to the IRA and in September 1972 a huge shipment of RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launchers was successfully and secretively landed at Shannon Airport. Originally the plan was to land the shipment at Farranfore Airport in Co. Kerry but the runway was too short for the aircraft. These rocket launchers were used in a series of attacks along the border the following month.
With the Provisional IRA campaign going into overdrive in Northern Ireland, there was a constant need for weapons, and what could not be brought in could possibly be built. There were those in PIRA who were to prove highly proficient in producing prototypes and then perfecting them. At a more basic level, training camps were organised and established well away from the ‘war zone’: in Kerry, Mayo and other out-of-the-way locations. A five-day training camp model was developed where weapon and explosives familiarisation was conducted, as well as training participants in the characteristics and capabilities of the weapons available. Weapons would be disassembled, their working parts exposed and explained and then the weapon reassembled. This ‘stripping and assembling’ of a weapon demystified it and for many fed the fascination with guns that was an attraction in the first place. Safety precautions, cleaning, care and maintenance were next and then firing practise with live rounds. Any bad habits were corrected through instruction and the individual trainees for the most part reached a standard to be allowed to operate on the streets and in rural parts of Northern Ireland.
Security was an issue and keeping the exact location of the training camp hidden was always uppermost. Active measures were taken to avoid suspicion and discovery. Those attending camps departed from their homes by different routes and were collected at a central rendezvous from which they were transported in vans, minibuses with blacked-out windows and in the rear of cattle trucks. Products used at the camps – including food and drink – were made generic and any reference to locality on milk cartons, shopping bags etc. was removed. No local newspapers were permitted. If discovered, there were selected escape routes and rendezvous spots where the participants were to gather after the getaway was made. Sometimes specialised camps for explosive making or advanced weapons training were also held. Hundreds of trainees passed through the training camps and areas; all were prepared and most put what they had learned into action to perpetrate and continue the violence. Often, force was not only used for the furthering of the ‘Brits out’ aim, but also for its own sake. The constant continuum of thousands of small-scale attacks, shootings and bombings were of value to the Provisional IRA in keeping the low-intensity struggle contested, thereby maintaining morale amongst the active members by keeping them tirelessly committed. This also kept their focus and nurtured their ability – keeping it fit for purpose – and was an overt statement of prevailing strength to the community from which it drew its support.
Financing the campaign and the organisation was always a difficulty; by its own estimates the Provisional IRA cost £2 million a year to keep itself functioning. The funds required came from an assorted mix of sources; a levy on Belfast’s black taxis, gaming machines, drinking clubs, extortion, defrauding the tax and social welfare, smuggling operations along the border involving petrol, cattle, cigarettes and diesel, as well as funds raised abroad – particularly in the USA – and of course bank and wage robberies in the Republic. There was a lot of criminality associated with PIRA and the professionalisation of the Provisional IRA’s handling of its finances was to develop over the years regarding the administration and control of its earnings.
The production of money was one aspect of Provisional IRA activity; the production of fertiliser-based explosives was another. Ammonium nitrate was extracted from a process using Net Nitrate fertiliser mixed with gallons of water. When this was heated and the resultant residue mixed with diesel oil, this became the primary ingredient for PIRA bombs. This process produced a nauseating stench with sickening fumes, and together with the heat such facilities, often semi-derelict buildings in remote areas, were unpleasant places to work. The explosive material extract was collected regularly and transported to bomb factories to become the primary component in car bombs.
The Provisional IRA had the means, method and mentality to continue its armed struggle, taking the fight to the British on every occasion they could, convinced that victory was in their grasp. The military thinking of the Provisional IRA was to change over the years; the leadership became Northern-based, its structure was dramatically reorganised and its support base was broadened by blending the armed struggle with electoral politics. There were to be cessations, ceasefires, truces, campaign resumptions and decisive escalation of violence; more lives were lost in Northern Ireland, and the Irish State was required to go to great lengths to combat the real and sinister threat posed by the organisation.
CHAPTER 5
The Irish Government Shudders
An impromptu after-hours soccer match at Collins Barracks, Dublin, on 2 April 1970, involving the garrison’s young officers on the quayside esplanade near the River Liffey is interrupted and an officer requested to report immediately to the Brigade Commander’s office. On the way he is joined by another junior officer, both Lieutenants from the 5th Infantry Battalion, similarly summonsed from elsewhere on the barracks. Three senior officers were waiting for them in the Brigade Commander’s office and the two Lieutenants were told to quickly get into uniform and that an already loaded convoy of trucks was awaiting their arrival in Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin. They were to command the convoy from there to Aiken Barracks, Dundalk, taking it on a given route from Dublin through Slane and Ardee to Dundalk. One of the former Lieutenants recalls:
On arrival to Cathal Brugha Barracks, it became apparent that the convoy contained a large consignment of Lee-Enfield rifles, ammunition and gas masks. Unable to verify the exact quantities involved and the specific serial numbers of the rifles, I declined to sign [the] Issues and Receipt Voucher presented for my signature by the Ordnance Survey stores staff. That I was unable to check the correctness of the convoy’s consignment was itself an irregular situation, but more worrying was the absence of any attendant armed escort party. The convoy was organised into two packets of three trucks each. The lead packet’s first truck contained rifles, the second rifles and ammunition, the third ammunition. I sat in the lead truck. All three drivers were armed, as were their companions. However, in terms of security this was light or minimal. The convoy’s second packet, to travel 15-minutes behind the first [and] commanded by the other officer, also had three trucks: two containing gas masks and the third truck empty, [which] acted as a spare in case of a breakdown. With a military police Land Rover placed well out in front as a vanguard ahead of the first packet. I briefed the drivers of the trucks to keep the truck behind in view. That completed, we headed off on our northwards journey out of Dublin’s Southside to Aiken Barracks, Dundalk.
The specified route was not that most regularly taken to reach Dundalk. Normally this involved turning right shortly after Slane and proceeding to Dundalk via Drogheda. Having made our way through the city and now beyond Slane, we were driving along the prescribed irregular route and as the road was winding, twisting and narrow, together with darkness having descended, it was difficult to keep the truck behind in view. I was also distracted by the fact that our radios were not working and concerned with thoughts in my mind as to why we were here, that it was all too easy to become intercepted by an armed body and was this planned to happen? It was then that I noticed the third truck full of ammunition was missing!
I ordered the driver of the lead truck beside me to pull over onto the side of the road so that we could regroup and was shortly joined only by the second truck. We waited and waited but no third truck appeared. The Military Police Land Rover had lost visual contact with us, so retraced its route and having located us I directed them back to find the missing third truck. The Military Police found the convoy’s separate second packet of trucks but there was no sign of the missing ammunition-carrying third truck. Suspecting that for whatever reason the driver of the third truck had mistakenly, or otherwise, taken the more usual, regular route to Dundalk, I decided to phone Aiken Barracks, Dundalk, to confirm that it had arrived. This, in the pre-mobile phone days, required a pay phone and loose change. Both eventually found, I got through to Aiken Barracks in Dundalk and ascertained that … having mechanically struggled up
