With the good man now buried, and Cork back about its daily business, let us remind ourselves that what finally scuppered the political career of Jack Lynch can be summarised in three letters. IRA. We have tended to favour the congenial fiction that terrorism, and his determination to end it, were not vital engines to his downfall. Yet they were absolutely decisive factors in the elevation of Charles Haughey to power, and the creation of the most sordid and diseased chapter in Irish political life since the end of the Civil War.
Twenty years ago last August, the IRA had its most successful day in these troubles. It massacred the Mountbatten boating party of octogenarians and children - quite a feat - and simultaneously slaughtered 18 soldiers at Narrow Water, Warrenpoint. It was a day of deep and abiding shame in Ireland. Shortly afterwards, Jack Lynch had acceded to a request from London to permit brief overflights by British aircraft in Border areas in the pursuit of terrorists.
Arms trial
That was the pretext used by Charles Cordite Haughey, still reeking with the martial fragrance of the arms trial, to mount his challenge for the leadership - not the failure to quash terrorism root and branch but because "national sovereignty" was being eroded by the prospect of temporary overflights. It was of course being systematically and daily eroded by the IRA; but that of course seemed less important than making a stand against the old enemy. Cordite wrapped the green flag around him, boys, and Fianna Fail, knowing full well what they were getting, elected him into office.
Now the issue of British overflights in Border areas might or might not have been a good pretext to overthrow a taoiseach, as indeed the overflights themselves might or might not have been a good idea (though what would have been better still would have been to equip our own forces with the necessary aircraft to increase security along a porous Border through which killers were infiltrating to cleanse entire areas of their Protestant population). But the awesome and shaming truth is that Jack Lynch's political career was ended by his civilised determination to end terrorism.
But was it always so? No, it wasn't. Early in the Troubles, his government was aware of the existence of at least one IRA training camp, which was allowed to remain functioning. A Garda Special Branch officer was so appalled at this studied inaction towards a terrorist base that he informed the British about it, and became an active British agent. The British prime minister Ted Heath took Jack Lynch horribly by surprise when he was able both to name the training camp, and the government's acquiescence in its existence, early in the 1970s. The Special Branch officer was exposed and prosecuted, and effectively obliged to emigrate.
Sinister whiff
It was of course the guns-for-the-North affair, which gave Charles Haughey that sinister whiff which so intoxicated the rank and file of Fianna Fail, and which was articulated so eloquently by a Haughey supporter and cabinet minister who had publicly declared early in the IRA campaign: "We don't want to bomb a million Protestants into a united Ireland: we want to bomb them out of it." (Cheers).
Jack Lynch only acted against those alleged to be importing guns for the North after he had been approached by the Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave, and his directors of intelligence. Did he strike to save democracy; or did he strike because he was given no other alternative? And so how could he be said to have been moved by a sense of honour or by his love of democracy?
He certainly preferred to shoot the messenger. When RTE alleged that illegal money-lending was rampant in Dublin, he commissioned a tribunal - the mother, as it happens, of all tribunals - into the way the programme was made, thereby wrecking the current affairs career of a promising young broadcaster, Bill O'Herlihy. When the RTE Authority refused to punish Kevin O'Kelly for broadcasting a transcript of an interview with Sean MacStiofain, he simply sacked the Authority.
True gentleman
I met Jack Lynch once. The word gentleman truly describes him. Twenty years ago, he was treated quite abominably by the party which he had led to power in its stunning victory two years before. The people who destroyed him - and they included future party eminences such as Charlie McCreevy, Sile de Valera, Ray McSharry, Albert Reynolds, Mark Killilea - also destroyed Fianna Fail as a single-party of government for ever. Theirs was a doubly pyrrhic victory: by it, they also foisted on Ireland the most corrupt and corrupting individual in the history of the state.
What is quite shameful is that the pretext for his downfall should have been Jack Lynch's role in furthering Irish-British co-operation in suppressing terrorism. A full score of years and 1,500 lives later, the lessons which had been learnt by this decent man are now accepted throughout Irish life. Jack Lynch was a vital part of the process of national maturation; the essence of being grown up is that you tell the truth about yourself, and about a good but flawed man such as Jack Lynch. And being good but flawed is the best that one can say of any of us.