The events surrounding the Arms Trial of 35 years ago are seminal to the succeeding decades of the 20th century, wrties Kevin Myers
What Algeria was to France, the Arms Trial was to Ireland. At its heart was the decision by some government ministers to split the Marxist-dominated IRA and to arm the breakaway right-wing, militant Provisionals.
In effect, this was a strike against both the government of Northern Ireland, and by extension, the government of this Republic. As such, it was an act of national treachery unprecedented in the history of this State.
The ministerial cohort was small in number; it included Neil Blaney but not, contrary to much mythology, Kevin Boland. Those involved knew him too well: he was from straight timber hewn, loyal to the institutions and the Constitution of this Republic, and would never have acted against the elected government of the Irish people.
When Jack Lynch heard of what was going on, he behaved with rigid adherence to the Constitution. He instructed the Attorney General, Colm Condon, to investigate the allegations that a small number of government ministers, and some Army officers, were engaged in treason, and to take whatever action was necessary. Jack Lynch had nothing more to do with the matter, which remained in the hands of Colm Condon. It was he who oversaw the ensuing prosecution of the politicians and one Army officer, which was led in court by Séamus McKenna SC.
If you wanted to make a four-part television programme about the life and times of one those defendants, Charles J. Haughey, would you not go to the trouble of interviewing the man who was on the very inside of the Arms Trial - its instigator, Colm Condon?
Might you not also seek the opinions of the foremost prosecuting counsel, Séamus McKenna? For, with so many of the main players now dead, do they not possess a unique understanding of the time, and the deeds that were done that led to the trial?
Neither man was asked to appear in the recent Haughey programmes, though both are alive and well, and remain practising barristers. Yet they had been behind the most thorough forensic investigation into the career and activities of Charles Haughey during 1969-70. Not to have made them integral to any examination of the Arms Trial - probably the most important period in Charles Haughey's career - is simply astounding, and constitutes either a breathtaking dereliction of duty, or the existence of editorial values which almost defy analysis.
Yet this was supposedly the greatest and most thorough investigation into a single politician in the history of programme-making for RTÉ. So consider: if a Garda investigation were conducted into a government scandal, allegedly involving treason, subversion and terrorism, but without gardaí interviewing the two foremost witnesses, would the RTÉ newsroom not be incandescent, and the airwaves hot with allegations of cover-ups and cronyism?
A truly golden opportunity has thus been lost. For the year 1970 provides a borehole into the sordid realities of Irish life.
The case against Neil Blaney was thrown out by a District Justice. Moreover, contrary to popular mythology - which the Haughey programmes appeared to accept - there was not one arms trial, but two. The first one was abandoned, and the refusal of the first judge, Andreas O'Keeffe, to allow it to continue raised serious questions.
From the rotten soil of this period grew the IRA and the cult of Haughey inside Fianna Fáil.
The guns that were smuggled in enabled the Provisional IRA to break away from the Official IRA. One of those guns, now in the hands of Saor Eire - bizarre left-wing associates of the right-wing Provisionals - was allegedly used to kill Garda Richard Fallon in 1970. A government-bought gun kills a loyal servant of the government: and the filth is only just beginning.
Moreover, though Haughey was acquitted, the Arms Trial left an indelible whiff of fenianism around his name. This actually enhanced his standing within Fianna Fáil, for a widespread belief in his complicity in smuggling arms was central to the cordite-charisma which he continued to possess for the ranks of the party faithful. Charlie was sound on the national question; wink, wink.
Onward and upwards he rose, spreading the rank corruption of his person and his values throughout Irish life, until hardly an institution was immune to the very contagion he personified.
Even the servants of the Revenue Commissioners themselves were drawn into the net of his nefarious activities. But this should not surprise us. In 1970, the office of the Revenue Commissioners was secretly used to funnel government money away from its intended beneficiary, the Red Cross, and into the coffers of the breakaway IRA.
The real hero of the hour, the Fianna Fáil Attorney General Colm Condon, has since been written out of history. Yet not merely did he stand for the rule of law and the sovereignty of the State in 1970, but over the coming period he recognised the threat to civilisation on this island posed by the rise of the Provisional IRA.
It was he who invoked and strengthened the Special Criminal Court, which - though debased to the point of hair-splitting meaninglessness in its later incarnations - was for years the central State tool for combating the fascist terrorism of the IRA in the Republic.
RTÉ, with its perverse values and strange agenda, might not acknowledge his true place in history; but future historians unquestionably will.