Were it not for his unwanted and major role in the Arms Crisis of 1969, Jim Gibbons's name might have been a mere footnote in Irish political history, despite his success as Minister for Agriculture from 1970 to 1973 and between 1977 and 1979. The Arms Crisis pushed him reluctantly into the spotlight, which remained on him during the remainder of his life and will continue to focus on him in historical analyses as students try to unravel the mysteries of the most intriguing political drama of our time.
His prominence in the story arises from his period as Minister for Defence in the crucial year 1969-'70. The Northern problem, ignored by successive Irish governments for years, with the exception of rhetorical speeches by party leaders on the occasion of anniversary functions, suddenly blew up in the faces of Irish politicians with the siege of the Bogside in Derry by mobs of loyalists, led by the RUC and B Specials, on August 12, 1969.
The government met in emergency session and continued to meet on an almost daily basis as Ministers tried to grapple with an unfamiliar and very confusing situation. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, made his famous "We will not stand by" statement on television, Army units were sent to the Border to set up field hospitals, and £100,000 was set aside by the government, under the care of the Minister for Finance, Charles Haughey, for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland. Haughey and Gibbons were also given responsibility to prepare the Army to deal with the possibility of a "contingency" situation in Northern Ireland. It has never been clear what the distinction was between a "contingency" and a "doomsday" situation. It seems to have been understood, however, that in a "doomsday" situation, in which the lives of the nationalist population in Northern Ireland would be threatened on a large scale, the Army would intervene to protect the nationalists from destruction. It is unlikely that the government notes of those meetings contain any definite decisions in this regard, but the fact that the government instructed the Army to set aside 500 older rifles, which had been replaced by more modern weapons at the time, confirms the belief that the government was ready to take drastic action if the need arose.
Further confirmation of the government's thinking arose from the action of the Army in subsequent weeks in bringing young men from Derry across the Border to Donegal for training in the use of weapons, under the pretence that they had been recruited as members of the FCA for annual training with the Army. The exercise was terminated by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, shortly after it started, when he learned that the newspapers had got word of it.
In the meantime, delegations of all kinds, including several political and business leaders, were arriving daily in Dublin seeking the assistance of the government. They were quite explicit in the type of assistance they required - it was always guns. Food and clothing were secondary to the overwhelming demand for guns. All of these people seem to have gone home to Belfast in the belief that the government "would not let them down".
A young Army intelligence officer, Capt James Kelly, had also arrived on the scene, and it was his involvement that brought Jim Gibbons, as Minister for Defence, directly into the picture. Kelly witnessed the siege of the Bogside as a visitor to the city in August 1969. Subsequently, he saw, and was even more distressed by, the riots in Belfast in which seven Catholics were killed inside a week and whole streets of Catholic homes were burned out. He met the leaders of the Catholic defence committees, who repeated the general clamour for weapons to defend their people and he brought back to his immediate Army superior, Col Michael Hefferon, graphic details of the situation. Col Hefferon instructed him to continue to monitor the situation and to report back to him.
Col Hefferon reported the situation to the Minister, Jim Gibbons, who became aware of the existence of Capt Kelly for the first time. Before long he was to get to know him personally as he became a regular visitor to Government Buildings to meet the Minister for Agriculture, Neil Blaney, and to liaise with the Minister for Finance, Charles Haughey, about requests for financial aid from the £100,000 fund set up by the government for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland.
Leaders of the defence committees in Northern Ireland claimed afterwards that it was generally accepted that the money was being sought for the purchase of guns. Haughey claimed he had no knowledge that the money was issued for any other purpose than the relief of distress, such as the purchase of clothes and food.
Small consignments of guns were bought in the United States and in Britain and smuggled back to Ireland on board the QE2 and through Dublin Airport. The Special Branch was gradually building up a file through informants and by surveillance of the main characters in the operation. Capt Kelly's name began appearing in reports, and when he chaired a meeting of leaders of Northern defence committees in Bailieboro, Co Cavan, in early October 1969, a detailed report of the meeting, compiled by the Special Branch, was sent to the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry. The report alleged that the Northern representatives were members of subversive organisations, which was correct in so far as many of the defence committee leaders were also members of the IRA. It was also alleged that statements had been made at the meeting that substantial amounts of money were available for the purchase of guns.
Peter Berry, who was receiving urgent treatment for an aortic condition in Mount Carmel Hospital, Rathgar, asked to speak to the Taoiseach to warn him about what he regarded as a most serious development, involving a member of the Army. Jack Lynch later denied any memory of this meeting, but there is evidence to suggest that he asked Jim Gibbons to investigate the report and that Gibbons contacted Col Hefferon about the matter. Neither Gibbons nor Hefferon, apparently, ever came back to Lynch with a report. With so many other matters on his mind about the Northern troubles, it is not surprising that the Taoiseach forgot about a story involving a comparatively junior Army officer, which, he felt, should have been dealt with by the officer's immediate superiors. As he said later, "If the law is being broken, let the gardai do their job".
Efforts to secure guns in the US and in the UK continued over the remaining weeks of 1969, but early in 1970, after a Belgian businessman, Albert Luykx, who owned a hotel in Sutton, Co Dublin, came into the picture, it was decided to switch operations to Europe, and particularly to Germany.
In early March 1970 Capt Kelly went to Germany, ostensibly to visit his sister, but in reality to vet guns in Hamburg.
Col Hefferon rang Jim Gibbons to inform him of Kelly's intention. It seems to have been about this time that Gibbons decided to get Kelly out of the Army and into civilian life. He said later that when he learned that Kelly had decided to throw in his lot with the Northern nationalists he thought it best to get him out of the Army and at the same time to ensure that he had a means of earning his living. He went to Haughey, who allegedly told him he had the ideal job available - a pigsmuggling preventive officer on the Border. In the event, the suggestion never came to anything. Capt Kelly said recently in a radio interview with Vincent Browne that he discussed the entire matter about obtaining guns with Haughey on February 14th, 1970, and that Haughey knew all about it.
On March 25th, Capt Kelly told Gibbons of a failed attempt to bring in guns on a ship through Dublin port, and that it was intended to renew the efforts to bring in the weapons by some other means, possibly by way of Trieste. Gibbons, apparently, did not know at that time, although Kelly did, because he had spoken on the quays to the people involved, that a properly authorised consignment of guns for the Army had arrived at the docks that same day and had been collected by a sergeant and a platoon of soldiers for delivery to Army barracks in Dublin. It is surprising that more prominence was not given to this aspect of the story in the arms trial.
Neither could Gibbons have known, and it is not clear that Capt Kelly was aware, that Kelly's intentions to bring the weapons he was supposed to be collecting to a safe place until a government decision was made about their disposal, was going to be thwarted by a group of Northern Ireland members of the IRA who were also waiting at Dublin docks with the intention of seizing the weapons and bringing them straight into Northern Ireland. Both Sean MacStiof ain, then chief-of-staff of the Provisional IRA, and John Kelly, who was O/C Belfast Brigade IRA, and who was later to be charged along with Haughey and James Kelly with conspiring to import arms illegally into the State, confirmed this in interviews on RTE a couple of years ago.
Gibbons next came into the story a month later when he learned that another attempt to bring in guns was being made through Dublin Airport. He claimed that he immediately went to Haughey and asked him to call the whole thing off, to which Haughey replied that he would call it off for a month. Gibbons then claimed that he said, "For God's sake, call it off altogether".
Haughey denied at the arms trial that this conversation ever took place, and the trial judge, Seamus Henchy, told the jury the different accounts by the two men could not be reconciled by any suggestion of a lapse of memory. One of the two must be lying. It was surprising that the presiding judge referred only to the conflict of evidence between Haughey and Gibbons when, in fact, Haughey's evidence also conflicted with the evidence of Peter Berry, Tony Fagan, his private secretary, and with his co-defendant, Capt James Kelly. For Haughey to be telling the truth, the four would all have to be telling lies.
When Haughey was acquitted by the jury, Gibbons suffered greatly from the mistaken belief that the public regarded him as a perjurer. This suffering was only eased earlier this year when Haughey was exposed as a liar at the McCracken Tribunal.
He had to suffer also from the knowledge that he had not been a very convincing witness at the trial in two particular areas. He was put in the almost impossible position as a prosecution witness of having to explain his actions in regard to a new directive to the Army on February 6th, 1970, and to instructions to send the 500 weapons, which had been put into cold storage by the government in August 1969 up to the border on April 2nd, 1970.
These were both extremely ambiguous actions, involving possible interference in the affairs of another state, which carried the gravest implications in international law. Gibbons was forced, in the circumstances, to evade a succession of leading questions from defence lawyers in order to avoid an admission that the government had contemplated actions of the most disturbing consequences. He could not admit that on February 6th, 1970, he had issued a new directive to the Army to be prepared not only for possible intervention in Northern Ireland but for the handing over of weapons to Northern citizens to defend themselves against murderous attacks. Neither could he admit the purpose of sending 500 guns to the Border in April. That action was inspired by an alarming call from Neil Blaney to Gibbons that Ballymurphy was being attacked and that the "doomsday" they had feared had arrived. The order to dispatch the guns from Dublin was only countermanded when Jack Lynch intervened.
Before the Arms Crisis, Jim Gibbons was a comparatively cheerful and friendly personality who gave endless enjoyment, along with Sean Dunne and Pat Lindsay, to the political correspondents at Leinster House when he would join their table in the restaurant for afternoon tea, and these three wonderful raconteurs would compete with one another to tell the funniest story. His detailed accounts of the behaviour of some of his colleagues at meetings of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg were hilarious. After the event, he became taciturn and introspective. He refused to speak to one journalist for three years because he had suggested when the story broke in 1970 that Gibbons had questions to answer. It was only at a meeting in Strasbourg in about 1973 that their friendship was restored.
It appeared to those who knew him that he was in a dilemma at the time of the Arms Crisis. It was not a time when a member of the government could give an impression of being less patriotic than his colleagues. Gibbons was a member of a Kilkenny family with a long tradition of republicanism. He was inclined to express himself at times with considerable vehemence. John Kelly met him only once or twice, but he said on one occasion that "Gibbons's vehemence frightened me". A colleague in government remembers him as thumping the table to make his point. He was aware of the actions of Capt James Kelly in trying to assist Northern nationalists but appears to have made no effort to stop him.
The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, could not understand why he did not disclose to him the activities of Blaney and Haughey, but it appears that he was relying on the older and more experienced man from Mayo, Michael Moran, who was Minister for Justice, and had more detailed information, to inform Lynch. He told of going to Moran on one occasion to ask him if he had told the Taoiseach, to which Moran replied, "No, not yet".
The defence of the two Kellys, Jimmy and John, and Albert Luykx at the Arms Trial, was that their actions had at all times government authority and that they were acting in accordance with government policy. Their counsel claimed that the Minister for Defence, Jim Gibbons, did not have to sign any document to authorise their actions: all that was necessary was a nod of the head. Since Gibbons did not say No, counsel argued that it could be inferred he was saying Yes. If this were the case, the question immediately arose as to why guns purchased with money from the Department of Finance failed to be loaded on board a ship in Antwerp in March 1970 and why they also failed to be loaded on board a plane at Vienna a month later. All the nodding in the world could not make up for the absence of the necessary documentation.
In any case, no Dublin jury was ever going to find the defendants guilty of wrongdoing in the circumstances that prevailed in Northern Ireland in the period 1969-'70.