Peter Murtagh recalls the kidnapping of Don Tidey in 1983 during a dark period in Irish history
THE IRELAND of 1983 was a different place – a very different place – to today’s Ireland. It was a place filled with darkness and despair, armed bank robberies, intimidation, murder and bombings. It was a place of roadblocks where gardaí searched cars for gunmen and the tools of their trade, supported by soldiers lying in ditches or behind walls, their guns trained on the drivers.
The Provisional IRA, the military wing of Sinn Féin, did not recognise the democratic legitimacy of either the Republic or Northern Ireland and claimed a right to wage war on behalf of Sinn Féin’s vision of a united Ireland.
Consider just one month: November, the month of Don Tidey’s kidnapping by the PIRA. On November 4th they planted a bomb in the Ulster Polytechnic in Co Antrim, targeting policemen of the Royal Ulster Constabulary there for a lecture.
Three officers died – two immediately, another nine months later, and 33 people were injured.
On November 14th, Charles Armstrong, a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment and also Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) chairman of Armagh District Council, was murdered by a booby trap bomb under his car.
On November 20th, gunmen styling themselves as the Catholic Reaction Force (but actually members of Dominic McGlinchey’s so-called Irish National Liberation Army) burst into the tiny Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church in Darkley, Co Armagh, and sprayed bullets at people who were there to worship. Miraculously, only three people died and seven others were injured. But the atrocity shocked people deeply – North and South.
Darkley faded into the background, however, when Don Tidey was kidnapped four days later near his home at Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin.
American-born Tidey was largely unknown outside business circles. He was chairman and chief executive of Associated British Foods, a supermarket company whose flagship chain in the Republic was Quinnsworth supermarkets (subsequently taken over by Tesco).
He was seized at 7.45am on November 24th 1983 when he left his home in Woodtown Way, a cul-de-sac, driving his 13-year-old daughter Susan to school at Alexandra College in Milltown, and accompanied also by his 24-year-old son, Alistair.
There was a spate of abductions (usually accompanied by ransom demands) and attempted abductions in the two years preceding the Tidey kidnapping. Ben Dunne, then managing director of Dunne Stores, was abducted and eventually released unharmed – physically – in October 1982 after, it was reported at the time, £300,000 (€378,000) was paid.
In November 1982, the daughters of two Louth bank managers were kidnapped and released after a £50,000 (€63,000) payment was demanded. In March 1983, Albert Folens, the publisher, was kidnapped and freed after a ransom demand of £10,000 (€12,600) was paid. In April, a ransom of £10,000 was paid to secure the release of the wife and daughter of steel importer Peter Simms. In June, a Louth butcher was abducted. Later that month, gardaí rescued the wife of the MD of Allied Couriers, who had been abducted. In August, an attempt to kidnap Galen Weston, a Canadian-born business associate of Tidey, failed when gardaí opened fire on a gang who arrived at his home in Co Wicklow.
A few days later, it was the turn of Enniskerry solicitor William Somerville, who was held tied to a tree at the Army firing range in Kilpedder for 24 hours. And in October, Alma Manina, the wife of a Greystones-based Canadian industrialist and art collector, was rescued three hours after she was kidnapped.
Don Tidey would have seen nothing unusual in a uniformed “garda” flagging him to stop at a “Garda roadblock” at the junction of Stocking Lane and Woodtown Way. However, the “gardaí” were in reality members of the Provisional IRA. Tidey tried a frantic reversal when he realised what was happening but to no avail.
A submachine gun was put to his head and he was bundled from his car. Susan and Alistair were pulled from the car by an armed man, also in a garda uniform and thrown by the roadside as the terrorists left with the father. The snatch was over in five minutes and involved five or six men.
In the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping, gardaí concentrated their efforts on the immediate
vicinity but quickly enlarged their search to parts of Kildare, Kerry, Roscommon and Mayo.
For almost all of his abduction, however, it appears that Tidey was held in woods near Ballinamore in Co Leitrim.
On November 27th, a ransom demand for £5 million sterling was telephoned to Associated British Foods offices in London. ABF and the government were totally opposed to paying.
However, the net was closing. From about December 13th in the Ballinamore area, about 1,000 soldiers and some 100 gardaí were manning roadblocks, scouring the countryside and doing house-to-house searches.
At about 2pm on December 16th, Garda recruits were crawling through dense undergrowth in a forest of young pine trees at Deradda Woods. They saw some plastic sheeting in a hollow. It stirred.
They moved back and called for assistance. Gunmen leapt up and began firing.
A hand grenade was thrown. Gardaí and soldiers swarmed forward. The gunmen fled. Don Tidey, his head covered by a balaclava, was freed, physically unharmed. But a young garda and a soldier had given their lives to save him.
Pte Patrick Kelly, a 35-year-old from Moate in Co Westmeath, was shot dead. He left a widow, Cathrina (31) and four young sons.
Gary Sheehan, aged 23, died with him. He was due to graduate from Templemore in 1984. He was the son of Det Garda Jim Sheehan, stationed not far away in Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan.
Gary Sheehan is remembered by each batch of recruits to pass through Training College in Templemore.
The best all-rounder receives the Gary Sheehan Memorial Medal.
Peter Murtagh was Irish Times security correspondent in 1983 and reported the release of Don Tidey from Ballinamore