Military kept files on many

Intelligence and who the State were watching: Military intelligence kept files on a wide array of individuals and organisations…

Intelligence and who the State were watching: Military intelligence kept files on a wide array of individuals and organisations in Irish society in 1975, writes Deaglán de Bréadún.

State Papers released under the 30-year rule show that military intelligence kept files in 1975 on a wide array of individuals and organisations in Irish society, including at least one member of the Cabinet as well as a former minister, along with political parties, trade unions, campaigning organisations, student groups, women's rights activists and journalists.

Even though he was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs at the time and issued regular pronouncements on the security threat posed by the IRA, a file was being kept on Conor Cruise-O'Brien. Another file was maintained on former health minister Noel Browne, who was then an independent member of Seanad Éireann for Trinity College Dublin. Future Supreme Court judge and president of the Law Commission, Catherine McGuinness, appears in a file that was being kept on her husband, journalist and broadcaster Proinsias MacAonghusa, who died in September 2003. Her relationship with Mr MacAonghusa is underlined with a pen in a press cutting on Mrs McGuinness's nomination as the Church of Ireland lay representative to a meeting of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi.

There were files on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Workers' Union of Ireland, Marine Port and General Workers' Union, National Union of Journalists, Union of Students in Ireland, Small Farmers' Defence Association and the Association of Combined Residents' Associations.

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Eight pupils in the fifth-year Spanish class at Mount St Joseph College, Roscrea, Co Tipperary ended up in a military intelligence file when they wrote a letter to The Irish Times, published on October 3rd, 1975, protesting against the "horrible executions" carried out by the "embarrassing" Franco regime the previous weekend. Five men in their 20s, leftists and Basque nationalists, had been shot by firing-squad after a military tribunal convicted them of the murder of three policemen and a Civil Guard. The letter is pasted into a file entitled "Student Organisations: General" and, as usual, each name is underlined and ticked-off, as though being checked against another, parallel list.

There is also a file entitled "Women's Liberation Movement" which features another letter to The Irish Times from future education minister Gemma Hussey and future junior minister for women's affairs Nuala Fennell about the continuing failure of the Dáil to enact legislation for women's rights including equal pay.

In the file on Dr O'Brien, a single-page document has been removed under the terms of the National Archives Act 1986 on the basis that it could "cause distress or danger . . . or be likely to lead to an action for damages for defamation". A statement to this effect is inserted, on a standard form signed by a colonel in the Defence Forces. The remainder of the file consists of press cuttings, including a letter on Northern Ireland from Dr O'Brien, signed in his capacity as minister for posts and telegraphs.

His former Labour Party colleague, Dr Browne, minister for health 1948-51, is also the subject of a file, which includes a newspaper report that he had been offered a post as "chief of psychiatric medicine" by the Col Gadafy regime in Libya. A file headed, "Labour Party, Communist infiltration" chronicles the activities of the "Liaison Committee of the Labour Left" which subsequently split away to found the short-lived Socialist Labour Party, led by Dr Browne and trade unionist Matt Merrigan, both of them now deceased.

A file on the Militant Tendency states that it is the public face of the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), counterpart of the British-based organisation of that name. An anonymous handwritten note in the file states: "The RSL is an organisation which believes that the Trotskyist revolution can be brought about through the Labour Party and it practises Entryism - working under cover in an organisation so as to influence and ultimately control the policies of that organisation. "The RSL has never sought a public existence. Its membership is kept secret." The Dublin headquarters address was in Crumlin: "This is a private residence and militants of varying degrees have resided in a flat there over the past five or six years." (The Militant Tendency was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989.)

Files were kept on a wide range of political parties and organisations, including the Labour Party, SDLP, Christian Democrat Party, Socialist Party of Ireland, New Ulster Movement, Alliance, Communist Party of Ireland, People's Democracy and both wings of Sinn Féin.

Prominent and not-so-prominent personalities in Irish life were also being monitored and there are individual files on journalists Gery Lawless of the Sunday World, Seán Cronin of The Irish Times, Deasún Breathnach of the Irish Independent and Éamonn McCann from Derry. Republicans and socialists were also an object of attention and there are files on Seán MacStiofáin, Seán Garland, historian and political activist Rayner Lysaght, former Westminster MP (1969-74) Bernadette McAliskey (nee Devlin) as well as the late Capt James Kelly, a central figure in the 1970 Arms Crisis.