To avoid repeating the mistakes of earlier generations it is necessary to learn from history. This is especially so in a society which is still shaped in many of its essentials by the forces and influences of the recent past. Hence it is essential that new information relating to the Arms Crisis of 1970 be fully examined and evaluated. The Government's limited proposal that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Attorney General investigate the workings of their own departments falls far short of what is required.
The cataclysmic events of 1969-1970 threw up deeply-conflicting imperatives for the people of this State. Even the most pacific spirits were challenged by the terrible prospect of widespread violence being visited upon the defenceless nationalist population in the North. The State qua the State was powerless to intervene directly. There was a widespread instinct that if the South could not protect Northern nationalists it should, at very least, do what it could to enable them to defend themselves. Yet, public men knew very well that to take this course would be to sow dragon's teeth. Out of these conflicting urges grew the plan to import almost seven tons of weapons in the spring of 1970 for distribution to the IRA. Mr Charles Haughey and the other defendants were arrested, charged and subsequently acquitted. Fianna Fail split, with the greater numbers rallying around the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch and his newly-structured Cabinet, in which the young Desmond O'Malley held the crucial Justice portfolio. There can be no doubt that Lynch, and those loyal to him, pulled the State back from a course which could have led to a breakdown of democracy, to anarchy and war. This is the context within which individuals' actions at the time have to be judged. They saw it as their duty, literally, to save the State. They discharged that duty with courage and at considerable risk.
But the trouble with democracy is that all actions - and not just their context - have to be judged by the stringent tests which flow from the rule of law. Was there due process? Was the judicial function allowed to discharge its responsibilities unimpeded? Was there a full vindication of every individual's rights? The evidence which has now emerged, beginning with RTE's Prime Time programme, strongly suggests that this may not have been so in every case.
Mr O'Malley himself has called for a full inquiry into all the events and circumstances surrounding the Arms Crisis while Captain James Kelly, charged and acquitted of conspiring to import arms illegally, seeks a more narrow focus into the processes and conduct of the trial. Meanwhile the Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, has suggested setting up an inquiry with the assistance of historians and others trained in the examination of documentary records. That call was endorsed last night in the Senate by his colleague, Dr Maurice Manning.
Even at a remove of more than 30 years it is not appropriate to have the Department of Justice and the Attorney General's department investigate the actions of their predecessors in office. The public interest would be best served by a broad inquiry of the kind suggested by Mr O'Malley. At the same time any such inquiry must examine thoroughly the questions which have now been raised by recent revelations and, indeed, by Deputy O'Malley's less than comprehensive answers in the current RTE series of programmes on his career. If any injustice was done to Captain Kelly it must be put right and it must not be airbrushed from history by the argument that a greater good was secured. The balancing of the public interest against individual rights is where a democracy's fault lines will often show up. If the balance has been upset it must be put right.