The Arms Crisis of 1970

In 1970, two cabinet ministers and their alleged accomplices were accused of smuggling arms to self-defence groups in Northern Ireland and were put on trial. Many of these groups were associated with the then-nascent Provisional IRA. It was also suggested that these ministers favoured the invasion of Catholic areas along the border in order to protect the northern minority and provoke an international incident that might draw in the United Nations.

All this took place against a background of sectarian violence and chaos: during and after August 1969, Catholic families were being driven out of Belfast and other towns and fleeing south, and whole streets were burned out. This was the situation that led to the first introduction of British troops in an attempt to halt the rioting and expulsions.

The trial was seen as a major test of Irish democracy: this was an attempt at a kind of coup, a conspiracy to provide guns to nationalist paramilitaries, and a secret plot to end partition by force. The two politicians were eventually acquitted, a verdict that was never accepted by many of their opponents, but their reputations were forever tainted. The prime minister at the time, Jack Lynch, was hailed as a courageous democrat who defended the integrity of the state and reined in the wild men of his own party. Lynch drew back from any talk of intervention. But politicians hostile to irredentism in the south, and Unionists in Ulster, accused Haughey and Blaney of helping to give birth to the Provos, who launched a murderous campaign that took 30 years to end.