Captain Kelly died on Wednesday, 16th July. There can be no doubt that the late Fianna Fail Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, bears much responsibility for his premature death. Lynch accused Kelly of breaching his duty as an army officer by conspiring to import arms for nationalists in Northern Ireland. Captain Kelly told me how Lynch called him into his office and tried to persuade him to give false evidence for the prosecution in the Arms Trial. When Lynch failed to persuade him to commit this dishonourable act, he prosecuted him instead. James Kelly died of lung cancer and secondary brain tumours. Who can deny that the shock of betrayal by the State he served, with a prosecution for faithfully obeying orders and doing his duty, created an intolerable mental and physical pressure, which was then exacerbated by the unrelenting slog of trying to clear his name over the next 35 years, and that these factors contributed to his disease?

The family death notice of 18th July carried the following verse:

"Stand up and be counted they keep saying
and every time I stand up,
and every time I am counted,
and every time I count only as one."

Down the years James Kelly fought virtually alone to vindicate his name. Any Republicans who backed him could be dismissed as prejudiced—and the constitutional politicians and 'investigative' journalists who should have made his case a cause celebre preferred to keep offside for their own reasons. Conor Cruise O'Brien says he thought Kelly was innocent all along (II 19.7.03). If he did, he kept very quiet about it. He certainly gave him no endorsement when it might have mattered. Talking to myself and others, Kelly mentioned various journalists and politicians he had approached down the years, for help to try to get his name cleared. Some of them, like Fergal Keane, John Banville, and like Vincent Browne ("a decent man", as Kelly rushed to add), made fair promises and took the documents he gave them and that was the last that was heard of it. None of them gave him any help. Indeed, no publisher could be found for his books on the arms crisis, and no commercial distribution. They had to be produced and paid for himself.

Given his lone struggle—cheered on by enthusiastic pockets of supporters all over the place incidentally, and by his large family—it was amazing how many of the high and the mighty turned out for his funeral. The Army, which officially cold-shouldered him after 1970, was there to provide a guard of honour. The faces that were not there were to be expected, such as ex-President Hillery—in up to his ears with Lynch—and Desmond O'Malley, then the budding young British asset in Fianna Fail. But James would have been pleased with the turnout, all the same: Bertie Ahern, Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, the Lenihan brothers, Niall Andrews, Attorney General Rory Brady, Chief Justice Keane, Supreme Court Judge Adrian Hardimann—to name but a few: there is a message in all the grand names assembled. Surely they must have attended because of guilt at the lives ruined by the Arms Trials and the subsequent character assassination committed by the Dail Public Accounts Committee, and because they felt there was a blot on the honour of the State?

In the end, despite the investigative journalism that is supposed to mark Ireland's liberal democracy, it was left to Kelly to find the documents in the Public Record Office that proved what he had been saying all along. And when he found the documents, getting any media agency to take them seriously was another hill to climb. In the end, only Michael Heaney and RTE's Prime Time would take the matter up. But the programme they made convinced a lot of people that Kelly had been traduced by politicians, journalists and academics down the years.

Before 1969 Kelly had a successful army career. He spent time in Lebanon on the Irish UN mission. He edited the Army paper, An Cosantóir, in the 1960s. He served in Army Intelligence, where one of his duties, he told me, was to interact and exchange ideas with British strategic military thinkers, including Brigadier Frank Kitson. As an ordinary member of the armed forces, he had no difficulty in performing the various duties assigned to him. But the last job he was given was the one that ruined his career and brought his family into hardship. After the Northern Ireland security forces lost their heads in August 1969 and attacked Catholic homes, he was ordered to liaise with Northern nationalists and keep an eye on the situation. And, subsequently, he was chosen to implement a Cabinet decision to buy untraceable arms abroad and ship them through Ireland to Northern nationalists. The Sunday Independent obituary (20.7.03) throughout describes these events as "a plot", which carries the connotations of an illicit undertaking. But this was no 'plot', but a secret Government project to aid its own minority in another State which was failing to fulfil its duty of protecting its citizens without fear or favour.

The reason Kelly was chosen was a quirk of history. James was visiting his brother, Fr. Martin Kelly, in Belfast at the time and witnessed the events which gradually led to the war. He reported to his superiors what he had seen. They ordered him to maintain a watching brief and to keep contact with leading nationalists. The demand made directly to Lynch and his Ministers—made repeatedly and forcefully—from the local leaders (including John Hume, Paddy Devlin and Gerry Fitt) was that Catholics must be given the means to defend their areas. (The IRA had by then dropped its military capability under Cathal Goulding who was moulding it into a tool of class struggle.)

The events of August 1969 caused turmoil in the South. When the news came through of what was happening, the streets of Dublin became thronged with people, looking for a lead. When nothing else was available, there was even a run on The Irish Communist, which unfortunately was devoted to questions of abstruse philosophy in what was expected to be a quiet month. The Irish Army could not fail to be affected by the anger felt across the society at the failure of the Northern Ireland Government, or Westminster, to act to prevent innocent people being driven out of their homes in whole streets. Nor could the Irish Cabinet fail to be affected by the general agitation.

There can be little doubt that, if the Irish Cabinet had succeeded in taking purposeful steps to protect Northern Ireland Catholics, the IRA split would not have occurred. Cathal Goulding and his Republican movement would have stayed largely outside Northern affairs and remained irrelevant there. And the Provos would not have come into being. Eoghan Harris, in a nasty article in the Sunday Independent, entitled, To 'Clear' The Name Of Captain Kelly Would Be A Travesty Of Truth (20.7.03) twists history into knots so that he can include Kelly within the vituperative and abnormal—not to say 'mad'—hatred he feels for the Provisionals:

"If I were to support the campaign to 'clear' Kelly's name, I would have to believe that Jack Lynch authorised the Minister for Defence, Jim Gibbons to order Colonel Hefferon, the Director of Intelligence, to order Captain Kelly to spend the Northern fund to attempt to to bribe Goulding to lay off socialism in the South, get stuck into armed struggle in the North, finance a faction that would become the Provisional IRA, and attempt to arm 'Catholics' who would turn into the the hawks who became the Provisional IRA.

"It simply beggars belief'…'

"The proper business of Irish Army Intelligence is not to help the IRA but to smash it… That is what Captain Kelly… should have been doing in 1970…" (emphasis added).

It's all a matter of faith and zeal with Harris. In the Middle Ages he would have been leading the Inquisition. Devils are necessary to him. No matter that Captain Kelly was a normal, conscientious member of the Irish Army with a fine career behind and before him in 1969. No matter that the Provos were not even conceived of then. No matter that his own IRA of that time, Goulding's IRA were play-acting as republicans in the North and provoking Protestants while disarming their units; no matter that its interest in class struggle soon gave way to other adventures. And no matter that the ordinary folk seeking weapons for self-defence were led by clergy and Catholic ex-servicemen from the British Army—people with no grand military schemes or United Ireland objectives (then largely viewed as an impossible dream for future generations). This is history written backwards and upside-down to feed insane delusion.

With a new generation that doesn't know what really happened, this kind of misrepresentation of what happened is bound to gain some currency. The Irish News, for instance, carried a background piece on the Arms Crisis by Valerie Robinson which states, "Ireland was rocked by allegations that cabinet ministers and members of the Irish army had worked with senior IRA figures to smuggle weapons from Dublin to Belfast as sectarian tensions increased in Northern Ireland" (17.7.03, emphasis added). In fact, the IRA was not involved (and was consequently known as I Ran Away). It was ordinary people who took the lead in defending Catholic areas. This is innocent misunderstanding from Valerie Robinson—but it is telling that the Editorial staff let such a travesty of the truth through—in Belfast of all places. That is why steps are underway to correct the historical record.

One of these days the penny is going to drop for Eoghan Harris, and he will have to acknowledge that Saint Jack Lynch was a scut. Like most of his Cabinet, he participated in the initial emotional response to the burning of Catholic streets which swept the South. Like his Cabinet he agreed to set up a Fund to aid Catholics who had lost their homes. And like his Cabinet he agreed to use some of the Fund to buy weapons for self-defence purposes: all quite legal within the terms of Irish law.

However, when the British Ambassador told Lynch he knew what was happening and threatened to shame him and his Government before the world as 'illegally' arming the Catholics of Northern Ireland, Lynch tried to pull back. The Irish leader failed to counter-attack with an indictment of the way Catholics were treated in the British state in Northern Ireland. He had no internal moral resources with which to face down the representative of the Imperial masters. He was not religious in a meaningful sense, nor was he republican. He simply panicked at the thought of being pilloried on the world stage and responded like a servile upstart, determined to hold his position. And, in a manoeuvre which must rank as the most contemptible in the history of the Irish State, he fixed the blame for the arms importation on the most 'republican' members of the Cabinet—and on Charles Haughey, who had probably remained throughout the most rational of all the Cabinet about the North. The fact that the fall-guys were by far the most capable members of the Cabinet was no accident. Lynch had the cunning of a cute hurler (one as dirty on the field as off, so it is said).

To maintain his illusions, Harris has already had to break with his mentor, C.C. O'Brien, who has no hang-up about polishing Lynch's halo—O'Brien hopes to see the whole Irish Establishment discredited. That is why he wrote an article, Why The Family Must Fight To Clear Captain Kelly's Name (II 19.7.03). There are more disappointments in store for Harris. And when these facts strike home to him one day, as indeed they must, there is no knowing what will happen. He will go berserk.

Unfortunately, Kelly himself will not be there to see his name vindicated. Shortly before he died, he made a plea to Ahern to clear his name—and the Taoiseach went part of the way towards this, though the formulation he used, "Captain Kelly acted on what he believed were the proper orders of his superiors" (17.7.03 IT) left it to be understood that the orders he faithfully implemented were suspect.

The Captain also lodged a legal case seeking a declaration that he should never have been prosecuted. There is no knowing what will happen to that case now: the family will continue it if permitted. It has been rubbished by Bruce Arnold, an Englishman who pursues his mission writing for the Irish Independent, and who recently was awarded the MBE for services to the British Crown. Arnold considers Kelly guilty of plotting to import arms into Ireland illegally and suggests that "Ahern's declaration of 'innocence', …is a re-interpretation of the not guilty finding of the court". It seems that for him the adage of British justice, 'innocent till proven guilty', is not to apply in this case.

Arnold displays an intimate knowledge of the events surrounding the Arms Trial. He states, for instance, that Kelly met Lynch in May 1970, and states, "Lynch wanted Kelly to name names and explain what he had done. Kelly declined." (II 19.7.03). The commentator does not give a source for this statement, but he is putting Lynch's gloss on the meeting at which he tried to intimidate or bribe Kelly into committing perjury.

Arnold hopes that Kelly's death will help push the whole Arms Trial episode into obscurity. His piece is entitled, Many Questions Left Unanswered—And Death Of Key Player Reduces Numbers In The Know (II 19.7.03). But his hope of seeing the affair fall into obscurity will not be fulfilled. The family remain committed to vindicating their good name and research is continuing into the whole episode, with documents continuing to appear in the public domain.

The Irish Times obituary for Kelly was entitled, An Irish Dreyfus Who Spent A Life Trying To Clear His Name (19.7.03)—a theme taken up by Tim Pat Coogan in his graveside oration. But the parallel falls short of the truth. As Jack Lane noted, Coogan failed to point out that James Kelly had to be his own Zola. Emil Zola (having been shamed into acting) put everything he had into vindicating Dreyfuss. He accepted ostracisation by the establishment and put his reputation on the line to get the case re-opened. And Dreyfuss—after imprisonment and terrible suffering—was reinstated as an army officer. But for Captain Kelly, none of the Irish chattering classes was willing to take on the establishment to see justice done. Any support they gave Kelly was mealy-mouthed and private. Kelly had to be his own Zola. And, having re-opened the incident which brought about his downfall by painstaking research, he failed to get any recompense for the injustice he suffered. Kelly was not given his army career back—or compensated for its loss.

James Kelly was interred in a prominent plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, near the memorial to Irish hunger strikers down the ages. Whoever arranged the location knew he will not be forgotten by history. Kelly's name had a resonance with the general public like that of none of his contemporaries. When researching the Arms Crisis in the Public Record Office—this was before I met James—one of the staff pointed him out to me in some awe. I cannot explain why this man inspired so much respect, even among people who did not know him personally, but he did.

If you wish to subscribe to the Irish Political Review, Labour & Trade Union Review, Church & State or Problems Of Capitalism & Socialism please go to our secure sales area. Postal delivery is free within the European Union.

Go To Secure Sales Area

ATHOL BOOKS HOMEPAGE

Past IPR Editorials