The release of the 1970 papers should remind us of the great significance of that year in the history of the Northern Troubles. Yet much comment, and the revelations regarding the Government's directions to the Army to make contingency plans to cross the Border, suggest that the real import of the events of that year were as little understood then as now.
The North did not unexpectedly erupt into widespread and sustained violence in 1970. The first half of that year, when Dublin was making its contingency plans to make arms available to the Northern minority, was rather quiet. In fact, by February 1970, the British government had withdrawn substantial numbers of the troops sent into Northern Ireland the previous year. Even by year's end, 1970 was statistically almost as peaceful as, for example, 2000.
The reform package put together after the events of August 1969 was making, by Northern Ireland standards, spectacular progress. In August 1969, British troops had been welcomed as protectors of the Catholic minority, particularly in Derry. By October it had been accepted that the RUC would be disarmed, the B-Specials abolished, public housing would be taken out of the hands of local authorities. An outsider, Sir Arthur Young, was brought in as chief constable of the RUC, a new ministry of community relations was established.
In November, an ombudsman was created to deal with complaints against local councils and public bodies. A new electoral law abolished the restricted franchises in local elections. In March 1970 a new Police Act made the RUC an unarmed force, with a new Police Authority designed to represent the whole community. On April 30th the B-Specials were disbanded. In May, the Macrory report recommended, and the government accepted, that there should be wholesale reform of local government.
Yet, at the very same time as reforms were multiplying and the British government was reducing its troop levels, the Government in Dublin was moving 500 guns to Dundalk, and was discussing how these might be given to the minority in the North. The Army was under instructions to prepare for "incursions" into UK territory. In the event, 1970 was crucial. Violence did increase, and accelerated rapidly the following year, not to reduce again to the level of 1970 until 1995. British troop withdrawals were reversed. The long terrorist war had begun and would destroy not just many lives and much property, but the hopes of political accommodation which flowered briefly in 1974.
Why was 1970 such a vital turning point? And did Dublin's misreading of the situation and its dealings with elements in the Northern minority contribute to the ensuing calamity?
Two other things happened in 1970. The first was the emergence of the Provisional IRA, born out of the split in December 1969, and the second was the Arms Trial and all it revealed, or suggested, in regard to assistance from Government sources in Dublin to the forces of violent nationalism in the North. The split arose from the Provisionals' reassertion of fundamental republicanism and their challenge to the authorities in Belfast, London or Dublin. By mid-1970 they were engaged in bombing, in shooting Protestants, in murdering RUC men. Events had moved beyond any civil rights claims, and the programme of reform was of no interest to republican terrorists.
The contrast that emerges in the documents between the Army's advice to Government, and the Government's instructions to the Army as regards possible intervention in the North in the early months of 1970, never mind the Arms Trial itself, raises serious questions.
Because it did not send troops North, and because members of the Government were, in the event, dismissed and one put on trial, the Lynch Government has enjoyed a good press. But why was it considering how to arm the Northern minority, and possibly send in troops, at a time when there was little violence, and when a reform programme was being pushed through?
Loyalist terror and unionist resistance to change aided the Provisionals, but did the Government's apparent acceptance of a militant nationalist view of the Northern problem, plus actual financial help, play an important role in the growth of the Provisional IRA and the transformation of a problem of real, and sometimes imagined, infringements of minority rights into one of armed nationalist terror?
It will not be easy, in these days of galloping political correctness, to get an honest answer. Those who formed the Provisionals in 1970, or their successors, now tell us that it has all been about justice and reform, that the situation made violence both justified and inevitable, and not just Dublin but London, too, seems disinclined to argue.
It was such timidity in 1970 which allowed the Provisional IRA to take root, and which today leaves these same terrorists in possession of illegal arms.
Dennis Kennedy is a historian and lecturer in European studies at Queen's University, Belfast.
