BACK PAGES:GROTESQUE, UNBELIEVABLE, bizarre, unprecedented were the adjectives used by then taoiseach Charles Haughey (not in that order) as he grappled with the arrest of a murder suspect at the home of his attorney general in 1982. (The order was created by his arch-critic Conor Cruise O'Brien to coin the acronym Gubu as shorthand for the, eh, grotesque etc events that seemed to follow in Haughey's political wake). The suspect, Malcolm MacArthur's, second court appearance was described by Maev Kennedy, writes JOE JOYCE
The women outside the gates of the District Court at the Bridewell couldn’t decide whether to wait and see Malcolm MacArthur arrive, or go in to try for a good place in the courtroom.
But at 10.15am it was already too late for a good place – every seat in the public gallery of Court Six was taken, and every seat on the press bench was full. In the next 10 minutes people streamed in through the double doors, shouldering their way through the knot of gardaí, until the court was packed to suffocation, a row of people hanging over the stairs up which MacArthur would walk, only a small rectangle of floor where he would stand left clear.
The craning heads showed he was coming up the stairs at 10.40am. The press and public surged forward, the gardaí making no attempt to stop them.
Malcolm MacArthur looked acutely nervous. He kept his two feet flat on the floor, but his hands and eyes flickered constantly. He held his brown eyes wide open, raising his eyebrows and furrowing his forehead.
He didn’t even glance at the public gallery. In his hands he held a white calling card. He twisted it continually between his fingers. Several times he stared down at it as if he were about to read something from it, but never spoke.
The slightly rakish elegance of his white short, grey silk bow tie, gold silk handkerchief and white knitted waistcoat contrasted oddly with the beige corduroy jacket he wore in Dún Laoghaire court, now creased and grubby, creased grey trousers, unpolished brown shoes. He looked singular, intelligent, worried.
It took about a minute to get him into the court and get the court settled down. The hearing took just a few minutes. He twisted his head to one side towards District Justice Kotsonouris to hear her remand him in custody until September 9th, and then he was taken downstairs again.
Outside a noisy crowd gathered waiting for him to come out. “We’ve got him under the seat,” a sergeant in a squad car joked to the crowding press. Ten minutes passed, then 20. The crowd began to break up. It was half an hour after he’d left the court before a squad car drew up at the door of the Bridewell Garda station. A plain-clothes garda ran the 10 feet from the steps to open the door of the car. The crowd around the gates ran down the road to encircle the car. Then MacArthur came out, his own jacket over his head, a plain-clothes man on either side of him and one behind, half-sheltering the accused man with his arms. The crowd of about 30, mostly men, lurched forward.
“Bastard . . . you bastard!” a man shouted. “Take it off him, make him take it off!” others roared at the gardaí. “Pig! Pig! Swine!” a woman shouted.
Two men threw punches under the gardaí’s arms and clouted MacArthur in the small of the back. A woman swung her handbag over the shoulder of the garda trying to hold her back and thumped MacArthur on the shoulder and neck. He staggered, and was quickly bundled the rest of the way into the car.
As the squad car drove away to Mountjoy, siren blazing, the women giggled and told one another how close they’d got to him. A man with a bicycle shook his fist at the retreating car.
http://url.ie/27bt