Sir, – Brian Hanley and John O’Brien take issue (Letters, April 21st) with my assertion that the State has never sent the “military in to confront the citizenry”(Opinion, April 18th).
In the instances during the 1930s – 90 years ago – to which Hanley refers, soldiers were indeed deployed but against organised paramilitaries (Blueshirts and IRA) in Kilkenny, Limerick, Cork and elsewhere.
In later cases, during the 1970s and 1980s, troops were sent into prisons in support of gardaí and custodial staff where riots had been instigated by paramilitary inmates, in co-ordination with their armed comrades on the outside.
The Dundalk rioting of 1972 to which he refers, when soldiers fired tear gas in support of besieged gardaí, was an organised assault and petrol-bombing of the local Garda station, led by the Provisional IRA.
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I believe it is fair to draw a distinction – and arguably I should have made it – between using the military to confront self-styled “armies” who do not hesitate to use lethal force against the State, and deploying soldiers against a “citizenry” protesting over economic issues.
O’Brien recounts the standby of armed troops of the 5th Infantry Battalion during the 1982 attack, again led by paramilitaries, on the British embassy, during the H-Block hunger strikes.
In the event, the gardaí, under the late chief superintendent John Robinson, held the line, albeit at the cost of many injuries to themselves (and indeed to some of my own media colleagues). The soldiers never left their trucks and returned to barracks. – Yours, etc,
CONOR BRADY,
Oranmore,
Co Galway.
