Sir, – Conor Brady again asserts (Letters, April 23rd) that the State has never sent its military to confront citizenry protesting over economic issues.
In 1982, protesting fishermen blockaded Dublin Port. That led to an operation that included the use of three Naval Service vessels, and members of the Army Ranger Wing abseiling from helicopters on to the trawler decks, where protesters were confronted. – Yours, etc,
Paul Lally,
Glenageary,
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Co Dublin.
Sir, – Conor Brady makes the point that in the 1982 attack on the British embassy, “the soldiers never left their trucks and returned to barracks”, yet in his earlier article (“Jim O’Callaghan crossed a line with his threat to deploy the Army,” Opinion, April 18th), he failed to make the same point in relation to the recent fuel protests when the Army again did not intervene.
Instead, he asserted a “line had been crossed” when the Minister for Justice merely suggested that our national army could be deployed to assist the Garda in removing vehicles illegally blocking our main roads, preventing people getting to work and nurses and patients getting to hospitals.
It is worth recalling that the State did intervene in a “citizenry” matter in the 1960s and 1970s during the bus workers strikes, when Army lorries were deployed in Dublin to assist a grateful public in travelling to and from work.
The trade unions, of course, objected strongly to this intervention but they did so within the law, in discussions with the Government and within the parameters of the industrial relations machinery. – Yours, etc,
Martin McDonald,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.
