Sir, - In the aftermath of Abbeylara, we were challenged to reflect on our history. Instead, the Minister for Justice turned for advice to the FBI, agents of a society burdened with an intractable gun culture.
In the midst of war the founders of the modern Irish state, trusting their own genius, disarmed the police service to win the peace.
In 1925, the secretary in Justice, Henry O'Friel, revealed that no express decision had been made on disarming the force. It was no more than "tacitly accepted as the proper thing".
A decision was forced by Commissioner Eoin O'Duffy who urged general re-arming following a night of mayhem in the winter of 1926, when two gardai were murdered in attacks on barracks across the country.
The views of the Department of Justice were considered by the cabinet on January 24th, 1927. The Garda Siochana had functioned successfully as an unarmed force in a period when the risk of armed attacks was greater than it was likely to be in the years ahead. Their success had been due largely to the moral support of the community.
The rejection of the proposal was conveyed by the Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, personally to Eoin O'Duffy. While Commissioner Michael Kinnane, appointed in 1938, and his successor Daniel Costigan, both former civil servants, would have been well informed, it is doubtful if the policy on arms was ever on record at Garda Headquarters. This bred a certain ambivalence in Garda administration.
In the 1950s, as a young garda on duty in uniform outside the residence of the UK representative in the south Dublin suburbs, I carried a loaded revolver openly on my belt. Out of sight of the public, detectives, appropriately armed, patrolled the grounds.
I was hardly aware of any incongruity; neither Garda history nor police philosophy were included in recruit training at the Phoenix Park depot.
My re-education began with the discovery in 1975 of instructions issued by the first Commissioner, M. J. Staines, defining moral authority. In the State Paper Office the following year, I turned up the file on O'Duffy's aberrant proposal in 1926 which tended, in effect, to reject his predecessor's vision.
In a telling re-affirmation, Commissioner Patrick McLoughlin in 1980 told delegates at an International Police conference in Dublin of Garda pride in their unarmed tradition. The Minister for Justice (Gerard Collins) had restated his own commitment. Commissioner McLaughlin welcomed this, as he was sure did "the majority of the Garda Siochana".
Within two years, the Representative Body for Inspectors and Sergeants complained of "a subtle but growing campaign on the part of sections of the force and the media to bring about the general arming of the Garda Siochana" - a "ludicrous", and an "extremely dangerous" policy.
The raising of the heavily-armed Emergency Response Unit may have been influenced by the growth in relations with our European neighbours. Writing in The Irish Times some years ago, I discerned a possible danger in any movement to standardise the police service in the EC; the paramilitary tradition on the Continent would challenge gardai to defend their own culture.
Calling in the FBI may well result in stark recommendations for the more efficient use of firepower. In the light of the 1927 executive decision on arms, never rescinded, the Garda Siochana must continue to function as a neighbourhood police service, closely integrated in the community. Otherwise, as a people, we will have failed in loyalty to a keystone national ideal, and betrayed posterity. -Yours, etc.,
Gregory Allen, Upper Kilmacud Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.