Publications
Orders for the Captain
James Kelly
(Kelly-Kane, Bailieboro, Ireland, 1971/86)
Kelly’s Genesis of Revolution, reviewed in Lobster 13 gave an overview of the Irish situation during the period 1969-73, from the Dublin arms trials to the failure of Sunningdale. It advanced the theory that a war of attrition between the British Army and the Provisional IRA became inevitable after the Dublin Government backed down from intervening in the North in 1970. Orders For The Captain is Kelly’s detailed account of his personal role in the crisis period of August 1969 to May 1970, when, on secret orders, he liaised between Northern Defence Committees and the Dublin Government, and arranged for undercover importation of arms for distribution to the North should the situation demand it.
Captain James Kelly (b.1929) joined the Irish Army in 1949 and, after other duties, was transferred to G2 (Intelligence) in 1960. On the appointment of Col. Michael Hefferon to the post of Director of Intelligence in 1962, Kelly became his Personal Staff Officer until Hefferon’s retirement in April 1970. While on leave in August 1969 Kelly had been in Derry at the outbreak of the Battle of the Bogside, the beginning of the present war. Kelly reported his experience and a subsequent visit to his home by a Northern delegation asking for arms to Col. Hefferon who detailed him to develop these contacts and to concentrate solely on the North.
Accordingly, Kelly arranged a visit to Belfast for the second week in September and there met John Kelly (no relation), a veteran of the IRA’s 1956-62 campaign. John Kelly had served six years in prison for his activities and was then Northern Ireland Co-ordinator for the Citizens’ Defence Committees.
The message from the committees was clear – they believed that only arms would guarantee safety for the minority in the North, and they looked South for assistance in procurement and training. On his return to Dublin Captain Kelly reported these meetings to Col. Hefferon (who reported to Minister of Defence, James Gibbons), and to two of the Ministers on a special Cabinet sub-committee on the Northern situation, Charles Haughey (Finance) and Neil Blaney (Agriculture).
At this time the Dublin Government felt a certain responsibility for the Nationalist community in the North: on the 13th August, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Jack Lynch had made a speech which read, in part: “It is clear now that the present situation cannot be allowed to continue… the Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.” By the early months of 1970 the Dublin Government’s policy had erred more towards public concern but diplomatic hesitancy, and ended in May 1970 with the abdication of responsibility for Northern Ireland altogether. Back in September 1969, however, the mood was for intervention. Steps were taken to come to the aid of the North – Minister of Defence James Gibbons authorised secret weapons training for 9 men from Derry at Fort Dunree, Co. Donegal.
As a subterfuge the Derry volunteers were enrolled in the FCA, Ireland’s Territorial Army, allowing the Minister of Defence to deny, if need be, that the Irish Army was training any other than Army or FCA personnel. The training programme was to be extended by the arrival of another 20 Derry volunteers on 4th October, but this was hastily cancelled and the training programme shelved when it was rumoured that the programme was to be exposed in the press. The opening of the Scarman Tribunal in Derry prevented the programme’s reactivation: any mention of official, if covert, weapons training in the Republic for Derry men would cause international embarrassment for Dublin.
Despite this setback, a conference was arranged for the weekend of 4/5 October in a hotel in Bailieboro, Co. Cavan, where Captain Kelly met representatives of Citizens’ Defence Committees from most parts of the North. His report on the Monday indicated that the CDCs felt arms and weapons training to be essential for the defence of the Nationalist minority, and they pressed for a resumption of the Fort Dunree programme and assistance in procuring weapons.
Kelly’s report was handed to Col. Hefferon, who informed Lynch, Gibbons and Peter Berry, Secretary to the Department of Justice. As a result, an account was opened in the fictitious name of George Dixon at the Lower Baggot St., Dublin, Branch of the Munster and Leinster Bank to handle funds from the North for weapons purchases.
Having drawn a blank at weapons supplies from America, and uncovered an MI6 agent called Captain Peter Markham-Randall who came to Dublin posing as an arms dealer, Northern representatives began negotiating with a Hamburg arms dealer called Otto Schleuter and, around the turn of the year, paid £3,000 to him from the Dixon account. Having been asked to assist in the negotiations Captain Kelly flew to Dortmund on 19th February 1970 to meet Schleuter and to hand over another £10,000. The two discussed transport arrangements but Kelly was disappointed not to be able to inspect the arms ordered – 500 pistols, 400 machine guns, 180,000 rounds of ammunition and a number of bullet-proof vests.
On 3rd March a meeting took place between Gibbons, Kelly and a Northern delegation led by John Kelly, at which the Minister of Defence, Gibbons, reaffirmed Dublin’s support, military if need be. The next day Captain Kelly briefed Gibbons on developments and obtained his permission to fly to Antwerp on 10th March for another meeting with Otto Schleuter. After some delays the first shipment from Schleuter arrived in Dublin on March 25, to be met by Captain Kelly, John Kelly and the Customs Surveyor who had been informed as to the nature of the cargo. However Schleuter’s shipment turned out to consist only of 40 bullet-proof vests, the arms having been held up in Antwerp because of paperwork. Fearful that the arms deal might end up a swindle, Kelly arranged to return to Hamburg on 1 April to see Schleuter, this time bringing an interpreter, Albert Luykx, a Belgian-born friend of Neil Blaney’s.
On April 2, however, the situation in Belfast worsened and, as an interim measure, Gibbons ordered 500 rifles to be transported to Dundalk on the border. The rifles had been stockpiled with this in mind – against the advice of Kelly, as they were traceable to the Irish Army – after a potential purchaser in August 1969 turned out to have links with the Ulster Volunteer Force.
Kelly returned on the 4th, briefing Gibbons on his talks with Schleuter. On 10th April Kelly’s superior, Director of Intelligence Hefferon, reached retirement age and was replaced by Gibbons’ protege Col. Patrick Delaney. On the 17th Kelly and Luykx flew to Vienna and made final arrangements for the £30,000 cargo of arms to be delivered to Dublin by air. However, while in Vienna, Kelly received a phone call saying that the Garda Special Branch were waiting to seize the arms and arrest him. Kelly cancelled the shipment and flew back to Dublin on the 22nd. Nothing more transpired until the 28th when, in the course of an interview with Gibbons, it became clear that the Minister of Defence was going to deny authorising the shipments and use the change-over of Directors of Intelligence to break with the previous (though unfulfilled) policy of support for the minority community in the North. Kelly immediately resigned and on that morning was arrested under the Offences Against the State Act, together with Charles Haughey, John Kelly, Albert Luykx and Neil Blaney (the latter to be released without charge).
On May 6 Jack Lynch fired Haughey and Blaney, and Kevin Boland, Minister for Local Government, resigned. James Gibbons was promoted to Blaney’s old position of Minister for Agriculture – a coveted post in the Irish Cabinet – and on July 2, reassured that Dublin would do no more than protest, General Freeland, GOC Northern Ireland, sent his troops into the Falls, and a bloody war of attrition became inevitable.
The trial of the 4 “conspirators” began on September 22nd 1970 before President of the High Court Mr Justice Andreas O’Keefe, who had publicly aired his reluctance to try this particular case. In the first week, the inconsistencies of Gibbons’ testimony, particularly in denying government knowledge of the arms plan before 20th April, were highlighted by clear and unequivocal evidence from Col. Hefferon that Captain Kelly had been following orders at all times and that the Minister of Defence had been kept informed. This was too much for O’Keefe who stopped the trial on 29th September and ordered a retrial which opened on 6th October under Mr Justice Seamus Henchy. In this second trial Col. Hefferon was not allowed to appear as a prosecution witness, but, despite this, the court took only two weeks to hear the evidence and clear all 4 defendants.
It is interesting to follow the careers of some of the participants in this episode. As might have been expected, Col. Delaney, who stood by Gibbons through both trials, was promoted to Major-General and appointed Chief-of-Staff in April 1971 after only one year as Director of Intelligence. He died in July 1971.
The publication of Peter Berry’s papers in Magill magazine in 1980 (extracts reprinted in the 1986 version of Orders for the Captain) confirms Kelly’s version of events: the former Justice Minister Desmond O’Malley affirms that Lynch and O’Malley were both kept informed of Captain Kelly’s activities from the Bailieboro meeting onwards.
Otto Schleuter’s disappearing trick with the money (never traced) was not forgotten. In David Leigh’s High Times – the life and times of Howard Marks (Unwin, London 1984) the IRA arms smuggler Jim McCann untruthfully brags about how he and his men “robbed a Hamburg arms dealer called Otto Schleuter of £30,000 worth of machine pistols, because the Irish government had secretly paid the man in 1970 for arms that were never delivered.” (p 189)
But it is three of the main players in the arms crisis who are in positions of importance today. Haughey made it to Taoiseach, but hangs on only thanks to the support of two Independents, one of whom is his old “co-conspirator”, Neil Blaney. As for Captain Kelly, he is back in his native Bailieboro, having been elected to Fianna Fail’s National Executive in 1986.
Perhaps angered by his republication of Orders for the Captain, Fianna Fail has done its best to freeze Kelly out. It rejected him for a place on the party panel for a Radio Telefis Eirann “Questions and Answers” session to be filmed in Bailieboro, preferring an obscure county councillor. Undaunted, Kelly found a place in the audience, only to be advised that that part of the room was not covered for sound. During a break he changed places and succeeded in speaking. But in the broadcast version not a word of his was heard. (The Phoenix 3 July 1987)
Orders For The Captain is stocked by Greene’s Bookshop, 16 Clare St., Dublin 2. £5.00 (or its equivalent) should cover book and postage. On the Arms Crisis see also What Kind of Country? Modern Irish Politics 1968-83 Bruce Arnold (Cape, London, 1984)
David Teacher
The article above was written for Lobster 14 but held over because of shortage of space. Since writing it, Teacher has been reading some of the work of Roger Faligot, the French writer on intelligence matters.
On Kelly, Teacher notes that in Faligot’s recent La Piscine, Faligot states:
Otto Schlutter had supplied weapons to the FLN during the Algerian war which drew the attention of the SDECE (now DGSE) on to him. Their ‘Service Action’, masquerading as a terrorist group ‘La Main Rouge’ (Red Hand), carried out several bombings and assassination attempts against FLN weapons suppliers between 1956 and 1960. Their first two attacks were against Schlutter – 28 September 1956 his Hamburg offices were bombed, killing his deputy Mr Lorenzi; and on 3 June 1957 Schlutter’s mother was killed by a bomb in her car.
And in Faligot’s Geurre Speciale en Europe (le laboratoire irlandais) he offers this on the Kelly episode:
When the SIS learned that Charles Haughey was keen to provide ‘concrete assistance’ to the Catholic ghettos under siege in the North, Sir John Rennie decided to entrap the Irish leader. ‘Jock’ Haughey, the Finance Minister’s brother, and the Deputy Director of Irish Military intelligence (G2), Captain James Kelly, contacted an arms salesman in London, Captain Peter Rakham-Randall (sic). When they discovered he was an SIS agent, they opted for a continental solution. Otto Schlutter of Hamburg had supplied weapons to the Algerian FLN in the past and would surely do the same for the IRA. But Schlutter, victim in the 1950s of several attempts on his life by the Red Hand group organised by the SDECE, did not want to run the gauntlet again. The SIS was alerted and they passed the information onto the Opposition in Dublin. Scandal was inevitable.