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Blaney’s feelings on the partition issue are very deeply felt, and he occasionally finds it difficult not to give public expression to them, he knows and endorses government policy on this issue, as he did in his speech in Letterkenny,’ Lynch said. Was Lynch saying that the Blaney’s speech reflected government policy?
    In the last week of December 1969 there was a curious incident following the arrest of some Derrymen with weapons near the border. Berry was told that the Taoiseach wanted ‘to throw the book’ at those arrested, so charges were preferred against them, much to Charlie’s annoyance.
    â€˜Twenty-four hours later Mr Haughey was on to me furiously inquiring who had given the gardaí the stupid direction to arrest the men,’ Berry wrote. ‘I told him that the decision came from the very top.’
    If the men recognised the court, Berry said the charges would be thrown out, otherwise they would be committed for contempt. Charlie remained furious. ‘His language,’ according to Berry, ‘was not the usual kind usually heard in church. He said that he would ensure that there would be no contempt.’
    At the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis on 17 January 1970 Blaney appeared to orchestrate an overt challenge to Lynch’s leadership. It was the biggest ard fheis in the party’s history, because it was the first one held over a weekend, rather than in midweek.
    Blaney’s supporters made the first four speeches in the debate on the Taoiseach’s department. They eulogised Blaney. Then Kevin Boland waded in with a speech denouncing partition. This was a bald attack on Lynch. ‘The Taoiseach knew exactly what I was doing,’ Boland later wrote. ‘I was castigating him in public.’
    Lynch confronted this challenge as he departed from his prepared script to declare a policy of peaceful intent in his presidential address to the party. ‘If anybody wants this policy to change, this is the place to do it and now is the time,’ he said throwing down the gauntlet. ‘If people want this traditional Fianna Fáil policy to be pursued by me as leader of the government and the party, now is the time to say it.’
    Blaney and Boland were routed. Lynch received a tumultuous ovation. At the end he received a prolonged standing ovation from the gathering as they chanted, ‘We back Jack.’ But Lynch did nothing about Capt. Kelly’s efforts in relation to procuring arms.
    As a result of all of this Berry concluded that Lynch did not wish to be informed so that he could turn a blind eye to the planned gun-running. This assessment – whether right or wrong – was shared by more than one member of the cabinet. Kevin Boland concluded, for instance, that the Taoiseach privately approved.
    â€˜As far as I could see,’ Boland explained, ‘everyone assumed everyone else knew and the matter was spoken of as if it was a case of the government assisting in the only way a government could assist without a diplomatic breach.’
    Following a cabinet meeting on 6 February 1970, defence minister Jim Gibbons actually ordered army Chief of Staff Lt Gen. Seán McKeown to prepare for involvement in Northern Ireland. ‘I was instructed to direct you to prepare the army for incursions into Northern Ireland,’ Gibbons said.
    â€˜The Taoiseach and other ministers have met delegations from the north,’ he continued. The Nationalist people of Northern Ireland were largely defenceless at the time, and they were terrified that Unionists thugs, who were armed, as many of them were members of so-called gun clubs, would massacre them. Thus, Nationalists visiting Dublin pleaded for weapons that they could use to defend themselves. ‘At these meetings urgent demands were made for respirators, weapons and ammunition the provision of which the government agreed,’ Gibbons explained. ‘Accordingly truck loads of these stores