Ireland
The last kidnapping?
Rawle Knox
Put cold-bloodedly, the Irish government was on a winner to nothing when it decided not to treat with the kidnappers of the Dutch industrialist, Tiede Herrema, on October 3. That doesn't mean Liam Cosgrave and his Cabinet were uncaring as to whether they saved an important victim's life; they both cared and intended to save it. All the same, they knew they couldn't lose. When it emerged that the criminals involved, Eddie Gallagher and Marion Coyle, were Provisional IRA members whom the Provos at once disowned, Cosgrave was riding high. The controversy in Ireland over the Spanish government's decision to execute its own convicted terrorists — which arose when Dublin was the only EEC capital not to order the withdrawal of its ambassador from Madrid — has not subsided. That argument showed what a strength of conservative feeling for authoritarian law and order existed in the country — with a forcefulness that surprised the liberal-leftists whose views get most airing in Dublin. Cosgrave knew that if his police held fast and could still save Herrema's life his government would score a solid victory for its concept of discipline; if the worst happened, the blame for an innocent foreigner's death must lie with the bloodthirsty efforts of the Provos.
From the start it was a straight fight between the Irish government and the Provos, on ground not of the latter's choosing — which is rare. When, early on, Cabinet members said there would be no yielding because any compromise might adversely affect prospects of foreign investment they were being less than truthful, because international business by now takes an actuarial view of the whole armoury of the ransom-hunter. Conor Cruise O'Brien, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, was more to the point in saying that if the government gave in it might as well hand over affairs to the IRA. For, unstifled by all the volume of public condemnation, there remains in so many Irish hearts that secret admiration for the IRA, for its guts in taking on the Brits, for its apparent refusal ever to die.
One Irish senator mused recently in the upper house that denunciations of the IRA, which he himself had indulged in, might be counter-productive; just as, he had been informed, the showing of films about venereal disease had the "most extraordinary effect" in increasing the communication of that disease. Those who have the day-to-day job of administration in Ireland think differently, and perhaps Liam Cosgrave sees most clearly of all.
The day before Herrema was bundled out of his car and into thin air just outside Limerick, Cosgrave was presenting medals at the Garda training centre at Templemore. Once again he castigated the IRA, though without naming it: "The community has time and again at the ballot box expressed its repugnance, and its desire to be let alone to live in peace. Yet there is often among our people an ambivalent attitude to those who carry out these atrocities ... It is time for us all to look critically at these forms of national double-think." That day Cosgrave presented six Scott Gold Medals, Ireland's highest police awards; four of them were to gardai concerned in the recapture of
Kevin Mallon, the IRA man who took part two years ago in the spectacular helicopter escape from Dublin's Mountjoy prison. The following day, together with Rose Dugdale and James Hyland, Mallon was demanded by the kidnappers in exchange for Tiede Herrema.
'Law and order' was a top priority in Cosgrave's election manifesto. Patrick Cooney, Minister for Justice, brushed aside the Provos' .
disclaimer of the kidnapping, indicting them for the training, the indoctrination of the criminals. He raised the expected bellow of 'unfair' from Provisional Sinn Fein because he had hit where it hurt. The Provos like to give the impression that they live their lives according to some Gaelic rules of Bushido. To their statement denying involvement in the kidnapping they had added a lofty rider: "Furthermore, it is not the policy of the Republican movement to differentiate between Republican prisoners in seeking their release."
One would like to know, in that case, how Kevin Mallon, Seamus Twomey and J. B.
O'Hagan — all big men in the Provo mob — got the only three seats in that helicopter flight out of The Joy. Not, I think, because they won them in a raffle. The kidnappers' persistent demand for the release of Mallon embarrassed the Provos. Neither Mallon nor Hyland has been disowned by his high command; neither ever indicated that he objected to being sprung in exchange for Herrema. In what relationship did that put the Provo command to Mallon, and to Gallagher?
It is not only the Provos' credibility that has been bruised. The Irish are forever in a lather about what constitutes Irishness and what doesn't, but none doubt (save perhaps the bishops) that the IRA is very Irish indeed. The Provos, whenever they have been able to exercise control in an area, have administered their brutal justice according to a puritanical code which is great on keeping youngsters off the drink and even more so on the sanctity of woman. Yet there we had Eddie Gallagher holed up with one girl — let alone an innocent, kidnapped foreigner — and demanding the release from prison of another who, in the opinion of the Garda, is the mother of his child, born in Limerick Gaol.
The public attitude to morality in Ireland is always difficult to assess. Radio Telefis Eireann cheerfully shows the British series, My Wife Next Door (comedy about divorcing couple: divorce cannot be obtained in Irish courts). But there has been an almighty howl about an incident in one of RTE's bog-operas, The O'Riordans, because a husband made a weighty pass at a woman not his wife. (One letter writer, I'm happy to say, said it was a nice change to have a bit of spice: "All we ever saw, up to that, was Tom dosing the horses.") Against that background one can safely say that Gallagher's behaviour has been un-Irish, by Provo or any other standard. Not, if scuttlebutt is to be believed — as it normally is — that his promiscuity is the cause of his disfavour with his seniors. There is the more serious matter of
the distribution of the proceeds from a bank raid. Nor should it be thought that the Irish young — and there are gunmen nowadays barely into their teens — care how many girls Gallagher has. To many of them Gallagher is a hero, which is not surprising in view of the Garda's declared wish to question him on a whole series of wild crimes, including the astonishing blast-out from Portlaoise gaol in August, 1974. His popularity must rile the Provos, who can hardly go back on their statement that he is no longer in the movement. Worse still for them is his unpopularity, which is felt by almost every Irishman tall enough to think. Thinking, they know that Cooney was right in blaming the IRA. Politics in Ireland still go very much in families. They say that when a Dail deputy dies the party managers look first at the widow and then go for the son; meaning that the widow, if she is parliamentary material at all, is likeliest to win the immediate by-election on a sympathy vote, but the son has the better prospect of continuing to 'hold the seat. "A good Republican family" usually means one that had a fighter in the old IRA's war against the British, and which finds it very hard to dissuade any young member now from continuing in that war. Good Republican families provide 'safe houses' for boys on the run, and do little to assist any inquiries the Garda may be making. But they have their rules as well as their republicanism, and Eddie Gallagher certainly didn't stick to them. He may have dealt a deep wound to Sinn Fein morale.
The voices raised during the long, wretched ordeal of Tiede Herrema, in favour of compromise, were not many, and it is to the credit of the Netherlands government — not to mention the prisoner's family — that the Irish viewpoint was respected; under how much protest we don't yet know, but it was never a protest made behind Cosgrave's back to the Irish people. The Ferencka firm, always in close touch with the Hague, this week reopened its Limerick plant, closed by demand of the kidnappers, with Herrema still held hostage. This whole affair not even the most witless citizen has found titillating. The encamped media men at Wonasterevan could never make it a Roman holiday for home viewers. In Ireland's nasty, continuing war, kidnapping for ransome has not been a conventional weapon of the Provo save, perhaps, when Eddie Gallagher was in on the act. The Garda had long wished to speak with him about the Donaghmore and Paget Bourke abductions. At the close of the Herrema atrocity, perhaps the Irish can once again look forward to nothing worse than slight cases of murder in aid of Creeds outworn.
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