In the summer of 1969 the cauldron that was Northern Ireland finally boiled over with the Battle of the Bogside in Derry and sectarian attacks on Catholics in Belfast. Refugees fled to the Republic as the violence intensified and hundreds of families were burned out of their homes. At that point the IRA was also in a state of internal turmoil over the political direction it should pursue. It led to a bitter split which created two factions. Official Sinn Féin and Official IRA (‘Stickies’) emerged on one side. They broke with the traditional republican goal of a 32-county Irish Republic and opted for a united working-class revolution by workers on both sides of the sectarian divide. On the other side of the split, Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA (‘Provos’) wanted to pursue an armed struggle to get the British out of Ireland. The developments were deeply worrying for the Jack Lynch-led Fianna Fáil Government in the South.
Cabinet papers from April of that year, released under the thirty-year rule, reveal that a collective decision had been made by the Cabinet to foment a split in the IRA. The Machiavellian plot was to try to weaken its militant leadership in Dublin while creating an organization that would be amenable to Fianna Fáil control in the North. The Department of Justice had recommended a policy of deliberately dividing the IRA’s rural conservatives from the urban radicals, who were seen as the greater threat. An account in the name ‘George Dixon’ was opened in a bank on Baggot Street with £100,000. Charles Haughey, who was Minister for Finance, had control of this special account. The Government provided the money ostensibly to relieve the plight of nationalists in the North, but the real purpose of the George Dixon account was to fund one section of the movement and supply it with arms. It was left to Haughey and his Donegal colleague Neil Blaney, the Minister for Agriculture, to implement the plan. Neil Blaney was a friend of Liam Walsh, who provided the channel into Saor Eire.
A report in the Irish Times in March 1970, focusing on the growing problem of the Saor Eire robberies, first revealed the uneasiness among senior Gardaí that there was ‘more than a little political tolerance of the elements involved’. The source of the story was referring to collusion between members of the Fianna Fáil Government and the gang. A memo found buried in files in the Department of Justice over thirty years later seems to corroborate those suspicions. The document was written by Peter Berry, the Secretary of the Department at the time. In it, Berry noted he had received reliable information that Jock Haughey, Charles Haughey’s brother, had travelled to London with Martin Casey, in November 1969, for the purpose of buying the arms from the Parker-Hale armoury. It named both Saor Eire’s Martin Casey and Christy Dunne as being centrally involved in the operation. During the trip, Haughey and Casey signed into the Irish Club, on London’s Eaton Square, with false names. Jock Haughey gave the name George Dixon. The department memo went on to claim that Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney had full knowledge of the Saor Eire gun-running expedition.
As Ireland prepared to cross the threshold of a new decade, the Official and Provisional IRAs began following the lead of their former comrades. Like the Saor Eire gangs, the two IRA groups started organizing their own ‘expropriations’ for the cause, by robbing banks, post offices and payrolls. Following a further spate of hold-ups in November 1969 and early December, the Justice Minister, Michael O’Morain, announced to the Dáil that the Garda authorities had to allocate men to stand guard outside banks in Dublin. This was in a bid to stem the sudden upsurge in robberies. Flying squads, drawn from the small group of armed, plainclothes officers in the force, had also begun patrolling the city. But they couldn’t cover everywhere.
Between 1970 and 1971, Ireland experienced the fastest-growing crime rate in Europe. On 20 February 1970, Saor Eire carried out another audacious commando-style heist, similar to their operations in Newry and Kells. This time, eight armed men took over the sleepy village of Rathdrum, County Wicklow – not far from the gang’s training camp in Lacken. The job was well planned in advance. Just before the robbery the main telephone lines to the village were cut. Then the team stormed into the village with military precision. Wearing combat fatigues and armed with pistols and machine-guns, the revolutionaries terrified the peaceful inhabitants of Rathdrum, who had previously only seen drama like it on TV. The raiders marched into the Hibernian Bank and fired shots in the air to show the staff they meant business. ‘Open up or I’ll shoot,’ one of them shouted. The manager handed over the contents of the safe, £1,900. Outside other raiders fired two shots over the head of local Garda Frank Arrigan and held him at gunpoint. Garda Arrigan would later claim the gunman was Frank Keane. As they made their getaway in two stolen cars, the raiders stopped at the local gunsmiths and grabbed five shotguns, three rifles and a revolver to augment their arsenal. They drove off and vanished into the countryside before the alarm could be raised.
The escapades of the workers’ champions were causing intense embarrassment and anger in the Gardaí. The gang usually managed to get away and were generally running rings around them. And when cornered, as they were in the Ballyfermot incident, they showed that they had no reluctance about using lethal force to resist arrest. Saor Eire was the first criminal mob to take full advantage of a malaise which had set in over decades of law-abiding peace in the Republic. An Garda Síochána was firmly rooted in a halcyon age, where a handful of burglaries were considered a crime wave. Detection rates in all categories of crime were favourably high. But solving petty crime was child’s play compared to dealing with well-organized, criminal enterprises. Decades of poor pay and working conditions had also eroded morale to breaking point. Gardaí, who then lived in their stations, were being accommodated in conditions described in a government report as ‘sub-standard and not fit to live in’. Members worked for as many hours as were required, for no extra pay. In 1968, the rank and file membership finally took industrial action. Throughout the country large numbers of Gardaí refused to turn up for work or called in sick. As a result, the Government established the Conroy Commission to investigate grievances over pay and work conditions. In January 1970, it made over fifty separate recommendations, including the introduction of a basic 42-hour week and a shift system. Pay was also to be increased through overtime allocations. Implementing the new regime, however, created more problems.
Critics argued that a lack of adequate planning about how to apply the new working conditions threw the Garda organization into further disarray and seriously hampered its ability to investigate crime. Local superintendents found themselves trying to juggle between the limited man-hours laid down by the Department of Justice and limited overtime budgets. It meant that whole districts were often left without police cover and squad cars were grounded simply because the money to pay the crew had run out. Cordons, which were intended to be set up after major crimes, such as the Rathdrum robbery, could not be activated if local commanders had spent their overtime allocation for the month. The situation caused morale to plummet even further. In the definitive history of the Force, The Garda Síochána: Policing Independent Ireland 1922–82, the author Greg Allen summarized the state of policing in the first few years of the 1970s. He wrote: ‘A measure of the demoralisation that set in was the virtual eclipse of the Garda Síochána as a preventive force, as patrols disappeared off the streets. Apart from the occasional sighting of a patrol car, citizens could travel the length of the country without encountering a uniformed guard.’
There was also serious concern about the lack of investment in basic equipment. Officers had good reason to complain that the criminals were going to work better equipped than they were. Saor Eire members were using two-way radios to co-ordinate their raids and stealing high-powered getaway cars which easily outran the cars in the Garda fleet. Any attempt to mount a co-ordinated manhunt for the raiders was virtually impossible because there were huge black spots in the Garda national radio network, and no aerial support available. By 1970, the group probably had as many guns as were in the entire Force.
The Garda Síochána
was not the only organization ill-equipped for the new challenges. The justice system was also languishing in a different age. In the 1970s, the waiting list for the growing number of criminal trials began to clog up the whole system. The result was that the time lapse between someone being charged and then coming to trial stretched into years.
In 1966, the Supreme Court had ruled that people could not be kept in custody while awaiting trial unless there was clear evidence they intended to abscond or interfere with witnesses. It meant that it was virtually impossible to keep a suspect in custody, even if that person was facing a number of charges. Gardaí argued that there would be a reduction in the number of robberies if the bail laws were tightened up and suspects were held in custody until trial – but the law remained unchanged.
In the early stages of the Troubles there was also a degree of ambivalence among the judiciary – and indeed the wider society – towards the paramilitary groups. This is borne out by a perusal of newspaper reports on armed robbery trials at the time. In a more naïve era, a ‘political’ motive for a crime was treated as a mitigating factor. As a result, every hoodlum caught coming out of a bank with a gun in his hand had a cause. The gangsters and the terrorists couldn’t have picked a more favourable environment in which to launch their new business.
An unidentified Garda source, quoted in the Irish Times after the Rathdrum heist, summarized the situation: ‘It is taking the public a long time to realise what is involved in these situations. The political people may not mean to shoot, but there may be accidents and somebody may have a go, or – and I feel this may be happening already – this bank robbing has been shown to be a “good thing” and there’s no reason why it should be confined to politically-minded, young men. There may be bloody-minded, young men at it too, and then the public may not be so complacent about it.’
After the Rathdrum raid the Central Detective Unit (CDU), which was based in Dublin Castle, was tasked with launching a co-ordinated counter-offensive against Saor Eire. All available intelligence on the members and their associates was collated. Surveillance, such as it was in a time when there were no specialist units, was placed on known sympathizers and suspects; informants were squeezed for what they knew.
Within weeks of the Rathdrum job a plan was put in place to round up all known members of the organization, in a massive search and arrest operation. At the last moment, however, the operation was called off by someone in higher authority. No explanation was given and it further fuelled rumours of an unholy alliance between the men in the combat fatigues and those in suits.
The decision to cancel the operation would have devastating consequences.
Dick Fallon spent most of his 23 years in the Gardaí as a beat-cop on the streets of Dublin’s north inner-city. Originally from Lanesboro in County Roscommon, he was one of four brothers in his family to join the Gardaí. The 44-year-old was married with five young children. Fallon had a reputation as a tough but fair cop, who was on first-name terms with every criminal in the city. By April 1970, he was well acquainted with the members of Saor Eire, many of whom were living in his district.
The veteran cop mentored the young, fresh-faced recruits, many of them from the country, whose first glimpse of the big city was the alien world of Mountjoy Station – next door to the country’s main committal prison. One of his brightest protégés was a young Kerry man called Tony Hickey, who joined up in 1965.
The now retired Assistant Commissioner recalls: ‘When I arrived from Templemore I was stationed in Mountjoy Station where Dick Fallon would have been one of the senior Gardaí and he mentored us younger people. At the time Ireland was a pretty stable, conservative society and serious crime was virtually unheard of. There was a certain amount of burglaries, larcenies; a certain amount of violence such as bad rows outside pubs. Some people carried knives and guns were most unusual. But that changed with the arrival of Saor Eire.’
Hickey never forgot the last time Dick Fallon offered him advice: ‘Dick Fallon was very concerned about the activities of Saor Eire and how their robberies were becoming more violent. In his wisdom he probably knew it was only a matter of time before they killed someone, especially a Guard. I remember the day he stood in the front office in Mountjoy Station at parade time and addressed our unit before we went out on the beat. He told us to be extra vigilant and careful on the street. In his case, he said, a Scott Medal awarded posthumously wouldn’t be any good to his widow. His words turned out to be very prophetic.’
On 3 April, six weeks after the dramatic assault on Rathdrum, funds for ‘the cause’ were already running low. Five members of Saor Eire parked a stolen getaway car on Lincoln Lane and waited for a few minutes to scan the area. The lane was situated at the rear of the Royal Bank of Ireland branch on Arran Quay, on the northern quay of the River Liffey. The gang had earlier planned to hit a bank on Dorset Street but abandoned the idea when they spotted a truckload of soldiers parked outside. The revolutionaries were not yet ready to take on the army. The bank on Arran Quay was their second choice. The robbers were armed with a machine-gun and pistols from the consignment stolen in Birmingham. They cut the phone and alarm wires at the rear of the building and ran down a side passageway. When the wires were cut a flashing, yellow light was set off on a console in the Chubb security company’s monitoring office in Leinster Street. It indicated that the alarms had been tampered with. As the light flashed, a Chubb employee phoned the main switchboard at the Garda Command and Control room in Dublin Castle to report that a possible incident was occurring.
At 10.45 a.m., the three Saor Eire members pulled masks over their faces and burst through the doors of the bank, shouting: ‘This is a stick up.’ Customers and staff were ordered to face the wall and were covered by a raider carrying the machine-gun. ‘Stay where you are or you’ll get this,’ he shouted, as his two comrades jumped over the counter. They began filling two bags with cash.
When Garda Command and Control relayed the call to go to Arran Quay, Dick Fallon was sitting in the back seat of the nearest patrol car, Delta One. Although still in uniform, he was officially off-duty. The patrol car crew, Paul Firth and Patrick Hunter, were giving him a lift to collect his car from a local garage. They were on North King Street when the call came through and they raced to Arran Quay. One of the officers asked Fallon if he wanted to get out but he said he would go with them.
In the few minutes since the yellow light had started flashing, the raiders had filled their bags with £3,270. As they were heading for the doors one of them warned: ‘Don’t follow us or you’ll have it.’ It was their thirteenth major robbery in three years.
Fallon and Firth had got out of the patrol car and were walking towards the entrance of the bank as the raiders were leaving. When the raiders saw the uniformed Guards they made a dash for their getaway car. Garda Fallon sprinted after them, followed by Firth, while Hunter called for more back-up. One of the raiders shot Dick Fallon in the arm but he kept going. As they rounded the corner on to a side passageway, he grappled with one of the raiders and another shot rang out. A second gang member doubled back and shot the officer in the head at close range. Dick Fallon fell face down on the concrete pavement as the raiders ran to the waiting getaway car. He died as his colleague whispered a prayer in his ear.
Dick Fallon was the first Garda to be murdered in the line of duty since 1942 – and the first to become a victim of Ireland’s new culture of violent crime. Over the next 15 years another 11 Gardaí and a soldier would also be gunned down as they tackled bank robbers, kidnappers and terrorists. Like Deirdre Fallon, their widows would be left to collect their posthumous Scott Medals for bravery. Retired Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey was one of the officers who raced to the bank when the call went out that a colleague was down. ‘It was hard to believe what had happened,’ he remembers. ‘We were at the scene very quickly and there was shock, there was horror, it was unprecedented. It certainly was a watershed as far as policing in this country was concerned. It wou
ld be fair to say that nothing would be the same again. Armed crime and murder and shootings would become so commonplace.’ Five years later Hickey, who would become one of the country’s top investigators, also received a Scott Medal for bravery. He and three colleagues, all of them unarmed, disarmed two armed robbers in a post office hold-up.
The investigation into the Fallon murder provided evidence of how hopelessly ill-prepared and disorganized the Force was to deal with violent crime. The initial shock at the news that a Garda had been gunned down was followed by utter confusion. The Gardaí had no experience of investigating crimes like this. No one seemed to know whose job it was to cordon off the scene and to search for evidence. The technical skills necessary to lift vital forensic clues were sadly lacking. A special report in the Irish Times, by security correspondent Conor Brady, noted how journalists, cameramen and nosey members of the public were allowed to tread all over the crime scene. Most damning of all, a few days later a child found spent bullet casings near the spot where Garda Fallon was shot. It was a hugely embarrassing episode in the history of An Garda Síochána and an indictment of the pervasive ineptitude.
Despite the fact that the modus operandi of the robbery immediately pointed to Saor Eire, the homes of known suspects were not searched until several days later. By then any evidence linked to the murder was long gone. The task should have been made easier because of the similar operation that had been planned in February but the delay was never explained. Another link with Saor Eire was established when the bullets found in Dick Fallon’s body were tested. The results showed that they came from the weapons stolen in Birmingham.
The Government joined the public chorus of condemnation and hurriedly announced a £5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the culprits. In response Garda management took the unprecedented step of issuing the photographs, names and addresses of the seven Saor Eire members they wanted to interview in relation to the murder. They were published in the national newspapers the following morning. The names on the list were Simon O’Donnell, Joe Dillon, Patrick Dillon, Frank Keane, Thomas O’Neill, Sean Doyle and John Morrissey, all of whom were already on the run. But somehow that exercise was also bungled. Two of the addresses given for the men were wrong – one was the home of Brendan Behan’s mother, and the news editor of the Irish Times lived at the other.
Badfellas Page 4