The Arms Trial

In May 1970, two Irish Cabinet ministers, Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey, were dismissed by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, for allegedly using Government money to import arms for the fledgling IRA. It was the early days of the Northern Ireland troubles and the crisis in Belfast and Derry threatened to destabilise the entire island.This dramatic moment in modern Irish life if now retold in detail for the first time. The Arms Crisis split the Dublin establishment and briefly threatened the stability of the Republic of Ireland. It nearly finished the career of Charles Haughey, the most prominent and charismatic of the defendants, who spent most of the 1970s in the political wilderness before staging a stunning come-back to power in 1979. Justin O'Brien's account of the Arms Crisis reads like fiction. But it is fact.