Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy by T. Ryle Dwyer

County Dublin that Mr Haughey’s accident occurred on a licensed premises on the previous night.’ Berry passed on the information to the Taoiseach, who ‘was emphatic’ that there should be no garda inquiries into the matter.
    â€˜Within a couple of days, there were all sorts of rumours in golf clubs, in political circles, etc., as to how the accident occurred with various husbands, fathers, brothers or lovers having struck the blow in any one of dozens of pubs around Dublin’, according to Berry.
    One unfounded rumour that was later published suggested that Haughey was beaten close to death by the father and brother of a young woman after they supposedly caught him in bed with her, upstairs in the Grasshopper Inn in Clonee, Co. Meath.
    Charlie had tried to dismount by hoisting himself out of the saddle by grabbing the guttering above the stable entrance, but it gave way with a large crack, which spooked the horse. Haughey was thrown heavily to the ground, receiving serious injuries that required hospitalisation. The rumours were so persistent that Charlie took the unusual step of having one of his stable hands talk to the press about having witnessed the riding accident.
    By then, however, rumours of Charlie’s other activities were already rampant and the country found itself in the midst of the arms crisis, which led to his dismissal as Minister for Finance on 6 May 1970.

T HE A RMS C RISIS
    At about three o’clock in the morning of 6 May 1970 Jack Lynch issued a statement to the press. He announced that he had ‘requested the resignation of members of the government, Mr Neil T. Blaney, Minister for Agriculture, and Mr C. J. Haughey, Minister for Finance, because I am satisfied that they do not subscribe fully to government policy in relation to the present situation in the six counties as stated by me at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in January last.’ On learning of the Taoiseach’s decision, Kevin Boland resigned as Minister for Local Government and Social Welfare in protest, and Paudge Brennan, his parliamentary secretary did likewise. The country was suddenly awash with rumours that the Taoiseach had discovered plans for a coup d’etat.
    It was not until hours later that Lynch explained to the Dáil that he had acted because security forces had informed him ‘about an alleged attempt to unlawfully import arms from the continent’. As these reports involved the two cabinet ministers, he said he asked them to resign on the basis ‘that not even the slightest suspicion should attach to any member of the government in a matter of this nature’.
    To understand the crisis one must go back to events surrounding serious violence which erupted in Northern Ireland following the Apprentice Boys Parade in Derry City on 12 August 1969. The parade was attacked by Nationalist protesters. The police, supported by Unionist thugs, then besieged the Nationalist area. What became known as the Battle of the Bogside had begun and quickly spread to other Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland, which seemed on the brink of a full-scale civil war.
    Amid the escalating violence the cabinet met in Dublin. Lynch had a draft address that he intended to deliver live on television that evening. Several members of the cabinet objected that it was too weak in the circumstances. Charlie, Blaney, and Boland, together with Jim Gibbons, Brian Lenihan and Seán Flanagan all called for something stronger. A new speech was prepared at the cabinet meeting.
    â€˜The Stormont government evidently is no longer in control of the situation, which is the inevitable outcome of policies pursued for decades by them,’ Lynch told the nation that evening. ‘The Government of Ireland can no longer stand by’.
    The statement had an electrifying impact on the situation in the north. Besieged Nationalists concluded the Republic was going to intervene militarily, and the Unionist population