Protect and Survive (Ireland)

Chapter I: Complacency meets reality.

JANUARY 1984


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Taoiseach (Prime Minister. pronounced 'tee-shock') Garret Fitzgerald was no FDR or JFK. He was no bold visionary. He had the aura of an absent minded professor. He led a coalition government between the conservative Fine Geal and the center-left Labour party due to a third election taking place within the same year and a half. His biggest problem was the exploding budget deficit...and nobody thought he was up to handling it.

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Foreign Affairs and national security issues had not been a big part of his governments agenda, unless they were related to the Northern Ireland troubles. Ireland was non-aligned in peace time with the goal of neutrality in war time. Successive Irish governments had refused to invest in the Irish military and refused to consider joining NATO as long as the UK continued to claim six counties of Irish territory. Ireland had a 10,000 man army, a small six ship navy and no air force.

The Berlin crises of December 1983 and January 1984 made him wake up to the real danger of a NATO-Warsaw Pact war. He decided to create an Office of Emergency Planning directly under the Taoiseachs office. Their task was to draw up a general plan for Ireland in the event of both a conventional and nuclear third world war. The defense minister had been ordered to cost the establishment of a small air force. They were to report back to the cabinet with these plans by February 1984.
It was time for a real national debate on NATO membership v Neutrality, they had fudged on this issue for far too long.

Relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact began to rapidly deteriorate during January, with bombastic over the top threats by the USSR that reminded Fitzgerald of Nikta Kruschevs day. Ronald Reagan was due to visit Ireland in June, the US ambassador called on Fitzgerald on 20th January to inform him the visit may be canceled, they would not want the President stuck abroad at a time of crises, it would be ''too good a time for the Soviets to pull something''.

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As expectations of war began to grow, the UK began overt preparations for war. The UK Parliament met to activate the Emergency Powers Act.
Irish citizens who had emigrated to work in the US and UK were streaming home. Many of them were trying to get work in Australia, assuming that the Aussies were not a target. Many more were content to stay home, assuming Ireland was no target either.




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On the morning of the 29th January, Fitzgeralds car approached the gates of government buildings. Something made him look up from his leather bound briefing book. There were usually two members of the Garda force (Ireland's police force) in dress uniform standing on either side of the gates. Instead, two soldiers, carrying assault rifles, wearing army combat uniforms, in the bottle green beret of the elite Army Ranger Wing, snapped off a crisp salute as his car passed through the gate. As he looked out the back window at the retreating gates he saw two jeeps, each with the biggest gun he'd ever seen, mounted on them, swing into place and park up on the path on either side of the gates. ''What he hell is all that about?'' he asked his Garda Special Branch driver. ''No idea chief...oh Jesus somethings happening you've a posse waiting for you on the steps''. Fitzgerald looked past him through the windows and saw his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Defense, General Hogan, the Chief of Defense Forces, and the head of G2 (the national intelligence agency) Mike Patterson without his suit jacket, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, looking like he'd lost a nights sleep. People were running around the courtyard frantically grabbing friends and colleagues who were just coming into work. Beside them, his military aide Captain Derek Jennings, who was in his early 20s but despite his rugby player build had the face of a doughy-eyed 16 year old, had his eyes cast skyward, as if he were looking for something. As Fitzgerald got out of the car he noticed beads of sweat streaming down the side of Jennings temples.

Oh God it's started, he thought...why else would the rangers, who's specialty was counter-insurgency, be deployed to protect government buildings? They must be worried about Saor Eire (a militant communist group) or the PIRA (who threw out rhetoric about a ''United Socialist Ireland'') taking advantage of the crises to make a move.​

As he got out of the car Patterson told him there had been a passenger jet shot down by the Soviet Air Force and the UK had raised it's alert level to BIKINI RED. It was expected to start any day, hour or minute.​

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A level of intense panic suddenly rose up in Fitzgerlad..he'd been careless and complacent, he had asked for the doomsday plans to be drawn up, but had otherwise put it out of his mind, even when the tensions in Berlin happened. He'd been complacent...and now was it too late? Would history record him as a new Nero who sat there while his nation careered towards disaster? There he was worried about the bond markets and the deficit when the very survival of the state might be threatened. He stormed into government buildings, ordering his PA Sharon Kelly to convene the cabinet and to pull the Oireachtas (national parliament) into emergency session at 10:30. ''Closed session Sharon'', ''closed Taoiseach?'', ''closed''. He asked General Hogan if the Office of Emergency Planning were ready with their plans, they were just finished. ''Lord help us'' he muttered under his breath as he went into the cabinet room ''it's Armageddon''.​

Chapter II: Preparing for the worst I

The cabinet meeting had been the most momentous in history.

President Hillary, who had been visiting Cork, had been quite indignantly tossed into an army helicopter by his bodyguards, on General Hogans orders, and flown straight to Dublin to preside over the cabinet meeting.

Also present was the leader of the opposition, his former university rival and arch nemesis Charles James Haughey, the leaders of the Labour party and the workers party, a chosen representative of the independent senators: Mary Robinson and the speakers of both houses. He felt the entire national leadership needed to hear it all laid out.

Fitzgerald had bluntly laid out the score, that war was inevitable and drastic measures ''to ensure our very survival as a nation'' needed to be taken.

As General Hogan laid out the emergency plans and possible scenarios, Fitzgerald found his eyes drifting over to Charles Haughey...if a state of emergency was going to be declared...what's to stop me from having him shot, he thought..only half joking. He was going to be trouble, he was going to challenge his authority. There was only one was to avoid it, a government of national unity.

There was good news and bad news in the emergency plan. Ireland had a large agricultural surplus but apart from gas imported nearly all it's fuel. The plan for a small air force was do-able only if major cuts were made in other areas, the Swedish willing to cut us a good deal on some older models. The usually unarmed Garda force would have to start carrying pistols routinely and be backed up by an army presence in some areas. Most of the prevailing winds blow north-east so fallout from a major attack on the UK would not affect Ireland much. There was a strong chance that regardless of neutrality, Dublin would be hit so convince the country to tend to it's own wounds and not help the UK recover.

It was reccomended the new air force jets be dispersed to smaller airports and aerodromes on the west coast as a result of this, that Dublins, Corks and Limericks emergency vechiles be preemptivly deployed out of the cities just in case.

The North was going to get hit, probably twice. Since the state claimed that it was her citizens up there, there was an obligation on them to help, but they could not absorb a half a million refugees so it was decided to set up aid camps just inside the border. A question of how to stop the refugees was met with an uncomfortable silence. Haughey suggested sealing the border, the General said that was only possible if the entire reserve was activated and dedicate solely to that task under the command of regular army officers, and even then they may need help from conscripts. The order was given to call up the entire Navy, Army and Air Corps reserves.

Fitzgerald asked the cabinet to sign letters of resignation placed in front of them by Sharon Kelly near the end of the meeting. He announced that while Dick Spring would stay Tanaiste (Deputy PM), Haughey would occupy a super portfolio of Defense and Justice merged into ''Minister for Security''.
It would be he, sitting on the government bench's for a change, that would introduce the Emergency Powers Act 1984, which declared a state of national emergency and allowed the government to rule by Emergency Powers Orders (EPO's) for the duration of the crises.
The new government of national unity would meet later that night to issue the first emergency powers orders followed by an address to the nation. There was discussion that perhaps the President should do this as he is a non political face.

He paused after the meeting for some pool spread pictures to be taken of them shaking hands, to encourage their grassroots to set partisanship aside.


There was little opposition, though some predictable irony over the 1984 name attached to such a draconian law. With the presidents agreement time for debate was abridged and the law was passed and signed by the President within 2 hours alongside an extension to the life of parliament was voted through, to seven years, meaning an election was not now due until late 1989.


The session was closed until the EPA was passed and signed, it's existence would be announced in the address to the nation later.
When the Oireachtas was opened again, the reporters were told that the government considered a NATO-Warsaw Pact war was a serious possibility and they were going to have a debate on NATO V Neutrality.



Word spread fast about the debate and it was being said on radio that there were 20-30 undecideds in FF and FG who could go either way

Just as the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) was reading the official tally that everyone could see from looking at the screen above his chair, a dozen men in dark suits, wearing the lapel pins of the Garda Special Branch, brandishing pistols, burst through each of the three doors, dropped to one knee and began to level their weapons outward at the closed doors.
As Fitzgerald started to ask his head bodyguard Sergent Chris Fulton what was going on, the definitive sound of rifle fire came from beyond the doors.
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