The Sallins train robbery, Nicky Kelly and the “Heavy Gang”      [1984]

The Sallins train robbery, Nicky Kelly and the “Heavy Gang”      [1984]

[ This review by Desmond Greaves of “Round-up the Usual Suspects: the Cosgrave coalition and Nicky Kelly”, by Derek Dunne and Gene Kerrigan, Magill, pp.272, pbk, £4.95, was carried in the October 1984 issue of the. “Irish Democrat” under the headline, “A Gang Too Heavy By Half”.   Greaves used his usual pseudonym “Feicreanach”, which is Irish for “insightful”.]

The public scandal surrounding the detention and release of Nicky Kelly obviously merits a book.

It also merits a public inquiry, for if a quarter of what these authors record as fact is true, then the wrong men were jailed, and quite a few in high places ought to be compelled to explain themselves.

What is alleged is, in sum, that senior officials of the Gardai cooked up a monstrous conspiracy to “frame” perfectly innocent men, and kept up the charade for eight years, when the last victim was released, no questions asked.

The facts are in this book.

In the small hours of Wednesday, March 31^st 1976 unknown men held up the Cork- Dublin mail train and got away with £200,000. For some unexplained reason it was assumed that the military wing of the IRSP, known as the INLA, were responsible. It was resolved to round some of them up, and Nicky Kelly’s parents’ home at Arklow was searched “for firearms”.

From then on irregularity followed irregularity. So consistently indeed were the rules broken that it is hard to believe that there was no political directive from on high, and indeed the authors occasionally hint at this.

The notorious “heavy gang” systematically beat the prisoners up and forced them to incriminate one another, even though there seems to have been no real evidence to connect them with the crime.

Asked how the men got their injuries the police replied that they had beaten each other up, and it seems that they had been provided with an opportunity to do this by being illegally placed two to a cell.

They were all sentenced, but Nicky Kelly had skipped to the USA. When the other men were released on the grounds that their confessions had been obtained by the use of improper force, he thought he was safe and came home.

He lived quite openly for a while. But suddenly he was arrested and held in Portlaoise, from which, after a hunger strike, he was released because of the pressure of public opinion.

It should not be allowed to rest at that, and this book will provide plenty of ammunition. Members of the Labour Party would do well to reflect that their own Ministers are forced into complicity with the Fine Gael culprits by participation in the coalition.

Fianna Fail promised an enquiry into allegations of irregularities by the “heavy gang” – but went back on their undertaking. Even in the worst days of the Cosgrave reaction in the 1920s the Labour Party, through Tom Johnson, used to protest against the violations of civil liberties. Where is Connolly’s party today?

This is a book that had to be written. But it could have been written better. Was it very hurried?  Was there no time to grace it with the slightest wit or elegance? Instead of wit there is trendiness; instead of elegance there is the desire to surprise.  What is “happenstance”, and how does a man “psych himself up”? American writing can be good, but Americanisms used to spice tame English are like curry of convenience. There are also misspelling like “practiced”  (not derived from the noun) and the Latin “habeas” is unaccountably translated “produce”.

The material is not well organised. Perhaps a journalist cannot resist the temptation to drag something arresting to the beginning, even if this is not its natural place. The authors repeatedly break chronology by using the lazy man’s “past future” (“He would”, meaning that at the stage under discussion the event about to be told had not yet happened). You can have flashbacks, though I don’t like them; you can’t have flash-forwards.

Finally, though they are criticising the Establishment the writers are at pains to proclaim their own conformist credentials by sneers against the opponents of Partition. This is a book about a miscarriage of justice. It is gratuitous to talk about “whinging anti-partitionism” and “caterwauling over the fourth green field”. Do the gentlemen of the press never indulge in caterwauling?

Still, a tale can be more telling from the artlessness with which it is told. We’ll leave it as that.

• Feicreanach