Harrowing story of a kidnapping …and its fallout
How shockwaves from the Don Tidey case are felt to this day The Kidnapping: A Hostage, A Desperate Manhunt And A Bloody Rescue That Shocked Ireland Tommy Conlon and Ronan McGreevy Penguin/Sandycove €23
In the early 1980s the IRA was running out of cash. Following a spate of bank robberies in the late 1970s, Irish banks bulked up their security protocols and the IRA’s usual smash-and-grab fundraiser was no longer an option. Attention within IRA leadership turned to high-profile kidnappings that would both raise cash and maintain the public profile of the paramilitary organisation. In early 1983, the IRA stole Shergar. However, the champion racehorse died shortly after and is believed to have been buried in rural Leitrim. The next target was Galen Weston, owner of Associated British Foods. Luckily for Mr Weston, the plot was uncovered and the gardaí foiled the attempted kidnapping.
Undeterred by these two botched attempts, the IRA set its sights on Don Tidey, managing director of Quinnsworth. The story of Tidey’s kidnapping and rescue is recounted in The Kidnapping by journalists Tommy Conlon and Ronan McGreevy. It is a harrowing story that merits the detailed examination it receives in this new book.
Don Tidey was an English retail executive who was headhunted to work first at Dunnes Stores and then at Quinnsworth. As a member of a successful organisation that the IRA believed would surely pay for his release, Mr Tidey was identified as a target.
On the morning of 24 November 1983, shortly after the supermarket boss left his home at the foot of the Dublin mountains, he was ambushed by a group of IRA men dressed as gardaí. They bundled him into a waiting car and, after a series of handovers, Mr Tidey was brought to a makeshift camp in a remote area a few kilometres outside Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim. It was there that he endured a gruelling 23-day period of captivity, sheltered from the elements only by a plastic tarpaulin. The news of his kidnapping – a direct challenge to the authority of the State – was greeted with shock by Ireland’s political and business establishment. It was known that business figures were at risk of kidnapping and the State’s inability to provide protection called into question its broader ability to constrain the threat to law and order posed by the IRA.
Following a tipoff by, among others, Freddie Scappaticci (aka ‘Stakeknife’), the gardaí narrowed their search to the countryside around Ballinamore. Following asearch, a small group of army personnel and trainee gardaí discovered the camp in the Derrada Woods. A short standoff ensued during in which the trainee Garda Gary Sheehan and Army Private Patrick Kelly were shot dead. It was an event that stunned the country. While there was elation at the rescue of Mr Tidey, questions emerged as to how the rescue ended in bloodshed. Particular focus was given to the use of Garda trainees from Templemore and whether or not Gda Sheehan had suitable training for such a dangerous mission.
The book explores in detail the kidnapping, the manhunt, and the political fallout following the two killings. It also describes the painful aftermath for the families of Patrick Kelly and Gary Sheehan. Neither family was able to rebuild their lives fully after the killings. Mr Sheehan’s mother never recovered and his sister recounted how a ‘pall of sadness’ hung over the family home after the killings. Mr Kelly’s three children faced a harrowing experience in which an interloper assumed the position of their father and packed them off to London.
In many respects, this is a book as much about Leitrim as it is about Mr Tidey, the IRA and the Kelly and Sheehan families. Conlon and McGreevy, both Leitrim men, clearly bristle that the kidnapping occurred in Ballinamore and that Leitrim is generally perceived as a country with long-standing Republican sympathies.
Despite an occasionally disjointed narrative, this is an enjoyable book. At its launch in Ballinamore, you could hear a pin drop as Patrick Kelly’s son David spoke about the years after his father’s killing. To those who like to romanticise the IRA’s campaign of violence and view the ‘armed struggle’ as something quite edgy, they would do well to read this story.
‘Bundled into a car and, after a series of handovers, was taken to a makeshift camp’