Book tells of PDForra’s secretive beginnings

Surveillance, covert meetings, false trails, and some girl power.

It has all the ingredients of a John Le Carre thriller but it’s an accurate account of the founding of PDForra 25 years ago.

Its first general secretary, who today operates popular tours in Cobh, Co Cork, has written a book, Breaking Ranks, about the struggle against all the odds to form the organisation.

Michael Martin was a young warrant officer who led colleagues in the Defence Forces to form the organisation which would fight for their rights.

Officers were extremely suspicious of their activities and had some of them put under surveillance. “We met in shady GAA halls,” the author said.

Another former founding member, Sam Fealy, who still serves in the navy, remembers booking halls for covert meetings under the name of ‘The Albatross Sports and Social Club’. “We knew we were being trailed. We thought the government would crush us,” the senior chief petty officer said.

Ironically, one of their colleages tasked with surveillance duties ended up being one of the first to join PDForra.

Officers had ordered Frank O’Brien, a sergeant in the military police, to shadow the agitators. “They told me to keep an eye on them but I didn’t. I’d tell them they gave me the slip,” he said.

As the government also tried to muzzle the fledgeling organisation, girl power was brought into the frontline in the form of the so-called ‘Army Wives’ who carried out protests on behalf of their partner’s rights.

An attempt was even made to arrest Mr Martin for speaking out.

“Sometimes it was scary and a lot of us who formed the organisation were worried that we might lose our jobs,” he said. “Of significant interest to the general Irish audience will be the evolution and impact of the women’s National Army Spouses Association campaign and the emergence of the notion of representation among Irish soldiers themselves.”

Michael Carlin, who was a petty officer at the time, recalled that the women certainly helped their cause. “But, at the end of the day, people had to stand up for themselves,” he said at yesterday’s book launch.

Mr Martin said the government saw PDForra as a threat.

“That’s not the case because PDForra provides representation without threatening the state.”

He recalled the former chief of staff, the late Dermot Earley, had said the formation of PDForra was “one of the best things that ever happened to the Defence Forces”.