Don Tidey kidnapping brought 1980s Ireland together across the sectarian divide

His plea was ignored by the Provisional IRA then engaged in its “long war” against the British state.

Four years later, on the afternoon of December 16, 1983, brothers Andrew and Alastair Tidey were in the offices of Garry Weston, the chairman of Associated British Foods (ABF) in London, owners of Quinnsworth.

Their father, Don Tidey, the managing director of Quinnsworth, had been kidnapped by the Provisional IRA 23 days previously.

The Provos demanded £5m from the company, a ransom which the British and Irish governments would not allow to be paid under any circumstances.

The Tidey brothers had stopped off in London on their way from Dublin to Rome at the request of Weston, who had been wrestling with the terrible dilemma presented by his employee’s kidnapping.

Only a few people knew where the Tidey brothers were going. They were due to meet Pope John Paul II that weekend; the pontiff was going to issue an appeal to the Provisional IRA to release their father.

This proposed intervention was all the more remarkable given Tidey was not a Catholic, but an English-born Anglican who had made Whitechurch in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains his parish church after moving to the area in 1979.

Tidey was kidnapped from outside his home in Woodtown, Co Dublin, on November 24, 1983. He was bringing his 13-year-old daughter Susan to school when he was ordered out of his car at gunpoint by a kidnapper dressed in a fake garda uniform.

His disappearance prompted the largest manhunt in the history of the State and the kidnapping gripped the nation. For more than a week, there was no communication from the kidnappers and no indication as to whether or not he was still alive. On December 1, the education minister, Gemma Hussey, wrote in her diary: “There is not one word of good news and we are all sick with worry.”

Whitechurch became the focal point for a nation’s hopes. Nightly prayers were offered for Tidey’s safety. The congregation, which usually numbered between 50 and 100, lit candles and recited psalms. The Tidey children often attended, surrounded by well-wishers.

Henry McAdoo, the Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin, made a public appeal to the terrorists’ humanity.

“You have everything to gain as human beings by setting free an innocent man,” he implored. 

I ask the kidnappers to have a change of heart. Let Mr Tidey go so he can return to his family. His children have suffered enough.

Implicit in that statement was an acknowledgement that Tidey, a widower, had lost his wife, Janice, to cancer three years prior to his kidnapping.

The impetus for the papal intervention came from an unusual source. The directors of Quinnsworth contacted Rev Horace McKinley and asked him to help. Rev McKinley was the rector of Whitechurch and is a friend of Mr Tidey’s to this day. The board had been impressed by the ecumenical nature of the church gatherings every evening.

This had led to a joint day of prayer in Dublin churches called for by the Catholic and Anglican archbishops of Dublin, Dermot Ryan and Henry McAdoo, which occurred on Sunday, December 10, 1983. Rev McKinley contacted Archbishop McAdoo, seeking permission to approach the papal secretary in Rome, Fr John Magee, about the Tidey kidnapping.

The coming of the Christmas season injected a fresh energy into everyone’s efforts. Archbishop McAdoo gave his approval. Rev McKinley believes it was a happy accident that the papal secretary was Irish and therefore well acquainted with the Tidey story.

Rev McKinley recalls: “All this was completely new territory for me. I found Fr Magee to be a good listener and reasonable. I had stressed Mr Tidey was a man of deeply rooted Christian faith. Clearly that discussion resulted in a positive Vatican response.

“Archbishop McAdoo was co-chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, which was involved in discussions to heal the historic differences between Anglicanism and Rome. I think all that must have had a positive impact on the Vatican’s decision to agree to this visit.”

Tidey became a free man again in dramatic circumstances on the afternoon of December 16.

His kidnappers shot dead Private Patrick Kelly and Garda Recruit Gary Sheehan, who had been part of a search party that found the hideout in Derrada Wood, Co Leitrim, where Tidey had been held.

In the ensuing firefight between kidnappers and state forces, Tidey broke away from his kidnappers and rolled down an incline. Even then he was not out of danger. A soldier pointed a gun at his head, thinking the wild, unkempt man in front of him with a beard and khaki clothing was one of the kidnappers. Fortunately, he did not pull the trigger and Tidey was brought to safety.

Word filtered through a few hours later to Alastair and Andrew Tidey that their father had been freed. They were about to leave the offices of ABF to board a plane to Rome. They returned immediately to Dublin.

“Instead of meeting the pope, they met me,” their father says.

In the weeks and months afterwards, he was gratified to discover that his kidnapping had brought so many people together to work and pray for his release.

“It has been good for me to reflect on that over the years ever since,” says Tidey.

“Whitechurch under the mountains, where we worshipped for 20-odd years, was an ecumenical church.

There were people in my own staff who had never before been within a Church of Ireland or Protestant church. Out of it, a there is another story to be told, in the sense that people were genuinely moved, whether they were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or non-conformist.

In 1997, Tidey, his second wife Barbara, and their daughter, Saskia, moved from Woodtown. He commissioned a stained glass window designed by the artist Willie Earley for Whitechurch as a parting gift.

The scene from the Old Testament Book of Tobit depicts Tobit in the company of Raphael, the angel of healing who also guards pilgrims on their journeys. For Tidey, the story of Tobit, a man taken away from everything he loves and forced into exile, has a parallel with the story of his own incarceration and safe deliverance.

The words in the window are taken from Psalms, chapter 9 verse 11: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee. To keep thee in all thy ways.”

This psalm was recited every night at the vigils in Whitechurch when people prayed for Tidey’s safe return. It was also chosen as a prayer of hope that the Kelly and Sheehan families would find consolation in their great loss.

A plaque beneath it reads: “This window was given by the Tidey family to thank God for His protective and healing presence, through His holy angels, during the years 1979-1997. The family lived in this parish and worshipped in this church.”

• The Kidnapping: A hostage, a desperate manhunt and a bloody rescue that shocked Ireland by Tommy Conlon and Ronan McGreevy is published by Penguin Sandycove priced €16.99.