Micheál Martin has accused the anti-NATO lobby of consistently claiming that Ireland faces the threat of membership of a military alliance, conscription into a European army, and even the presence of ‘NATO tanks in O’Connell Street’. In the Dáil, Bríd Smith asked Martin did he want to send the sons and daughters of ‘mostly working class people’ to be cannon fodder for the world’s ‘colonial powers’. She wanted to know whether the government was ‘falling in line’ with those who warn that Europe is in a ‘pre-war era’. Martin told her that in every debate on Europe since 1972 the left had claimed that the government wanted to march the Irish people into NATO.
This heated exchange, with its Cold War rhetoric, could have taken place forty years ago. In fact it took place last May. The row between Martin and Smith is typical of debates about Ireland’s neutrality – and what it means – since the possibility of joining the European Economic Community (EEC) arose more than sixty years ago. Since then more heat than light has been generated in the discussion about the extent of an Irish military obligation, if any, to the defence of Europe.
Few states have made so heavy an emotional investment in the rhetoric of neutrality, Joe Lee observes, while paying so little attention to it as a policy. Ireland’s neutrality – ‘military neutrality’ – is poorly understood. Consequently, the question of the state making a commitment to defending Europe has been a sensitive one since Ireland’s first application for membership. For some, neutrality became a sacred cow associated with high moral purpose – particularly the participation of the Defence Forces in UN peacekeeping missions – as successive governments supported the progressive integration of European foreign and security policy. When Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, as a non-NATO member-state, the British ambassador in Dublin said that neutrality was not ‘a considered policy’ but rather ‘a desire to make a virtue out of a lack of necessity’. Seán Lemass’s 1960 statement on Ireland’s neutral status was unusually candid: ‘There is no neutrality and we are not neutral.’ In other words, Ireland was not politically neutral and ‘military neutrality’ could be dumped.
The Irish state, neutral, or, more specifically, non-aligned, participated in the Cold War. It sided with the Western powers. Nor did our militarily neutral stance, such as it was, endear us to the Soviet Union. The Soviets blocked Ireland’s attempt to join the UN on the grounds of the state’s neutrality during the Second World War and the fact that diplomatic relations had not been established between Dublin and Moscow. Ireland was seen therefore in Cold War terms as pro-American and, worse, militantly anti-communist. Andrei Vyshinsky told the UN general assembly in 1947 that states such as Ireland and Salazar’s Portugal could not be regarded as ‘peace-loving’ because they had ‘supported fascism’ during the war. He also contended that they maintained ‘particularly friendly relationships with another dictatorship, Franco’s Spain, the last offshoot of fascism in Europe’. Vetoed several times, Ireland finally became a member of the UN in 1955.
Vyshinsky’s comments about Ireland’s neutrality during the war were inaccurate and unfair, but he was right about the identification of Catholic opinion with anti-communism as the Cold War developed. In 1948, amid fears that a communist/socialist alliance would win the Italian general election, the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, made a radio appeal for funds to combat communist-led revolution there. Other bishops followed suit and more than £60,000, a considerable sum, was quickly collected in Ireland to help the Italian Christian Democrats. The minister for external affairs, Seán MacBride, a former IRA chief of staff, facilitated the transfer of this money through diplomatic channels. The Irish ambassador to the Holy See, Joe Walshe, had been particularly energetic in seeking assistance for Italian anti-communist forces. Neither the Vatican, nor McQuaid, were pleased when Ireland – a Catholic state in their eyes – did not join NATO. MacBride rejected the Americans’ invitation to join the alliance in 1949, not because he was unenthusiastic about US efforts to contain Soviet expansionism but because NATO membership involved recognition of partition.
Communists in Ireland, few in number, were obliged to oppose this US-led military alliance and promote nuclear disarmament. ‘Defending the USSR was always high on the agenda,’ Roy Johnston remembered, but promoting ‘peace’ in the early 1950s did not make them any less unpopular with the public. Catholicism, the American embassy observed, dominated the ‘bitterly’ anti-communist Irish state. The Irish authorities provided information to the Americans and British on disarmament campaigners, who were seen as working to a Moscow-directed agenda.
However, as the minister for external affairs, Frank Aiken, pursued a non-aligned stance at the UN on nuclear non-proliferation, between 1957 and 1961, Irish foreign policy became more independent of the US. This proved to be a significant development because it allowed communist, or ex-communist, ‘peace’ advocates to appear less partisan by linking Ireland’s neutral status with the disarmament agenda. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) phenomenon in Britain had a knock-on effect in Ireland and mainstream figures participated in the debate over nuclear arms. For example, Nobel laureate Ernest Walton, physics professor at Trinity College, Dublin, spoke on behalf of Irish CND.
Disarmament spokespersons appeared as reasonable, well-meaning, and patriotic. Betty de Courcy Ireland claimed to have found herself in a ‘favoured’ position at an international conference because she was ‘able to state that this country’s foreign policy with regard to armaments is closely related to that which the European Federation Against Atomic Armaments would wish to see universally adopted’. Betty and John de Courcy Ireland were profiled in The Irish Times in December 1958 and came across as respectable, if slightly eccentric, left-wingers. They championed Ireland’s CND lobby, which had been set up in the wake of its British parent earlier that year. ‘Here, in an atmosphere redolent of the Kingstown past, live as vigorous a pair of “do-gooders” as ever tried to inject the spirit of self-help into the nation’s somewhat sluggish veins,’ an Irish Times writer reported. A mother of three children, Betty insisted ‘with an irresistible combination of feminine charm and suffragette tenacity, on the right of Irish women to have their say in political matters. At the top of these she now puts the terrible dangers of nuclear armaments.’ The de Courcy Irelands had a simple, Christian, message in relation to the CND project: ‘All life is sacred, and any destruction of life is evil.’
Ireland applied for full membership of the EEC, along with the UK in 1961, and, importantly, this raised the question of a military relationship with NATO members who had nuclear weapons. CND advocates joined the debate on the EEC and highlighted the issue of ‘military neutrality’. Speakers at a well-attended event in 1962 included Seán MacBride, the independent TD Noël Browne, and WB Stanford, a Trinity College senator. Stanford argued that the indications that Lemass might bring Ireland into a military alliance had caused indignation, and those who opposed this possibility would ‘stand up and be counted’. Browne contended that it had been ‘impossible’ to obtain ‘any categorical statement on the political and military implications’ of joining the Common Market (EEC). He called for a referendum to protect Ireland’s ‘traditional policy of neutrality’.
A photograph of Browne and a Garda dog lunging at him at the height of the Cuban missile crisis became an iconic image of Ireland’s 1960s. He made the front page of the Irish Times in this dramatic fashion when he and a few dozen others were brutally prevented from marching to the American embassy. This anti-war demonstration included CND supporters carrying ‘Keep our neutrality’ placards. The protesters wanted President Kennedy to lift his blockade of Cuba which was preventing Soviet ships from docking on the Caribbean island. Five days later the Soviet leader blinked first and Khrushchev announced that he would not deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise from Kennedy that the US would not invade it. The crisi was effectively over – for six days the world had come as close as it ever has to a nuclear war between the two Cold War superpowers.
Opposition deputies in the Dáil now questioned Lemass on how far he might alter Ireland’s neutrality in order to join the EEC. Would he allow NATO bases in Ireland? Lemass responded sharply to his interlocutor, Browne: ‘Neither here nor in Cuba […] Go back to Khrushchev and tell him […]’ Browne had accused Lemass, following his visit to West Germany seeking support for Irish EEC membership, of attempting to involve the Irish state in the Cold War by jettisoning its policy of neutrality. Since ninety-nine per cent of the population, according to the taoiseach, opposed the Soviet Union’s ‘communist empire’ – Ireland was not politically neutral and aligned itself with the Western powers. As it happened, he added, no EEC member-state had asked Ireland to drop its ‘military neutrality’. This rebuttal led to Browne being labelled a ‘Red’ by the taoiseach’s colleagues. However, Lemass’s position was less than clear. In Bonn, during his most recent visit to an EEC capital, he stated that Ireland’s reasons for joining Europe were political. ‘We have made it quite clear that our desire is to participate in whatever political union may ultimately be developed in Europe. We are making no reservations of any sort, including defence.’
The Irish Times now asked whether a referendum should be held to allow the public to decide the implications of this development: ‘If we are committed to the European defence programme – Mr Lemass says we are – let the people know that means in certain circumstances we will have to fight.’ Later in the year, The Cork Examiner pointed out that the treaty visualised a united Europe – economically, and politically – involving common foreign and defence policies. ‘If the shedding of neutrality, in the fullest sense of the term, is the price to be paid for [economic] survival – and that is the factor which the opponents of EEC membership seem strangely loath to take into account – then, it would appear, we have no alternative but to accept.’
Ireland’s application to join the bloc fell along with Britain’s, in January 1963, when France’s Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain joining. Fears over a relationship with NATO subsided. In relation to neutrality, however, a heightened public awareness of the state’s neutral status emerged over the course of the 1960s when Irish troops served in UN peacekeeping missions in Congo and Cyprus.
The question of making a military commitment to the EEC resurfaced in 1968 when the government renewed its bid to join the bloc. Jack Lynch, Lemass’s successor as taoiseach, stated that the circumstances of such a commitment would have to be approved by the Dáil. In other words, the policy of ‘military neutrality’ could be reshaped if necessary. Lynch declared, in Cold War terms, that in a military conflict ‘between atheistic communism’ and ‘our Christian way of life’ then ‘we in this parliament would not be neutral, nor would the people of Ireland permit us to be neutral’. Lynch, The Irish Times stated, had taken the state further towards some form of commitment to European defence than even Lemass. Preparing the ground for entry to the European bloc, Lynch’s external affairs minister, Patrick Hillery, asserted more than once that Ireland would play its part in defending Western Europe.
Separately, in relation to events in the North in 1969, one of Lynch’s ministers spoke frankly about ‘military neutrality’ in a private discussion with the British ambassador. Concessions to Britain’s strategic interests were offered by Charles Haughey, who made it clear that a united Ireland could be a NATO ally. He told Andrew Gilchrist that Britain’s strategic interests could be recognised in a federal Ireland and neutrality abandoned. Gilchrist believed that Haughey’s proposals were representative of a wider Dublin viewpoint. A new all-Ireland entity, according to Haughey, could meet unionist fears in relation to the power of the Catholic church and have a close relationship with NATO: along with the abolition of the special constitutional position of the Catholic Church, Ireland could rejoin the Commonwealth; Britain could have access to Irish bases; and NATO troops could be stationed in Ireland.
On the other side of the Cold War divide, the Soviets were openly hostile to an enlarged EEC but also wanted to develop relations with Ireland. A Soviet visitor chided Lynch’s government for applying to join the Common Market – indicating that Moscow backed the campaign against Irish membership. The anti-EEC lobbyists aligned themselves with the Soviets in arguing that a stronger Western European political entity, the EEC, would strengthen NATO. Left-wing republicans exploited domestic concerns about the ability to maintain the state’s neutrality. They argued that the government appeared to be willing to make a commitment to military obligations within a NATO-dominated EEC. Since the EEC emphasised the development of political partnership alongside economic relationships, Official Sinn Féin argued, commitments to a military alliance of some kind would inevitably arise: ‘Ireland would soon be forced to join and allow NATO bases to be established at Shannon, Cork and elsewhere.’
Protesters highlighted Lynch’s pro-American position in relation to the war in Vietnam during President Nixon’s visit to Dublin in 1970. More than a thousand people marched to the US embassy and were told that the government did not have a neutral position on Vietnam: the invitation to the president and Lynch’s ‘silence’ on the issue could be taken to mean the government had aligned itself with the American ‘oppressors’ in that country. The anti-Nixon lobby here alleged that the government had sided with NATO’s leading power. In the White House the Irish state was seen in positive terms. Nixon visited Ireland to draw the attention of Irish-Americans to his Irish roots and his brief for the visit, supplied by Henry Kissinger, described Ireland as ‘a constructive and reliable neutral’.
Economic questions dominated the debate in 1972 before the referendum on EEC membership. Following Ireland’s signing of the treaty of accession, in January, the Common Market Defence Campaign staged a series of anti-EEC rallies which warned of loss of sovereignty and of jobs. The demonstration in Dublin, the biggest for years, saw trade union members out in force. In Cork, a spokesman argued that control of the economy, and, ultimately, of ‘our political life’ would be handed over to others. These warnings of calamity were not heeded by the electorate, eighty-three per cent voting to join. In relation to the defence of the EEC, the government stated that no military commitments had been entered into. Both the American and British ambassadors now agreed, as Kissinger believed, that Ireland remained firmly in the Western camp.
Joining Europe marked a modernisation moment for the Irish state, as did establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1974. The Cold War here had entered a new phase: a ‘who’s who’ of dignitaries in Dublin, including cabinet ministers and the papal nuncio, attended a party hosted by the Soviet embassy. But the tensions between the world’s two superpowers heated up in the early 1980s.
More than twenty parliamentarians in total were absent for President Reagan’s address to the Oireachtas in 1984, including three TDs who walked out. One of the two Workers’ Party TDs who demonstrated in this fashion said he had withdrawn in protest at the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and ‘in defence of Irish neutrality’. Reagan’s visit prompted further critical remarks on Ireland’s non-aligned status when a British diplomat wrote that the Irish saw themselves as ‘the unpaid conscience of the West’, who ‘stress their neutrality more stridently than hitherto’. A year earlier the British defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, caused a minor public spat when he suggested that Ireland could afford to take this attitude by hiding behind NATO’s ‘umbrella’. Leading up to the referendum on the Single European Act, in 1987, the taoiseach, Charles Haughey, committed himself to the state’s ‘policy of military neutrality’ and to ‘the concept of Ireland as an independent sovereign nation maintaining its own position on international affairs’. Fine Gael dismissed the No side as ‘the same people’ who advocated a No vote in 1972, who had advanced ‘the same phoney arguments’ about Ireland’s neutral status. That ‘traditional neutrality’ was a ‘contemptible fraud’ was thee view of one relatively blunt Fine Gael backbencher, expressed during the debate on the Act. Garret FitzGerald reminded the Dáil that the general secretary of the Workers’ Party was no stranger to Moscow. It was ‘nonsense’, he asserted, to suggest the state was neutral between East and West, notwithstanding the fact that it was ‘neutral in a military sense’.
With European integration and the development of a common EU defence policy the upholders of ‘Irish’ or ‘traditional neutrality’ are not exaggerating when they highlight the relationship between the Defence Forces and NATO. The contention that Ireland might join NATO can no longer be regarded as the baseless claim of unrepresentative ‘Reds’. Successive governments have maintained that Ireland’s ‘military neutrality’ is intact. However, since the Defence Forces cannot defend the country on land, sea or air, we cannot continue to delude ourselves that this policy is adequate given the geopolitical uncertainties that have developed since the end of the Cold War. Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael, have failed to explain their approach to ‘military neutrality’ as it relates to our EU membership, and the public remains unenlightened on the issue. A cool – not heated – process of discussion on Ireland’s defence requirements is long overdue, with a view to holding a referendum on the subject. In 1962 Noël Browne called on the government to come clean on the constitutional implications for neutrality if we aligned ourselves with NATO members in Europe. We are still waiting.
1/10/2024
John Mulqueen is currently working on a study of Frank Ryan and his political world, 1932-45.
