Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volume XIV, 1969-1973, eds Michael Kennedy, Eunan O’Halpin, Kate O’Malley, Bernadette Whelan, Kevin O’Sullivan, Jennifer Redmond, John Gibney and Melissa Baird, Royal Irish Academy, 1,122 pp, €50, ISBN: 978-1802050219
In one way it was the best of times: the last document in this fourteenth volume of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP XIV) is a short briefing note prepared for the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the concept of European Union. It is dated March 13th, 1973, just two months after Ireland’s accession to the European Communities. But mostly it was the worst of times: the first document, dated June 12th, 1969, is a belated report of a call in April by Paddy O’Hanlon, a nationalist Stormont MP, for the Irish government to seek the deployment to Northern Ireland of a ‘United Nations police force’.
The years between 1969 and 1973 saw Ireland’s second, and successful, attempt to join the European Communities. They also saw early steps towards a modernisation of the Department of Foreign Affairs (as the Department of External Affairs was renamed in 1972) and plans for an extension of Ireland’s small network of diplomatic missions. The Department was also concerned with commercial and foreign policy issues, including aviation between Ireland and the United States, the end of the civil war in Nigeria, Bangladesh’s successful secession from Pakistan and the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations. But the same years also saw the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in August 1969 and, after some subsequent months of relative optimism following the deployment of the British army, the degeneration of the situation into appalling bloodshed and political deadlock. DIFP XIV is dominated by the government’s efforts to develop and communicate policy on Northern Ireland, and to exercise influence on the British government through closer Anglo-Irish relations. [This article will refer to the Irish government simply as ‘the government’ and to the Department of External/Foreign Affairs as ‘DFA’].
This volume maintains the sequence of biennial publications which began in 1996. DIFP is a monumental achievement of Irish scholarly publishing. It is hugely to the credit of the Royal Irish Academy and its outstanding team of editors, under the leadership of Dr Michael Kennedy, to the National Archives, from which most of the documents come, and to the Department of Foreign Affairs, which has faithfully supported and helped fund the enterprise since it was first conceived of by Ted Barrington, the then political director. Design and production standards remain exemplary.
I will not offer a detailed account of the Troubles as reflected in DIFP XIV – the story has been told many times – but will rather seek to analyse how the Irish political and official system reacted to events and sought to shape them, and to pick out the themes which consistently emerge from the documents. Nevertheless, the main developments in this period need to be highlighted.
Rioting in Derry in August 1969, and its repression by the RUC and B-Specials, is usually seen as the start of the Troubles per se. There was rioting in Belfast, and many Catholics were driven from mixed areas. The British army was immediately sent in large numbers to pacify the situation and was warmly welcomed by most Catholics – though as early as August 20th the secretary of the Department was telling the British ambassador that the taoiseach was concerned about the IRA. The British government, led by Harold Wilson and home secretary James Callaghan, forced the Stormont administration, under the lacklustre James Chichester-Clark, to make a renewed commitment to the full implementation of civil rights and the ending of discrimination in areas such as local government and housing. The reform of the RUC and the abolition of the B-Specials were announced. These steps were hailed by nationalists but sowed the seeds of unionist reaction, expressed by elements within the Ulster Unionist Party and, powerfully, by the charismatic and deeply controversial Reverend Ian Paisley. He was elected to Stormont in 1970.
The Government, with Jack Lynch as taoiseach and Patrick Hillery as minister for external affairs, reacted by sending field hospitals to the border, mobilising reserves, and seeking to involve the United Nations. This prompted a hostile reaction from the British government. Within a month, however, in a speech in Tralee, Lynch stressed the unacceptability of violence and the need for consent if unity were to be achieved. As was to emerge the following year, two of his leading ministers, Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey, covertly took a different tack.
Notwithstanding good progress on reforms, the situation began to deteriorate in the first part of 1970. Both republican and loyalist paramilitaries developed their terrorist capacities. The Provisional IRA had come into existence in December 1969 in consequence of a split from the then Official IRA. Younger and more aggressive, it gradually came to overshadow its rival. Relations with the army became frayed, with street violence in West Belfast prompting a heavy-handed search of many Catholic homes in June. Chichester-Clark came under increasing pressure from his right. In August the first policeman was murdered by the IRA (one had been killed by Protestant rioters the previous year). Also in August, however, the Social Democratic and Labour Party was founded on a platform of reform and social justice and the exclusively peaceful advancement of nationalist rights and aspirations.
In June the Conservative Party unexpectedly won the British general election and Edward Heath became prime minister. The minister most concerned with Northern Ireland was home secretary Reginald Maudling, who on returning from his first visit to Northern Ireland legendarily said ‘Give me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country.’ The foreign secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was also involved.
Just before Heath’s victory Ireland experienced possibly the most dramatic event in its modern political history when Lynch sacked Blaney and Haughey for their alleged involvement with gun-running funded by state money. For some time, Lynch’s position seemed to be threatened. The British ambassador, Sir John Peck, is reported in DIFP XIV as thinking he would not survive. But he did, and continued to espouse a moderate approach. His focus was above all on maintaining stability and trying to build connections with the British government which would lead to greater Irish influence over British policy and practice.
Things went very wrong in 1971. Violence continued to build from both sides. There was a dramatic acceleration in the number of deaths, from twenty-six in 1970 to 171. The British army became a target for the Provisional IRA, with the first soldier being killed in February. Unionist anger at the violence, and opposition to what was seen as a pro-nationalist policy (all reforms were so characterised by the right wing) led to Chichester-Clark’s resignation in March. He was followed as prime minister by Brian Faulkner, seen in Dublin as a hard-liner. The loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association was set up in September. In August Faulkner resorted to internment without trial. This stratagem had previously been effective both North and South, but this time it misfired disastrously. It was aimed overwhelmingly at the nationalist community and was based on inadequate and out-of-date intelligence. This led to many uninvolved men being locked up. Accounts quickly emerged of maltreatment of internees, to the point of torture. Internment contributed hugely to the alienation of many nationalists. The Irish government was appalled by its folly and by how it was carried out, and initiated work on referring claims of torture to the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg. One positive development was that Heath invited Lynch to a full summit meeting at Chequers in September, and later in the month they met again.
1972 was even worse than 1971 and saw 480 deaths – more, by a wide margin, than any other year of the Troubles. Amid the constant slaughter two episodes achieved particular notoriety. The first was the killing in Derry of thirteen unarmed demonstrators by the British army on Bloody Sunday, January 30th. This, and the subsequent official whitewash, caused shockwaves North and South and further radicalised young Catholics, for a good number of whom joining the IRA seemed the right response. On July 21st, which came to be known as Bloody Friday, the IRA exploded twenty-two bombs in Belfast, killing nine people (six Protestants, among them two children, two British soldiers, and one Catholic) and seriously injuring 132 more. This further strengthened the determination of unionists to resist what was now seen as a full-scale insurrection and to demand a tougher line from the security forces.
By March 1972 Heath had had enough and by taking over full control of security forced Faulkner’s resignation. The Stormont parliament was prorogued and never recalled. Northern Ireland was to be run through direct rule from Westminster, headed by a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The first SOSNI was William Whitelaw, whose gentlemanly and sometimes bumbling manner concealed a sharp political brain. In the summer he made an abortive attempt to negotiate secretly with the IRA. The talks produced no progress, and a brief IRA ceasefire ended. Irish officials reported that John Hume told them that ‘at the request of the IRA … an internee, Mr Adams, had been released from Long Kesh today’. But most of Whitelaw’s efforts were devoted to looking for a basis for the restoration of devolved government in a new, more inclusive form. In November he published a Green Paper which ruled out both full integration with the UK and a return to Stormont as it had been. It recognised the need to accommodate an ‘Irish dimension’ and led to the White Paper published on March 20th, 1973, just after the end of the period covered in this volume. This in turn became the basis for the establishment of a Northern Ireland Assembly and a power-sharing Executive, and to the Sunningdale Agreement between the two governments. In the months after the publication of the Green Paper the Irish government worked hard to develop plans for a meaningful Council of Ireland.
The period from 1969 to 1973 was relentlessly turbulent. However, at this remove it is striking that the descent from August 1969 to the depths of 1972 was not linear. During the latter months of 1969 and the early months of 1970 there was relative calm and some apparent reasons for optimism. This was not to last. Whether it could have is one of the many ‘what ifs’ of the Troubles.
Of course DIFP XIV, monumental though it is, offers only a partial account of the period. The British government’s views are reported fully but what it and its officials privately thought of Irish arguments is not to be found here. Nationalist opinion is largely represented by John Hume: there was not a similarly close relationship with the Belfast section of the SDLP and the party leader, Gerry Fitt. There was virtually no contact with unionists. Nor is opinion across the two communities on the ground much in evidence. This had to await the later development of the ‘traveller’ system by the DFA. Naturally, political dynamics within the Republic feature little in official papers. There are periodic references in discussions with the British to the political pressures on Lynch, but little detail: even the Arms Crisis occupies little space.
Even with a volume of this length, the editorial team has had to be selective, given the mass of materials. As with all archives, we do not know what papers might not have been put on file, or could have been written but weren’t, though the DFA’s notetaking and record-keeping culture was very strong. The volume of material produced by different individuals does not necessarily reflect their influence in the system. The tensions, disagreements, dislikes and jealousies which occur in all human organisations are not manifest. Nor are friendships, jokes, oral discussions, and quiet, or, given the culture of the time, not-so-quiet, pints. There are two exceptions, both involving Patrick Hillery. In an undated note headed ‘Autumn 69’ he is scathing about the performance of his colleague, minister for defence Jim Gibbons, who had taken a belligerent line at a cabinet meeting. He had mouthed inanities; was a ‘cartoonist in office’ (Gibbons drew cartoons of colleagues); was vacuous on the army’s capacity; ‘the whole lot smothered in lashings of creamy patriotic ballad-singing type of thing’. Hillery also formed a dim view of a senior official, as will be seen.
The number of people centrally involved in the formulation and expression of Irish policy was very small. Of course, minutes and memoranda by the most senior officials in many cases no doubt reflected discussions with or contributions by their juniors. Future secretaries of the Department Seán Donlon, Noel Dorr and Pádraic McKernan make cameo appearances. Dermot Gallagher, secretary general from 2001-9, appears anonymously, as the unnamed duty officer receiving an angry nationalist delegation in August 1969.
But the main actors emerge clearly. Jack Lynch, in line with his public image, emerges as calm, conciliatory, always seeking to be reasonable. Patrick Hillery shared the same general approach but could be sharper and more emotional in discussion and more trenchant in expression. Some of the papers were written by himself personally, including reports of private meetings and instructions to officials. Hugh McCann, the long-serving secretary of the DFA, was its anchor and the chief conduit to the minister. Assistant secretaries Seán Ronan, in the earlier period, and Bob McDonagh, who headed a new Anglo-Irish Division from early 1972, were the most senior officials below McCann’s level. In the autumn of 1969, a flow of reports and analyses by Éamonn Gallagher began. Gallagher was a colourful and dynamic official, brilliant, opinionated and self-confident. Almost accidentally he established a good relationship with John Hume on his way to and from his Donegal birthplace. He wrote numerous memoranda setting out his interpretation of the situation and his recommendations, for the most part consciously blunt, though not without flashes of emotion. He became close to Lynch and acted as a principal unofficial adviser and speechwriter. However he flew too close to the sun. Noel Dorr, in his book on Sunningdale, describes his strengths and weaknesses, and the extent of his influence in 1970 and 1971. However, in early 1972 ‘his influence with Lynch began to diminish – perhaps because the part he was playing had become too widely known’.
Hillery wrote a note of a November 1971 meeting between the taoiseach and ministers and British Labour leader Harold Wilson, which was attended by Gallagher. He was not impressed by either Wilson or Gallagher. ‘ … Mr Gallagher of the Department of Foreign Affairs kept talking about the Taoiseach’s speeches in such a way as to make it clear that he was the origin of the speeches … was also inclined to intrude in the situation as if he were a politician and the Ministers who sat in with me afterwards felt that he was quite a dangerous person, not at all to be trusted’. Even the taoiseach ‘was obviously very nettled’. He was transferred to EEC affairs. After playing a leading role in the first Irish EEC presidency in 1975 he became a very senior official in the Commission and then in the Council secretariat. In retirement in Brussels, Gallagher wrote cogently on EU affairs, not always reflecting Irish positions. He died in April 2009.
The Irish ambassador in London, Dónal O’Sullivan, and the British ambassador in Dublin, Sir John Peck, enjoyed levels of political access which would be unimaginable now. O’Sullivan met incessantly with British officials and also had private meetings with ministers, and even the prime minister. His first meeting with Heath, still leader of the opposition at the time, did not go well. Heath was cold to the point of rudeness, not getting up from his chair to greet him, and berating him about Irish interference. However, over time they established a good working relationship, in which views were exchanged informally and frankly, to the point where O’Sullivan was able to get Heath to step out of a dinner at 10.30pm to receive a message from the government, Heath saying at the end that he was happy to meet him at any time. O’Sullivan was normally the only official to accompany the taoiseach or the minister for foreign affairs at meetings with their British opposite numbers. This meant that he had to write complete, often lengthy, reports: those of the two Chequers summits in September 1971 were eighteen and twenty pages long respectively.
The pressure on this small group of Irish ministers and officials was immense, especially in the first months of the Troubles when a lack of knowledge, preparedness and structures became painfully clear (though the British were in much the same boat). The quantity and urgency of the work were great. DIFP XIV includes eight documents written on August 16th, 1969, and three more about the events of that day. There were numerous other crisis points over the next years, and substantive and intense interactions with the UK, which all posed their own challenges.
Ambassadors other than in London were from time to time instructed to maintain contact with opinion-formers, brief on the Government’s policy and to seek expressions of interest or sympathy on the main concerns of the day. In the United States they also monitored Irish-American organisations and the media. Some of the not infrequent comedy of St Patrick’s Day parades continued: the taoiseach was advised not to attend that in St Louis, which had previously been poorly organised and involved one man dressed as a leprechaun and another as a pig.
Most unusually, however, in September 1969 Hillery asked that ambassadors furnish their personal views on the situation. For the most part, they responded thoughtfully and openly, not always but often on similar lines. Perhaps the most impressive and wide-ranging reply came from Éamonn Kennedy in Bonn. In addition to recognising the futility of any military intervention, the ambassadors urged that Ireland’s commitment to non-violence be stressed at all times. While none disputed the ultimate goal of unity by agreement, some urged that the main focus be clearly on civil rights, and that excessive mention of unity be avoided. There was a need to recognise Protestant fears about the Republic and to look at the constitutional and legal changes necessary to prepare for a ‘pluralist rather than a confessional society’. The economic and social welfare gap between North and South was a serious obstacle. A study of a federalist model of unity would be valuable, and Commonwealth membership could be re-examined. Practical issues were also raised, in particular the need for much better sources of information.
It is probable that the exercise had little impact on the detailed formulation of policy, the broad lines of which were already similar to the general principles set out by the ambassadors. But it reflects well on the willingness of senior officials to think creatively and in a spirit of honest reflection.
A relatively small number of British officials also appear regularly, mostly from the Foreign and Home Offices, as well as the ambassador in Dublin. They come across as professional and able. They were usually, if not always, courteous, even friendly, despite possibly sometimes being irritated by perceived Irish lecturing – though this was by no means one-sided. In private conversation they could sometimes move beyond their briefs and offer some personal reflections. No doubt Irish officials did likewise, without recording it in their reports.
Among the politicians, Heath lives up to his image: businesslike to the point of brusqueness, irritable at times, but very intelligent and hard-working, open to argument, prepared to learn and to revise his approach in the light of circumstances. Wilson is also as advertised: quick, unscrupulous, motivated by domestic politics and his desire for visibility. Whitelaw was friendly, old-fashioned in style, and open, to the point of worrying his officials. One of them sat in at a meeting with Ambassador O’Sullivan, saying privately that ‘Mr Whitelaw is occasionally inclined to go too far in unburdening himself to visitors, and it is important to keep him on the rails.’
Not much can be derived from these documents about the personalities and styles of most other ministers.
Some threads run consistently through DIFP XIV, though they wax and wane in prominence over the period. Many issues of the period remained relevant until 1998 and beyond.
There was a brief moment in August 1969 when it seemed that the Irish government might be preparing a military incursion into the North. From time to time in those early days appeals were made for weapons to arm the nationalist population. There was also a period in 1970 when worst case scenarios were envisaged. But very quickly the counter-productive and dangerous futility of such initiatives, and indeed the incapacity of the Irish army to carry them out, freely admitted by senior officers, became clear. The government remained committed to non-violence and consistently condemned the use of force. The Irish were consistently more pessimistic than the British about what might go wrong: and they were usually right. They were quick to point to the deterioration of relations between the British army and Catholic communities, and the threat of loyalist terrorism. They immediately realised the catastrophic impacts which internment and Bloody Sunday would have. They also complained about the practical and political impact of the cratering and closure of border roads and protested about incursions by British forces into the South.
As the IRA gathered momentum the British were equally quick to complain about a lack of Irish determination to crack down on it. They cited the movement of explosives and weapons across the border, the reluctance of the courts to punish IRA men, and the ease with which attacks could be prepared and launched from the Southern side of the border. The government usually reacted defensively to these allegations, denying them or saying they were exaggerated, and pointing out that the great bulk of violence came from within the North. But from very early on they recognised that there was an IRA threat. And over the years serious new measures proved possible, such as enhanced Garda and army presence near the border, the revival of the Special Criminal Court, and the broadcasting ban, though the prohibition of extradition from Ireland to Britain of ‘political’ offenders remained a thorny issue until 1987.
The government would not talk to the IRA or treat with intermediaries, and Garda and military intelligence were presumably better informed about the older generation of Southern-based leaders than about their younger, Northern successors. It was blindsided by the July 1972 talks between Whitelaw and an IRA delegation, which Whitelaw acknowledged went nowhere.
One of the first steps the government took in August 1969 was to seek support at and from the United Nations. Hillery went to New York but soon understood, as had been predicted by the ambassador, Con Cremin, that there was no chance of having the matter discussed at the Security Council, not just because of British opposition but because of widespread reluctance to intervene in what were seen as the internal affairs of a member state. France was quite sympathetic, but recalled its blocking of discussion on Algeria a few years earlier. A subsequent effort to have the issue discussed in the General Assembly also failed. However, in both cases, thanks in part to the forbearance of the British ambassador, Lord Caradon, the procedures used were such as to avoid a public defeat, and permitted the Irish position to be stated.
During this initiative, and periodically thereafter, the taoiseach, minister for foreign affairs and diplomats would brief friendly countries on the situation and seek their understanding and, if possible, support. They were normally afforded a courteous hearing; sympathy and interest were often expressed; but it was made quite clear, explicitly or implicitly, that there was no prospect of any action which would discomfit the British. This was particularly so in the United States, right up to the level of the president himself. As had always been the case, Irish-American opinion did not offer an effective counterweight to US establishment orthodoxy.
The embassy and the consulates tended to see Irish-Americans more as a possible source of trouble than of support. Reports from the consul general in Boston, Seán Donlon, described a situation in which the level of general interest or knowledge was low, but where those who did care tended to be sympathetic to the men of violence. In May 1970 Donlon reported that fundraising for the IRA was estimated to net a modest but steady $3,000 to $4,000 a month. However, Irish-America did not care for radical nationalism once it strayed beyond the Irish question. Outrage was caused by Bernadette Devlin’s meeting with Jesse Jackson on a visit to Chicago, and later by her giving to the Black Panthers the key to New York presented to her by Mayor Lindsay.
The greatest political challenge the government faced was to have its legitimate interest in Northern Ireland recognised and taken account of by the British government. On August 16th, 1969 Hillery met Lord Chalfont, a junior Foreign Office minister. Chalfont was adamant: Northern Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland had no right to intervene or interfere. This line was repeated by others. But bit by bit, due to Irish persistence, but also no doubt due to a growing realisation that this complex and dangerous situation could benefit from bringing Ireland some of the way into their confidence, British ministers became prepared to talk to their opposite numbers. This nearly always took place in Britain, sometimes on the margins of international events, never in Ireland. Nonetheless, departures from what the British saw as correct practice, as in Hillery’s sudden visit to Belfast in July 1970 after serious trouble there, provoked stern responses.
A breakthrough came with two very substantive meetings between Heath and Lynch in Chequers in September 1971 – Faulkner taking some part in the latter. Even though there was no meeting of minds on most issues, they symbolised a British recognition that Ireland needed to be heard, if not necessarily heeded. In the first meeting, when Lynch pressed for language on the long-term political future, Heath pushed back: the taoiseach had no constitutional status to pronounce on Northern Ireland, and no right to expect his assent to be sought. But at the same time Heath said he did want continued engagement. This engagement continued though the rest of the period. The British ensured that the Irish government had no public role in what would later be Strand One issues internal to Northern Ireland, but listened to what it had to say. The fact that Irish and British politicians were talking at all alarmed unionists, and the British had to walk a careful path. But in the Green Paper of October 1972 they came to recognise Ireland’s interest in Northern Ireland and the need for an ‘Irish dimension’ in a new political order. The Green Paper was warmly welcomed by the government.
The embassy worked hard to brief the British press, sometimes claiming success in influencing reporting or editorial lines. Traditional methods were employed. On August 13th, 1970 Con Howard reported that ‘While I was in the famous Ye Olde Falstaff Hostel yesterday, C.J. Lear, Editor of the News of the World beckoned to me and we retreated to a quiet corner and bought ourselves and the 3 barmaids drinks and goodies [sic] and had a long and useful conversation.’ Howard praised the constructive line taken by the News of the World. ‘After some time’ (and maybe some drinks?) Lear confirmed Howard’s hunch that ‘the strong editorial line on the Northern situation was very much personally backed and perhaps initiated by Mr Murdoch, the owner of the News of the World and of The Sun’.
In the British-Irish discussions, security issues and the ongoing crises of the day occupied considerable attention. So did the implementation of civil rights reform, with the two sides quite often disputing the pace of progress and the level of commitment to it from Stormont. But the prospects for new political arrangements also featured. From the autumn of 1969 onwards, Éamonn Gallagher was writing that the Stormont regime could not be maintained as it was and that only radical change would attract nationalist support. The official line, as expressed by McCann in November, was that the reforms under way should be accelerated, and, insofar as they were taking effect, be encouraged. Direct rule was felt to be undesirable.
However, as the situation got worse, and unionist opinion moved rightwards, with pressure on the leadership of the Unionist Party, there was a growing acceptance in Dublin that gradual improvements were not enough, and that Stormont as it was was the irreformable citadel of unionist domination. Direct rule eventually came to be seen as inevitable and preferable to the status quo, if only as an interim solution. In the longer term it was essential that nationalists be able to play a part in the government of Northern Ireland. For a long time, Heath adamantly opposed their obligatory inclusion as profoundly undemocratic: the Irish response was that the Northern majority had been artificially constructed to ensure an absence of real democracy. Various possibilities were aired, such as the reform of the electoral system, and the opposition providing chairs of parliamentary committees. SDLP MPs withdrew from Stormont in the summer of 1971 and said they would not return until internment had ended. As this abstention continued into 1972 the British were frustrated by their unwillingness to engage and sometimes turned to other supposedly representative figures within the minority – a tactic Dublin disparaged. But British thinking evolved after Stormont closed down. In the Green Paper, its non-prescriptive analysis pointed clearly to some form of nationalist participation.
The relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic was another important piece of the jigsaw. As during the Lemass-O’Neill and Lynch-Lemass era of 1965/6, the government emphasised co-operation as a way to reconciliation and mutual understanding, as well as having practical benefits. More cultural exchange was also desirable. The government frequently, but without success, called for RTÉ to be able to broadcast into the North. This was a consistent ambition for the next twenty-five years. Another hint of the future came when the government pondered the possibility of connecting the Shannon and Lough Erne though a revival of the Ballinamore to Ballyconnell canal.
The British, and indeed the unionist government, were open to practical co-operation. But formal structures were another matter. The Irish side, mindful of the aborted Council of Ireland of 1920/21, favoured what was initially called an Economic Council. Thinking developed quickly in the light of the Green Paper. The complex practical and legal, as well as political, issues posed by a Council of Ireland were set out by Noel Dorr in a note of early December 1972.
The questions explored were extremely similar to those which featured so strongly in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations over twenty years later. How politically ambitious could the government be, taking account both of the expectations of nationalists and of the anxiety of unionists? The Council should involve both parliamentarians and the executive branches. Should it have stand-alone executive powers? There needed to be a strong secretariat (Dorr) or economic commission (TK Whitaker in another note) to give it impetus. Should it be legislated for in Westminster and the Oireachtas, with the subsequent involvement of Stormont in agreeing on detail? What would fit within a broad remit (most of the topics suggested are familiar, but a couple are of their time: co-operation on a nuclear reactor and exploration for oil and minerals). What about the administration of justice and security?
Dorr stressed the need to take risks with the South’s own vested interests. A flavour of possible resistance from within came in a warning from Maurice Doyle of the department of finance (later its secretary) to be very cautious about co-operation on EC regional policy.
At the start of 1973 the two governments engaged quite intensively on the issue. The Irish side was taken aback by and disappointed with the extreme caution of the British, who pointed to the need to win over unionists, expressed surprise at the apparent Irish willingness to cede some sovereignty, and stressed the strict financial constraints upon a Northern Executive. The Council of Ireland was to be at the centre of the Sunningdale Talks at the end of 1973, and opposition to it a contributor to the downfall of the Executive and Assembly in May 1974.
Over the 1969-1973 period, therefore, the government pressed for reform within Northern Ireland, for the representation of the minority in the government of the North, and for serious and structured North-South co-operation and common action. However, a consistent thread in its policy was advocacy of Irish unity, both as the righting of the historic wrong of partition and as the road to permanent peace and stability on the island (including Northern Ireland). In internal debate, in public comment in Ireland and beyond, and in meetings with the British politicians and officials the government repeatedly identified it as the central objective of policy. Progress towards it should be an essential part of any interim agreement. It was generally recognised that this was a longer-term objective (though in June 1970 Hillery said he saw it happening within a generation at most), and could only happen peacefully and by agreement. There was a recognition of the need to reform some of the Irish state’s legal and constitutional restrictions, and to boost the South’s economic performance and social welfare provisions. Co-operation with the North on a wide range of economic issues, and greater cultural and personal exchanges, were also a prerequisite. Overall, while there may have been some element of ritualistic obeisance in the constant profession of the need to resolve the national question, one has to conclude that the ambition was sincere.
But how was agreement to be defined and measured? The government continued to express hostility to the 1949 Ireland Act’s guarantee that Northern Ireland’s parliament would have to consent to unity. It also strongly objected to the plebiscite on Northern Ireland’s place in the Union which was being planned towards the end of the period, and which formed part of Whitelaw’s set of new political measures. This border poll was acknowledged to be a concession to unionist opinion, to help compensate for shifts away from orthodoxy elsewhere. The government’s criticisms were practical and political, as well as principled, and it correctly forecast that the vote would only polarise opinion and that nationalists would abstain. But it was also the case that it would demonstrate the continued existence within Northern Ireland of a solid majority in favour of the union and opposed to unity.
In DIFP XIV there is no discussion of the mechanics of a unification process, though some attention was paid to future arrangements (such as the possibility of a federal system). The key role of the British government in paving the way to unity was constantly emphasised. In a variety of ways the British were asked to say that they supported the goal of unity and would help facilitate it – to be ‘persuaders for unity’, in the later formulation. Time and again Lynch, Hillery, McCann and O’Sullivan made the case to their interlocutors. Every time, with varying amounts of bluntness, the British would say that they would not abandon the constitutional guarantee and would not support unity. The most that they might say was that they would not oppose unity if that were the will of a majority.
The government may well have thought that ideologically and politically they had no alternative but to continue to make the argument. It seemed that the leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson, might be prepared to move off the position established by the British government – though Ministers and officials were unimpressed by him. But presenting reform and change within the constitutional status quo as a step along the way to unity, and not defining what agreement would mean, had an unsettling impact on unionist opinion and strengthened opposition to Sunningdale in 1974.
Related to this was the absence of knowledge of, contact with, or understanding of the unionist majority. Gallagher had a particular distaste for its political leadership. Paisley was ‘a political obscenity’. On Faulkner’s resignation on the introduction of direct rule in March 1972, he commented that ‘fittingly Unionist government ended with a man whose most remarkable qualities are negative ones – lack of vision and obviously lack of insight’. While he understandably lamented the Unionist Party’s constant tacking to the right and excoriated the mediocrity of most of its main figures, he did not acknowledge the strength of public feeling which placed so much pressure on it. Generally, the unionist world view was seen as motivated by bigotry and a desire to dominate: this was of course at least partly true, but other aspects of unionist identity were mostly ignored. Nor do the toxic effects of republican violence on unionist opinion seem to have been fully registered.
From time to time there was some hope that moderates would see where their future lay and decouple from the extremists. But this never happened. The leaders of the Protestant churches, when they met the taoiseach in October 1972, offered few grounds for optimism. Among a number of points causing difficulty, the Methodist representative mentioned the constant mention of unity by people in the South; suspicion of the words ‘by consent’ associated with unity in the speeches of Southern politicians; and references to ‘our people in the north’. Had he seen it, a memorandum for the government on Northern Ireland prepared in September 1970, very possibly by Gallagher, and framed by the speeches by the taoiseach he let it be known he had written, would have alarmed him mightily: ‘ … this relatively new settlement in Ireland … is entitled to retain its personality but it is right to require it to accept its true position in an Irish society rather than to allow it to impose its will on part of the country to the exclusion of the majority [on the island] tradition’.
The years from 1969 to 1973 established a grim pattern of three-cornered strife involving republicans, loyalists and the British army. Opinions hardened and the community divide grew, especially in working class areas and mixed parts of rural Ulster. The government ‘s policy was serious, thoughtful and honourable, as generally was its rhetoric. Establishing a solid working relationship with the British government, and forcing recognition of its vital interest in Northern Ireland, was a fine achievement. The futile effort to win meaningful international support was much less consequential. In March 1973, as the Fianna Fáil government gave way to the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, some optimism that the British political initiative might create a basis for stability, despite continuing violence, was not unreasonable. The rest of 1973 saw movement in the right direction, before hopes were dashed in 1974.
The focus on Northern Ireland is reflected in the proportion of documents in DIFP XIV. However, entry to the European Communities on January 1st, 1973 was a truly historic step. It took a long time for the potential of membership to be realised. Accession was by no means a panacea for Ireland’s domestic economic problems. But its negotiation was a triumph for the efforts of governments and officials over more than a decade.
While DIFP XIV contains numerous documents relating to the negotiations, the cumulative effect is, at least for me, a bit flat. There is plenty of detail on Irish priorities, offensive and defensive, but one gets little sense of the views of the EEC side or of the cut and thrust of negotiations. How compromises were eventually agreed is mostly invisible. There is no insight into the personalities on the Irish side, including that of CP ‘Robin’ Fogarty, at the time the DFA workhorse on EEC issues, who was (briefly) Hillery’s chef de cabinet in the Commission and later ambassador in Tokyo, Bonn, Rome and Berne and deputy secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs, who made an impact wherever he went. Finally, the main political actor in the previous period, the man who had held the fate of would-be members in his hands, Charles de Gaulle, had resigned as president of France shortly before the volume begins. His absence certainly takes from the drama of the events.
In 1969, the chief Irish concern was that negotiations with the UK might begin sooner than with the three other applicants (Denmark and Norway as well as Ireland). There were also some rumours of interest in a Community of seven. Firm reassurances were sought and given that neither of these would happen. The question of possible political union and what it might mean for foreign and defence policy continued to attract some attention, as it did throughout the period, but the consistent advice was that bridges only needed to be crossed when come to and that (as turned out to be the case) political union was far from an immediate prospect. Éamonn Kennedy in Bonn, like some others, was clear that EC membership would reduce formal Irish sovereignty but increase Ireland’s real freedom of action. This tension has resurfaced many times since.
The following year, 1970, priorities in negotiations began to be established, and were set out by Hillery on June 30th at the first meeting between the Communities and the applicants. Ireland was fully committed to the Treaty of Rome, including its ‘political finality’. It was also committed to work on Economic and Monetary Union. Most industrial sectors were ready to compete, but some needed transitional periods and safeguards. Ireland looked forward to full access to the Common Agricultural Policy, though it wanted a smooth transition from the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement arrangements. Issues might arise as regards animal and plant health. In terms of process, there should be a ‘reasonable degree of parallelism’ between applicants, and each applicant should be able to take part in any negotiation affecting its interests.
These points were mostly repeated at the first ministerial negotiating session in September. However, in the interim the problem of fisheries began to loom larger, as the EEC worked towards the completion of a Common Fisheries Policy before the entry of new members with significant fleets and fish stocks in their waters. Hillery pointed out that common access to Ireland’s exclusive fishing area would be of particular concern given that there was no Irish deep-sea fleet to take advantage of other opportunities. He said that this would be an especially difficult issue.
The eventual outcome of the negotiations on fisheries was seen by some, and indeed is still seen, as a betrayal of coastal communities. On the other hand, the move to equal pay between men and women is often cited as a major benefit of membership. The government may not have been very enthusiastic, but it had been told by its mission in Brussels that the view was that European law prohibited pay discrimination between men and women, including in marriage and children’s allowances. Hillery acknowledged this at the meeting in September, but looked for a transitional period.
Another issue which became prominent in late 1970 was that of economic development. In December, at a meeting with Raymond Barre, Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs and a future French prime minister, TK Whitaker, as governor of the Central Bank, argued that a strong regional policy would be necessary, especially as part of EMU. Barre agreed.
Throughout 1971, as the negotiations moved to a conclusion, most issues were gradually settled: representation in the institutions, transitional arrangements for industry (including protection for motor assembly until 1985), anti-dumping, the maintenance of export tax relief, commitment to a regional policy. Fisheries remained the most difficult problem. A transitional arrangement was agreed but felt by many to be unsatisfactory.
Earlier in the year, the status of the Irish language was raised by Hillery with Aldo Moro, the Italian president of the Council. Not wishing to waste negotiating capital, and mindful of possible pushback (I have seen a report, not in this volume, to the effect that The Netherlands warned that to press for Irish to be a working language could lead to an attempt to limit the number of working languages, at the expense of Dutch), Ireland settled for Irish being given official status but for its use to be confined to the Treaties and instruments of accession. This remained the case for thirty years.
In October Hillery slapped down a suggestion from the minister for finance, George Colley, that his Department should in future co-ordinate EC policy. In line with general European practice, it should remain with DFA.
There is little trace in these papers of preparation for the membership referendum, including the writing and publication of a White Paper (always quite an effort for the officials involved). The referendum was held on May 10th, 1972. Some worries had been expressed that it could face difficulties – including from the energising of left-wing opinion by events in the North, and from women’s fears of rising prices – but these were quite unfounded.
Towards the end of 1972, it was correctly predicted that Hillery, who was to be the first Irish commissioner, would be offered the social affairs portfolio.
The final document in DIFP XIV, from March 13th, 1973, is a memorandum setting out the ambitious agenda agreed at the recent Paris Summit. Leaders had instructed that a report was to be prepared by the end of 1975 on all the steps necessary to a European Union, including greater political unity and EMU. Agreement was eventually reached in 1991, and ratified in 1992.
At the United Nations, the issue which stimulated most discussion was that of the admission of the People’s Republic of China. In September 1969 Ireland maintained its position, as laid down by Frank Aiken, that the special importance of the matter required a two-thirds majority vote, and that it opposed the admission of the PRC if that involved the expulsion of Taiwan. Hillery, as the new minister, later questioned why he hadn’t been consulted: he said he might have taken a different view. Bit by bit the policy changed. In 1970 Ireland moved to abstention on the substantive vote, and in 1971 supported the admission of the People’s Republic at the cost of the expulsion of Taiwan.
A wide range of other issues continued to require attention. Ireland continued to support a full restoration of pre-1967 borders in the Middle East. It did not support the use of force against the government of Rhodesia, advocated a practical approach to Namibian decolonisation, and despite its abhorrence of apartheid, did not favour the expulsion of South Africa from the UN or the imposition of sanctions against it. It did support a General Assembly resolution urging sporting organisations and individual athletes not to take part in events run on a discriminatory basis. Cautiously, it supported the convening of a conference on the Law of the Sea and continued to press for further ratification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and for other nuclear disarmament action.
In 1969 the Nigerian Civil War was winding down, with the government in Lagos completely victorious. Ambassador Paul Keating continued to take a jaundiced view of what he saw as the excessive partisanship of the Holy Ghost Fathers towards Biafra, and their unwise and inappropriate intervention in politics. Joe Small, his First Secretary, was more positive. The Department advised against the funding of Africa Concern (later Concern), despite a plea from its former officer, Conor Cruise O’Brien, now a TD. In early 1970 twenty-five Irish missionaries were convicted of illegal entry to the territory of the former Biafra and then deported. The taoiseach called in the Nigerian chargé d’affaires to protest and his and the president’s aides-de-camp were part of the welcoming party when the priests came home.
There were exchanges on Ireland’s still extremely low level of foreign aid. In 1969 this stood at 0.08 per cent of GDP. It was mostly made up of contributions to the UN. At the DFA’s instigation, an interdepartmental committee, minus the department of finance, broadly agreed that it should be increased. In 1970 an increase of 50 per cent was agreed by the government: in 1971 this was reduced due to budgetary pressures. However, also in 1971 the government agreed to increase its derisory (the word of the ambassador to India) initial contribution of $3,000 to humanitarian relief in Bangladesh following its secession from Pakistan to £50,000. The development of a serious aid programme would have to await the arrival of a new minister for foreign affairs.
As previously, Finance continued to oppose signature of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which it saw as requiring equal pay for women and the end of the marriage bar in the civil service (as noted earlier, the matter was resolved by the application of European law).
In 1971 and 1972, quite an amount of the secretary’s time was taken up by discussions with the US embassy about the American demand for airline landing rights in Dublin. US planes had to terminate in Shannon. Threats were made to ban Aer Lingus onward flights to Chicago from Boston and New York or indeed to abrogate the entire Air Transport Agreement. Various formulae were advanced by the two sides. Strangely, the Department of Transport and Power, and its minister, Brian Lenihan, were more inclined to compromise than was the DFA, which (no doubt influenced by its Clare-based Minister) stressed the socio-economic importance of Shannon. The matter even reached the Oval Office, when Hillery met President Nixon. Hillery emphasised the role of Shannon as an economic hub for an entire under-developed region, leading Nixon to muse about possible parallels with the growth of the new city of Brasilia. A solution was not found until later in the decade.
The opening of embassies in Moscow and Tokyo, and reciprocal Soviet and Japanese embassies in Dublin, began to be considered.
An easing of Cold War tensions in the détente era prompted more consideration of developing relations with countries in the Soviet bloc. In November 1970 the Soviet Union proposed a three-man trade mission in Dublin, with full diplomatic rights. There was no follow-up. In 1971, a proposal to open an embassy was strongly opposed on security grounds by the Department of Defence. Justice was less definite but pointed to the extra resources which would be needed to monitor it and its staff. The Department of Agriculture was enthusiastic. In December 1971 the government approved the establishment of diplomatic relations and opening of embassies in both Dublin and Moscow. In March 1972 the British ambassador passed on the firm view of London that numbers in the Soviet embassy should be strictly limited and its officers properly overseen. The Soviet embassy was established in 1973, and the Irish embassy in Moscow in 1974. The often uneasy relationship with the Soviet Union, and then Russia, has sometimes, as now, complicated the lives of both embassies and their staffs.
Non-residential diplomatic relations with Poland also began, and in early 1973 Ireland, following the lead of the Federal Republic, recognised the German Democratic Republic.
Attention turned towards Japan as its remarkable economic growth continued. In September 1971 Hugh McCann agreed with Bob McDonagh that an embassy in Tokyo should be given ‘reasonably high priority’ given the trade potential – rather quaintly, Ireland’s main export to Japan in 1970, valued at £2m, was bowling alley equipment. An embassy in Tokyo was opened in 1973.
Also in 1971 McCann recognised that an embassy in Luxembourg would be required after EC accession. It was set up in 1974, though that anticipated for Oslo was no longer required when Norway voted against membership.
The years from 1969 to 1973 saw extraordinary change in Irish foreign policy. The eruption of violence and political chaos in Northern Ireland obliged the government and the DFA to build a new policy and develop a new expertise almost from scratch. Anglo-Irish relations intensified exponentially, putting a particular burden on the embassy in London. At the same time, the negotiation of EC accession, and preparation for membership, also placed fresh demands on the system, while opening up a quite new field of action. Ireland’s engagement with the UN and with international issues continued to be professional and committed, though, continuing the trend of previous years, less in the spotlight than in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The need for an increased aid budget was recognised but only partially acted on.
The real modernisation and expansion of the Department did not get seriously under way until later in the 1970s. But the creation of the Anglo-Irish Division in 1972, building on the Anglo-Irish Section of 1970, was an important structural change.
In January 1971 Hugh McCann responded to a request from Hillery for views on how DFA might be reformed. His paper was clear and cogent. The issues he addressed have, mutatis mutandis, preoccupied his successors ever since. Staffing was inadequate, though Hillery’s openness to looking for more resources was very welcome. Recruitment was too slow. Promotion should be more focused on merit and performance. Little training was offered. In the absence of a willingness to retire officers early on health grounds, those who had fallen victim to ‘the stresses and temptations of foreign service’ had to be confined to less important and attractive posts. The allowances system needed to be reformed. Some officers had too high a notion of themselves, suffering from a ‘morbus diplomaticus’ or ‘peacock complex’, which damaged the Department’s image. Better accommodation, archiving and communications were all necessary. Too much paper flowed upwards. There needed to be more focus on long-term planning.
One sweeping and systemic change which was to transform the Department was not forecast. A problem with recruitment was that every year ‘one or two girls are appointed’ as Third Secretaries ‘and there is a high natural wastage on marriage’. Women are almost completely absent from DIFP XIV, as from previous volumes – whether as civil servants, diplomats or ministers, Irish or foreign. One imagines that McCann would have been astonished had he heard that women would over the coming decades hold most of the most senior ambassadorships and positions in the Department, never more so than now. He might well have been equally astonished to learn that in 2025 Ireland would have 107 diplomatic missions around the world. Twenty-seven have been opened since 2018 – the total at the end of DIFP XIV was twenty-six.
1/7/2025
Rory Montgomery is a former Irish diplomat who served as Permanent Representative to the European Union and ambassador to France. He was a member of the Irish team which negotiated the Good Friday Agreement. From 2016 to 2019, as Second Secretary General at the Department of Foreign Affairs, he led on Brexit in the Department. He is currently chairperson of the Press Council of Ireland and an honorary professor of practice at the George Mitchell Institute, Queen’s University Belfast. His reviews of the two preceding volumes of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy can be found on the drb website.
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