During 1970 the Irish government had to accommodate the election victory in Britain of Mr Edward Heath and the departure of Mr Harold Wilson.
Mr James Callaghan, as home secretary, had been in charge of the Labour government's policy of crisis management since the Northern civil rights marches had forced the issue to the forefront of British politics in the summer of 1968. Once out of power, Mr Callaghan was keen to reassure Dublin that it need have "no doubts at all" that the British Labour Party would insist the pressure for reform would be maintained on the Northern Ireland government, then being led by Maj James Chichester-Clark.
On October 21st, the Irish ambassador, Mr Donal O'Sullivan, had a three-hour lunch with Callaghan and reported to the Department of External Affairs Mr Callaghan's "particular interest in knowing how we are getting on with the Tory government." Mr Callaghan expected Dublin would find Mr Heath "cold and difficult to know" but "fair-minded and decisive." He was given, in strict confidence, Dublin's critical analysis of the proposed legislation on housing reform and he "took copious notes" of all that Mr O'Sullivan had to say about local government reform. He "listened attentively" to the Dublin line on the need for proportional representation in Northern elections, but left Mr O'Sullivan with the impression that he was "not an enthusiast for a change in this direction".
He paid "warm tribute" to Maj Chichester-Clark and hoped Dublin would "avoid doing or saying anything" that might weaken his position. Mr O'Sullivan quotes Mr Callaghan's verdict on Mr Lynch's approach to the North as "admirable".
On one key contingency, Mr Callaghan's attitude was shifting. Mr O'Sullivan reported that "at the time of his leaving office he personally still had strong reservations about the advisability of a takeover by London in almost any circumstances. He has, however, changed his mind somewhat in the meantime but still feels that, if Chichester-Clark were to fall, the administration in the North should be given a last chance under a new leader".
Mr Callaghan "greatly surprised" Mr O'Sullivan by taking this line, even in the event of Maj Chichester-Clark being ousted by Mr William Craig. Mr O'Sullivan asked if he was "prepared to countenance an almost certain bloodbath in the initial 48 hours, not to mention what would follow later". The Dublin line was that neither Mr Craig nor Mr Brian Faulkner was acceptable; Mr Faulkner being characterised by Mr O'Sullivan as being in the "unhappy position of not being trusted either by the moderate or the rightwing unionists". Mr Callaghan wondered whether this was not a rather harsh judgment on Mr Faulkner, whom he described as "a most able politician".
Mr O'Sullivan then reported Mr Callaghan as saying that it might come as news to Dublin to learn that he was strongly in favour of the unification of Ireland. The present division was unnatural and the constitutional problem would certainly have to be resolved, but the approach must be gradual. Mr O'Sullivan was not impressed by Mr Callaghan's next enthusiasm: the building up of a genuine Labour opposition at Stormont. To this end, Mr Callaghan had been "working very hard" to persuade the Labour party establishment to organise seriously in every constituency in Northern Ireland. Mr O'Sullivan expressed the fear that Mr Callaghan's plan "could do serious damage" to the recently formed SDLP. "He [Callaghan] brushed this comment aside by saying that the new party has no future." He believed it would "disintegrate quickly because it has no genuine basis of cohesion".
Mr Callaghan concluded by emphasising his desire to come to Dublin to discuss Northern policy with Irish ministers. Mr O'Sullivan noted Mr Callaghan was "such a smooth operator" that the main purpose of his suggested visit might have been to win Dublin's acquiescence for his proposal to build up the Labour Party in the North.
Elsewhere in the 1970 files, there is a possible clue concerning Mr Callaghan's antipathy to the SDLP. In March 1970, Mr Eamonn Gallagher, Dublin's principal gatherer of political intelligence in the North, reported that Mr John Hume had confided to him that some months before, he had been invited to a private dinner in London and found there Mr Ivan Cooper, Mr Austin Currie, Mr Gerry Fitt and Mr Maurice Foley, a Labour MP with a keen interest in Northern Ireland. There was also "a vacant chair - reserved for Callaghan". A proposal was put to the Northern politicians present that they accept £20,000 sterling from the British Labour Party to help found a new party and that while not "organically connected" to British Labour, its members would support that party at Westminster. Gallagher had got the impression "that the conversation did not get off the ground". Elsewhere there are several indications of Mr Hume's wariness of Mr Gerry Fitt's interest in linking the embryonic SDLP to Labour parties in Britain and the South. Might it be that Mr Callaghan was miffed that the plan outlined at that London dinner had been ignored and that his motive in naively promoting the British Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland owed more to chagrin than to judgment?
Mr Gallagher, in a memorandum in November, excoriated Mr Callaghan's proposals, arguing that they were based on Callaghan's "superficial view of the situation".
