TAOISEACH JACK Lynch had to realise the only prospect for Irish unity lay in “the seduction, not the rape” of Northern Ireland, a top British diplomat told British home secretary James Callaghan in 1970.
The remark came in a detailed letter written in March 1970 by Oliver Wright to Mr Callaghan at the end of a six-month posting to Stormont as the UK’s representative to Northern Ireland.
“So long as we keep the North quiet, the South will give us no trouble, for Mr Lynch also went to the edge of disaster last August and stepped back in time [in his “we will not stand by” speech].
“His courageous speech to his party conference in January marked a change from fantasy to realism about the Irish question,” said Wright in the letter, released yesterday by the UK’s national archives.
“If he recognises, as he now does, that force cannot be used to solve the problem of partition, he must come to realise that the only prospect of Irish unity lies in the seduction, not the rape of the North. The South will, I suspect, be a long-time a-wooing, if they ever start: the Irish tend to marry late, I believe,” he wrote.
Sent to Stormont in 1969 after British troops were deployed, Wright, who later became ambassador to the US, was less than impressed with much of what he saw, as is clear from his descriptions of “Micks” and “Prods”.
“It is a tribal society, and the natives stranded by partition on the wrong side of the borders like and trust each other about as well as dog and cat, Arab and Jew, Greek and Turkish Cypriot.” The “Orange Protestant ascendancy” had abused “the existence of British-style democracy” to guarantee and perpetuate a most un-British-style injustice towards the Catholic community, he said.
“But the minority, though perhaps more sinned against than sinning, has been far from blameless. In true Irish fashion, the Micks have enjoyed provoking the Prods as much as the Prods have enjoyed retaliating.
“Catholic attitudes have been at best ambivalent and at worst treacherous. It makes the Prods’ blood boil – and all Irish blood boils at a very low temperature – to see the Micks enjoy the superior material benefits of the British connection while continuing to wave the tricolour at them,” said the diplomat.
Judging the performance of NI prime minister James Chichester-Clark’s government, Wright said it was reforming against the prevailing mood among its supporters.
“It is doing its best – whether its best is good enough is another matter.” Chichester-Clark was gone from power in a year.