SDLP in government: As tribal politics returned, the nationalist party sought Dublin's allegiance, writes John Bowman.
In the aftermath of the collapse of Sunningdale the SDLP felt increasingly isolated and was wary of any conciliatory gestures towards the unionists by the Fine Gael-Labour coalition in Dublin.
They might have regretted the return to tribal politics in Northern Ireland but insisted that "once this has happened there is nothing for Dublin to do but to join its tribe".
The SDLP remained convinced that the Wilson government intended to withdraw from Northern Ireland, motivated by British self-interest.
At a meeting in Iveagh House in Dublin on August 20th, Gerry Fitt said that since the fall of the executive "a great mood of despair" had overtaken the minority community while the majority were "in the grip of euphoria, confident that they have the economic and industrial power needed to get their own way".
Nor after the collapse of Sunningdale did the SDLP have any confidence that the British would face down the loyalists.
SDLP leaders reserved a special contempt for the Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees. In an account of this meeting, written up for the Department of the Taoiseach, John Hume comments on an occasion when Rees was reading from a long apologia for his term as Northern secretary.
Government secretary Dermot Nally records Hume as developing "the definite impression that Mr Rees . . ." and here, on the copy available in the National Archives, Hume's verdict on Rees has been censored.
Again in Nally's account Gerry Fitt is quoted as saying that Labour's policy in the North "had been absolutely disastrous", adding that Fitt "thought that Mr Rees . . ."; and here again some censor has intervened.
Fortunately, however, elsewhere in the archives there is a record from Seán Donlon written up for the Department of Foreign Affairs of the same meeting which records the verdicts of Hume and Fitt.
Hume's comment was that Rees "did not appear to be in control of himself". Fitt's verdict, as noted by Donlon, was that Rees gave the impression "of being close to a nervous breakdown. At times he was almost incoherent."
At the same meeting Gerry Fitt is recorded as complaining that "Merlyn Rees makes many peculiar statements which nobody understands; for instance, the UWC after their meeting with him appeared to feel that he had not ruled out a third force. He had attempted to do so subsequently but had added an expression of hope that people who wished to contribute to security would join whatever force he has in mind thus leaving some hope to the loyalists that their force would be acceptable.
"The uncertainty which he allowed to develop on this subject had given rise to a mood of hysteria in the minority community last week when there had been talk of a Catholic force of 20,000-25,000 men. The consequences of people being allowed to build up private armies can easily be seen."
Austin Currie suggested that in a doomsday situation the South must be the guarantor of the minority.
"Ideally the minority would like to be in a Turkish Cypriot situation but they realised that they were not. He agreed that the South was in a weak military situation. It should, nevertheless, stand by the Northern minority so that they will not be thumped into the ground."
While everybody at the table was determined to avoid a doomsday scenario they reckoned it prudent to discuss the possibility.
Elsewhere in the 1974 cabinet papers there are estimates of the limitations of any military help which the Irish Army could provide if a civil war were to follow a British withdrawal.
At this meeting Garret FitzGerald suggested that "militarily, the loyalists could not hold west Ulster while it would be militarily impossible for us to get near Belfast. There was nothing which even we could do in a timescale of years in terms of men and arms which could change that. Repartition would create an Israel in the north-east of Ireland, which we must at all costs avoid."
Following a visit to Northern Ireland from October 23rd to 25th, Donlon reported that there was still a widespread opinion within the SDLP that the British were "intent on a complete withdrawal from NI and a stronger conviction than ever that there is now no prospect that the British will confront loyalists, either politically or even in a limited security operation.
"Hume sees a move towards NI independence, more likely negotiated than unilaterally declared, as almost inevitable but says that he cannot at this stage even seriously contemplate it. He is not prepared to trust the majority who have all the machinery of state, particularly the police and public service, on their side, and he feels that in this situation any outside guarantor, whether British, Irish, UN or combination of the three, would be meaningless."
Hume - heavily influenced by his experience as a minister ousted by the UWC strikers - argued that the only acceptable guarantor would be one who could at a time of crisis generate and distribute electricity and provide adequate security for Northern Ireland as a whole.
Donlon reported that more than at any time in recent years the SDLP "feel their position seriously threatened by the IRA".
Both Devlin and Currie suggested to him that there could be no settlement to which the IRA were not a party and although Hume "does not fully agree, he would certainly like to see some way in which the IRA could be brought more directly into the political process so that the possible 10 per cent of the minority who support them would be fully committed to any agreement reached".
On November 22nd a senior delegation of SDLP leaders came to meet the taoiseach and his senior ministers in Dublin.
Hume told the meeting that it was the considered view of his party "that the Provisional IRA had now taken a deliberate decision to attempt to provoke a civil war which would embroil the whole of Ireland".
They saw this, according to Hume, as "the only way of vindicating themselves, in the wake of all the suffering they had caused, apparently with little success, so far as their objectives were concerned".
Hume added that the result of the recent escalation in the IRA's campaign of violence had been a massive increase in retaliatory sectarian assassinations.
"The Catholic population in the North was now gripped with fear. In general, the situation was perhaps at its most serious since the troubles had begun."
This meeting was only days after the IRA bombing of Birmingham. Currie said that he thought the campaign of bombing in Britain would intensify, "perhaps leading up to an explosion involving very large loss of life, say in the Oxford Street area of London in the period immediately before Christmas. It had to be remembered that 1974 had been described by the Provisionals as the year of victory.
The thinking here would be to generate an irresistible demand among the British public for a withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland".
There was considerable debate concerning the prospects of a British withdrawal, which Dublin saw as a possibility but which the SDLP reckoned to be almost certain.
Garret FitzGerald expressed the view that if the Irish government "were to indicate that it was facing up to the possibility of British withdrawal, this might give the British government the alibi they almost certainly wanted to get out of the North; in this way we would be letting them off the hook".
John Hume did not agree. In his opinion the British would leave.
"We should try to ensure, therefore, that it would be in the best possible circumstances and that they would stay until stable institutions had been set up."
Hume added that once the Irish government became fully involved, "the Provisional IRA would be finished. This would be the case if the 1920 guarantees about Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom were withdrawn.
If the British said that they were not staying in Northern Ireland indefinitely but only until agreed institutions were established, the loyalists would be left in an uncharted situation and might well be prepared to 'play ball'."
FitzGerald replied that what the SDLP was proposing was a gamble. If it did not work, one "would be left in the situation where there might be a British commitment to withdrawal and the loyalists would be in a very ugly mood".
In the course of a wide-ranging debate John Hume did express optimism at one point. His preferred outcome remained a concerted effort by the original supporters of Sunningdale to split the loyalist monolith.
And if the voters were certain that the governments would stand firm on power-sharing and an Irish dimension "the results might be surprisingly favourable".
Hume driver joins strike
Irish government adviser Seán Donlon added what he termed a "politically insignificant but nevertheless revealing footnote". When John Hume took office he had been assigned a car and driver from the official car pool. He was also "given the option of nominating his own driver but rejected it and said he would take Charlie, an east Belfast Protestant". During his period as a minister, Donlon noted, Hume had befriended Charlie. He had even given him a bed two or three nights a week so that Charlie could save his subsistence expenses. "He paid him generously and privately when he came to Dublin on unofficial trips.
He brought him to meetings and parties and generally did everything he could for him. On the first morning of the Loyalist strike, Hume received word that Charlie was not available. He had gone on strike. The day after the executive collapsed, Hume returned to his former office at Chichester House to thank his personal staff but, though invited, Charlie didn't turn up. As Hume says, intimidation can't have been all that bad."