John Bowmanon Jack Lynch's uphill diplomatic battle and ultimate failure to convince Britain to engage with nationalist Ireland
While Jack Lynch was in opposition from 1973 to 1977 he had witnessed the Fine Gael-Labour coalition engaged in one of the most turbulent periods in Anglo-Irish relations. At the helm in Iveagh House was Liam Cosgrave's choice as foreign affairs minister, Garret FitzGerald, who found that one of his life-long preoccupations was now at the heart of Anglo-Irish relations: policy relating to Northern Ireland.
FitzGerald's first year in office was nothing if not eventful - all-party talks in Belfast, then agreement at Sunningdale; the historic breakthrough of the Faulkner-Fitt powersharing executive and its controversial overthrow by the Ulster Workers Council strike.
The remainder of the Fine Gael-Labour term in office was dominated by Dublin's insistence that no Northern solution was viable without the sharing of power between unionists and nationalists. However, unionists who shared this opinion won only five seats in the election to the Northern Ireland Convention and all other rival strands of unionism, although deeply suspicious of one another, were unanimous in their opposition to compulsory powersharing.
This was the wicket on which Jack Lynch came in to bat after his landslide victory in the summer election of 1977. The cabinet papers included a briefing document which had been prepared for his predecessor the previous January and which set out "possible developments" in Northern Ireland.
Greater integration with the UK was reckoned to be "unlikely" and indeed Cosgrave had been reminded that when Ted Heath had suggested it in September 1973, he was met with "a considerable outcry" in the Republic. "This could be repeated if the proposal were again pushed."
Independence for Northern Ireland was seen as a non-runner for three reasons:
The loss of British subsidies;
The impossibility of guaranteeing civil rights to the minority;
And the "obvious limits" to the "tolerance and interest" of the European Community who would scarcely accept the addition of "quarrelsome and impoverished mini-states".
The "fashionable" solution was devolution, perhaps on Jim Molyneux's limited model, confined to administrative but without legislative powers. Labour's Northern Ireland secretary Roy Mason had boasted to the SDLP that it had been achieved through his "plotting". Iveagh House was supportive, provided the SDLP acquiesced.
But what was described as the "most serious possibility of all" was a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Their involvement was costing the British exchequer £1 billion per annum, plus many military casualties and "endless trouble and obloquy". The "main practical reason" why they maintained their commitment to the Union was their fear of widespread violence if they did pull out. Moreover, even if such violence was confined to Ireland, "it would still be to the disadvantage of the British that a neighbouring island should be permitted to degenerate to a Marxist or Maoist Republic - as could well happen if events got out of hand, following widespread violence".
After his election victory Lynch expressed a keenness for a meeting with British prime minister James Callaghan. The taoiseach's department reckoned that the British were "looking at the meeting as an exchange of views" and did not expect "firm decisions". The British emphasised a wide agenda with eight matters needing attention at the EEC, along with two further bilateral issues and six pertaining to Northern Ireland - with four focused on security. Indeed, Dermot Nally in the taoiseach's office in another file admits that the British, while hesitant on other agendas, were "all go" when it came to discussing security.
In advance of the summit Lynch was advised that Callaghan had won the Labour leadership, after Harold Wilson's surprise exit the previous year, because his fellow MPs reckoned he could unite the party, work with the unions and win an election. "Jim cares about the Labour movement," one colleague had confided. "Those dreary committee rooms, the bad teas, the duplicating machines that get ink everywhere, the old ladies writing notices with exasperating slowness. Jim likes all that."
Furthermore, Lynch was warned not to expect much movement from Callaghan on Northern Ireland policy as his minority Labour government was potentially beholden to the Ulster Unionists for its very survival. Callaghan had already forged a parliamentary pact with the Liberals and it was generally assumed that, despite formal denials, there was a further understanding with the Ulster Unionists not to bring the government down. Moreover, it was this consideration which gave Dublin "most cause for concern".
Callaghan, of course, had a past on Northern Ireland. As home secretary from 1967 to 1970 and later as shadow spokesman, he was a central figure in fashioning British policy towards the province. Indeed, he had written a book on the subject, A House Divided, and Lynch was reminded of some of the more revealing conclusions, including a comment which was written in 1973, a year before the loyalists had sabotaged the painfully constructed Sunningdale Agreement.
Callaghan had then theorised that "if, by sabotage of the political structure of Northern Ireland, the majority deliberately contracted out, then Britain should feel morally free to reconsider the link between herself and Northern Ireland". Nor did he believe that anyone could forecast what the outcome of such a reconsideration of policy might be. But Britain could not "be expected to sit patiently and bleed indefinitely if her best efforts face deliberate sabotage by the elected majority of the Province".
In their preliminary arrangements for the summit, the British described as "an unobtainable objective" the controversial Fianna Fáil call in 1975 for a declaration of intent for the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland. Moreover, although Dublin feared a precipitate British withdrawal, the background briefing note for Lynch still argued that there were "compelling arguments in favour of an ordered withdrawal, in peaceful conditions".
Nally also wrote that it seemed logical that "a considerable part" of the summit should be spent on "a full discussion" of Dublin's attitude to the British presence in the North. But in the event this did not happen, as Nally's own note of the preliminary meeting between Callaghan and Lynch reveals. Callaghan adroitly widened the agenda and perhaps filibustered on other issues - the better to delimit the time for debate on Northern Ireland.
Then Lynch concentrated on the Labour government's failure to save the Sunningdale breakthrough, arguing that if in 1974 there had been "more sustained support" for the powersharing executive, it would have succeeded. Callaghan responded "that he too was convinced that 'another push' could well have done it". Lynch must have been tempted to remind Callaghan that he was a senior member of the Wilson cabinet which had not only singularly failed to provide that push, but by calling the loyalists "spongers" had arguably ensured the strike's success.
All seemed agreed that, in the aftermath of all this, "powersharing had become a dirty word". Lynch said that the Irish government "was particularly concerned about the appearance of a movement towards greater integration. This had come about through the pact or understanding with the Unionists - to put it bluntly".
Labour's facilitation of the expansion of Northern Ireland's seats at Westminster from 12 to a proposed 17 or 18 added to this impression: "a milestone in the wrong direction" as Lynch described it elsewhere. He now urged some political initiative "to indicate another direction in British policy".
Furthermore, he complained that during Merlyn Rees's tenure as NI secretary "there had been a definite drift away from the concept of powersharing" which was the only route to stability. He now added that it was "equally important not to let the present malaise set in. If political parties in the North collapsed, there would be no alternative for the minority but to go to the IRA".
Callaghan suggested that frustration at the impasse in the North was not felt by the people but rather by the "out-of-work politicians". He "fully assured" Lynch that there "was not a scintilla of movement towards integration". Indeed, he added, that it would be "completely unacceptable to the British people".
Commenting on the recent visit of Queen Elizabeth to the province, Callaghan confided that when he first saw that the visit was scheduled for early August at the height of the marching season he had gone to the Palace to object. "It was," he said, "madness for the visit to take place at that time."
Indeed he had twice sent the proposal back to the Palace but in the end they had insisted that there was "no way in which the date could be changed". He added that the Queen had been "a little hurt" by Gerry Fitt's boycott of her visit. The monarch "understood the aspirations of the Irish people and did not regard the visit as complete if it were limited only to the majority". But Fitt had told Lynch a week before that Northern nationalists could only see the Queen as "head of the Unionist tribe".
On a North-South working group on economic co-operation, as mooted by Lynch, Callaghan responded that the unionists "would not be dragooned. They had got to be wooed". Nally, on whose note of the private meeting the above account rests, cannot but have been disappointed with how the exchange had gone. This was scarcely "the full discussion" of Dublin's attitude to the British presence in the North which he had advised Lynch should logically form "a considerable part" of the summit. Moreover, when the plenary session followed with the two leaders being joined by foreign minister Michael O'Kennedy and Roy Mason, Callaghan again requested that the meeting should proceed "without excessive concentration" on Northern Ireland.
Lynch cited Fianna Fáil's comfortable victory in the June election as some indicator of the Irish people's rejection of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition which, he believed, "had moved away from the aspiration of ultimate unity". But far from opening up a debate on this topic, the British would not even agree to Lynch's request that the summit communique should include a reference to Irish nationalist aspirations. Nor would they support his suggestion that the communique might repeat the promise made at Sunningdale that "if a majority in Northern Ireland should in the future evidence a wish for unity with the rest of Ireland, the British government would support that wish". Pressed by Lynch, Callaghan gave the reassurance that this was still British policy but argued that it would be counter-productive in the current climate to publicly re-iterate it.
Some indication of how the Callaghan government had marginalised Dublin can be gleaned from an account by Irish ambassador in London Paul Keating. He reported to SeáDonlon in December on a meeting with Douglas Janes of the Northern Ireland Office concerning allegations of ill-treatment of detainees in Castlereagh.
Janes was only willing to talk on the basis of a background briefing and would not take representations as this would be permitting Dublin a say in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland.
Complaints were part of a propaganda campaign said Janes: "Prisoners fake injuries . . . attack interrogating officers so that they get bruised." Intelligence at Castlereagh was now "very complete and . . . prisoners tended to break their silence. When they did so they found it necessary to justify their breakdown by alleging ill-treatment".
Later at lunch Keating and Janes conducted "a tour d'horizon of the Northern situation". On Mason's promised initiative, Janes predicted preliminary talks before Christmas but he admitted that "there was a difficulty in finding people to talk to who would deliver. The Unionists kept looking over their shoulders continually at Paisley who would involve himself in the talks in order to find out what was going on but would not make any move".
The British were complacent concerning their security record believing that the Provisionals were "much weakened and on the verge of demoralisation". Moreover, they had noted elsewhere during the year that Paisley had threatened to quit politics if his attempted reprise of the Ulster Workers Council strike weapon failed. It did, but he forgot his promise.
Thirty years on some of the players in the 1977 drama may read these files with an "I told you so" response. But nobody in 1977 could have foreseen which of the political factions would be in the ascendant when power came to be shared.