The picture laid out by the release of State Papers for 1977 is an incomplete but valuable addition to our knowledge of current affairs 30 years ago. Governments do not deal with everything, then or now, and much is simply missing.
The Dublin papers do not tell us much about economic problems, or how ministers proposed to deal with them, yet the year started with inflation running at about 20 per cent, and oil price rises were to the forefront of the public mind. The tax cutting and job creation promises of the incoming Fianna Fáil government are probably the most visible public engagement with the economy, though the approach adopted was to prove controversial. In 1977, important first steps towards creation of the internet took place, out of the line of sight of our political and administrative classes.
What we do catch is a glimpse of how the machinery of government works. The measured advice given by senior civil servants to politicians by and large remains the same, regardless of the political stripe of the parties in power. But personalities assert themselves. There are occasional flurries of impatience. The Department of Foreign Affairs became quite tetchy with the Vatican for what it saw as an ill-judged intervention over the Portlaoise hunger strike. The Fine Gael minister for finance Richie Ryan was even-handed in excoriating colleagues. Labour's Michael O'Leary got it in the neck over the October bank holiday announcement as did Fine Gael's Patrick Cooney over that perennial political football, Garda Síochána numbers. And from an earlier time, the measured exchanges between George Bernard Shaw and Eamon de Valera make fascinating reading.
Britain was in a political bubble in 1977 which Margaret Thatcher would burst in 1979, doing Ireland few favours in the process. The picture in Northern Ireland was bleak, yet the attentive reader will note that British policy there was crafted to do less - much less than Dublin would have liked - yet achieved more than it is generally given credit for. There was to be no progress on power-sharing, but the defeat of the second Ulster workers strike was an important gain for the rule of law, and a stinging setback for the bullyboy tactics which had taken down the executive.
There were hopeful signs. Liam Cosgrave ended Ireland's official ambivalence towards the British monarchy in June 1977. In one of his last acts as taoiseach, he sent his Minister for Foreign Affairs Garret FitzGerald to a service in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, to mark the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne. President Hillery also sent her a message of congratulations. An important milestone was passed. A dual recognition was afforded, to our neighbours and to those living on the island of Ireland for whom the monarchy is an important element of their belief system. On these small courtesies, an edifice of mutual understanding and co-operation could be built. And so eventually it was.