Jim Malley, who died on June 5th aged 81, was a wartime pathfinder whose dangerous job it was to fly low in front of the RAF bomber formations and mark their targets with flares.
In more peaceful times, in the mid-1960's, as a civil servant, he delivered an equally pioneering service for his boss, Captain Terence O'Neill, paving the way for a meeting with Sean Lemass. Although it is the two prime ministers who have received the historical plaudits for belatedly effecting north-south rapprochement some 40 years after partition, much of the credit belongs to the anonymous mandarins in the shadows behind them, Jim Malley, and his counterpart, Dr T.K. (Ken) Whitaker, the visionary architects of the groundbreaking encounter.
James Young Malley was born on July 24th, 1918, near Aughnacloy, into Tyrone farming stock and soon developed what was to be a lifelong belief in the unsurpassed quality of the county's agricultural produce, commending its potatoes, cabbage or butter whenever the opportunity arose. But, as one of four brothers and a sister, instead of carrying on the family farming tradition after leaving Dungannon Royal School, he joined the civil service in Belfast.
In 1940, soon after the outbreak of the second World War, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, and was assigned to Bomber Command, where, as a navigator and bomb-aimer, he participated in attacks on the major German cities and as far afield as Poland and northern Italy. After a spell of service in Tel Aviv he returned to Britain and was assigned to a training unit but, despite having contracted TB, he volunteered again for active service in 1944, dragooned a medical officer into passing him fit and joined a flight of Pathfinders, flying at 10,000 feet, well within the range of antiaircraft fire, marking targets with flares for aerial bombardment in support of the final push to end the conflict in Europe.
Jim Malley's war record is peerless, having flown a record 127 bombing missions over Europe, some of them round trips of up to 10 hours duration in the claustrophobic confines of heavy bombers, under the constant threat of enemy attack. On one of the 37 missions he completed over Berlin, only half the 74 aircraft involved came back and he always admitted afterwards the he was scared stiff everytime he took to the air. But, with two brothers, who also served as bomber aircrew, he survived the war unscathed, had reached the rank of squadron-leader and was rewarded for his service and courage with the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Order.
Back at a desk in Stormont after the war he worked in the Department of Finance. In 1956 he was appointed as private secretary to Captain Terence O'Neill, then minister, beginning what was to be a very close nine-year working relationship. When O'Neill succeeded the long serving Lord Brookeborough as prime minister on the evening of March 25th, 1963, Jim Malley moved with him as one of the bright young men brought in to invigorate his administration. Indeed, with the new prime minister unable to get after hours access to Stormont, the cabinet appointing process was done from Jim Malley's nearby Dundonald home with no more back-up than the telephone directory, an unfortunate happenstance that resulted in a man who shared the name and initials of one of the designate ministers being offered a post.
O'Neill was a painfully shy man and a poor communicator, shortcomings which the gregarious, sociable and, often, acerbic Jim Malley came to more than compensate for. Oblivious to the supposed conventions of public service neutrality, he emerged as raconteur, leg-man, fixer, mouthpiece and front-man for his boss whenever the need arose, but especially in the corridors and bars at Stormont. Jim Malley's 15 minutes of fame came after the idea of meeting Lemass was conceived during one of the unstructured, endless, frequently rambling "bull" sessions between O'Neill and his unofficial kitchen cabinet.
Thus on the morning of January 3rd, 1965, Jim Malley boarded the train in Belfast at the start of a delicate mission to propose the encounter but the secrecy of his trip was nearly compromised. His sister was on the train, bound for Dublin to shop, as was the head of the railway, en route to a meeting. Jim Malley was on his way to see Dr Ken Whitaker, a northerner himself, born in Rostrevor, and a close confidant of the taoiseach, Sean Lemass. The two men knew each other well, having developed a relationship after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance during a meeting of the World Bank in Washington DC.
Over lunch, Jim Malley proposed the historic meeting, Whitaker concurred and sent the emissary to the National Gallery to give him time to see Lemass and commend it to him. By the time he got the evening train home, Jim Malley had been in to see Lemass to personally extend the invitation. But the next day, a nervous typist, overcome by the importance of the letter she was composing, wrongly addressed the acceptance to Stormont, Dublin. While the letter was being redirected - a post office sorter had written "try Belfast" on it - telephone contact had been made and the taoiseach's visit to Belfast was set for January 14th. Jim Malley met him at the border at Killeen and escorted him to Stormont.
He remained at O'Neill's side through the frustrations that followed and the dark days that fell with the onset of the Troubles. When the moderate, liberal, but hapless, O'Neill was finally driven from office early in 1969, Jim Malley accompanied him on his last official engagement, attending a boxing tournament at the appropriately cross-community Newsboys Club in Belfast. Soon afterwards he was appointed Registrar-General for Northern Ireland, which included responsibility for organising the periodic census of population and recording births, deaths and marriages. He finally retired from the public service in 1978.
He was pre-deceased by his wife, Sheila, in 1983 and is survived by his daughters, SheilaJane and Maeve.
James Young (Jim) Malley: born 1918; died, June 2000.