Northern nationalists had moved from being “anti-unionist” in the 1960s to being “anti-British” by the early 1980s, Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was warned by a leading Irish civil servant.
The warning came in a December 1983 letter from the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sean Donlon after he had been asked by Fitzgerald for views on the state of Anglo-Irish relations in the wake of the first Anglo-Irish summit for two years.
Warning that the situation in Northern Ireland was deteriorating, Donlon said “given Thatcher’s own views” that extra British security forces action on the ground would increase “nationalist alienation, possibly suddenly and dramatically”.
“A significant development in NI nationalism over the past 10 years, or so has been the emergence of a stronger anti-British mood that had existed for some time,” Donlon told FitzGerald.
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“The younger generation of nationalists had no first-hand experience of the unionist-organised discrimination in housing, votes and economic opportunity,” he went on in the letter, written on December 12th 1983.
“They do, however, have considerable experience of what they see as the unacceptable face of British, or British-controlled security presence and policy. They also feel remote from direct British rule, especially (the Northern Ireland Office).
“They resent the fact that just as it was becoming possible for them to get serious access to, for example, NI local authorities, civil service and quangos, these institutions become relatively powerless.
“The anti-unionism of the late Sixties has given way to a marked anti-Britishness in the Eighties. If things begin to get radically worse now there is no escape valve as there was in the early Seventies when it was possible to appeal over the heads of the unionists.”
The core of the Irish Government’s policy towards Northern Ireland for years had been to create a political framework “not necessarily within Northern Ireland” to which both communities there could give their consent.
Since there was no possibility of a devolved powersharing government in Stormont, Dublin had concentrated on winning “a decisive role” for Dublin in the running of Northern Ireland, he told FitzGerald.
Even though Thatcher’s attitude to joint authority was negative, he suggested that Dublin had no choice but to “stick with it as our minimum demand unless and until powersharing become possible”, or until the British come up with an idea that gets support.
He said he saw benefits in the Fine Gael/Labour government combining with Fianna Fáil and the SDLP to present “a unified nationalist position” to London, to other governments and to public opinion.
In addition, Dublin should highlight “at home and abroad” British failures, especially shoot-to-kill actions against Republican paramilitaries and local government discrimination that “illustrate most starkly the inadequacy of the unilateral British approach”.
[ MI5 has ‘blind spot’ over Northern Ireland Troubles, PSNI chief saysOpens in new window ]
