THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:WHEN RICHARD Nixon visited Ireland in October 1970, it's a safe bet that his aim was to make a name for himself as an international statesman and diplomat. Thing weren't going well for the US on the world stage; the war in Vietnam was dragging on; ongoing peace talks in Paris had long since run out of steam. Surely a jaunt to his Irish roots, near Timahoe in Co Kildare, would result in cheering peasantry and smiling faces? After all, it had worked well for John F Kennedy just seven years earlier: and the Irish always put on a good show for visiting dignitaries.
As our photograph of the Nixon cavalcade shows, there were people in Ireland who were happy to shake the US president’s hand. The gesture of the garda in the car nearest the photographer, however, could be interpreted as saying a lot about the wider verdict on the visit.
The visit was opposed not just by those who disagreed with the war in Vietnam, but by all kinds of groups, from the Irish Third World Group to the Irish Campaign for Greek Democracy, which deplored the visit “in the light of the resumption of US arms shipments to the Greek military junta”.
And despite the folksy welcome speech from then taoiseach Jack Lynch, it was clear to most commentators that it was US money for capital development projects that Ireland really wanted to attract. The front-page story in this newspaper on the day Nixon arrived in Ireland spoke of rising unemployment due to a drop in emigration and fewer jobs in the farming sector.
Two years later, there would be more smiling and waving as Nixon made his historic visit to China.
But history had a trick up its sleeve; 1972 was also the year of the Watergate scandal, and by the summer of 1974 the man known to posterity as Tricky Dicky would be forced into an ignominious resignation. So that garda, whoever he was, was spot on with his apparent thumb’s down.
Published on October 5th 1970 Photographer: Jimmy McCormack irishtimes.com/ archive
