ANALYSIS:If 1979 brought new faces to discussions on the North, Warrenpoint and the murder of Lord Mountbatten showed old problems remained, writes JOHN BOWMAN
FOR SOME commentators in the 1970s the best hope of a breakthrough on Northern Ireland was quadripartite talks. It was such discussions between the British and Irish governments and the leaders of unionism and nationalism which had led to the power-sharing executive in 1974. If similar four-way talks could have been convened at the start of 1979 the personnel around the table would have been James Callaghan (prime minister), Roy Mason (Northern secretary), Harry West (UUP), Gerry Fitt (SDLP), Jack Lynch (taoiseach) and Michael O’Kennedy (minister for foreign affairs); by the end of that year all of these politicians had lost their leadership positions to be replaced, respectively, by Margaret Thatcher, Humphrey Atkins, James Molyneaux, John Hume, Charles Haughey and Brian Lenihan.
But if 1979 was a year of change among these leaders, there was little enough change in policy and no change in the conundrum facing all of the players.
Initially the Irish government must have been pleased enough to see the end of the Callaghan Labour government’s policy of containment on the issue. In May, shortly after Thatcher’s election victory and her appointment of Humphrey Atkins to the post of Northern Ireland secretary, the Irish ambassador in London, Eamonn Kennedy, reported on “a friendly low-key exploratory” conversation with Atkins whom he found to be “almost the direct opposite” of his predecessor, Roy Mason.
Atkins came across “as a quiet receptive negotiator with a finely-tuned political antenna and a feeling for political sensibilities which Mason lacked. He told me that he shunned the limelight and preferred quiet diplomacy”. Kennedy welcomed the acceptance by the incoming Thatcher administration that an NI solution would need to be based on a partnership approach and that they had also acknowledged “the interest of the government of the Republic in achieving this”. And he quoted with approval Atkins’s response: “Of course. Isn’t it obvious?” He added that one of Atkins’s “most encouraging features is his apparent willingness to listen and learn. After David Owen and Roy Mason it’s a good beginning.”
And Jack Lynch could consider that he had enjoyed a good start after an early courtesy call on Margaret Thatcher: “warm and cordial” was the verdict of note-taker and government secretary, Dermot Nally. Both leaders agreed on the desirability of an autumn summit when Thatcher and Atkins would have had an opportunity to further brief themselves on Anglo-Irish relations and the Northern Ireland problem.
They were not then to know the circumstances in which that summit would take place. It was hastily brought forward because of the events of August 27th when the Provisional IRA murdered Lord Mountbatten – in Sligo on his annual holiday – and on the same day killed 18 soldiers when they blew up an army bus in Warrenpoint, Co Down.
Lynch had been slow to return from his Portuguese holiday and had been the victim of a scurrilous propaganda campaign in the British tabloids that his government was weak on security. This was also believed by Thatcher whose admission to Lynch the previous May that she needed to read more on Northern Ireland did not inhibit her strident infallibility on the question.
Dublin had been briefed by Eamonn Kennedy about what to expect. He emphasised that since the events of August 27th, “it would be difficult to exaggerate the anti-Irish bitterness of the popular mood here expressed in the lower grade press”. There had been “nothing quite like it for many years”. The Irish government was accused of being “soft on security, unresponsive to the impact of the tragedy, harbouring the IRA and trying to force the North into an Irish Republic”.
Kennedy gave Thatcher credit because she had not “indulged in open criticism”. But he had the distinct impression that the Northern Ireland Office and Atkins had been “shunted to one side” and that Thatcher had taken over the direction of policy “in her firm no-nonsense style”. At the initial one-to-one meeting with Lynch she would want to talk security and would be “quite cold and tough in her present mood”.
To compound Lynch’s discomfiture he was coming straight to the summit from Lord Mountbatten’s funeral service at Westminster Abbey. John Hume, for one, was uncomfortable that such an important summit was happening in such a context.
The Department of Foreign Affairs files just released – with Washington ambassador Seán Donlon as the informant – reports the impression of the plain-speaking mayor of Chicago, Jane Byrne, who also attended the Mountbatten funeral. She commented on “the poor treatment” in Westminster Abbey which the Irish delegation “seemed prepared to accept”; and added that Lynch “seemed to feel ashamed of his Irishness and did not, for example, mingle very much with the other delegations. His demeanour suggested that he would prefer not to have been there at all and she noted that he seemed to disappear as soon as the service was over.” Lynch was in fact going directly to Downing Street for a meeting with Thatcher which some elements of the British media had likened to a call to the headmaster’s study.
From Nally’s note of the meeting, Thatcher began by arguing that the events of August 27th had “afforded both an opportunity and a mandate” for both governments to improve joint security. Lynch said that Irish people – including the Irish in Britain – “had a deep sense of shame” for what had happened to Mountbatten on their territory. He went on to complain about how the British tabloids had stirred up anti-Irish feelings, their line being “both tragic and untrue”.
He acknowledged that Thatcher “had calmed things down but he would have greatly appreciated some public indication of appreciation of the fact that the Irish government were doing everything possible to eliminate terrorism”. Such a plaudit was improbable because Thatcher’s private view – even before the events of August 27th – was that Dublin was soft on security.
Lynch now sought to convince her that Irish legislation against terrorism was the strongest in Europe; he instanced increased investment in the South’s security forces and equipment and claimed that co-operation with the RUC was considered “excellent” by both sides. Lynch had been strongly advised by Eamonn Kennedy to expect a double standard on security from the British.
Lynch should express resentment at “the fact that if there is a security lapse in Britain it is put down to human error but if in Ireland it is regarded as a form of deliberate negligence or worse”. He instanced British security’s failure to prevent Airey Neave’s murder in the precincts of the House of Commons, and the Provisional IRA being filmed parading in uniform in Belfast in August. Yet when the Mountbatten tragedy occurs off the Irish coast “the nation is pilloried and the government attacked – even though the security offered was shrugged off by Lord Mountbatten”.
In Downing Street, Lynch complained to Thatcher that despite all Irish efforts on security, certain proposals “purporting to emanate from the British government” had won wide media attention. These included British demands for hot pursuit, army to army contact, an RUC presence at Southern interrogations of suspects and joint British-Irish army patrols of key Border areas. Thatcher now asked for all of these and added a request that British helicopters should be permitted to fly some 10 to 15 kilometres into the South “without having to obtain specific permission”. Thatcher insisted that whatever they decided they should “say nothing in public. Security specifics should not be discussed.”
As for a political solution, Thatcher said that “of course we are straining for it”, but recent events “had put off its possibility”. Lynch disagreed: it was essential “to get at the cause as well as trying to deal with the effects”. But Thatcher’s response was that it would “help enormously” if the Republic stopped talking about Irish unity.
The two leaders had taken longer than intended resulting in the plenary session which followed starting late. For this session Lynch was not only joined by minister for foreign affairs Michael O’Kennedy but also by the tánaiste, George Colley. Thatcher was accompanied by her foreign secretary Lord Carrington as well as Humphrey Atkins.
This session lasted less than two hours and from the Irish note of the proceedings added little that was new to the Thatcher-Lynch exchanges already summarised. Nor is there any hint in the Irish archives of the spat – which John Bew reports from the British account – between Colley and Carrington over the historic nationalist complaint of simple majority rule at Stormont. Colley may well have been keen to improve Thatcher’s “somewhat superficial” understanding of Northern Ireland. Tip O’Neill had confided this verdict to Irish diplomats following an April meeting with Thatcher when she had clearly alarmed him by arguing “from the desirability of majority rule in Rhodesia to simple majority in Northern Ireland”.
This summit concluded with a British listing of desired improvements in security, some of which were acceded to in the weeks which followed. It was the necessity for secrecy and the change in overflight permissions which would prove so treacherous for Lynch. There were rumours, leaks and scoops concerning helicopter overflights. The issue was to dog Lynch’s American tour in November and cause such unrest in the parliamentary party – along with Lynch’s failure to win two byelections in Cork – that he was obliged to bring forward his planned retirement by some months and failed to secure the leadership for his preferred successor George Colley.
The trauma felt by the Lynch faction at this rebuff and at Charles Haughey’s victory has left few enough traces in the State papers. But the diplomats who had worked assiduously on Northern policy cannot but have been apprehensive at Haughey’s accession to power.
Tomorrow
HAUGHEY AND THE NORTH:Charles Haughey's Northern policy and his relationship with the civil servants who had been most influential in the 1970s in shaping Dublin's response to the North