ANGLO-IRISH RELATIONS:IN AUGUST 1981, the Irish ambassador to Britain, Eamon Kennedy, was on holidays in France when he learned that incoming taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was convening a confidential summit of senior policy-makers at Iveagh House. This was to review in a "frank and uninhibited manner" all policy options on Northern Ireland.
Participants were informed that “a fundamental review” appeared desirable. This, however, did not mean that current policies were “necessarily incorrect”: merely that, “if pursued to the next stage”, they might well prove irreversible. A turning point might well be imminent which would largely be the result of the “particular conjuncture” of two such personalities as Haughey and Thatcher having been in power the previous year.
The introductory agenda allowed that the outcome of the review might well be that the present course should be continued “with the kind of objective which seems to be implicit in it”, or indeed “with a somewhat different objective”. The alternative was to change course and seek “an optimal choice rationally decided upon now between a range of possibilities”.
Kennedy was forthright in his advice concerning these choices. He did “not quite agree” with the suggestion that the current policy had arisen mainly from the “particular conjuncture” in power of Haughey and Thatcher. He reckoned it “much more than that”.
He wrote that the London embassy had noticed “an early and growing impatience” with the Ulster Unionist position following Thatcher’s coming to power. This was because the initiative of her Northern Ireland secretary Humphrey Atkins – although it had ruled out power-sharing and an Irish dimension – had still been rejected by the Ulster Unionist leader James Molyneux.
Kennedy believed that this was the moment when Thatcher realised that the British “were actually subsidising unionist intransigence”. And he quoted Ken Stowe, secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, as having confided to him that the unionists were akin to the Bourbons: “forgetting nothing but also learning nothing”.
His assessment was that the Haughey-Thatcher summit of the previous December had been nothing less than “an historic turning point” and that this had been underlined by the impressive entourage of senior ministers who had accompanied Thatcher to Dublin. This was intended as a clear message to the unionists that London was now seeking progress on Northern Ireland in the wider framework of Anglo-Irish relations.
Kennedy insisted that Charles Haughey deserved credit for this shift: the ambassador believed that at their first meeting in May 1980, Haughey had “developed in her an interest in a new, more radical approach, to the pursuit of peace in NI”.
Given this analysis, Kennedy supported continuity of policy but recommended the avoidance of “excessive secrecy” which would only allow Ian Paisley “to stir up hostility”. Kennedy added that Paisley’s sense of alarm was “in a way a striking proof that new and radical NI policies” were being developed. During all the years when the London and Dublin governments moved apart, the unionists had been “strengthened and encouraged”. But now they found London and Dublin “working together in confidence”.
Kennedy also briefed his fellow policy-reviewers concerning Thatcher’s standing at Westminster. Some few weeks before, he had alerted Iveagh House that her government was “dangerously off-course and in deep trouble”: opponents within her cabinet might not yet be in “open rebellion” against “the Blessed Margaret” but one could “hear them whispering”.
But he also advised that the Conservatives would be “afraid to ditch her” before the next election which she would lose – he could not have foreseen how she would benefit from the Falklands factor which would come the following year. He believed her most likely successors would be Francis Pym or Jim Prior, or “even possibly” Peter Carrington, all of whom he rated as “enlightened, flexible leaders who are friendly to us”.
Meanwhile, Thatcher would remain in power and was likely “to pursue her unbending policy” on the “appalling problem” presented by the H-block issue. He queried whether criticism of her handling of that issue from Dublin was of much value: specifically he wondered whether “direct attacks” on Thatcher as recently made by the Labour leader and tánaiste Michael O’Leary were not counter-productive.
In the general entente which he recognised as emerging in Anglo-Irish relations, the ambassador believed that “our participation in common defence” would “have to play a role in any viable solution to the NI problem”. This would be important to any Conservative government or any in which the new SDP-Liberal alliance was involved.
In terms of Dublin’s future strategy he advised patience. Because of the H-block issue and the fact that FitzGerald’s government faced “the problem of survival”, he thought it “better to postpone consideration of issues of condominium or confederation until we can see clearer ahead”.
He finally stated that despite his best endeavours he had failed to “make meaningful contact” with unionist MPs in London. Only Enoch Powell came to Irish embassy receptions and Harold McCusker “at least talks to me”.
He reckoned that the hostility of Unionist and DUP MPs towards him was “in marked contrast to the excellent relations” he enjoyed with “even the most right-wing members of the Conservative party.
In a way that symbolises what is happening in Anglo-Irish relations.”
