In 1969, the chief executive of The Irish Times, Major Thomas McDowell, was prepared to be used as "a link" between the Irish and British governments and to encourage contacts between prominent people in the Republic and in the North so that a solution might be found to resolve the gathering political crisis.
In a confidential letter from W.K.K. White, an official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, written in November 1969, he described Major McDowell's "feelings of duty and anxiety that many who are emotionally both British and Irish must now be experiencing".
The meeting took place over lunch on October 30th and White told the ambassador that Major McDowell wanted to help foster Anglo-Irish and North-South relations. He was "willing to be used as a link", White said. "McDowell himself said he had hitherto, for obvious newspaper reasons, tried to keep free of those constraints that follow if a newspaperman forms an honourable alliance with the official world, but the present situation was so serious and so different he thought he ought to offer his services."
Major McDowell's qualifications, he pointed out, "are his contacts in both capitals and his acceptability, in Whitehall terms, through his service in the Judge Advocate General's department". White advised the ambassador that it would be "useful" to keep in contact with Major McDowell, "to keep him briefed in general terms, and to encourage him to forward the moderates' cause in his paper".
The two men had lunch again on December 12th and White again wrote to the ambassador to inform him of their conversation. On December 29th, White wrote that Major McDowell was "still anxious to help, though still without any precise ideas". However, White was interested in Major McDowell's proposal that The Irish Times might sponsor a gathering of prominent people North and South to bring the two sides together. Major McDowell told White that The Irish Times would be happy to contribute its name, finance and administrative assistance, but that the paper would be prepared to remain in the background, if London thought it better.
White noted that Major McDowell seemed at first sight to be well placed "to get things moving if both sides prove either reluctant to issue an invitation or too scared of their extremist fringes to accept an invitation form the other government".