Plans to protect Northern Catholics in 1974 revealed

The Government co-operated with the Catholic Church in 1974 in preparing a doomsday plan to protect Catholics in Northern Ireland from loyalist attacks.

The plan was devised in the event of the British government being "unable or unwilling" to safeguard Northern nationalists, according to "secret" Department of Foreign Affairs papers published today.

The current edition of Magill magazine has obtained the confidential Department of Foreign Affairs papers detailing the plan, its editor Eamon Delaney said yesterday.

It was devised in the wake of the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike of May 1974, which forced the collapse of the Sunningdale power-sharing government, the magazine reported.

Mr Delaney said the papers were secret and had not been released previously under the 30-year rule freeing up State papers. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not comment until it saw the full report in the magazine.

The 1974 plan detailed what should be done in the event of another situation similar to the UWC strike in which, through "discriminatory measures", Catholics were denied essential food supplies or faced pogroms by loyalists, or in the event of a "full-scale civil war".

Aside from a humanitarian motivation, the church devised the rescue package because it wanted to avoid the IRA "assuming the leading role in such activity and taking the credit for so doing".

Many Catholic priests were deputed to organise parishioners into safe areas and to stockpile food and supplies to allow people to sustain themselves against any loyalist or other threat.

Government officials suggested moving Catholics to strengthen already predominant Catholic areas and make them easier to hold. In some cases, this involved "pushing Protestants out of areas".

Magill reported: "The plan recommended some dramatic proposals such as that the only escape for the people in the Ligoniel area, bounded by the loyalist Ballysillan and Glencairn areas, 'would be to cross via the mountainside into the west Belfast area'. Meanwhile, Catholics in the Short Strand and the Markets areas were to move towards the city centre and on into west Belfast. However, in areas such as Willowfield and Castlereagh, which were 90 per cent Protestant, there would 'simply be no hope for the Catholics in a doomsday unless they successfully fled'."

Plans were also laid out for Derry and the predominantly Protestant towns of Carrickfergus and Larne, where it was envisaged Catholics might be compelled to "literally retire to the beaches" to await rescue by boat.

In one extract, a Northern Ireland priest from the Down and Connor relief advisory service warns that in a situation of civil strife, he would expect that "the Catholics on the Finaghy [ south Belfast] side of the M1 and the relief centre would be attacked and either killed or forced to flee".

He also expected that "Twinbrook . . . [ would] link up with Lenadoon, Andersonstown and Ladybrook and push the Protestants in Suffolk and Dunmurry out so as to obtain control of all the area west of the MI".