SDLP in government: January-May 1974: Among the most significant documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs for 1974 are those which bear the signature of Sean Donlon, who was then specialising in Northern policy and Anglo-Irish relations and was later to be Ambassador in Washington.
It was Donlon's duty to keep the Dublin government informed about opinion - especially nationalist opinion - within Northern Ireland. On January 9th, after a meeting in Belfast with two of the SDLP's ministers, Austin Currie and Paddy Devlin, he reported there was a general feeling in the SDLP that their party leader and deputy chief minister in the new executive, Gerry Fitt, was thought to be too close to Brian Faulkner.
Efforts by the SDLP to pull him back somewhat were not helped by the fact that Fitt and Faulkner had been given adjoining suites of rooms at Stormont; and according to Devlin, since Fitt had no executive responsibilities, he had plenty of time to develop a relationship with Faulkner which would work mainly to Faulkner's advantage.
Nor was this impression contradicted some months later when Devlin and Fitt formed the SDLP delegation which met those Irish ministers who had negotiated the Sunningdale agreement. Donlon noted that there seemed to be no agreed policy line between Fitt and Devlin. Indeed on a number of topics, "they held opposed opinions."
Donlon's note of the meeting recorded that "Fitt seemed to act as an advocate" for Faulkner, characterising him as a supporter of the immediate ratification of the full Sunningdale package, but as a leader unable to "carry his troops with him". Devlin, on the other hand, reckoned the apparent loss of support for Faulkner was to a large extent "a contrived 'wobble'". Roy Bradford was "selling the line" that Unionists "could not fail to get some concession from 'a wobble'."
By May 8th, Donlon was reporting on conversations he had had in Belfast with SDLP ministers following the executive meeting of the previous day. He reported that there was a general "willingness of the Faulkner Unionists, with the notable exception of Bradford, to move forward": indeed, "eventually even Faulkner himself tackled Bradford and seemed to question his commitment not only to Sunningdale but also to the pro-Assembly Unionist Party."
Donlon reported on "intensive talks" taking place in Derry, where there was some optimism "that a geographically limited ceasefire can be worked out though it is difficult to reconcile this with the information from other parts of Northern Ireland that Provo morale has never been higher and that they see 'victory' just around the corner."
Overall he believed the Provisional IRA's capacity for causing destruction, especially in Belfast, continued to exceed the capacity of the security forces to prevent it. And perhaps more significantly, their capacity to demolish sites such as the Smithfield Market - the emotional equivalent in Dublin terms of blowing up all the barrows and old traders of Moore Street - and yet not be rejected by the communities from which they were operating, still seemed to be enormous.
Reporting on a visit to the North on May 21st - one week after the UWC strike against the power-sharing executive had been declared - Donlon wrote that the conditions he had met were "completely chaotic". The UWC's control of the power stations had created a situation which was "very bad and even essential food supplies are scarce." What he found "most dramatic and obvious" was the UWC control of the situation. "Any part of 'normal' life which is continuing is doing so only by licence from the UWC."
One week later Faulkner had resigned and the executive had collapsed.
Donlon travelled throughout the North on the following weekend to assess the mood of the SDLP, which he found to be one of "considerable depression, frustration and despair". All nineteen SDLP members of the Northern Ireland assembly had gathered for a day-long post-mortem in Dungannon.
Having spoken to leaders and backbenchers there, Donlon drove Hume back to Derry "and spent many hours in session with him and his influential 'kitchen cabinet'". He stayed the night at Hume's house and returned to Dublin via Armagh and Newry, where he met with politically non-involved nationalists "whom I found in the past to be reliable guides to local feelings and outlook."
All 19 members of the assembly party, "without exception", reported a "massive swing away from support of their party to support of both wings of the IRA." Moreover, this tendency was "confirmed by sources outside the party". From many areas - he instanced Newry, west Belfast and parts of Tyrone - the reports indicated that support "was more likely to drift towards the Official rather than the Provo IRA." This he believed was because the Officials were "not as closely identified with the atrocities and violence of recent years and were in general more active politically than militarily."
Donlon reported that the traditional nationalist backbenchers believed that a call for a British withdrawal would allow the party to "survive largely intact since the overwhelming majority of their supporters would not in the long run wish to identify themselves completely with a movement of violence."
The swing away from the SDLP was acknowledged to be "more dramatic" in some areas than others. Paddy Devlin and Gerry Fitt said they now had "no support" in Belfast.
Many of the leaders, particularly Hume and Currie, seemed to feel the SDLP was over as a political force. They had pinned their colours firmly on power-sharing within Northern Ireland and partnership between North and South and neither of these was now possible. At different stages over the weekend, Hume made it clear he believed any hope of Irish unity was gone forever, that the prospects for a minimal Irish dimension to the Northern Ireland solution in the next 200 years were virtually non-existent and that there was no brand of unionism present or on the horizon that would be prepared to share power with the SDLP.
Donlon found the SDLP traumatised by what they manifestly considered to be a British failure to face down an anti-democratic strike whose goal was to undo what had been solemnly agreed at Sunningdale by the British and Irish governments and by the widest spectrum of opinion ever assembled in Northern Irish politics. They themselves were the first nationalist ministers ever to sit in a Northern cabinet.
Although power-sharing and an Irish dimension remained their goals, "not one person at the Dungannon meeting gave the renewed efforts to power-share any prospect of success." The Dublin government was also informed of how the SDLP leadership now read the situation.
Hume argued very strongly against making any noises to indicate support for the British withdrawal lobby. This, he said, would, in the eyes of the minority community, make the SDLP indistinguishable from the IRA and while he accepted what he called "the inevitability of British withdrawal", he thought the minority community would survive this situation best if withdrawal were seen to be the result of extreme loyalist intransigence rather than of an IRA campaign.
The long-term prospect following withdrawal "was felt by many to be some agreement on re-partitioning - and this would come only after it had been forced on everyone concerned by a bitter and bloody conflict - since the only alternative was majority rule which the minority was simply not prepared to accept."
Donlon noted that it was with "depressing frequency" over the long weekend that the various discussions invariably returned to "the scenario of civil war and re-partition". He wished to record it "without assessing its validity because regardless of whether or not it is the only or most likely development, it is the one which dominates the thinking of those to whom I spoke."