THE PAST is a foreign country, wrote L P Hartley in the opening lines of his novel The Go Betweenpublished in 1953, "they do things differently there." Up to a point: what is to be learned about the past from the release of the 1979 State Papers in Dublin, Belfast and London suggests that in all three centres, and their areas of influence, transition was the order of the day.
In the Republic, the economy had been particularly badly battered by two oil-price shocks in the decade just ending. Fianna Fáil under Jack Lynch had won a historic victory just two years earlier but it had been a hollow one, as Lynch had feared. As the year ended Lynch tired and his republican wing displaced him in favour of Charles Haughey. His rhetoric would not advance their cause, nor ultimately that of the nation, though he would have his successes in time.
In 1979 Britain faced its own difficulties under the leadership of James Callaghan, whose Labour administration appeared to have lost the will to govern. Margaret Thatcher led the Conservatives to a stunning victory. A conviction politician, she had good reason to dislike the Irish. Months before her May victory, the INLA had killed her close ally Airey Neave within the Westminster parliament purlieu. She lost no time in making her views known to colleagues about Ireland, the Irish government and how she might punish the Irish community in Britain, as we learn in some detail from the London archives examined by historian John Bew in today’s editions. Eventually her advisers and her own political nous made her stay her hand and it was she who signed the Anglo Irish agreement in 1985, giving the Republic a say in the governance of the North, something her Labour predecessors who professed to be better disposed to the Irish viewpoint, had failed to do.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland was in a sad state. A well-meant Labour plan to create jobs in deprived Catholic areas while cracking down on security was not working. The incoming Conservative administration was likely to focus even more on security measures to contain the situation, and that was before the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint atrocities. The ferment in the prisons which grew from the blanket protest to the dirty protest and eventually to the hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 in which 11 men died was little understood on either side of the Border. It puzzles many on this island to this day. And moderate unionism, never the strongest of political tendencies, was in retreat.
However by 1979 many of the main actors were in place, albeit moving slowly. Ian Paisley appeared as a destructive and polarising force, much as many in Dublin saw Thatcher at that time. John Hume assumed leadership of Northern constitutional nationalism, Edward Kennedy was influencing US policy on Ireland in the Senate, Haughey would show himself more responsible in power than in opposition. Constitutional politics had a long way to go but would eventually win through. The seeds of that victory were beginning to show in 1979. Perhaps Hartley was right – 1979 was a “go between” year.