Craigavon Ponders

Interesting footnote to our recent history

Interesting footnote to our recent history. In 1950, just a half-century ago, this newspaper printed a series of articles by a man who had been a civil servant in Dublin and then moved North in 1922 as so many did. The articles were then published as a pamphlet: "Northern Ireland: Success or Failure?" The writer was G.C. Duggan, by then C.B., O.B.E., LLD, formerly Principal Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Northern Ireland and Comptroller and Auditor-General (N.I.). As recollected by the Dubliner Duggan, the atmosphere was of generosity and warmth in so many cases across the floor of the house. Joe Devlin, Nationalist MP who could have a whiplash tongue on occasions could also bring down the temperature of the House when it ran too high, as when he once said "The difference between the Right Honourable Gentlemen on the Government Bench and myself is that I was a revolutionary when I was young and they were revolutionaries when they were middle-aged." Cahir Healy was much quoted.

Likewise when Pollock, the first Minister of Finance returned after illness, Devlin welcomed him back saying "We have a warm affection for him". The most significant paragraphs, whose most highlighted at the time, however, came in the form of what Duggan called "a personal postscript which I write as accurately as I can recollect the circumstances and the words after the lapse of time. Why I should have been admitted into that sanctuary that holds a man's inner thoughts which often die unspoken I cannot say, for my relations with him (Craigavon) were just those (and no more) which are customary between a senior civil servant and a Minister whose mutual acquaintance has been of long standing."

In 1937 he relates, "when the agreement between the British and Free State Governments was about to be published and was creating much perturbation in the Northern Ireland Cabinet, Craigavon asked me to come across and talk informally on a number of points. He was, as usual, in his sitting room, which faced south to the Castlereagh hills. When we had finished our talk, which in accordance with his habitual practice, was carried on as he paced the room, he stopped: `Duggan' he said "you know that in this island we cannot live always separated from one another. We are too small to be apart or for the border to be there for all time. The change will not be in my time, but it will come". I felt, wrote Duggan, "that the words were not lightly spoken and had in them something prophetic".