Ireland Since 1939

by Henry Patterson

  Let us look for a moment at the situation through ‘Ulster’ eyes, and we will see people enjoying the benefits of Britain's progressive National Health scheme, without the indignity of a means test. It does not strengthen their desire to unite with the South if by doing so these things would be taken from them because they conflicted with some ‘Christian principle’.71

  The Contradictions of Anti-partitionism

  Fianna Fáil's failure to make progress on ending partition had been high on the agenda of those who formed Clann na Poblachta. Seán MacBride was convinced that the strategic needs of the US and Britain in the struggle with the USSR would make both powers more amenable to Irish demands. At the same time he was also aware of the economic, social and cultural divisions on the island that made the achievement of unity problematic – something that could not be brought about simply by producing a change of policy in London. During the general election campaign, while supporting the idea of opening up the Irish parliament to elected representatives from Northern Ireland, he also admitted that until social and economic standards in the South were at least as good as those in Northern Ireland, it would be impossible to expect even nationalists in the North to be interested in unity.72 In government he supported the development of closer economic and cultural relations with the North, and, although his more grandiose scheme for a customs union along the lines of the proposed Benelux scheme came to nothing, a number of limited but important forms of cooperation with Stormont were agreed: a buyout of the bankrupt Great Northern Railway, drainage of Lough Erne and a joint fisheries commission for Lough Foyle. However, the potentialities for improving North–South relations inherent in such forms of functional cooperation were undermined by the decisions to declare a republic and to reject an invitation to join NATO.

  Costello's coalition displayed a depressing continuity with de Valera's penchant for combining rhetorical anti-partitionism with a realpolitik that prioritized electoral competition in the South. Fine Gael had traditionally been the party that favoured close cooperation with Britain and the Commonwealth; indeed, during the war Mulcahy had made a strongly pro-Commonwealth speech advocating that Eire resume active membership when the hostilities were over.73 During the election campaign Fine Gael was divided on the question of continuing Commonwealth links, for, while Mulcahy defended the legislative basis for Commonwealth membership, the External Relations Act, other prominent members supported its repeal. The External Relations Act of 1936 was one of two pieces of legislation rushed through the Dáil in response to the abdication of King Edward VIII. The Constitution Amendment Act had abolished the residual functions of the British monarch in the internal affairs of the Irish Free State but the External Relations Act had confirmed a continuing role for the King in external affairs: as long as the Free State remained a part of the Commonwealth, the King, as head of that association, had a role in diplomatic and consular appointments and international agreements. Although a purely symbolic role, it sat uneasily with the fact that under de Valera's constitution of 1937 Ireland had its own head of state. Britain's representative in Dublin, John Maffey (now Lord Rugby), was convinced that de Valera wanted to maintain the Act as a bridge to the North, but feared that the emergence of Clann na Poblachta might force him to propose its repeal in order to cover Fianna Fáil's flank from more extreme nationalist attacks.74 In fact the repeal of the Act had not featured as a major issue during the campaign, and MacBride publicly accepted that the new government could not claim a mandate for repeal. That Costello would announce a decision to get rid of the Act within six months of the formation of his government said more about inter-party competition in the Free State than it did about his government's possession of a coherent set of policies on Anglo-Irish relations and Northern Ireland.

  Costello took the initiative on the issue, and his main motivation seems to have been to pre-empt a Dáil private member's motion to repeal the Act from Peadar Cowan, a fractious former member of Clann na Poblachta who had been expelled from the party in June 1948 for opposing acceptance of Marshall Aid. Costello also feared a Fianna Fáil assault on the coalition's republican and anti-partitionist credentials as de Valera, on losing office, embarked on a tour of America, Australia and Britain to denounce the ‘artificial division’ of his country. More positively, there was the possibility that by taking the initiative in removing the last symbolic links with the Crown and the Commonwealth, Fine Gael would, once and for all, make it impossible for Fianna Fail to question its ‘national’ credentials and break out of the downward spiral of election performances that had led Rugby to refer to the possible ‘elimination of Fine Gale [sic]’.75 Yet the relatively narrow range of considerations that led the Taoiseach unexpectedly to announce the end of the Act on a visit to Canada in September 1948 was evident not just from the annoyed surprise of his colleagues, who had not formally approved the decision, but from the government's outrage at what might have been foreseen as the likely British response – the Ireland Act of 1949, which consolidated Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom. The implications of the decision to leave the Commonwealth for the government's strongly pronounced policy on ending partition does not appear to have been seriously considered by either Costello or MacBride.

  The only original thinking on partition in the government came from the Minister for Finance. Patrick McGilligan saw in the tensions of the Cold War a way in which the new republic could join NATO and also approach the Commonwealth about a mutual defence treaty. This, he argued, would help shift attitudes in the North and make a ‘healthy reunion’ a possibility. But, as Troy Davis has pointed out, the Finance Minister's radical memorandum, prepared for his Fine Gael cabinet colleagues, was at fundamental variance with Costello and MacBride's policy of making Irish defence cooperation with the Western powers contingent on unification.76

  McGilligan's blueprint, which fully justified Patrick Lynch's description of his having the ‘finest and most original mind’,77 could have done much to bridge the ideological divide on the island through a shared stake in the defence of ‘Western civilization’. His colleagues' lack of interest reflected the fear of a break with MacBride and a premature end to a coalition that was restoring Fine Gael's credibility as a party of government. The result was a foreign policy that only served to convince those European and American politicians that paid any notice to MacBride's frequent foreign trips of Ireland's irredeemable parochialism.

  MacBride was encouraged in his misreading of American attitudes to the strategic significance of Ireland's participation in the proposed NATO alliance by his friendship with George Garrett, who had been appointed American Minister Plenipotentiary to Ireland in 1947.78 Unlike his predecessor, David Gray, who had become a fervent supporter of Ulster unionism and was cordially detested by de Valera, Garrett, ‘a typical Hibernophile Irish American’,79 pushed for a radical change in US policy on the Ulster question. Arguing that a united Ireland would contribute strategically to Western defence measures, he suggested that Washington should persuade London to extend its ‘enlightened policy’ in India and other parts of the empire to Northern Ireland. The response of officials in the State Department to Garrett's proposals was critical and dismissive. The State Department's Director of European Affairs, John Hickerson, pointed out that the claim that a majority of Irishmen on both sides of the border wanted unity simply ignored the desires of a majority in Northern Ireland. He also disputed, on the basis of Ireland's wartime neutrality, Garrett's strategic argument:

  If the Dublin Government were to gain control of Northern Ireland, facilities in that area might be denied us in the future, just as they have been denied… in the past. With the United Kingdom in control of Northern Ireland we have… every reason to count on the use of its bases… I am sure you will agree that this is a powerful argument for this Government's favouring the continued control of Northern Ireland by the United Kingdom.80

  Despite this analysis, delivered in May 1948, which continued to be the basis of
American policy throughout MacBride's tenure at External Affairs, he maintained what Seán MacEntee termed the ‘sore thumb’ approach to Ireland's foreign policy. While declaring that Ireland was in solidarity with the West in its struggle to contain communism, MacBride then added that the Irish desire to play a useful role on the international stage was nullified by the ‘injustice’ of the ‘artificial division’ of the country. When, in January 1949, the US government asked what the Irish reaction to an invitation to become a member of NATO would be, MacBride's rejection of membership justified itself in terms of the danger of a nationalist uprising against his government for ‘selling out’ the North. This approach caused severe disquiet not simply in Fine Gael but even in Fianna Fail, where the appeal of an international crusade against ‘atheistic materialism’ to some extent counteracted the more solipsistic forms of anti-partitionism. It was on this issue, where the Church's virulent anti-communism made it sympathize with the NATO project, that MacBride failed to display his usual eagerness to please Archbishop McQuaid.

  The suspicion remained that, for all the emphasis MacBride and Costello placed on the partition issue, the real focus of their attention was not the ‘occupied six counties’ but the brooding presence of de Valera. Surely, as some critics at the time pointed out, echoing McGilligan's internal memorandum for Fine Gael, NATO membership with the UK would have increased the pressure on the Stormont administration to at least cooperate more closely with Dublin. Instead, as R.P. Mortished, a former Labour Party politician and now Chairman of the Labour Court, put it, the government's attitude ‘on the problem of the defence of Christian Civilisation against Soviet Communism was completely negative and futilely isolationist’.81 While it is possible that MacBride's passionate nationalism blinded him to these considerations, it seems more likely that his major motivation was the urge to cede no ground that de Valera could have used electorally. It was also the case that he faced an intransigent republican rump in his own party that could not stomach collaboration with Britain even if it was aimed at Stalin.

  As part of his determination that Fianna Fáil would not exploit the freedom of opposition to embarrass the government on its northern policy, MacBride had proposed an all-party committee on partition. This became a reality during the heated exchanges between Belfast and Dublin provoked by the repeal of the External Relations Act. Responding to Brooke's calling of a Stormont election to register loyalist unity in the face of this challenge, Costello invited the leaders of all parties in the Dáil to a meeting in Dublin's Mansion House to consider ways of helping anti-partition candidates in the northern elections. The meeting's main result, a collection to be held outside Catholic churches throughout the South on 30 January 1949, was hailed by MacBride as ‘the first real sign of unity in the national sense since 1921’.82 Unionists were predictably delighted with this manifestation of southern Catholic-nationalist intent to ‘interfere’ and used it to great effect in wiping out the NILP.

  The effect of official anti-partitionism in solidifying unionist resistance to change might have been of lesser import if there had been any indication that the campaign was having an impact in London, which was, after all, supposedly the real source of the division of the island. Instead Costello and MacBride were faced with the Ireland Act and in response cranked up the ideological assault on the North. The Mansion House Committee was kept in existence to produce a stream of anti-partitionist propaganda under the direction of Frank Gallagher, who had been for many years de Valera's principal assistant in press and propaganda affairs. MacBride's motivation for transferring responsibility for anti-partition propaganda from his ministry to an all-party committee heavily influenced by a Fianna Faill traditionalist may have stemmed from his strong suspicion of the allegedly pro-British sympathies of some officials in Iveagh House. Frederick Boland, who was Secretary of the Department of External Affairs when MacBride was appointed, later claimed that his minister's first words to him were a request for a list of all the British agents working in the department.83 Boland, a pragmatic nationalist, found working for MacBride an uncongenial experience and moved to the position of Irish Ambassador in London in 1950. His subsequent memoranda and those of Conor Cruise O'Brien, whom MacBride had promoted to a new post of Information Officer, provide some early evidence of a growing awareness of the futility of the Irish state's official policy on the North.

  O'Brien, who claims that he was already weary of ‘the usual anti-partition rubbish’,84 had an opportunity to dissect its shortcomings when he had to respond to a full-frontal assault on the Mansion House Committee by the ex-Free State cabinet minister Ernest Blythe. A member of that rare breed of northern Protestants who supported Gaelic and separatist ideals and was imprisoned during the 1916 Rising, Blythe had produced a devastatingly critical analysis of the anti-partition campaign. O'Brien summarized his arguments in a memorandum for Boland:

  The British will not coerce the North to join us. The maximum which we can achieve by our propaganda would be to get British troops to leave Northern Ireland.

  If the British do leave, the North will fight. Mr Blythe believes that because of their industry and probable British aid they would be likely to win.

  Guerrilla activity in the North would be a pretext for pogroms and the mass expulsion of the Nationalist population.

  In these conditions our propaganda campaign abroad, however well conducted, cannot lead to effective action and serves only to increase contention between ourselves and the Unionists.

  There is therefore no prospect of bringing in the North except by peaceful persuasion. This would be a long-term job of 20 to 50 years.85

  Blythe's own proposals centred on a pledge from the Irish government that they would not coerce the North, coupled with support for initiatives to increase cooperation in the social and cultural sphere as a means of lessening unionist suspicions. He also urged northern nationalists to end policies of non-recognition and to participate actively in the public life of the state. O'Brien criticized the ‘unreality’ of some of these proposals but accepted that there was a good deal of strength in Blythe's basic contention: ‘that the hard core of the Ulster Unionists will only be made harder by direct attacks, threats and propaganda campaigns’.

  O'Brien added one concern that had not featured in Blythe's critique by suggesting that unionists should be assured that in a united Ireland there would be no question of Irish laws on divorce and censorship being extended to them. This reference to what he called ‘their very real fears of Catholic coercion and domination’ would soon be reflected in a revived emphasis on the religious dimension in unionist arguments even before the Mother and Child débâcle. It was sparked by the statistics on religious denominations in the Interim Report of the Irish Census of 1946, which showed a sharp decline of 13 per cent in the state's Protestant population during the previous decade. Speeches by Unionist politicians increasingly focused on what one referred to as an inexorable tendency to ‘the complete and utter extinction of the Protestant population south of the border’.86

  There could be no doubting the embarrassment caused to the anti-partition movement by such figures. The government's response was to prepare statistics on the position of Protestants in the economic and public life of the state. Thus Protestants who represented 5.7 per cent of the total population of the state were 26 per cent of those who owned farms of over 2,000 acres, 25 per cent of male professionals, 45 per cent of bank officials and 32 per cent of all industrial employees. Given that this reflected a pre-partition Protestant pre-eminence in such fields, the statistics were not particularly reassuring, since they demonstrated little about how the minority felt about the direction of public policy since 1922. It seemed to echo the loyalist argument in the North that if things were as bad as nationalists claimed, why had the Catholic population of the state increased since partition? As a leading government statistician pointed out, the figures for the decline in the southern Protestant population reflected that non-Catholics had emigrated at a
markedly higher rate than Catholics in the decade. This was due to ‘pull’ factors: ‘this class, relatively well-educated… could make a living here but they could do much better for themselves abroad in an environment that suits them.’87

  While the pull of higher wages and salaries in Britain was one dimension of the problem, it remained that many had gone to serve in the Forces, and an ‘environment that suits them’ was an oblique reference to the reality of low-intensity unhappiness with what many southern Protestants saw as the anti-British and confessional nature of the Irish state. In 1950 Protestant concerns were reinforced by the Tilson judgment, in which the High Court in Dublin ruled that a Protestant husband who had signed the declaration required by the Catholic Church in mixed marriages that the children would be brought up as Catholics had to cede custody of his children to his estranged wife.88 The strict censorship of publications, particularly the banning of anything that dealt with artificial methods of contraception, was a long-standing grievance, while compulsory Irish in schools aroused much Protestant resentment.89 It was also noticeable that in the official response to unionist criticisms, the bulk of statistical material on employment related to the private sector. The claim was made that in government service and the judiciary Protestants were well represented, although the only example given was that they were two of the eleven members of the Supreme and High Courts. There was no response to the unionists who pointed out that in the three border counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, with a Protestant population of nearly 15 per cent, there were virtually no Protestants on the public payroll.90