Ireland Since 1939

by Henry Patterson

  5. Memorandum on ‘The Constitutional Position’ by R. Nugent, 6 January 1946, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9J/53/1.

  6. Memorandum by Minister of Health and Local Government, 9 July 1946, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9J/53/2.

  7. John Ditch, Social Policy in Northern Ireland 1939–1950 (Aldershot, 1988), 105.

  8. Letter from Lieutenant Colonel J. M. Blakiston-Houston, Beltrim Castle, Gortin, to Basil Brooke, 9 April 1948, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9J/53/1.

  9. Belfast Newsletter, 27 November 1947.

  10. Note on Dominion Status from Robert Gransden, Cabinet Secretary, to the Prime Minister, 31 October 1947, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9J/53/2.

  11. Sir Alexander Maxwell to the Home Secretary, 25 October 1945, included in the file ‘Infiltration of Éire Workers into Northern Ireland’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat Cab 9C/47/3.

  12. Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–1996: Political Forces and Social Classes (London, 1996), 107.

  13. Letter from Henry McCay, Secretary of the City of Londonderry and Foyle Unionist Association, to McCoy, 29 March 1951, PRONI, McCoy Papers, D333/A/1.

  14. Madge MacDonald to McCoy, 24 February 1948, PRONI, McCoy Papers, D333/A/1.

  15. May Knox-Browne, Aglinton Castle, Fivemiletown, to McCoy, 9 September 1952, PRONI, McCoy Papers, D333/A/1.

  16. Belfast Newsletter, 22 December 1945.

  17. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 103.

  18. Sabine Wichert, Northern Ireland since 1945 (London, 1991), 72.

  19. F. H. Boland, Irish Ambassador, London, to Seán Nunan, Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 6 January 1954, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/249. Brooke was created Viscount Brookeborough in 1952.

  20. Sir Basil Brooke, ‘Diaries’, 18 February 1951, account of Ulster Unionist Council Meeting, PRONI, Brookeborough Papers, D 3004/D/44.

  21. Letter from Maginess to Brooke, 21 August 1951, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9J/53/2.

  22. ‘Roman Catholic Electors Seeing the Light’, Northern Whig, 20 October 1951.

  23. Belfast Newsletter, 13 July 1946.

  24. Statement showing scope and amount of social services in Northern Ireland and Éire, October 1946, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/47/3.

  25. F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971), 742.

  26. The UlsterYear Book 1947 (Belfast, 1948), 76, and The UlsterYear Book 1963–1964 (Belfast, 1965), 213.

  27. From 2,026 in 1945–6 to 4,708 in 1963–4, The Ulster Year Book 1963–1964, 234.

  28. John Ditch, Social Policy in Northern Ireland 1939–1950 (Aldershot, 1988), 107.

  29. The Ulster Year Book 1960–1962 (Belfast, 1963), 229.

  30. J. H. Whyte, ‘How Much Discrimination was There under the Unionist Regime 1921–1968?’, in I. T. Gallagher and James O'Connell (eds.), Contemporary Irish Studies (Manchester, 1983), 20.

  31. Graham Gudgin, ‘Discrimination in Housing and Employment under the Stormont Regime’, in P. Boche and B. Barton (eds.), The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition (Hampshire, 1999), 103.

  32. Memorandum by the Minister of Home Affairs on the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, 22 February 1950, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4/846/10.

  33. See Henry Patterson, ‘Party versus Order: Ulster Unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act’, Contemporary British History, 13, 4, Winter 1999, 104–29.

  34. Belfast Newsletter, 13 July 1946.

  35. Report of the Proceedings of the Half-yearly General Meeting of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, Sandy Row Orange Hall, 14 December 1949, in the Library of the Orange Order, Belfast.

  36. Michael McGrath, ‘The Narrow Road: Harry Midgley and Catholic Schools in Northern Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 30, 119, May 1997, 439.

  37. ibid., 440.

  38. Oliver P. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretative History (Dublin, 1994), 247.

  39. Belfast LOL 958 resolution, which protested against grants to sixteen Catholic schools under the 1947 Act: Meeting of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, 8 June 1949, the Library of the Orange Order, Belfast.

  40. Ulster Protestant, October 1957.

  41. ‘Position of the Minority in the 26 Counties’, 24 October 1950, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/351A.

  42. Ulster Protestant, August 1951.

  43. Memorandum from the Inspector-General of the RUC, 30 December 1953, PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs, HA/32/1/956.

  44. Patterson, 120.

  45. ibid., 108.

  46. Lord Brookeborough, ‘Diaries’, 6 June 1956, PRONI, Brookeborough Papers, D3004/D/45. In 1956 the Prime Minister met a delegation of leading unionists from Derry who, wrongly believing that Catholics were 40 per cent of the population – the 1951 census figure was 35 per cent – predicted a ‘disloyal majority by 2000’. Minute prepared for meeting with the Prime Minister, 13 September 1956, PRONI, PM 5/95/10.

  47. ibid., 13 September: ‘Deputation headed by Teddy Jones [MP for Londonderry city] on industries. They are anxious that we should not get an invasion from the other side.’

  48. This was after a letter from Teddy Jones that warned that if the position ‘falls into the wrong hands, the situation in Londonderry City will go from bad to worse and ultimately destroy us’. Letter from Jones to A. J. Kelly, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/5/4.

  49. Harry Diamond, a Republican Labour MP, quoted in Irish News, 15 October 1953.

  50. Whyte, 10.

  51. Lord Brookborough, ‘Diaries’, 24 February 1956, PRONI, Brookeborough Papers, D3004/D/45.

  52. ibid., 5 September 1956.

  53. Paul Teague, ‘Discrimination and Segmentation Theory: A Survey’, in Terry Cradden and Paul Teague (eds.), Labour Market Discrimination and Fair Employment in Northern Ireland: International Journal of Manpower, 13, 65/7, 1992.

  54. The seminal article on the topic is E.A. Aunger, ‘Religion and Occupational Class in Northern Ireland’, Economic and Social Review, 7, 1, 1975.

  55. Whyte, 21–3.

  56. Letter from Brian Maginess to R. A. Butler, 15 December 1954, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/21.

  57. Memorandum of the Minister of Commerce on Advanced Factories, 28 March 1956, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/25.

  58. Letter from Brian Maginess to R. A. Butler, 15 December 1954, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/21.

  59. This depressing story is, not surprisingly, easier to follow in the Prime Minister's diaries than in the cabinet papers. 30 April 1957: ‘Cabinet subcommittee on Derry employment problem in new industries. There are two lines we can help – getting good labour relations people into the factories… Housing is important and getting Derry men from other parts of the Province and from England to return to the city.’ 17 May 1957: ‘Met Executive of the party at Glengall Street and told them we had made arrangements for Derry about new industries.’ 26 June 1957: ‘Teddy Jones saw Labour and Commerce about employment in Derry. He says there is a row with the Apprentice Boys that no Protestants are being employed in the building operations [for Dupont plant].’ Extracts from ‘Diaries’, PRONI, Brookeborough Papers, D3004/D/45.

  60. Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland, The Plain Truth (Dungannon, 2nd ed., 1969).

  61. Niall Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (Cork, 1997), xvi–xvii.

  62. Lord Brookeborough, ‘Diaries’, 23 September 1958, PRONI, Brookeborough Papers, D3004/D/45.

  63. Copy of telephone message from Brookeborough to the Home Secretary, 7 February 1958: ‘The unemployment rate in Londonderry is 17% and the closing of the station will completely cancel the volume of additional work being provided by new industry in the area.’ PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/29.

  64. Brendan Lynn, Holding the Ground: The Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland 1945–1972 (Aldershot, 1997), 4.

  65. 1951 election address of Ger
ald Annesley APL candidate in South Down, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/109/4/1.

  66. In a memorandum on the state of northern nationalism, 1 May 1958, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/2/4.

  67. Lynn, 37.

  68. ibid., 55.

  69. Visit by Conor Cruise O'Brien to anti-partitionist centres in Northern Ireland, 23–5 March 1953, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/2/3.

  70. ibid.

  71. J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: A History of the IRA 1916–1970 (London, 1972), 296.

  72. Report by F. H. Boland to Seán Nunan, Department of External Affairs, 26 November 1953, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/249.

  73. Conor Cruise O'Brien report on a visit to Ulster, 21–2 June, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/17/2/3.

  74. Round Table, 177, December 1954.

  75. Report on a visit to Ulster, 21–2 June, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/17/2/3.

  76. Bowyer Bell, 313–15.

  77. Thus Seán Rafferty to a Sinn Féin meeting in Belfast: ‘They had a far greater weapon in the ballot box than in bullets, bayonets and bombs.’ Irish News, 16 May 1955.

  78. An intercepted communication from Eamon Timoney, an IRA officer in Derry, to his commanding officer was revealing: ‘Our boys are anxious to let the “B” patrols have it, but I have objected… If you say the word “let them have it” we will not say “no”.’ Quoted at his trial, Belfast Newsletter, 20 June 1957.

  79. Examples were the killing of Sergeant Ovens by a booby-trap in August 1957 and the shooting of an off-duty RUC constable by an IRA team in Fermanagh in January 1961. Bowyer Bell, 367, 391.

  80. Seán Cronin, Irish Nationalism (Dublin, 1980), 171.

  81. Target list included in documents found on IRA man tried in Belfast, Belfast Newsletter, 16 March 1957.

  82. ‘Belfast Man Jailed for Possessing IRA Documents’, Belfast Newsletter, 11 December 1956.

  83. Inspector-General's office, Crime Branch Special, ‘Subversive Activities: Reports and Correspondence’, PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs, HA/32/1/1349.

  84. Department of External Affairs memorandum on meeting with Michael O'Neill, 19 May 1955, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/14/2.

  85. Conor Cruise O'Brien, report on visit to Ulster, 21–2 July 1954, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, 305/17/2/3.

  86. J. G. Nelson, RUC headquarters, to R. F. R. Dunbar, 26 September 1958, PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs, HA/32/1/1349.

  87. Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), 92.

  88. ‘Subversive Incidents in Northern Ireland since 12 December 1958’, PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs, HA/32/1/1349.

  89. ‘Proposed Winding Up of the APL in the Six Counties’, NAD, Department of External Affairs, 305/14/2/4.

  90. Memorandum on Publicity by Eric Montgomery, Director of Publicity, 7 April 1957, PRONI, Cabinet Publicity Committee, Cab 4A/26/75.

  91. Government of Northern Ireland, Report of the Joint Working Party on the Economy of Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 446 (Belfast, 1962) (hereafter referred to as the Hall Report, after Sir Robert Hall, who chaired it), para. 23.

  92. G. P. Steed, ‘Internal Organization, Firm Integration and Locational Change: The Northern Ireland Linen Complex 1954–1964’, Economic Geography, 47, 1971.

  93. Report by officials on employment policy, December 1960, PRONI, Cabinet Employment Subcommittee, Cab 4A/38/43.

  94. Hall Report, para. 21.

  95. ibid., para. 26.

  96. ibid., para. 44.

  97. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 119.

  98. Hall Report, para. 25.

  99. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 118.

  100. Hall Report, para. 26.

  101. Minute from the Prime Minister to the Home Secretary, 29 December 1949, in ‘Industrial Development and Employment in Northern Ireland, Measures by British Government’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9F/188/1.

  102. Note by Sir Frank Newsam of the Home Office of a meeting to discuss unemployment in Northern Ireland, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9F/188/3.

  103. PRONI, Cab 4/970/830 April 1955.

  104. ‘Employment Policy: Report by Officials’, December 1960, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/43.

  105. ibid.

  106. ‘Industrial Development and Employment in Northern Ireland, Measures by British Government’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9F/188/72.

  107. Terry Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition (Belfast, 1993), 179.

  108. ‘The Economic Survey of Northern Ireland’, memorandum by the Minister of Commerce, 16 October 1957, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4/1049.

  109. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 126.

  110. See O'Neill's comments at meeting of Cabinet Employment Committee, 3 April 1958, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/21.

  111. ‘Observations on the 1953 Election’, PRONI, Ulster Unionist Council Papers, D1327/16/3/51.

  112. Cabinet Employment Committee, 19 November 1958, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/34.

  113. Personal note from Minister of Finance to Cabinet Employment Committee, 12 February 1958, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4A/38/29.

  114. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 128.

  115. Sydney Elliott, Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results 1921–1971 (Chichester, 1973), 43.

  116. Belfast Newsletter, 2 June 1962.

  117. This was the opinion of Jack Sayers, the liberal editor of the Belfast Telegraph, who in his column in the Round Table noted, ‘It begins to appear that Northern Ireland's failure to recruit to the political field men and women of greater stature, capacity and breadth of vision is at last coming home to roost.’ Round Table, 185, December 1956.

  118. ‘Future of Messrs. Short Brothers and Harland’, memorandum by Minister of Defence and Minister of Aviation, 2 October 1962, PRO, Cab 127/110. Wilson's remark is from a meeting with Terence O'Neill and other members of the Stormont cabinet, 4 November 1968, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 4/1413/10.

  6 Expansion: Ireland 1959–1973

  1. ‘Economic Relations with the Irish Republic’, 5 February 1960, PRO, Cab 129/100.

  2. Symposium on Economic Development, Journal of the Social and Statistical Inquiry of Ireland, 19, Part 2, 1958/59.

  3. Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, Seán Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1982), 114.

  4. ‘Economic Relations with the Irish Republic’, 5 February 1960, PRO, Cab 129/100.

  5. John Horgan, Seán Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot (Dublin, 1997), 216.

  6. Garret FitzGerald, All in a Life: An Autobiography (Dublin, 1991), 58.

  7. Bew and Patterson, 136.

  8. ibid., 184.

  9. ‘The Political Implication of an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area’, 1 January 1965, NAD, Department of the Taoiseach, S16674 Q/95.

  10. Peter Mair, The Changing Irish Party System (London, 1987), 182.

  11. Susan Baker, ‘Nationalist Ideology and the Industrial Policy of Fianna Fáil, Irish Political Studies, 1, 1986, 61.

  12. ibid., 64.

  13. Lemass in a speech to the Dublin South-central branch of Fianna Fáil, Irish Times, 13 May 1961.

  14. Report of a meeting between the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Linen, Cotton and Rayon Manufacturers' Association, 13 July 1961, NAD, Department of the Taoiseach, S6272 C/61.

  15. Cormac Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s (Manchester, 1997), 29.

  16. All the figures in this paragraph are from Liam Kennedy, The Modern Industrialization of Ireland 1940–1988 (Dublin, 1989), 14–16.

  17. Liam Kennedy, 15.

  18. Kieran Allen, Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour: 1926 to the Present (London, 1997), 108.

  19. Allen, 109.

  20. Niamh Hardiman, Pay, Politics and Economic Performance in Ireland 1970–1987 (Oxford, 1988), 48.

  21. Horgan, 230.

  22. Bew and Patterso
n, 173.

  23. Horgan, 229.

  24. Finola Kennedy, Public Social Expenditure in Ireland, Economic and Social Research Institute, Broadsheet No. 11, February 1975.

  25. Mair, 30.

  26. F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971), 623–4.

  27. J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge, 1994), 367.

  28. Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 1992), 629.

  29. New York Times, 29 April 1957.

  30. Martin Mansergh, ‘The Political Legacy of Seán Lemass’, Etudes Irlandaises, No. 25–1, Printemps 2000, 160.

  31. Lemass in his Presidential Address to Ard-Fheis, 20 November 1962, in ‘Partition: Government Policy’, NAD, Department of the Taoiseach, S9361 K/63.

  32. In 1956–7, when ill with phlebitis, he sent a note to T. K. Whitaker: ‘Dev wants me to brush up my Irish – please send me some books on economics and finance’, in Horgan, 302. The same book records his view on the afterlife: ‘This is all nonsense. When it's over, it's over’ (325).

  33. Round Table, 196, September 1959.

  34. Henry Patterson, ‘Seán Lemass and the Ulster Question 1959–1965’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 1, 1999, 151–2.

  35. After a meeting with northern Nationalist MPs and Senators on 19 July 1962, Lemass asked the Minister for Transport and Power, Erskine Childers, to raise these issues with the two state companies: ‘Government Policy on Partition’, NAD, Department of the Taoiseach, S9361 K/62.

  36. Presidential Address to Ard-Fheis, 20 November 1962.

  37. Irish Times, 16 October 1959.

  38. At his first meeting in November 1963 with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the British premier suggested a meeting with Lemass: Andrew Gailey, Crying in the Wilderness. Jack Sayers: A Liberal Editor in Ulster 1939–1969 (Belfast, 1995), 81–2.

  39. Gransden, who was Cabinet Secretary from 1939 to 1957 and Northern Ireland Agent in London from 1957 to 1962, had become friendly with Hugh McCann, then Irish Ambassador in London and subsequently Secretary of the Department of External Affairs. His views were expressed during a holiday in Ireland in June 1963 and recorded in a note by McCann on 15 July 1963, ‘Partition: Government Policy’, NAD, Department of Foreign Affairs, DFA 313/31K.

  40. Irish Times, 30 July 1963.