138 demonstrating the pressures he was operating under.
252 were shot by fire originating from within the Six Counties.
Nevertheless, despite extremist pressure upon both Governments,
particularly the British, this incident was not, of itself, permitted to exacerbate the already strained relations between the two countries. It did, however, point to an important implication of Border
violations, one that was probably not foreseen and certainly one that could not be conceded by the British Government if it was to maintain its claim that the Northern Ireland situation was essentially domestic, i.e. that cross-Border violence (as opposed to incursions') could be construed, as Ireland had argued at the United Nations, as a threat to
253
international peace and security. Subsequent actions tended to undermine the British position even more.
In 1971, the decision was taken by the British Government to crater, and otherwise render impassable, cross-Border roads. By the end of that year, 121 unapproved crossings had been cratered or
254
spiked. As a means of preventing the transfer of arms and material from the Republic to the North, it was a counter-productive measure. It resulted in an almost comical (were it not for the seriousness of the situation) cycle of crater-filling (by the local population) and
255
re-cratering (by the British Army) activities which could have no Border into Northern Ireland this vehicle came under a second
251
Irish Times3 1 September 1971, pp. 1 and 8; and the Times> 30 August 1971, p. 1.
252
The Taoiseach's statement of differentiates between evidence that at least five shots were fired from within the Republic and 'the
conclusion that the British soldiers were not shot from the 26 County side of the Border ...' (emphasis added). Taoiseach's statement, as cited in the Irish Timess 1 September 1971, p. 8.
253
This aspect is discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 82-3. On 31 August 1971, following the Hackball's Cross incident, the Daily Telegraphs went so far as to describe an Anglo-Irish war as 'an ultimate possibility which cannot be logically excluded'.
254
House of Commons, Official Report3 vol. 826, 19 November 1971, cols. 224-5.
255 .... ibid.
other effect than to generate, unintentionally, support for the IRA on both sides of the Border. As Conor Cruise O'Brien recounted:
As the border generally runs through homogeneously Catholic territory — having been drawn at a time of maximum Protestant influence - the cratering was equally resented on both sides of the border, both because of its practical inconvenience, and because of a more basic biological feeling about a relationship to the soil: the foreigner was deliberately inflicting wounds on our land.256
Cruise O'Brien emphasises that this was not a fanciful inference 257
taken from his visit to the Border areas which is confirmed by the attention cratering received from the Irish Government. Throughout late 1971 the policy from which it stemmed was frequently denounced, by Opposition and Government alike, in terms more vehement than those used to describe internment, and which were repeated, albeit less frequently, in reference to only one other occasion — Bloody Sunday. Thus, it was seen by the Fine Gael Leader, Liam Cosgrave, as a
258
'lunatic enterprise' — a view that was shared by the Foreign 259
Minister, Hillery — and by the Minister for Transport and Power, Brian Lenihan, as an inconvenient and generally futile exercise conducted by 'stupid, bovine people in the Stormont and Westminster regimes' . ^
In Dublin, therefore, cratering was regarded as 'a most serious situation' in which the respective Governments were taking
Cruise O'Brien, States of Ireland3 p. 260. 257 . . . .
ibid., note. 9G.Q
Dail Eireann, Official Report, vol. 256, 20 October 1971, col. 23. 259
Dail Eireann, Official Report, vol. 257, 1 December 1971, cols. 1061-8. Although Hillery also found cratering to be 'folly'
(col. 489), and 'silly', he appears to have been particularly attracted to 'lunatic' (or lunacy.) - which finds expression no less than seven times in this short adjournment debate.
ibid., col. 570. Lenihan later succeeded Hillery as Foreign
'totally opposing attitudes'. For this reason it may be something of a triumph that, while the Irish Government were to claim in early 1972 that 'gas canisters, smoke bombs and bullets' have been fired by British troops at people on the Republican side of the Border, there is no record of other than insults having been exchanged between British and Irish forces placed in antagonistic positions in the
263 execution of their orders.
From a British Government perspective its Border interdiction policy was justified by an imposing body of evidence and by the obvious impracticability admitted to by Maudling, of closing the
264 Border over which the IRA was held to be travelling with impunity. Initially this attitude resulted from
... the notorious fact that the chief of staff of the Provos, Sean Mac Stiofain, ... lived openly (till May 1972) in the Republic, and that I.R.A. communiques, claiming or disclaiming responsibility for the latest bombings and killings in the north, issued in a steady stream from headquarters in Dublin [which] seemed to prove the hollowness of Mr Lynch's repeated condemnation of violence.265
Moreover, it was exacerbated by some 157 border incidents alleging 266
'violence originating south of the Border' and by 'occasions when shooting occurred and the Gardai [sic] or the Irish Army unaccountably
261
Hillery, ibid., col. 1064.
pco , *
For example, at Mullanahinch on 19 March 1972, Dail Eireann, Official Report3 vol. 259, 23 March 1972, col. 2338.
Of.')
For example, the 'Munnelly Bridge episode', as cited by Deputy Billy Fox, Dail Eireann, Official R e p o r tvol. 257, 1 December 1971, col. 1060.
House of Commons, Official Report3 vol. 833, 23 March 1972, col. 1656.
nr r
T.W. Moody, The Ulster Questions 1603-1973 (Dublin and Cork:
Mercier, 1974), p. 89, (hereafter cited as Moody, The Ulster Question) . See also Peck, Dublin from Dooming S t r e e tpp. 125-6.
^ House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 832, 3 March 1972, col. 200. The figure quoted is for the period 9 August 1971-6 February 1972.
failed to play as vigorous a role as might be hoped1.
Nevertheless, the force of this claim was diminished by the
realistic acknowledgements, by both Labour and Conservative Governments, that the IRA were 'as much an enemy to the Republic of Ireland as to
268
the Stormont Government'. Moreover, and to the delight of the Irish Government, Lord Windlesham, the Conservative Minister of State at the Home Office, undermined the stated necessity for such policies as cratering by stating that there were 'relatively few crossings by
269
terrorists' of the Border. This in turn was consistent with the 270
view held by the Taoiseach, by former Home Secretary, James 271
Callaghan, and by the British Ambassador for most of the first 272
period, that the IRA's activities were less dependent upon support from the Republic than they were on the persistent feeling of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland that their social, economic, and political rights were being systematically denied and indefinitely
273 postponed.
Out of discretion and sound political sense this understanding of the Northern situation was never allowed to imply recognition of the IRA, in either the Republic or Northern Ireland, as a legitimate
2 6 7
267
Mr An^nony Royle, on behalf of the Secretary of State for Foreion and Commonwealth Affairs, House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 828, 13 December 1971, col. 5.
26 P
The Minister of State for Defence, Lord Balneil, House of Commons, Official Report3 vol. 823, 23 September 1971, col. 208. For a previous statement, by Prime Minister Wilson, and in agreement with this see House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 800, 30 April 1970, col. 1447. 269
House of Lords, Official Report, vol. 324, 23 September 1971, col. 133. 'Relatively few' is obviously imprecise but the noble Lord
'estimated that terrorists may represent no more than one in something of the order of 10,000 crossings', ibid.
?7n
Dail Eireann, Official Report3 vol. 256, 20 October 1971, col. 13. 271
Callaghan, A House Divided, pp. 48 and 148. 272
Peck, Dublin from Downing S t r e e tp. 128. 273
See also Kevin Boyle, Tom Hadden and Paddy Hillyard, Law and
State: The Case of Northern Ireland (London: Martin Robinson, 1975), pp. 15-26.
actor. Notwithstanding the former, a central element in British attitudes to cross-Border violence which re-emerged in this period was that the Irish Government, through the default of the Garda Siochana and the Irish Army, was declining to face an open challenge to the authority of the state by armed usurpers. Surprisingly, in the circumstances, the Irish Government held that the British were also remiss in this regard — in one case involving the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, Harold Wilson — inexusably. Until early 1972, with a conviction bordering on piety, British Ministers proclaimed their refusal to negotiate, or even meet, members of
274
either Official or Provisional persuasion of the IRA. It was significant, therefore, that in 1972, the IRA was not an illegal organisation in Britain, nor were there any restrictions upon the British electronic media from broadcasting material supplied by, or interviews with spokesman of, the two organisations. Given the heavy penetration of the east coast of Ireland by programmes of British origin, this situation effectively resulted in the media services
in, and of, One friendly nation broadcasting material which was 275
prohibited within the second and moreover, which v/as intended 276
to undermine the authority of the State therein.
Callaghan, A House Divided, p. 103; Wilson, House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 826, 25 November 1971, col. 1572; and
Maudling, House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 823, 22 September 1971, col. 4. But not quite pious for, in Northern Ireland, senior military officers and the Chief Constable of the RUC had frequently to talk to the IRA in the execution of government policy. Sunday Times, Ulster, pp. 153-7, and p.236.
?7S
See Section 18(1) of the Broadcasting Authority Act, 1960; and Section 2 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939.
?7£
For two of the most lucid accounts of the issues involved in this matter, from an Irish Government perspective, see the following two addresses by the then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien.
1. Speech by the Minister in the Irish Senate on the introduction of the Broadcasting Authority (Amendment) Bill, 27 March 1975; and
2. Keynote Address to the Dublin Symposium on Direct Satellite Broadcasting organised by the European Space Agency and the European Broadcasting Union, 23 May 1977.
Both appear in Conor Cruise O'Brien, Herod: Reflections on Political Violence (London: Hutchinson, 1978), pp. 110-27, and pp. 141-54, repectively.
with prominent members of the Provisional IRA on 13 March 1972 was seen by former Minister for Foreign Affairs and current Leader of
277
Fine Gael, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, as a 'treacherous a c t ' . Wilson claimed, of course, that he met with Provisional Sinn Fein and at the
278
initiative of a member of the Irish Labour Party. But if there was ever an instance which confirmed Cruise O ' B r ie n ' s description of that organisation as 'the open, civilian legal expression of a secret and
279
illegal army', this occasion at Inchicore, Dublin , did so. Those he met were Joe Cahi 11 , ^ ^ J o h n K e l l y , a n d Daithi 0 Conail 1:^®^ l ittle wonder, then, that Provision Chief of Staff Sean MacStiofain
283 described them as 'our people'.
It was for this reason that Harold Wilson's lengthy meeting
Garret Fitzgerald, 'Five Years of British muddle', Sunday Times, 18 December 1978.
278
Times3 21 March 1972, p. 8. The member of the Irish Labour Party in question was almost certainly Dr John O' Connell, but whether he initiated the meeting is doubtful. Conor Bruise O'Brien records only that O'Connell 'acted as intermediary' [States of Ireland, p. 2 6 9 ), while Sean MacStiofain [Memoirs of a Revolutionary ( n . p . : Gordon
Cremonesi, 1975) , p. 239, (hereafter cited as MacStiofain, Memoirs)] claims that it v/as at Wi 1 son's request the meeting took place.
97 Q
Cruise O ' Br ie n, States of Irelands p. 308. 280
One time Provo Leader in Belfast, later to be j ailed for his part in the 1973 'Claudia' (cargo vessel) arms smuggling attempt.
P81
Belfast IRA. One of the defendants in the 1970 Arms Trial.
Served six years in Crumlin Road jail for possessing arms and ammunition during the abortive 1956-62 IRA campaign.
282
In 1971, the Adjutant-General of the Provisionals. Later, if not in March 1972, a member of the 7-man Army Council which formulated the policy on IRA campaigns: and to become Provisional Chief of Staff.
MacStiofain, M e m o i r sp. 239. 283
f i r s t , and in direct contradiction to his own presence, to make clear to Sinn Fein that violence would achieve no political objectives; second, to advise them that no British Government could accept the terms of their peace plan; third, to propose a truce when the
anticipated British ' i nit ia tiv e1 was made; and fourth, to request that • ?84 the spokesmen of the minority community be free from intimidation. In view of the Leader of the Opposition's dramatic interest in
285
solutions to the Irish Question, it is reasonable to include Cruise O ' B ri en ' s claim that Wilson also sought an extension of the 72-hour
ooc truce which the IRA had called on 10 March.
This truce, however;, had been called by the IRA to demonstrate that it was 'under effective control and d i s c i p l i n e ' ; that as a result, it expected 'a positive response' from the British Government to its
287
revised Republican peace terms and, f i na l l y , in tacit recognition that Wilson's visit would be more easily facilitated during a lull in
288
military operations. From IRA accounts it is clear that Wilson's visit was never likely to presage an indefinite suspension of
operations but he appeared not to have understood this sufficiently. 289
Dave [Daithi U Connaill] told me afterwards that in political terms the meeting was quite unproductive . . . Wilson seemed to be more concerned with creating a
favourable image, behaving in a hearty manner, slapping the three of us on the back and using words like
'bloody' and ' C h r i s t ' . Presumably, he thouoht the Provisionsals swore this way.
284
Times, 21 September 1971, p. 8. 285
For example his 15-point plan for the constitution of a United Ireland. House of Commons, Official Report, vol. 826, 25 November 1971, cols. 1571-93; and his decision, in December 1971, to assume the
spokesmanship on Northern Ireland. ?86
Cruise O ' Br ie n, States of Irelands p. 268. oo 7
MacStiofain, Memoirss pp. 238-9. 288
Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 19 73 ), p. 101, (hereafter cited as McGuire,
To Take Arms). 289
In some texts, Daithi 0 Connaill is referred to by his Anglicised name — Dave O'Connell.
290
According to Wilson his purpose in meeting the IRA was fourfold:
Rather, the 'Inchicore summit' adds strength to Richard Crossman's characterisation of the (then) Prime Minister during the period of his intense desire to vi sit Ulster in April 1969.
He has a passion for being on the spot, being in the news. Perhaps that i s n ' t fai r. It i s, rather, that he sees himself influencing events personally. He wants to be active in international affairs rather
in the way that he has stopped one or two strikes at home.291
In the injudicious indulgence of this passion he clearly exceeded the bounds of candour and courtesy in Anglo-Irish relations.
According to Bowyer Bell, Wilson
. . . left the impression that a satisfactory end to the Provos struggle was in sight. He also left an outraged Irish Government which had, as Dave O'Connell gleefully pointed out, been used as a cover for the meeting with the Provos. The Provos were now in the big time
pol i ti cal ly. At a minimum they had veto power and at best they had bombed themselves ahead of Lynch in the queue to the bargaining t a b l e . 292
Further, as Cruise O'Brien noted
It must be conceded that here the IRA had a point. Mr Wilson, like many another British statesman before him, was helping the argument of those in Ireland who hold that power must come from the barrel of a gun. And he did so, at a moment when that power was
beginning to wilt from that which alone can cause it to wilt — the disapproval of the people of whom the gunmen were part. In other words — that i s, using another metaphor of Chairman Mao's — this untoward visit came at a moment when 'the water' was just beginning to turn a l i ttl e unhealthy for 'the fish' of the guerrilla. The 'Inchicore summit' put a li ttle sparkle back into the water again . . . 3
291
Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, The diaries of a Cabinet Minister vol. 3: Secretary of State for Social Services (New York: Holt Rinehard and Winston, 19 77 ), p. 458.
292
Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, p. 386. 293
The full implications of this meeting, unintended though they were, were felt at a later date. Perhaps fortunately, it occurred at a time when Anglo-Irish relations could hardly have been worse, and were pre-occupied with the anticipation of an ' i n i t i a t i v e ' on
Northern Ireland by the British Government. In these conditions the immediate effect was to establish a precedent, later to be repeated by Wilson, and followed by Northern Ireland Ministers William Whitelaw and Merlyn. Rees, of treating with the IRA. Reflection upon it was postponed, and then over-shadowed by the prorogation of Stormont on 24 March 1972 — an objective which had been sought by the Irish Government since the introduction of internment without trial. Even if anti-British sentiments in the Republic were not completely
dissipated by this measure, or that it was, in Dublin terms, 294
incomplete, expressions of displeasure with particular British politicians were rendered inappropriate in the atmosphere of goodwill
295 and optimism which prorogation injected into Anglo-Irish relations.
294
Incomplete because it v/as not accompanied by a power-sharing administration as Lynch had proposed in his 12 August 1971 statement
(see p. 67-8). 295
The Taoiseach had been advised by the British Ambassador in early February that rumours of an i nitiative 'were not totally unfounded' (although its specific form remained unknown) and further, was advised of the prorogation of Stormont the day before it was announced. Peck, Dublin from Downing Street, pp. 142 and 144.
The prorogation of Stormont was one of the hallmark events of m o d e m Irish history: it compassed for all the justifiable criticism
that could be levelled against the institution itself, the death of an Irish Parliament. Moreover, prorogation, and the further