Conservative dimension:Thirty years ago Irish diplomats were indefatigable in their attention to detail on Northern Ireland policy as it impinged on Anglo-Irish relations. Reading through the files of the Taoiseach's office and those of Foreign Affairs for 1976, one is struck by the consistency with which Dublin pursued its strategic overview compared to a somewhat inattentive and erratic performance by policy makers in Britain.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and the SDLP leadership shared a basic analysis and prescription: they believed that Irish unity was an aspiration which could only be achieved by uniting the people of Ireland rather than the territory.
Furthermore they appreciated that a prerequisite was an intermediate settlement with three elements: a power-sharing executive within Northern Ireland; a realistic North-South dimension; and an appreciation that Irish unity could only be based on consent.
It will be noted that these are the basic elements of both the Sunningdale and the Belfast agreements, although the first was signed in 1973 and the latter in 1998 and is still a work in progress.
In 1976 Dublin still feared that continuing IRA violence might precipitate a self-interested British withdrawal which could lead to a civil war, or an attempt at a loyalist UDI or even an east-west repartition of the North along the line of the River Bann. All of these had been seriously considered as contingency scenarios in the mid-1970s - possible, if not probable, nightmares.
The Iveagh House mandarins knew well just how much diplomatic and political effort had been invested in converting Edward Heath to an appreciation of the necessity for Dublin's involvement. They felt thwarted when he was ousted from Downing Street by Harold Wilson and then from the Tory leadership by Margaret Thatcher. Convinced that their own doctrine was empirically sound, they remained diligent in monitoring the statements of British politicians lest they stray from what Dublin considered a hard-won, pragmatic and agreed line on Northern Ireland policy.
In yesterday's newspaper we examined how Wilson and then Callaghan's Labour government were cajoled or persuaded to avoid any departure from this basic policy. Dublin had an even tougher proposition in the opposition spokesman on Northern Ireland, Airey Neave.
Neave was a colourful figure: wounded in France in 1940, he was the first British officer to escape from Colditz POW camp and he later served indictments on leading Nazis - including Goring - at Nuremberg.
An MP since 1953, he had masterminded Thatcher's ousting of Heath as Conservative leader and had been promptly rewarded with an appointment to the shadow cabinet.
He also headed her private office - he was to hold both posts until he was killed by the INLA in a booby-trap car bomb at the House of Commons on the eve of the 1979 general election.
Dublin feared that Thatcher's choice of Neave as her Northern Ireland spokesman might well mark a retreat from the Heath-Whitelaw policy which had helped deliver the Sunningdale Agreement. Dublin was all too aware that continuity with Heath's policy would count for little as Thatcher considered what her policy ought to be on Northern Ireland.
Donal O'Sullivan, Irish ambassador in London, reported Neave's opinion that both Thatcher and Heath were "furious" about press reports that they effected a reconciliation. "They are still poles apart and neither wants to have anything to do with the other. The truth is that Heath continues to treat her with studied coldness and never addresses a remark to her except when he cannot avoid it."
At another meeting O'Sullivan had found Neave preoccupied not by political choices but by army matters and with "nothing new to say on the security question except a lot of words".
Neave had "talked at considerable length" about the threat posed by the USSR and the "question of a communist infiltration" of both Britain and Ireland. Moreover, this was a matter which Neave believed Thatcher would "very much like" to discuss with the taoiseach.
O'Sullivan added that from his conversation with Neave, he "would have tended to conclude that Airey was talking through the top of his head". However, he added that the Swedish ambassador in London had spoken in identical terms the previous weekend.
After his summit meeting with Harold Wilson in Downing Street on March 5th, taoiseach Liam Cosgrave had a meeting with Thatcher who insisted that it would be "highly desirable" to hold to that paragraph in the Wilson-Cosgrave communiqué that a solution could be found "only through elected representatives and political parties and not through negotiations with paramilitary organizations".
When the topic of a British pull-out from Northern Ireland was raised, Thatcher insisted she was in politics "to see that sudden emotions" did not drive policy.
In June the Irish ambassador found Neave still preoccupied by the continuing British contacts with the Provisionals. Indeed if he didn't get "a firm indication" that these talks would cease, he or Thatcher intended to "take the matter up with the prime minister".
The ambassador added that even some Tory MPs were "now inclined to take the line that Airey has gone overboard on this matter. One of them remarked to me a few days ago that the joke among a few Tory backbenchers is that, if the talks are ended, Airey will be stuck for something to raise with Rees."
A persistent criticism of Neave was that he was over-preoccupied with the security dimension to policy. Harold McCusker, unionist whip at Westminster, was reported to Dublin as finding Neave "hard to size up". McCusker's assessment was that his "lack of local knowledge makes him reluctant to express himself in other than general terms".
In October Garret FitzGerald used the opportunity of a visit to London to speak with Margaret Thatcher about his alarm at how Neave was handling the Northern Ireland brief. She was accompanied by Willie Whitelaw, her deputy leader, who had confided to FitzGerald the previous year that it would be a resigning matter for him if power-sharing was abandoned by Thatcher.
As it happened Neave was conveniently absent on the day. In fact he was on a visit to Northern Ireland where the SDLP was refusing to meet him because of what they saw as his refusal to clarify his attitude to power-sharing.
FitzGerald now asserted that many unionists had come to the conclusion that they could escape from the straight-jacket of compulsory power-sharing by simply waiting for the Conservatives to win power in Britain.
FitzGerald had many sources for this argument. One of them would have been Peter (T.E.) Utley, chief leader writer with the Daily Telegraph, whose private views had been gleaned by Dermot Gallagher in the London embassy.
Utley had conveyed that he was "quite worried" about Neave's calibre and that he was in particular concerned that Neave would be unable to handle Martin Smyth of the Official Unionists. Utley thought this could prove "disastrous"; it would push nationalists towards the Provisionals and would alienate Dublin.
"He thought Smith and the Unionists might succeed over a period, in converting Neave to supporting proposals for the re-establishment of something akin to the old Stormont."
FitzGerald now expressed similar fears only to be immediately challenged by an indignant Thatcher and Whitelaw "asking how anybody could think that this could happen. Their policy had not changed one iota."
But FitzGerald had manifestly been more attentive to what Neave had been saying than the Tories he was talking to. Neave's speeches, he pointed out, had either omitted reference to power-sharing on those occasions when such a reference "would have been extremely relevant", or, on other occasions, he "seemed to modify or water down in some way the commitment to power-sharing".
Thatcher and Whitelaw demurred but FitzGerald then "handed over a paper setting out the main elements of all major statements by Airey Neave since his appointment". Moreover he insisted that it was perception which mattered in the North. It had been "quite clear" to him that all along the Unionists had hoped there would be a change in the Conservative Party's position and that in recent months there had been a "marked shift" in their optimism on this question. To buttress this argument, FitzGerald cited a number of discussions he had had with Martin Smyth.
Earlier in the year he had the impression that Smyth "was largely whistling in the wind but more recently there seemed to be on his part a real confidence that such a change could occur".
At this point FitzGerald noted that "the seriousness of the situation and the reality of the Unionist illusions" were being noted by his Conservative audience, "although they continued to insist that there had in fact been no change in policy on their part".
FitzGerald strongly advised that if the Wilson government reiterated its strong commitment to devolution with compulsory power-sharing that it would be "vitally important" that the Conservative Party would immediately endorse such a statement.
Thatcher said that she could not commit herself to any course of action until she had an opportunity to talk to Neave.
FitzGerald may well have been merely courteous when he expressed regret at Neave's absence from the meeting because he certainly exploited this to discuss the depths of his concerns about him.
Moreover his account of the meeting for his Cabinet colleagues enjoined them to be "particularly careful not to mention this meeting to anybody because of the necessity to ensure that Airey Neave would not find out about it".
FitzGerald also outlined the measures being taken by the Fine Gael-Labour government against the IRA. But he added that praise from English politicians "was not necessarily helpful". Thatcher, he believed, readily understood this.
"I said humorously that perhaps if it were possible not to praise us more than twice a week it would help though I did not wish to overstress the importance of the issue. The strength of the support we had from our own people in dealing with the IRA meant that even praise from British politicians wasn't doing us serious harm. She said that she took my point and accepted that praise once a week would be better than praise twice a week."
FitzGerald also argued that there was now "considerable urgency" about the need to lower the British army's profile.
"The situation where housewives could look out of their windows and see British soldiers burning down a community centre and then hear denials from the British army on the next day that anything of the kind had taken place, followed by an announcement by the British army on the day after that seven soldiers had been arrested, was most unhelpful."
There are passages where this encounter reads like a tutorial by FitzGerald, ably assisted by Whitelaw, for the benefit of Thatcher's understanding of the dynamics of politics in the North. FitzGerald noted that Thatcher had asked him "why was it that the politicians in Northern Ireland could not reach agreement.
In asking the question it became clear that she was considerably confused and thought that the Convention Report involved a proposal for emergency power-sharing for five years."
He added that "Whitelaw and I patiently put her right on this and she then said that she remembered that this had been - an initiative of Bill Craig. Even then she still didn't seem to recall the context so that I went back over it and explained precisely what had happened at that time and why the Craig initiative seemed to have failed."
And as for Thatcher's original question "as to why the politicians could not agree, I said I thought the major problem was Paisley". FitzGerald records that she "seemed extremely surprised at this, though Whitelaw assented with my view".
FitzGerald argued that the problem was Paisley's dominant position "and because of the fact that he had brought down successive leaders of the Unionist Party who had seemed willing to compromise with the minority".
FitzGerald added that Paisley's role in this respect "could not be underestimated".
