Rapid changes in government in 1981 complicated matters for the many civil servants involved in fashioning the policy represented in the peace process
WERE THERE ever two rivals for the office of taoiseach who had such different approaches to Northern Ireland policy as Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald?
Where Haughey believed Northern Ireland “a failed political entity” and came across to unionists as disdainful or hostile, FitzGerald was sensitive to their fears, respectful of their political difficulties and keen to demonstrate how critical he himself was about some of the confessional aspects of the South’s Constitution, laws and political culture.
Indeed one of FitzGerald’s first initiatives as taoiseach after he had won power from Haughey in 1981 was a major broadcast in late September in which he launched what he termed a constitutional crusade to transform de Valera’s 1937 document on the grounds that it was inimical to the very unity that it espoused.
This broadcast had elicited a withering rebuke from Haughey, which left the British ambassador, for one, “a little surprised”. For his part, FitzGerald believed that on Northern policy the unionists had been “left out” during Haughey’s time as taoiseach: his own approach would be more inclusive and would also aim to end what he termed “dangerous secrecy”.
On the ongoing joint studies on different aspects of Anglo-Irish relations being undertaken by officials in London and Dublin, FitzGerald said he would like to include unionists in the process although he “would not accept any obstruction” from them.
The advice from Iveagh House was that unionist involvement equalled unionist obstruction. Assistant secretary DM Neligan believed that to involve Northern representatives in the joint studies programme would "only lead to the entire process being aborted at this stage". Instead unionists should be presented with a fait accompliin the form of a proposed Anglo-Irish council or variation on this theme.
These exchanges were part of the advance planning for FitzGerald’s first major summit with Thatcher, which would take place in London on November 6th, 1981. The government secretary, Dermot Nally, warned FitzGerald the formal British approach would be “on the basis of minimum possible movement”. He advised the taoiseach to explore this at a pre-summit meeting in Dublin with British cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong. On this meeting would depend “the entire approach” to the summit, which would probably “have to be played in a low key”.
At their meeting FitzGerald impressed on Armstrong the importance of thorough preparation and suggested an early meeting with the recently appointed Northern Ireland secretary James Prior. Armstrong replied that he was aware that the minister was “thinking hard”, but also knew that Prior “had his marching orders”.
Armstrong also told FitzGerald that Thatcher had “tremendous respect” for what he had been saying concerning his constitutional crusade. “She was anxious to know whether she should welcome it in public or whether it would be better that she should keep her mouth shut, at this point.”
FitzGerald said he expected to discuss this at the summit. He had “stuck his neck out on Articles two and three, knowing that it could be a divisive issue between parties but not wishing it to be so”. And he hoped that in response the British could express “support for Irish unity”, by which he meant a reiteration of what had been agreed at Sunningdale.
Prior himself came to Dublin to impress on FitzGerald that no improvement was possible on the Sunningdale wording: “This was going too far.” He confided that in his early weeks as Northern secretary he had found the position with the Ulster unionists to be “very dodgy. They were all over the place and their disarray was making difficult the job of opening up political issues again”.
Prior also said the “economic decline was now hitting the Protestant community with particular severity. They were aware that the British might be getting fed up”.
FitzGerald returned to the historic British guarantee of the union: he faulted it as “a negative declaration”. He argued something was needed “to the effect that the British did not have an interest in remaining in Ireland” but would continue to stay only “so long as was necessary” to honour their constitutional pledge, and they would support reconciliation.
Prior replied the British could not “give too strong an indication of this sort or it would be taken as support for violence”. He felt Thatcher would be influenced by what she believed Airey Neave’s attitude would be, saying she was really a unionist at heart.
An interesting difference in the mindsets of Irish and British politicians on the guarantee was revealed in some of the early exchanges at the summit itself in Downing Street on November 6th. The taoiseach complained the British government had not demonstrated “a similar resolution” to their support of the balanced promises of the Sunningdale agreement. Manifestly FitzGerald – who was part author of Sunningdale – wanted to use that nationalist gain as the starting point for some further incremental demand favourable to Dublin.
The files also show an extraordinary effort on the Irish side concerning the exact choice of words for the communique. Thatcher seemed less attentive on this front – as she admits in her memoirs – and reminded FitzGerald that no communique could “override the law”. At one point she is noted as asking FitzGerald: “Are you telling me that the communique will bind future British governments?”
Thatcher praised FitzGerald’s constitutional crusade and asked if the taoiseach could advise her on how best to respond. FitzGerald suggested the term “secular” be avoided because in Ireland “it had an anti-religious connotation”. His basic aim was to suggest changes to achieve a constitution that would “reflect the ethos of all the people of Ireland” and remove “its confessional aspects”.
Thatcher queried FitzGerald on the reception his broadcast had received. FitzGerald said he had chosen radio for impact. He noted that Haughey “had reacted very strongly in the beginning, but now seemed to have pulled back”.
Thatcher wanted to know if the FitzGerald crusade agenda “reflected the hidden feelings of many”. FitzGerald thought so, but added that “the many did not necessarily constitute a majority”.
He had not taken soundings before deciding on the broadcast. He had spoken his mind “because he felt passionately on the subject. He fully understood the position of Northern Protestants. He had been full of suppressed fury since childhood at some of the attitudes adopted in the South. Furthermore he told her “he was in politics today for this purpose largely”.
On the joint studies, Thatcher feared misrepresentation. She “had suffered a great deal from previous insinuations. There were suggestions of all kinds of agreement being reached behind the backs of the people”. And she especially complained about what she manifestly believed was the overselling of the Dublin communique of December 1980 by the Haughey government. “The words institutional and constitutional had been bandied about.”
In her memoirs she reveals something of the challenge she found in handling Anglo-Irish relations with such different leaders on the Irish side. She writes that she found Haughey “easy to get on with, less talkative and more realistic” than FitzGerald. But she also faulted Haughey for having claimed a constitutional breakthrough in their Dublin Castle summit.
And she blamed herself for not working “closely enough” with those drafting the communique, which had famously introduced a new phrase that Thatcher disliked but would never succeed in shaking off. This was the promise that officials in London and Dublin would have “special consideration of the totality of relationships within these islands”.
Although these two Irish leaders remained mutually hostile on Northern policy, it would be this phrase – first agreed by Haughey and Thatcher in December 1980 – that would become the keel of Anglo-Irish relations in the years ahead and that would lead to the 1985 Hillsborough agreement and eventually the Belfast Agreement.
As Thatcher and FitzGerald met in Downing Street, they were not to know that within weeks a Haughey-led Fianna Fáil government would be back in power, to be followed after a mere eight months by a more stable Fine Gael-Labour coalition again led by FitzGerald. And these two Irish leaders in both the 1982 elections clashed repeatedly on many aspects of Northern policy.
This cannot have provided other than a complicated working environment for the many civil servants involved in the taoiseach’s department and in foreign affairs as they strove to fashion the sophisticated and eventually successful policy represented in the peace process. But as in earlier years their prodigious toil, attention to detail and forthright advice to their political masters is again evident in the voluminous cabinet papers released in the National Archives for 1981.
