Is there no limit to the nationalist capacity for self-delusion when it comes to events in the North? It seems to infect all shades of thinking, from the dark recesses of Sinn Fein minds to the most reasonable of former government directors of information.
The most startling revelations from the State Papers for 1970 were that on February 6th of that year the Lynch government had "directed" the Army to prepare for possible incursions into Northern Ireland, and that subsequently 500 rifles plus ammunition and other equipment were moved to Dundalk. The point of my article of January 5th was to ask what such actions told us of the government's basic approach to the Northern situation, and whether that approach was crucial in making 1970 the disastrous starting point for a descent into sustained terrorist violence and accompanying communal strife.
Eoin Neeson (Opinion, January 27th) tells us that these were "contingency measures". The documents make clear what was contemplated: in the event of "a complete breakdown of law and order" in the North, the Army would, without warning or consultation, simply march into Northern Ireland. Such an action would have been contrary to international law, to Article 29 of the Irish Constitution and to the whole ethos of the European Community. Protestations that these were "incursions", not an invasion, and were in support of a beleaguered minority would have altered none of that. Such excuses are the common coinage of aggressors.
That such moves were actually contemplated, and preparations put in place, is astounding in itself, but what on earth did Dublin think would be the result inside Northern Ireland? Would a swift march on Newry suddenly restore law and order and ensure the safety of Catholics in Belfast, Ballymena and Bellaghy? Or would it, more probably, provoke the most appalling sectarian blood-letting imaginable?
Possibly no such catastrophic action was ever seriously contemplated by Jack Lynch himself, and the moves were made as a means of defusing tensions within the government, and rapidly abandoned when he was able to assert his authority. But there was no certainty in the spring of 1970 that Lynch would outmanoeuvre Haughey, Blaney and others, and the "directions" given to the Army were those of the government. At best it was playing with fire in an oil dump. What if news of the transfer of rifles to Dundalk and Army "contingency" plans to invade had leaked? What effect would that have had on law and order inside Northern Ireland? The possibilities can be guessed at by looking at the instant and inflammatory impact of Lynch's public announcement the previous August of the establishment of field hospitals on the Border.
What were the circumstances in which such extraordinary plans were being made? As others have pointed out, things were not blissfully peaceful, and communal tension was high. But there was no complete breakdown of law and order, nor, at that point, any immediate threat of it. The reform programme was going through. As far as I can check, the first Catholics to die in Northern Ireland as the result of the Troubles after the arrival of the British army in August 1969, were those killed by a premature IRA bomb in Derry in June 1970.
So why on earth, in February 1970, was the Lynch Government "directing" the Army to prepare such reckless and illegal actions? Perhaps J. Bower Bell was right when he wrote in The Secret Army that "between August 1969 and the following April, the Dublin Government appeared to be following a policy of tacit alliance with the Provos in defence of Northern Catholics and, some suspected, in hopes of a united Ireland".
Were there wild hopes that some brief "spectacular", like an incursion into Newry, would serve to internationalise the problem, as the recourse to the UN the previous autumn had not, and perhaps destabilise Northern Ireland to the extent that anything might have been possible? Who knows?
Eoin Neeson provides a clue as to why this fundamental territorial nationalism survived so long - and still survives - in Ireland in a European Union founded amid the ruins of such nationalism, and designed to render it redundant. He writes that "the minority population was deprived of normal human rights for many years" and suggests that this is easily verified. Not so; since partition the Catholic population in the North grew and increasingly shared in improved standards of living, while total population in the South declined. Individual Catholics, in some areas and some sectors, were victims of discrimination in terms of public housing and employment (as were Protestants in one or two areas controlled by nationalists). To allege that this constituted "deprivation of normal human rights" for the minority is to ignore the available evidence and to devalue the very meaning of human rights.
The reforms introduced under pressure from London in 1969-70 were specifically tailored to meet the demands of the civil rights movement. Some of them were far from long term - the disbandment of the B-Specials and the disarming of the RUC were faits accomplis by mid-1970. But ever since, both Dublin and Northern nationalists have clung to the myth of the "nationalist nightmare" to argue that only the undoing of partition can guarantee full rights for Catholics. There never was a denial of basic human rights to Catholics; specific civil rights grievances were substantially addressed by 1970. Refusal to recognise this on the part of nationalists in Northern Ireland and in Government in Dublin helped the Provisional IRA pretend that 30 years of murder and destruction were somehow a fight for freedom and justice. Even today the Belfast Agreement is threatened by such double-thinking.