Both of these books discuss Anglo–Irish relations in the years immediately following the crisis in Northern Ireland in 1969. Faced with a deteriorating security situation north and south and the real prospect of civil war, all parties to the conflict had to re-adjust their perspectives and review policy options. Anglo–Irish relations had been fairly stable between 1945 and 1969, despite ritualistic criticisms of partition on the part of the Irish government. None of the parties were prepared for the challenge that emerged from the collapse of unionist dominance, polarisation between Catholics and Protestants or the paramilitary violence that followed. The violence destabilised relations between the two states and it was some time before new approaches were tested. Daniel Williamson’s study focuses fairly tightly on diplomatic relations between the states, though he does occasionally evaluate the policy of the United States. Thomas Hennessey also places Anglo–Irish relations at the heart of his discussion, while discussing the positions taken by the Provisional I.R.A., the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionist Party. Williamson follows a chronological approach, while Hennessy adopts a thematic one.
Both studies draw heavily on government sources to provide detailed assessments of high politics between 1969 and 1976. Taken together they offer insights into assumptions, policy making and lost opportunities at various times during this crucial period. One conclusion might be that they are studies in failure. The most obvious failure is that peace did not return to Northern Ireland and that violence continued for another two decades. There is also the failure of Unionism to appreciate that single party rule could not continue in a deeply divided society. Furthermore, the Irish government and nationalists generally failed to appreciate the strength of unionist British identity and their rejection of Irish nationality. Successive British governments also failed to take imaginative or innovative policy stances in response to the breakdown of political order and the challenge to democratic stability that violence brought.
Hennessey argues that ‘The conditions for a settlement of the Northern Ireland conflict did not exist in the period 1972–1976’ (p. 234). Both books provide solid support for this view. Williamson suggests that new patterns were established between 1969 and 1972 within which Anglo–Irish relations developed from confrontation to cooperation. This may be the case but establishing new patterns was not easy. One reason why a settlement was not possible is that each of the parties involved in the conflict reverted to traditional political positions. New patterns of exchange did not entail that traditional perspectives disappeared.
One conclusion that can be drawn from these studies is that it is the British who change most during this time. At first Britain resisted and resented Irish demands for involvement in Northern Ireland on the grounds that the United Kingdom was the sovereign power and Ireland was a foreign state. According to this view, Dublin had no ‘right to be consulted on our political or administrative decisions in Northern Ireland’ (p. 44). The Irish insisted that the only real solution to the crisis was Irish unity. Patrick Hillery, the Irish minister for external affairs was extremely confrontational with the British, claiming that ‘Northern Ireland is part of Ireland. Our people do not accept that it is part of the UK. … It is Ireland, our island’ (pp 12–13). He predicted that partition would be ended in a generation; after Bloody Sunday he called the British ‘lunatics’ (p. 186). It is arguable that the distance between Britain and Ireland widened as the crisis deepened.
Surprisingly, British officials began to revaluate previous assumptions and policy. Hennessy reminds the reader that Northern Ireland was established so that Britain could disengage from the Irish question (p. 238). This implied that Northern Ireland was different from the rest of the United Kingdom. Indeed, Sir Alec Douglas-Home argued after Bloody Sunday that Irish unity was a better option than direct rule, because the people of Northern Ireland are not ‘like the Scots or the Welsh and I doubt if they ever will be’. Accordingly, Britain’s ‘interest would … be best served by pushing them towards a United Ireland rather than tying them closer to the U.K.’ (Williamson, p. 196). While this view was not endorsed by the cabinet, the Home secretary Reginald Maudling stated that the government would not obstruct Irish unity if a majority in Northern Ireland agreed to that outcome.
However, this was a position that Irish nationalists could not accept. Irish government policy remained focused on an agreement with the United Kingdom that would end partition. The archival and public record for this period and later supports the view that Lynch sincerely believed that ‘the reunification of the national territory can provide the only permanent solution to the problem’. This was not rhetoric and policy making in Dublin presumed this. Williamson is probably right to suggest that Lynch believed that British involvement in Northern Ireland was a stopgap solution ‘prior to a permanent new settlement for Northern Ireland that would directly involve the Irish Government’. Tellingly Lynch opposed the British initiative to hold a plebiscite on the border on the grounds that Northern Ireland did not have the right to decide by itself an issue that affected all of Ireland (p. 199). There is little difference among nationalists about the ends of policy though there was about means. As Hennessey points out in respect of British discussion with the Provisional I.R.A. ‘the main obstacle to Irish self-determination was not the British presence in Ireland as the Provisionals defined it – Her Majesty’s Government – but the Unionist majority in Northern Ireland’ (p. 8).
Nor did the Irish government have a realistic overall strategy for dealing with the crisis in Northern Ireland. Indeed Irish policy-making was bogged down by internal divisions, an indecisive leader and committed to an irredentist policy in respect of the North. Irish diplomats did advance a number of new ideas during this period – power sharing and some type of Council of Ireland were promoted in exchanges with the British. While these did not find favour in the short term, they do become central to the future of the relations north and south, internally and in Anglo–Irish relations. Williamson provides a detailed and valuable discussion of the Chequers summits in September 1971. After the introduction of internment relations between the British and Irish were at a new low. However, what was clear by 1971 was that the violence of the period 1969 to 1971 had undermined any legitimacy that the unionist government had maintained. Irish policy was now focused on persuading the British government to act decisively and largely ignored unionism. At the meeting between Heath and Lynch in September 1971, Lynch wanted the British to accept that the Irish government had a right to be consulted on Northern Ireland (at the very least). These meetings demonstrated how much had changed since 1969. The unionist position had been weakened appreciably though Brian Faulkner was not aware of this. Ted Heath, the British prime minister, had little sympathy for unionism. Lynch felt strong enough to suggest to Heath that ‘if Faulkner could not agree; then London and Dublin should proceed without his cooperation’ (p. 155).
Hennessey focuses on the four years after the imposition of direct rule. This was a time of improvisation and change and both the British and Irish governments were actively looking for a solution. The author provides a very close reading of British talks with representatives of the Provisional I.R.A. He concludes that a ceasefire was never possible on the terms sought by the I.R.A., as these were incompatible with British and Irish policy and would have prompted a ‘Protestant backlash’.
Hennessey’s extensive discussion of power sharing, the Council of Ireland and the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973 is very welcome. The close analysis of the documentation and policy positions provides important insights into the assumptions of the main participants. The Irish government was fortunate in that it could focus its diplomatic and political resources in an attempt to achieve its objectives. This can be seen in the chapter on ‘power sharing and the Council of Ireland’. The Irish feared that the British wanted a weak institutional arrangement between north and south to placate the unionists. For the Irish government any new institutional arrangement must be strong and ‘be able to bring North and South closer together and, in general, set them on converging paths rather than simply resolve North/South difficulties’ (p. 63).
The author’s assessment of the Sunningdale Agreement is that the Irish government and the S.D.L.P. achieved most of their objectives but unionism lost on its key constitutional aims. Faulkner was pressurised to make major concessions on the Council of Ireland though the Irish side refused to recognise the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. This set the scene for the Ulster workers’ strike and the end of the power sharing executive in 1974. The British government also ceased to be active defenders of the unionist position, another major achievement for Irish diplomacy.
Yet, Faulkner also recognised that power sharing was necessary if nationalists were to play a role in the future of the region. Hennessey is surely correct to emphasise that the period between 1969 and 1973 is one where unionism lost virtually every battle it fought, because the terms of engagement in Northern Ireland had changed but most unionists had not.
What both volumes demonstrate is that diplomacy alone is never enough to resolve ethno-religious conflicts such as that in Northern Ireland. It was to take over thirty years before an agreement could be achieved that all parties could agree to. Such agreement was never available during the period assessed by these books and the authors provide significant insights into why this was the case.
