PRC-UTE
3rd January 2005, 07:18
'Irish have taken the point': British envoy on Dublin bombs
'Irish have taken the point': British envoy on Dublin bombs
Sunday Business Post
02 January 2005 By Rory Rapple
"I think the Irish have taken the point." That was how the then
British Ambassador to Ireland, Sir Arthur Galsworthy, responded to
the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 17, 1974.
Analysing the Irish reaction to the atrocity, he noted that "there is
no sign of any general anti-Northern Protestant reaction'`, adding
that "the predictable attempt by the IRA to pin the blame on the
British (British agents, the SAS, etc) has made no headway at all'`.
While the then taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, blamed "everybody who has
practised violence or preached violence'` for the outrages, the
minister for foreign affairs Garret FitzGerald told Galsworthy
that "the government's view was that popular hostility appeared to be
directed more against the IRA'`.
Galsworthy took a certain pleasure in the hardening of attitudes
against republicans. He noted that an "official IRA candidate'` for
the local elections in south-west Dublin was "roughed up by a working-
class crowd'`.
The Irish Civil Rights Association (ICRA) also cancelled its normal
Sunday afternoon demonstration outside the ambassador's
residence "ostensibly on the grounds that the Garda would be better
employed than in protecting me, but perhaps in reality because the
ICRA has detected the prevailing anti-IRA mood'`.
Galsworthy added facetiously: "I almost felt neglected."
The ambassador later wrote: "It is only now that the South has
experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North
has sought for so long."
Despite these feelings of schadenfreude, he told the Northern Ireland
Office (NIO) that "it would be. . . a psychological mistake for us to
rub this point in . . . I think the Irish have taken the point'`.
During the period of the loyalist workers' strike, British officials
at the Northern Ireland Office – JN Allen and Michael Oatley - were
in regular contact with the UVF leadership.
Members of the UVF, according to the Barron Report, were responsible
for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
Contact was made with Ken Gibson of the UVF on at least three
occasions in 1974 – on May 21, 27 and 29. No reference was made to
the explosions in the south, and the talks centred on internal
loyalist politics. The UVF supported power-sharing involving everyone
except Republicans.
The NIO officials noted after the meeting of May 27 that "the UVF's
relationship with us has become very strange. They are desperately in
need of advice as to how to achieve their aims of ensuring working-
class - and above all UVF-participation in politics and they seek
this from us even though they know that there are basic differences
between them and HMG [Her Majesty's Government] on the strike."
By September, Northern Secretary Merlyn Rees was telling the British
prime minister Harold Wilson: "We have successfully encouraged
moderate leaders of the UVF in following a political path. They are
sadly naive and ill-equipped to do so, and are under constant
pressure from their more militant colleagues, but they are also
susceptible to influence and officials have kept closely in touch
with them."
Rees said his agenda for the loyalist paramilitaries was to
contain "the very dangerous threat of further violence'`, and to
establish a point of influence with the loyalist coordinating
committee "likely to control any attempted repetition of the Ulster
Workers' Council strike'`.
Further IRA violence, he said, would cut the ground from under the
UVF moderates.
Galsworthy's hints that republicanism was facing something of a
crisis in public confidence dovetailed with the general British
belief that the Provisional IRA was suffering from serious tensions
between its leaders in the Republic and the organisation in the North.
In a particularly acerbic memo, dated June 11, the British Ambassador
alleged that leading Provo Daithi Ó Conaill had walked out of hunger
striker Michael Gaughan's funeral Mass because of his need to appeal
to Northern republicans. Ó Conaill was protesting at a sermon which
had criticised the IRA campaign and had elicited protests from the
congregation.
Galsworthy noted: "The voices that called out their protests in the
church spoke with Northern accents.'' He added: "This factor [might
have] played its part in deciding O'Connell to walk as a `tough'
gesture. He could hardly seem to acquiesce, in the presence of
Northern members of his organisation, if anyone – least of all a
Catholic priest - [implied] that there should be no war against the
British."
The Dublin middle-class, the ambassador wrote, were recoiling
from "the Gaughan road-show. . .with much the same feeling of disgust
as we do'`.
Brian Major, another British diplomat, noted with some satisfaction
that one bus leaving Dublin for the North after the arrival of
Gaughan's remains in Dublin Airport was "stoned by a crowd of youths
in north Dublin'`.
He marvelled that, while Fianna Fáil's Bodenstown commemoration had
only received five column inches in the Irish Times, Official Sinn
Féin's commemoration had been given 40 column inches.
Earlier in the year, on February 13, Galsworthy said that he had
received an anonymous telephone call purporting to be from
Provisional Sinn Féin asking whether the British government might opt
to legalise the party in the North before the general election.
The caller, who stressed that a "top-level meeting'' of Provos was
debating the question, stated that "certain PIRA leaders were
extremely anxious about the problem'` because "they were under
extreme pressure from a group of `Trotskyite socialists' who were
trying to take over the movement from within'`.
This new group, the caller alleged, was based in Belfast but was
different from the "old hard-line gang controlled by [Seamus]
Twomey. . . it had outside help, and had gained a measure of control
over the main arms supply'`.
The caller told Galsworthy that the cell had only been uncovered
during the previous week, and insisted that "it was urgently
necessary for HMG to react helpfully'`.
When Brian Faulkner, John Hume and Paddy Devlin were canvassed about
the notion of Sinn Féin standing in the general election, they "gave
the news . . . a cautious welcome'`. Garret FitzGerald, however,
proposed that the party should be allowed to stand "precisely so they
could expose themselves to defeat'`.
In any event, according to Galsworthy, the Army Council had decided
not to take part in the election by a small majority, but there had
been "a real division of opinion with many seeking away out from
their present policy of violence'`.
The IRA campaign, especially in Belfast, was regarded as particularly
subversive of British commitment. The commanding officer of the
British Army in Northern Ireland, Lieutenant General Sir Frank King,
told Wilson on April 18 that "he did not think it was an exaggeration
that fire bombs could win the war. The security problems which they
posed were like `shoplifting in reverse': ie, you had to prevent
terrorists from leaving small parcels in stores."
King added that morale in the army had plummeted, as "some soldiers
were now on their fourth and fifth tour of duty in the Province . . .
[and] there was also dissatisfaction that soldiers transferred to
Ulster from Germany lost their entitlement to duty-free cigarettes'`.
The prime minister was aware of general British discontent about the
increased military presence in the North, which was now approaching
its fifth anniversary.
On May 13, Wilson read details of an "IRA plot'` to the House of
Commons.
The plan - available in manuscript form in the Public Record Office
in London, as it was when taken by security forces during a raid in
Belfast - was explicitly seized upon for its propaganda value,
according to accompanying memos.
Wilson's speech, which went through many drafts, stated that the
IRA's aim was to carry out a "scorched earth policy'` in loyalist
areas of Belfast, and "by means of ruthless and indiscriminate
violence, to foment inter-sectarian hatred and a degree of chaos'`,
creating a situation "in which the IRA could present themselves as
the protectors of the Catholic population'`.
In a letter to Wilson that November, Paddy Devlin of the SDLP
denounced this revelation as "pure science fiction material which no
one but the loyalist agitators took seriously at a time when the
Provos were not in a position in Belfast to occupy a telephone
kiosk'`.
Despite Wilson's allegations in May, the House of Commons had removed
the ban on Sinn Féin and the UVF in the North the day after his
speech. The following month, the IRA bombed the Houses of Parliament,
damaging Westminster Hall. Subsequent bombs in Britain were detonated
in pubs in Guildford and Birmingham in October and November
respectively.
By September, Merlyn Rees speculated that the IRA Army Council in
Dublin seemed "increasingly isolated but probably still [had] the
power of deciding whether to intensify or end the campaign'`.
The British government believed that the Provos were looking for an
opportunity to call a ceasefire, because they had unilaterally
approached them in early summer "for political discussions
(willingness to discuss a declaration of intent to withdraw)".
According to Rees, British reluctance to "respond'` caused "confusion
and some resentment'' among the IRA.
Irish state papers
The military files opened in the National Archives in Dublin for 1974
deal mostly with the minutiae of the whereabouts and activities of
suspected "subversives'`, including Tomás MacGiolla, Desmond Greaves,
Deasún Breathnach, Declan Bree, Desmond Fennell, Cathal Goulding,
Captain James Kelly and Ruairi Ó Brádaigh, among others.
The information, often garnered from attendance at public meetings
around the country, can appear to be inconsequential, and raises
questions about how such intelligence could have been gathered.
For example, a July 14 memo notes that "Harald Stoeren wants Rory
Brady to send him IRA songs [and] knows Rory Brady has been in
contact with the head of Norwegian broadcasting'`.
A military file about Daithi Ó Conaill is more bewildering, as almost
every article within it has been withheld from the general release,
apart from a newspaper cutting, some general notes and a particularly
strange page giving instructions on how to make a "kitchen sink H
bomb'`.
The year ended on a more peaceful note. Following consultation
between Protestant churchmen and Provisional Sinn Féin in the Co
Clare town of Feakle in December, the IRA Army Council declared a
ceasefire, dependent on a limitation of security force activity in
the North. It issued proposals to the British government demanding a
commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to
draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners. The
details of these developments were on British government stationery
in the National Archives in Dublin.
Rory Rapple is a Fellow in History at St John's College, Cambridge.
'Irish have taken the point': British envoy on Dublin bombs
Sunday Business Post
02 January 2005 By Rory Rapple
"I think the Irish have taken the point." That was how the then
British Ambassador to Ireland, Sir Arthur Galsworthy, responded to
the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 17, 1974.
Analysing the Irish reaction to the atrocity, he noted that "there is
no sign of any general anti-Northern Protestant reaction'`, adding
that "the predictable attempt by the IRA to pin the blame on the
British (British agents, the SAS, etc) has made no headway at all'`.
While the then taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, blamed "everybody who has
practised violence or preached violence'` for the outrages, the
minister for foreign affairs Garret FitzGerald told Galsworthy
that "the government's view was that popular hostility appeared to be
directed more against the IRA'`.
Galsworthy took a certain pleasure in the hardening of attitudes
against republicans. He noted that an "official IRA candidate'` for
the local elections in south-west Dublin was "roughed up by a working-
class crowd'`.
The Irish Civil Rights Association (ICRA) also cancelled its normal
Sunday afternoon demonstration outside the ambassador's
residence "ostensibly on the grounds that the Garda would be better
employed than in protecting me, but perhaps in reality because the
ICRA has detected the prevailing anti-IRA mood'`.
Galsworthy added facetiously: "I almost felt neglected."
The ambassador later wrote: "It is only now that the South has
experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North
has sought for so long."
Despite these feelings of schadenfreude, he told the Northern Ireland
Office (NIO) that "it would be. . . a psychological mistake for us to
rub this point in . . . I think the Irish have taken the point'`.
During the period of the loyalist workers' strike, British officials
at the Northern Ireland Office – JN Allen and Michael Oatley - were
in regular contact with the UVF leadership.
Members of the UVF, according to the Barron Report, were responsible
for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
Contact was made with Ken Gibson of the UVF on at least three
occasions in 1974 – on May 21, 27 and 29. No reference was made to
the explosions in the south, and the talks centred on internal
loyalist politics. The UVF supported power-sharing involving everyone
except Republicans.
The NIO officials noted after the meeting of May 27 that "the UVF's
relationship with us has become very strange. They are desperately in
need of advice as to how to achieve their aims of ensuring working-
class - and above all UVF-participation in politics and they seek
this from us even though they know that there are basic differences
between them and HMG [Her Majesty's Government] on the strike."
By September, Northern Secretary Merlyn Rees was telling the British
prime minister Harold Wilson: "We have successfully encouraged
moderate leaders of the UVF in following a political path. They are
sadly naive and ill-equipped to do so, and are under constant
pressure from their more militant colleagues, but they are also
susceptible to influence and officials have kept closely in touch
with them."
Rees said his agenda for the loyalist paramilitaries was to
contain "the very dangerous threat of further violence'`, and to
establish a point of influence with the loyalist coordinating
committee "likely to control any attempted repetition of the Ulster
Workers' Council strike'`.
Further IRA violence, he said, would cut the ground from under the
UVF moderates.
Galsworthy's hints that republicanism was facing something of a
crisis in public confidence dovetailed with the general British
belief that the Provisional IRA was suffering from serious tensions
between its leaders in the Republic and the organisation in the North.
In a particularly acerbic memo, dated June 11, the British Ambassador
alleged that leading Provo Daithi Ó Conaill had walked out of hunger
striker Michael Gaughan's funeral Mass because of his need to appeal
to Northern republicans. Ó Conaill was protesting at a sermon which
had criticised the IRA campaign and had elicited protests from the
congregation.
Galsworthy noted: "The voices that called out their protests in the
church spoke with Northern accents.'' He added: "This factor [might
have] played its part in deciding O'Connell to walk as a `tough'
gesture. He could hardly seem to acquiesce, in the presence of
Northern members of his organisation, if anyone – least of all a
Catholic priest - [implied] that there should be no war against the
British."
The Dublin middle-class, the ambassador wrote, were recoiling
from "the Gaughan road-show. . .with much the same feeling of disgust
as we do'`.
Brian Major, another British diplomat, noted with some satisfaction
that one bus leaving Dublin for the North after the arrival of
Gaughan's remains in Dublin Airport was "stoned by a crowd of youths
in north Dublin'`.
He marvelled that, while Fianna Fáil's Bodenstown commemoration had
only received five column inches in the Irish Times, Official Sinn
Féin's commemoration had been given 40 column inches.
Earlier in the year, on February 13, Galsworthy said that he had
received an anonymous telephone call purporting to be from
Provisional Sinn Féin asking whether the British government might opt
to legalise the party in the North before the general election.
The caller, who stressed that a "top-level meeting'' of Provos was
debating the question, stated that "certain PIRA leaders were
extremely anxious about the problem'` because "they were under
extreme pressure from a group of `Trotskyite socialists' who were
trying to take over the movement from within'`.
This new group, the caller alleged, was based in Belfast but was
different from the "old hard-line gang controlled by [Seamus]
Twomey. . . it had outside help, and had gained a measure of control
over the main arms supply'`.
The caller told Galsworthy that the cell had only been uncovered
during the previous week, and insisted that "it was urgently
necessary for HMG to react helpfully'`.
When Brian Faulkner, John Hume and Paddy Devlin were canvassed about
the notion of Sinn Féin standing in the general election, they "gave
the news . . . a cautious welcome'`. Garret FitzGerald, however,
proposed that the party should be allowed to stand "precisely so they
could expose themselves to defeat'`.
In any event, according to Galsworthy, the Army Council had decided
not to take part in the election by a small majority, but there had
been "a real division of opinion with many seeking away out from
their present policy of violence'`.
The IRA campaign, especially in Belfast, was regarded as particularly
subversive of British commitment. The commanding officer of the
British Army in Northern Ireland, Lieutenant General Sir Frank King,
told Wilson on April 18 that "he did not think it was an exaggeration
that fire bombs could win the war. The security problems which they
posed were like `shoplifting in reverse': ie, you had to prevent
terrorists from leaving small parcels in stores."
King added that morale in the army had plummeted, as "some soldiers
were now on their fourth and fifth tour of duty in the Province . . .
[and] there was also dissatisfaction that soldiers transferred to
Ulster from Germany lost their entitlement to duty-free cigarettes'`.
The prime minister was aware of general British discontent about the
increased military presence in the North, which was now approaching
its fifth anniversary.
On May 13, Wilson read details of an "IRA plot'` to the House of
Commons.
The plan - available in manuscript form in the Public Record Office
in London, as it was when taken by security forces during a raid in
Belfast - was explicitly seized upon for its propaganda value,
according to accompanying memos.
Wilson's speech, which went through many drafts, stated that the
IRA's aim was to carry out a "scorched earth policy'` in loyalist
areas of Belfast, and "by means of ruthless and indiscriminate
violence, to foment inter-sectarian hatred and a degree of chaos'`,
creating a situation "in which the IRA could present themselves as
the protectors of the Catholic population'`.
In a letter to Wilson that November, Paddy Devlin of the SDLP
denounced this revelation as "pure science fiction material which no
one but the loyalist agitators took seriously at a time when the
Provos were not in a position in Belfast to occupy a telephone
kiosk'`.
Despite Wilson's allegations in May, the House of Commons had removed
the ban on Sinn Féin and the UVF in the North the day after his
speech. The following month, the IRA bombed the Houses of Parliament,
damaging Westminster Hall. Subsequent bombs in Britain were detonated
in pubs in Guildford and Birmingham in October and November
respectively.
By September, Merlyn Rees speculated that the IRA Army Council in
Dublin seemed "increasingly isolated but probably still [had] the
power of deciding whether to intensify or end the campaign'`.
The British government believed that the Provos were looking for an
opportunity to call a ceasefire, because they had unilaterally
approached them in early summer "for political discussions
(willingness to discuss a declaration of intent to withdraw)".
According to Rees, British reluctance to "respond'` caused "confusion
and some resentment'' among the IRA.
Irish state papers
The military files opened in the National Archives in Dublin for 1974
deal mostly with the minutiae of the whereabouts and activities of
suspected "subversives'`, including Tomás MacGiolla, Desmond Greaves,
Deasún Breathnach, Declan Bree, Desmond Fennell, Cathal Goulding,
Captain James Kelly and Ruairi Ó Brádaigh, among others.
The information, often garnered from attendance at public meetings
around the country, can appear to be inconsequential, and raises
questions about how such intelligence could have been gathered.
For example, a July 14 memo notes that "Harald Stoeren wants Rory
Brady to send him IRA songs [and] knows Rory Brady has been in
contact with the head of Norwegian broadcasting'`.
A military file about Daithi Ó Conaill is more bewildering, as almost
every article within it has been withheld from the general release,
apart from a newspaper cutting, some general notes and a particularly
strange page giving instructions on how to make a "kitchen sink H
bomb'`.
The year ended on a more peaceful note. Following consultation
between Protestant churchmen and Provisional Sinn Féin in the Co
Clare town of Feakle in December, the IRA Army Council declared a
ceasefire, dependent on a limitation of security force activity in
the North. It issued proposals to the British government demanding a
commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to
draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners. The
details of these developments were on British government stationery
in the National Archives in Dublin.
Rory Rapple is a Fellow in History at St John's College, Cambridge.