A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  However, the bishops could not prevent the emergence of a lively homegrown literature mocking prevailing attitudes. And at times politicians stood up to them. On 13 May 1957 in the Co. Wexford village of Fethard-on-Sea Catholics began a boycott of their Protestant neighbours. The conflict was caused by the break-up of a mixed marriage. The Protestant wife took her two children to Belfast and offered her Catholic husband a reunion only if he would agree to the children being brought up as Protestants. During the boycott a Protestant music teacher lost eleven out of her twelve pupils; two Protestant shopkeepers lost their Catholic customers; and the Catholic teacher at the local Church of Ireland National School resigned.

  The Catholic Bishop of Ferns, James Staunton, rejected an appeal from the Church of Ireland to express disapproval. Bishop Browne described the boycott as ‘peaceful and moderate’, adding that ‘there seems to be a concerted campaign to entice or kidnap Catholic children and deprive them of their faith’. De Valera, who had always been at pains to maintain good relations with the Protestant minority, did not hesitate to condemn the boycott. In a long statement in the Dáil he said that ‘I regard this boycott as ill-conceived, ill-considered and futile…. I regard it as unjust and cruel to confound the innocent with the guilty.’ However, the clergy did not respond to his appeal to all ‘to bring this deplorable affair to a speedy end’. Bishop Browne, indeed, repeated his defence of the boycott, which dragged on for several more months.

  North of the border narrowness of vision was just as apparent. Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Hall-Thompson, Minister of Education, endured three years of rancorous denunciation from Protestant clergy before his Education Act became law in 1947. ‘There are no sacrifices we will not make, in order that our Protestant form of inheritance will be made secure,’ the Church of Ireland Dean of Belfast declared while making an appeal for a £20,000 fighting fund to oppose the bill, condemning in particular the sections scrapping compulsory Bible instruction. A former Education minister, the Rev. Professor Robert Corkey, asserted that state schools would be thrown open to ‘Jews, Agnostics, Roman Catholics and Atheists’. In 1949, when Brookeborough told a Grand Orange Lodge meeting that he would amend the scheme, Hall-Thompson, not surprisingly, resigned. And every year overtly sectarian remarks were routinely included in speeches delivered by sash-wearing dignitaries on 12 July.

  At least the Catholic bishops, the Orange Order, and the Dublin and Belfast governments were at one in condemning the IRA. In January 1956 the Catholic hierarchy issued a detailed statement, including a declaration ‘that it is a mortal sin for a Catholic to become or remain a member of an organisation or society, which arrogates to itself the right to bear arms or to use them against its own or another state’.

  On 10 June 1954, having previously observed that the sentry had no ammunition in his Sten gun, members of the IRA, led by Seán Garland, broke into Gough Barracks in Armagh and seized 250 rifles, thirty-seven Sten guns, nine Bren guns and forty training rifles. Taken in a lorry back over the border, the arms were quickly dispersed and hidden. It took more than another two years before the organisation launched ‘Operation Harvest’, an armed assault along the frontier. In driving sleet it began at midnight on 11 December 1956. A BBC transmitter was destroyed; Magherafelt courthouse was burnt to the ground; a Territorial Army building in Enniskillen was wrecked; and in Newry a B Special hut was set on fire—all in all, an unimpressive achievement for an operation involving around 150 volunteers.

  Over the next few years the IRA campaign continued fitfully. The high points were usually glorious failures, the most memorable being an attack on Brookeborough RUC barracks on New Year’s Day 1957. The volunteers’ mine failed to explode, and in the ensuing gun battle Seán South of Garryowen in Limerick city and Fergal O’Hanlon of Monaghan were mortally wounded. Their funerals attracted huge numbers of mourners, and songs commemorating them became enormously popular. Brookeborough’s government interned 256 men and one woman. Critical of the inter-party government’s hostility to the IRA, Seán MacBride of Clann na Poblachta forced a general election early in 1957. Four Sinn Féin TDs were among those elected. De Valera, returned to power, reintroduced internment in the Republic in July 1957 with devastating effect. Seán Lemass set up military tribunals in 1961. There had been 366 incidents by the end of 1957; but, squeezed both north and south, the IRA was rendered powerless. On 26 February 1962 the IRA Chief of Staff, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (one of those who had been elected Sinn Féin TDs in 1957), called off the campaign.

  Episode 249

  NEW BROOMS NORTH AND SOUTH

  In 1956 the Irish Times, on the fortieth anniversary of the Easter Rising, reflected: ‘If the present trend disclosed continues unchecked … Ireland will die—not in the remote unpredictable future, but quite soon.’ In the same year Dr T. K. Whitaker was appointed Secretary to the Department of Finance at the unusually young age of thirty-nine. With his colleagues, he began work on a document which attempted to find ways of revivifying the Republic’s economy. As he remembered in December 2006, ‘I was spurred on by a cartoon in Dublin Opinion showing Ireland a still beautiful but somewhat bedraggled lady asking a fortune teller “Have I a future?”’

  Whitaker presented his paper, Economic Development, to de Valera’s government in May 1958. In the opening section he wrote of a vicious circle

  of increasing emigration, resulting in a smaller domestic market depleted of initiative and skill, and a reduced incentive, whether for Irishmen or foreigners, to undertake and organise the productive enterprises which alone can provide increased employment opportunities and higher living standards.

  The answer, he argued, was to reduce and perhaps even eliminate protective import duties in an orderly way and to entice overseas concerns to set up in Ireland by sweeping away the regulations which had been discouraging them. As Whitaker explained later, ‘Protectionism, both in agriculture and industry, would have to give way to active participation in a free-trading world.’

  The Tánaiste, Seán Lemass, cautiously welcomed the report which, it could be argued, was the state’s first cohesive economic strategy document, a blueprint for the rapid modernisation. Most of the recommendations were incorporated in the White Paper Programme for Economic Expansion published in November 1958. This called for the staged abandonment of high protective tariffs and a five-year economically productive investment programme, with a target growth of 2 per cent per year.

  Only when de Valera bowed out in June 1959 did Lemass as Taoiseach throw himself with enthusiasm behind the implementation of the programme. The results were more spectacular than anyone in the Department of Finance could hope. The repeal of the restrictive Control of Manufactures Acts of 1932–4 allowed multinational firms to set up branches in the state with the same advantages as existing native manufacturers. These international firms exported much of their output, contributing heavily to the rise of the Gross National Product by an average of 4.5 per cent annually between 1959 and 1963. Emigration, which had been 44,427 in 1961, dropped to 12,226 in 1963, and by 1966 the population had risen by 66,000 above that of 1961.

  It must be admitted that Lemass had a fair wind behind him: the advanced economies were doing particularly well, and large corporations were looking for suitable places in which to invest and expand. The Taoiseach was largely able to silence the agonised howls of protest from employers and workers in industries previously cosseted by tariffs by pointing to the emergence of the EEC and its British-led counterpart EFTA. Nevertheless, Lemass showed considerable prowess in the way that he listened carefully to the advice of a talented cadre of senior civil servants to achieve a productive consensus, made sure that the public were kept fully informed about what he was doing, and brought employers and the trade unions together in the National Industrial and Economic Council to harmonise industrial relations. Lemass had been the architect of de Valera’s siege economy in the 1930s. It was a formidable task therefore to persuade his colleagues in Fianna Fáil that the time had come for
an about-turn, to consign to the waste-bin the ideals of self-sufficiency—so dear to de Valera—outlined originally by Arthur Griffith at the start of the century.

  The Northern Ireland government had no need to overcome ideological objections to opening up the region to overseas capital. Here the problem was staple export industries: engineering and shipbuilding were contracting and the linen industry, for long the most important industrial employer, was in a nose-dive towards near oblivion. Lord Brookeborough’s Finance minister, Captain Terence O’Neill, had shown flair and a professional approach in attracting multinationals to set up branches in Northern Ireland. This, however, was not enough to prevent unemployment from rising to 7.5 per cent in 1962. Brookeborough’s solution was to go cap-in-hand to London to ask for short-term subsidies for the ailing industries. The report of a working party chaired by Sir Robert Hall, published in October 1962, poured scorn on this approach. This led directly to Brookeborough’s fall and the appointment of O’Neill as Prime Minister in March 1963.

  A few days after his appointment O’Neill told the Ulster Unionist Council: ‘Our task will be literally to transform Ulster…. To achieve it will demand bold and imaginative measures.’ Later he said that his main aims were not only to make the region ‘economically stronger and prosperous’ but also ‘to build bridges between the two traditions within our community’. In short, O’Neill was the first Northern Ireland Prime Minister to state clearly that reconciliation was a central part of his programme.

  O’Neill proposed to achieve both his principal aims by economic modernisation through planning—an approach condemned by Brookeborough, O’Neill recalled, ‘as a socialist menace’. The new Prime Minister’s Whitaker was Tom Wilson, a professor of political economy at Glasgow University, who submitted his report at the end of 1964. Like Lemass, O’Neill worked closely with hand-picked civil servants of ability and imagination, including Jim Malley, Cecil Bateman and Ken Bloomfield. The government implemented Wilson’s recommendations straight away: a Ministry of Development was set up in January 1965; as previously recommended by Sir Robert Mathew in 1962, Belfast’s growth was to be restricted to encourage growth beyond the city; a motorway would be extended to Dungannon; a new city would be created between Portadown and Lurgan; and Larne, Bangor–Newtownards, Carrickfergus–Carnmoney, Antrim–Ballymena and Derry were designated as additional growth points.

  Very soon O’Neill’s fresh economic strategy seemed to be working. Multinational firms, including Grundig, British Enkalon, ICI, Michelin and Goodyear, were induced to establish branches in Northern Ireland. As was already happening in the Republic, international trade was so buoyant that capital came in search of labour. In addition, foreign businesses were able to use Northern Ireland to obtain unhindered access to the burgeoning British market and were attracted by generous incentives provided by the Ministry of Commerce. Both the Republic and Northern Ireland had other attractions for multinational executives: English spoken everywhere; familiar social institutions; apparent political stability; and inexpensive access to beautiful countryside, golf courses and uncrowded boating and angling centres.

  In Northern Ireland the run-down in employment opportunities in the older industries meant that O’Neill’s government had to run hard to avoid simply standing still. Still, manufacturing growth rate in the 1960s was 5.7 per cent, well ahead of the rest of the UK, and by the end of 1969 no fewer than 29,000 new jobs in manufacturing had been created. O’Neill put his faith in this drive for greater prosperity to improve community relations. But could improved living standards alone achieve this?

  O’Neill visited Catholic schools and hospitals, making sure he was photographed in the company of nuns; he met Cardinal William Conway, Archbishop of Armagh; and when Pope John XXIII died on 3 June 1963, he sent condolences to Rome, had the Union Flag flown at half-mast, and declared that the pope ‘had won widespread acclaim throughout the world because of his qualities of kindness and humanity’—in contrast to the Rev. Ian Paisley, who on the following day in the Ulster Hall excoriated ‘the Iscariots of Ulster’ who had expressed sympathy to the Vatican, assuring his packed audience that ‘This Romish man of sin is now in Hell.’ Undaunted, O’Neill began preparations to ease north–south relations by inviting Lemass to Stormont.

  Episode 250

  THE O’NEILL–LEMASS MEETING, 14 JANUARY 1965

  On the night of 13–14 January 1965 in Belfast St Brendan’s Church collapsed and two ships collided in the lough. Gale-force winds gusting to eighty miles an hour and accompanied by torrential rain swept Ulster. Captain Terence O’Neill lay awake for another reason. He, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, had invited the Taoiseach of the Irish Republic, Seán Lemass, to Stormont—and he had not informed his cabinet colleagues.

  Shortly after midday the Taoiseach stepped out of his Mercedes. ‘Welcome to the North,’ O’Neill said. There was no reply. Lemass finally broke his silence in the lavatory of Stormont House: ‘I’ll get into terrible trouble for this.’ The Taoiseach then relaxed and became more garrulous over a splendid lunch. Ken Whitaker, who accompanied him, remembered: ‘Our hosts thought the occasion worthy of champagne. The atmosphere was most friendly. I imagine Dr Paisley’s worst fears would be confirmed if I were to say that the red wine we drank was Châteauneuf-du-Pape!’

  Cabinet ministers smiled bravely for the cameras. They had just been summoned that morning. Only Brian Faulkner, Minister of Commerce, had met Lemass before; he subsequently recalled:

  The first thing Lemass said to me was ‘I hear you had a great day with the Westmeaths a few weeks ago.’ ‘That’s right indeed, I didn’t realise you knew.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the boys told me.’ He said, ‘Have you had a day with Charlie lately?’

  Charlie was the Taoiseach’s son-in-law, Charles Haughey, and Faulkner’s reminiscences about regular hunt meetings with him helped to break the ice. After discussions on possible north–south co-operation on tourism and economic matters, Lemass then left to return to Dublin.

  ‘I think I can say a road block has been removed,’ the Taoiseach said to waiting reporters when he arrived back in Dublin. Lemass had fought with Patrick Pearse in the GPO in 1916; he had been a member of Michael Collins’s ‘Squad’ which had assassinated fourteen suspected British secret service agents in Dublin on ‘Bloody Sunday’, 21 November 1920; and he had fought with the Irregulars opposed to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. He had said in an Oxford Union debate in 1959 that the British government should declare that it would like to see partition ended ‘by agreement among the Irish’. In the same speech, however, he asked: ‘Is it not common sense that the two existing communities in our small island should seek every opportunity of working together in practical matters for their mutual and common good?’

  Lemass had every reason to accept O’Neill’s invitation. Better relations with Britain were vital to the success of his economic strategy. Application to join the European Economic Community by both the UK and the Republic had been rejected in 1963, but it was confidently expected that acceptance would come in the near future. The only hope for membership was a determined retreat from protectionism. Back in April 1960 an Anglo-Irish trade agreement had started the process, and unilateral tariff reductions made in 1963 and 1964 had not caused the sky to fall in. Quite the contrary: the rise in the value of exports by 35 per cent in 1959–60 had encouraged Lemass to launch the Second Programme for Economic Expansion in 1964; an enlarged role for foreign enterprise was bringing in multinational firms promoting export-led growth; the numbers of visitors from America and the European mainland had increased fourfold to 1,200,000 in 1964; and emigration was ceasing to sap the nation’s strength.

  On the day after the O’Neill–Lemass meeting a car, trailing a very large Ulster flag, drove to Stormont, where Ian Paisley’s followers held up placards which read: ‘IRA murderer welcomed at Stormont’; ‘Down with the Lundys’; and ‘No Mass, no Lemass’. The former cabinet minister Edmond Warnock issued a statement castig
ating O’Neill ‘for doing within a couple of months what all our enemies failed to achieve in forty years. He has thrown the whole Ulster question back into the political arena.’ In fact no widespread hostile reaction greeted the meeting. O’Neill returned the Taoiseach’s visit by going to Dublin, and in November he went to the electorate, increasing the Unionist vote substantially.

  The O’Neill–Lemass meeting was little more than a signal that the two premiers wished for an improvement in relations between north and south. But O’Neill fatefully believed that economic advance would, almost alone, heal the bitter divisions between Catholics and Protestants in the region. His gestures of friendship to nationalists were not followed up by practical reforms which would begin to eradicate the institutional unfairness which had prevailed for decades. Paisley, in his campaign ‘O’Neill Must Go’, warned the Prime Minister that he would reap the whirlwind. Nervous of traditional unionist reaction, O’Neill, by raising Catholic expectations, brought about intense frustration by lack of action. This was to cause him to reap a whirlwind quite different from that envisaged by Paisley.

  The introduction of the welfare state, helped by transfers from the Treasury in London, had magnified unfairness. Vastly increased expenditure by local authorities in particular had increased opportunities for discrimination in job appointments and in the allocation of council houses. O’Neill did nothing to undo the meticulous manipulation of local government boundaries to Unionist advantage, begun in 1923. Owing to his party’s fear that more Nationalist councillors would be elected, he did not follow Britain’s lead, given as far back as 1949, to introduce universal suffrage in local government elections. As late as 1969 Catholics held only six senior judicial posts out of a total of sixty-eight. There were twenty-two public boards by 1969, with 332 members in all, but only 49 were Catholics. Only 15.4 per cent of 8,122 employed in the publicly owned electricity, gas and water industries were Catholics. Geoffrey Copcutt, the Englishman appointed to head the design team for the new city between Portadown and Lurgan, resigned because the plans did not include a special development plan for Derry, a predominantly Catholic city with acute unemployment—and gerrymandered to ensure a permanent Unionist majority in the Corporation. Copcutt also supported Derry’s bid to be the home of a second university. O’Neill provoked outrage by implementing the recommendation of the Lockwood Committee (which had no Catholic as a member) in 1965 that Coleraine should be the site for the university. And the decision to name the new city Craigavon was hardly likely to promote intercommunal harmony.