by Gary Murphy
Nobody has yet told us that this is a condition of a membership of the EEC. On the other hand, nobody so loves us as to want us in the EEC on our own terms. The Community has difficulties enough without adding those introduced by a ‘contrary’ new member who will bring the Community no particular benefits but will inflict on it additional problems including (as they might well view it) this tiresome forty year old problem with Britain … It is well to remind ourselves that it is our own propaganda which has given such an artificial significance to NATO in relation to partition. There is, in fact, no necessary incompatibility between joining NATO and maintaining our stand on partition … We say we agree with the aims of the North Atlantic Treaty and are not ideologically neutral. But are these not in danger of being regarded as empty professions when effect is deliberately not given to them because of preoccupation with a national problem which we have lived with for forty years? To others it may seem that we are treating a narrow national interest as being more important than unity and co-operation in the defence of Western civilisation.92
Whitaker also argued that the Government should not press its neutral status in terms of the Swiss or the Swedes, who were ideological neutrals and whose neutrality, as such, ruled them out of membership of the EEC even in an associate capacity. Notwithstanding this critical approach, Whitaker advised Ryan that the Government should adopt a wait-and-see approach to the question of NATO, while insisting that it should not ignore the real political and defence requirements that would in time come with membership.
The fact that much of the diplomatic wrangling about political issues went through Whitaker is significant in that it shows the crucial role of Finance with regard to membership of the EEC. While External Affairs had played key roles in relation to Marshall Aid and other European commitments, Finance had taken the lead when it came to decisions regarding Europe, despite these matters not being formally economic. External Affairs – which had harboured some doubts about the EEC – was effectively sidelined as Lemass took control of the debate and interacted more with Whitaker and Finance on the issues of the EEC and NATO.93Ultimately, for Whitaker, the economic and political roles of membership were intertwined. He bluntly told his minister:
If we want to safeguard our economic future – and on this, basically, our independence and influence in the world rests – we should not ourselves raise obstacles to being admitted as members of the EEC. To say that we would withdraw our application if membership of NATO were insisted upon would be extremely unfortunate.94
The NATO question had, to an extent, dogged the application, and Lemass accepted that he would have to reassure the Community on this question. On 5 February the Minister for Lands, Michael Moran, addressed the Chamber of Commerce in his native Castlebar on the application issue. He pointed out that it would be unrealistic to ignore the fact that all members of the EEC were in NATO, and that neutrality in the context of East-West divisions was something that had not been envisaged by the Irish people. He famously went on to argue that between communism and the free world:
Neutrality … is not a policy to which we would even wish to appear committed … I mention this to emphasise that we are entering negotiations for membership of the EEC without any pre-committed attitude, political or otherwise. Our whole history and cultural tradition and outlook have been bound up with that of Europe for past ages. We have, I believe, a full part to play in this day and age in the integration and development of a United States of Europe, and towards this end it may be necessary for us to share any political decisions for the common good.95
This speech caused quite an uproar within both Fianna Fáil and in the country at large. While there is no substantive evidence to show Lemass was well informed as to what Moran would say, as a known Cabinet disciplinarian it seems inconceivable that Lemass would not have known and approved of Moran’s speech, hinting as it did at a fundamental change in Irish foreign policy.96At a parliamentary party meeting nine days later, Lemass ‘gave a lengthy explanation to the party’ of Moran’s speech.97While the minutes of this meeting are no clearer than that, it does appear that Lemass was able to convince his colleagues that the economic benefits of membership of the Community were paramount, and, in any event, there was no stipulation that entry into NATO was a prerequisite to joining the EEC. This was something the US embassy picked up on:
It is much to be doubted that the Government wished to prepare the people of Ireland for admission into NATO … Rather it would seem that the Government felt that the time had come for the public at large to start thinking about what is inevitable if Ireland becomes a member of the EEC, namely a marked change in its present neutral status and complete independence of action … By raising the subject of NATO, the Government was sure of stirring the public into awareness that there were significant political implications in the application for membership in the EEC.98
In the October 1961 general election campaign, Lemass had vowed that a Fianna Fáil Government would bring Ireland into the EEC. It was the tangible benefits of economic expansion that brought about this vow, and Lemass was not about to let the NATO question interfere with that. The point about political integration was also addressed within the civil service. At a meeting of department secretaries in March 1962, J.C. Nagle of Agriculture wondered whether the emphasis placed on NATO in some preliminary discussions was intended to convey the message that some countries were opposed to Irish entry into the EEC on grounds other than economic.99Adding to this, Frank Biggar claimed: ‘I would not indeed think it impossible that, if we fail to convince on the political side, our economic difficulties might be used as a device to block our membership application’.100Politically, Lemass recognised the extent to which the EEC required assurances on a number of issues. In the area of foreign policy Lemass stated that the Government accepted its obligation in this field fully:
Economic integration is not regarded as an end in itself but as a step towards political union, and is, of course, in itself a political develop-ment of major significance. Indeed the removal of all causes of economic conflict between the member states is a very great political achievement.101
What worried the Government, and Finance in particular, was the possibility that political questions would impede Ireland’s entry and subsequently stifle its economic development.
The terrible cost
At a more basic level, the official application also pointed out that an understanding of the Community’s character and aims was not confined to the Government but had come to be shared by the Irish people generally through debates in Parliament, widespread press comment and a great deal of discussion by trade unions, employers’ organisations, farmers’ groups and similar bodies.102Indeed, there was a remarkable sense of homogeneity about the application. During the 1961 general election, the three major parties openly supported entry into the EEC, leaving it to independent socialists Noël Browne and Jack McQuillan to be lone voices in the Dáil in opposing the application.103Speeches by all Fine Gael’s important figures – such as James Dillon, Gerard Sweetman, Richard Mulcahy, Liam Cosgrave, T.F. O’Higgins, Gerry L’Estrange and Seán MacEoin – emphasised in the campaign the need to develop policies conducive to benefiting from membership of the EEC, and placed great emphasis on the need to prepare sufficiently to meet the new challenges that membership would bring. Cosgrave explained to an audience in Dalkey what he considered to be the key issue of the campaign: ‘this country is facing a new era and that with developments in Europe conditions in the future will be quite different’.104Labour’s 4,000-word manifesto did not mention the EEC once. While its new leader, Brendan Corish, argued that strong Labour representation in the Dáil was necessary as drastic changes would come about with membership, Niamh Puirséil perceptively points out that voters could be forgiven for wondering what the point was in having strong Labour representation when it did not have a strong policy on Ireland’s role in Europe.105In fact, Labour’s position was largely due to the influence of former pa
rty leader, William Norton, who regarded the Common Market as a ‘bulwark against communism’.106
At a wider level, the major newspapers and interest groups were all notionally pro-European in outlook. Nicholas Harman of the Economist noted such unanimity in an interview with Lemass: ‘Ireland’s application to the Common Market is a revolutionary step in Irish history, yet it seems that Irishmen, irrespective of their political party, are almost solidly behind the Government.’107
For the most part, the academic economic community was also in favour of Ireland joining the EEC. There was, however, one significant opponent: David O’Mahony was a college lecturer who later succeeded John Busteed as professor of economics in University College, Cork, and who published in the same year, 1964, the first textbook on the Irish economy by a professional economist; he opposed entry on the grounds that Ireland would be as well off in GATT following free trade policies from within that organisation. He argued that there was nothing to stop Ireland staying out if Britain entered, as in that case the British-Irish labour market would be broken up into two markets that would enable the country to stand a good chance of being able to turn improvements in productive efficiency into lower prices. This would also happen if Ireland entered and the British stayed out. In the latter case, Irish products would not enjoy free entry into the Common Market, which would include Britain. But if Ireland pursued a free trade policy, there would be no obstacle to it becoming a member of GATT:
It should then be comparatively easy for us to make an agreement with the EEC within the framework of GATT providing for the free entry which its products would enjoy into this country by virtue of its free trade policy. Ultimately indeed such a course might perhaps be the most desirable one for this country to follow. It would probably be regarded in a very favourable light by the community which quite evidently is not over anxious to dilute its membership with the fringe countries of Europe.108
Others were worried by the approach taken by Lemass. A commentator in Hibernia in late 1962 wondered whether there were alternatives to full entry, claiming that, though Lemass maintained Ireland could undertake the responsibilities of full membership:
No man in Ireland is more painfully aware of the limitations of Irish industry – limitations of size, of management, of capital and of enterprise … Lemass may well be right in saying that Ireland can bear full membership but has he really counted the terrible cost?109
Strangely, this writer declared that the majority of people in the country were leaderless, and that a great opportunity existed for the Labour Party to fight and win the next election by running on an anti-EEC platform. He accused Fianna Fáil of playing politics with the Common Market issue:
Nothing could be more harmful to a democratic community than that a major segment of opinion, and perhaps even a majority of the electorate should be unable to find political expression for their hopes and fears on an issue of such magnitude … It would be a poor state of affairs if our people were to escape great and unnecessary hardship because the Europeans more conscientiously assessed our situation and our well-being than our leaders to whom we had entrusted our affairs.110
It would appear, however, that this was a voice in the wilderness. The Labour Party was not ideologically opposed to entry at this stage (although it did oppose the later successful application in 1972). Furthermore, the Catholic church offered no significant opposition to the application, though some of its members did warn of the dangers if the country joined. One contributor to the January 1962 edition of Christus Rex sounded a note of caution:
Before we decide finally to enter the EEC we should fully consider its very far reaching obligations which entail a surrender of so much control over our own ‘household’ and of independence of action in economic, social, and perhaps political fields. Also entering EEC will be like swimming out into the open sea from the former shelter of a bathing pool: unless our various branches of agriculture and industry can keep pace with those in other countries they will certainly be submerged without any hole of ‘protection’. Assuredly the Common Market is no ‘gift on the silver salver’ but only an opportunity to be grasped with resolute energy – if at all.111
Nevertheless, there was no resistance on the part of the church to EEC membership, as the hierarchy had no collective stance on the issue. While one or two of the bishops had been outspoken on economic issues – most notably Bishop Cornelius Lucey of Cork, who was a strong defender of small farmers, and Bishop William Philbin of Clonfert, who wrote substantially on social issues – as a group the hierarchy do not seem to have commented on the EEC. Philbin was of the view that it was Ireland itself that was largely responsible for its classification as an underdeveloped country, and, as Diarmaid Ferriter points out, ‘for the loss of many of its more adventurous citizens, who would look for the rewards that more advanced economies could offer’.112Philbin – along with other clerical sociologists of the 1950s and early 1960s – saw it as his duty to point out the failures of rural self-sufficiency, which had been a key feature of Irish revolutionary rhetoric.113Indeed, Lemass and Cardinal William Conway both stressed in separate interviews in 1969 the limited role the church had in influencing Government policy in the economic sphere.114
The Catholic journals did offer some critical comment on the application, with Studies and Christus Rex opening their pages for commentary. It was William Philbin who offered the most cogent analysis of the application from the clergy, in an address entitled ‘The Irish and the New Europe’, which was reprinted in Studies. For Philbin, the challenge of the Common Market was ‘above everything else a moral challenge’. He noted that while it seemed to be commonly accepted that Ireland would receive a trade advantage from membership, the benefits of such would not just be confined to the field of international trade:
Our admission to the Common Market might well provide the stimulus we need, nationally and personally, to use our talents and resources generally to better account. The material factor might react favourably on the spiritual, making a two-way traffic as the body serves the soul. Enrichment in the field of human character is a better justification of the risks we are taking than any prospects of enhanced prosperity, because our personal qualities are, ultimately, the only possessions we need care about. Indeed personal improvement is the only adequate reason, in the last reckoning, for any corporate enterprise.115
In essence, the Common Market – as perceived by Philbin – had formalised a pattern that was already implicit in the economic pattern of modern society. He therefore called on the whole population to interest themselves in the industrial concerns of the country:
Unless Irish people in our present circumstances of combined opportunity and peril shoulder the responsibilities that modern social organisation is imposing among us, unless we are prepared to be a nation in the twentieth-century sense, we had better forget our European ambitions and settle for something much more primitive, and forget too our hopes of staunching the flow of our life-blood in emigration … And an essential condition for advance is that we should think and act as a nation in the economic field, regarding lesser loyalties as subsidiary to our general duty of citizenship. If individuals or groups that hold strong economic positions of one kind or another press their advantage to the detriment of the public good, they will make even the most enlightened national planning and even the most elaborate material provision quite futile.116
As we have seen, the farmers, unions and employers were all pressing their claims with Government when it seemed that entry into the EEC was at hand. Ultimately, Philbin declared that membership of the EEC was a good thing for Ireland, but that sectional interests would have to take a back seat for the overall good of society:
Leadership or planning will not be enough. We shall all be to blame if we fail or only half-succeed … Let us then, in the midst of all our detailed and technical preparation for the Common Market, not neglect to persuade ourselves about what it entails in terms of ordinary human character, of moral
stamina. We are meeting in the current phase a moment of truth. Let us see and accept that a challenge faces us, simply as men and women, to prove what we are made of.117
Philbin’s lecture – originally entitled ‘The moral challenge of the Common Market’ – is the only substantive statement from a member of the hierarchy on the question of membership. Other clergy writing on the application followed Philbin’s lead and urged the economic interest groups to play a larger role in the policy process and to not leave everything to the state. James Kavanagh of UCD, writing in Christus Rex, declared that ‘looking to the state is a national disease. Our industrialists – many of them – have been feather-bedded for too long and only a few of them are aware that management is expected to be enterprising’.118Those few Catholic writers who did write on economic issues were basically advocating a quasi-corporatist approach to the economy, and calling on Government and interest groups to work together.
Whilst domestic discussion developed, a meeting was held in Brussels on 18 January 1962 to explore some of the questions raised by the Irish application. The Irish Press reported that Lemass was ‘optimistic’ that full membership of the Common Market could be obtained.119The European Commission was not convinced at first that Ireland could fulfil the obligations of membership, noting that Ireland had special problems in respect of membership, and that these had to be given serious consideration even prior to the opening of formal negotiations. Indeed, the Irish Government was worried that the Council of Ministers might separate the Irish application from those of Denmark and Britain, both of whom has been advised that agreement had been reached on the opening of negotiations.120
Lemass was told that in view of the existing commercial relations between Ireland and Britain, it would be difficult to begin negotiations with the Irish Government until at least some progress had been made towards a Community agreement with Britain. Lemass maintained after this meeting that he was ‘satisfied with the results of his first contact with the commission’, and that the Government would be pressing on with its application for full membership.121A more ominous note was sounded by the Guardian in Britain when it declared: ‘although the Irish application has been officially welcomed, there is no doubt that individuals, among the French delegation especially, have severe reservations about the application’.122This probably related to worries the French had about any special concessions the Irish would seek. Yet some members of the European Commission saw merit in the Irish application. J.C.B. MacCarthy noted the reaction of the Belgian commissioner, Jean Rey, who saw: