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The Reluctant Taoiseach

Page 32

by David McCullagh


  Freddie Boland, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, told Nicholas Mansergh that “the Cabinet itself while it had discussed the desirability of repealing the External Relations Act had reached no conclusions when Mr Costello went to Canada. His announcement … came as a ‘bomb shell’ to his colleagues …”61 In an interview with journalist Bruce Arnold, later broadcast in a radio documentary, Boland said the issue had been discussed twice in Cabinet and there was a consensus that the Act would go, “but there was no decision as to when and how the job would be done”.62

  This view was backed by James Dillon. In his memoir, he accepted that proper procedures were not followed—there had been informal discussion and agreement round the Cabinet table, but no formal decision.63 However, as noted above, MacBride told Rugby some hours before Costello’s news conference that the Government intended to do away with the Act,64 which implies a rather more definite decision had been taken. The Minister later told Rugby that he hadn’t brought the matter up in Cabinet—it had in fact been raised by Fine Gael, “who had had such a grim time in the period of the Cosgrave government defending what they did not really believe in that they had decided this time not to find themselves in that position against a virulent Opposition”.65

  This seems to be a fair assessment of the situation—the matter had clearly been discussed at Cabinet and consensus reached, but without a full consideration of the implications, and without consulting other interested parties, most notably the British. It is significant that the Cabinet approved the drafting of a Bill to repeal the External Relations Act on 9 September—just two days after Costello’s press conference. On the form seeking urgent consideration of the matter, MacBride said that “recent developments have made it imperative that a decision should be arrived at immediately”.66

  The British were later to make much of the failure to consult them; but here Costello’s unorthodox approach arguably paid off. The British knew that the External Relations Act was to be repealed soon after the Dáil returned in the autumn. They had considered warning Dublin that repeal “would be regarded by the older members of the Commonwealth as ending her membership of the club”, but accepted that such a warning “would probably have no effect” and that “unilateral action by Éire will force the issue whatever the argument may be”.67 Rugby later complained that Costello had crashed “the delicate fabric” of the Act, with “not one word to me as to the desirability of re-examining the difficult procedure of the External Relations Act, no suggestion of any discussion in London”.68 However, it is clear that if Costello had broached the subject with London, he would have been confronted with endless warnings about the difficulties involved; presenting a fait accompli had its advantages.

  Here the story moves across the Atlantic to Canada. Costello had been invited to Montreal to speak at a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association. The Taoiseach told his friend Michael MacWhite, the Irish Minister to Rome, that all his colleagues thought he should accept the invitation; in fact, Richard Mulcahy had earlier told MacWhite that “both our national and international affairs will … be better served by his being at home”.69 Despite Mulcahy’s reservations, the invitation was accepted; once it was, the Canadian Government offered Costello hospitality, including the use of a Government railway carriage.70 The Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was less than enthralled at the prospect of the visit, which was one of many official visits at around this time, as he prepared for his retirement. He complained in his diary, “It is just appalling the number of engagements connected with this visit and other social events next week … All involving more preparation of speeches, days in the city etc and this at a moment when the last hours of the summer are flying so swiftly by.”71

  In advance of the visit, the Canadians worried that Costello might say something which would cause controversy. William Turgeon, the High Commissioner in Dublin, on his own initiative suggested to the Taoiseach that “he should consider his mission to Canada as one of a lawyer speaking to lawyers and speaking only of subjects in which members of the profession are interested”. He also informed him that “the Irish Catholic people in Canada are not at all anti-British, that the great majority of them hold about the same views on Empire and Commonwealth questions as other English-speaking Canadians. I think he was surprised to hear this.” Lester Pearson, the undersecretary of state for External Affairs, welcomed Turgeon’s “gentle warning” to Costello, saying it “should prevent him from making statements which might cause embarrassing controversies in Canada”.72

  The Irish Department of External Affairs was also concerned about what Costello might say, with Secretary Freddie Boland writing a personal letter to the Irish High Commissioner in Ottawa, John Hearne, setting out in detail MacBride’s views. He said it was generally recognised that the “days of the External Relations Act are numbered” and that they should proceed on the assumption that it would be repealed in the near future. “In the meantime, it is very important that any statement made about our relations with the Commonwealth should emphasise the undesirability and inappropriateness in our case of any constitutional arrangements of the kind which Britain and the overseas dominions maintain between themselves as symbols of their association in the Commonwealth …” Boland advised that Costello should avoid “any public statement which had too ‘Commonwealthish’ a flavour”.73 Which, as it turned out, was not to be a problem.

  Costello left Government Buildings for Cork on the afternoon of 20 August, embarked on the Mauritania from Cobh on the twenty-second, and arrived in New York five days later. He was accompanied by his wife, Ida, by Patrick Lynch, and by his ADC Mick Byrne (who received permission from the Canadians to bring his revolver with him).74 They travelled in some style—first class on the Mauritania on the outward leg, and the Britannic on the return; staying in the landmark Château Frontenac in Quebec and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. The weather in New York was extremely warm, with temperatures of 104 degrees (40 degrees Celsius),75 and the party had to buy extra summer clothes in New York at their own expense.76

  On his arrival in Montreal on 30 August, Costello was met by Hearne and John T. Hackett, President of the Canadian Bar Association (he was at this point still a guest of the Association rather than the Canadian Government). At a press conference, he told journalists that as he was a guest of the Bar Association, he did not “propose to express any views at present on controversial political matters”.

  On Wednesday 1 September, he delivered his lunchtime address to around one thousand lawyers at the Bar Association lunch. His theme was “Ireland in International Affairs”. The text of this speech had been considered and approved by Cabinet before Costello left Dublin—the only time a speech was so approved, according to MacBride.77 Despite his injunction to Hearne about avoiding Commonwealth themes, Boland drafted a speech which concentrated on the development of the Commonwealth, and was in line with Costello’s views as expressed at various Imperial conferences which Boland had attended. He avoided references to the External Relations Act (in line with MacBride’s wishes). But when he showed it to Costello, the Taoiseach remarked, “It’s fine, but there’s too much of the smell of Empire about this.”78

  Whether or not Costello made many changes to Boland’s original draft, the final speech traced the well-trodden path of the constitutional development of the Commonwealth under Irish, South African and Canadian prompting. He explained why Ireland in the 1920s could not accept the Crown as enthusiastically as the other members of the Commonwealth (except South Africa). “The harp without the Crown symbolised the ideal of Irish independence and nationhood. The harp beneath the Crown was the symbol of conquest.”

  In dealing with the External Relations Act, he repeated many of his criticisms of 1936, pointing out, as he had then in the Dáil, that according to the Statute of Westminster the Crown was the symbol of free association, not the symbol of co-operation as de Valera’s text had it. He said the Act ignored the formalities of the issue of ful
l powers to negotiate or sign treaties; and it dealt with the appointment, but not the reception, of diplomatic representatives. The most quoted sentence of his speech said, “The inaccuracies and infirmities of these provisions are apparent.” However, he then went on to ask, “is it fruitful … to enquire too legalistically into the nature of Ireland’s association with the Commonwealth?”79 The implicit answer was no—so his audience could be forgiven for thinking that the speech signalled no new departure. Certainly the British High Commissioner in Canada didn’t think much of the address, saying it “lasted an hour and a half and went into details of Irish politics with which most of the audience were unfamiliar and considerably bored”.80

  Whatever about the speech, the next few days saw a series of events that formed a controversial backdrop to Costello’s confirmation at a news conference that the External Relations Act was to be repealed. He later wrote that he was subject to “the most extraordinary, fantastic and completely unfounded” allegations as to why he had said what he had. These stories suggested that “in a fit of pique … I on my own responsibility ‘declared the Republic in Canada’ … [that] I got annoyed, summoned the representatives of the press, and on my own initiative proceeded to declare the intention of my colleagues and myself to repeal the External Relations Act”.81 Costello’s indignation was obvious, but misplaced. While he had very good reasons for what he said at the press conference, as we will see below, he was also the main source of suggestions that he had been annoyed at his treatment at the hands of the Governor General of Canada, Lord Harold Alexander, a distinguished British soldier with family connections to Northern Ireland.

  The first point of friction occurred the day after Costello’s speech to the Bar Association, when the Taoiseach and his wife attended a garden party in the grounds of McGill University in Montreal. In his official diary of the trip, Patrick Lynch noted, “Atmosphere rather chilly … Governor General … very cool and reserved. Suspect he was displeased by some passages in Taoiseach’s address to the Bar Association. In general he appears to be either anti-social or somewhat hostile.” Costello later complained to President Seán T. O’Kelly that while he and his wife had been asked by an aide to join the Governor General’s party for tea in a special marquee, Lord Alexander did not greet them or speak to them when they were there.82 The Canadian chargé d’affaires in Dublin commented that while Costello “is a very genial person usually … there is a touch of sourness about him … He would pass lightly on the fact that the Governor General had sought him to come and have tea under his tent, a gesture of great courtesy, and would brood over the fact that there was no conversation between the two …”83

  On Saturday 4 September, the Taoiseach’s party left Montreal for Ottawa. He was met on his arrival by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who recorded the Taoiseach’s gratitude in his diary: “He was so appreciative of my being at the station and I felt happy that I had given up the morning to this end.”84 After his visit, Costello “spoke feelingly of his meetings with Mr Mackenzie King and of the honour done him in Mr King … having met him personally on his arrival in Ottawa”.85 But his satisfaction at his treatment was not to last.

  That evening, the Costellos attended a dinner hosted by the Governor General and Lady Alexander. As guests of honour, Jack and Ida Costello were seated on the right of Lady and Lord Alexander respectively.86 Two problems arose—the question of toasts and, bizarrely, the table decorations. Hearne believed he had received a promise from W.H. Measures, the Head of Protocol of the Canadian Department of External Affairs, that both the King and the President of Ireland would be toasted. But the latter toast was not given.87 Measures later claimed that while Hearne had raised the issue with him, he had advised him to contact Government House about it.88 (It may be significant that Measures did agree to have a toast to the President on the menu card for a later dinner given by Mackenzie King, much to the annoyance of the Prime Minister, as we shall see below. Hearne may have gained the impression that Measures had agreed to a toast on both occasions.) Officials at Government House denied hearing anything about the toast, so Lord Alexander certainly didn’t know about it.

  More famously, on the table in front of Costello was a replica of Roaring Meg, one of the cannon used in the defence of the Siege of Derry. This ornament had been presented to Alexander when he was made a Freeman of the City of Londonderry some six months previously. When questions were later raised about its use, Canadian officials pointed out that it was “constantly used by the Governor General as a centrepiece on the dining room table at formal functions at Government House … the placing of this ornament on the table at the time of the Costello visit was quite a routine proceeding and … it did not occur to anyone that it should not be used”.89 Costello “considered the matter as being in very bad taste”, but decided not to make any comment so as not to embarrass Mackenzie King, who was seated on the other side of Lady Alexander. The Canadian Prime Minister evidently didn’t notice any awkwardness, writing in his diary that it was “a very pleasant party. I much enjoyed the talks with the different guests present.”90

  In his memorandum, Costello admitted that he thought at first that the failure to honour the toast was a deliberate action on the part of Alexander, but that he had later come to the conclusion that he would not have been guilty of such conduct. “It would certainly have been an extraordinary action for the Governor General to take on his own initiative … It seems to me to be inconceivable that Lord Alexander would deliberately take a step which would be an insult to this country … I therefore acquit Lord Alexander of any complicity in omitting to propose the Toast of The President of Ireland, as had been arranged with the Chief of Protocol of the Canadian Department of External Affairs.”

  However, this considered account was written in the 1960s—the significant point is that at the time, Costello believed he, and Ireland, had been deliberately snubbed. And on his return to Dublin he relayed his indignation—both at the omission of the toast and the presence of Roaring Meg—to at least two independent witnesses, President Seán T. O’Kelly and Frank MacDermott, who gleefully passed it on.

  MacDermott, the former Centre Party leader and founding Vice-President of Fine Gael, was then living in Paris, where he was the Sunday Times correspondent. He interviewed Costello about the repeal of the External Relations Act, and was given a full (and, no doubt, vivid) account of the “insults” he had received from the Governor General. This part of the interview was off the record, which didn’t stop MacDermott telling Lord Rugby, who in turn informed the Canadian High Commissioner, Turgeon.91 MacDermott also relayed the story directly to Lester Pearson, Canada’s new Minister of External Affairs, when the latter was in Paris.92

  The second source was President O’Kelly, who told Rugby in December that he had asked Costello why he had made his announcement in Canada, and that the Taoiseach replied, “Because I was stung into it,” then relating his complaints about the garden party, the toasts, and Roaring Meg.93 O’Kelly was so taken with the story that he was still repeating it a year later, this time to the new Canadian Ambassador, David Johnson.94 After receiving all these reports, the Canadians looked into the matter, but concluded that while the alleged incidents may have prompted an earlier than anticipated announcement, they certainly did not cause the decision to repeal the Act and to leave the Commonwealth. As the chargé d’affaires in Dublin, Joseph Chapdelaine, commented, “Mr Costello was rarin’ to go and, almost like a child with a secret, could not hold it …”95

  Costello also repeated the same story to Senators William Bedell Stanford and William Fearon, both representatives of Trinity College, who had raised questions about the timing and location of the announcement during the Seanad debate on the Republic of Ireland Bill. They were called to the Taoiseach’s room in Leinster House, a call Stanford compared to “being summoned to the Headmaster’s study”. Costello again went through the way he was treated—the absence of the toast, Roaring Meg, and so on—leaving the two Senator
s with the clear impression that “the immediate cause of his precipitate announcement in Canada had been indignation rather than calculation—and, as we know, he was by nature rather irascible—understandable indignation in the light of what looked like insults”.96

  While Stanford and Fearon didn’t spread the story to diplomats as MacDermott and O’Kelly did, they presumably weren’t the only people Costello told the story to. He was later to complain about the “legend” that he “declared the Republic” because he was insulted. But the legend originated with Jack Costello, who only had himself to blame for the widespread belief that his press conference performance was prompted by these incidents. As his assistant Patrick Lynch pointed out, the Taoiseach, as an experienced constitutional lawyer, was unlikely to have been influenced on such an important issue by perceived insults, “whatever their later utility as conversational material”. However, by repeatedly making use of this conversational material, Costello had “gradually … created a mythology that grew with repetition and, for some people served as a substitute explanation for the reality of the press conference”.97

  One other incident should be mentioned, a typical example of Costello’s rather careless choice of words on occasion. On the evening after the Government House dinner, he recorded a broadcast for the CBC National Network. In it, he claimed that “the virus of atheistic Communism is poisoning the bloodstream of nations and peoples. The Irish nation is anxious to cooperate with all nations in creating the conditions of a just and permanent peace … We cannot but feel that Canada and Ireland might fruitfully share the task of laying the foundations of a citadel of freedom which may shelter all free democracies in this threatened world.”98

  These sentiments, while admirably anti-communist, were also admirably vague and non-committal. However, in an interview with journalists after the broadcast, Costello was reported to have become considerably more bellicose, saying that Ireland would come to Canada’s aid if she were ever threatened by war from communists. This promise, given Ireland’s military strength, did not overly impress the journalists, one of whom “asked the rather pointed question whether Ireland was spending much money on defence. Mr Costello replied that not much money was being spent since the government was trying to improve its system of social security.”99

 

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