STATE PAPERS 1972: At the first UK Cabinet meeting following Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British embassy in Dublin, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, said he would be giving "a warning to the Government of the Irish Republic that, if such acts of violence were repeated, this could lead to a serious deterioration in the relations between the two countries".
Sir Alec noted "the Irish Foreign Minister, Dr \ Hillery, had embarked on a tour of countries where he hoped to stimulate support for the attitude of his Government and appropriate instructions had been sent to our ambassadors to enable them to take steps to offset any publicity hostile to our interests which might result from Dr Hillery's tour."
This was recorded in the cabinet minutes for the meeting of February 3rd, 1972, released yesterday by the British Public Record Office. But this and other detailed discussions of the crisis in Northern Ireland and in Anglo-Irish relations were kept in "Top Secret" annexes circulated only to a limited number of ministers. The most high-level discussions on Northern Ireland were restricted to a cabinet sub-committee called GEN 79. The February 3rd meeting set out how the Cabinet would deal with the crisis and relations with Dublin over the coming months.
There were repeated references to a forthcoming "political initiative" being drafted by the Home Secretary, Mr Reginald Maudling, which turned out to be the suspension of Stormont, the imposition of direct rule and a wary but growing co-operation with the Irish government. This was before Mr Heath had rejected any Irish input into Northern Ireland affairs.
It was noted that "acceptance by Roman Catholics of any political settlement, however, depended in large measure on its endorsement by the Government of the Republic".
The long-term solution might therefore have to involve some kind of constitutional association between the two parts of Ireland, while permitting the six counties of Northern Ireland to continue to form part of the UK. "Similarly, the Government of the Republic would not be able to mobilise public support against the IRA unless they could convincingly endorse whatever solution was found in Northern Ireland".
Securing a political settlement could mean taking "major political risks" and "even the possibility of considerable bloodshed". The aim would be to ensure "an active, permanent and guaranteed role in government" for the minority community - this would later be called power-sharing - "while simultaneously giving assurances about the position of Northern Ireland in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom".
Mr Heath, summing up, said "a major obstacle to any rational solution was likely to be the absence of any incentive to the IRA to desist from violence at any point short of a revolutionary all-Ireland republic". Just four months later, the new Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Mr William Whitelaw, had a secret meeting with IRA leaders at Cheyne Walk in London, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, which left Whitelaw "emotionally exhausted", the report on the meeting said. The IRA delegation, led by Chief of Staff, Seán MacStiofain, insisted on a British "Declaration of Intent" to withdraw from Northern Ireland and a complete withdrawal of the British army by 1975.
British officials later discussing the meeting wondered "whether the position of the IRA leaders was to be regarded as an opening bid which was negotiable". They noted the Declaration of Intent was "very close to the position of Mr Lynch that the future of Ireland should be decided by the people of Ireland as a whole".
The Cheyne Walk meeting had been prepared by a meeting between Mr Gerry Adams, then 23, who had been released from Long Kesh for this purpose, and Mr Dáithí O'Connell on the IRA side, and two officials from the Northern Ireland Office, Mr Philip Woodfield and Mr Frank Steele, who is believed to have been in MI6. This meeting took place on June 20th at Ballyarnett near the Border in a house owned by a Col M.W. McCorkell. Mr Woodfield later reported the meeting was "informal and relaxed" and that the IRA men were "respectable and respectful".
"They made no bombastic defence of their past and made no attacks on the British government, the British army or any other communities or bodies in Northern Ireland. Their response to every argument put to them was reasonable and moderate. Their behaviour and attitude appeared to bear no relation to the indiscriminate campaigns of bombing and shooting in which both have been prominent leaders."
Mr Woodfield said O'Connell and Adams "genuinely want a ceasefire and a permanent end to violence".
"Whatever pressures in Northern Ireland have brought them to this frame of mind there is also little doubt that, now the prospect of peace is there, they have a strong personal incentive to try and get it. They let drop several remarks that the life of a Provisional IRA man on the run is not a pleasant one."