Emergency plans for a private, round-table conference to discuss the future of Northern Ireland, excluding the Irish Government, were drawn up by London in May 1969, according to British Cabinet papers released at the Public Record Office in London yesterday.
Under the plan, which was drawn up by a Home Office official, Mr D.E.R. Faulkner, in briefing papers for the then prime minister, Mr Harold Wilson, it was accepted that the conference was likely to end in failure.
Writing on May 16th, 1969, Faulkner said that at best the conference could point the way to progress and at worst it would postpone total intervention, making clear to international opinion that London had no other choice but to directly intervene in Northern Ireland.
The official stressed that the plan should be concealed from the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Major Chichester-Clark. Membership of the conference should not move substantially wider than Stormont and members of the British government - otherwise Dublin might claim a place at the table.
Any such inclusion would render the proposal totally unacceptable to most unionists, the official advised. But a hostile Republic was an enemy to progress, he told the Prime Minister.
"Apart from the United Kingdom government element, the main membership would have to be centred on the membership of the Parliament of Northern Ireland; but this raises a number of problems. First, there is no coherent opposition party at Stormont. There are Northern Ireland Labour, Republican, Nationalist and Civil Rights members. Each shade of opinion at Stormont would no doubt have to be represented, but it might be asserted that even then one would have to go outside Stormont for a complete spectrum. On the other wing, there are reactionary Unionists at Stormont, but Mr Paisley might see a lack of symmetry in any conference that excluded him; and he might be right.
"A conference held in private in London representing different political opinion in Northern Ireland might create a climate for reconciliation where Stormont had failed: exposure to political opinion in Great Britain might have a salutary effect on the inbred and polarised political thought of Northern Ireland."
The official recognised the conference would be performing a task expected of Stormont and that unionists, believing it was being imposed, might boycott the talks.
"If the Northern Ireland government would not take the initiative in asking HMG to sponsor such a conference it might prove hard to impose it on them and there is a risk that the conference might be boycotted," Mr Faulkner wrote.
The possibility of Westminster legislation arising from the conference was not wholly excluded. But the official advised Wilson that if Stormont saw the possibility of legislation being imposed it might affect its readiness to co-operate.