ANALYSIS:The prospect of a diplomatic explosion between the prime minister and the taoiseach was a constant concern for British officials
BRITISH OFFICIALS urged Margaret Thatcher to adopt a softly-softly approach to Charles Haughey in 1980, encouraging him talk about a “special relationship” between the two states, but keeping him at arm’s length when it came to the question of Northern Ireland, newly released documents in London show.
While the terms of the Anglo-Irish relationship were broadened in 1980, the prospect of a diplomatic explosion between taoiseach and prime minister – both in office for less than a year – was a constant concern for British officials.
On January 16th, 1980, the British ambassador in Dublin, Sir Robin Haydon, warned that Haughey “is no friend of ours” and Britain “must expect a more nationalistic, republican approach to the overall question of unity”.
However, Haughey had expressed an interest in an “international initiative” to get momentum for Irish unity and was eager to carve out a more active role for the Irish government on the Northern Ireland question.
Equally, however, while they valued improved security co-operation between the UK and the Republic, British officials were concerned that he could be a destabilising force in the North. “While we readily accept that he has a legitimate interest, any attempt to assert a measure of responsibility would have disastrous consequences”.
Following a half-hour meeting with Haughey in late March, Haydon claimed the taoiseach felt “apprehensive” about Thatcher, “for whom he has respect (though he has not met her) because of her reputation in the media for toughness, decisiveness and determination”. Also, it was claimed, “he has a guilty or inferiority complex about his shady past – and present (!) – and wants to be accepted by us”.
From January to March, Northern Ireland secretary of state Humphrey Atkins had hosted a constitutional conference with the SDLP, DUP and Alliance. However, this had been wound up without a breakthrough.
Sinn Féin had not been invited to the talks and the Official Unionists had boycotted them. Even those who had attended made no progress on the core issue of powersharing. As Atkins admitted himself, preparing a government White Paper after the end of the talks on March 24th, this was “the central issue which has got to be settled by one means or another before a political solution could be achieved”.
For Haughey, the failure of the British to achieve any momentum towards a peace process was a symptom of the fact that Thatcher had largely excluded Dublin from the process.
In April, therefore, Haughey told Atkins that “he would be imaginative and radical, even revolutionary about constructive proposals for dealing with Northern Ireland in a broad context; that while he welcomed our present initiative for what it was, it was not enough; and that the problem could not be solved in an exclusively Northern Ireland context”.
On May 7th, Willie Whitelaw, the home secretary and former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, wrote to Thatcher saying: “The taoiseach represents a problem.” He could not “have what he wants on Irish unity” due to the way this would destabilise the North. On the other hand, however, the British were eager to maintain what they saw as much improved security co-operation against the Provisional IRA.
“All the signs are that the Garda have been instructed to pursue PIRA vigorously and to co-operate fully with the RUC, the Security Service and the Metropolitan Police.” Haughey’s “marginally firmer stance on Irish unity [was] a small price to pay for this”.
While Haughey was unlikely to risk international opprobrium by “blatantly withdrawing” this co-operation, the British remained concerned that “only one telephone call is needed to cripple its effectiveness”.
Before her first meeting with Haughey on May 21st, therefore, Whitelaw impressed upon Thatcher “the need to be nice to Mr Haughey and the potential damage to British interests if the meeting goes badly”. In briefing notes, officials urged him to convince the combative prime minister that the softly-softly approach was the right one.
The key question for the meeting on May 21st was whether the taoiseach was looking for real progress towards Irish unity, or for improved relations between the two countries. “This we simply do not know; he is playing his cards close to his chest. If he does press this issue he must inevitably be disappointed. Important to let him down as lightly as possible.”
That said, there was a “good chance that he would prefer not to take this route”, officials suggested.
“Up against Garret FitzGerald, it is the moderate vote he needs, so image of statesmanship and good relations with prime minister could be valuable electoral assets in themselves.”
Thatcher was therefore advised to discourage “any suggestion of a joint Anglo-Irish initiative over Northern Ireland” but “to give a cautious and non-committal encouragement to the ideas that the taoiseach may float for the development of new relations within these islands”.
The official minutes of the meeting of May 21st have been retained at the British National Archives. However, it seems that it was constructive, as Thatcher and Haughey agreed to hold an Anglo-Irish summit in Dublin before the end of the year, to discuss the broadening of the Anglo-Irish relationship.
In June, a flurry of memorandums in the British foreign office began to explore opportunities for co-operation, recognising “potential for a united anglophone front on many EC matters”. “The Irish have a good reputation amongst the non- aligned and in the Third World”, it was argued. “This is because of their neutrality and because they are identified by some as fellow past sufferers from British imperialism. But Ireland is also a Western European country and as it emerges into the 20th century, its interests are bound to coincide with our own.”
At the end of July, Thatcher expressed irritation with Haughey, following reports from the Northern Ireland Office that he had privately told John Hume that she expected the government’s latest initiative on Northern Ireland, a White Paper by Humphrey Atkins, to get nowhere.
“I am sure I said no such thing,” she scribbled in her trademark blue fountain pen.
The planned hunger strike of republican prisoners at the Maze prison – against the phasing out of their “special category” as prisoners – which began on October 27th, contributed to further uneasiness in relations between Dublin and London.
The day that the strikes began, Eamon Kennedy, the Irish ambassador in London, called on Thatcher at Downing Street to express the taoiseach’s “grave concern” about the “emotional impact” which would reverberate throughout Ireland if any of the strikers died, with potentially serious repercussions for security co-operation.
In a brief meeting with Haughey in Luxembourg on December 1st, ahead of the Anglo- Irish summit, Thatcher acknowledged that her forthcoming visit to Dublin was likely “to take place in circumstances which had not been foreseen when it was arranged”.
Haughey confirmed that the Irish government was “enormously worried”. The hunger strike “might enable the PIRA to mobilise support in a way they had been unable to do for several years”.
Before the meeting in Dublin, Thatcher was advised not to give any incentive to Haughey to “reverse his present cautious policy over Northern Ireland”. Having bided his time at earlier meetings, however, Haughey now stressed the need to see some “political movement”.
He stressed the cost of the common security effort, amounting to £25 a head in the Republic and only £8 a head in the UK. “The unionists looked to London and the nationalists to Dublin and it was only therefore in the context of government-to- government talks that their problems could be tackled.”