July 17th, 1980:BOYCOTTS OF sporting events for political reasons were popular in the 1970s and 1980s, most notably over apartheid in South Africa and mostly affecting rugby.
US president Jimmy Carter used the tactic against the Soviet Union over its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by calling for a boycott of the following year’s Olympic Games, which were being held in Moscow.
Most western states supported the boycott diplomatically; some 60 countries did not take part, while other countries allowed their teams to participate, but ignored the event diplomatically and in other symbolic ways.
The Fianna Fáil government played a solo game, as this report by Dennis Kennedy illustrated, allowing the Olympic team to participate while trying to hedge its bets on the diplomatic front by pursuing an idiosyncratic course which may have been designed to confuse everyone. The minister for foreign affairs at the time was Brian Lenihan snr.
A news agency report that Ireland would be the only EEC member state to be represented diplomatically at the Moscow Olympics is just the latest piece of confusion to arise over Ireland and the Games.
As reported last week, and as confirmed by [the Department of] Foreign Affairs yesterday, the Irish Ambassador in Moscow, Dr Edward Brennan, will not be attending any functions in connection with the Games. Instructions have been given to all embassy staff not to attend.
But Dr Brennan will be at his post in Moscow for the period of the Games, having taken his holidays early this year. All his EEC colleagues will, for one diplomatic reason or another, be absent from Moscow for the duration. This is not entirely accidental, for although the Government here formally supports the boycott, and has withdrawn financial support from the Irish team, it has never displayed much enthusiasm for President Carter’s initiative.
When the United States first proposed a boycott of the Olympics over Afghanistan, the official response in Dublin was unsympathetic. In January, just before President Carter’s formal request for support was received in Dublin, Jim Tunney, Minister of State responsible for sport, told potential Olympic athletes in Dublin that “Moscow is on as far as we are concerned”, and he went on to call for commercial support for the team, and to confirm that Government finance would be forthcoming.
Thereafter, some qualification entered into the Government attitude. In February, Mr Lenihan told the Dáil there was no need to make “a definitive decision” before May 24th. “Of course we should go if there is any meaningful Olympics,” he said, “but there would be no point in going if three-quarters of the world is not going.”
Mr Tunney was still under the impression that the Government was against the boycott, for he said on February 9th that the Government would have to reconsider its opposition to it, if the attitude of other EEC countries changed. (West Germany had already explicitly backed the boycott.) “Let me state quite clearly that Irish athletes will compete,” the [Olympic] council’s president, Des O’Sullivan, said on February 28th.
In fact, no explicit Government opposition to Irish participation in Moscow was voiced until May 16th, only days before the Irish Olympic Council was scheduled to meet to confirm formally its acceptance of the invitation to Moscow.
By that time the Olympic Council’s decision to go was inevitable and had strong public support. By its silence, the Government had done nothing to head off the decision to which it was theoretically opposed.
In the end it was not even fully an EEC position, for the French and Danish governments gave no directions to their Olympic councils.