Politicians exploiting partition for their own ends ensured its survival

IT was a year of hope in the North, with realistic signs of progress in that there was so little talk about ending partition. It was not even mentioned during the talks at St Andrews.

It was so different from what happened during most of the last century, when the partition question overshadowed Anglo-Irish relations.

Partition was the great smokescreen that was used to obscure some of our biggest political failings and thus distort or poison our politics for much of the century.

The thickest files in the annual release of State papers yesterday had to do with aspects of the partition question. There were a number of massive files relating directly to issue during the 1960s, in addition to the files relating to the Northern troubles during the 1970s.

Looking through them one is immediately struck by the amount of time that was wasted on the issue. Like most of my contemporaries, I grew up thinking the Civil War was fought over partition.

We had no 20th century Irish history in school during the 1950s or early 1960s. Eamon de Valera had secretly warned the Dáil in August 1921 that if deputies did not accept the unionists’ right to partition, they would be making the same mistake that the British made with the rest of the island.

During the Treaty debate, de Valera secretly presented the Dáil with an alternative that included the partition clauses of the Treaty verbatim. Thus partition had nothing to do with that controversy, or the civil war that ensued.

Michael Collins never contended that the Treaty was more than the freedom to achieve the desired freedom. De Valera proved that Collins was right by leading the country to political independence in the 1930s and demonstrating this during World War II .

The 1937 constitution changed the country’s name from Irish Free State to Ireland. Article 2 claimed sovereignty over the whole island, but Article 3 recognised that laws enacted in Dublin would apply only to the 26 Counties “pending the reintegration of the national territory”.

In short, Ireland referred to the 32 counties but only applied to what had been the Irish Free State.

De Valera exploited the partition issue to such an extent that he created the impression it was the cause of the Civil War and he even used it to justify staying out of World War II. He said the Irish people were so divided over partition it would be suicide for such a small, divided country to get involved in the war.

The British called his bluff in June 1940 by offering to end partition in return for Irish bases, but he was not interested. In truth, we had no business in that war, and he was right to keep us out of it. Yet he pursued a thoroughly honourable course because his government secretly provided the Allies with all the help it could.

But fearing de Valera would make trouble in America over partition after the war — just as he had made trouble over the refusal to recognise Irish independence after World War I — the White House distorted the true nature of Irish neutrality by depicting this country as indifferent to the moral issues involved in the war.

Ireland was therefore shunned internationally over our perceived indifferent neutrality. The Soviet Union used this as an excuse to block our admission to the UN, even though this country had punched well above its weight at the League of Nations.

De Valera had served as president of both the council and the assembly of the League and, ironically, he had bravely supported the admission of the Soviet Union, despite the opposition of the Irish hierarchy.

Moreover, the third and last secretary general of the League was an Irishman, Seán Lester.

While being shunned internationally no opportunity to highlight the partition issue was passed up.

The first crack in our obduracy began to appear on November 14, 1963 when, after reaffirming our right to the whole island, the Taoiseach Seán Lemass talked realistically: “We have come to realise that the reiteration of the right is not enough, that we also need to have regard to the causes of the divisions amongst our people which were used as a justification for partition”.

By accepting Prime Minister Terence O’Neill’s invitation to visit Northern Ireland in 1966, Lemass recognised Northern Ireland. Unfortunately his successor, Jack Lynch, lacked the self-assurance to build on what Lemass started.

When Captain O’Neill visited the United States in 1967, for instance, the Irish consul generals in Chicago and San Francisco were instructed not attend functions in his honour at which they had been invited to sit at the top table.

THESE snubs were an insult to a man who was trying to break down barriers and we played into the hands of that hysterical cleric Ian Paisley, who plagued O’Neill. Now everyone has to deal with Paisley.

On a visit to Belfast in October 1967, less than a year after stepping down as Taoiseach, Lemass blamed politicians of both persuasions for perpetuating the political and religious divisions of the North, much to the annoyance of nationalists. Gerry Fitt called the former Taoiseach’s comments “amazing”, while Eddie McAteer, leader of the moribund Nationalist Party, denounced them as “unfortunate”.

“Mr Lemass apparently was ingratiating himself with the unionists by tarring everyone with the same brush”, McAteer complained. “We want to know if his attitude is shared by the Government. I complained recently of the deafening silence from Dublin in our regard, but this is not the way we would have wanted it broken”.

The validity of what Lemass said is now self-evident to anyone with an open mind. But Eddie McAteer did have a point. For decades we encouraged the intransigence of Northern nationalists without ever really trying to help them.

Our politicians complained about discrimination in the North, but never tried to use our influence to rectify the situation. Instead, we preferred to have the grievance as a kind of stick with which we could beat the British.

Once the troubles began, many people recognised the problem, but by then it was out of control.

Following the civil rights riot in Derry on October 5, 1968, for instance, Hugh McCann, secretary of the Department of External Affairs, sent instructions to all Irish diplomats to say as little as possible about the North.

“The reasoning behind this policy is simply that there is nothing at this stage we could do to improve the situation in the North”, McCann wrote. “On the contrary, any suggestion of ‘outside’ pressure or interference, particularly by us, would only play into the hands of the Northern extremists”.

Diplomats were instructed to avoid radio and TV appearances and public speaking engagements. They were only to talk to journalists off the record, and then only with the prior permission of the Department of External Affairs.

Liam Cosgrave told a press briefing on June 13, 1974. “Talk has done more harm to the whole situation that anything else. It has generated action in the belief that unity could be achieved quickly and it has provoked people into taking action and at the same time it has antagonised the loyalists and the unionists”.

Yet we hadn’t really learned because people again went for the old guff about ending partition in the early 1980s when the promises of unity were as twisted as the politicians who were making them.