Armed struggle forced British to consider withdrawal

Sunday January 02, 2005 12:37

by Séamus Ó Cadhain

British saw advantage of Dublin-Monaghan bombings

A report in today's (2 Jan's) Sunday Business Post shows that the British government was faltering under the pressure of the IRA's armed struggle in 1974. It also shows senior ease with, if not sanction for, the Dublin-Monaghan bombings.

Britain considered North withdrawal

02 January 2005 By Rory Rapple
The British government considered transferring large tracts of the North to the Republic in 1974, state papers just released by the National Archives in London and Dublin reveal. The then British prime minister Harold Wilson considered complete withdrawal from the North, and giving the Six Counties dominion status within the Commonwealth.

Detailed studies of the implications of withdrawing from the North and redrawing the border were undertaken by Irish officials who anticipated three possible repartitions:

small transfers of parts of South Armagh and Derry to the Republic;

the transfer of most of Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Down, south Armagh and Derry;

a redrawing of the border along the line of the river Bann.

In another record, the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Arthur Galsworthy, said he believed the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974 had hardened attitudes against the Republican movement and had given Irish people a greater insight into the views of Northern Protestants.

“I think the Irish have taken the point,” Galsworthy wrote in a memo.

The records also reveal that civil servants in the North were in regular contact with the UVF during the 1974 loyalist general strike and at the time of the May 1974 bombs. The bombs were planted by UVF members, according to the recent Barron Report into the atrocities.

British civil servants examined the economic and social implications of repartition and withdrawal from the North after the Sunningdale power-sharing executive fell in the spring.