Warning of civil war if British pulled out of North
Irish Independent
December 28, 2007
DOOMSDAY warnings were sounded about Ireland being plunged into civil war if Britain pulled out of Northern Ireland.
At the height of the Troubles in the mid-1970s official documents spoke of possible intervention by the United Nations, of the Irish Army needing 60,000 troops to control Northern Ireland in the event of widespread violence and of the enormous economic drain such an intervention would have on the country.
In one dire warning, the then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs Conor Cruise O’Brien predicted that if the British withdrew, “the pin is out of the bomb of civil war and neither our own army nor the UN nor anything else on earth will prevent that.”
One draft memo for government, dated 1974, predicted that, in the event of widespread violence that involved Irish intervention, up to 60,000 soldiers costing substantially more than £220 million a year would be needed.
And hinting at possible conscription, the memo reveals that even an intensive recruitment and publicity campaign would be most unlikely to achieve a rate of intake sufficient to raise army strength to 20,000 and that “steps other than voluntary recruitment” would be necessary.
It was against such a grim backdrop that Cruise O’Brien wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Garret FitzGerald in January 1975 and cautioned against the “serious danger” of “toying” with the idea of an international force to solve the Northern Ireland crisis.
Not only might such an intervention prove “entirely chimerical” but it might let Britain “off the hook” and provide her with an honourable path of retreat from Northern Ireland in circumstances offering only illusory guarantees for the minority.
According to Cruise O’Brien, it appeared the only likely outcomes — he would not call them solutions — were either a continuance of British rule or Protestant rule. And he advised that no further suggestions should be made in any international context of possible internationalisation of Northern Ireland.
Although unsigned, a handwritten draft reply, almost certainly written by FitzGerald, explained that Cruise O’Brien’s letter might be based on a misunderstanding of a memo from the Foreign Affairs Minister three months previously which was drawn up to discuss the situation in the North.
Dr FitzGerald said he was not convinced that discreet “toying with the idea” of internationalisation in any way constituted letting the British off the hook.
Ideally, they should be doing some “discreet groundwork” in Northern Ireland and internationally both to test in general the possible reaction to internationalisation.
