Confidential report from William P. Fay to Leo T. McCauley (Dublin)¹
(Confidential)

I have the honour to inform you that the British Ambassador in Brussels, Sir George Rendel, who has shown me many marks of friendship, invited me on Thursday evening the 18th inst. to a dinner party in honour of Mr. Bevin, at which the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr. P.H. Spaak was also a guest.

During the course of conversation, Mr. Ivone Kirkpatrick, an Assistant Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, who had come to Brussels specially in connection with the Five Power ('Western Union') Pact, mentioned that he hoped we should join the five signatories shortly. He explained that they did not expect or, indeed, desire many adhesions; that was implicit from Article IX which states that the High Contracting Parties may, by agreement, 'invite any other State to accede'. What they intended to do was to form an 'exclusive club', not open to everyone, the conditions in which would they hoped become so good that it would rather be regarded as a privilege to be asked to join.

Later in the evening, we were discussing co-operation in Europe, and I mentioned that though we were not particularly enthusiastic about Customs Unions, we were anxious to do what we could to help in other ways; for instance, I thought we favoured the abolition, as far as possible, of visa restrictions and other impediments to personal movement. His reply was 'When you join the Western Union, all these things will follow'.

I think it can clearly be deduced from these remarks and from the friendly manner of their utterances that it is intended shortly to issue to us an invitation to accede to the Brussels Pact.²

In the course of the dinner, Mr. Bevin paid a compliment to Ireland, which he emphasised and repeated. Mentioning the building of the 'Mulberry' harbours, he explained to Mr. Spaak that they had to be built within a very short time and that he recruited a special labour force of 300,000 men of whom more than half were Irish. He had agreed with de Valera to give these men holidays from time to time, but when D-day approached he had to close down on this. He could not inform anyone in Ireland of the real reason for this, but he informed the top-ranking Irish Officials that it would be necessary to suspend the holiday arrangements and they must accept that without knowing the reason for the time being. He thought it was a great credit to them that there was absolutely no leakage and that they were able to accept the explanation given to them, despite the fact that it looked like a breach of the agreement. He gave them full marks for that.

In private conversation, Mr. Bevin showed a very friendly attitude to us, and said he knew Ireland well from his former days in the N.U.R.,³ and that he liked the Irish people.