Confidential report from John W. Dulanty to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(Secret Report No. 3)¹

Mr. Noel-Baker's diary, I was told, was chock full of engagements today. He saw me, however, for about ten minutes this afternoon.

When I showed him yesterday's Observer, he said that he had not seen it before. I think this was true because when he finished reading it, there was a long pause before he made any remark.

His first line of argument was that Brooke, as we knew, was coming over again. As he had told me last week, questions were being examined by the Officials here and so far finality had not been reached. He would like to see me again in a week or ten days when he might be in a position to say something definite.

I said that I knew the writer of the article and I had made this visit to the Commonwealth Relations Office in the hope that Mr. Noel-Baker would be able to say to me that it was as wide of the mark as the Observer article some months ago which suggested that an important round table conference would be held in Ireland whilst Mr. Attlee and the other British Ministers were holidaying there.

As he made no reply to this, I went on to say that it was inconceivable, having regard to the serious character of the whole question of the Six Counties, and remembering the long British Liberal and British Labour tradition of opposition to the Tories on this question, that a Labour Government should introduce legislation which would clamp down, almost as in a mosaic, the continuance of partition.

Noel-Baker said that this would no more than confirm what the Prime Minister had already said on two occasions in the House of Commons. He did not agree with me when I said there was an immense political and psychological advance for the Six County people, if any such pledge were to be given.

I next referred to the Observer paragraph on the question of voting rights. At this point one of his Private Secretaries came in to remind him of a meeting which he was due to attend at No. 10 Downing Street. I felt it necessary to keep him until I had impressed upon him that if either of these measures were proceeded with, my Government would undoubtedly make a major issue of the matter. If such actions were persisted in by the British, they would bring the problem of partition into a new and most acute phase, creating a situation fraught with consequences of a grave and far-reaching character. I reminded him that he had talked to me last week about the fear the North-Eastern Government felt about the possibility of force and how, he, himself, had no doubt of the reality and depth of this feeling.² Surely he must see that if his Government persisted in the line which his own remarks suggested they might, they were, with their eyes open, precipitating the immediate danger of force.

When I tried to elicit whether there was even a slight basis of fact in the Observer article, he was evasive. He would not say whether any significance, great or small, could be attached to the suggestion about a pledge or that about voting rights. Equally he would not say whether such matters would be embodied in their legislation.

My impression is that it is more likely that there is some basis of truth in the Observer article than that there is no such basis.