Confidential report from John W. Dulanty to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(Secret Report No.22)

I have just seen Mr. Ernest Bevin at the Foreign Office where he was alone and carefully read the Aide Mémoire of the 7th May.² He mentioned that he had had no talk on our question with the Prime Minister since his recent conversation with our Minister.

I told him that Mr. MacBride had given me express instructions to say that on his return to Ireland, he had found a mounting sense of anger over the Ireland Bill.

Mr. Bevin said that with world affairs in their present urgent and compelling state, he thought we might have given them breathing space to put Europe on its feet when they and we could have sat round a table to settle the difficulties about the Six Counties. Their advisers had said that it was legally necessary to define Northern Ireland's position in the new circumstances arising from the Republic of Ireland Act. Mr. MacBride, it was true, had said that that was not necessary; 'well, what can a layman do' he asked in a rather despairing way, 'when he gets two lawyers differing fundamentally in their view of a legal question?'

I referred to my association with him many years before he was in Parliament and in the Advance Wing of the Labour Party and said it was incomprehensible to me that a Party who voted solidly against Partition should now be so completely turning their coats. His answer was that he couldn't be expected to put the clock back and no Parliament could commit further Parliaments - a fact that, of course, affected his Government's present Bill.

He went on to say how sorry he was we had not seen our way to join the Atlantic Pact. It would have been a big help both to them and to us but still we had decided to stay out and he made no complaint.

But when it came to the repeal of the External Relations Act and the Republic of Ireland Act, it seemed to him that we felt free to throw a brick at their heads at any time we liked and be suddenly bitter by even a mild reply from them.

At this point he got up and walked about the room and continued in a glow of moral fervour: 'You are complaining of our having given no indication to you of this Government of Ireland Bill; why couldn't you have given us even a hint about the Republic of Ireland Act? I am not disputing that you had a right to pass this Act, but if everybody goes on exercising their own right, regardless entirely of its repercussions elsewhere, then they have only themselves to blame if everything doesn't go the way they think it should'.

He reverted to what the Minister had said last week about the danger of force: 'I'm afraid I was not impressed', he said, 'I am an old hand in the political game and I think that when people talk about the probability of guns popping off, they either wish or intend them to pop off'. I assured him that force was a factor that my Government would resist to the utmost but I didn't feel sure that he was even listening to what I said. Possibly he was fatigued after his recent journeys in Germany for he seemed to be in an ill-tempered mood and without any inclination to listen but to follow the tactics he has frequently employed in the House of Commons of 'steam rolling' any who do not accept his view.

As I left him I couldn't help wondering how far the moral fervour was simulated.