Letter from Joseph Brennan to Brian Durnin (Dublin)

Dear Durnin,
With reference to your letter of the 28th December¹ (305/14/118) concerning the forthcoming visit of Sir Basil and Lady Brooke to the United States I shall indeed keep a close watch on the press publicity relating to them.

I agree that it would be a good idea if the Irish Societies in the United States were to be furnished with a short biographical note of Sir Basil Brooke and how they use that information will be a matter for them. I think the selection of sayings which would be unacceptable here should include some of his remarks in regard to discrimination. As you know, there is a Civil Rights programme promoted by the Democrats at present before Congress and that programme is designed to do away with racial and religious discrimination in the United States. If it can be shown that discrimination, if not racial, at any rate religious, exists in the Six Counties and that it has been endorsed by Sir Basil I believe it would be repugnant to the sentiments of the Democratic thinking people of this country. It might also be mentioned that liquidation of the minority is something which Sir Basil has sponsored or at least that he has not found fault with one of his henchmen sponsoring it. For the Catholic group his famous saying that no Catholic is employed on his estate in County Fermanagh might well be utilised. Indeed anything which can be shown to be his definitely and to be a detraction from the rights of the minority, especially in regard to jobs, would be quite useful. If you can arrange to provide this material I might be able to arrange for it to be circulated through the ALUI² or the AOH.³ I think it would be better if it were printed here rather than in Ireland and under the auspices of these Societies.

I do hope that you are not discounting the Brooke effort. It will have appeal to a vast number of people in this country because of his own losses in the war and because of the Six Counties attitude during the war and it would ill become us to attack him on any of those issues. He, undoubtedly, will get a fairly decent press because despite denials I am still of opinion that the British Information Service will help from the press end however much they may disassociate themselves from it publicly. In the last Bulletin issued from this Office I made reference to the publicity angle for Brooke and I shall send a copy of it to you as soon as it is available from the Stencilling Company. I might mention that it is my own feeling that we should not attack Brooke nor any Irishman in regard to Partition. We should continue to lay the blame for Partition at Britain's door and point the finger at her on that score but so far as possible we should refrain from attacking Irishmen who merely differ from us politically.