Extracts from a letter from Seán O'hÉideáin to Conor Cruise O'Brien (Dublin)
(8/2)

Many thanks for your kind note of 15 June 1951¹ (your ref. 305/14/22) regarding the Spanish language memorandum ‘LAS MALVINAS’ DE IRLANDA and other literature circulated at election time by this Legation.

So far the enclosed clipping from EL ORDEN (Santa Fé) of June 13, which quotes the memorandum in full, has been forwarded by our clipping service. The caption used by EL ORDEN is, I think, rather good, and might do as a slogan; IRLANDA RECLAMA SUS ‘MALVINAS’ – IRELAND DEMANDS BACK HER ‘FALKLAND ISLANDS’. EL ORDEN is one of the two dailies having a circulation of about 45,000 in Santa Fé, a city of 168,000 inhabitants. I have got a dozen copies made of EL ORDEN’s article and am checking on the newspaper’s shade of politics so that this version of the memorandum can be brought to the notice of some suitable Senators and Deputies in the Argentine Congress.

[matter omitted]

But to return to the Malvinas. The memorandum mentioned was not of course an official press release, issued over the name of the Legation. But it seems to me that we should talk more about the Malvinas in our anti-Partition work in Argentina, for four reasons. First, that would put Partition into the headlines here. Second, the analogy between the unlawful occupation by Great Britain of the Malvinas and of the Six Counties would help to explain the Six Counties situation to the average uninitiated Argentine citizen. Third, the fact that one of the new Argentine Naval bases in the disputed Argentine Antarctic has been called after an Irishman, Almirante Guillermo Brown, is perhaps a convenient starting point for a sympathetic discussion by Argentines of the disputed Irish territory of the Six Counties. Fourth, the Malvinas are about the only thing on which all political parties in Argentina are agreed; so the Legation and Argentines of all shades of political thought could play up the Malvinas–Six Counties comparison without alienating, from sympathy with Ireland, Argentines of other political schools.

However, if the Legation were to issue official press releases referring to the Six Counties as Ireland’s Malvinas, or if I were to draw the comparison between the two in say a public talk or address, that would, I think, imply that Ireland sided with Argentina in the Malvinas dispute with Great Britain. So far as I am aware no official pronouncement or indication to that effect has been given by the Department of External Affairs. Naturally, therefore, though I think the Malvinas-Six Counties comparison is a good publicity line, I should like the Department’s sanction before I could follow up this line in an official press release or other form of official publicity here in Argentina. I should accordingly be glad if you can let me have the green light for this course.

Regarding the question of material in Spanish, referred to in your note, I agree completely that there is a need of a fairly comprehensive, well-printed publication putting the anti-Partition case in Spanish. While I have a special affection for IRELAND’S RIGHT TO UNITY (which was a great stand-by in Washington a couple of years ago when the local Information Bulletin had been launched and the inquiries were coming in thick and fast), nevertheless any comprehensive publication here, or indeed in Spain, would have to be angled specially for local conditions, and any of the present excellent publications would therefore need a large amount of re-writing.

[matter omitted]