Extract from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to
Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Confidential) (Copy)

With further reference to my confidential report of 22nd January¹ about the statement regarding Partition made recently by ‘a British Embassy spokesman’ in Washington, I was greatly interested to read the Washington Embassy’s full report of Mr. Churchill’s remarks, which you were good enough to send me.²

2. It was particularly interesting to see from this that in his talk at the Press luncheon, Mr. Churchill reverted to a theme which seems for some time to have become quite an obsession with him – praise of the cultured, well-ordered, ‘gracious’ (to use the adjective he has employed himself more than once when talking to me) way of life we have developed in the Twenty-six Counties! In each of the five or six conversations I have had with Mr. Churchill since I came to London, he has spoken on this same theme, sometimes at considerable length and always with apparent sincerity. You will see from the ‘Daily Telegraph’ of the 1st February, that he returns to it again in his foreword to the new edition of his life of his father.³ The fact that Mr. Churchill invariably mentions this theme in the context of his advice about ‘wooing’ the Six Counties suggests that, in his estimation, we have a strong card for the purposes of the ‘wooing’ process in the fact of our tolerance and good government.
3. It is characteristic that Reuter, the AP and the UP ignored or gave a very garbled version of this part of Mr. Churchill’s remarks in Washington. Having regard to our past experience with these agencies – specially Reuter and UP – it is not surprising because, looking at the matter from the point of view of our great national problem, there can be no doubt about the value and importance to us of these public tributes – particularly coming from Mr. Churchill. It is a safe assumption that no part of Mr. Churchill’s observations in Washington can have caused more indignation and alarm in Belfast than these compliments paid to us by the leader of the Conservative party in Britain; because, as the people in Stormont must know well, nothing is better calculated to sway public sympathy in Britain to favour us on the Partition issue than a growing appreciation of our tolerance and fair-mindedness in public and private conduct in contradistinction to the bigotry and illiberalism of the ruling junta in the North. It is interesting to recall, in this whole context, the vigour with which the Unionist Party in the Six Counties disavowed the speaker in the last election who shouted, ‘To hell with the Pope’.⁴
4. Although Mr. Churchill’s estimate of us is probably to a large extent a personal one, there is some evidence that it is quite widely shared by members of his party. For example, Mr. J.P.L. Thomas,⁵ who is Vice-Chairman of the Conservative party and now First Lord of the Admiralty, spoke to me some time ago very much on the same lines. This is the more remarkable because Mr. Thomas has close family ties in ruling circles in the Six Counties.
5. It is an interesting speculation what precisely has fostered this idea in the minds of Conservatives in this country. In the case of Mr. Churchill, no doubt reports made to him by his son⁶ have helped – although as his speech in the House of Commons in November, 1948, and the remarks made by him to me over a year ago,⁷ would seem to indicate, the idea was already firmly fixed in his mind before his son’s recent visit to Dublin. Although no doubt many factors have contributed, I believe that the increased extent to which English people are visiting Ireland, and, in some cases, settling there, is starting to have an important influence. For example, Mr. J.P.L. Thomas visits Ireland frequently to stay at Dunsany Castle,⁸ and his views seem to me largely based on what he himself has seen and heard while there. In conversation some time ago, Lord Woolton⁹ said to me, semi-jocularly, that he was always well posted on Irish affairs because Lord Brocket¹⁰ was a great friend of his and had usually a lot to say about Ireland when he came over here. John Foster,¹¹ Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, told me he had cousins who had gone to live in Ireland ‘and loved it’. Other similar instances have come under my notice, indicating among other things, that members of the former ascendancy are nowadays inclined to take a less jaundiced view of Ireland and Irish affairs than they did in the past. However embarrassing, therefore, the ‘retreat from Moscow’ may be in other respects, it is having, I think, a perceptible influence on opinions here about Ireland and the long-term importance of this may be very considerable; because if the picture once becomes fixed in the British mind of, on the one hand, a tolerant, cultured and well-governed twenty-six counties, and on the other, of a bigoted, narrow and selfish Six County régime – constantly forced to have recourse to the methods of the police-state to maintain itself in being – the instinctive sympathy which the Stormont régime has hitherto been able to rely on in this country will not endure for long.

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