Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)¹
(Confidential)

One of the questions which is likely to arise, following the retirement of Krishna Menon,² is whether we are prepared to allow the new Indian High Commissioner in London³ to be accredited as Ambassador to Ireland or whether – as we have done in other cases – we will insist on having someone from some other diplomatic capital.

In the particular case of India, I think there is a good case in favour of taking the man from London. India and Canada are the two Commonwealth countries which have a standing interest in Ireland. At moments of controversy, they are inclined to side with us, not out of altruism but because they want to avoid precedents being established which some day may be used against them. India is particularly interested in Ireland and on more than one occasion, we have had evidence that the Indian High Commissioner here has taken a benevolent interest on our behalf when matters affecting us were discussed at Commonwealth conferences or meetings. This seems to have been the case, for example, at the meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers here early this year of the proceedings of which we were kept reasonably well informed, thanks to Indian interest. The value of taking the Indian Ambassador from London is that it gives us a means of ensuring that the Indian delegation at Commonwealth conferences here, some of which may be discussing matters of consequence to us, will be fully informed of our views and interests.

You might perhaps mention this point of view to the Minister for his consideration.

Although it was, of course, always a concern with us to prevent Dublin becoming a diplomatic suburb of London by the accredition to us of people already accredited and resident here, I was never much in favour of going to the other extreme and insisting that heads of missions who are doubly accredited to us should be resident anywhere else in the world except in London. I always felt that two or three double accreditions from capitals like Paris and Brussels would be sufficient to prevent the implication we were anxious to avoid from arising but that, on the other hand if all our doubly accredited heads of missions were so remote, it would reduce the principle of double accredition in our case to a farce. It was for this reason that I suggested more than once to the last Minister that we should follow the practice of taking doubly accredited heads of missions of Northern European countries from London (as we have already done in the case of Norway) and doubly accredited heads of missions of Southern European countries from France or Belgium. So far as I know, he never gave a ruling on this general principle.

However about that, I do feel that the balance of the argument is in favour of taking the Indian representative from London for the reasons I have stated.