Extracts from a letter from Frederick H. Boland to William P. Fay (Dublin)¹

I have given a good deal of thought to your letter, 402/218, of the 20th January² about the proposed fund to promote welfare activities among our people here. Having discussed the question with the members of the Embassy staff who have constant dealings with the Irish organisations in this country and are familiar with their circumstances and their work, I venture to put forward the following comments.

The new scheme differs radically, of course, from that originally suggested. The original scheme took as its starting point the idea that our people in this country should be able to provide for any necessary welfare activities by means of voluntary effort and organisation among themselves; but it recognised that in present circumstances the amount of organisation available for this purpose is very deficient, and it proposed to meet this deficiency by providing a fund out of which help could be given to people who were prepared to help themselves by coming together and setting up local organisations which – once established with the help of initial encouragement from the fund – could be expected to become self-supporting.

The new scheme seems to me to set out from a different premise. It assumes that a fair degree of organisation either already exists or can be brought into being with comparatively little delay; and that this organisation could be used to provide a body capable of framing a suitable scheme and organising a general appeal for subscriptions in this country and Ireland.

That seems to me the essential difference between the two schemes. They imply two different conceptions of the present extent of Irish organisation here and what it is capable of. On the basis of the information and experience available to us here in the Embassy, I feel bound to say that in my view the conception upon which the original suggestion was based, though possibly open to objections on other grounds, was the more realistic. The new scheme seems to me to imply a rather too optimistic assessment of the scope and possibilities of Irish organisation here in present circumstances.

It will help to explain this view perhaps, if I set out the following considerations:-

1. In present circumstances, there is extremely little organisation among our people in this country. In saying this, I am leaving aside the Anti-Partition League; I don’t think we should try to use it in this context for fear of distracting the energies of its local branches from their present task. There are, of course, some excellent Irish organisations in London and there are Irish societies and GAA and Gaelic League branches in nine or ten provincial centres, such as Manchester, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow etc. Some of these local organisations are, however, extremely weak. Their activities hardly extend beyond the organisation of an occasional social and a St. Patrick’s Day dinner. The finances of almost all of them are extremely shaky. Even the cost of sending a representative to attend a meeting in London would be more than some of them would want to face. They have no representative capacity. Some of them are confined to the higher social strata. The lack of organisation is most marked among the people who need it most – the young Irish boys and girls who come over here as workers. In brief, the infrastructure upon which a national organisation of the kind envisaged by the new scheme could be based, hardly exists. It would be largely a question of trying to create one and that task would inevitably take a good deal of time.
2. We have had practical experience of collecting funds among our people here in connection with the Anti-Partition League. It is an up-hill task. We cannot rely on radio or press facilities as can be done at home. Printed appeals have proved in practice quite valueless. No assistance can be expected from the clergy, who are faced with the tremendous problem of financing the Catholic schools, and public collections outside church precincts require police authorisation. The only method which has proved in any way effective is that of direct personal approach. Even here, the results obtained are relatively meagre in relation to the effort expended. The existing Irish organisations find it hard enough to raise the funds they require in their own localities.

[matter omitted]

3. It seemed to us desirable that the Board of Trustees responsible for the administration of any funds eventually raised should not be representative of individual Irish organisations, so much as persons of high standing and repute not specifically identified with membership of particular Irish bodies. The list of names put forward in my minute of the 17th December³ was suggested largely with that consideration in mind.

[matter omitted]

4. I doubt whether the picture given in the preceding paragraphs could be materially altered within any measurable length of time by the appointment of a welfare officer at the Embassy. The task of organising interested groups where they do not already exist would under the best circumstances be a slow one. It is not merely a question of locating the right people to take the initiative; even when they can be discovered and persuaded to act, the task of working up a membership would still have to be faced and, as the vast majority of the Irish here are working people with limited leisure, this would inevitably take some time. It would be different if, as the original scheme contemplated, we were in a position to say to local groups: ‘If you get together and make an application to the Trust Fund, they may be able to give you some assistance to enable you to get going properly’. Even under these conditions, the rate of progress would hardly be rapid. If, however, all we can say to them is: ‘We would like you to form a group to send a representative to a meeting to discuss a general appeal for raising funds out of which your group, in company with the other groups concerned, may eventually benefit’, it seems to me doubtful whether the rate of progress will be sufficiently fast to make the initiative a success.

I am sorry to sound so depressing; but these are the present position and future prospects as we see them and it is best to state them frankly. The present dearth of organisation among our people in this country is lamentable. They are steadily pouring into the pockets of English dance-hall proprietors and publicans, vast sums of money which, if we only had effective local organisations offering dancing and club amenities, might be made available, in part at least, to finance a whole network of Irish social and welfare activities throughout the country. The whole question is where to begin and which is to come first, the chicken or the egg. What we must realise, I think, is that there is a barrier of habit and apathy to be overcome before any progress can be made. If it can be once surmounted, a snowball effect may be set up by the force of example. The great merit of the original scheme seemed to me to be that it offered a quick and effective means of surmounting the initial barrier. I am not sure that the alternative would have the same effect. Indeed, it is questionable whether it doesn’t leave us with the task of surmounting the initial barrier of inertia and indifference before the scheme it envisages can be got going at all.

For that reason, if there is any room for reconsideration of the matter, I would hope that the original scheme would be looked at again. As I said earlier, I realise there are some objections to it. It may be said, for example, that our people here should be well able to finance welfare activities among themselves and that it is wrong that people at home should be asked to bear all the burden of a financial appeal for that purpose. But it was never intended that the people at home should bear all the burden. They would merely provide the means of getting voluntary schemes going among our people here. It would be for the people here to provide the financial means of keeping them going once they were started. The idea of the fund was simply to provide the vital initial stimulus and by so doing to provide the ‘mise en train’ which, as the French proverb tells us, is the most difficult part of any operation.