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

One of the people here who normally keeps me informed about Six County affairs, dropped in here the other day to give me his impressions of recent developments in the Six County area.

2. He said that the new Fianna Uladh² movement was definitely a failure and that it is making no headway whatever. It is virtually confined to the parishes of Carrickmore, Pomeroy and Kildress in mid-Tyrone and its efforts to extend to other areas have so far proved completely unsuccessful. At a meeting which it held in Enniskillen on the 2nd February, there were only forty people present and all the speakers were from the three mid-Tyrone parishes with the exception of two local working men named Love³ and Farry,⁴ who have no weight or influence whatever among our people in Fermanagh. The organisers of the meeting had asked Father Campbell⁵ of Rosslea to speak, apparently under the impression that he was one of their supporters. Actually Father Campbell, who is a well-known ‘sujet difficile’, made a speech roundly condemning the aims of the new movement. My friend thought it highly indicative that some of the most prominent left-wing nationalists in Fermanagh – such as Mr. McCarron⁶ of Lisnaskea and Sean Lethercott⁷ of Enniskillen – had refused to have anything to do with the new movement.
3. Apart from that, my friend said, the new movement was suffering heavily from divided councils and lack of strength of purpose in its chosen leaders. There had been a sharp row over the decision that Liam Kelly should, if necessary, wear prison clothes while in jail. The decision had been taken by a small caucus headed by Father Bernard Treacy, who were anxious not to endanger Mr. Kelly’s life and to spare his family mental suffering. At its next meeting, the executive of the movement condemned the decision and expelled Father Treacy from membership of the executive. Before the conclusion of the meeting, however, the decision to expel Father Treacy was reversed whereupon one of the extremist members of the executive – a man named Morris from Greencastle – resigned. The movement had barely recovered from this upset when there arose the episode about Mr. Cullen, N.T., one of its vice-presidents.⁸ You may remember that one of the Ulster Unionist members at Stormont raised the question of a speech made by Mr. Cullen in which he was alleged to have renounced his signature of the oath of allegiance. The appropriate Six County Minister replied by reading a letter from Mr. Cullen in which he denied the allegations in terms so humiliating and inept as to cause great pain to those who had supported him for the vice-presidency.
4. On the whole, therefore, my friend thought that the Fianna Uladh movement was certain to prove a damp squib and he wasn’t sure whether, on the whole, it hadn’t done more good than harm. One good effect it had had was that a lot of our people in the Six Counties who had become sharply divided during the recent Stormont elections on the abstention issue, were now standing together again in common opposition to Fianna Uladh. Fianna Uladh’s only asset, my friend said, was Mr. Liam Kelly who enjoyed personal popularity in the mid-Tyrone area.
5. My friend said that a factor which had contributed more than anything to the ill success of the Fianna Uladh was its failure to come to terms with the Sinn Féin movement. The two bodies had been unable to reach agreement because the Sinn Féin movement refuses to recognise the Constitution of 1937 which, it thinks, accepts the fact of the border. My friend thought that people who left the Fianna Uladh movement would be inclined to gravitate towards Sinn Féin, all the more so because the clergy, who had been very opposed to Sinn Féin in the past, seem to be revising their attitude towards it. His own feeling was that the Anti-Partition League should long ago have sat down and tried to come to some sort of arrangement with Sinn Féin themselves. He thought it could have been done if the League had been prepared to stand down and back a Sinn Féin candidate for either Fermanagh or mid-Ulster in the Westminster elections.
6. My friend went on to say that the feeling among our people in the Six Counties about the Flags and Emblems (Display) Bill although strong, was not as strong as one might have expected. The general impression was that it really made no change in the law apart from the fact that the powers which could previously be exercised only by a County Inspector were now at the disposal of ‘any police officer’. Our people didn’t mind this so much because as a general rule they found head constables and sergeants more reasonable and easier to deal with than county inspectors. Moreover, people had noted that, whereas the previous Special Powers Regulation had referred expressly to the Irish tricolour and had been directed exclusively against it, the new Act avoided the invidious distinction. Apart from that, there was a feeling that, having regard to the circumstances of the ‘split’ in the Unionist party, our people should not do anything to help the party to compose its differences with its own extremists.
7. My friend didn’t think that the Ulster Unionist party would find it easy to get rid of the difficulties which have arisen in its ranks. He was convinced that the real origin of the trouble was that more and more people in the North are getting sick of the old sectarian shibboleths and starting to think more of economic and social issues. He said that an Ulster Unionist member had admitted to him that this was the real issue. The Ulster Unionist headquarters were concerned about the rising volume of unrest and dissatisfaction in the predominantly Unionist areas in which there are never any electoral contests. The extremists in the Unionist party thought that the best way of meeting this new development was to beat the old drums somewhat louder. Lord Brookeborough and his friends felt that the general policy and approach of the government at Stormont would have to be modified if it was to keep abreast of it. For the moment the extremists have certainly the upper hand. The resignation of Mr. Christie, Chairman of the Derry County Council, from the chairmanship of the North Derry Unionist Association was symptomatic of what was happening throughout the Six Counties. The moderates were resigning and dissociating themselves from the extremist policy, but that didn’t mean that they accepted the new position. The nucleus of a new opposition in the North was gradually being formed. It was noticeable, my friend said, that the Unionist dissensions had been carefully limited to the areas in which there was no risk of their opening the door for nationalist victories. They were being actively pursued in Armagh, Antrim, Down and Co. Derry (outside Derry City) but so far they had been successfully blanketed in other areas.