Report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret)

I went to see Sir Percivale Liesching on the morning of the 31st August, at his request.

2. After preliminary casual conversation, Sir Percivale said that he had been instructed to speak to me about the following matter, but he wanted to make it clear that in doing so he was speaking ‘informally, and not in any formal official way’.
3. He said that his government was much concerned about the possibilities of the situation which would arise if IRA groups on our side of the border made a practice of carrying out forays or exploits in the Six County area. There seemed to be some increase in IRA drilling and other activity on our side of the border, and there was some evidence that the kind of thing he mentioned was what these groups had in mind. As he understood the position, the IRA was an illegal organisation under our law and it was not imagined or suggested that our government viewed these activities with favour. But, as his government saw the situation, the danger existed and it was a real and serious one. They were much concerned at the thought of the consequences it might entail and his purpose in speaking to me was to make this feeling of concern known to us.
4. The foregoing does not purport to be a verbatim account of Sir Percivale’s remarks, but I think it translates faithfully the tone and substance of what he said.
5. I asked Sir Percivale whether there was any evidence to support the suggestion that recent IRA doings in the Six Counties were the work of groups from south of the border. He said that his remarks had been intended to apply, not so much to any particular incident or incidents, as generally. The concern they felt related to future possibilities rather than to anything that had happened in the past.
6. I told Sir Percivale that I would convey the substance of what he had said to my Minister. As he knew, force had no place in the Irish Government’s ideas as to how the Partition problem should be solved. But we were better judges than anyone in England of what tended to increase or lessen physical force activity; and so far as the present situation was concerned, the major factor in this regard was the turn which the Stormont Government’s policy towards the minority had taken within the last six or nine months. Making it clear that I was speaking personally and without specific instructions, I went on to give him a full account of this development, including the passage of the Flags and Emblems Act² and the happenings at Pomeroy last month. I spoke particularly strongly about the challenging and provocative action of the Six County authorities in condoning the Black Preceptory³ rally in Pomeroy a few days after the forcible suppression of the welcome to Senator Kelly,⁴ pointing out that it was the action of a Government less concerned with preserving law and order than with provoking and humiliating its political opponents for the sake of appeasing its own extremists.
7. I told Sir Percivale that I would not have spoken so directly on this matter without instructions were it not for its immediate bearing on what he had said to me. I agreed with him that the present trend of events in the Six Counties gave cause for concern. But I felt I couldn’t leave that room appearing to accept the wholly one-sided and erroneous view that the essence of the present situation is the danger of IRA activity. The real danger of the situation, and I couldn’t impress this on him too strongly, was that naturally law-abiding people were being gradually goaded to a state of exasperation and that, in their exasperation, they might be tempted to take an indulgent view of IRA activities of which they would probably otherwise disapprove. It was devoutly to be hoped, therefore, that the views of the more sensible members of the Six County government would prevail and that there would be a return to the more moderate courses which obtained up to last year when the extreme elements in the Orange Order started to take over the direction of Six County affairs.

   Liesching made notes on his pad while I was speaking. At the end, he said that he had delivered his message and had made a note of what I said in reply; he didn’t wish to make any comment on what I had said at that stage.