Extracts from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)‘Lord Home’ (Confidential) (Copy)

I made my first call on Lord Home, the new Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations last week.

2. At an early stage of the conversation, I told him that, whereas in other respects the relations between England and Ireland gave rise to few problems and were satisfactory enough, the continuance of Partition was a fatal barrier to the sort of friendship which should exist and, indeed represented a constant threat to the relations between the two countries. Lord Home — who had probably been advised not to be drawn into discussion of matters of substance in the course of his initial courtesy visits — said he knew there was anxiety about the Border position, arising from recent events in particular, and it was one of the matters he wanted to familiarise himself with as soon as possible. The trouble was that he had not yet succeeded in releasing himself from the affairs of the Scottish Office¹ and, in fact, he had to go back to the House of Lords after his interview with me to take one of the concluding stages of the Scottish Crofters’ Bill. It was clear that he wasn’t on for the discussion of current problems.
3. Most of the conversation was therefore purely general. He is still very wrapped up in Scottish affairs, and such knowledge as he has of contemporary Irish developments (peat production, rural migration, rural electrification, etc.) seems to have been picked up in the course of considering similar problems in their relation to Scotland.

[matter omitted]

4. Lord Home is not a very impressive personality. He is handicapped by a cool, poised, Etonian manner. He exhibits no signs of intellectual brilliance, but he seems to be calm, objective and interested — unlike his choleric and self-opinionated predecessor.² He is obviously very much of a Tory and probably stands poles apart from the section of the party associated with Mr. Butler, which nowadays has the dominant voice in the shaping of Conservative policy.