Letter from Joseph D. Brennan to Seán Murphy (Dublin)

With reference to your Cable 118¹ in which you requested that four copies of an up-to-date brief for the Tánaiste on the progress of the Anti-Partition campaign in Congress since January 1st last should be forwarded. I regret that it was not possible to have this brief prepared so as to arrive on the 22nd but it is hoped that it will reach you in time to be delivered to the Tánaiste before his departure for the United States. In connection with the brief it might be well that Mr. Norton should beforehand have the opportunity of reading the review of the Anti-Partition movement in the United States prepared in July 1954 for the Department.² That report brought the activity of the movement up to the date it was presented, namely the 12th July, 1954.

In that connection it is pertinent to refer to the efforts made by Congressman John E. Fogarty and his group to bring the case against Partition to the very highest and most responsible quarters in the United States Administration. As you know from my reports, Mr. Fogarty headed a Congressional delegation which met with the Secretary of State, Mr. John Foster Dulles, on the 23 September, 1954, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.³ That meeting came about as a result of several letters written by Congressman Fogarty to the Secretary of State pointing out that he headed a bloc in Congress amounting to 168 members, a very substantial part of the House membership. He further said that their endorsement of the cause of Anti-Partition should not lightly be discounted and therefore he, Mr. Fogarty, felt justified in bringing the subject to the Secretary of State’s notice. It was as a consequence of this correspondence that the Secretary of State invited Mr. Fogarty to meet him. Mr. Fogarty met him, accompanied by Congressman John Rooney and Congresswoman Edna Kelly, each of whom was responsible in the House of Representatives for certain aspects of State Department policies. Congresswoman Kelly is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Mr. Rooney is the ranking Democratic member on the Committee of Appropriations for the State Department. Apparently the Congressional delegation had a satisfactory conversation with the Secretary of State. He promised them on that occasion that he would examine the subject thoroughly and ascertain how most effectively the grievances complained of might be redressed. My understanding of the Secretary’s intentions at that particular time was that he proposed to raise the issue at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in London in October, 1954. As for the delegation, I was assured by them that every conceivable point which might have a bearing on the situation was discussed by them with the Secretary of State. The delegation further assured me that the views they expressed and the suggestions they put forward for consideration by Mr. Dulles were not necessarily those which would be acceptable to an Irish Government. They thought that consideration should⁴ be given to any possibility which could be accepted as a new approach to the long standing problem.

While it was not definitely so stated, so far as I could ascertain, nevertheless an impression was given that the Secretary of State would discuss the matter in an intimate fashion with the British authorities. At any rate the Secretary agreed to another meeting at a later date.

In that connection it might be well that the Tánaiste should know that Mr. Fogarty and his group met on July 28, 1955, with Mr. Robert D. Murphy,⁵ Deputy Under-Secretary of State, Mr. William Christensen, of the Irish Desk in the State Department, and Mr. Ben Hill Brown⁶ of the State Department. This meeting took place in the Capitol. Mr. Fogarty expressed himself as being gratified with the progress made since the previous meeting with the Secretary of State. According to my report, the Deputy Under-Secretary, Mr. Robert D. Murphy, showed a knowledge of the development of the common interest between the Twenty-Six Counties and the Six Counties during the last few years and expressed the idea that any possible solution of the Partition question might lie along the lines of co-operation on plans which were not yet evident. Mr. Murphy referred to the successful co-operation in transport, the hydro-electric schemes and the fisheries schemes. To these remarks of Mr. Murphy, Mr. Fogarty rejoined that while agreeing with these particular instances and agreeing that they were evidences of the inherent common sense and good business principles of both parties in Ireland, it should not be much more difficult to have co-operation on a political level. That might take place more rapidly and might lead to greater areas of co-operation if the United States Administration expressed themselves in favour of it and encouraged it. The other members of the Congressional delegation expressed similar views and urged Mr. Murphy to have the State Department take such action as might be open to it to impress the British authorities with their point of view. Apparently Mr. Murphy was not very enthusiastic about this idea and expressed the viewpoint that time would surely heal the sore and that anything which was not pressing in its nature or had no immediate explosive tendencies need not demand the urgent attention of the State Department. According to my information the proceedings wound up with Mr. Murphy promising to consult with the Secretary of State and to inform Mr. Fogarty at a later date of anything positive he might have to say in connection with this matter. So far as I can ascertain no further communication has yet taken place between Mr. Murphy and Mr. Fogarty though it is significant perhaps that they were playing golf together and that Mr. Murphy allegedly confessed himself as sympathetic towards the cause sponsored by Mr. Fogarty.

However, all action was not confined to Mr. Fogarty’s discussions with the State Department. A resolution similar to the terms of the Fogarty resolution in the House of Representatives was put forward in the Senate by a group of 17 Senators headed by Senator Everett Dirksen,⁷ Republican of Illinois, and Senator John Kennedy,⁸ Democrat of Massachusetts. With 17 Senators endorsing a rather innocuous resolution one would have hoped that time would have been made by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hear evidence on the resolution. That has not so far transpired and regretfully one has to come to the conclusion that little pressure was made by the signatories of the resolution on the Foreign Relations Committee. Of course, to be cynical one would have to have regard to the fact that there were no Congressional elections in the year 1955.

Notice was taken in Washington of the statements made by the Taoiseach and the Minister for External Affairs early in the year. The attention of the Secretary of State was directed by the American League for an Undivided Ireland to the interview with Mr. Liam Cosgrave in which the Minister appealed to Great Britain to end Partition as ‘a gesture of statesmanship’. Congressman John J. Rooney, Democrat of Brooklyn, New York, as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee for the State Department, raised again the question of Partition with high officials of the State Department who came before his Committee to argue the case for their appropriations. The President of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Captain Michael J. Dowd,⁹ in February, 1955, issued a statement to the press in which he said that the success of the measure, i.e. the resolution proposed in the Senate, was the No. 1 aim of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. This statement received wide publicity but, as reported above, no action was taken on the resolution by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Meantime, other members introduced resolutions seeking to end Partition. For example, Representative Isidore Dollinger,¹⁰ Democrat of New York, proposed a resolution on the same terms as that of Congressman Fogarty. This seemed pointless except that it is a notification to all that Mr. Dollinger is solidly behind the Fogarty resolution. It must be remembered that the Fogarty resolution commanded a minimum of 168 members in the House in the previous Congress. These members went on record for its passage but they were 50 short of a majority of the House. Still, 168 members out of a total of 435 is a very substantial minority.

Mr. Fogarty was not alone in communicating with the Secretary of State. Representative Thomas J. Lane,¹¹ Democrat of Massachusetts, who has long shown interest in this question of Partition in Ireland, wrote to the Secretary of State on March 10 asking for a definite policy statement by the United States Government in support of the unification of Ireland. Mr. Lane stated that it was his belief that the Government of the United States should declare itself ‘as morally opposed to the continuing Partition of Ireland’. He got the usual reply from the State Department to the effect that both Great Britain and Ireland were close friends of the United States and the matter of Partition was something in which the United States Administration felt it could not usefully intervene.

From time to time various Members of Congress and of the Senate spoke up in favour of the unification of Ireland. Such a one was Senator Estes Kefauver,¹² Democrat of Tennessee, who is now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. He signed the resolution put forward by Senators Dirksen and Kennedy saying as he did so that he favoured self-determination in Ireland as well as he did in America. Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney had this to say ‘Ireland is and always has been a single unit, the division of which has been the result of colonial policy contrary to the basic principles to which the free world is dedicated’.

In the Spring of 1955 feeling began to rise as a result of shooting incidents on the border. Despite the moderate statements made by Mr. Cosgrave, our Minister, and by the Head of the Government and by the Head of the Opposition concerning their abhorrence at the use of arms in this particular case, a great deal of sympathy was expressed amongst our people in the United States for the activities of the IRA. Time and time again one heard it said ‘Well, we never got anything from England except when we took it in arms’. A very prominent Congressman who had visited Israel told the writer that Ireland ought to take a lesson from the Israelites who were out ploughing their fields with tommy guns tucked under their arms and ready at anytime to protect the soil which they had so long sought as their own. This particular Congressman mentioned the sympathy for the Israel cause which prevailed as a result of their vigorous action and said that Ireland’s young men who risked jail and, possibly, execution because of their use of force were more akin to the thinking of the American people than to that of our own who deprecated the use of force. These shooting incidents brought a fresh rush of comment from Congressmen and Senators. For example, Rep. John E. Fogarty, who has been the spearhead of this Anti-Partition cause in the Congress, said that the shootings which had just occurred in Ireland stemmed from the evil of the border and that it was time that ‘our own Government proposed to Great Britain that she exercise a little statesmanship and direct the Stormont Government to sit down with the Dublin Government and come to terms on unification’.

As the Parliamentary session proceeded, interest in the question of Partition appeared to wax with the notice given to IRA activities in England and in Ireland. While, naturally, responsible Representatives could not wholly approve the activities of the IRA, there was always a suspicion of a tongue in the cheek attitude in their disapproval and some even went so far as to say once more that the IRA were on the right lines. Our people, however, were not idle and took pains to point out in June of 1955 that three Agencies alone of the United Kingdom spent $2,108,789 in a publicity and propaganda campaign in the United States. In his report on Operations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, the Attorney General of the USA mentioned that while considerable quantities of its propaganda materials are designed to present Great Britain as an attractive tourist country, very great amounts were spent to place before the American public Great Britain’s views with respect to what it considers major international issues. Against such enormous expenditure, the ALUI could muster very few dollars but they continued to push in Congress for consideration of the resolution put forward in the Senate by 18 Members. Towards the end of the session, Senator Mansfield, Democrat of Montana, one of the sponsors of the resolution, said they had every hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would hold hearings on it in 1956 but with the Congress aiming at adjournment in July 1955 there was little hope of time being allotted to the measure.

With the convening of the United Nations for its Tenth Anniversary session at San Francisco more was heard from the ALUI. They sent out resolutions appealing for the admission of Ireland to the United Nations and when Ireland was admitted a few days ago they had this to say: ‘We are most happy to see Ireland given an opportunity to take her rightful place among the nations of the world’ said Mr. Charles T. Rice,¹³ Spokesman for the League and he added: ‘It may well be that this will provide the first real opportunity that the Irish have had to bring the border question to the forefront of the world’s attention.’

On this note it might well be said that the activity in regard to Partition ended for 1955. According to a spokesman of the League, they are looking forward to 1956 to the National Conventions of the two principal parties in the United States with a view to exerting pressure on these Conventions to place as planks in their party platforms resolutions embodying the sense of the Conventions that the unity of Ireland should be restored. While undoubtedly the efforts will be made to have appropriate resolutions adopted by the Conventions, it is doubtful whether they will meet with positive success. Nevertheless, they will do good inasmuch as they will bring to the attention of the political parties of this country that the Irish question is yet uncompletely settled.