Extracts from a draft confidential report by Con Cremin
'Labour Leaders and Partition'
(Confidential) (Copy)

When he was in Dublin some time ago, Lord Pakenham suggested to the Tánaiste that he should agree to meet some of the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party on the occasion of a future visit to London. Consequently when informing me a few days beforehand of the Tánaiste’s visit from the 2nd to 5th December, Mr. O’Carroll, the Private Secretary, suggested that I might tell Lord Pakenham of this visit in case he could, even at such short notice, arrange a meeting. I spoke to Lord Pakenham who felt that he could have a few of the Labour party meet Mr. Norton, and we agreed that they come to dinner at the Embassy on the evening of Tuesday, 4th December. Mr. Robens was to have been one of the group but in fact he was taken ill over the weekend. In the event those who came were Lord Silkin,¹ former Minister for Town and Country Planning, and Messrs. George Brown² and Douglas Jay³ as well as Lord Pakenham. Mr. Bottomley was also to have been here but there was some misunderstanding about the invitation conveyed to him by Lord Pakenham.

2. At the end of the meal Lord Pakenham suggested that it might be no harm to have a talk about Partition and the possible behaviour of a future Labour Government in relation thereto. It was perfectly clear that the four guests present (Lords Silkin and Pakenham and Messrs. George Brown and Douglas Jay) considered themselves as probable Ministers in the event of Labour returning to power.
3. The talk, lasting over an hour and a half (at a certain point Mr. Jay had to leave to return to the House of Commons), was not entirely consecutive and does not, therefore, lend itself readily to a detailed and ordered report. The following is a rough summary of the main points made.
4. An important preliminary point was our view of the attitude towards this question of the Labour Government during its last period of office. The Tánaiste explained that, as it had always been felt in Ireland that the Labour Party was friendly to us, there had been great disappointment at what seemed to be the quite gratuitous inclusion in the Ireland Bill by the Attlee Government of a clause (Section 1(2) of the Bill as enacted) to the effect that no change would be made in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the Belfast parliament.⁴ This in effect means that the situation is frozen indefinitely as there is very little prospect of such an alteration in the composition and outlook of Stormont as would give any hope of that parliament voting for a change in the status quo. Both the Tánaiste’s statement and the existence of this clause seemed to come as a great surprise to the other men present, with the exception of Lord Pakenham: it appeared that because of current day-to-day preoccupations in other directions, including Departmental duties, they had not adverted to the importance of the clause. Lord Pakenham had, of course, done so. He told us that he had made representations both orally and in writing to Mr. Attlee and that he was indeed so distressed about this provision and his inability to have it altered or eliminated that he actually discussed with Mr. Dulanty, then High Commissioner, the question of his resigning. Mr. Dulanty had advised against such a course on the ground that his resignation would serve no useful purpose and that he could be more efficacious inside than outside the Cabinet.

[matter omitted]

6. There appeared to be a real disposition on the part of the guests to consider sympathetically, and as a matter of practical politics, what can be done to remedy the situation. They seemed to toy with the idea of eliminating the offending section from the Ireland Act. On the other hand, and while professing no love for the separate status of an area which consistently returns to Westminster a small but compact group of reliable Conservative MPs, they appeared to think that it would be difficult to envisage a solution which would deprive the inhabitants of the Six Counties who feel that way of their right to profess allegiance to the English Crown. Generally speaking they seemed to favour the unity of the country but subject to the over-riding consideration that the sentiments of a large part of the population of the Six Counties should not be violated and that the final solution should not be more disadvantageous to Britain than is the present position. Lord Silkin suggested that one might think of two formulae – reunification of the whole country on the understanding that Ireland would again become part of the United Kingdom, or reunification accompanied by our return to the Commonwealth. It was made clear to him and the others that there can be no question whatever of adopting the first formula and that the same applies to the second. The Tánaiste explained recent history in this regard emphasising that the abolition of the Act of Union of 1800 and the termination of allegiance to the British Crown, associated in the minds of Irishmen with political discrimination and oppression, and with economic dependence and poverty, have been the aspiration of the Irish nation for generations. The guests, in particular Mr. George Brown, expressed complete indifference to the English Crown as an institution but were rather emphatic that public opinion here would not support a solution which would seem to leave a reunited Ireland completely cut off from Britain. They argued, instancing India, that the links which bind the Commonwealth members nowadays are so tenuous that our return to that group should not put any great strain on our patriotism. It was put to them that there are other formulae which might not have the same sentimental objections and which indeed, from the British point of view, might be more effective – that one could conceive, at least theoretically, the negotiation concurrently with reunification of some kind of treaty of friendship. Clearly, however, Lord Silkin in particular considers that the concept of membership of the Commonwealth still carries such connotations for public opinion here as to render this particular formula that most likely to secure public acceptance.

[matter omitted]

9. The general impression we had from the talk was that the British Labour representatives learned many things about Partition and its background of which they were entirely ignorant and that they personally would be disposed to consider sympathetically possible solutions. Lord Silkin and Mr. Brown spoke in this regard of having a talk with Lord Attlee.
10. When leaving Lord Pakenham expressed the opinion privately that it might be possible to have seriously examined by a Labour Government the possibilities of ending Partition provided this step is accompanied by the concurrent establishment on the part of a united Ireland of some kind of link with Britain – via the Commonwealth or otherwise, but something concrete and formally binding.