Confidential report from John J. Hearne to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Confidential)

I have the honour to report a conversation with Sir Harold Caccia² the new British Ambassador to Washington who paid his protocol call on Wednesday the 11th December.

After the usual exchange of courtesies, Sir Harold said: ‘Now don’t ask me all the hard questions at once.’ I said: ‘I won’t ask any questions. I know you’ve been having a difficult time, and, as we are colleagues here, feel absolutely free to relax and let’s talk about nothing.’

‘That’s very kind of you. I find everybody personally kind in Washington. But officially the atmosphere is about as cold as it could be.’

I said: ‘That’s a passing phase. I think your friends here are anxious to find ways and means of getting back to the old close relations. You are going to need each other greatly. The general view I hear expressed in every quarter is that the Alliance has to be pulled together as quickly as possible.’

‘Yes’, the British Ambassador added, ‘the common enemy remains. We tried one way of forestalling him. That did not succeed. The responsibility now rests on the United States. How do they propose to meet the common enemy? What is the plan to stop Russian encroachment everywhere? It’s a tremendous responsibility for them.’

I said that American policy was being based more and more on the United Nations, and that the United Nations had shown considerable strength on the Egyptian affair. With the Anglo-French-American axis intact again, and the United Nations functioning as it has been doing, there seemed great hope of maintaining a preponderance of power in favour of peace and freedom. ‘Do you know Mr. Secretary Dulles well?’ I asked Sir Harold Caccia.

‘I don’t know him intimately’, my visitor replied.

‘Well’, I said, ‘he is an American idealist. He believes in the principles on which the American Republic was founded. That is why he took so strong a stand on the Egyptian affair. He felt that, whatever had to be done about Suez or Nasser or Egypt, the course the French and yourselves took seemed to be the wrong course, a throwback to the days of Queen Victoria or, as he would think, of George the Third. He played hard to get the support of the "non-committed" or "neutralist" Afro-Asian countries and he got that tremendous vote of 60 to 5 in the Assembly. Mr. Dulles points to that achievement as the justification of his stand on Egypt.’

Sir Harold did not seek to justify the British-French invasion on Egypt on the ground on which Prime Minister Eden sought to do so on his return to London from Jamaica today, namely, that their intervention in the Middle East was right because it had resulted in the creation of a UN force, and had prevented the establishment of more Russian satellites in the Middle East; and that there was a ‘growing understanding’ of this in Canada and the United States.

I asked the Ambassador whether he would care to talk about Sir Anthony Eden’s future, – what the prospects were of his remaining Prime Minister. Sir Harold said that he would be glad to give me his personal views. ‘The situation,’ he said, ‘is one in which one would naturally expect somebody’s head to fall. But whose? If any resignation takes place it would normally be that of the Head of the Government. The resignation of Selwyn Lloyd e.g. would not be regarded as important. It would be nothing. But if Sir Anthony resigns who is to succeed him? There is no one. Butler? Macmillan? Neither of these would do. Others are mentioned Lennox Boyd e.g. and even Duncan Sandys. Eden’s power is that there is no one in the Conservative Party to succeed him. Therefore, he will probably remain on if his health is alright and, if he does, he will weather the storm.’

At the end of our conversation Sir Harold referred to the IRA raids in the Six County area reported that morning.³ He asked me what I knew about them. I said ‘Nothing, except what we heard on the radio a few hours ago.’ I said that both of the big political parties in Ireland, and, indeed, all the parties in the Dáil condemned the use of force as a method of achieving national unity. We wanted peace also and we hoped to secure unity without civil war. We were prepared to make almost any sacrifice for unity. The present Government and the previous Government were opposed to raids on the Six County area by illegally constituted armies. The defence forces of Ireland are constituted by statute and under the control of the National Government and Parliament. Operations by other forces are unlawful and morally wrong. That was the position of the Government.

Sir Harold asked whether I could say why raids on so large a scale took place at this particular time.

I said that I did not know but that possibly the raiders had in mind the events now taking place in Hungary and Poland.

‘Your predecessor but one, Sir Harold’ I continued, ‘Sir Oliver Franks used to describe the partition of Ireland as one of the most unnatural things he had ever heard of.’

‘You must come back to us’ Sir Harold Caccia said.

‘We sought amity’, I replied ‘for over twenty-five years on the basis of the Crown, proportional representation and guarantees to the religious minority, but without avail. We are now seeking closer relations with our fellow countrymen in the Six Counties by practical day to day co-operation in the handling of a number of problems affecting the two sides of the border, fisheries, railways, drainage and so on. We will keep on doing everything possible to unify our country by peaceful means. Unity is ultimately inevitable.’

Sir Harold said: ‘Let’s talk about it again.’