Confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Confidential)

With reference to your cypher telegram No. 23² about the representations received by the Minister from the Portuguese Charge d’Affaires³ regarding the difficulty experienced by the Portuguese delegation here in connection with the Portuguese overseas territories, I beg to state that I had already been approached on this question by the Portuguese Ambassador⁴ here before I received your telegram.

You will, no doubt, be familiar with the point involved. Portugal insists that her overseas territories are not colonies at all but provinces of Portugal on the same footing as the provinces of the Portuguese mainland. On that ground, Portugal, when she became a member of the United Nations, did not furnish any list of her overseas possessions, as members of the United Nations are required to do. This point was raised by the Indian and other Afro-Asian delegations in the Fourth Committee as part of their general drive against ‘colonialism’.

We had very grave doubts about the wisdom and soundness of the Portuguese stand. Her position that Portugal is not a Colonial Power at all because her overseas possessions are really part of the mainland is, to say the least of it, naive. On the other hand, the Afro-Asian drive against ‘colonialism’ has become so irrational, immoderate and undiscriminating that, at the present stage, probably more harm than good is done by lending it encouragement on points of this kind. This is all the more so as the Afro-Asians themselves show no regard whatever for the principles on which they base their attacks on the Colonial Powers in cases in which their own interests happen to be involved. Examples of this are the Indian attitude on Kashmir and Indonesia’s claim that West New Guinea should be part of Indonesia simply because Indonesia and West New Guinea were comprised under the same Dutch Colonial administration. Balancing these conflicting considerations against one another, I felt that this was a case in which we could justifiably lend support to Portugal and we, accordingly, voted in her favour when the matter came up at the Fourth Committee. The vote went against Portugal by 35 to 33 but I gather from the Portuguese Ambassador that he has some hopes of being able to swing the vote in the other direction when the matter comes to the Plenary Assembly.