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January 2002 Fateful Steps on the Road to Internment —by Ronan Fanning, The Independent British Cabinet Papers from 1971 reveal the lead-up to 'a last fling', writes Ronan Fanning The introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland on August  9, 1971 produced catastrophic consequences. Thirty-four people had so far been killed in 1971 but another 140 were killed before the year ended. That escalation in deaths was sustained throughout 1972, the worst year of violence, when the death-rate was in excess of one a day. The only beneficiaries of internment were the Provisional IRA whose numbers soared and whose claims to legitimacy, in Catholic eyes, seemed less spurious. Now, with the release of the papers for 1971, we are able to disentangle fact from myth and, in particular, to discover why Ted Heath's government agreed to back such a disastrous policy. For, although the announcement of the decision fell to Brian Faulkner, the last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Faulkner needed British approval not least because internment could never have been implemented without the involvement of British security forces. The issue of internment had arisen in December 1970 when the Northern Ireland Government asked London if emergency contingency plans could be drawn up to use HMS Maidstone (a ship anchored in Belfast Lough and used to accommodate troops) as a place of internment. British Ministers recoiled, not in principle but because the proposal was "too sensational and ... more photogenic than a prison or a barbed wire camp". Although the Home Secretary (Reginald Maudling) and Defence Secretary (Lord Carrington) pushed through "a contingency study (rather than a contingency plan) dealing with the practical problems of internment", that information was not conveyed to Northern Ireland Prime Minister, James Chichester-Clark, when he met Heath at Chequers on February 13. Chichester-Clark then declared himself against internment, as were the RUC and the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the British forces. By March 2, however, right-wing Unionist pressure in regard to the deteriorating security situation had pushed Chichester-Clark to the brink of resignation and the UK Representative at Stormont, Ronnie Burroughs, was recommending that, as "a time-saving device", Chichester-Clark be authorised to say he was in consultation with Heath's government about preparing accommodation for internees. When the British Cabinet discussed Northern Ireland for the first time at its 13th meeting of the year, Maudling reported that, although increasing IRA activity was creating "a serious situation" in Catholic areas, "the Army were continuing to keep the situation under control" and there was no mention of internment. But on the same day, March 9, the pressure on Chichester-Clark increased when three off-duty Scottish soldiers were lured from a pub and murdered by the Provisional IRA. On March 13, Ronnie Burroughs reported that the Head of the Special Branch now considered internment essential, "not because he believes it will be effective (Director of Intelligence believes we might pick up about 20 per cent and then mostly small fry) but because he fears that the Protestants will take the law into their own hands". Burroughs disagreed, arguing that "to arrest only a fraction would still leave the IRA as the masters of fear in the Belfast enclaves" and that the time was past when "the open threat of internment" could prop up Chichester-Clark A brief prepared on March 16 for Heath by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend, having rehearsed the arguments for the introduction of direct rule from Westminster, also reviewed the case for internment. He, too, pointed out that "the reprisal effect would be more marked" than the deterrent effect of interning, at best, 20 per cent of suspects. He concluded with a question which provides the key to understanding British policy in 1971: "is internment, with all its disadvantages, preferable to direct rule?" But answering that question was postponed because, when Chichester-Clark met Heath on the same day and sought more drastic security measures, he said nothing about internment. Thus the conclusions of the next British Cabinet meetings when Northern Ireland was next discussed (on March 18 and 22) make no mention of internment; nor does a note for the record of the sequence of events leading to Chichester-Clark's resignation, on March 20. On March 23 Brian Faulkner succeeded him, having defeated William Craig by 26 votes to 4 a week after Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillery, had prophetically warned the British Ambassador, John Peck, that the "greatest danger" was that Chichester-Clark would be replaced not by William Craig but by Faulkner who was "plausible enough and could convey an impression of moderation which might bamboozle Westminster and the moderate Unionists in Stormont". Nor was there any discussion of internment when Faulkner first met Heath on April 1. On April 20, however, Maudling advised Heath that the construction of an internment camp at Long Kesh "represented the most feasiblesolution". On July 21, the Ministry of Defence advised Downing Street that the GOC had reported that renewed pressure was building within Faulkner's government and that Faulkner himself was suggesting that "the time may have come to think again about internment". Although the GOC, fully supported by the Defence Secretary, still believed that the arguments against internment remained "very strong" and that other ways of disrupting the IRA (such as systematically harassing suspected IRA leaders) should be tried first, the resort to internment was represented as "primarily a political decision". The British Cabinet's fateful and only substantive discussion of internment took place next day, on July 22. The Home Secretary, Reggie Maudling, as the Minister responsible at Westminster for Northern Ireland, advised his colleagues that they "had seriously to contemplate" the institution of direct rule if Faulkner's administration lost its authority and was replaced by a regime whose policies were unacceptable in other words an administration led by Craig or Paisley. The crucial moment in the discussion was the need to confront the question anticipated by the Cabinet Secretary, Burke Trends, four months earlier: was internment preferable to direct rule? The answer was "that the institution of direct rule should be regarded as a policy of last resort and that before it was adopted it might well be right to agree that the Northern Ireland Government should invoke their powers of internment". In effect, the Cabinet had given the Prime Minister and the Ministerial Committee on Northern Ireland carte blanche to endorse internment if they saw fit. Burke Trend's memorandum of July 28 for the Ministerial Committee puts flesh on the "strong view at Cabinet ... that internment should precede direct rule, particularly since we might well be creating subsequent political embarrassment for ourselves if we needed, under direct rule, to use a weapon which we had earlier denied to the Northern Ireland Government". The corollary was that if, as so many in Whitehall predicted, internment was a disaster, then the blame would fall on Faulkner's administration rather than on Heath's. The other tactical element in the timing of internment revolved around "reaching, and emerging from August 12 [the day of the Apprentice Boys' march in Derry] without a catastrophe" this was the march which had triggered the start of the killing and the commitment of British troops in 1969 and it had been banned in 1970. In 1971, the GOC had been asked whether he would be "prepared to take a chance in terms of security" with a rerouted march because of "the political advantage to Mr Faulkner" that would thereby accrue. It was also decided to instruct the British Ambassador in Dublin, John Peck, to call on Taoiseach Jack Lynch on July 31 to seek "a substantive reaction" to the prospect of internment the Cabinet had also decided on July 22 that the introduction of internment should not depend on the Irish government's response, particularly because it would subject Lynch "to increasing political pressure which would not coincide with (British) interests". This anxiety to minimise political embarrassment to Lynch's government is a persistent theme in British policy throughout 1971. "Mr Lynch is the best Irish Prime Minister we are likely to have," observed the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, in a memorandum to Ted Heath as early as March 3. By the end of March, Heath was anxious to arrange a meeting with Lynch in London as quickly as possible and he was unhappy when the date initially proposed was late October. Lynch's reaction, reported Peck, "while calm and courteous, was firm and immediate". He stated categorically "that he could not possibly contemplate internment at the present time, there were no immediate grounds for doing so, and ... neither his nor any Irish government could survive such a measure". He also predicted, in uncharacteristically strong language, that internment "would produce an explosion which it would be impossible to contain" and that "all the moderates would identify with the internees". Although, when pressed by Peck, Lynch expressed a preference for direct rule as opposed to an "election and a Paisley-led government, ... he reverted again and again to the unwisdom of internment". The meeting ended with Lynch and Peck agreeing "explicitly that (their) conversation on internment had not taken place and that as few people as possible anywhere should know of it"; Lynch added that "he might be forced to express his objections [as he duly did] but would not give any hint that there had been any consultation on the subject". Nor did he and the fact that Lynch knew internment was coming more than a week before its introduction has remained veiled in secrecy until today. Lynch's views that internment would "lead to greater polarisation of opinion and ... make it harder to promote policies of co-operation and reconciliation" were endorsed by Burke Trend in another memorandum to the Prime Minister on August 2. The die was cast on August 4 when Faulkner told Maudling that he was "now firmly of the opinion that internment is desirable". Another sceptic was Heath's Principal Private Secretary, Robert Armstrong, who was subsequently to play a key role as Cabinet Secretary in the talks leading to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. On internment, he wrote in a withering personal minute to the Prime Minister, "the argument that seems to me to carry great force is Lord Carrington's: it is a last fling. If this is right, it seems to me that it should be something which you do when you visibly have to, and not before: not as part of a deal for banning marches". But the meeting next day in Downing Street between Faulkner and a British Ministerial delegation consisting of Heath, Maudling, Douglas-Home and Carrington ratified just such a deal. Much more significant and the subject of a separate note for the record from Burke Trend to Robert Armstrong was the earlier private discussion when Heath and his colleagues "had made it clear to (Faulkner) that, if internment failed, there could be no question of then moving on to e.g. reviving the B Specials or anything of that sort. The next step, and the only remaining step, would be direct rule". Although direct rule was postponed until March 1972, the sudden plethora of British Cabinet discussions on Northern Ireland (six before the end of September) signalled the failure of the last fling. Together with Heath's hastily convened Chequers meetings in the same month first, on September 6-7, with Lynch and, second, on September 27-28 with Lynch and Faulkner they show that the larger historical significance of internment is that it served as the catalyst which irrevocably destroyed the credibility of exclusively Unionist government in Northern Ireland and so opened that path of consultation with the Irish government upon which the British government has continued until today. Ronan Fanning is Professor of Modern History at University College Dublin Page updated 30 Mar 2008 Ireland's OWN Logo by Eamann Website Design and Celtic Background by Míchealín Daugherty Copyright © 2008 Ireland's OWN All Rights Reserved.