This article is from page 8 of the 2012-01-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
TO GO or not to go? That was the question that faced Clare’s President of Ireland, Dr Patrick Hillery in 1981 when, as head of State, he was invited to attend the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
Thirty years on, one of his successors in Áras an Uachtaráin, President Mary McAleese, may have attended the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, but things were different in 1981.
It was the year of the hunger strikes and Anglo-Irish relations, as they were in 1981, led to a government decision that President Hillery should not attend the wedding.
The State papers from 1981 that were opened this week reveal that Dr Hillery, who as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the 1969-1973 government, was trenchant in his criticism of British policy in Northern Ireland, didn’t want to attend the wedding.
However, President Hillery’s stance, which was backed up by the Charles J Haughey-led Fianna Fáil government in 1981 and the Garret FitzGerald led Fine Gael/Labour coalition that also came to power that year, didn’t meet with universal approval.
The State papers show that Dr Hillery’s non-attendance at the wedding was taken up directly by an Irish priest, Fr PG O’Dea, who was based in Lancashire at the time. Fr O’Dea, who is still alive and now a retired monsignor, wrote directly to Áras an Uachtaráin to protest at the failure of President Hillery to accept an invitation to attend the wedding.
In deciding whether President Hillery should attend the royal wedding, a government memo noted that “whichever decision is taken will give rise to criticism”.
Some in the Taoiseach’s office, including assistant secretary Richard Stokes, advised in favour of compelling the president to attend, as staying away would “make a nonsense” of all progress in Anglo-Irish relations.
An unnamed Taoiseach’s department official criticised the Department of Foreign Affairs’s “very inadequate” briefing document which posed questions rather than coming up with advice and supporting arguments.
“The Government have been very badly served by the Department of Foreign Affairs” whose tone indicates that it did not favour acceptance but it did not “advance any compelling argument”.
The foreign affairs brief said such an invitation from a friendly country should be accepted “unless there are compelling arguments against” it. It then refers to the ensuing “unfavourable comment” due to general feel- ings of dissatisfaction with the British government over the H-Blocks.
This argument could “hardly be described as a compelling reason”, the civil servant wrote, adding that most of the unfavourable comment would come from the Provisional IRA and H-block committee. He described as “naive” the assertion by foreign affairs that refusal “would not impair political dialogue with London”.
The British prime minister “would almost certainly regard a refusal as a rebuff” and it would be viewed by the “hostile British press” as presidential support for the hunger strikers.
In the end, the new Fine Gael-led coalition, it decided that the President should be advised not to attend and to send the ambassador in his place.
The reply to the palace was issued on the final day possible, June 26, with the excuse of the President’s “prior commitments”.
Meanwhile, in response to complaints from Fr PG O’Dea, Áras an Uachtaráin pointed out that Ireland had been represented at the wedding by the Irish ambassador in London.