The Expedience of Tradition: Ireland, International Organization and the Falklands Crisis
| Date | 01 March 1985 |
| Published date | 01 March 1985 |
| Author | Norman MacQueen |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1985.tb01560.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1985),
XXXIII,
38-55
The Expedience
of
Tradition: Ireland,
International Organization and the
Falklands Crisis
NORMAN
MACQUEEN
The
Fiunnu
Fuil Government of Charles Haughey adopted
a
publicly conspicuous
position of independence during the Falklands crisis of April-June
1982.
Mr
Haughey defended the departure from European Community solidarity and the
active role in the UN Security Council on the grounds of ‘traditional neutrality’ while
his critics accused him of opportunism and improvisation for domestic political
advantage. The sharp deterioration in Anglo-Irish relations caused by the episode
has not proved lasting. Nor has there been any significant change in Ireland’s overall
international relations.
Ireland’s response to the Falklands crisis has been seen variously as a resolute
assertion
of
‘traditional neutrality’, ‘ham-fisted’ meddling or merely as a
cynical posturing for domestic advantage. To the defence of each view has been
brought, unsurprisingly in Irish politics, the myths and actualities of historical
precedent. Did Mr Haughey’s approach to the conflict signal a resurgence
of
the enthusiasm
for
activism in international organization associated with the
earlier
Fianna
Fail
generation
of
Eamon de Valera and Frank Aiken
or
was
it
merely an echo of the self-importance of the
Skibbereen Eagle,
the west Cork
newspaper which in the
1890s
was ever-vigilant over the activities of Imperial
Russia? Was it simply part of a continuing strain of Irish politics which held,
with nineteenth-century nationalist John Mitchel, that England’s difficulty is
Ireland’s opportunity?
Or
was it, as was widely held by his political opponents,
more a question
of
England’s difficulty being
Haughey’s
opportunity as a
crucial by-election approached, offering the chance of widening, however
slightly, his fearfully narrow majority in the
Dail?
Anglo-Irish relations on the eve of the crisis were not especially warm-
although given the distinctly cyclical pattern
of
these relations which has
emerged since the end of the
1960s,
the situation was far from acute. Despite the
much-vaunted ‘special relationship’ which supposedly emerged from the
Thatcher-Haughey summit of December
1980,
the underlying British
preference for a
Fine
Gael
rather than
Fiunnu Fail
administration in Dublin
remained. Moreover, the climate
of
emotion created by the prison hunger
strikes in the North in the first half of
1981
edged
Fiunna Fad
some way back to
its radical republican origins and relations with Britain became progressively
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1985
Political
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NORMAN MACQUEEN
39
cooler as the crisis deepened. Garret FitzGerald’s formation of a coalition
government led by Fine Gaelin June
1981
signalled an upturn in relations which
was confirmed the following November when Dr FitzGerald and Mrs Thatcher
agreed to the establishment of an inter-governmental Council which was
intended to meet regularly at both official and ministerial level to discuss
matters
of
common interest.
The current volatile Irish party and electoral systems, oblivious to diplomatic
fragilities, brought Fiunna
Fail
and Charles Haughey back to power in early
March
1982.
Upstaged by FitzGerald in the area
of
concrete Anglo-Irish
cooperation and confronted by a heightening of republican feeling within his
own party in the wake of the hunger strikes, it appeared that little remained
of
his special relationship with Downing Street when he returned to office. This
relationship in any case had never been defined beyond its initial proclamation
and was regarded with considerable scepticism in Dublin, not only among the
Taoiseach
’s
traditional opponents. Against this unpromising background and
within four weeks
of
the formation
of
his precarious administration, Haughey
was required to present the national response to the Falklands crisis-a conflict
heavy with a range of issues of special significance in Irish politics. Self-
determination, the use of force in pursuit
of
political ends, British militarism
and irredentism all transmitted their various and contradictory signals to ‘qe
policy-makers in Dublin. The expression of the response, significantly ir; terms
of Ireland’s foreign policy traditions, took place in the arena of international
organization, both global and regional.
Neutrality and International Organization
Relations with international organizations historically have occupied a central
place in Irish foreign policy. In the
1920s
and
1930s
the Free State’s member-
ship of the League of Nations was both a symbolic and a practical assertion
of
sovereignty in the first years of nationhood.’ Neutrality between
1939
and
1945
and its later incarnation after
1949
derived from specific national considera-
tions and not from an ideological equidistance from the centres
of
world power.
Nor were the decisions
of
1939
and
1949
linked in the sense of representing a
continuation of a ‘traditional’ or ‘structural’ neutrality such as that of
Switzerland or Sweden. Although each stance was concerned with the problem
of Anglo-Irish relations over the North, they were taken in response to par-
ticular circumstances at each date: in the first case Britain’s declaration of
war and in the second a specific American invitation to join the Atlantic
Alliance. However, a certain moral dimension was given to neutrality in the
post-war years by the strong commitment to collective security and the League
system associated with Eamon de Valera’s foreign policy prior to
1939.
This
‘positive’ tinge to neutrality, however misleading, created a certain sense
of
continuity and formality in international perceptions of Ireland’s position.
A corresponding post-war expression
of
commitment to international
organization was denied to Ireland until
1955
through a Soviet veto on its
admission to the United Nations. And, indeed, even after admission, the first
See
for
example Patrick Keatinge, ‘Ireland and the League
of
Nations’,
Studies,
LIX:234
(Summer
1970),
passim.
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