Ireland and the End of the British Empire: The Republic and its Role in the Cyprus Emergency 9780755621521, 9781350156340

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In memory of David O’Shea and Dick Hayes

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr W. H. (1889) When I was a small child I wondered if she was Greek, the cat of our Greek neighbour. One day I asked my mother if cats are Turkish and dogs are Greek. Their dogs had snarled at our kittens. Days later I saw Our cat eat the very kittens she’d given birth to. Mehmet Yassin, ‘The Myth of Our Own Cat’ (1985) It is the primary right of man to die and kill for the land they live in. Sir Winston Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples (1956)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate 1 Cyprus, Sir Garnet Wolseley holding a reception in the Konak, Nicosia at the Turkish Festival of Bairim. Source: Illustrated London News, 2 November 1878. Plate 2 ‘Thirty-three years I’ve been here, man and boy, and nobody cares a tinker’s damn about me now. I’m clearing out, so I am!’ Source: Dublin Opinion, June 1955. Plate 3 ‘As one woman to another, I think you’re making the same mistake with Cyprus that you made with me.’ Source: Dublin Opinion, June 1956. Plate 4 ‘A plague on both your houses!’ Source: Dublin Opinion, August, 1956.

ABBREVIATIONS

ADM AKEL AKOE BBC CAB CAC CAS CCIA CIGS CO CPC CRO DFA DO DT ECHR ECtHR ECmHR ECSC EDA

Admiralty Files Progressive Party of Workers (Anorthotiko´ Ko´mma Ergazo´menou Laou´) Anti-Killers Organisation of Expatriates British Council of Churches Cabinet Papers Churchill Archives, Cambridge Chief of the Air Staff Commission of Churches on International Affairs Chief of the Imperial General Staff Colonial Office Communist Party of Cyprus Commonwealth Relations Office Department of Foreign Affairs Dominions Office Department of the Taoiseach European Convention on Human Rights European Court of Human Rights European Commission of Human Rights European Coal and Steel Community United Democratic Left Party (Eniaia Dimokratiki Aristera)

ABBREVIATIONS

EOKA FO GAOR GPRA KKE MCF MEAF MELF NAI NAUK ERE OEEC PEK PEO PEON PROC TMT TRNC RHL RUR TCD UCD WCC WEU WO

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National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) Foreign Office United Nations General Assembly Official Records Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisoire de la Re´publique Alge´rienne) Communist Party of Greece (Kommounistiko´ Ko´mma Ella´das) Movement for Colonial Freedom Middle East Air Forces Middle East Land Forces National Archives of Ireland National Archives, Kew National Radical Union (Ethnike Rizospastike Enosis) Organisation for European Economic Cooperation Pan-Cyprian Farmers Union (Panagrotiki Enosis Kyprou) Pan-Cyprian Federation of Labour (Pankypria Ergatiki Omospondia) Pan-Cyprian Youth Organisation (Pankyprios Ethniki Organosis Neolaisas) Public Record Office of the Republic of Cyprus Turkish Defence Organisation (Tu¨rk Mukavemet Tes
kilatı) Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Rhodes House Library, Oxford Royal Ulster Rifles Trinity College Dublin University College Dublin World Council of Churches Western European Union War Office

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The one great pleasure when dealing with such a recent historical period as the 1950s is the opportunity it gives to add flesh to academic bones by listening to that history as lived. I am extremely grateful to all those who granted me their time: Mehmet Ali Talat, Donal Barrington, Martin Bell, Tony Benn, John Bourke, Peter Boyle, Jennifer Boyle, Ken Castle, Glafkos Clerides, Tim Pat Coogan, Declan Costello, Vera Cook, David Cranston, Ted Crosbie, George Duke, Jack Dunlop, Sandra Evans, Pat Farrelly, Julian Foley, Rowan Gillespie, Edward Hallinan, Elizabeth Hallinan, David Hannay, Frixos Joannides, Renos Kyriakides, Vias Livadas, Anthony J. Murphy, Seamus Murphy, Corran Purdon, Teresa Stewart, Robin Stichbury, Angela Trainor, John Trainor and Hardress Waller. Not all of those interviewed will agree with every conclusion in this book. But I do hope they recognise how much I learned from them and how seriously I took their opinions and arguments as I grappled with the often sharply conflicting claims. The life-blood however of this research has been the financial aid I received as a recipient of the University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Scholarship, the Andrew Smith Memorial Foundation Award, the Justin Arbuthnott British– Irish Fund Scholarship and the AHRC Doctoral Award. I am deeply thankful for all the assistance given to me by the librarians and archivists at the University of Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Ireland, the

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National Archives of Ireland, University College Dublin Archives, the Manuscript Department of Trinity College Dublin, the British Newspaper Library, the National Archives at Kew, the Royal Air Force Museum Archives at Hendon and at Rhodes House Library, Oxford. In addition, Caitriona Lawlor, Catherine Charley of the Royal Ulster Rifles Museum, Denis Cleary at the Guards Museum and Richard Coppin of the National Statistic Office in London all kindly went beyond the call of duty to assist me. And finally, to Tomasz and Alice at I.B.Tauris for their faith in the project. It has been a genuine privilege to have had two extraordinarily talented historians as my supervisors, Prof Alvin Jackson and Mr Owen Dudley Edwards. With the benefit of hindsight and the remaining evidence of earlier drafts, I am all the more humbled by the support they have given me throughout. Dr Adam Budd, Dr Robert Crowcroft, Prof Richard English, Prof Michael Kennedy, Prof Lionel Pilkington, Dr Simon Potter and Dr Michael Rosie have, often unknowingly, provided encouragement when I needed it most. To the Lawtons and Leydens, to the Ennis and East Cork contingents, for making all subsequent welcomes as warm as the first in Dublin and London and for the unanticipated, but muchcherished, diversions. To Christine Lauritsen for providing me with the scenic surroundings to finish the book without distraction apart from that of my own making. To Ewen, a true friend and u¨ber-editor who managed to maintain (or fantastically feign) good humour throughout. I am deeply grateful to Sonny Hayes for providing enough answers to make me want to excavate further into my family’s civil war and imperial entanglements. To my family, for their infinite, unquestioning support. And finally, to Rusty, co-conspirator and chief mischief-maker. The debt is immeasurable.

FOREWORD

Early 1956. First Year History, University College Dublin. Dr Zdeneˇk Ehler, 50-year-old refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia finishing a lecture on the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Tall, dignified, slow enough spoken to win popularity with note-takers, popular anyway from both the slight vagaries in pronunciation and from the lectures whose ponderous speech lost none of the potential interest of his material. We hardly thought it through, but the interest he transmitted derived naturally from his life. European history had been a matter of life and death to him. As a rule he let history supply its own drama, and although he had a charming smile, he seldom used it in class. But he was beginning to show a slight sign of one, today: Britain agreed to go to war on behalf of Turkey against Russia. In return she was given an island. But she did not go to war. Nevertheless, she did not give up the island. And to this day she holds on to this controversial island – the island of Cyprus. The smile was wide now, almost mandarin in its majesty. His gown swirled as he rolled up the map of Europe and made his way to the door, bowing ironically in response to the laughter and applause. He knew his students enjoyed his lectures, but this was the only time he courted applause.

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Cyprus had already exhibited EOKA violence and UK repression. Few in Dr Ehler’s audience – and certainly not Dr Ehler himself – would have supported the violence on any side. But they would have believed (as apparently he did) that Britain had no business in Cyprus, no right to it, and should get out of it. They would not have approved of the murders or massacres carried out in Kenya by the Mau Mau, but they would not have approved of British repression there, including the torture of prisoners (which was known fairly widely). Revolutions seek legitimisation from imitation. The very much unspoken and perhaps unpermitted thought was the fear that the Anglo– Irish War of 1919 –21 had been too great a price to pay for independence, all the more that the heroes-into-martyrs Easter Rising of 1916 had been. Rebellion in Kenya or Cyprus might take unfortunate turns (as perhaps the Irish national struggle had, though nobody would say that). But they made it clear Britain was wrong to hold on to a people who did not want British rule; Cyprus with its obvious clericalism had a particular spiritual, if schismatic, resonance. The Irish Catholics were not noticeably anti-African, welcoming many African students to Dublin and supporting many missionaries to Africa (who sometimes came back much more antiimperialist than when they went out, against Catholic empires). But Cyprus seemed a clear-cut Christian case. And so I remember laughing and cheering our pro-Cypriot Czech with the rest. I do not remember feeling as angry about any government action in any part of the world as I did about Cyprus. I had no such anger about Northern Ireland, whose IRA invasions I disliked more than the fate of the invaders. I do not recall feeling hatred of any soldier comparable to what I felt for Governor Field-Marshal Harding. Like most of my UCD contemporaries, I would deplore Suez and with many I marched against USSR repression in Hungary, but Eden seemed not so much hateful as hysterical, and what else could one expect from the Russians? Perhaps we had flickering thoughts of something more, and implicit in the anger against Harding over Cyprus was the belief that this was unworthy of Britain. In fact, the Irish turn to hostility against Britain after the Easter Rising was the same phenomenon: General Maxwell’s executions of the leaders were

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something the Irish were incredulous to behold, and revolted in all senses. Certainly many of us welcomed Harding’s supersession by Sir Hugh Foot in October 1957, although when I got his much more left-wing brother Michael to chair a UCD Literary and Historical Society meeting in late 1958, one of the participants delighted him by planting a boot in front of him labelled ‘FOR THE OTHER FOOT’. The brothers Foot perpetually enjoyed their arguments at the family Christmas and Hugh’s son, Paul, became a far more leftwing publicist even than his beloved Uncle Michael. But Hugh Foot showed his integrity in October 1962 when he resigned from the British UN delegation because of continuing UK support for the racialist repression in Southern Rhodesia. Michael Foot was editor of Tribune and left-wing agitator in Parliament (and one of the greatest and most lovable men I have ever known). He symbolised a hidden factor in Ireland’s response to British repression in Cyprus. Where Irish anger was genuine, and not merely self-serving in one form or another, it drew very heavily on the British Left (which would have appalled the Catholic Dr Ehler). Tribune and the New Statesman supplied the data and the detail, as well as the damnation. Here also was an echo of the Irish rebellion of 1919– 21, which ultimately won its success not through E´amon de Valera’s courtship of American public opinion, but by the press campaigns of the English-voiced Desmond Fitzgerald and Erskine Childers in London, where in response the British Left showed its continued gallantry and demand for fair play from the satire of G.K. Chesterton and the reportage of H.W. Nevinson to the cartoons of David Low. That same spirit animated the British Left over Cyprus, and as we measure the Irish response we must also remember how well Irish and British protest could work together. It was an old tradition, as Michael Foot showed in his The Pen and the Sword (1957) on Jonathan Swift’s role in overthrowing the Duke of Marlborough and ending his incessant warfare. One of the most salutary experiences we can have is to discover the historical realities of what we ourselves had seen and heard, but only in our own three dimensions. Dr Helen O’Shea now enables us to see the Ireland – Cyprus story in its fourth dimension. She has

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unflaggingly taken up layer after layer to show in what ways Ireland impinged on the struggle, why, how and where it did, what the multiplicity of Irish in so many different fields thought they were doing, what realities they missed, and what fate they endured. It is anything but straightforward, and it coils back on itself as yet new levels cast different shades on what we know. It is gripping to read; and it was so at every stage, as my chief, Professor Alvin Jackson, and I found in supervising the doctoral thesis in progress. One of the most remarkable polemics to appear during the events you are about to read was Laurence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons (1957), based on his own personal experience on the island. The rumour floated around that he was Irish, even preoccupying the Irish Embassy in Washington DC for a moment. He was in fact born in India, as were both of his parents, although his mother’s family was Irish, rejoicing in the name of Dixie. I wrote to him in 1966 to recruit him for a symposium to be published as Conor Cruise O’Brien Introduces Ireland (1969), which duly proved one of Dr O’Shea’s sources: but in answer to my request that he write us an essay on ‘Sex in Ireland’, he replied, ‘Alas, I have never been to Ireland nor sampled any of that commodity there.’ Yet I write his name in Dr O’Shea’s song (as Yeats might have said). After Bitter Lemons Durrell went on to write The Alexandria Quartet, whose four parts amongst other things carry a fascinating lesson for the historian. Justine (1957) narrates a set of events; Balthazar (1958) narrates the same events as seen by the same narrator after another witness of those events gives him his view of them; Mountolive (1958) narrates them once more, as by a third narrator; and Clea (1960) gives a sequel by the first narrator. Dr O’Shea’s book is far too professional to fool around with pseudo-fictional devices inventing themselves in imitation of Durrell’s masterpiece, but the reader will time and time again reencounter the same ground taking a new appearance after fresh occupations are considered and fresh identities summoned to testify. And although what she has to tell stays firmly in Cyprus when it is not in our own little archipelago off the European north-western coast, Alexandria has its own shadow to cast. The British Empire has been a much abused institution and, as Dr O’Shea makes clear, it has

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been an Irish empire in many respects as well as a Scots one (as Professor Thomas Devine has described so profoundly), a Welsh one and an English one. If it did harm – as it did – it also did good. But in Cyprus the British interest from the first was strategic, and so through to its end. In the UK insistence on holding Cyprus, the rationale as Dr O’Shea shows us always seems to have been strategic rather than – as sometimes elsewhere – stemming in part from a belief in the need to hold the territory in question for the sake of its inhabitants. From 1878 to 1960 the value Whitehall set on Cyprus was its place in relation to Egypt. Durrell liked to quote the poet Cafavy, and this is the story of Ireland’s part in what Cafavy would call ‘the British farewell’ – farewell to the Alexandria they were losing. Mr Owen Dudley Edwards

INTRODUCTION

Ireland Has More Than One Story1 On St Patrick’s Day 1958, a newly qualified young doctor from England arrived in Cyprus to begin work at Nicosia General Hospital. His memoir of the time, written under the pseudonym ‘Peter Paris’, gives great insight into the Irish presence there during the Cyprus Emergency. His new boss, Dublin man Dr Jack Gillespie, had been Senior Consultant Physician at the hospital since 1947, having studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin before joining the Colonial Service in 1942.2 ‘Paris’ described his new boss thus: ‘eyes sharp and blue as a razor blade edge between grim parallel lids. . . only his pleasant Dublin accent relieved the asperity of his face.’3 Several more of Paris’ colleagues were also Irish, including orthopaedic surgeon E.J. Kirwan and many of the nurses. The reason for Paris’ interest was obvious. His parents were Irish and, though raised in England, he too considered himself Irish: ‘my blood is Irish; the case if not the cause seemed only too close to that of Ireland 40 years ago.’4 He was invited by Turk– Cypriot Dr Hadji, married to an Irish nurse, to join them that night for celebrations at the Irish Club, founded on another St Patrick’s Eve, two years earlier in 1956, Hadji explaining to Paris: The doctors here are Irish, the police, the lawyers. The large man there, he is the Chief Justice, Sir Paget Burke [sic ]. He is

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Irish; so is Gillespie himself and Kirwan the orthopaedic surgeon. . . that judge, Sir James Henry. Sir Hugh Foot and the Colonel of the Irish Guards are the only Englishmen in Cyprus! Paris described the Jack and Anne Yeats paintings on the walls as ‘strange Gaelic treasures to find so far away’.5 Another Irish guest pointed out the irony: ‘I fought against the Black-and-Tans in the old days and one thought then that the British were a dirty lot. Well, I’m one of the dirty British myself now. And after all, we are not so bad – at least we are nothing as bad as the Black-and-Tans were!’6 When Paris declared himself Irish, another guest, Mr Demetrakis, replied: ‘No! You too! Wonderful! All Irish! Tell me, are you IRA?’ I replied that nobody had yet asked me to join. ‘Amazing! There is a person I know – knew of,’ he corrected, ‘who was in EOKA; he was caught and sent to Wandsworth Gaol in London. And who do you think he found in the gaol? IRA people, also prisoners! So they used to plot together things against the British, the Irish and EOKA together. But look at this room,’ his hand swept around him. ‘Who are the British? Irish. It is Irish against the Irish.’7 No single narrative can encompass the complexity of independent Ireland’s interaction with empire, but examining the evidence of one case study can tell a great deal about its substance. It has been commonly assumed that, given its own difficult semi-colonial legacy, the Republic ardently supported self-determination elsewhere; the reality, as always, is more complex. This work aims to capture the intricacy of Ireland’s interaction with empire using the case of British Cyprus during the Emergency period of 1955– 9. Using this, it is possible to identify disparities between the multifaceted microrealities of Irish complicity and cooperation in the imperial project and the homogenised master-narratives of nation-building public history. This attempt to reflect the ‘varieties of Irishness’ in a period when the Republic was still intrinsically linked to the British Empire aims to widen the scope of what has traditionally been regarded as

INTRODUCTION

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Irish national history.8 Distinctive contributions in terms of proficiency or proportionality are subject to analysis where found, but cognisant of the performativity, shifting meanings and intersectionality of ethnic or national identity with other positionalities such as social class, religion or power positions, this work does not attempt to locate any alleged ‘Irish’ exceptionalist tendencies. It is hoped, however, that gaining as complete a snapshot as possible will allow for an exploration of independent Ireland’s interaction with itself within empire. An investigation of this kind seems especially ripe in light of Queen Elizabeth’s recent trips to the Republic and to Northern Ireland, which stimulated and renewed debate about Ireland’s place in the imperial project. Addressed in this text are discourses that the Irish revolutionary period, its Civil War aftermath, and later the Troubles did much to deflect attention from – namely, the many continuities between pre- and post-independent Ireland’s imperial partaking, the imaginative divorcing from Ireland’s ‘spiritual’ empire, and a shared tradition of imperial participation north and south of the Irish border. It also discusses how these silences and incompatibilities were facilitated at local and national – and official and unofficial – levels to create a myopic sense of identity in the 1950s, despite isolationist Ireland’s transformation, following its ostensible wartime neutrality, to ‘good international citizen’ on the United Nations stage. The current national identity crisis makes these traditions ready for reassessment. Indeed 1950s Ireland, defined by fiscal emergency and mass youth emigration, resonates only too clearly with ‘Generation Emigration’. It seems that while future certainties have disappeared with the financial crisis in what is a nation of emigrants once again, past certitudes have unravelled with scandal after scandal in the Catholic Church. As a contrite national church contends with the harrowing global scale of clerical child abuse, formal state repentance has also taken place: Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s unreserved apology to survivors of the Magdalene laundries in February 2013 was swiftly followed by government legislation in May providing for an amnesty and apology to Irish Defence Force members who fought with Allied forces during World War II.

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In Britain, too, it seems the political present is acutely informed by an egregious version of the past, specifically the turbulent endgame of empire. An historic High Court ruling in London, resulting in the ‘Hanslope disclosure’ of previously concealed colonial records, and allowing for compensation claims for Kenyan Mau Mau veterans who experienced torture and rape at the hands of the British authorities, may pave the way for further recompense for abuse inflicted on suspected insurgents and collaborators during counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya, Cyprus, Aden, Indonesia and Oman between the 1940s and 1970s.9 If this is the first of many settlements resulting from crimes committed under imperial rule, then we need to ask, who are the ‘British’? Despite the rather striking success, at local and national levels, of expunging empire from the Republic’s received history, it is an inaccurate teleology that simply views Irish independence, however incomplete to some, as signalling an inevitable retreat from participation in empire. Given that Irish recruits are joining the British army in record numbers, the Irish government’s pardon of Irish army deserters who fought alongside the British in World War II seems particularly fitting,10 and shows how current recruitment exemplifies continuity rather than anything novel in the history of the Irish Republic: in the emergency period of dirty colonial wars, the ‘British’ were often Irish. Indeed, given the manifold imperial and international roles played by Irish citizens in the context of the Cyprus Emergency, these often overarched and intersected in unexpected locations, positioning the ‘Irish against the Irish’ and exemplifying the well-worn ‘point-counter-point nature of the Irish political personality.’11 Despite wide acknowledgement that the ‘British’ Empire was far from being homogeneous, British historiography has only recently dealt with the specifically Irish, Welsh, English or Scottish contributions to the imperial project. However, the methodology of several recent publications addresses this by employing a ‘four nation’ approach, advocated by John M. MacKenzie.12 While there has been palpable interest in the theme of Ireland and empire recently, Stephen Howe points out that the Irish role in British imperialism remains ‘even less researched’ than Irish anti-imperialism.13 This is

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particularly true in the case of 1950s Ireland – the so-called ‘lost decade’.14 Despite welcome additions to the historiography of Ireland’s post-Commonwealth period, no work has attempted to comprehensively deal with this era in the context of Ireland and empire.15 Deirdre McMahon’s work comes close, but only stretches as far as Ireland’s 1949 removal from the Commonwealth.16 Kate O’Malley and Kevin O’Sullivan touch on the period with illuminating examples of Irish politico-diplomatic solidarity with Indian and African independence movements, but remain divorced from the Irish materialist contribution to the imperial project.17 There has yet to be a comprehensive study that deals with the period after the departure from the Commonwealth, a period of economic emergency and correlated increased dependency on an empire able to provide opportunities so desperately lacking back home. Though the subsequent paradoxes, nuances and silences inherent in this relationship have gone unrecognised, it has much to tell us, since the 1950s were a period of vigorous imperial action, with a revivalist empire geared towards maintaining its global role in the postwar world order rather than disassembling it.18 Aiming to inaugurate what John Darwin has posited as a ‘fourth’ British empire partly explains the intensity of costly counter-insurgency campaigns fought ‘to snuff out “undesirable” movements in the colonies. . . most successfully in Malaya, most controversially in Kenya’ – and most forgetfully in Cyprus.19 However, this is symptomatic of the wider under-representation of the Mediterranean, the ‘poor cousin,’ in British imperial historiography.20 Perhaps contemporary events will lead to a more inclusive treatment of the area, but the financial emergency in Cyprus and the Syrian conflict has undoubtedly renewed debate about the small island’s disproportionate geo-political importance. Additionally, Russian influence and its origins, the potential consequences of exploratory oil and gas drilling in contested waters, the lack of a viable alternative to the failed Annan Plan, and protests against British military bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia all need to be assessed in order to be comprehensible to current observers. Within this context, there are three main reasons for focusing on Cyprus. Firstly, its subjects were white, mostly Christian and

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European, part of an ancient, cultured civilisation fighting against the same colonial yoke Ireland had. Because the perceived wholeness of islands was axiomatic for the majority of Ireland’s populace, Greek– Cypriot opposition to the possible partition of Cyprus during the late 1950s was implicitly understood. For these reasons the Cyprus Emergency had a greater emotional resonance in the Irish imagination than similar events in more distant, non-island colonial outposts might. This manifested itself in a vigorous textual response, its legacy a trove of documentary evidence for historians wishing to examine this element of Ireland’s interaction with Cyprus. Secondly, its relative proximity to Britain meant Cyprus was open to observation and criticism in a way that Britain’s more distant possessions were not, and so media coverage of the Emergency was much more extensive than of other, contemporaneous British counter-insurgencies. Thirdly, the island being only a little larger than Co. Cork makes it a manageable size to assess its interaction with Ireland. While impressive Irish transnational histories have multiplied since the mid-1980s onwards, under the rubric of Ireland and empire attention has focused on India more than any other British colony.21 Despite these valuable contributions, its sheer geographical enormity means that only snippets of the total picture have been retrieved. Conversely, the compactness of Cyprus allows for a work of synthesis. Despite the ubiquity of Irish settlement across the British Empire, in the literature the Irish diaspora, particularly post-1922, is rarely framed within an imperial context of agency, opportunity and influence. As Joe Cleary has noted, ‘the epic of empire. . . seems to have remained subordinate in the nationalist imagination to the epic of the Irish struggle against England and Empire.’22 With the continuance of Irish nationalist grievances after independence – namely partition – this remained firmly the case in 1950s Ireland. One of the aims of this text is to recover some of these submerged imperial involvements, so ill-fitted to the hegemonic nationalist narrative. The 1950s constitute a particularly fruitful period for historical analysis of this nature, given it was an era of sustained anticolonial agitation which coincided with advancements in mass

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communication, resulting in an Irish public more cognisant of empire’s trouble-spots than ever before. This book ventures to address one further concern raised by Cleary: when empire is at issue nationalist-leaning histories will still commonly accent only Irish opposition to empire whereas revisionist-leaning ones will insist, with equal predictability, on Irish collusions in or contributions to empire. These rigidly dichotomised mindsets remain one of the strongest obstacles to the development of some more sophisticated materialist analysis of the issues concerned.23 Breaking this mould hopefully provides much more than an exposition of Ireland’s traditional role as a country that both sustained and simultaneously destabilised empire, by shining a light on the multidimensionality of the conversations Ireland was having with itself, often unknowingly, in the context of empire. As the following chapter breakdown will show, this approach allows for an examination of previously neglected aspects of Irish and imperial histories. Firstly, to place the work in a wider historical context, a sketch of the evolution of enosis – union with Greece – and the Irish interaction with British Cyprus from 1878 – 1954 is provided in Chapter One, showing how the Irish presence in Cyprus between 1955 and 1959 was one of continuity rather than change. With the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 – as with anywhere else under their rule – came Irish involvement. The administration’s upper ranks included many members of the Irish Protestant landed gentry and the Castle Catholic tradition, but with the Home Rule movement gathering speed, Irish constitutional nationalist politicians such as T.P. O’Connor looked with sympathy on, and sometimes actively supported, Greek –Cypriot nationalists. Clearly the psychology of denial in relation to the strength of Irish separatist nationalism prior to independence – stigmatised as artificially created, unreasonable and existent only on the fringes of society – was closely paralleled in

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the British administration’s assessment of the strength of Hellenic irredentism. Both the Irish and Cypriot situations have been described many times as exceptional or peculiar in the history of British colonialism. Chapter One asks whether, if looked at comparatively, they remain so.24 Ireland’s anti-colonialist credentials are cited frequently but all too fleetingly – asserted not scrutinised. No comprehensive study has been done on post-independent Ireland’s response to British decolonisation, this being one of the underlying factors behind the continued exaggerations, false assumptions and antagonisms between revisionists and post-colonialists. Was the Irish press response an expression of a wider Irish anti-colonial sensibility? Or did the Cyprus Emergency simply serve as a metaphor for Ireland, a peg upon which to hang past and present nationalist grievances? Chapter Two deals with these questions and thereby contributes to the history of Irish newspapers, which, as Simon Potter states, ‘is still a field awaiting detailed and comprehensive scrutiny’.25 Using a comparative approach, the chapter asks how exceptional the Irish press response was. The majority of Irish were hostile to British policy in Cyprus, seeing events there as analogous to those in Ireland during 1919– 21, more so than any other conflict in the history of the British Empire. With this came an instinctive sympathy with, and support for, Greek – Cypriot self-determination, particularly from those for whom the Irish War of Independence was still in living memory. But did the Irish response differ significantly from that in Britain? Chapter Three investigates the republican response to British policy in Cyprus. For republicans, Ireland’s subjection to a foreign force of occupation was an article of faith, with colonial conflicts viewed as opportunities for rebellion. In reminding the Irish of their own history of coercion, the Cyprus Question brought out latent republican sentiments and fed into the republican resurgence from 1956 onwards. For many fighting to end Irish partition, British policy in Cyprus reinforced the conviction that any remaining links with the Empire were intrinsically oppressive. The Irish republican response to British colonial rule in Cyprus during the insurgency was in many ways a reflection of continuity rather than change in Ireland’s

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relationship with the Empire, albeit one in retreat. Given popular sympathy for Greek– Cypriot self-determination, it is not surprising that Irish republican circles took an interest in the Cyprus Question – yet this interest went far beyond the usual tokenism. In light of latent anti-Britishness, Irish public opinion prior to the Cyprus Emergency was crudely anti-colonial, sometimes only superficially so, but also unquestionably Catholic. But given Irish analogies with Cyprus and the extent of British repression, there was acute interest in its struggle for self-determination. How did the Irish Roman Catholic Church negotiate between popular anti-colonialism and its own implacable anti-communism? For most Irish in the 1950s, religion remained central to personal life. Chapter Four examines the motivations behind the absence of response by the Catholic Church and the more active response by the Church of Ireland. This highlights one area where the Catholic Church was less dogmatic – less intrusive – than it was in other respects, giving credence to what Owen Dudley Edwards calls the ‘Cruise O’Brien Law of Clerical Pressure’: in short, how it consisted mainly of the activities of interested laymen to secure their purely secular ends.26 One could have expected greater sympathy from the Church of Ireland towards British colonial policy, given their strong presence within northern unionism, but the reverse turns out to be the case. The Church of Ireland, particularly since 1939, had become ‘steadily involved’ in nonAnglican bodies outside of Ireland, and enjoyed a close relationship with Greek Orthodoxy, including its local Cypriot off-shoot, through shared membership of international and inter-denominational associations,27 hence an active response, including direct intervention in the Cyprus dispute through these bodies, is evident. In an effort to end its postwar isolationism – a direct consequence of its wartime neutrality – Ireland applied for UN membership in 1946. Blocked each successive year since then, it finally gained admission in December 1955 as part of a 16-nation ‘package deal’ during a brief thaw in Soviet – American relations. The ‘sore thumb’ policy, whereby Irish partition was brought up in unsuitable and irrelevant contexts, was abandoned by this time. How did the Irish delegation respond to British plans to partition Cyprus, given its

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similarity to Irish territorial claims? Chapter Five analyses the motivations behind the Irish UN foreign policy response to the Cyprus Question. While Ireland’s role in the UN during this period has commendably been focused on in recent years, no work has touched upon the Cyprus Question. In addressing this niche in foreign policy studies, this chapter builds on invaluable recent work by Michael Kennedy, Deirdre McMahon and Joseph Morrison Skelly.28 Contrary to Dermot Keogh’s assertion that Fianna Fa´il policy towards partition remained ‘an exercise in rhetoric’, serious consideration was given to putting down a partition resolution at the UN.29 Chapter Five illustrates how Irish proposals to raise partition were primarily influenced by the precedents set by the Cyprus Question at the UN. Did the eventual decision not to do so at the Thirteenth Session of the General Assembly in 1958 mark the point when de Valera and Aiken painfully realised that Irish partition was a permanent, rather than temporary, expedient? Analysing the Irish UN foreign policy response to the Cyprus Question allows one to see the precise moment when dropping partition from its diplomatic portfolio became the price Ireland paid for playing in the world arena. Continuing the theme of Ireland in international affairs, Chapter Six delineates the role played in the resolution of the Cyprus Question by two Irish lawyers and Council of Europe delegates, Fine Gael Senator James Crosbie and Clann na Poblachta leader Sea´n MacBride, and adds new depth to existing research on Ireland at the Council of Europe by Michael Kennedy and Eunan O’Halpin.30 Crosbie, a member of the ECmHR (European Commission of Human Rights) from 1954 to 1960, played a key role as Council of Europe subcommission member in investigating human rights abuses in Cyprus, brought about by the Greek Inter-State Application 176/56 to the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights). Initially instigating much Council debate on Cyprus in the Consultative Assembly, MacBride went on to become an ally of the Greek government and of Archbishop Makarios. In Strasbourg, he advised Greek Council of Europe ministers during their two inter-state applications against the

INTRODUCTION

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United Kingdom to the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) for alleged violations under the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). In New York, he advised the Greek delegation during the UN General Assembly in December 1956, and in Athens was a frequent guest of Greek ministers, becoming an adviser to Makarios following his release from the Seychelles. It will be shown that MacBride was the single Irish individual most closely involved in Greek and Greek– Cypriot efforts to bring about Cypriot independence, yet his contribution has been largely ignored until now. The one supposed fact on his contribution, that he was responsible for securing the release of Archbishop Makarios, is a misconception that Chapter Six aims to correct.31 The evidence presented will reveal that Makarios’ release was largely due to pressure from the aforementioned Council of Europe sub-commission, of which James Crosbie was a member. Possible reasons for this misconception will also be accounted for. That Crosbie and MacBride’s efforts have never received substantial official recognition or historical interest warrants attention. Chapter Six continues with this legal theme but in a different context, tracing the Irish judicial contribution to law and order in Cyprus. Despite over three decades of independence – and partly due to what was perceived as incomplete independence in the form of continued partition – the Irish role in the British Empire had changed little. In the latter 1950s, Ireland was far more heavily implicated in Britain’s colonial outposts than the hegemonic nationalist narrative has ever acknowledged. It can be argued that, given the lack of opportunities in Ireland during the economically depressed 1950s, its value increased. Yet this was an Ireland where officialdom still expounded a highly prescriptive sense of Irish identity, one gravely ill-fitted to the realities of its contribution to empire. In the case of Cyprus, the persistence of official amnesia over Ireland’s ‘unwelcome heritage’ constituted something little short of censorship in the Irish Press and the Irish Independent, and evidently permeated public thinking as well.32 In September 1956, one writer to the Irish Times, Thomas F. Dowdall, stated that Ireland was ‘one of

12

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

the very few European countries that have never had a colonial empire or indulged in any exploitation’, unlike the ‘thrice accursed British Empire’ in Cyprus.33 In reality, the weighty Irish presence there significantly shaped British policy on the island. Elsewhere, sending out priests, nuns and missionaries was seen as inherently positive, yet many were unaware of the uncomfortable corollary between Ireland’s spiritual empire and British colonial conquest. The extent of Irish involvement in all corners of the Empire, including Cyprus, underscores the fallacy of perceiving the Irish as incidental conduits of colonial rule.34 In the 1950s, Irish nationalist thought included little engagement with Ireland’s place within the global framework of empire. The colonial presence in Cyprus, when it was not designated ‘English’, was seen as simply ‘British’ – an homogeneous whole, however much the Irish presence permeated all levels of the administration. With all the parallels being made between Ireland during the War of Independence and the Cyprus Emergency, and the genuine sympathy this evoked, Irish involvement was a potentially uneasy challenge to the narrative of Irish resistance. Thus, one of the aims of this book is to salvage the hidden histories of those who directly participated in the Cyprus Emergency. To this end, Chapter Six provides an account of the Irish judicial contribution to law and order in Cyprus during the period of the EOKA (National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters, Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) insurgency. Some of the more significant cases these judges were involved in, and the responsibilities and challenges they faced, will be examined. The chapter also questions how much their sense of national identity shaped their experience in Cyprus. Chapter Seven details the Irish involvement with counterinsurgency in Cyprus, most notably by the military and air force, adding to work on the Irish military tradition by Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery.35 Independence could neither efface Irish participation in empire nor reverse it. During the economically depressed 1950s, the Irish contribution in Cyprus owed as much to the exploitation of opportunity that the Empire offered as it did the lack of opportunity in Ireland. While illustrating the level of continued Irish integration in empire, the Irish presence in Cyprus

INTRODUCTION

13

provides little indication of ideological support for empire. Even those who viewed Ireland as a colony prior to 1921 took advantage of employment in colonial service. In the 1950s, the armed services continued to provide an important outlet for Irishmen of all religions and classes. Nationality did not effectively discourage unemployed, mostly Catholic Irishmen from the Twenty-Six Counties from fighting with the Northern Irish or British regiments in Cyprus. For many facing either unemployment in Ireland or emigration to England, recruitment to the British armed forces seemed a far more attractive and secure career than could be gained at home. The absence of any ideological justification for joining up, as was readily available during World War II, did little to weaken this tradition. Through the use of newspaper reports, private papers and the available archival material, it will be shown that the Irish contribution was evident in almost every regiment in Cyprus. The book concludes by asking how Ireland was perceived in the Cypriot imagination. Given the extent of the Irish interaction with Cyprus, it assesses how Cypriots viewed the wider Irish presence on the island during the Emergency and how aware they were of Irish expressions of support. Similarities between Irish and Greek – Cypriot nationalism, and whether Irish separatist nationalism was the antecedent of Greek – Cypriot anti-colonial agitation, are further examined. It also asks how the various socio-political forces at work in Ireland effectively muted discourse on its imperial entanglements. The work closes by pointing to other avenues of research that may further enrich our understanding of independent Ireland and its interconnectedness with an empire that – as improvised and intricate as it was – once spanned every continent. In 1973, Irish Ambassador to Nigeria Tadgh O’Sullivan expressed a candid scepticism of Ireland’s ‘special’ understanding with the developing world that can arguably be extended to include its relationship with all of Britain’s former colonies: ‘I think this is just an idea we have of ourselves, which we have never tested in practice and perhaps have not wanted to test in practice.’36 Surely, in this remarkable period of societal selfreflection, it is time to do just that.

CHAPTER 1 THE EVOLUTION OF ENOSIS AND THE IRISH INTERACTION WITH BRITISH CYPRUS, 1878—1954

We can give them the Permissive, and the Sunday Closing Bills, And lots of Irish Members, who will cure their island’s ills And we’ll send them Captain Burnaby, with tons of Cockle’s Pills, To cure the collywobbles, out in Cyprus. ‘What Shall We Do With Cyprus?’ E.V. Page (1879)1 Ireland’s history, not least in the early twentieth century, has been a bloody one. Even so, the presentation of the Irish national past as the story of the ‘most oppressed people ever’, as Liam Kennedy wryly put it, needs to be placed in a European context.2 All European history could arguably be termed ‘colonial history’, yet the island of Cyprus stands out as truly deserving of Kennedy’s tag. Throughout its history it has been conquered – by Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians, Ottoman Turks and the British – and its current-day geo-political importance belies its former perception, between British occupation

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in 1878 and its offer to the Greek government in 1915, as an ‘inconsequential possession’.3 The need to acquire a fortress colony – or ‘new Gibraltar’ – in the eastern Mediterranean only became urgent with increased Russian influence in the Balkans following the Treaty of San Stefano, imposed on the Ottomans in March 1878. Although the island’s sovereignty remained with the Sultan, William Gladstone was outraged by secret manoeuvres of Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury, who clandestinely forced the Sultan to sign the Anglo– Turkish Convention before the Congress of Berlin, rather than working with the other European powers to reach consensus on the Treaty’s revisions as was anticipated.4 Beaconsfield, naturally delighted, was dubbed the ‘Duke of Cyprus’ by jingoistic crowds on his return from the Congress for bringing home ‘Peace with Honour’.5 As Gladstone’s concerns intensified with each subsequent challenge to empire in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the domestic emergencies of the Irish famine of 1879 and ensuing land war fused Irish nationalist and anti-imperialist critiques, as Irish attitudes to empire were ‘developed in relationship to evolving self-understanding, imperial events and the ideologies and imperatives of a progression of national movements’.6 A famine-riddled India, coupled with a humiliating British defeat in the First Boer War and a costly but successful Second Afghan War, calcified the role of Irish anti-imperialism ‘as an integral, powerful part of Irish nationalist mobilizing rhetoric’ during the first two years of British Cyprus.7 Though others have located this rhetoric as an increasingly important theme within Irish nationalist political ideology from 1840 onwards – espoused with considerable flair by Young Irelanders Thomas Davis and John Mitchel, for example, in the Nation newspaper – attitudes to empire were not uniformly shared or consistent.8 This ambivalence, prevalent in Irish constitutional nationalism, was marked by a deep awareness of, and varying levels of pride in, the populous Irish contribution to empire due to individuals’ own direct experience or that of family members. Conceptually, other Young Irelanders like William Smith O’Brien and Charles Gavan Duffy saw nothing inherently contradictory with an independent Ireland

16

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playing a significant role in empire, nor did Mitchel see any incompatibility between Irish freedom and the maintenance of chattel slavery. Irish Home Rule imperial federalists such as John Redmond held fast to Isaac Butt’s conviction that the desired Irish partnership in empire was justified by Ireland’s record in helping build it. Similarly, influential leaders such as Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell (who once accepted a party donation of £10,000 from zealous imperialist Cecil Rhodes) sometimes opposed particular imperial policies but, as Parnell’s acquiescence exemplifies, were far from committed anti-imperialists.9 Even among the minority who consistently questioned imperial policy, like Irish MPs Frank Hugh O’Donnell, Alfred Webb and Michael Davitt, it was British India, not Cyprus, commanding most attention in the latter nineteenth century. Nonetheless, several lateVictorian era Irish Home Rule MPs commented unfavourably on British policy in Cyprus during revenue debates soon after its acquisition. Echoing Gladstone’s frustration at Disraelian bluster, Cork-born MP for Westmeath T.D. Sullivan declared to the House of Commons in August 1881 that taking Cyprus was ‘a bad job, and a disgraceful affair’, recommending ‘the sooner it was undone the better it would be for the credit of the English nation’.10 But this did not necessarily mean Sullivan was informed about, or influenced by, the Hellenic ideal of enosis, the territorial unity of all culturally Greek peoples, believing there ‘would be more political morality in giving up Cyprus, either to Turkey or to Greece, than there was in taking it’.11 However, his fellow Home Rule MP (for Tipperary) P.J. Smyth articulated enosist sentiments by recommending the restoration of Cyprus to Turkey, with a view to the ultimate transfer of the island to Greece.12 Rather than voicing concern for, or solidarity with, Cypriot nationalist aspirations, Irish nationalist MP for Cavan Joseph Biggar, observing that making Cyprus a place of arms was ‘quite absurd’, aligned himself with the Liberal party assessment of the occupation as a major tactical foreign policy error.13 It was Arthur O’Connor who placed British actions in Cyprus within a wider, anti-imperial framework in describing the take-over as ‘only a portion of a very large scheme of injustice and aggression’

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perpetuated by the British.14 Obviously one should be careful imputing any anti-imperial convictions based on inconsistent and opportunistic remarks; simple political pragmatism was far more often at play. Also, the language used is sometimes highly suggestive of the extensive cooperative Irish role played within empire, as in the instance of Frank Hugh O’Donnell, MP for Dungarvan, Co. Waterford (and brother of Charles J. O’Donnell, a civil servant in Bihar, India), who ‘could not but think that the Turks were great fools in handing the Island over to us’.15 The often contrary stances in the Irish press, ranging from wellrehearsed denigration of imperial policy to immodest pride in Ireland’s prominence in the practices of empire, also extended to its response to the British occupation. It appears that, even amongst the pages of the Nation, in denouncing ‘the perfidy and greed of the Cyprus bargain’, little differentiates it from the British Gladstonian press organs.16 Indeed, gestures of solidarity are notably absent and few parallels between Ireland and Cyprus were made in either the Nation or the Freeman’s Journal. Contrastingly, for those in the British administration in Cyprus, their reading of events on the island were often infused with Irish analogies, echoing earlier events on the Ionian islands whose officials ‘felt a fundamental tension between their perceptions of the idealized Greeks of antiquity and the Ionian islanders. . . and it was a tension that had to be resolved’ as agitation for the long-cherished Hellenic ideal of Greek unification increased from the 1830s onwards.17 In another example of the variegated roles played by Irish officials under the rubric of the ‘British’ in empire, the chief commentator on the Ionian Greeks’ supposed character flaws was Lord George Bowen from Taughboyne, Co. Donegal.18 As the Governor of the Ionian Islands’ political secretary between 1851 – 9, ‘very little about island society escaped the critical eye and poison pen’ of Bowen, ‘the official who most directly confronted the tension between the romanticized ancient Greece and the debased modern Greece’.19 As well as Greek identities portrayed as ‘European aborigines’, the other dominant Ionian Greek stereotype used to legitimise British rule during the protectorate period between 1815 and 1864 was that

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of the ‘Mediterranean Irish’. Construing Ionians as ‘Paddies of the South’, British officialdom, not without its cohort of Irishmen, responded to Greek agitation using Irish comparisons: When colonial officers attempted to understand Greek rural violence, instead of turning to episodes from the British countryside, like the Captain Swing outbursts of 1831– 32 or the Scottish anti-clearance outrages of the 1840s and 1850s . . . they chose instead to analogize it to a very specific type of Irish rural violence: Whiteboyism . . . The 1819 tax revolt on Lefkada, the 1832 electoral riot on Kefallenia, for example, were compared not with the Newport rising of 1839 or the Welsh Rebecca Riots but instead with the Young Ireland uprising of 1848 . . . To the colonial officers, rural Greek violence resembled Irish, but not English or Scottish or Welsh, rural violence.20 While rule of the Ionian Islands was transferred to Greece’s proBritish monarch, George I, in 1862, the ‘Mediterranean Irish’ trope continued to prove effective, as did Irish political analogies, for the British administration and visitors to Cyprus. Seen in this light, glib remarks such as those of the explorer Sir Samuel White Baker are indicative of a much wider inclination: following a confrontation with a disgruntled crowd in Limassol in 1879 (who, believing him to be someone of influence, complained to him about their watersupply), he got rid of the deputation ‘without suggesting that under the existing agrarian dispute they should let their farms to some enterprising Irish tenants from Tipperary’.21

I. ‘Accidental’ Irishmen or Erin’s ‘Gallant Sons’? The Early Years of ‘British’ Cyprus With the occupation of Cyprus in 1878 – as with anywhere else under British rule – came opportunity. Three weeks after the signing of the Cyprus Convention, the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Bill of 1878 was passed in the House of Lords, whereby

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19

the government agreed to fund secondary education in Ireland on a payment-by-results basis. For Robert Dyer Lyons, a Catholic physician from Glanmire in Co. Cork with a keen interest in educational reform, the timing of the occupation was particularly fitting. In July 1878, he wrote to Lord Beaconsfield: ‘Under this Bill . . . I am induced to believe that an ample field [in Ireland] may be readily afforded for cultivating the intellectual materials needed for supplying the wants of the new Political and Civil Service required in Cyprus.’22 Lyons suggested that Irish secondary school students, for whom learning Greek was obligatory under the Bill’s stipulations, should also have the option of studying Turkish and Arabic, so as to serve as able civil servants in the new administration in Cyprus.23 Although the plans never came to fruition, even a loose implementation of his proposals may have prevented many later political headaches.24 For others such as Philip Callan, the Irish Catholic Home Rule MP from Co. Louth, who had persistently pursued a government colonial position during the Gladstone administration of 1868– 74, the opportunities were two-fold: he sought unsuccessfully for a position both in the Conservative administration’s new Intermediate Education Board and in the new Cyprus administration.25 Nevertheless, the Irish presence in Cyprus was substantial from the outset, though its full extent was often hidden by Irish newspapers such as the Freeman Journal wilfully referring only to ‘English officials’ on the island.26 Akin to the well-documented Irish role in British India, the upper echelons of the administration in Cyprus included many members from the Irish Protestant landed gentry and Castle Catholic traditions, while Irish soldiers swelled the British army ranks – with the inauguration of ‘British’ Cyprus on 22 July 1878 being a particularly Irish affair. The first High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief was Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley from Goldenbridge, Co. Dublin, accompanied by his two aides-de-camp, his nephew MajorGeneral Arthur Creagh from Doneraile, Co. Cork,27 and MajorGeneral Hugh McCalmont from Abbeylands, Co. Antrim.28 Also serving with Wolseley was his old friend Sir William Francis Butler

20

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from Golden, Co. Tipperary. In September 1878, Augustine Birrell’s ‘accidental Irishman’, Lieutenant-General Horatio Kitchener, arrived in Cyprus after being commissioned to organise land registration and survey the island. He had been the obvious choice for the job, having completed the same task in Palestine in 1877. In 1881, the same year that most of Thessaly became Greek, Kitchener completed the survey and drew up the first modern map of Cyprus. In August of that year, Colonel Simpson Hackett, son of wealthy landowner Thomas Hackett of Moorpark, Parsonstown, King’s County, was appointed Commander-in-Chief.29 Joining him was his brother, Colonel Robert Hackett. Simpson Hackett would retain command of the troops until 1890. During his tenure a more assertive enosis consciousness began to form, at the same time as a more confident Home Rule movement in Ireland emerged. In 1891, a new Colonial Secretary of Cyprus was appointed, George Thomas O’Brien from Kilkenny town, son of James Thomas O’Brien, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and grandson of Edward Pennefeather, former Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.30 Despite optimistic beginnings, disillusion set in quickly, the lack of a deep harbour making it clear that Cyprus was never going to be the Mediterranean El Dorado, as veteran Irish war journalist John Augustus O’Shea, who accompanied Wolseley, had hoped, less still an effective reserve place d’armes.31 In 1897 the Greco – Turkish War further stimulated enosist passions, as had the Cretan uprising in 1896. Yet a different issue dominated proceedings within the Legislative Assembly – that of the Tribute: it would prove a major factor in the disintegration of Anglo–Greek understanding on the island and heighten feelings of Hellenic irredentism. Intended for the Sultan (through an Anglo– Turkish Convention proviso permitting the island’s excess revenue be paid to him), it instead went to pay British bondholders, the Porte having defaulted on the Crimean War Loan. Despite repeated warnings from the administration in Cyprus, the British Treasury remained intransigent. Winston Churchill’s speech, forever engrained in Greek – Cypriot memory, merely added fuel to the enosis fire: visiting Cyprus in 1907, he stated, albeit with less

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conviction than the ‘Grand Old Man’, that the incorporation with ‘what can be called their mother country’ was ‘an ideal to be earnestly, devoutly, and fervently cherished’.32 Major Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams was appointed High Commissioner in October 1911, further alienating Greek –Cypriot opinion, the wealthy Protestant landowner from Jamesbrook, Co. Cork being ‘imbued with a strong bias against Greek politicians’.33 Conservative politician J.C.C. Davidson, visiting Cyprus between November and December 1913, duly informed the Secretary of State for the Colonies that Goold-Adams was ‘hated – there is no other word which I can really use – by the Greeks’.34 In London, Colonial Office (CO) mandarins stereotyped Goold-Adams as ‘the sole cause of instability’ on the island.35 It remains difficult, however, to assess how Irish developments informed his methods in Cyprus, rather than his experiences fighting in the First and Second Boer Wars, or his role as Governor of the Orange River Colony from 1907 to 1910. What is clear is that the psychology of denial in relation to the strength of Irish separatist nationalism – regularly stigmatised as artificially created, unreasonable and existent only on the fringes of society – was closely paralleled in his assessment of the strength of Hellenic irredentism. But Goold-Adams may also have been influenced by a perceived weakening of power within the House of Lords, with potentially critical consequences for British rule in Ireland and Cyprus. Two months before his arrival, the Parliament Act of 1911 was passed, which by restricting peers’ ability to delay legislation to only three sessions of Parliament made future Home Rule a possibility. Would this set a precedent for Cypriot nationalist aspirations? In April 1912, all seven Greek-elected members of the Legislative Council resigned, frustrated by Goold-Adams’ obduracy about discussing the Tribute or reform of the legislature. Large demonstrations followed. Goold-Adams described things thus to Sir Lewis Harcourt, the British Colonial Secretary: ‘A little local excitement but all quiet.’36 The following month saw extensive disturbances comparable only to those of the last two years of the Cyprus Emergency. Turk– Cypriots, fearful of a British departure (a fear that would resurface during the

22

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Emergency), and now with three seats on the Council, allied themselves more closely with the administration. Consequently, the protests were instilled with communal tension. In Limassol on 26 May 1912, five people were killed and 17 seriously hurt.37 That the police were largely Turk–Cypriots, as would also be the case during the Emergency, helped little. Crete’s union with Greece in 1913 was the final nail in the coffin. That it had never belonged to the British provided little comfort for the Greek– Cypriots, still excluded from Greek unification. Just as Ireland was within an inch of Home Rule until the Third Home Rule Bill’s suspension in August 1914, enosists now geared up for outright war. In early October, Goold-Adams ordered a martial law edict be drawn up, in the likelihood of an emergency – only prevented by the declaration of war between Britain and Turkey on 5 November 1914. Britain grabbed the opportunity to formally annex Cyprus. But while Ireland’s future was thrown into limbo, enosis looked ever more certain. The arrival of Goold-Adams’ more moderate replacement Major Sir John Clauson in January 1915 was auspicious. More crucial, however, was the value Britain placed on Greece joining the Entente Powers, helping stabilise the Balkan front. Attempting to lure the Greeks to join the Allied forces, Cyprus was offered to Greece by Sir Edward Grey on 16 October. An Irish Independent editorial warned that if Greece was to ‘not act loyally by her ally she will be the loser by perfidy’,38 while the Kerryman instead questioned why there was ‘no-one to ask for concessions on the part of Ireland’.39 More surprisingly, the nationalist regional Leitrim Observer voiced indignation at the Greek refusal: ‘We offered to make over Cyprus to Greece if she would side with us; but the bribe, apparently, was not considered big enough.’40 Were it not for King Constantine I of Greece being married to the Kaiser’s sister, it probably would have been accepted. Gerald Fitzmaurice, a Roman Catholic from Howth, Co. Dublin and First Dragoman in Constantinople before the war, was flabbergasted at the offer. Fitzmaurice, who worked alongside other influential Irish Catholics at the British Embassy (most notably Nicholas O’Conor, the Roscommon-born diplomat and Ambassador at Constantinople from 1898 to 1908), was so knowledgeable about

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23

Ottoman politics that he was dubbed the ‘wizard of Stamboul’. Employed in espionage during the war, he was given an unusually free rein. Fitzmaurice told fellow spy Compton Mackenzie that he was ‘genuinely shocked’ that Grey had offered Cyprus as bait,41 though Fitzmaurice himself had advocated ‘the most ruthless methods’ to compel Greece to enter the war, even taking Corfu from her.42 In June 1917, the republican Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos managed to persuade King Alexander, son of the abdicated Constantine, to join the Triple Entente. The offer of Cyprus, naturally interpreted by Greek –Cypriots as a tacit admission by the British that their claims were justifiable, marked a watershed in Cypriot enosis politics. Grey’s offer, never to be repeated, also represented the apex of British amenability on the issue of enosis. Similarly, the MacDonald– Chamberlain offer of Irish reunification in June 1940, encouraging the Irish to join the war effort, would represent the ‘high-water mark of British tractability’ over Northern Ireland.43

II. Growing Analogies: T.P. O’Connor, Michael Collins and ‘British Fairplay’ in Cyprus With so much at stake elsewhere during the war, enosists remained moderate, following the wishes of the Greek consul in Cyprus, but the end of the war signalled a flurry of activity. In December 1918, Archbishop Kyrillos III led a deputation to London, where they were assisted by distinguished British philhellenes such as Sir Arthur Crosfield and Dr Ronald Burrows. Irish philhellenes would play their part too: a notable supporter of Greek – Cypriot nationalist aspirations was Irish nationalist MP and Fleet Street editor T.P. O’Connor, from Athlone, Co. Westmeath, ‘one of the oldest survivors of the Philhellenes of the days of Gladstone’.44 Notwithstanding Michael Silvestri’s caution that with ‘the exception of a few politicians . . . any expressions of support for other nationalist movements were always secondary to the needs of the Irish cause’, O’Connor went beyond token gestures to advocate the justice of enosis.45 The delegation’s hopes, increased by the wartime offer and

24

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philhellene support, were, however, misplaced. Prior to World War I, the British presence on Cyprus had been defined by their interests in Asia Minor, but now its strategic usefulness was tied up with newly acquired possessions in the Middle East – the fruits of Field Marshal Edmund Allenby’s exploits. With this reorientation in British foreign policy, the possibility of enosis was less than ever. In September 1919, newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and British High Commissioner in Turkey ViceAdmiral John de Robeck, from Naas, Co. Clare, outlined the military advantages of retaining Cyprus,46 and the odds were stacked against the enosists in Whitehall, too: Lord Curzon, no fan of the Greeks, became Foreign Secretary in October 1919. Greece was not pushing for enosis either: at the Paris Peace Conference, Prime Minister Venizelos, hoping for continued support from Britain in stemming any Turkish re-occupation of Smyrna, refused to raise the matter with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Archbishop Kyrillos had been warned by President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood Michael Collins that his ‘reliance on British justice and British fairplay’ was ‘entirely misplaced’.47 Collins was both right and wrong. Kyrillos had reason to believe in the British justice system in Cyprus, which had always been held in high esteem by Greek– Cypriots and Turk– Cypriots alike. Thus, the delegation’s pamphlet, entitled ‘Cyprus Trusts in British Justice’, could claim they had faith in British justice ‘from childhood’.48 Wherever in the world ‘British’ justice operated, it was accompanied by Irish judges, and Cyprus was no exception. The Irish legal tradition on the island began shortly after occupation in 1878 and included figures such as Ulick Burke (son of Charles Granby Burke, master of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland), who practised law there from 1885 to 1889. Maurice Cherry Greene, ‘one of the best known young men in Dublin at the turn of the century’ and immortalised in ‘The Wandering Rocks’ episode of Joyce’s Ulysses, was President of the District Court in 1926.49 His successor was Robert Vere de Vere of Curragh Chase, Co. Limerick, nephew of the poet Aubrey de Vere and a friend of Tennyson.50 The lawyer and scholar Dr Patrick Walsh from Creeslough, Co. Donegal

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became the new President of the District Court following de Vere’s departure. Walsh was famous in Ireland for being Senior Counsel in the appeal brought by poet and translator Niall MacGiolla Bhrighde, also of Creeslough, against a fine incurred for having his name in Irish on his cart. Walsh’s junior colleague on the case was none other than Patrick Pearse.51 Sir Henry William Butler Blackall, son of solicitor Henry Blackall from Castleconnell in Co. Limerick, was the Attorney-General from 1932 to 1936. His successor was Captain Lancelot Lloyd-Blood from Winton Road, Co. Dublin, who served as Attorney-General until 1938.52 The precedent of Irish Chief Justices on the island was set by Sir Herbert Cecil Stronge, from Kilkee in Co. Clare, who became head of the judiciary in January 1931. Sir Bernard A. Crean, a Belfast-born Catholic who served as a Puisne Judge in Cyprus from 1930 to 1934, followed a spell in British Guiana by succeeding Stronge in 1938, before retiring in 1943. But Collins’ assessment was not entirely untrue. The fruitless meeting with Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies Leopold Amery in October 1920 brought the Cypriot delegation’s mission to a close and appeared to validate Collins’ cynicism towards ‘British fairplay.’ T.P. O’Connor, perhaps with the Irish Protestant minority in mind, quizzed Amery the following month in the House of Commons: May I ask my hon. and gallant Friend whether it is not the fact that ever since the occupation of this island by the British authorities protests have been made continuously from every section of the population, except a comparatively small minority of Mohammedans in the island; and whether there is any justification whatever for the idea that the Greek government, which has already a large body of Mohammedan subjects under its control, would treat the minority in Cyprus in any spirit but that of justice and equality?53 How was O’Connor’s philhellenism informed by his own nationalist aims? In March 1920 – with the Irish War of Independence in its second year – Conservative MP Sir Neville Jodrell asked the House

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‘to keep an open mind’ on Cyprus, and ‘not be led away by parallels’ drawn by O’Connor, which would ‘be used largely on a future occasion not far off’ in ‘another island, with which, I think, he is more acquainted’.54 But veteran Greek – Cypriot nationalist politician Nikolaos Lanitis pointed out that, unlike the Irish, the Cypriots did not by themselves constitute a nation seeking independence but were an ‘unfree part of a nation’ possessing its own state, a position O’Connor supported.55 In Cyprus, O’Connor’s efforts to advance enosis were publicly acknowledged, even having a street named after him in Limassol.56 Although some Irish MPs and radical nationalists were willing ‘to contemplate an alliance with virtually any adversary of perfidious Albion’, gestures of solidarity with Greek –Cypriot nationalists are conspicuously absent, until the 1950s when British policy in Emergency Cyprus was condemned worldwide.57 Admittedly, the offer of Cyprus to Greece gave some Irish nationalists false hope during World War I. At a meeting of the West Cork Executive of the United Irish League in Bantry in October 1916, chief registration agent Hugh Martin complained that Home Rule should have been made a condition of Ireland’s contribution to the war, believing ‘if that demand had been made by the Irish Party, even a year later, that the country which was prepared to give Cyprus to Greece for her assistance would hesitate before she would give a blank refusal for the aid of such men’.58 Tellingly, it was not matched by expressions of sympathy for the Cypriot cause. The selectivity of the Irish nationalist press for political ends obscured the full Irish presence on Cyprus, compounded by the ethnocentricity of nationalist culture. However, the insularity central to all nationalist movements did not prevent Irish philhellenes such as George Bernard Shaw, who visited Cyprus himself, from deriding Sinn Fe´in’s blinkered tendencies. Claiming it ‘hardly too much to say that Ireland is the Malvolio of the nations, sick with self-love’, he accused Sinn Fe´in of thinking ‘that the world consists of Ireland and a few subordinate continents’.59 But political strategising played a much greater role than nationalistic self-regard, as gestures of solidarity with Cypriot Hellenism would have rendered the Irish case unremarkable – and the Irish rationale for self-government was

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27

contingent upon its exceptionalism in the context of white entitlement. Even for radical nationalists expressing a more bellicose anti-imperialism than some Home Rulers, racial equality was far from a shared worldview and comparisons with indigenous African claims for self-government seen as deleterious. Despite eagerness to place their cause within a white, European framework, the corollary of Ireland’s claim to uniqueness as the last unfree white nation was the lack of solidarity for their fellow white, Christian Europeans in Cyprus from some of Ireland’s nationalists, such as Erskine Childers, who though English-born became an erudite propagandist for Irish self-rule. Despite his in-depth knowledge of Europe, in 1919 he asserted that ‘Ireland is now the only white nationality in the world . . . where the principle of self-determination is not, in theory, conceded’; the following month he described Ireland as ‘a lonely, symbolic figure’, ‘the one solitary exception’ that was ‘tragically isolated’ from other European nations.60 E´amon de Valera also claimed in 1919 and 1920 that Ireland was the last white nation ´ Ceallaigh and George Gavan deprived of its liberty, as did Sean T. O 61 Duffy. Amery’s rigidity had immediate consequences as it fed into the interwar discontent. The Wilsonian insistence that the war was being fought for the right of all nations to self-determination, so rapidly circumscribed in the immediate aftermath, was an affront to even moderate Cypriot nationalists, thousands of whom had volunteered for the war effort. Enosist agitation resurfaced on a scale not seen since October 1914, taking the form of rigid abstentionism, Sinn Fe´in-style, by the Legislative Council in Nicosia. While GooldAdams had been in denial over the extent of support for enosis, the 1916 Rising in Ireland brought the reality of insurgent nationalism into sharp focus. The new High Commissioner was Sir Michael Stevenson, from Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Described by Leonard Woolf, who worked alongside him in the Ceylon civil service in the early 1900s, as ‘an amusing Irishman,’ Stevenson was ill-equipped for the role of High Commissioner.62 ‘A mediocre and narrow-minded colonial official’, according to G.S. Georghallides, Stevenson’s posting had more to do with being the son-in-law of Lord Chalmers,

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former Governor of Ceylon.63 Despite all but one of the Greek delegates being absent from the Legislative Council by 1919, he carried on with the administration of the island, but by burying his head in the sand risked a Cypriot equivalent to Ireland’s Easter Rising. Ironically, the instigators were Turk– Cypriots. In the spring of 1919, the small nationalist ‘Union with Turkey’ party planned to launch anti-Greek disturbances during Easter week, followed by a general Turkish uprising. Once Stevenson was informed, the ringleaders were arrested under martial law. To disrupt the enosis campaign, Stevenson was prepared to take the same measure the British had in Ireland following the alleged ‘German Plot’ – namely deportation. In April 1921, he deported Greek national and enosis leader Nikolaos Katalanos, along with Mayor of Larnaca Dr Philios Zannettos, an historian– revolutionary akin to Eoin MacNeill. Like former deportee de Valera, Katalanos had also been a secondary school teacher, as well as a charismatic and cultured orator and tireless radical nationalist.64 On 25 December 1921, nearly three weeks after the Anglo–Irish Treaty signing, Stevenson warned Colonial Secretary Churchill that: ‘The danger of the adoption by the Greek Cypriots of “Sinn Fe´in” methods is for the moment remote . . . but in all seriousness the essential possibility must not be lost sight of.’65 These comparisons were not exceptional; Sinn Fe´in militancy was frequently compared with anti-colonial violence elsewhere in the Empire, particularly in India, Egypt and South Africa. Sinn Fe´in abstentionism was seen as comparable too, though erroneously: the Donegal News headline ‘Sinn Fe´in in Cyprus’ referred to the electoral boycott of the Legislative Council elections in January 1923, with only 2,400 votes recorded out of 24,000 electors, protesting a British administration resolved to stay.66 Under the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey forfeited all claims to Cyprus in July 1923. British control was augmented in March 1925 when it became a Crown colony, with Stevenson as its first governor. With the island’s future now seen as an Anglo-Greek problem by Greek– Cypriots, the nationalists upped the ante.67 Internal divisions resulted in a split – like that of the Fenians and Home Rulers – between constitutional nationalists looking for a larger measure of

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self-government, and radical separatist nationalists sticking to enosis. To placate constitutional moderates, the Legislative Council’s numbers were increased shortly before colonial status was declared, yet the ratio of Greek, Turk and British remained the same. The token gesture served to irritate, even humiliate, Greek –Cypriot Council members, as it seemed to justify their abstentionist opponents’ claims. Now the challenge for the British administration was not violence, Sinn Fe´in-style – still a real possibility – but legislative obstruction as resolution after resolution called for union with Greece.

III. ‘Enosis and only Enosis’: The 1931 Riots, World War II and the Greek Civil War Stevenson’s successor Sir Ronald Storrs tried to change tack, abolishing the contentious Tribute in 1928 and openly recognising the deep emotion behind Greek – Cypriot Hellenism, however this had little effect in quelling agitation. He later remarked that his approach was driven by his belief that ‘a man is of the race that he passionately feels himself to be’.68 Yet his recognition that the Greek– Cypriot was ‘Greek-speaking, Greek-thinking, [and] Greekfeeling’ antagonised those he sought to placate when he wouldn’t budge on the issue of enosis.69 With relations reaching breaking point, another delegation went to London in mid-November 1929 to visit old philhellenes, including a frail O’Connor who pledged, just three days before dying on 17 November, to write in their support.70 With disillusionment, frustration and anger peaking once news spread of the deputation’s failure, government moves on 7 December to consolidate control over primary education risked further inflaming anti-colonial sentiment. Yet for some, including the Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the CO, Sir John Shuckburgh, it was particularly necessary in light of recent Irish events: We shall never have peace in Cyprus, and indeed the situation is bound to grow progressively worse, so long as Education is under the control of people who use their power openly for

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political ends. It will be a case of Ireland over again. What can we expect of a generation which has been inoculated from early childhood with the ‘Union with Greece’ virus? If matters are allowed to go unchecked, we shall reach a point – as we did in Ireland – when we shall have no practical alternative but to yield to the demand.71 Though the Education Law was incendiary enough, with crowds of secondary school children protesting in the streets, the immediate context for the October 1931 crisis was an equally unpopular rise in the custom tariff and the resultant anger of Greek – Cypriot Legislative Council deputies. The atmosphere so deteriorated that Storrs felt compelled to return to London for emergency talks. On 21 October, the night before his departure, two deputies walked to Government House to resign, joined by a crowd of around 5,000, ‘armed with staves and stones’,72 who set the wooden structure ablaze. Disorder quickly spread, peace only restored by troop reinforcements from Malta and Egypt. Commissioner of Paphos Captain Arthur Fleury, from Sydney Parade in Dublin, received an OBE for services in connection with the disturbances, despite being evaluated by the CO in 1922 as ‘mediocre and not suited for service elsewhere’.73 He had been in Cyprus since 1910, first acting as a local commandant of the military police before promotion to Commissioner. The Times attributed the riots to ‘a group of office-seekers and . . . the fanaticism of ecclesiastical politicians’.74 Whether Orthodox priests had really been ‘observed to be inciting students’, clearly the Orthodox Church was seeking to consolidate its leadership of the enosis movement during 1931, lest it lose out to the Communist Party of Cyprus (CPC), which had steadily gained ground since forming in 1926.75 A decisive era of British illiberalism, lasting until 1943, was ushered in. The CPC was banned, the Bishops of Kition and Kyrenia, Nikodemos Mylonas and Michail Papaioannou, with five Greek – Cypriot politicians, were deported to Malta, the constitution was revoked, and 2,000 enosist agitators were imprisoned.

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While Irish press responses to Cypriot affairs were scant in the 1920s, the repressive measures sparked immediate comment, underlining Irish journalistic reticence – and occasional ignorance – of Greek – Cypriot nationalism. An Irish Independent editorial published after the protests portrayed Hellenist sentiments as a new development on the island. Though acknowledging mass support, and the consequent likelihood of further trouble, the conservative daily refrained from declarations of support: ‘from what has filtered through it would appear that there is a strong popular movement for union with Greece . . . if the majority of the people are at the back of the movement as appears probable, there are likely to be very difficult times ahead.’76 Following suspension of the Legislative Council, the Governor had sole authority. The Anglophobic Irish Press declared it ‘a dictatorship in Cyprus’, but refrained from Irish analogies.77 British press organs such as the left-leaning Manchester Guardian went comparatively further: ‘the most surprising thing about the disturbances in Cyprus is that they have not happened before’.78 It declared confidently that there was ‘no Crown colony in which the moral case for British occupation is weaker’, given four-fifths of the population were Greek ‘by birth or religion, or both’.79 Believing the Archbishop of Cyprus was ‘following a line of tactics not unlike those of Mr de Valera’ by declaring the union of Greece with Cyprus, it recognised the Governor had ‘no alternative but the ugly one of rule by military force’.80 Even Chief Justice Stronge’s harshest laws could not lessen the nervousness of the next Treasurer of Cyprus, former Acting Chief Secretary Major William Flinn from Ardamine, Co. Wexford, who held the post from 1935 to 1938.81 After all, fiscal matters such as the Tribute and tax spikes had ignited the disorder, and it was Flinn who in 1926 had placed contentious tax increases on everyday commodities and was later recalled to serve as the permanent Cyprus Trade Commissioner in London.82 Nevertheless, the damage was done. With taxes up from £350,000 in 1915 to £920,000 in 1930, the economic impact on islanders was immense.83 By 1939, it was clear that Hellenic sentiment would not be mitigated by British intransigence. Travel writer Eric Gifford’s disparaging comments in

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East of Athens, recounting his seven-year Near East painting expedition, led one Spectator reviewer to warn that the ‘chapters on Cyprus will not please the British residents or the island’s administrators; Mr Gifford gives an alarming picture of the snobbery and ignorance that still persist there in the face of an increasingly dangerous situation.’84 An Irish Press reviewer predictably – and symptomatic of much contemporary Irish commentary – kept referring to ‘English officials’ on the island rather than the more complicated reality.85 World War II further solidified Hellenic sentiment in Cyprus, as much due to staunch Greek – Cypriot support of the Allies, particularly after the invasion of Greece in 1940, as it was to British vagueness regarding the island’s future status. Following a request by Greek Prime Minister Alexander Korizis that Cyprus be relinquished to Greece in appreciation for Greek support, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden implied that the problem would be resolved when the war was won, and Churchill, too, made some hazy allusions to a postwar settlement. The British administration recruited for the Cyprus Regiment under the opaquely hopeful slogan ‘For Greece and Freedom’,86 the longer version in the recruitment leaflets even more exploitative: ‘By enlisting in the British Army you fight for Greece and for your freedom.’87 However, wide-scale recruitment only occurred after removal in October 1939 of the official policy preventing ‘dark-skinned Cypriots’ from joining the army,88 though the Air Force maintained its precondition of only accepting Cypriots who were ‘European in appearance and habits’ and not ‘of dark complexion’ or ‘of Asiatic or African appearance’ for the duration of the war.89 Although conscription was not enforced, over 30,000 Cypriots enrolled in the British army. With Greek – Cypriots asked to volunteer to save the Greek motherland, and being the first colonial troops sent to the Western Front, the administration could hardly forbid flying the Greek flag or treat talk of enosis as sedition. To placate Greek – Cypriots, increased political activity was allowed. The CPC reorganised in 1941 to form AKEL (the Progressive Party of Workers, Anorthotiko´ Ko´mma Ergazo´menou Laou´), to which both Greek– Cypriots and Turk– Cypriots belonged. Its strength posed a

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threat to the clerical nationalist right. With Greece immersed in civil war, the bitterness between the political left and right in Cyprus deepened. Meanwhile Turk – Cypriots, conscious of Turkey’s evasive neutrality during the war and the implications of the Atlantic Charter, grew fearful that the status quo in Cyprus would end, particularly after Italy ceded the Dodecanese Islands to Greece in 1947.90 Cyprus was now the only large island in the Eastern Mediterranean, apart from Turkey’s offshore ones, not in Greek hands. However, as long as it depended on British military and economic help to quell the civil war, Greece’s leverage to push for enosis was limited. When the Greek communists were defeated in the civil war, AKEL, worried that they too would be crushed by the right, intensified their campaign. By October 1949, they declared that enosis should be raised in the UN. Yet any hope that Britain would relinquish the island was remote. It no longer had Palestine, its Suez base looked increasingly vulnerable, and with it no longer the dominant power in the Middle East, the importance of retaining Cyprus was greater than ever. Simultaneously, the idea of ‘enosis and only enosis’ became even more attractive, though not to the Irish press organs where comment, apart from that on the October 1931 riots and the odd review of Gifford’s travelogue, was sporadic, so much so that Sean O’Faolain wondered what had happened to the funds of a supposed ‘Free Cyprus Association’.91 On 15 January 1950, the Orthodox Church in Cyprus, keen to gain ground against AKEL, held a plebiscite. No Turk– Cypriots were allowed to vote. The results revealed almost 97 per cent of Greek– Cypriots in favour of enosis. AKEL would never recover its popularity. Archbishop Makarios II, as Bishop of Kyrenia one of the 1931 deportees, died the following June. Bishop of Kition Michael Mouskos (who had replaced the other bishop deportee, Nikodemos Mylonas) was elected Archbishop in October, taking office as Makarios III. At 37 years old, he was the youngest archbishop in the history of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. His ability to resonate with and garner the support of Cyprus’ youth was already apparent by 1952 when he founded PEON (the Pancyprian Youth Organization,

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Pankyprios Ethniki Organosis Neolaisas), later a recruiting centre for EOKA’s campaign. At his inauguration, Makarios pledged not to rest until union with ‘Mother Greece’ had been accomplished. No-one in AKEL could contend with Makarios in personality terms. Financially, AKEL could not compete either. The Church of Cyprus was immensely rich, a conservative 1955 estimate putting the value of Church properties at £6.5 million.92 In March 1954, Greek Prime Minister (and Field-Marshal) Alexander Papagos finally succumbed to pressure from Makarios to internationalise the Cyprus Question. The UN approach appeared especially urgent given Minister of State for the Colonies Henry Hopkinson’s remarks on 28 July, declaring what many in Westminster thought but did not dare say: ‘It has always been understood and agreed that there are certain territories in the Commonwealth which, owing to their particular circumstances, can never expect to be fully independent.’93 Although he did not mention the island, it was widely understood what he was referring to. Papagos, with Greek popular opinion behind him, disregarded Eden’s protests that Cyprus was ‘a closed question’ and requested it be placed on the UN General Assembly agenda. Although it failed to gain the necessary two-thirds of the vote, the genie was now out of the bottle. When news of the decision reached Cyprus, the peaceful, if expectant, atmosphere was disrupted by violent demonstrations. In December 1954, the British accelerated transfer of their Middle East headquarters from Suez to Cyprus. With the corresponding increase in troops, it was now clear to Greek – Cypriots that the British intended to stay for the immediate future. Despite these developments, the outbreak of the EOKA campaign on 1 April 1955 was not necessarily inevitable. As Robert Holland states: EOKA could not have arisen, and above all could not have survived, if the possibility of such emulation, and even a certain pride in it, had not touched a chord amongst the great mass of Greek – Cypriots who detested violence for its own sake. What accident and events brought it to head-on collision in Cyprus, therefore, were two different but equally tenacious ideas about

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the exceptional circumstances of the island – a Greek – Cypriot belief that they were exceptionally qualified to determine their own future, and a British belief that the island must be exempted in some way from the process of imperial retraction.94 If one changes the references from Cyprus to Ireland, EOKA to the IRA and Greek – Cypriot to Irish, these assertions hold true for the case of Ireland during the period 1919– 21. EOKA, like the IRA, wanted immediate and full self-determination. In Cyprus as in Ireland, popular support was explained away by the British incorrectly assuming that the agitation was caused by a minority not reflecting wider genuine nationalist sentiment, and so that eliminating the troublemakers would eradicate an artificially created, unspontaneous expression of discontent. These false arguments were rooted in distortion because both places were considered integral to empire. In 1921, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson declared, ‘If we lose Ireland, we have lost the Empire.’95 Similarly, British officialdom believed Cyprus indispensable to imperial interests. These similar polarisations, together with the fact that the British response to the EOKA insurgency followed the same pattern as in Ireland, explain why parallels between Ireland and Cyprus grew as the Cyprus Emergency unfolded. The following chapter deals with how these similarities were commented upon in the Irish press, the nuances in the various press responses, and the manifold contributions of Irish citizens during the Emergency period.

CHAPTER 2 THE IRISH PRESS RESPONSE TO THE CYPRUS EMERGENCY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

In speeches, education, discussions, propaganda, the international political theme which dominates all others is the so called ‘tyranny’ of Britain, exercised through seven centuries of oppression, removed at last from the Twenty-Six Counties, but continued in the maintenance of Partition and manifested as still the same creature in Kenya, Cyprus and other territories ‘struggling for freedom.’ Almost the only other specific feature of thought here on international affairs is a strong ‘European’ tendency – a natural one for geographical and racial reasons, glamorised by memories of the travelling Irish scholars of a thousand years ago, but itself enhanced by a more realist desire to seek friendly neighbours beyond Britain.1 In his analysis above, UK Ambassador in Dublin Sir Alexander Clutterbuck conveyed why public opinion in the Republic of Ireland was in such sympathy with the Greek – Cypriot struggle for selfdetermination. They were mostly white, Christian Europeans, part of an ancient and cultured civilisation fighting against the same colonial yoke as Ireland had. It is not surprising then that the majority of Irish

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people were hostile to British policy in Cyprus, seeing events there as analogous to those in Ireland during 1919 – 21. That the struggle for enosis was only superficially similar to the Irish experience did not deter support. The two situations were seen as comparable because the pattern of British repressive measures in Ireland was, however unintentionally, repeated in Cyprus. Sympathy and support came particularly from those for whom the Irish War of Independence was still in living memory – still considered very much part of the recent past. For those who perceived England’s role in Ireland over the centuries as intrinsically repressive, the related ‘ancient evils cast very long shadows’.2 Public protest increased with the deportations and executions, and whenever the question of partition for Cyprus raised its head, so too did the analogies made between Ireland and Cyprus. While the general pattern of the British response to the IRA insurgency bears resemblance to that towards EOKA violence – retaliation, increased repression, quiet diplomacy and eventual accommodation – the British clearly wanted to avoid a repetition of what happened in Ireland. According to William Roger Louis, there was, on the part of the British administration in Cyprus, ‘a determination not to repeat the experience of Ireland where “union” had proven disastrous to the stalwarts of the British Empire’.3 Opposition leaders such as Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell and the Liberal Party’s Clement Davies stressed that the lessons learnt in Ireland needed to be remembered. On 5 December 1955, only days after Governor Sir John Harding declared a state of emergency, Davies warned that maintaining law and order through repressive methods ‘will never settle anything’.4 He continued: Much has been said about keeping law and order [in Cyprus]. That brings to my mind memories of another bitter dispute, when acts similar to those in Cyprus were being perpetrated nearer home and left a bitterness which has not been wiped out even after a generation. It was no good trying at that time to repress the people of Southern Ireland in the name of law and order. The only way in which we could ultimately meet their

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wishes was by granting the independence for which they asked. I ask the Government to bear that in mind.5 Although the Tory party downplayed the similarities, Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd nevertheless admitted that, ‘as for amnesties and acts of oblivion, before I went to Cyprus I steeped myself in the story of Ireland’.6 But despite the Irish example, the Cyprus Emergency ultimately developed into a case of lessons unlearned. That similar, unusually firm, methods of repression were employed clearly shows the British administration’s inability, indeed desperation, to remain in control of events. In Britain, these same reasons were behind the ideological sensitivity towards repressive measures in Cyprus. Amongst the British public there was often little interest in the colonial territories,7 yet its relative geographical proximity meant Cyprus was open to observation and criticism in a way that Britain’s more distant possessions were not. Because of this, media coverage was more extensive than of other, contemporaneous British counter-insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya. Furthermore, apart from those loosely, sometimes unjustly, considered ‘fellow-travellers’, anti-communism in Britain muted majority criticism of policy in Malaya, fighting as they were against communist insurgents. Similarly, accounts of Mau Mau atrocities in Kenya subdued protests until the Hola camp massacre in 1959. Public awareness also increased with Greece’s internationalisation of the Cyprus Question at the Council of Europe and UN. Finally, the Cyprus Emergency coincided with the period when anti-colonial feeling in Britain ‘found its most unified, coherent, and forceful organisational expression, and its widest base of support’ through the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF), established in 1954,8 marking the ‘culmination of active opposition to colonialism in Britain’.9 Tellingly, no such similar organisation existed in Ireland. Public dissent in Britain towards imperial policy was nothing new, the Second Boer War – often called the world’s first ‘media war’ – being an important precedent. Response to policy in Cyprus must be seen as part of wider postwar anti-colonialism in light of the

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Atlantic Charter and the Truman Doctrine, yet the persistence and duration of the press protests, further amplified by the Suez de´baˆcle, stands apart in the history of empire. Labourites and Liberals persistently attacked Tory policy on Cyprus, but opposition lay right across the political spectrum. As early as August 1954, Roman Catholic Conservative MP Christopher Hollis informed Anthony Nutting MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, that he was ‘by no means happy about the Government’s handling of the Cyprus situation’.10 Conservative politician, soldierdiplomat and philhellene C.M. Woodhouse was already convinced by 1945, given his expertise in Greek affairs, especially as Second Secretary at the Embassy at Athens, that ‘the only way to permanent peace lay through the concession of the Greek claim to enosis’.11 In 1955 when Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan was ‘urging us to stir up the Turks in order to neutralise the Greek agitation’, Woodhouse wrote a minute denouncing the tactic.12 That same year, when Harding was appointed Governor of Cyprus and asked Woodhouse to join his staff, he replied only ‘if the object of his policy was to bring about enosis’ – obviously an unacceptable proviso for Harding.13 British policy in Cyprus had, of course, its Tory supporters, manifested in Lord Beaverbrook’s arch-imperialist Express newspaper. The Manchester Guardian hinted at Beaverbrook’s nefarious influence behind the scenes: ‘It is the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Colonial Secretary, and the “popular” press which with Kiplingesque fervour acclaims them, who are pulling their party the wrong way.’14 By May 1956, Irish Ambassador in London Frederick Boland was unequivocal in his assessment of the British public’s reaction. Given his sympathy for the official British view, as shall be seen in Chapter Five, his candid commentary speaks volumes: Sir Anthony Eden’s ‘strength and resolution in defending the interests of the Empire in Cyprus,’ far from doing anything to increase his standing in the country, is regarded by nine people out of ten to be a ghastly blunder. Hardly anything has done so much to damage the prestige of the government in the eyes of

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British public opinion. Indeed, public feeling is becoming so vociferous about the Cyprus policy that it is not inconceivable that it may yet land the government in a serious crisis.15 This strength of opinion can clearly be seen in the Manchester Guardian, the New Statesman and Nation, and even in The Times. They perceived, and so placed, the Irish analogies in a colonial context, which might not have happened were it not for the nature of the Cyprus conflict, signalling a shift in thinking from the time of Ireland’s breakaway from the Union. Then, it was perceived in Britain as the break-up of the United Kingdom rather than as decolonisation. Also, for British journalists criticising government policy in Cyprus, the revisiting of policy in Ireland inaugurated a confessional period, and Irish parallels would never be used so extensively with counter-insurgencies elsewhere. Labour and Liberal Party politicians also drew on Irish comparisons, and in doing so reinforced the perception of events from 1919 to 1921 as colonial in nature.16 When compared in tone and content, the analogies drawn between Ireland and Cyprus are often indiscernible as specifically ‘Irish’ or ‘British’. Contrary to de Valera’s notion of a Gaelic Eden, much Irish social and cultural life was ‘markedly similar’ to that of the UK,17 the socio-cultural response to the Cyprus Question no exception. Ireland was highly anglicised: English newspapers and periodicals circulated freely, even those banned by the censors often finding their way into Irish homes; BBC radio could be heard by most of the country, and BBC television was available for those living on the east coast and able to afford it. Indeed, the letter pages of the New Statesman and Nation attest to how diverse its Irish demographic was during these years and Irish society was evidently not immune to red-top infiltration. Pastoral monthly the Furrow surveyed what examples of the British ‘gutter press’ were regularly read in working-class suburban Cork in March 1950. Of the 55 families queried, 14 read the banned News of the World, 24 the Sunday Dispatch, 31 often read the People, and 12 regularly read the ‘respectable’ Universe and Standard newspapers.18

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I. Hesitant Beginnings: Irish Anti-communism and the Cyprus Question It must be asked what kind of Republic existed during the Cypriot Emergency, what kind of Ireland these papers were talking to. In light of Ireland’s depressed economy and shocking 1956 census figures, Sea´n Lemass proclaimed, with little exaggeration, that ‘it is the survival of the nation that is involved now’.19 Depictions of 1950s Ireland as a ‘lost decade’ that bore ‘the raddle-mark of failure and despair’,20 an ‘unremarkable place, in an unremarkable, meanspirited time’21 and ‘the worst decade since the famine’,22 were borne out of the relentless poverty, large-scale emigration, literary censorship, heavy-handed clericalism, cultural chauvinism and provincialism attributed to this period. Even so, there were intellectually combative figures, like the rambunctious Brendan Behan and the incomparable Brian O’Nolan, who challenged ‘the imperialistic British regime. . . and elements of the Irish republican myth itself’.23 Academics like Cambridge-educated Professor T. Desmond Williams ‘sought to leave the sodden lump of Irish thought’ through the Leader journal,24 which attracted some of the finest writers of the decade, including Denis Donoghue, Brian Inglis, Val Iremonger, Patrick Lynch, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Tommy Woods.25 In other ways, with a resurgent IRA, it was a return to the past. With the Easter Rising anniversary approaching, anti-Treatyite historian and de Valera loyalist Dorothy Macardle lectured on Patrick Pearse and James Connolly for the 1955 – 6 Thomas Davis lecture series broadcast by Radio E´ireann.26 A former Gaelic League and Cumann na mBan member, her defence of the Easter Rising leaders’ decision to pursue violent methods presumably resonated with at least some sections across the pro- and anti-Treaty divide: I think that few Irish people of my generation, who remember the desperate bitterness of subjection, and remember the obtuseness, at that time, of the British governing class concerning Ireland – the insolence of many of the most

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powerful, the facetiousness of a multitude, the ruthlessness of a few – will agree with that happy optimists’ view; nor will those of us who have studied the long struggle of India and of other countries held down by great powers believe easily in that ‘natural course’.27 Thus, Macardle and her sympathisers understood, and some perhaps supported, those resorting to violence in Cyprus after constitutional avenues, frustrated by British intransigence, failed. She disputed claims – ‘sometimes from young people’ – ‘that all we have achieved in four-fifths of Ireland since 1916 would have come to us, without any Rising, without any violent effort, already, in the natural course of events’.28 However, as the next chapter details, there were other Irish youths, in Saor Uladh (Free Ulster) and the IRA, clearly willing to carry on physical force republicanism. The IRA Border Campaign, beginning in December 1956, re-ignited latent republican sentiment. Thousands lined the streets of Dublin for the funerals of IRA members Sea´n South and Feargal O’Hanlon, killed during a raid on Fermanagh Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks on 1 January 1957. As Keogh states, ‘morbid curiosity may have brought many out onto the streets, but the crowds also reflected a clear ambivalence in Irish society towards the use of violence’.29 Though most Fianna Fa´il members rejected using violence, a small number of ‘conditional constitutionalists’ were loath to denounce illegitimate force to achieve Irish reunification.30 Ambivalence, rather than active support, was the wider Irish nationalist response to the Border Campaign: The Irish people had never, in fact, seemed sufficiently interested in this phase of IRA activity. Within a short time of its commencement, it had become clear that the IRA’s 1956 – 62 border campaign was not going to succeed. Unionists, clearly, would oppose it; but Irish nationalists, north and south, failed also to rally at all significantly to the bugle call on this occasion.31

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Sinn Fe´in benefited from popular support for the Border Campaign, securing 66,000 first preferences and four seats in the March 1957 general election. As John A. Murphy points out, ‘When Sinn Fe´in displayed their traditional contempt for Leinster House by refusing to sit there, a pragmatic electorate made sure the next time round that they would have no seats to reject.’32 But a general election was not held again until October 1961. While short-lived, the sympathy did overlap with the latter, more turbulent years of the Cyprus Emergency. Consequently, this ambivalence towards violence, existing across generations, also extended to the EOKA campaign. This was an Ireland where officialdom was still highly prescriptive of identity, an Ireland where Michael J. Lawlor, News editor of Radio E´ireann, was forced to publicly apologise in the Irish Press for using the word ‘terrorist’ in a news item about EOKA (and curtly blamed the error on a temporary member of staff)33 – in effect, state-sanctioned policy legitimising EOKA violence. Until the Broadcasting Authority Act in 1960, Radio E´ireann was part of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and those working for the service regarded as civil servants. Driven by the Irish experience of insurgency and its inheritance of conditional constitutionalists, there is perhaps no clearer indication of the underlying public support for the EOKA campaign. Irish public opinion prior to the Cypriot Emergency was crudely anti-colonial, but also unquestionably Catholic. Despite AKEL’s diminished influence after 1950, Irish anti-communism ensured a slow response to calls for self-determination. Responding to Papagos’ threat in May 1954 to take the Cypriot case to the UN, the Irish Times published an editorial suggesting the communist threat was one reason why Cyprus should remain under British control. It warned: ‘The Communists in Cyprus are extremely well organised and a free constitution immediately applied, with the promise of a plebiscite at some future date, might produce alarming results.’34 Charalombous David, a Cypriot economics student at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), replied that ‘the Greeks of Trinity College are very grateful for the kind hospitality we have been receiving since our arrival in

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Ireland, but we find it very difficult indeed to remain silent before the partisan attitude of your leading article’.35 The British government attempted, not unsuccessfully, to capitalise on the ‘Red Menace’, falsely linking EOKA violence with communism to quell dissent. Following the first night of EOKA attacks on 31 March 1955, Labour MP Kenneth Robinson declared that responsibility for them rested on the Tory government’s own mistaken policies. Robin Turton, Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, then accused Robinson of ‘trying to aid and abet Communist terrorism in Cyprus’.36 EOKA were certainly no communists, as their attacks on suspected AKEL members proved, yet early on a concerted effort was made for over six months to portray them as part of the communist master plan. The Irish Press, edited since 1953 by Jim McGuinness (though controlled by de Valera), and the rival Irish Independent, under Frank Geary’s editorship, refrained from commenting on Cypriot affairs until several months into the EOKA campaign, when it was evident that the communists were not behind the violence. By evading the subject, both papers avoided a tiresome balancing act of trying to please their respective readerships, which were both anti-colonial and anti-communist – and occasionally, as the Cyprus Question exemplified, contrarily so. With the declaration of an emergency by Governor Harding in November 1955, parallels between Ireland and Cyprus began to multiply. Following the announcement that a specially trained British police force would be seconded to Cyprus, an Irish Press editorial exclaimed, ‘how like the Ireland of thirty-five years ago Cyprus is becoming’.37 It asked, ‘is Cyprus so soon to have Blackand-Tans amongst her people?’38 As allegations of torture and misconduct by the British forces grew in early 1956, so too did the purported parallels. The Leader, which largely resisted orthodox nationalist cant, declared that: The tensions of war as Cyprus knows it now – and we knew it 35 years ago – always has a disintegrating effect on the morale of regular military forces; and no one is going to tell us that fist,

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boot and gun-butt are not being used on Cypriots today, in similar circumstances and for identical purposes as those for which they were employed against Irishmen within the memory of many of our readers. Who knows better than we the horrors that can lurk behind smooth cliche´s like ‘police action,’ ‘in custody’ and ‘routine interrogation’?39 But this was not unique to Irish reportage. The Times in London also acknowledged the parallels in reviewing the major events of 1955: Cyprus had begun to resemble John Bull’s other island in 1920 and 1921. . . and as if to remind the British of this uncomfortable chapter of their imperial past, the IRA, or that part of it which still brandishes guns, raised its head again. For Englishmen, though not for Irishmen, these incidents were like echoes from a past they had forgotten.40

II. Civil War Ghosts: Historical Constraints on Irish Press Opinion In June 1955, Ireland’s ‘monthly humorous journal’, Dublin Opinion, featured an illustration of the ghost of the Irish Civil War departing from the Da´il.41 Although animosities may have privately remained, there was seemingly a conscious effort made to transcend these divisions publicly, and in the press there is no clearer indication of this than in its response to the Cyprus Question. The cartoon demonstrates why Irish names were not raised, though analogies were freely drawn between British individuals. For example, Governor Harding’s role in Cyprus – as military governor he held the rank of Field-Marshal – was compared to that of Sir Nevil ‘Make-Ready’ Macready, General Officer Commander-in-Chief of the British forces during the Irish War of Independence.42 But the effort to avoid dragging up old pro- and anti-Treaty enmities can most clearly be seen in the press response following Archbishop Makarios’ deportation on 9 March 1956, and the execution of EOKA members Michalis Karaolis and Andreas Dimitriou two months later.43

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Both incidents caused outrage and indignation in Ireland. Sir Saville Garner, Deputy Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), quite accurately claimed that ‘the deportation of the Archbishop, in particular, is no doubt just the sort of thing that would bring out any latent anti-British spirit’.44 For a church dignitary to be treated in such a manner was anathema to Catholic Ireland. He may have been leader of a schismatic Orthodox Church, but unlike the Protestant Church, his was not considered heretical. Furthermore, its members were commonly referred to as ‘Greek Catholics’. Thus, Makarios was viewed by many Irish Roman Catholics as a Catholic, albeit schismatic, prelate. While British officials looked at his combining of ecclesiastical and political roles with utmost suspicion, for Catholic Ireland the separation between Church and State was not so clear. Makarios’ deportation also resonated with Irish historical precedents, and in its fortnightly report to the Foreign Office (FO), the British Embassy in Dublin remarked that ‘comparisons between Ireland’s history and that of Cyprus are freely drawn, and there are a few instances of slogans being painted on walls’.45 The execution of Karaolis and Dimitriou on 10 May 1956 also resulted in a wave of public sympathy. Four days later, Dublin City Council passed a resolution calling on Lord Mayor and Labour Party member Mr Denis Larkin TD to convey, to civic authorities in Athens and Nicosia, the ‘deepest sympathy of the people of Dublin with the parents, relatives and comrades of the two young Cypriots who gave their lives for the cause of freedom’,46 and Cork, Sligo and Kilkenny County Councils also voted on similar resolutions.47 Illustrative of the wider Irish ambivalence towards EOKA violence is the use of the term ‘comrades’. Yet an implied sympathy, a tone of neighbourly concern, for the complexity of the Cyprus Question was also evident. In June 1956, a Dublin Opinion illustration portrayed two female figures representing Ireland and England standing side by side with the caption, ‘As one woman to another, I think you’re making the same mistake with Cyprus that you made with me’.48 However, what is perhaps most revealing is what the press excluded from their editorial comment. Parallels with two very different

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Roman Catholic archbishops, ‘the Pollux and Castor of the National Movement’ led by Parnell, could plausibly have been made.49 In terms of influence alone, Makarios might have been compared to Dr William Joseph Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin from 1885 until his death in 1921: ‘No modern prelate in Ireland has influenced the history of his times and of future Irishmen more’, notes Shane Leslie.50 In being a thorn in the side of the British government, Makarios could also be likened to Dr Thomas William Croke, Archbishop of Cashel between 1875 and 1902. Neither Walsh nor Croke, recognised by the 1880s as the two main leaders of the nationalist clergy, were mentioned in any of the leading daily newspapers. Were the analogies so evident that it was felt they did not need stating? The tightest Irish analogy to the deportation of Makarios was the case of Archbishop Daniel Mannix. Mannix, whose leadership style was based on that of his fellow Corkonian Croke, was not mentioned in any of the three dailies’ editorials following Makarios’ deportation, a consequence of Ireland’s past internal divisions. Given Mannix’s animosity towards the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, old Civil War divisions were thought best left undisturbed. A champion of Sinn Fe´in in Australia and outspoken opponent of conscription, Mannix was banned from entering Ireland by Lloyd George’s government fearing he would inflame republican sentiment. Defying the ban in August 1920, he was arrested aboard a passenger liner off Cobh in his home county of Cork.51 Deported to Cornwall, he was allowed to travel to London, but forbade from visiting Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow. His influence was certainly substantial; the previous month, 15,000 people – including de Valera, whom Mannix supported – participated in an archdiocesan reception for him at Madison Square Gardens, New York, which ‘lapsed into a tumultuous demonstration for the Sinn Fe´in movement’.52 The Irish Times refrained from citing him in its editorial, and the Irish Press also refused to draw parallels with Makarios, though it made other comparisons from the same period. It described the ‘parallel between Cyprus in 1956 and Ireland in 1918’ as ‘very close’.53 It claimed the deportation of Makarios was the ‘“German Plot” all over again’, adding:

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In 1918 the British believed that if they could leave Ireland leaderless the people would submit to conscription, partition, anything. It never occurred to them that national spirit could not be so easily subdued and that the arrest of the leaders would only strengthen it. So it proved here forty years ago and all the signs show that it will prove so in Cyprus today. In Cyprus now as here forty years ago they are fighting not a group of people that can be exiled but the spirit of a people that wants to be free.54 However, individual Fianna Fa´il members did draw parallels between Makarios and Mannix. On 2 April 1956, a ‘message of goodwill and success’ was sent to Archbishop Makarios by Thomas Mullins, General Secretary of Fianna Fa´il, the machine politician par excellence, who undoubtedly reflected the grass-roots sentiments within the party by saying Makarios ‘was being put through the same sufferings as had Dr Mannix for Ireland’.55 The Irish Independent also refrained from drawing analogies, unsurprising given its support for Fine Gael’s forerunner Cumann na nGaedheal. Though Mannix scorned the Free Staters as ‘placemen’ until de Valera came to power in 1932, the paper was nonetheless adamant in its protest: The deportation of Archbishop Makarios has been described by the leader of the British Liberal Party as an act of madness, it is worse. It is madness that betrays utter responsibility. . . The unhappy islanders may now prepare themselves for an era whose course is a familiar page in the recent history of Ireland.56 As seen in Chapter One, the precedent for deportations in Cyprus was Irish in origin, the first deportations of enosist agitators in 1921 being ordered by High Commissioner Sir Michael Stevenson from Antrim. Nonetheless, the silence on past divisions was far from exceptional, standard school history books of the 1950s by James Carty being striking examples of state-sanctioned amnesia. As Gene Kerrigan recalls of Carty’s A Junior History of Ireland, ‘there wasn’t a

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single word in the book or in my schooling about the bloodshed that led from the Treaty and the split which created the dominant political culture of the decades that followed’.57 Even in Carty’s four-volume textbook on Irish history, the Civil War only rated a single paragraph. Kerrigan alludes to the motivations behind this censorship: The state’s educational authorities quietly decided it would simply be better for us not to know about the Civil War. It might confuse us; it might take a bit of the shine off the picture painted for us of a happy, holy Ireland, the family of the Gael broken free from the yoke of the Brit. Better to edit the little family squabble out of existence. Like sex, the Civil War was a yucky subject which could not be raised without embarrassment, so it was best not mentioned at all.58 Yet the same textbooks lauded the 1916 martyrs, particularly Pearse. So how does one explain the reluctance of the major dailies to compare Ireland and Cyprus following the execution of Karaolis and Dimitriou? This was one occasion when all three, in light of overwhelming public sympathy, felt compelled to comment, yet no parallels, however obvious, with Irish martyrs such as Patrick Pearse, James Connolly or Kevin Barry were drawn. Irish historians were also fearful of inciting republican sentiment or stirring up civil war divisions, including those involved with the Thomas Davis broadcasts. As F.X. Martin later explained, There was an obvious unspoken decision to fight shy of Irish history in the present century, dealing as it inescapably would with the rising of 1916 (an event which was not to be questioned or analysed except in a laudatory fashion) and the civil war of 1922– 3 (which was still a raw memory for most of the surviving participants).59 Referring to Macardle’s 1956 broadcast on Pearse and Connolly, he acknowledged that ‘the nettle was tentatively clutched’.60

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But other uncomfortable parallels also went discretely, and understandably, unacknowledged by the three dailies. 40 years to the day after the Irish Times had called for the execution of the failed Easter Rising’s leaders, the first EOKA executions were carried out.61 The Irish Press also refrained from making parallels either to these executions or those during the Irish War of Independence. To do so could have left Fianna Fa´il open to charges of hypocrisy. During its time in power from 1932 until 1948, it executed several IRA men, ‘for attempting to put the party’s history and trumpeted ideals into action’.62 The Irish Independent remained similarly circumspect. It had also called for the executions of those responsible for the ‘wicked and insane’ Easter Rising,63 and the Free State had sanctioned the execution of 77 anti-Treaty prisoners during the Civil War under the watch of Fine Gael’s forerunner, Cumann na nGaedheal. Compelled to make some response in light of public opinion, it did not mention the EOKA hangings explicitly but drew opaque comparisons between Ireland and Cyprus. Its editorial entitled ‘Deadlock in Cyprus’ focused rather on Makarios’ deportation, claiming ‘the situation in the island has gone from bad to worse and it is clear that the British, who of course refer to their opponents as terrorists, are themselves responsible for a regime of terror similar to that known to Ireland forty years ago’.64 Following the executions, British Charge´ d’Affaires in Dublin Gurth Kimber reported to the CRO: ‘we have been keeping you informed of comments in the Republic on the situation in Cyprus. . . the recent executions have, of course, been given wide publicity and have been the subject of leaders in the three Dublin papers.’65 As will be shown later, the British government’s main concern was how Ireland would vote on the Cyprus Question at the UN General Assembly. These examples are not exceptional. For the duration of the Cyprus Emergency, the three dailies abstained from mentioning any specific Irish individuals in this connection, or even obliquely commenting on the undesirability of manufacturing martyrs, an absence conspicuous when compared to how often historically significant Irish names appeared in the British press and parliamentary debates.

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R.S. Scrivener of the FO admitted that ‘few people anywhere are likely to see no parallel between Cyprus and the Ireland of the 1920s. Plenty of London newspapers have’.66 Following the executions of suspected EOKA members in Cyprus, the liberal Manchester Guardian declared that, ‘In 1916 we shot the leaders of the Easter Rebellion. By 1921 more Irishmen than ever were fighting us in the name of Pearse and Connolly, and the resentment which our action aroused has not died away.’67 For the Irish papers, the elephant in the room was Michael Collins. In the British press and parliament, though the names of E´amon de Valera and Arthur Griffith arose, it was Collins to whom Makarios was most frequently compared. Although the three Irish dailies’ editorials often quoted from parliamentary debates, they did not reproduce commentary touching on those involved in the Easter Rising, the War of Independence or the signing of the Treaty. Within the House of Commons, the names of Irish revolutionary leaders were frequently aired – as Liberal Party leader Clement Davies did when urging Colonial Secretary Lennox-Boyd to consider the severity of the security situation after the Easter Rising – to justify proposing an amnesty in Cyprus: In 1916, there occurred the tragedy of Easter Week. We were then right in the middle of a war, and at the time we were doing very badly. It was so serious a matter that there were 3,000 casualties within a week, 300 soldiers were killed, 216 civilians were killed and 60 Irish volunteers. A number who were caught were tried summarily and executed. One in particular who was caught, tried and sentenced to death was de Valera. His sentence was commuted to a life sentence. A great many were sent to a concentration camp, and included Michael Collins and that still greater man, Arthur Griffiths [sic ]. Nevertheless, without any communication with any Government or authority in Ireland, all those in the concentration camps were released and in June, 1917, all those undergoing sentences – even life sentences, including de Valera – were landed at Dublin and released.68

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Davies further remarked: What does not seem to be realised by Hon. Members opposite is that the Archbishop was obviously carrying his life in his hands, just in the same way as Michael Collins and Arthur Griffiths [sic ] were signing something which they could not have accepted. . . In exactly the same way in regard to Ireland, if only the Government had acted at the right time they would have carried those people with them.69 On 27 August 1956, a Manchester Guardian editorial compared Collins with Makarios: Resistance movements are often ugly. The question is: do they carry the people with them? In Ireland we had to deal with Michael Collins because he had just enough weight to carry Ireland with him and was prepared to negotiate with us. If that is Makarios’ position in Cyprus we shall have, in the end, to deal with him too, ‘personal director’ or no.70 The socialist New Statesman and Nation drew a similar comparison on 1 September, claiming ‘Mr Lennox-Boyd’s failure so far to find a more reasonable alternative leader recalls the lessons we ought to have learnt from Michael Collins forty years ago: “Makarios the terrorist” may well prove an even more effective plenipotentiary than Makarios the ecclesiastical politician.’71 The comparison stuck. Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker used it in the House of Commons two weeks later to urge the Tory party to end the bloodshed by truce and negotiation. He opined: ‘Makarios remains the man who spoke for Cyprus, his hands no less stained with blood than those of Michael Collins with whom peace was made in 1921. The Government should do as with the Irish in 1921 – invite the Cypriot leaders to London.’72 Of course, Makarios did not participate in violence, but his support for EOKA’s tactics made him guilty by association in the eyes of British politicians. Three months after Noel-Baker’s comments, the IRA Border Campaign began. The challenges posed by the republican resurgence

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from 1956 onwards further muted editorial comment on Cyprus in all three Irish dailies, something the British authorities were aware of. Kimber informed Charles E. Diggines of the CRO that although ‘there has been some evidence of a growing interest in Cyprus. . . the more responsible press realise, especially in the last few days, that our problem is not quite so simple as they once thought it to be’.73 In March 1957, de Valera returned to power for the last time. With Fianna Fa´il at the reins, the Irish Press grew ever more circumspect on Cyprus. To explain this change, a brief history of the paper’s origins and outlook is necessary. At the second Fianna Fa´il A´rd Fheis in 1927, de Valera announced his party would launch a new national newspaper.74 Since he founded both party and paper, he ultimately controlled both, and would remain the controlling director of the Press Group until January 1959 – despite the various editors employed, de Valera remained ‘the Chief’. De Valera’s espousal of protectionism, self-sufficiency and social conservatism would dominate the pages of his paper, as would the republican ethos. The paper’s editors, from the very beginning, sought out and published reports of anti-colonial agitation from around the world. In 1931, first editor-in-Chief Frank Gallagher, a dedicated supporter of Fianna Fa´il, outlined to British United Press what stories they were interested in receiving: Movements for national independence anywhere, particularly those in the British empire. . . The progress of Gandhi’s movement in India. . . the national movement in Palestine, the Frontier Movement in India, and also all secessionist movements in Canada, Australia and South Africa.75 Most of the older staff came from a republican background – or rather were ‘republican retainers’, who had fought with de Valera during 1919– 21 and in the subsequent civil war,76 the paper being nicknamed the ‘gunman’s gazette’ by northern unionist politicians. The Irish Press, notoriously ambivalent about the illegal use of force, ‘shamelessly fostered the cult of the warrior and the soldier’.77

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Given this, how does one explain the more reserved approach to the Cyprus Question following de Valera’s return to power? Its treatment of Spain in the 1930s provides an early precedent for how the paper’s stance could change depending on what was politically expedient for de Valera. When Fianna Fa´il had been in opposition, the paper supported the Spanish Republic. However, when De Valera took office, it then supported his policy of impartiality.78 The Cyprus Question was a useful pretext to raise Irish partition, but became a double-edged sword. Four months into the Border Campaign de Valera returned as Taoiseach but was now in no position to use inflammatory republican rhetoric. Whatever analogies the Irish Press drew between past Irish and current Cypriot events, the fact remained that, legally, a state of emergency also existed in Ireland from 5 July 1957 until 14 March 1959. To deal with the Border Campaign, Fianna Fa´il brought back special powers of indefinite detention without trial under the Offences against the State (Amendment) Act 1940. It could only do so legally under the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) if there was an emergency threatening the life of the nation. However, it was never proclaimed as such in public by anyone in de Valera’s government. Given he had declared a state of emergency for World War II, announcing that one now existed would bolster the Border Campaign’s importance, and de Valera, who knew how to work publicity better than any politician of his era, wanted to give the IRA as little oxygen as possible. The Act’s re-introduction led to the arrest and detention without trial of over 200 IRA suspects in the Curragh, Co. Kildare. But this hardly indicated the existence of a threat to the country, given the IRA was carrying out operations across the border. On 27 June 1957, the UK lodged its notice of derogation in respect of internment in Northern Ireland. Because of the IRA raids in Northern Ireland, it was arguably more justified in doing so. But in contrast to the UK’s formal notice, the Irish government wanted to have its cake and eat it: As required by Article 15, a letter [from Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken] was dispatched to the Secretary-General

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on 20 July 1957, informing him that Part II of the Offences Against the State Act (Amendment Act) had been activated by the government. He was noted that this measure was taken in order ‘to prevent the commission of offences against public peace and order, including the maintaining of an illegal military order.’ In spite of this, the government, through a formula devised in the Department of External Affairs, attempted to fudge the issue. The wording of the letter was designed so as not to specifically admit of derogation on the government’s behalf unless the European Commission of Human Rights decided that the measures it had taken had actually breached the Convention. In effect, the government was trying to have it both ways by using internment and attempting to sidestep the derogation issue.79 Not only had the Ireland of the past been compared to Cyprus, but now the Irish emergency legislation was also seen by some as analogous to British policy to Cyprus. On 19 July, at a meeting of the Congress of Irish Unions (CIU) in Tramore, Co. Waterford, Mr J. Hennigan of the Engineering, Industrial and Electrical Union drew on the Ireland– Cyprus analogy. He claimed that, ‘Outside the Iron Curtain countries and the British in Cyprus, this was the only country in the world at the moment where men could be sentenced without trial, interned and put under such economic duress that they could no longer keep their families.’80 With de Valera’s internment policy now being so compared, the Irish Press response to the Cyprus Question became markedly circumspect. How does one explain the Irish Independent’s reticence on the Cyprus Question? In 1891, the Irish Daily Independent – as it was then known – was founded as a mouthpiece to support Charles Stewart Parnell after the O’Shea divorce disclosures. Its initial attitude towards empire was critical, but when William Martin Murphy bought the paper in 1900 (as a commercial rather than political undertaking), it took a ‘more conciliatory attitude towards the perceived benefits of imperial connections’.81 While the paper would remain conservative in its criticism of empire – damaging as this could be for Murphy’s

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business interests – it explicitly decried republican movements. As seen earlier, it had called for the executions of those involved in the Easter Rising, also giving its allegiance to Cumann na nGaedheal. Successive generations of the Murphy family who inherited the paper were ‘equally supportive’ of Fine Gael and ‘just as anti-Fianna Fa´il’.82 Given its dislike for de Valera’s politics, the paper rarely provided editorial commentary on anti-colonial agitation within empire, so its explicit opposition to British policy in Cyprus was a sharp departure. But in doing so, the Irish Independent, unlike the Irish Press, remained resolute in its aversion to the illegal use of force. While it was obliged to comment after major incidents such as Makarios’ deportation, it gave far fewer editorials on Cyprus than its two competitors. It also kept parallels between Ireland and Cyprus relatively opaque so as not to provide fuel for the recently revived republican cause. There are, however, other reasons for the Irish Independent’s approach on Cyprus. Firstly, it was very conservative in its Catholicism, in which the unity of Western civilisation and the prevention of communism were considered more urgent imperatives than self-determination. As shall be seen in Chapter Four, in the Catholic Church’s fight against communism, Cyprus’ possible independence, given Greece’s recent history, was regarded as too risky. Given it was the most ‘obsequious’ in its approach towards the Catholic Church, the paper was little prepared to risk going against Church dogma.83 And it never questioned the rights or wrongs of the enosis campaign, unlike the Fine Gael monthly current affairs journal, the National Observer: The question is not whether people have a right to be free and independent, but whether or not it might be wiser not to insist on this ‘right.’ Self-determination is subordinate to other principles of international behaviour: it is not an absolute right, and to disrupt the peace of Europe, or to endanger the unity of Western civilisation for ‘Enosis’ is sheerest lunacy.84 While the National Observer wanted to move away from the old Fine Gael clericalism, the above quotation shows how anti-communism continued to frame, though not explicitly, the responses of those press

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organs supportive of Fine Gael. Secondly, Irish Independent owners the Murphy family were close friends with Conservative politician Selwyn Lloyd, who succeeded Harold Macmillan as British Foreign Secretary in December 1955.85 For these reasons, avoiding the Cyprus Question as far as possible was the rule of thumb. This cautionary approach chimed well with Geary’s editorship, a period when the paper became ‘even more conservative than in its formative years’.86 While the paper may have appeared at times to lag behind majority public opinion over Cyprus, at least it did not set itself at odds with it by questioning the principle of self-determination in the case of Cyprus. But there were other silences too. Very little reference was made in the three dailies to the position of the Turk– Cypriots. Because the Turk– Cypriots were seen as similar to the Irish Protestant minority prior to partition, Catholic popular opinion was overwhelmingly predisposed towards Greek – Cypriot nationalist aims. Even after widespread reportage on inter-communal violence in 1958, the Cyprus Question was still seen as primarily a Greek– Cypriot affair. Little consideration was given to the Turk– Cypriot minority’s fears, press attention remaining focused on the inadequacies and mistakes of British policy. This was a can of worms the Irish Times shrewdly chose not to open.

III. Reflecting the National Synthesis? The Irish Times and the Cyprus Question That majority Irish public opinion remained against their policy in Cyprus was clearly recognised by British officials. In Dublin, Ambassador Clutterbuck regarded it as ‘virtually inevitable’.87 In 1958, Arthur Wendell Snelling, Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the CRO, outlined the reasons behind Clutterbuck’s assessment: ‘Cyprus raises issues which have 100 years of emotional overtones in Irish history: the principle of self-determination, partition, the use of troops from another country to maintain law and order.’88 Given this verdict, there appears to be a disparity between Irish public opinion and the treatment of Cyprus by both the Irish Independent and the Irish Press from 1957 onwards, the Irish Times best reflecting public opinion.

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The Irish Times, by not being affiliated to either main political party, gave it greater freedom in its coverage of the Cyprus Question. Established in 1859 as the voice of southern unionism, the Irish Times reluctantly accepted the new Irish independent state in 1922. It immediately supported the pro-Treatyite Cumann na nGaedheal government. Despite Collins’ assurance that the Protestant minority were welcome to remain in an independent Ireland, de Valera’s republican nationalism inherited little from late eighteenth-century visions of an Irish democracy having a place for Catholic, Protestant and dissenter alike.89 The paper abhorred the Irish Ireland movement as much as it did de Valera’s politics and his ‘tyranny of violence’ during the Civil War.90 The appointment of Robert Smyllie as editor in 1934 marks the point when the paper finally abandoned its unionist intransigence. Its first editor John Healy had served for 27 years, and although he threw the paper’s support behind Cumann na nGaedheal, it was for him merely the lesser of two evils. While he remained opposed to the Free State, his successor was more pragmatic. Smyllie could see the paper needed to widen its constituency: Protestant Ireland was shrinking.91 The departure of the British army families, and the wider exodus to Northern Ireland and Britain because of Gaelic exclusivist state ideology and the burning of the Big Houses, were the main factors behind its decline. Smyllie looked at things from an Irish rather than imperial angle, and could clearly see that ‘West-Britonism’ as a policy or viewpoint was dead.92 He was a constant thorn in the press censor’s side during World War II given his loyalty to Britain’s war effort, and would often, as he put it, ‘resort to subterfuge to get around it’.93 Because of this, his relationship with the ostensibly neutral (but quietly proAllied) Fianna Fa´il government was often tumultuous. But his relationship with Fine Gael could also be troublesome. Strongly committed to Irish political independence, Smyllie was also a firm believer in Commonwealth membership, and Taoiseach John A. Costello’s decision in 1949 to leave the Commonwealth marked the end of the paper’s support for Fine Gael. It declared its support for Fianna Fail in the 1951 and 1954 general elections.

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Because Smyllie had made it clear he would not be reflexively loyal to either party, his successor Alec Newman continued the paper’s policy of independence when he took over as editor in September 1954. This allowed Newman greater freedom in the paper’s editorial coverage of the Cyprus Emergency,94 bound to neither de Valera’s republicanism nor Costello’s conservatism. Under Newman, letters on the subject of Cyprus were drawn from a wider spectrum of public opinion. In 1954, essayist Hubert Butler remarked, ‘We Protestants in the Irish Republic are no longer very interesting to anyone but ourselves’,95 something Newman clearly recognised. Very little space was given to dissenting views in the letter pages of the other two dailies, but despite the Irish Times’ abhorrence of republicanism, it nonetheless allowed republican views on the Cyprus Question to be aired. The most prominent example is that of Eric Dorman ‘Chink’ O’Gowan, who would get more letters published in the Irish Times than any other individual on the injustice of Irish partition through comparison, however facile, with Cypriot events. He was motivated by personal grievances with the British army and the Irish republican sympathies of his later years. An Anglo-Irish army general from Co. Cavan who fought in World War II, he was sacked by the British army in 1942. Following this, O’Gowan, whose surname was originally Dorman-Smith, fell out with the British military, became disillusioned with British foreign policy, and in 1949 adopted his Irish name. A member of the Irish landed gentry, his home, Bellamont Forest in Cavan, with its expansive grounds, was used as an IRA training ground in 1955 and 1956, and in 1958 he advised the IRA during the Border Campaign.96 O’Gowan not only drew analogies between the Ireland of 1916 – 21 but between Northern Ireland and Cyprus at that time. Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke’s assessment of O’Gowan – ‘a most fertile brain, continually producing new ideas’ – rings true, if only facetiously, given one of his more ‘imaginative’ letters to the Irish Times.97 Headed ‘Partition – A Realistic Approach’, O’Gowan’s letter, undoubtedly influenced by proposals to partition Cyprus, suggested Northern Ireland should also be partitioned:

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In this context it is wryly amusing to note the solicitude displayed by the United Kingdom Government for the Cypriots of Turkish descent, who represent about one in four of the population of Cyprus. It has been seriously proposed to partition Cyprus, an island somewhat smaller in area than the Six Counties, in the interest of this minority. There is no moral reason why the same consideration should not be given to the partition of Northern Ireland in the interests of the Ulster Irish. If only anyone bothered about them.98 But with very few aware of his clandestine activities, ‘Chink’ was merely considered an eccentric – a harmless crank.99 The Irish Times’ bold editorial statements on British policy in Cyprus, published several months before the Suez crisis, were a radical departure for the Irish Times. Indeed, it shows that it was the Cyprus Question which accelerated its de-unionisation, rather than the fallout after the Suez crisis as has previously been assumed.100 Denunciations that ‘Britain, in our opinion, has not put a foot right in Cyprus since the enosis campaign assumed serious proportions’101 were swiftly followed by reneging on its support for Britain: ‘Britain has behaved badly, and stupidly, in regard to Cyprus. . . and our natural instinct would be to take the Cypriot side at Lake Success.’102 Despite its opposition to British policy, it still questioned whether some Irish protest was simply anti-British rather than anti-imperialist, describing Dublin’s resolution of sympathy as ‘the sort of time-wasting humbug which is irresistible to so many local legislators in Ireland’.103 It was not against such resolutions per se, but believed that this one ‘was inspired not by a disinterested compassion, or by a genuine concern for freedom, but simply by the desire to thumb a nose at England’104 – if the Council was sincerely against imperial oppression, it would have extended sympathy to the relatives of those killed by the French in Algeria and Morocco as well. It concluded that the Council ‘of course, is not sincere: it is not interested in freedom, but only in anti-British propaganda’.105 There may be something to this accusation. The motion had been proposed by Con Lehane of the left-leaning nationalist Clann na Poblachta party, who had been an IRA Army Council member during

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the 1930s. Lehane quickly defended the resolution in a reply to the paper, claiming it was passed as Cypriots were ‘suffering under a reign of terror almost identical with that under which the citizens of this city suffered during the War of Independence at the hands of the same imperialist power’,106 and adding, ‘we in this country know from experience the encouragement it was to us during our fight for freedom to receive similar resolutions from bodies and organisations outside the country’.107 In defending the failure to address French imperialism, Lehane inadvertently justified the Irish Times’ accusations by stating it was ‘Britain’s Black and Tans, not the French Foreign Legion that turned their machine guns on an unarmed crowd at a football match in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday.’108 Lehane argued that ‘it only requires a tiny scratch to make the Tory wolf discard the liberal fleece which it has lately been affecting’.109 Unlike its two competitors, the Irish Times bravely weathered accusations of anti-nationalism when it saw fit, even on a subject as emotive as Cyprus. Despite the majority Irish public opinion supporting Cypriot independence, the Irish Times also provided an outlet for minority opinion. Irish writer and critic Sea´n O´ Faola´in, long disillusioned by what he saw as inadequate republican thinking and the slyness of de Valera once in power, warned in a letter against insisting ‘on the abstract rigidity on the principle of self-determination’ in Cyprus.110 For him, the ‘test case of Cyprus’ showed how ‘every case has to be judged separately in relation to some larger principle than the claim of each individual nation or region’.111 Other commentators, such as playwright and communist propagandist Sean O’Casey, used the Irish Times to criticise what they saw as the hypocrisy inherent in Christianity, wishing Christians would say ‘farewell to this stupid hatred of Communism and Communists everywhere’,112 and complaining that ‘after 2000 years of Christianity’ they were still unable to live ‘in charity with your neighbours’.113 Citing Cyprus as an example, he asked, ‘Do ye still fan the flames of hatred? Indeed it is in right disorder in many places.’114 The Irish Times also featured correspondence from Marxists such as Charles Desmond Greaves of the Connolly Association in London, who declared that:

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as long as Britain intends to remain an imperial power, that intention must carry its consequences with it, in arms expenditure, conscription and the demand for overseas bases and facilities whether these are in Cyprus or Ireland. It is futile to talk of ending partition without taking into account the total imperial policy of which partition is a part.115 Irish poet Ewart Milne, a member in the 1950s of the Writers Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain, echoed the feelings of mainstream Ireland when he wrote to the paper asserting that ‘the pattern of British occupation in Cyprus shows no change from the pattern of British occupation in Ireland, 1916 – 1921’.116 It would have been anathema for the Irish Press or Irish Independent to feature letters from Irish members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, even if their stance on Cyprus was comparable to the reigning Irish populist view. In this sense, the Irish Times respected the freedom of the individual more than its two competitors, in providing a forum for free and open discussion. Its treatment of the Cyprus Emergency marks the point when it became the voice of Irish liberalism. In condemning British policy in Cyprus while supporting the Irish military, judicial and administrative contribution there, the Irish Times reflected more accurately than any other Irish paper of its time the complexity of the national synthesis. It is remarkable how little the Irish Press or Irish Independent engaged with the Irish participation in empire, though it should be noted that although the Irish Times featured articles on the Irish participation in Cyprus, it did not debate the issue. As shall be seen in the following chapter, republican organ the United Irishman was, perhaps surprisingly, the only paper to do so. For the Irish Times, interest in Irish involvement in empire indicated continuity rather than change. Employment in empire was an important safety valve for the economically depressed Ireland of the 1950s, but this participation, not least in Cyprus, could not easily be contained within independent Ireland’s dominant conception of its own identity, being at odds with the national orthodoxies of

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self-sufficiency and Gaelic distinctiveness. The narrowness of this ideological framework belied a social and cultural reality that flew in the face of nationalistic self-congratulation. When compared to the Irish Times, this amnesia stopped little short of censorship. Despite Ireland’s prominent role in empire during the 1950s, the selectivity of the Irish Press and the Irish Independent was never subject to debate, in itself a reflection of how little public engagement there was with the issue. Remarkably, there was only one newspaper critique during the entire period of the Cyprus Emergency that questioned the prevalent Irish attitude towards empire. The piece in question was a 1956 editorial in the Fine Gael-orientated and consistently moderate Cork Examiner, which boldly challenged Ireland’s anti-imperial credentials: Here in Ireland the momentary fashion is to deprecate colonialism and sympathise with colonies seeking independence. Descendants of Norman invaders and colonisers of Ireland denounce ‘imperialism’ as pursued by others. . . Even Irish descendants of Cromwellian blood, as well as the Gaelic Irish, one and all, have done their share in colonising countries. We boast that there are thirty million people of Irish birth or descent scattered in many countries all over the globe, and boast of the great numbers of them who have filled or are filling important political, administrative and commercial posts. Are not all these colonists or descendants of colonists? For these reasons, when we talk about colonising and imperialising countries, we might examine our own consciences in the matter. Ireland may not be herself an empire, but there is nevertheless an Irish empire abroad.117 Professor Williams succinctly captured the sentiments of the editorial when he remarked three years later in the National Observer that, ‘A little more light and a lot more charity is needed before we can again point our finger at the British Pharisee.’118

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What was certainly unique in the Irish response to Cyprus is that the traumatic events of the Irish War of Independence were still in living memory for the older generation. Thus, it was inevitable that there would be some pointing at the ‘British Pharisee’, such as enosis slogans found on many Dublin walls. Nonetheless, Irish public opinion was not incomparable to that of its closest neighbour, much British public and political opinion being opposed to government policy in Cyprus. Admittedly, the Irish public response lies ambiguously between genuine anti-imperialism and latent antiBritishness, as the Irish Times feared. Although largely sympathetic, Irish support for Cypriot self-determination was not necessarily an expression of a wider anti-colonial sensibility. For some, Cyprus merely served as an extended metaphor for Ireland, a suitable peg upon which to hang past resentments. For others, with the Hibernia irredenta mentality still alive, the conflict was primarily significant in offering opportunities to address continued nationalist grievances – namely partition. Initially, the threat of communism in Cyprus subsumed Irish support for its independence, stability in the Mediterranean during the Cold War being considered more imperative than selfdetermination. This quickly changed, however, when it became apparent it was the clerical nationalist right not the secular progressive left that was driving the enosis campaign. Attitudes were overwhelmingly predisposed to Greek –Cypriot nationalist aims, the little consideration given to the minority Turkish community diminishing even more when they began advocating taksim – or partition – in 1958 as the only solution to the crisis. While these factors were perhaps an inevitable consequence of the complicated Irish historical experience, the Irish Press, for all its nationalist posturing, resembled the more consistently conservative Irish Independent after de Valera’s return to power. Ironically, both papers were more conservative on Cyprus than their British counterparts. In this sense, the Irish press response is exceptional in its moderation, revealing the constraints of Ireland’s newly independent position: how it was slowly transcending civil war divisions and its vulnerability in the face of republican resurgence.

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The exclusion from all three dailies of the names of past Irish republican leaders makes the confessional nature of the British response to Cyprus all the more poignant. Ireland may have been pointing a finger at the ‘British Pharisee’ of empire, but so too were many of Britain’s press organs. Three months after the signing of the London – Zu¨rich Agreements, the film Shake Hands with the Devil premiered in England. Directed by Englishman Michael Anderson and starring James Cagney, Michael Redgrave and Richard Harris, the film is set in the war-torn Dublin of 1921. The subsequent reviews exemplify how the Cyprus Question inaugurated a reappraisal of British policy in Ireland. The Times film critic forthrightly claimed that ‘the story of the Black and Tan War in Ireland – for such as it was – in 1921 makes sad reading for an Englishman’.119 The Daily Herald critic called it ‘a shameful episode in British history’, and even the conservative Daily Telegraph recalled the Black and Tans’ ‘ruthlessness’.120 They were undoubtedly reflecting the views of at least some of their readers. The opening up of this unhappy phase of the Union was in stark contrast with the approach taken in the immediate post-Treaty period: British supporters of the Treaty, Liberal and Unionist, adopted a discourse which emphasised the discontinuity in Anglo-Irish relations. They were keen to close an ‘unhappy episode in our history.’ It is not, of course, surprising that British commentators should wish rather hastily to draw a veil over some of their government’s past acts in Ireland, to wish for a ‘blessed oblivion’ of the past.121 Ironically, the paper deemed the least representative of Irish majority opinion in the 1950s was the bravest in its criticism and the most inclusive in its coverage of the Irish interaction with the Cyprus Emergency. This contests the widely held notion that the Irish Times drifted somewhat for several years after the death of its celebrated editor Robert Smyllie.122 Douglas Gageby, Editor of the Irish Times from 1963 to 1974 and from 1977 until 1986, was also overly

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critical in his assertion that the 1950s were ‘dull and inconsequent’ for Irish newspapers.123 The manner in which it responded to the Cyprus Question reflected, and perhaps assisted, in the wider rapprochement taking place between the children of the Anglo-Irish tradition – what was left of them by the 1950s after the inevitable exodus – and an independent Ireland that had excluded them for so long. In its coverage of Cyprus, it successfully executed a difficult balancing act. In condemning British policy while supporting the Irish military, judicial and administrative contribution there, it reflected more accurately than any other Irish paper of its time the complex cocktail of Irish identities. In other words, it revealed the intricate reality of the Irish interaction with empire. It was, as Arthur Miller said in defining what a good newspaper should be, ‘a nation talking to itself’.124

CHAPTER 3 INSURGENT COMPATRIOTS: IRISH REPUBLICANISM AND THE EOKA CAMPAIGN

Identity of interests is the surest of bonds whether between states or individuals. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC ) Harold Macmillan claimed that ‘on arrival at the Foreign Office I learned of the disturbed state of Cyprus . . . EOKA was now to become as much a household word to us as the old I.R.A. had been to our predecessors’.1 It comes as no surprise then that Irish republican circles took an interest in the Cyprus Question, one that went far beyond the usual tokenism. No closer relationship was formed between active Irish republicans and foreign anti-colonial guerrilla fighters than that which existed between the IRA and EOKA. Much to the chagrin of British officials, the IRA– EOKA connection was a direct result of British colonial policy in Cyprus. EOKA men sent to British prisons due to security concerns at Nicosia Prison quickly identified with IRA prisoners and their Border Campaign. Close, long-standing relationships were formed in Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs Prisons. Two joint escapes, one partially successful, were attempted, with plans for the EOKA men to join the IRA in its Border Campaign until they could feasibly return to Cyprus. As shall

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be shown in the current chapter, the IRA was willing to train EOKA men if necessary. This union would undoubtedly have bolstered the Border Campaign, serving to increase the apparent legitimacy of the IRA’s objectives by association with anti-colonial guerrilla fighters and a cause having great sympathy amongst the Irish public. IRA– EOKA links were also easily formed outside of prison between the Irish and Cypriots living in Camden Town – nicknamed ‘Little Cyprus’ – home to more Irish immigrants than any other part of London in the 1950s. However, these events remained largely unknown until the publication of J. Bowyer Bell’s The Secret Army in 1972 and Sea´n MacStı´ofa´in’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary in 1975.2 Apart from the exchanges taking place in prisons, the IRA had more immediate reasons to follow Cypriot events closely. As could be seen in republican monthly the United Irishman, the traffic of British troops between Cyprus and Northern Ireland was watched closely by the IRA and inevitably influenced, to some degree, the conduct of its Border Campaign. This traffic increased as the British army became ever more stretched in each area, as both campaigns were largely conducted during the same period. While these activities remained secret, the National Students’ Council (NSC), founded by UCD students but not officially affiliated with any university, became the most visible source of republican sympathy for the Greek– Cypriot cause, as many of its members were also part of the IRA until their expulsion in June 1956, when they joined the splinter group Saor Uladh. Yet these NSC activities have never received historical attention. The University had, despite its official conservatism, a long tradition of student republican activism, having provided the republican cause with martyrs such as medical student Kevin Barry, though the activities were persistently repudiated by university officials. As shall be shown, from 1954 until 1958 the NSC made Dublin, on occasion, a locus of student ´ Bra´daigh’s biographer anti-colonial agitation. According to Ruairı´ O Robert White, ‘The 1960s would be the decade of the student protest, but the 1950s was the decade of the guerrilla.’3 This is certainly true yet it was precisely because many leading NSC figures

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were also paramilitary group members that they encouraged student anti-colonial agitation to promote their own political aims. Founded in December 1954 by IRA member and UCD law student Joseph Christle, the NSC was inevitably sympathetic to militant republican views. It received much publicity, not least in the United Irishman, where its efforts fed into the Border Campaign propaganda effort. The NSC also attracted British intelligence interest due to their street demonstrations supporting appropriate international causes, including EOKA. Not surprisingly, the AntiPartition Association, a southern-based ginger group of the AntiPartition League, and the Old IRA Veteran Association both declared their support for the EOKA campaign,4 yet this seems little more than opportunistic rhetoric, whereas NSC members, often acting in unison with the IRA and later Saor Uladh, would go on to plan joint IRA–EOKA prison escapes. Although only partially successful, these highlighted the inability of the Irish authorities to contain the NSC.

I. A Marriage of Motives: Greek – Cypriot Nationalism and the National Student Council In 1949, Joseph Christle, otherwise known as Seosamh MacCriostail, was taken into the IRA by Michael ‘Pasha’ O’Donovan, manager of the United Irishman paper.5 Christle’s energy and dedication to the IRA were undisputed, and he soon became involved with the United Irishman, Sinn Fe´in and the Republican Prisoners’ Dependent Fund. The paper’s circulation figures, allegedly averaging between 100,000 and 120,000 a month in the mid-1950s, perhaps best indicate the strength of interest in Irish republicanism at this time,6 and may not necessarily be far off the actual number sold. As with Sinn Fe´in, the paper benefited from popular support for the Border Campaign. First published in 1948, its chosen title indicated how Irish republicans wished to be seen as the heirs of an unbroken revolutionary tradition. Young Irelander John Mitchel and Sinn Fe´in founder Arthur Griffith had both published papers under the same title. Because of his United Irishman

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links, when Christle organised the first NSC demonstration on 11 December 1954 it received much coverage in the paper. According to the United Irishman, 2,300 students marched through the streets of Dublin to pledge their support for republican prisoners,7 before gathering in O’Connell Street to hear Christle speak. He asked them for their allegiance to the principles of NSC President Philip Clarke, imprisoned for his part in the raid on the Omagh Military Barracks in 1954, in which Christle had also been involved. According to Christle, Clarke was a devotee of Patrick Pearse, the pre-eminent republican icon and ideologue of the cult of violence. Christle urged the crowd thus: ‘To those who accept Pearse there is only one road and that one has been pointed out to you by Clarke and his comrades . . . it leads you into the Republican Movement and ultimately into battle with occupation forces.’8 Although primarily in support of Irish republican prisoners, the United Irishman linked the rally to the pro-enosis student demonstrations in Greece, stating that it ‘was the first indication that henceforward Irish students will play a prominent and active part in the cause of freedom as do their fellow students abroad . . . A striking example is Greece’.9 Beneath a photograph of Christle addressing the crowd was a picture of Greek students tearing up a Union Jack during an enosis demonstration in Salonica. The Greek protest, consisting of ‘several thousand students’ according to The Times, had broken out five days after the NSC demonstration, following the announcement that the UN had voted against the inclusion of the Cyprus Question.10 That the NSC were closely watching the enosis movement is not surprising: ‘there seems to have been a somewhat indiscriminate Irish nationalist willingness to applaud anyone or anything that was seen as standing against the British’.11 But within Irish republican circles, the resonances went much deeper. From the outset, Archbishop Makarios propagated the sacrificial myth of martyrdom, deployed by generations of republicans.12 From the pulpit of St John’s Cathedral in Nicosia, three months before the EOKA campaign officially began, Makarios urged ‘If it is necessary for us to die for our cause we shall not hesitate to fall on the bastions of freedom. Liberty for

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Cyprus will arise from our bones . . . We shall remain faithful to our cause until death, and shall not waver before sacrifice.’13 For Christle and his more militant NSC followers, Makarios was preaching to the converted. Rather than seeing the NSC as a valuable recruiting ground, the IRA Army Council was becoming uneasy with their indirect association with it. Although Christle remained in the IRA until June 1956, in October 1955 it banned membership for NSC volunteers, the charismatic Christle having been President of the IRA branch at UCD until that point.14 In May 1956, EOKA fighters Michalis Karaolis and Andreas Dimitriou were hanged. The NSC responded with a brief letter to British Ambassador Clutterbuck signed by Presiding Officer Breanda´n O´ Dubhghaill, declaring that ‘the tragedy which your country has so cruelly inflicted on the Greek nation does not shock the Irish people who for so long have been subjected to your tyranny’.15 The use of the term ‘Greek nation’ is important here; it highlights the awareness and extent of NSC support for the Greek – Cypriot aim of enosis, something the Irish press did not allude to in their reports on the hangings.16 The letter concluded: ‘the public conscience is appalled at this latest desecration of democracy and the National Students of Ireland condemn this outrage and demand the unconditional liberation of Cyprus’.17 This was followed by a letter from Counsellor Kimber of the British Embassy in Dublin to Richard Ormerod of the CRO. Seemingly the British Embassy was beginning to worry about the agitational potential of the NSC, though as yet unaware of its links with Saor Uladh. Although Kimber described the Council as an ‘irresponsible and tiresome body representing, so far as we know, nobody but themselves’, two weeks later the British Embassy was beginning to take them more seriously.18 On 23 May, Reginald P. Williamson, First Secretary of the British Embassy in Dublin, wrote to Leonard Brian Walsh-Atkins of the CRO ‘about one of your old interests. And it is some consolation to know that you will not dismiss it, as any reasonable person might do had he not suffered a sojourn in Ireland, as utter nonsense.’19 WalshAtkins was well aware of the NSC, having been an Embassy staff member in Dublin prior to his transfer to the CRO in 1956. While

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stationed there in November 1955, he wrote to the CRO to inform them that the NSC was a body ‘exploiting the present propagandacharged atmosphere as an opportunity to be cheaply offensive’.20 He lamented that none of the Irish newspapers adopted ‘the weapon of ridicule’ recommended by the Chief-of-Staff to the Ambassador in Dublin.21 Williamson had received an update from lawyer and future Irish Times literary editor Terence de Vere White, who had learnt from his law partner Alexis Fitzgerald that the NSC, as a result of the recent UCD elections, ‘now had the controlling interest on the Students’ Representative Council’.22 Fitzgerald, Taoiseach Costello’s son-in-law who would go on to become a Fine Gael Senator, had close links with UCD from his work as a lecturer there. De Vere White also informed Williamson that ‘it is a policy of the NSC to establish cells wherever possible and that it is a matter of some pride that a cell has recently been founded at Clongowes Wood, the Jesuit College’.23 While Christle’s courage was not in question, the IRA leadership now wanted him out, particularly Chief-of-Staff Tony Magan, who considered him a liability. Before the outbreak of the Border Campaign in December 1956, Christle had taken part in a raid on the Omagh Military Barracks in October 1954 without permission from the IRA Army Council. Also, his very public actions as NSC President were seen as incompatible with their clandestine plans for the forthcoming campaign. Christle was dismissed in June 1956 on a technicality, addressing a Sinn Fe´in meeting without permission. He then joined forces with Liam Kelly from Co. Tyrone, a prominent member of the IRA until his expulsion in 1951 for carrying out military activity with volunteers from East Tyrone without IRA Army Council approval. Following his expulsion, Kelly founded the splinter group Saor Uladh (Free Ulster). Its political wing, Fianna Uladh (Warriors of Ulster), was formed in 1953. Saor Uladh was unorthodox in republican terms as it recognised the 1937 Constitution and thus the Da´il’s legitimacy. It also had the support of some Clann na Poblachta members, most notably Sea´n MacBride, who secured for Kelly a seat in the Seanad in 1954. When Christle left the IRA, many others, unaware of the planned Border Campaign, also left and joined him in Saor Uladh. According

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to Coogan, ‘the bulk of the most active and best trained volunteers, including most of the active service unit and twelve out of fifteen of the officer corps, followed him’.24 This also meant that many of the NSC students who had previously been IRA members switched allegiance to the apparently more eager branch of physical force republicanism, Kelly’s Saor Uladh. While the Christle-Kelly operations are not of direct interest here, Christle’s proposed strategy is. Although opposed by Kelly for fear Catholics might be killed, Christle wanted to ‘ostracize British servicemen by using the EOKA tactics of bombing cafe´s, pubs and dance halls patronised by British soldiers’.25 By September 1956, British officials – and Irish Special Branch forces – were to pay ever more attention to the NSC. On 27 September, Williamson again wrote to Walsh-Atkins, saying that, ‘after four months of quiet the National Students’ Council opened what the Garda [sic ] believed to be its new campaign on the night of 20 September by organising a procession in protest against the execution of the Cypriot terrorists’.26 Yet again, EOKA hangings served as the catalyst, with Andreas Panayides, Michael Koutsoftas and Stelios Mavromatis set to go to the gallows the following morning. However, the protest was thwarted. Inspector Philip McMahon of the Special Branch of the Ga´rdaı´ Sı´ocha´na informed Williamson that the leaders were detained for the night then released without charge. He also gave Williamson a copy of an NSC pamphlet which the Ga´rdaı´ had prevented from being distributed to the press the night of the protest. But the official Ga´rdaı´ statement to Williamson indicates their uncertainty about the NSC’s campaign: Last night thirty young men of a Republican Organisation emblazoned the country with their emblem. It appeared in front of the Da´il, the British Embassy, Stormont and many other public buildings besides innumerable other pre-selected sites both North and South of the border. In Ulster a number of young men were held for questioning and ‘B’ Specials were alerted. Both Dublin Castle and the Belfast C.I.D. were unable to give any explanation for the overnight appearance of this

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emblem. It has been suggested that it is the banner for the new Republican Party which has been conceived out of the recent union of all Independence Movements and Splinter groups throughout Ireland. It is however certain that the Organisation behind this emblem is preparing for a large-scale public demonstration in the immediate future.27 Williamson described the emblem as ‘a red circle of about 18 inches in diameter enclosing a black Greek cross.’28 Dismissing the notion that it appeared in front of the British Embassy, he admitted it ‘disfigured pavements in other parts of the city.’29 Its very ambiguity must have spooked British officials. Of course, the danger was that the EOKA insurgency, given the interrelationship between religion and nationalism in Cyprus, would appeal to both crude and sophisticated Irish nationalists. With its broad appeal, was this public demonstration going to centre on Irish or Cypriot events – or perhaps both? What would be the strength and political make-up of the crowd? Or was it merely a bluff? The NSC was certainly growing bolder. Williamson received a phone call on 21 September 1956, allegedly from NSC Secretary O‛Donnell-Kelly, saying a deputation wished to call at noon with a petition for the Ambassador, the letter actually delivered solely by Liam Fogarty, who was already known to Williamson and Walsh-Atkins. The letter began: ‘We, the undersigned, as representatives of the National Students’ Council on behalf of the Students of Ireland, hereby protest most vehemently to the British government about the hanging of three Greek– Cypriot youths in Cyprus this morning.’30 NSC support for EOKA was made explicit: ‘this brutal act has served only to bring further sorrow and suffering to the Cypriot people, international disgrace to the name of British justice, and inspiration to the gallant remaining soldiers of EOKA’.31 It followed with a call for the government to ‘release immediately all political prisoners in Cyprus, the return of Archbishop Makarios from exile, and to cease from further barbaric repressive measures on that island’.32 The letter was signed by NSC members Michael Carmody and O’Donnell-Kelly, though headed ‘the Kevin Barry (Students)

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Cumann, Sinn Fe´in’.33 The memory of Kevin Barry, an 18-year-old UCD medical student executed by the British on 1 November 1920, was to become a powerful symbol of republican sacrifice and British brutality for the NSC, his memory used to great effect in rallying anti-imperial agitation in Dublin, especially on 1 November 1956, the anniversary of his death. British Embassy staff may well have paid the letter little further attention were it not for the last demand, calling for the release of NSC President Clarke and ‘his fellow prisoners in H.M. Prison, Crumlin Road, Belfast and for the release of all republican prisoners at present held in other British prisons’.34 Clarke had been selected as Sinn Fe´in MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, winning the election on 26 May 1955. Despite his ineligibility to take up his seat, due to the Sinn Fe´in abstentionism policy rather than his incarceration, it was nonetheless a startling victory for Sinn Fe´in. Two of their candidates were chosen, the other being Tom Mitchell in Mid-Ulster, the first time since 1918 that any Sinn Fe´in candidate had been elected to Westminster. The apparent alliance of Irish republican aims with pro-EOKA agitation by the NSC unnerved both British and Irish officials. It is clear from Williamson’s letter that the Embassy in Dublin was receiving valuable information regarding the composition of the NSC from Inspector McMahon, for example that ‘Rory O’DonnellKelly’ was a pseudonym used by NSC members, particularly Fogarty himself. Williamson continued: ‘amongst other things I learn from McMahon the leading spirit of the Council is Joe Crystal [sic ], about whom you know of old’.35 McMahon also informed him that the NSC no longer had any links with the IRA, and that they anticipated ‘considerably more trouble from the Council both for themselves and for us’.36 This letter was the beginning of a concerted effort by British and Irish officials to keep each other informed, the initiative apparently coming from McMahon: ‘The Inspector suggests that the Special Branch in the Castle and this office should maintain the closest liaison on the Council’s activities’, noted Williamson. ‘To this, of course, I agreed’, he added.37

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By coincidence, the same day Fogarty brought his letter to the Embassy, Frederick Boland lunched with Ambassador Clutterbuck. Having served as Irish Ambassador in London from 1950, Boland had just been appointed Ireland’s Permanent Representative to the UN, and the last thing he wanted was any ‘inconvenience’. As will be shown in Chapter Five, despite his UN rhetoric, in his response to Cypriot events Boland was resolutely pro-British. Williamson’s letter reinforces this perception. When Clutterbuck mentioned the visit of the ‘deputation’, Boland opined that the Ga´rdaı´ and UCD had hitherto paid too little attention to the Council’s activities,38 something he ‘deplored’ because though ‘the Council was of no importance in itself, it was clearly out to make mischief and there was considerable risk of its being exploited by outsiders for its own ends’.39 Boland’s suspicions were to come true; not only did the NSC support an anti-colonial protest led by international students in Dublin, it also became involved in the 1959 IRA– EOKA prison break. Walsh-Atkins forwarded Williamson’s letter to the Home Office on 4 October, adding ‘you will see with satisfaction that the Special Branch at Dublin Castle have volunteered to maintain close liaison with the Embassy on the Council’s activities; contacts between the two have in the past been very delicate and spasmodic’.40 The significance of this collaboration is evident by the fact that he also informed Major General Sir Alec Bishop and Sir Ian MacLennan (who was to become the British Ambassador in Dublin in 1960) of these developments. Although he felt that McMahon’s suggestion of liaison with the Embassy was ‘most satisfactory’, he questioned whether it was merely his own idea or ‘a concrete response to our representations to the Government of the Republic at the highest level that there should be more contact between us in the field of Police Intelligence’.41 Walsh-Atkins then replied to Williamson on 9 October 1956, thanking him for the letter: ‘As you can imagine we have found this account of the latest activities of the National Students’ Council, which you and we had long been rather anxious about with great interest’,42 McMahon’s suggested liaisons again noted with

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‘particular satisfaction’.43 This cooperation between the Embassy and Dublin Castle would prove especially beneficial given the Border Campaign. In the meantime, the press attention given to the NSC was proving undesirable. The Evening Mail published a photo of Fogarty leaving the Embassy and a copy of the letter, which he handed out to reporters before driving away,44 the incident featuring in the Irish Times the following day.45 More publicity was to come the following November – the small change of Irish extremism was about to make a very loud ruckus indeed. On 1 November 1956, about 200 students wearing armbands with the NSC insignia – the encircled Greek cross – commemorated Kevin Barry’s death on the streets of Dublin, and included remembrance of the Greek – Cypriot youths about whom they had twice protested. Another letter was presented to the British Embassy in Merrion Square, this time protesting against the ‘aggressive action’ of British forces in Suez and Cyprus.46 Alongside placards declaiming ‘Barry for Ireland’ were others likewise mooting ‘Karaolis for Cyprus’,47 the Cypriot analogy sitting easily with its Irish parallel, as noted by a Sunday Press piece headlined ‘Thousands sign to save Kevin Barry of Cyprus.’48 In fact, similarities between the two are striking. Barry was the first IRA member executed during the War of Independence, Karaolis the first EOKA member executed during the Cypriot Emergency. Both were young idealists and keen sportsmen, and neither belonged to what could be called the ‘fringe of extremism’, Barry a medical student and Karaolis a clerk with the British administration in Nicosia. Both executions were to profoundly influence events in their respective homelands, marking the point where the possibilities of political agreement were gravely compromised. And both deaths resulted in escalations of violence by and surges in recruitment for their respective organisations. Each country’s nationalist narrative now had its martyr. But to British FO officials like Jack Ward, there was a crucial difference between Ireland in the 1920s and Cyprus in the 1950s. In a letter written a week before Karaolis’ execution, Ward lamented that in Ireland’s case, Britain used the ‘Black and Tans and executed murderers and did all sorts of things which are inconceivable in the soft and apologetic mood of today’.49

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II. The NSC and International Student Anti-colonialism in Dublin This NSC protest might not have worried British officials were it not for events the next day, confirming Boland’s prediction that there ‘was considerable risk of its being exploited by outsiders for its own ends’.50 According to the Irish Times, ‘a party of about 80 coloured students’ from UCD, TCD and the Royal College of Surgeons marched through the streets of Dublin before presenting a letter to Williamson at the British Embassy protesting the actions of Britain and France in Suez.51 The Irish Press cited 100 foreign and as many Irish students carrying flags emblazoned ‘Away with British Imperialism’,52 accompanied by NSC members still wearing their Greek-inspired insignia. In St Stephen’s Green, NSC Presiding ´ Dubhghaill (or Brendan Officer and Saor Uladh member Breanda´n O Doyle) ‘pledged the full support of his organisation’.53 The NSC, in protesting against British actions in Cyprus, had undoubtedly inspired anti-colonial foreign students to do likewise. More worryingly for Irish and British officials, they had the support of the militant Saor Uladh. Their letter reveals how multinational the group was. It declared: ‘We, students of Egypt, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya, China, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sudan, South Africa, East Africa, the West Indies and our Irish Colleagues – solemnly protest against the naked act of aggression of Britain and France against Egypt.’54 Along with the potential for further protests, their actions could increase support for the NSC, which had pioneered such tactics. This was anathema to British FO officials. Several NSC members were ex-IRA and a substantial number now in Saor Uladh, which advocated physical force republicanism. With an international body of colonial students now supporting the NSC, their vocal desire to end Irish partition had the potential to be seen in the larger context of anti-colonial nationalism rather than merely the confines of an Anglo-Irish dispute. Worse still, what if these international students could find support abroad for the republican cause? In a note to General Bishop and Sir Ian McLennan, Walsh-Atkins wrote that while ‘there is

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nothing serious in this except the nobbling of students, of whom a high proportion are Commonwealth, by the wild NSC, this reinforces the doubts I have long had about the merits of Commonwealth students repairing to the Irish Republic.’55 He reiterated these sentiments to the British Embassy in Dublin,56 then wrote to B. Cockram of the CRO saying, ‘there may be a few on Colonial government grants but I cannot remember’.57 He added that: There was a good deal of discussion about this in the context of the possible opening of a British Council Students’ Office in Dublin. I do not know what has happened about that, but I think it is safe to say that the consent of the Republican Government to its establishment would be even warmer now that the National Students’ Council appears to be exerting an influence on the student body.58 The figures were potentially worrisome. In December 1956, there were 428 colonial students in Dublin, 11 from Cyprus.59 But how concerned was the Irish government? When asked by Williamson why UCD authorities, following another NSC protest on 16 November, took no disciplinary means against ‘such organised hooliganism’, McMahon replied that ‘since politics were involved, the authorities knew better than to interfere’.60 Speakers at the protest included Saor Uladh founder Senator Liam Kelly, and his fellow Seanad member Labour Senator Patrick Bergin. The demonstrators carried Greek, Hungarian and Egyptian flags, and some called for the release of political prisoners in Northern Ireland and England.61 The use of the Hungarian flag implies that Irish and Greek protestors also saw Soviet aggression as a parallel to the British presence in Cyprus. In supporting the foreign students, they were framing the problem of partition as part of the wider British antiimperial struggle. To that end, flags with slogans such as ‘Long Live the Imperial Gael’ were reportedly flown.62 The date of the NSC protest highlights the extent of Saor Uladh infiltration. On five days before, if protest was 16 November, Saor Uladh declared war on the Northern Irish government, thus Kelly’s

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presence at the protest was significant. Although the IRA had been planning ‘Operation Harvest’ for several months, Saor Uladh’s announcement pressured the IRA into issuing its own declaration of war on 12 December.63 Both university and government officials had a tricky balancing act. Forbidding the protests might have served to increase, not lessen, agitation – the last thing either the second InterParty or Fianna Fa´il governments needed. In addition, Irish Ga´rdaı´ would have found little public support for apprehending Irish students protesting British colonial brutality. NSC agitation was not reserved solely for the British in Cyprus. In mid-May 1957, the NSC passed a motion expressing ‘its abhorrence of the attitude of Trinity College in conferring the honorary degree of LL.D. on one who has played a large part in the execution of Cypriot patriots’,64 and called upon TCD’s Students’ Council to also register its protest, the person in question being TCD graduate Sir Eric Hallinan of Midleton, Co. Cork, Chief Justice in Cyprus from February 1952 until January 1957.65 His appointment was far from anomalous, being one of two Chief Justices in Cyprus during the Emergency who were Irish Roman Catholic and Trinity graduates, continuing a long-established tradition amongst Irish university graduates of service in the colonial judiciary. As a result of the NSC protest, extra police were put on duty on 16 May when a number of degrees were conferred, though none for Hallinan. The college authorities confirmed, however, that it would be conferred on him the next graduation day as he might prefer to receive it at the College rather than in absentia.66 Parallel with these protests, the NSC also agitated over Irish measures to help curb the Border Campaign. Several days after the Hallinan protest, a letter to Taoiseach de Valera demanded that the ‘shameful Offences against the State Act which has brought our judiciary into disrepute is repealed’.67 The NSC was effective in highlighting analogies between Cypriot and Irish events, their adoption of the Greek insignia being part of this rationale. However, the most contentious analogy went unnoticed, as politicians had hoped: the aforementioned state of emergency which existed in Ireland from July 1957 until March 1959.

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The Irish authorities’ apparent inability, or unwillingness, to contain the NSC and Saor Uladh reflected the greater ambivalence in Irish politics in dealing with agitational nationalists, made even more difficult by the participation of two Seanad members at the 16 November protest, which highlights the continued sympathy, and involvement, of some Irish politicians in physical force republicanism. Costello’s Inter-Party government could ill afford to rock the boat. In return for Clann na Poblachta’s support, it had given Kelly a Seanad seat. If Costello had taken decisive action against the IRA, it would inevitably have alienated the more physically minded republicans in MacBride’s Clann na Poblachta, which in turn could have led to the fall of his government. According to Bowyer Bell, following the death of IRA members Sea´n South and Fergal O’Hanlon, killed in action in January 1957 during the Brookeborough raid, ‘Ireland seemed to hover on the brink of a deep emotional commitment to a desperate crusade.’68 Yet Costello’s government did fail when Clann na Poblachta withdrew its support, ushering in Fianna Fa´il for a second 16-year period. Though de Valera was as intolerant of the IRA as Costello, his treatment of protestors was ambiguous. On 11 May 1957, a huge rally was allowed to go ahead in Dublin where many ex-IRA prisoners spoke to the crowd.69 If the failure to clamp down on physical force republicanism was largely Costello’s fault rather than de Valera’s, it could be argued that it was an even greater failure of British, rather than Irish, policy to enable the establishment of close IRA–EOKA links in British prisons. For EOKA, the relationship with the IRA was an isolated example of collaboration. As former EOKA member Vias Livadas put it, ‘it was the only case where EOKA fighters came in contact and cooperated with other Freedom Fighters and Liberation Movements outside Cyprus’.70

III. ‘The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend’: The IRA – EOKA Joint Prison Escape Effort Between August and November 1956, 20 EOKA men were sent to Wormwood Scrubs from Central Prison in Nicosia. Tensions were at

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fever-pitch in the Nicosian prison following the May and September executions, so for security reasons the known troublemakers were sent to British prisons. It was hoped this would help restore order in the prison, and that the threat of exile might intimidate the remaining prisoners. Already incarcerated at Wormwood Scrubs Prison were four IRA members, Cathal Goulding, future leader of the Official IRA, Sea´n MacStı´ofa´in, future head of the Provisional IRA, Manus Canning and Donal Murphy. The first three had been imprisoned for the Felstead raid in Essex on 25 July 1953, while Murphy was arrested for his part in the Arborfield raid of 13 August 1955. The first six Cypriot prisoners, including two just out of secondary school, had all received life sentences for carrying arms. In his memoirs, MacStı´ofa´in recalled meeting the Cypriots, allocated a table in the mess hall right next to the IRA prisoners: They had been transferred to England from Cyprus because they had been leading the campaign of defiance which the EOKA prisoners had been waging there. That campaign was in the same revolutionary tradition as the tactics of the Irish Republican jail fighters of the past. When you have numbers, you can accomplish a great deal, even in prison.71 Soon there were 15 EOKA prisoners in the prison, the friendship between the two groups sealed when the Irish prisoners stood up for their Mediterranean compatriots, who were subject to threats from British convicts that went apparently unnoticed by the guards. According to Livadas, ‘in those critical moments the EOKA patriots had witnessed the IRA stand of solidarity’.72 That they connected so well is not surprising, given their common enemy and common aim. Only by force would the British leave Cyprus – and Northern Ireland. The prisoners’ affinity was quickly recognised by the prison authorities. After all, only these two groups were allowed to sit during ‘God Save the Queen’.73 When the Cypriot prisoners staged a two-day hunger strike to honour EOKA’s second-in-command, Gregoris Afxentiou, killed by the British in March 1957, the four IRA prisoners declared their allegiance. Naturally, the fighters

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exchanged their campaign experiences and strategies. MacStı´ofa´in recounted that, ‘I left my accountancy studies to one side for a while and replaced them with long and deeply interesting discussions of revolutionary methods and military action with the EOKA men’.74 The IRA especially wanted to know how EOKA communicated, how it transported and hid wanted men, and how groups were organised in the towns and mountains. By the winter another nine EOKA men had been sent to Wormwood Scrubs, four from the same unit. MacStı´ofa´in, embarrassed, noted they would probably never have been caught hiding in the Troodos Mountains were it not for Private Kieran O’Donnell, ‘a mercenary from Co. Mayo’.75 However, the EOKA prisoners were uncomfortable talking about one subject: As the campaign went on and I learned about it from our talks with them, it was clear that Grivas would not budge from his goal of Enosis, or unity with Greece. Archbishop Makarios, on the other hand, would be content with nominal independence which would leave the British quite an amount of control. This situation echoed the Republic-versus-Free State problem in Ireland in the 1920s, and seemed to contain similar dangers of dividing the national movements.76 FO officials soon became aware of the IRA– EOKA relationship, and on 14 December 1957 the EOKA prisoners were divided into two groups of ten, one sent to Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire while the other went to Maidstone in Kent. The ten transferred to Wakefield were Giorgos Ioannou, Renos Kyriakides, Vias Livadas, Andreas Savva, Nicos Sophocleous, Nicos Sampson, Nicos Tsardellis, Gregoris Gregoras, Giorgos Skoteinos and Nicolas Loizou.77 There they met again with Goulding, also transferred from Wormwood Scrubs, as well as Seamus Murphy and Joseph Doyle; all three had been involved in the Arborfield raid and received life sentences.78 IRA member Seamus McCallum was also at Wormwood Scrubs. Close relationships were again formed, and a joint committee set up to plan an escape, outside contact between the two organisations

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having already been established. Tony Meade, attached to the Dublin GHQ, met Giorgos Ioannou’s brother Nicolas, the EOKA underground contact, firstly in London and then in Phoenix Park, Dublin, where a joint prison break was decided upon.79 According to Bowyer Bell, ‘the IRA would even make arrangements to train certain selected EOKA men if need be’.80 Although this fell through when the Cypriots were moved from Wormwood Scrubs, IRA– EOKA contacts were maintained. The IRA prisoners were undoubtedly bolstered by a letter in the United Irishman from Makarios in April 1958, which legitimised the belief that the IRA and EOKA campaigns were seen as similar in the eyes of the Archbishop and EOKA. It had been received by Thomas McGuigan, Junior Vice-Chairman of the United Ireland Committee of Philadelphia, otherwise known as Clan na Gael, and declared that Makarios was in ‘whole-hearted sympathy with the Irish cause’.81 The newspaper extensively quoted the letter, which also stated Makarios’ belief – undoubtedly with Cyprus in mind, following rejection of the Radcliffe partitionist plan – that: only as one undivided nation can the Irish people fulfill their destiny. Partition in Ireland as everywhere else is an unnatural state of things which is in itself a cause for trouble and unrest and hampers progress. I wish to the Irish people success in their just cause. I am confident that justice will eventually prevail in Ireland as well as in Cyprus.82 Ioannou continued to organise an escape, this time from Wakefield Prison, the plan being to join the fight in Ireland until it was possible to return to Cyprus. Any foreign anti-colonial insurgent participation in the Border Campaign would have provided fertile propaganda for the IRA, helping legitimise their actions and encourage recruitment. In return, the IRA would be given a hit list of ‘Cypriot traitors’ sent to Britain for protection. The plan never materialised: Ioannou was killed driving back from Liverpool port on 17 July 1958. An emissary, MacStı´ofa´in’s future son-in-law Pat Farrelly, was sent from Dublin. Joseph Christle, now a barrister, had since left the NSC

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but was now an integral member of Saor Uladh. He agreed to the escape plans after making contact with EOKA in London: they were particularly keen to get Sampson, one of their more bloodthirsty and influential members, out of prison. Premier atom spy Klaus Fuchs, imprisoned for selling the Russians information, made a detailed plan of Wakefield Prison from which an unidentified Dublin architect created a scale model.83 ‘Operation Dooley’ was undertaken on 19 February 1959 by a Saor Uladh party of four. Of the three IRA and seven EOKA prisoners, only Seamus Murphy managed to escape, the alarm raised when he missed the 6:30 pm roll call.84 Fine Gael monthly the National Observer considered Murphy’s escape an ‘embarrassing situation’ for de Valera, there being no extradition treaty between England and the Republic,85 and surmised the legal and political dilemma might best be solved ‘by no application being made in England for the issue of a warrant or by Mr Murphy’s whereabouts remaining unascertained’86 – which is precisely what happened. Murphy hid for a short period in Manchester before flying back unnoticed to Ireland from Glasgow. Although exceptional in its joint efforts with EOKA, his escape was but one of many in the history of Irish republicanism.87 The United Irishman congratulated Murphy: ‘We extend to him on our own behalf, on behalf of our readers and on behalf of the Irish people a very hearty welcome home, and of course, unstinted congratulations for his wonderful escape’.88 Significantly, the escape was financed by Greek – Cypriot supporters of the EOKA campaign, the money given to Christle’s brother Mick by Katrina Pilina, daughter of a Greek – Cypriot cafe´ owner in London and a cousin of Nicos Sampson, who had been receiving secret correspondence from him. The Cypriot constitution had been agreed upon a week before the escape, on 11 February in Zu¨rich, whilst the London Agreement was reached the very same day as the escape. On 14 March 1959, the Wakefield prisoners were released under an amnesty and returned to Cyprus. To what extent were the IRA– EOKA encounters transforming for active Irish republicans? There is evidence that when he became head of the Provisional IRA MacStı´ofa´in put into practice some of what he

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learnt from the EOKA prisoners; on his release he had ‘many detailed notes on EOKA revolutionary and guerrilla tactics’.89 In a tribute ´ Bra´daigh claimed it following MacStı´ofa´in’s death in 2001, Ruairı´ O was through the EOKA prisoners that MacStı´ofa´in learnt the ‘realities of an anti-British guerilla campaign’.90 In Century of Endeavour, ex-IRA member Roy H.W. Johnston claimed the 1966 Sea´n Garland ‘Captured Document’ (Garland was a member of the IRA Army Council) contained a military plan, which he attributes to MacStı´ofa´in. It is, he says: Close to a blueprint for the way the Provisionals developed in the North under MacStı´ofa´in’s leadership. There is explicit reference to Cyprus and to the conscious use of terror tactics and assassination. It is not unreasonable to attribute this document to MacStı´ofa´in as an early draft of the Provisional plan for a northern campaign.91 This is backed up by similar claims by Maria Maguire, an exProvisional IRA member.92 Perhaps MacStı´ofa´in was influenced by the notoriously violent EOKA member Nicos Sampson, who would eventually overthrow the Makarios government in 1974, though in his memoirs MacStı´ofa´in said, ‘He and I didn’t hit it off well at all, and I suppose many would just call it a personality clash.’93 Was this a retrospective attempt to distance himself from the ‘unacceptable face’ of insurgency? For active IRA members not in direct contact with EOKA prisoners, Cyprus was nonetheless used to legitimise the Border Campaign and highlight political ambivalence towards violence. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the court case of IRA volunteer ´ Bra´daigh, and future head of the Provisional Sinn Fe´in Ruairı´ O following his involvement in the IRA raid on Derrylin RUC Barracks on 30 November 1956. On 14 January 1957, at Dublin District Court, O´ Bra´daigh, along with nine others, was found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by Justice Fitzpatrick, after ´ Bra´daigh asked to address the court. He expressed his which O frustration that the Irish authorities would repress the IRA but offer

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sympathy to movements outside of Ireland that also used physical force, such as in Cyprus.94 However, his statement was only partially correct. The Irish authorities were sympathetic towards the Greek – Cypriots’ plight, as evidenced by their voting patterns at the UN, but they were also aware of the leverage this support might give to the IRA volunteers – it was a peculiarly delicate balancing act, compounded by having to appease Irish public opinion overwhelmingly supportive of Cypriot self-determination. Apart from Clann na Poblachta, no official statements of solidarity or sympathy were expressed by any Irish political parties, despite members’ private misgivings.

IV. The United Irishman Debate: Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the British Armed Forces Ironically, a republican newspaper, rather than any of the three leading dailies, featured the only sustained debate on the Irish contribution to British counter-insurgency efforts in Cyprus. As noted previously, the Irish Times featured articles on the Irish participation there but refrained from editorial debate and published no letters on the matter. The reasons for this are that editorial comment ran the risk of alienating its most valued constituency, the Protestant middle and upper classes, many with a family tradition of loyal service in empire, and that singling out individuals, in the colonial service in Cyprus or contributors to the letters’ pages, carried the risk of IRA reprisals. The United Irishman was the only paper throughout the Cyprus Emergency to consider that ‘it might be worth our while . . . to examine our consciences on this matter’.95 Why did the United Irishman instigate the debate and include so many letters on those Irish serving in the British army in Cyprus? In other words, what ideological value was there for those working to destabilise British rule in Northern Ireland? At first glance, it appears to undermine, rather than emphasise, the perception of Ireland as a victim of empire. With all the parallels being made between the Ireland of 1919 – 21 and the Cyprus Emergency, Irish involvement potentially challenged the higher moral ground within

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the Irish narrative of resistance. However, it was too tempting an opportunity to discredit Irish politicians, allowing the paper to stress why physical force republicanism apparently had an integrity which Irish constitutionalist politics did not possess. In short, it allowed for a diatribe against what the paper saw as the unpatriotic conduct of the Leinster House politicians. The catalyst for debate was an article on ‘Operation Sparrowhawk’, which had taken place in Cyprus in October 1956. The build-up of troops in preparation for the Anglo–French– Israeli invasion of Egypt to capture the Suez Canal – reaching 30,000 by mid-September – allowed Governor Harding to launch a fresh offensive in the Kyrenia Mountains, the aim being to inflict as much damage on EOKA before ‘Operation Musketeer’ in Egypt sapped the island of forces. The article lamented that it was Mayo man Private O’Donnell who was credited by the British with leading them to ‘the top Cypriot guerillas’ (and who so embarrassed Sea´n MacStı´ofa´in in Wormwood Scrubs).96 But rather than condemning his actions or those of the British army, the Irish government was held responsible for forcing Irishmen, in need of a regular wage, into the army; O’Donnell was ‘an innocent victim of the circumstances which sent him to Cyprus in the first place. The real culprits in this instance at any rate are not in Britain but those in high places among us who keep on talking of our mock freedom in this divided land controlled economically by England.’97 The United Irishman laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of constitutionalist politicians: For the type of country the men of Leinster House have created and the type of educational system they took over with them via the Treaty and partition raised into manhood young Kieran O’Donnell of Ballina . . . Was there ever a ballad about Michael Dwyer and how the Redcoats searched for him sang to young O’Donnell in any schoolroom as he rose from childhood to manhood? Of course not. These things are not taught in our schools. How many others of our ignorant young are we throwing on the world? Is this something to be proud of – that we produce human track dogs for Britain’s Imperial services?98

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In reality, the Irish history syllabus was far from being antinational in the sense implied. For example, Carty’s A Junior History of Ireland praised Patrick Pearse as ‘the greatest of these [1916] leaders and one of noblest characters in Irish history’.99 The article concluded: But Private O’Donnell is not at fault himself. Thousands of Irish are serving today in Britain’s armed forces and hundreds of others have better jobs in her colonial administrations . . . We must answer for Kieran O’Donnell and all the rest. We reared him and them. They are ours and we can neither deny them nor explain them away.100 In the following month’s edition, Sinn Fe´in Vice-President Tom Doyle was far less sympathetic towards O’Donnell, his actions making him ‘a traitor to his own country and in part . . . supporting and condoning the judicial murder of Kevin Barry and his comrades’.101 According to Doyle, the ‘colossal irony’ of the matter was that ‘many Irishmen wearing England’s uniform will sing “Kevin Barry” with great gusto, without realising for a moment the contradiction of their own position’.102 Yet alongside Doyle’s contribution was a letter from an Irishman in the British army stationed in Cyprus. His name allegedly provided but withheld for his protection, his comments are insightful in illustrating the motivations behind joining the British army, also showing that service in the British forces did not necessarily mean checking one’s nationalist, or even republican, sentiments: My mother died and afterwards my father left for England to find work. My younger brother and myself were left at home. I worked hard for a mean £3–15–0 a week. I tried to keep the old home going but I didn’t succeed. After nine months of near starvation I had to get out and join the British Army. That was all that was left for me to do. Maybe there was something else for me to do but I couldn’t see it at the time. Anyway I joined and I now occupy another man’s country. But I have never

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forgotten my own land or its people or my Republican principles. They are still there and they are strong . . . The reasons for me being in this confounded mess are as follows: Lack of education; lack of work; lack of decent wages in my own land.103 His comments also highlighted the failure of Irish constitutional politics to provide for its citizens. Whatever one’s sentiments, as Joseph V. O’Brien once remarked, ‘idle hands and empty stomachs’ were a ‘powerful antidote to patriotic idealism’104 – and so it remained in the economically depressed Ireland of the 1950s, much as it was at the turn of the century. On 3 September 1958, Rifleman Daniel Kinsella from Crumlin in Dublin was killed fighting EOKA insurgents during the Battle of Liopetri, south-west of Famagusta. Attached to the First Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR), he was due to demob two months later. He was 19 years old.105 The lack of government or press comment on his death provided another opportunity for the United Irishman to point the finger: No one wrote an editorial when a young Irish lad serving in the British Army was killed in Cyprus on September 3. No one had a word to say about this terrible waste of young manhood. No one mentioned the sacredness of human life. Not one spokesman for the 26-County Government, not one newspaper, commented . . . The young Irish lad who joins the British Army may be driven there by economic necessity, by a false sense of adventure, or by conscription if he is working in Britain. What does the Dublin Government do to help him? Ultimately the responsibility for his being there at all, rests on their shoulders.106 However, not all Irishmen in Cyprus were treated equally. The paper reasoned: ‘We would condemn even more those who serve British Imperialism in civil service and other jobs in her colonies: they run fewer risks in the process; they reap far richer rewards than the serving soldier ever could; and they do more damage to the people

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they join in helping to suppress.’107 As a case in point, an Irish member of the judiciary in Cyprus was singled out in the paper for criticism, just as the NSC had done, but the response seems to have been motivated by long-held religious and class antagonisms, rather than the nature of the position itself. The judge in question was Dublin-born Charles Vesey Boyle, Chief Justice of Cyprus in 1958, a TCD graduate and former member of the Irish national rugby squad. In November 1958, he sentenced a 19-year-old woman after bombs were found in her husband’s hideout. Perhaps the United Irishman’s most telling comments are its last: ‘As an open-minded GAA man, I would still cast no reflection on the Irishmen who play rugby, which by the way the Black and Tans never banned, provided that they utter just one simple protest for the Greek girl, against rugby-flyer Judge Boyle’s swift judgment.’108 It is an uncomfortable irony that repressive sentences in areas such as Cyprus, cited with unreserved ire by republicans, were often facilitated by Irish judges. Apart from using Irish participation in Cyprus as an ideological weapon against the Irish government, it is clear that active republicans were also keeping a close eye on far more practical matters, notably the British army traffic between Cyprus and Northern Ireland. Psychologically, the frequency of this traffic served to confirm among IRA members the colonial status of Northern Ireland – that they too were fighting a war of national liberation. Strategically, the presence of these troops in Northern Ireland was to shape the planning and timing of what was known as ‘Operation Harvest’. In July 1956, it was reported that the First Battalion of the Warwickshire Regiment was being posted from Cyprus to Omagh. For those British soldiers with experience in colonial outposts, it must have been unsettling. A United Irishman article headlined ‘British Troops in Ireland – Six Counties Now an Armed Camp’, quoting a British army publication, stated that: ‘for troops who had fought terrorism in varying fronts, in Cyprus, in Egypt & Kenya, it was an odd experience to be going through the same security routine on the soil of the United Kingdom’.109 For those physical force republicans, however, Northern Ireland was seen as on a par with these colonial frontiers. They viewed

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Cypriot events, in particular, as a warning for what might happen in Northern Ireland. The United Irishman declared that, ‘for us, the Cyprus tragedy is a terrible warning (if we need one at this late stage) of what can happen in occupied Ireland unless British forces are made to get out now. Let us be guided accordingly’.110 In July 1957, the meeting of Governor Harding and Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Gerald Templer – best known for his defeat of the guerrilla rebels in Malaya – was documented. The paper claimed they met to discuss anti-guerrilla operations. Given that this meeting was subsequent to Templer’s visit to Northern Ireland, the paper speculated that ‘security measures to be adopted against Irish freedom fighters’ was also discussed between them, again linking the Irish and Greek – Cypriot campaigns.111 The following October, a photo captioned ‘From Cyprus to Ireland’ showed British soldiers of the First Battalion of the Duke of Wellington Regiment unpacking their kit at Hollywood Barracks, Co. Down, following their transfer from Cyprus.112 The next month a photograph of senior officers of the British forces was published with the headline, ‘Leaving Occupied Ireland’, following the announcement that they were to be posted to Cyprus.113 The following year, in November 1958, it again noted the movement of a detachment of 40 men of the RUR from Ballymena Military Barracks to Cyprus.114 Against the background of these facts, one needs to ask how successful were the NSC exploiting what anti-colonial feeling there was amongst students to further their own republican ends? The NSC certainly attracted, for a short period, Irish students who wished to express solidarity with foreign anti-colonial movements, part of the wider international student movements taking root at this time, which would find their fullest expression in the 1960s. Thus, for Christle and other leading militant members of the NSC, it was of limited success having attracted international students from Egypt, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya, revealing a more multicultural Dublin than has been hitherto assumed. Were it not for the inability of the Irish authorities to contain the NSC and Saor Uladh, the prison escape might never have got further than wishful thinking.

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It is true that no closer relationship was formed linking the IRA and foreign anti-colonial guerrilla fighters than that which existed between them and EOKA. But neither the IRA nor EOKA instigated this. Rather, it was due to their shared experiences inside British prisons. Nor did EOKA ever claim that they were influenced by earlier IRA tactics. General Georgios Grivas did not need to look to an island on the opposite extremity of Europe for lessons in guerrilla warfare. If anything, he modelled EOKA tactics on the guerrilla warfare used so successfully by the Greek communists he had fought against, alongside the British forces, for three years in the Greek Civil War. The United Irishman’s interest in the Greek – Cypriot anti-colonial struggle was a marker of continuity rather than change. Earlier republican papers such as Saoirse, An Phoblacht, the Republican Congress, Republican Review and the Wolfe Tone Weekly all displayed ‘a consistent interest’ in anti-colonial struggles abroad.115 It is striking that it was a republican newspaper, rather than any of the three leading dailies, that featured the only sustained debate on the Irish contribution to British counter-insurgency efforts in Cyprus. But the United Irishman’s motives were primarily driven by expediency in an effort to discredit the narrative of progress and achievement of Irish constitutional politics. But at a time when Ireland was so beset by manifold problems, its criticisms were hardly radical. While the paper denounced the government’s educational and economic policies, the United Irishman refrained from offering up any alternative solutions and remained on the fence in terms of constructive debate. More importantly, it was the only paper to remark on the palpable political and press silence on Irish soldiers killed or injured in Cyprus. Although these soldiers were ultimately aiding the complex disengagement from empire, for Irish republicans it was clearly better to die ‘neath an Irish sky’ than at Limassol or Larnaca.

CHAPTER 4 THE IRISH RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO CYPRIOT SELF-DETERMINATION

‘Why should we care,’ voters cried, ‘for child Or mother? Common help is harmful And state-control must starve the soul.’ One doctor spoke out. Bishops mitred.1 In 1950s Ireland, the dominant tone of the Roman Catholic Church was one of triumphalism.2 It was the era of two particularly bitter controversies; the Mother and Child imbroglio and the Fethard-onSea fiasco, with the Church’s weighty interventions reinforcing its perceived moral dominance in Catholic Ireland. As John Banville recounts, many living in Ireland in the 1950s remained in the grip of tradition: Although we did not know it, and would have been shocked to think it, our conditions were very like those in the Eastern Bloc countries. The State, backed by an iron ideology – Irish Catholicism is a special case of the Roman faith – ruled over us absolutely; all protest was futile, all dissension was punished. Sinners and misfits alike were sent into exile. Inconveniently free-thinking writers were forced to go abroad or be silent;

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recalcitrant boys were locked away in Industrial Schools; girls who got pregnant ‘out of wedlock,’ as it was quaintly put, were sent to work – to slave, really – in laundrys [sic ] run by nuns, and when their babies were born they were taken away from them and put in orphanages, here and abroad. These were the realities of life on this right little, tight little island.3 While the Catholic Church flaunted its flock’s servitude, the Church of Ireland was acutely aware of its dependence on its worshippers’ support.4 To what extent did these circumstances influence each Church’s response to the Cyprus Question? Primarily driven by internal considerations, both responses were also significantly shaped by international factors, a reflection of the supranational character of both Churches. Communism and Islam were considered the two biggest threats to Roman Catholicism, so why the palpable silence by the Roman Catholic Church if the Cypriot Orthodox Church was both strongly anti-communist and fearful of Islamic nationalism? One could reasonably have expected greater sympathy from the Church of Ireland towards British colonial policy in Cyprus, given the strong Church of Ireland presence within northern unionism. In fact, the reverse turns out to be the case. The Roman Catholic Church’s formal silence stemmed from its support of Britain in Cyprus because of their shared interests in maintaining the island’s status quo during the Cold War. Also, the expedient alignment of American and Vatican interests reciprocally strengthened the credibility of each side’s rhetoric, in turn providing the justification for more fervent anti-communist counter-measures. As the Catholic press in Ireland was part of the wider theo-political battle, influenced by Vatican and US foreign policy, it was often reactionary, overplaying the threat of the ‘Red Menace’ while the Church of Ireland took a more moderate, sober view. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church at this time had a self-appointed global political role which the Anglican Communion, at large, did not. Since communism was the ‘favourite enemy’ of both Catholicism and the American people, Irish Catholic anti-communism was seen as ‘at once an emotional catharsis and an assertion of loyalty to America and

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the Church’.5 However, for Irish Protestants, the major American protagonists in the fight against communism, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, were seen as reactionary and often hostile to liberal Protestantism. These two approaches to the Gordian knot of Cyprus are evident in the Irish Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland religious weeklies. Secondly, anti-Roman Catholicism amongst the Greek Orthodox clergy strained relations between them and the Vatican. This affected the level of support the Vatican, and thus the Irish Roman Catholic Church, gave to self-determination in Cyprus. In addition to these corporeal tensions, the Anglican Church acknowledged the ‘trueChurchness’ of Greek Orthodoxy in a way the Roman Catholic Church could not. While the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland remained aloof, the Church of Ireland, particularly since 1939, had become ‘steadily involved’ in non-Anglican bodies outside of Ireland, in international and inter-denominational associations which brought them into direct contact with the Greek Orthodox Church.6 Greek Orthodoxy, including its autocephalous branch in Cyprus, enjoyed a close relationship with the Church of Ireland through shared membership of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) and the British Council of Churches (BCC), and through the Irish branch of the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association. An active response in the Church of Ireland paper the Church of Ireland Gazette, along with its interventions in the Cyprus dispute through these bodies, is evident.7

I. The Irish Catholic, the Standard, Irish Partition and the Cyprus Question The Irish Roman Catholic press response itself was not entirely homogeneous. The often truculent Irish Catholic saw the Cyprus issue as more analogous to Irish nationalist interests. In its editorials, it used the Cyprus Question to interrogate what it saw as the injustice of partition in Ireland and to stress Irish historical grievances, rather than treating the Cypriot conflict on its own

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terms. Founded in 1888 by T.D. Sullivan, a former Lord Mayor of Dublin and Irish Parliamentary Party MP, it was ‘conceived in opposition to the Toryism of the Tablet’.8 Several of the paper’s early staff worked at the Nation newspaper alongside Young Irelanders Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon. John J.M. Ryan, the paper’s editor from 1936 until his death in 1981, customarily raised the ‘sore thumb’ of Irish partition, in the context of the inefficacy of the ‘atheistic’ UN to solve the problem and in the context of the Cyprus Question.9 Ryan’s commentary was driven by his own politics, which were clearly in alignment with the nationalist posturing of Fianna Fa´il, hypothesising in one editorial that ‘the days when the Orangemen will continue to enjoy inordinate rewards for their squatters’ title in six Irish counties may well be numbered’.10 The Standard refrained from making these editorial comparisons and adhered more closely to the official Catholic Church dogma. When the paper was founded in 1928, its first editor was Monsignor Joseph Deery, Chairman of the Censorship of Publications Board for a number of years.11 Promoted to Vicar-General in the Diocese of Dublin in 1955, in 1956 Pope Pius XII ‘conferred on him the dignity of Domestic Prelate’.12 His replacement in 1938 was Peadar O’Curry, a former Irish News Agency director and leader in European Catholic democratic movements. From the time he took the editorial position at the end of 1938, he dramatically transformed the once-ailing paper into ‘the most notable advocate of the new trend in Catholic social teaching’.13 Recently released US National Archive files also disclose O’Curry as an anti-communist spy who wrote several memoranda for the Special Branch Forces whilst editor of the Standard.14 When O’Curry was replaced in November 1957 by Peter E. Kilroy, who had been its News editor since 1947, the Standard line of Vatican doctrinal correctness continued.15 Although both unofficial Church papers, these two weeklies, the Standard and the Irish Catholic, were the most widely read Catholic newspapers in the Republic of Ireland during the 1950s, a place where the terms ‘Irish’ and ‘Catholic’ were to many synonymous. One cannot underestimate their influence in public opinion-making during a period when there

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was little public ideological competition. Yet this was partly born out of the conformist spirit of the age: Conformity to the prevailing ethic was the international style of the 1950s, which the Italians, teetering on the brink of Communism, called gli anni del conformismo – the conformist years. Each society was conformist in its own way, and in Ireland conformity and deference to authority took the form of strict adherence to the values of Irish Catholicism.16 The geo-political importance of Cyprus during the Cold War ensured a harmonisation of featured articles in both papers, inevitably pro-Western despite the muscular nationalism and frequent antiBritishness of the Irish Catholic. Nevertheless, a contradiction existed between Irish nationalist interests as seen in the Irish Catholic – whereby it used the Cyprus question to raise Irish partition – and Irish anti-communism as propagated, at times quite fiercely, by the Irish clerical hierarchy. As for the Standard, the subject of possible Christian communion dominated its editorial pages and the potentially divisive Cyprus Question featured far less in its editorial commentary than in the Irish Catholic. The Irish Catholic saw no inherent contradiction in reconciling agitational nationalism with Catholic social teaching in its editorials. It did so time and time again in citing the example of the UN, seeing it as both a symbol of pagan internationalism and an ineffective organ to bring about an end to partition. Though the Irish Catholic would refer to Cyprus editorially, it largely followed the Standard’s policy of non-inclusion of Cypriot articles, apart from a few which explicitly criticised the British government. Because of these differing loyalties, the Irish Catholic was less influential as an unofficial Church organ, and seen as ‘more of a straight newspaper than the Standard, and less the advocate of a particular point of view’.17 Although largely acknowledged as the more influential Catholic paper, the Standard was not exempt from criticism that ‘in presentation, extent of coverage and outlook, it can hardly claim to represent the educated Catholic’.18 Despite considering the Standard

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as ‘our main hope’, it was widely believed it could not ‘stand comparison’ with the superior British Catholic weeklies, the Tablet and the Catholic Herald.19 The Standard’s ‘three fine examples of Catholic magazines,’ the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, the Furrow and the Month, all followed the same policy of silence on the Cyprus Question.20 So too did the journal with arguably the greatest influence among the Irish intelligentsia, the Jesuit publication Studies. Despite the agitational nationalist stance of Irish Catholic editorials, the geo-political importance of Cyprus during the Cold War ensured that the syndicated articles found in both the Irish Catholic and the Standard newspapers were often markedly similar. This response was influenced and controlled by their chief source of Catholic news, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) News Service, founded by members of the US Catholic hierarchy in 1920. The importance of the NCWC cannot be overstated, as this agency also informed Vatican opinion. Vatican Radio also received the bulk of its world news from the NCWC News Service in Washington. Under direct control of American bishops and archbishops, including the Church’s chief political voice, the ultrareactionary Archbishop of New York Cardinal Francis Spellman, the NCWC was the world’s biggest Catholic news bureau. Spellman’s strong support for US intervention in Vietnam and for the Diem regime, his friendship with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, his championing of McCarthy and his support for President Dwight D. Eisenhower ensured that NCWC articles on Cypriot affairs were a staunch anti-communist reconciling of Vatican policy with US foreign policy. Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston, who was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958, may have been a moderating influence on Spellman’s rigid conservatism, but it was Spellman who was ‘America’s Pope,’ the ‘kingmaker in the American Catholic Church.’21 In a paper read to the Maynooth Union in June 1957, Father Patrick O’Connor, the well-known Dublin journalist and Far Eastern correspondent of the NCWC News Service, stressed its importance as ‘invaluable to the Church’ by ‘informing and forming Catholic public opinion across the world on vital issues’, which O’Connor believed

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had helped ‘mightily to knit Catholics of many lands and races into a conscious unity’.22 Such was the power of the NCWC News Service.

II. Cyprus, Communism and Irish Catholicism If union with Greece was fought for – and won – by Greek –Cypriot communist forces, it was possible that Greece too, in light of its recent civil war, could fall to communism. With the view held by US policy makers that ‘if Greece fell to communism, so too would Italy’,23 pro-US Vatican support in its respectful silence on Cypriot events was inevitable – and more so than ever given the sharp rise in Italian Communist Party membership following World War II. Several months before the beginnings of the renewed EOKA campaign in 1955, an article in the Standard alluded to the reasoning behind Cypriot silence and is characteristic of the style and content of subsequent pieces covering ‘Red Menace’ atrocities. On 26 February 1954, the Standard documented the return to Greece of 1,200 children from the ‘red hell’ of Stalinist-ruled Hungary, where they had been abducted by ‘the Greek Communist gangs’ led by the ‘notorious Markos’ during the Civil War.24 General Markos Vafiades, founding member of the communist-led Greek Democratic Army, had been ‘enemy number one’ in British and American-backed Greece during the fighting. The Standard’s Special Foreign Correspondent went on to describe how one mother was told not to worry, that she was going to a ‘communist paradise’, only to experience ‘communist hell’ in the real sense at the labour camp she was sent to, and how travelling with those returning by train, ‘their eyes reflected terror and the nightmare which fell upon them’.25 The style of rhetoric may be fear-provoking but was not seen as too extreme in the already excessively anti-communist grip of Catholic Ireland in the 1950s. Religious iconography familiar to its Catholic Irish readership was utilised in this and subsequent reportage, helping its readers to empathise with the anti-communist plight wherever that may be, and essentially streamlining Vatican foreign policy. It followed that very little could be seen as excessive in the face of threatening atheistic dominance, with the greatest of sacrifices perhaps necessary.

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Motifs of martyrdom and punishing self-sacrifice persistently re-emerge in the Standard’s coverage. The correspondent further emphasises the atheistic battle by using the sub-headline ‘Cross Banished’, going on to explain that any sign of the cross at the labour camps resulted in a ‘punishable offence’, often savage. With strong communist parties in France and Italy, then surely it was all the more necessary for Catholic Ireland to remain a ‘stronghold of the Faith’. With communism in Cyprus primarily under the auspices of the AKEL party, it followed that Vatican foreign policy and the Standard editorial line would be in unison with British and American MiddleEastern strategic interests. In November 1957, during his farewell radio broadcast as Governor of Cyprus, Harding declared international communism as ‘the real menace to the future of the island’.26 Vatican policy reasoned, given British military strength and America’s ‘invisible hand’, that Cyprus under British military control was the surest possibility in thwarting the spread of communist strength there. Yet in reality both the Greek –Cypriot and Turk–Cypriot paramilitary organisations, EOKA and the TNT (the Turkish Defence Organisation, Tu¨rk Mukavemet Tes¸kilatı), were also strongly anti-communist, with both sides carrying out acts of coercion, sometimes brutal, against their respective communist parties, AKEL and the PEO Pan-Cyprian Federation of Labour (Pankypria Ergatiki Omospondia). The British administration’s maltreatment and eventual deportation of the Orthodox clergy must have rattled Irish clergymen. But a veneer of united silence was upheld by the Vatican and the Irish religious establishment in response to these events, seen as an unfortunate, even uncomfortable, consequence in the course of solidifying anti-communist resistance. British actions could almost have been seen as justified, given Archbishop Makarios’ intimate involvement with the leadership of EOKA, providing the cause with spiritual patronage. In adopting an anti-communist rationale for official and unofficial Catholic unity on all these prickly issues, the Standard wisely steered clear of the potential divisiveness the Cyprus Question could ignite, potentially compromising the much-discussed but still hypothetical future unity

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of Christianity and Irish Catholic national unity itself. In advocating its unified, anti-communist dogma, it avoided offending Irish Catholics in favour of Cypriot self-determination, or having to comment on the complicity of the Greek and Cypriot Orthodox Churches in political violence. In early 1956, a Standard article entitled ‘Communists Exploit Greek Crisis’ detailed the publication of documents by the Minister of the Interior in Greece, stating that ‘radio communications had been set up between the Greek Communist Party and Greek communist refugees in the Soviet Union. It was also claimed that instructions had been issued from the U.S.S.R. that the crisis in Cyprus was to be utilised by Greek communists to stir up opposition to Western powers.’27 However, these claims did little to circumscribe Irish public support for self-determination in Cyprus. Despite the widespread denouncement of communists from behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains in Ireland, the Irish popular response to the Cyprus Question was predominantly framed by the Irish historical experience of 1919– 21, rather than considerations of the security and unity of the Western powers. Because of this, one might deduce that the Irish Catholic clergy had to carry out a continuous balancing act between adhering to Vatican doctrine and appeasing Irish public opinion. However, given the Church’s selfassuredness, compounded by its flock’s often unquestioning obedience, it did not feel compelled to comment on Cypriot affairs, even in the aftermath of Archbishop Makarios’ deportation. Silence was the preferred option. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, Ireland’s most powerful ‘doughty anti-Communist Cold War warrior’, had ‘nailed his colours to the mast’ as early as 1948.28 In a broadcast on 11 April of that year, the ‘Cold Warrior’ churchman warned that a communist victory in Italy would not only result in the downfall of the papacy, it would lead to the total destruction of Christian civilisation. By the time of this broadcast, he had already raised almost £20,000 in funds from Irish Catholics for their fellow Italian Catholics in the Christian Democratic Party. Others in the Irish hierarchy, including the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Cardinal John

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Francis D’Alton, and Bishop Cornelius Lucey of the Cork Diocese, consistently spoke out against communism, at times arguably as virulently as Cardinal Spellman. In his Lenten Pastoral of 1956 on ‘Communism and Religion’, Cardinal D’Alton relayed in apocalyptic terms the epic century-long struggle against communism’s ‘pernicious’ doctrines, with its explicit conclusion demonstrative of the force of opposition towards communism as advocated by the Irish hierarchy: We must keep in mind that in the battle that is now being fought, we have a powerful ally in our Blessed Lady, who was destined to cooperate with her Divine Son in crushing the serpent’s head. She has promised that by recourse to the weapons of prayer and penance, and especially by fidelity to her Rosary, Communism will be defeated, Russia converted, and an era of peace bestowed upon the world.29 While statements such as these must have ‘seemed a very remote concern for most ordinary Irish Catholics who rarely caught a glimpse of a full-blooded communist’, they were not unexceptional in the wider European context.30 But, as the next section will show, anti-communism was not the only factor in play. ‘

III. Catholic –Greek Orthodox Tensions and the Cyprus Question Despite the rapprochement in the 1950s between the Vatican and the ‘schismatic’ Greek Patriarchy of Constantinople, Greece experienced a sharp rise in Catholic– Orthodox tensions, influencing the Vatican’s level of support. For Pope Pius XII, and later Pope John XXIII, there was a convergence of interests between the Vatican and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in no small part due to the demands of the times, where a united front against atheistic communism was necessary, the Patriarch’s seat in Istanbul ensuring a foothold of Christianity in a secularised republic with a majority

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Muslim population. Though the thawing in relations would culminate in the closest relationship between the Vatican and the Greek Patriarchy of Constantinople since before the schism of 1054 (or at least since the pontificate of Pope Gregory X, where there was a brief reunification), this relationship belied the deep divisions between the Greek Orthodox clergy and the Vatican. While pockets of anti-Roman Catholicism had existed in Greece since the fall of Constantinople, the Ethnarchy had greatly grown in power – ‘out of all proportion to its importance’ – since Makarios’ deportation.31 With its increased power and influence, relations between the Vatican and the Greek Orthodox hierarchy, also tellingly known as the ‘State Church’, were correspondingly strained. These developments had ominous consequences for the Roman Catholic minority in Greece. Calls for ‘Christian unity’ were repeatedly rejected by Orthodox leaders in Athens. An ally to help fight the communist Goliath needed to be found elsewhere. Consequently, Vatican support for Greek – Cypriots was not seen as a politically expedient move in a climate where the Greek Orthodox Church was distancing itself from the Vatican. Relations between the two Churches were further strained when the hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens, under the leadership of Archbishop Dorotheos, voted against the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Greece.32 Further controversial moves to separate church links were taken by the Theology Faculty of the University of Athens in a request to the Pope asking that the seat of the Catholic Byzantine Rite be left vacant in Athens following the death of Bishop Calavassy. The representative theologians at the University said that ‘the existence of Greek Christians in communion with the Holy See has been a source of irritation between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches ever since the sixteenth century’.33 They reasoned that by not appointing a new Exarchate Apostolic, ‘the Holy See would be removing a centuries-old source of discord and would be creating a climate favourable to good relations between the two bodies’.34 No comment was made by the Vatican and, significantly, no successor was appointed. The purpose of this move, according to one

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archbishopric commentator, was ‘clearly to put an end to the Byzantine Catholic bishopric in Athens’.35 The following year, a Greek ban on the erection of a Roman Catholic church in Athens, after its initial approval in April 1957 by the late Archbishop Dorotheos, caused further friction. This ban, authorised by the Minister of Education and Religion, was done at the behest of Dorotheos’ successor Archbishop Theoklitos, Primate of Greece. The Irish Catholic reported that ‘under a Greek law, which Catholics have long objected to as “anti-constitutional,” no church may be erected without permission first being obtained from the Minister of Education and Religion’.36 In a letter to the Minister, the Archbishop asked for the work to be stopped because ‘it is intolerable that Roman Catholics of every variety should be free and uncontrolled in the Greek Christian capital’.37 This statement highlights the extent of Orthodox intolerance of Roman Catholics in Greece, who were far from being ‘free and uncontrolled’. The building was to be the first Catholic Byzantine church built in Athens in nine centuries. Working to preserve the Roman Catholic faith in Greece was Archbishop Benedictus Printesis of Athens, who estimated Catholic numbers in Athens as between 20,000 and 25,000 and totalling 60,000 in Greece altogether.38 In another indication of anti-Catholic intolerance, it was forbidden under the Greek constitution for Roman Catholic priests to do any missionary work in Greece.39 In 1961, the Archbishop described relations with the Greek Orthodox Church as ‘not cordial’ and termed its leader in Athens, Archbishop Theoklitos, ‘fanatically anti-Catholic’.40 Three weeks after this report in the Irish Catholic, the Orthodox leader was again in the news over his continued opposition to the proposed Catholic Byzantine church, in spite of the Greek Supreme Court granting building permission. The Archbishop, described by the Exarchate Printesis as being motivated by ‘a fierce anti-Catholic fanaticism’, stated that ‘in the opinion of the official church, Roman Catholics of all sorts, among whom are those of the Byzantine Rite, have enough churches in Athens to fulfil their religious duties and therefore have no need to build others’.41 When construction eventually began, it was reported that police had to

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disperse protestors outside the building site in Athens, including a procession of Orthodox priests.42 Some marchers resisted the police and ‘one fully vested priest’ was allegedly reported as beating a policeman over the head ‘with a pole surmounted by a wooden rhombus signifying the orders of angels’.43 With Patriarch Athenagoras’ authority confined to the geographical borders of Istanbul, in compliance with the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, there was little he could do to ameliorate Roman Catholic – Orthodox tensions.

IV. The Church of Ireland’s Relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church Protestant news on Cyprus, as featured in the Gazette, was largely obtained from the Ecumenical News Service and the Lutheran World Federation News Service, both located in Geneva. These bodies were comprised of a global communion of Christian Churches, rather than one religious hierarchy, allowing for a more nuanced perspective. The editorship of lay member Norman Black between 1955 and 1959, in close association with the Reverend Andy Willis, who took up the task as editor-in-chief from 1959, closely mirrored the Church’s diverse global interests. Also influencing the Church of Ireland’s response, as portrayed in the pages of the Gazette, was the cordial relationship enjoyed between the Church of Ireland and the Greek Orthodox Church and its wish to support its sister church in England.44 This is evident from the annual meetings held at Kildare Place in Dublin, and reports of the Irish branch of the Anglican and Eastern Churches’ Association, founded in 1929. The President of the Association was the Church of Ireland’s Primate and Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Reverend Dr John Gregg. The report of the Association’s committee following the branch’s meeting in November 1958 indicated that ‘for the fourth year in succession the annual meeting was overshadowed by tragic events in the Middle East and especially in Cyprus’.45 A paper given at the meeting by Professor William Bedell Stanford, describing a visit he had made in April to the Patriarch in Istanbul, makes clear that

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Athenagoras was at pains to distance himself from Cypriot events, telling Stanford that ‘the clergy here [in Turkey] do not become involved in politics’.46 Given that he was a Seanad member in Leinster House and a previous Council of Europe delegate, Stanford was well informed on the Cyprus Question. As a guest of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi at the European Parliamentary Conference in Vienna in 1956, Stanford witnessed the Greek, Turkish and British delegates debating the Cyprus issue. His account shows a clear understanding of the complex factors at play.47 Similarly, Stanford succinctly highlighted the conflicting demands faced by Athenagoras: The Turks would like him to denounce clerical influence in the Cyprus Question; his colleagues in the Greek Orthodox Church would like him to support Orthodoxy against Islam in Cyprus, as they see it. Further, to complicate things even more, some Turks suspect that the spiritual affinity between the Oecumenical Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church might be a channel for Communist infiltration. At the moment there is nothing whatsoever to justify this third criticism, but it is a dangerous slander.48 At the same meeting, in a message of support, Archbishop Gregg contended that the Eastern Orthodox Church was ‘misunderstood by many’, a remark which was an obvious allusion to the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the fact that Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism had once been united, and Orthodox Christians were still often termed ‘Catholics’, the Greek Orthodox Church was seen as irremediably alien to the Irish Roman Catholic Church. There is some truth in this; even the Catholic fortnightly journal Hibernia, in an admission of its ignorance on the Eastern Church, claimed that its mention ‘gives the mental picture of political prelates in stove-pipe hats, ever engaged in interminable liturgies’.49 In April 1956, following the death of Archbishop Spyridon of Athens, Chairman of the Central Committee of the enosis campaign,

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the Gazette featured a glowing tribute to him. Although anti-Roman Catholicism on the part of the Orthodox hierarchy was present in Athens at this time, Spyridon is described as devoting himself to problems of ecumenical cooperation between his own Church and the Churches of other nations through the WCC. The Gazette claimed that in these negotiations, he ‘always proved understanding and open-minded’.50 Described in the Gazette as ‘an outstanding figure in the political field’, who guided the Church ‘firmly’, it is clear that two very different portrayals of the Greek Church emerge from the Protestant and Catholic press.51 In its 28th meeting since its foundation, held in 1956, the BCC, of which the Church of Ireland was a member, passed several resolutions concerning Cyprus ‘due to the deepest concern’ of the ‘grave deterioration’ there.52 The Council’s report ‘profoundly’ rejected ‘both the violence and terrorism’ used in Cyprus, but also the ‘use of force which such violence has inevitably evoked’.53 The BCC also commended its president – Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher – for vocally opposing the Conservative government’s Cyprus policy. Like the CCIA and the WCC (both of which Fisher was president of from 1948 until 1954), the BCC also wanted to play a direct role, seeking to ‘play its part in that reconciling ministry’.54 In a similar vein to the CCIA’s proposals, the Council urged the government to draft a constitution designed ‘to lead by progressive steps to Cypriot self-determination’.55 The Gazette’s support for BCC, WCC and CCIA resolutions on Cyprus, favourable to the Greek Orthodox Church, was also a means to show its support for its larger and more powerful sister church in England and for the Archbishop of Canterbury. With similar measures of support expected by the Greek Orthodox clergy from the Church of Ireland, and shared obligations and outlook through membership of the same world religious affiliations, the press responses of the Church of Ireland and the Church of England were very similar. Conversely, the gulf that existed between the Irish Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland can be seen in their starkly different treatments of the deportation of Archbishop Makarios and the anti-Greek pogroms.

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V. The Irish Churches’ Response to the Anti-Greek Pogroms and the Deportation of Archbishop Makarios On 7 September 1955, following a bomb explosion at the Turkish Consulate-General in Salonika, Northern Greece, thousands of youths carrying ‘Cyprus is Turkish’ slogans streamed through the main centre of Istanbul. During the anti-Greek riots in Istanbul and Izmir on 6 and 7 September, not one sentence was given in the Standard or the Irish Catholic on the pogroms. Why were the events, singled out by the General Secretary of the WCC, Dr Visser ‘t Hooft, as ‘one of the worst calamities that has befallen any Christian Church in our time’, not deemed of Catholic interest?56 Greek Orthodox Churches were especially singled out, pillaged and profaned. Religious icons, Bibles and crucifixes were burned. Greek Orthodox bishops were forcibly circumcised in the street. At least one Orthodox priest was killed when his church was burned down. According to an estimate from Lambeth Palace, 72 out of the 83 Orthodox churches in Istanbul were damaged and a reported 100,000 Greeks were left homeless.57 The Gazette reported on the speech delivered by Reverend Raymond E. Maxwell to the WCC following his visit to Istanbul, who declared the devastation of churches ‘a very great tragedy’.58 It was not only churches that were desecrated. According to his information, almost all of the 70 Greek-language schools belonging to the Church were also damaged. Dr Visser ‘t Hooft said that what had happened in Istanbul was ‘even worse than the first reports gave us to understand’.59 Despite his conviction that ‘the Christian world will want to express its solidarity with its brethren in Istanbul in every possible way’,60 the Vatican remained silent. What was universally recognised as a ‘highly reprehensible outburst’ received not one column inch in either Catholic weekly.61 While the WCC report declared that each of its Churches ‘should feel that the burden which this member church must carry is also its burden’, the Vatican, not being a member, could remain aloof.62 The significance of these outrages was curtailed by Secretary of State Dulles at the US State Department. Subsequently, other NATO members followed suit, refusing to contemplate taking action

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against fellow NATO member Turkey; Dulles sent identical telegrams of sympathy to the Greek and Turkish Prime Ministers. The Vatican and its international press organs, including the Irish Catholic and the Standard, were fully complicit, inadvertently or not, in pro-Turk American policy in their media blackout. While some historians claim that ‘nothing could have done more to harm Turkey’s image in the mid-twentieth century than this spectacle of mass destruction and mob rule directed against an innocent Christian minority’, it went apparently unnoticed by the Irish Catholic press.63 When one looks at the numerous reports in the Irish Press, the Independent and the Irish Times of deported clergy, imprisoned monks, the desecration of churches and arrest of priests, including some Cypriot Catholics, the degree of selectivity in both Catholic weeklies becomes fully evident. Only the Irish Catholic addressed the deportation of Archbishop Makarios to the Seychelles on 9 March 1956, and this was only done in an editorial and not through any syndicated news articles. For the nationalistic Irish Catholic, Makarios’ deportation was used more as a pretext to further emphasise British injustice in Ireland, rather than as ecumenical reportage on its own grounds. No comment was made in the Standard. From this treatment, one is led to deduce that the deportation, which caused uproar in ecclesiastical circles, was treated with overwhelming silence by the Catholic Church for very good reason. While it is inconceivable that Roman Catholic clergy were not stunned at this move, not one statement was ever reported as being made from their pulpits throughout Ireland’s parishes. Given the public outcry and interest in Ireland, if a comment had been publicly made, it would have been immediately reproduced in the Irish press. It is clear that the Church of Ireland supported the Anglican Archbishop’s stance, made in the House of Lords, that ‘Christians everywhere were shocked and uneasy at Britain’s action’.64 The Gazette declared that the Archbishop’s speech ‘will be welcomed by those Church people who are perplexed’ about the deportation.65 While not condoning the violence in Cyprus, it supported the Archbishop’s contention that it must not be forgotten that

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Archbishop Makarios ‘remains the head of an independent Church, a religious Christian leader whose presence is indispensable to the proper functioning of that Church’.66 Fisher’s forthright statements on the deportation drew stiff opposition from the Conservative Leader of the House of Lords, Viscount de L’Isle.67 The Conservative Spectator duly featured a cartoon depicting Fisher’s clerical baggage turning up on the quay in the Seychelles alongside that of Makarios.68 Likewise, the opposition by the Church of Ireland towards the Conservative government’s colonial policy in Cyprus became increasingly evident from the period of Makarios’ deportation onwards. Its outlook, as expressed in the Gazette, on the future of the island, given the intransigent nature of Tory foreign policy on Cyprus, was bleak: On whatever grounds British Colonial Office policy may be defensible; it is certainly not on those of expediency. It might be that a hostile Cyprus is considered to be better than no Cyprus at all, and perhaps that is the pessimistic outlook on which policy is based. But it is abundantly clear that both Cyprus and the friendship of the Cypriots are well on the way to being lost by Britain.69 Following EOKA’s call for a truce in August 1956, the Gazette ‘hoped that the British government will take the Cypriots at their word, if not without salt’.70 In doing so, the paper stressed that the truce should be not met with ‘an uncompromising and legalistic response’ by the British government. For the Gazette, the legalistic attitude adopted by the British authorities towards Makarios, as an accessory ‘to violence and murder’, was ‘perturbing’.71 In February 1957, Fisher wrote to Macmillan calling on him to replace Harding with a new governor who might prove a ‘skilful and sympathetic healer of divisions’.72 This unwelcome interference, as it was perceived by the Conservative government, was rebuffed by one CO official as ‘pathetically naı¨ve and misguided’.73 Fisher’s sentiments were blatantly not shared by British government officials.

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Lennox-Boyd sent a personal letter of ‘deep reproach’ to him for causing a rift over Makarios between Church and State.74 At one stage, the British army in Cyprus had difficulties explaining to military personnel why the See of Canterbury had apparently gone ‘soft’ once more on the ‘evil scourge of terrorism’.75 While Fisher was accustomed to speaking his mind on British foreign policy – his interventions following Suez are another case in point – the Irish Roman Catholic silence on the Cyprus Question seems incongruous if placed in its wider context. The considerable coverage given to the plight of imprisoned Catholic clergymen behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtains – such as that of Cardinal Jo´zsef Mindszenty, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary, and the Croatian Catholic Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac – stands in stark contrast with the markedly sparse treatment given to Makarios’ exile. However, his deportation was a result of pro-Western rather than non-Western strategy and thus, in order to remain allied with them, silent acquiescence was required. As will be shown in the following chapter, this too was the official Irish government line. No denunciation was made by the second Inter-Party government following Makarios’ deportation. The analysis of the Irish Roman Catholic Church’s policy towards Cyprus exposes how traditional perceptions of these interests, as being in alignment with Irish majority public opinion, fell far short of the overwhelming realpolitik. The official response of an Irish minority Church, the Church of Ireland, was much more in line with the overwhelming majority of Irish Roman Catholics in its response to the Cyprus Question than that of the official approach by the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, which was simply a wall of silence. Rather than placing all of its eggs in the unionist basket by supporting Tory policy, the Church of Ireland chose to take an independent stance. Its criticism of the British government was unprecedented. Thus, its self-assuredly active response to the Cyprus ´ Corra´in’s recent claims that the Church Question reinforces Daithı´ O of Ireland during the 1950s was not ‘the alienated minority of caricature but . . . a confident one’.76 While the Standard was admittedly more influential than the Irish Catholic, its influence on

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Irish public opinion regarding the Cypriot conflict was negligible. This is, of course, in part due to the fact that it did not explicitly address the issue. In short, the Standard reflected the views of an independent Ireland, while the Irish Catholic perpetuated the insular antagonisms of an incomplete independence. Yet it is clear that the dominant Irish nationalist narrative, as contained in Irish Catholic editorials, and the similarities it invoked between Ireland and Cyprus, resonated far more powerfully in the Irish imagination than ecclesiastical concerns like Church unity which the Standard’s editorials emphasised. While the Irish Catholic Church’s silence on Cyprus was motivated by Vatican Cold War policy and Greek Orthodox– Catholic tensions, it was only made feasible by its nonmembership of larger ecclesiastical unions like the WCC and the CCIA. Thus, unlike the Church of Ireland, the level of pressure the Greek and Greek– Cypriot Orthodoxy could place on the Church was minimal. This ability to remain aloof is most palpable in its nonacknowledgement of the deportation of Archbishop Makarios and the response to the anti-Greek riots in Istanbul in September 1955. This investigation also shows the ambivalence, and at times acquiescence, shown by the Irish Catholic Church towards Irish nationalist sentiments as expressed in the Irish Catholic in the context of the Cyprus Question. It could have easily prevented the publication of these articles if it so wished. It certainly had enough authority to do so. The fact that it chose not to prohibit such articles at a time of rampant censorship and clerical heavy-handedness was a reflection of the tightrope the Church clergy, despite all its power, had to walk between adhering to Church doctrine and retaining the loyalty of its faithful. Of course, it also signifies that the Irish Catholic clergy were not totally disinterested in Irish reunification in the 1950s. Whether they really wanted Irish reunification, given all its possible ramifications for the Church’s power, is unknown. A more detailed study is urgently required to comparatively explore the Irish Catholic response to the Cyprus Question to decolonisation elsewhere in the postwar British, French and Portuguese Empires. Whatever Irish popular solidarity was shown to colonised peoples in the context of self-determination, it was rarely

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echoed in the pages of the Irish Catholic, with descriptions of Irish missionary activity in Asia and Africa largely appropriated from justificatory imperial discourse. Furthermore, it appears that within the Irish popular imagination, the exploitative elements of religious imperialism were subdued by presumptions of Ireland’s spiritual empire ‘as the antithesis of an imperialism driven by mercenary greed and a hunger of power’.77 In the case of Cyprus, Cold War contingencies meant that the modus vivendi between Ireland’s spiritual empire and British imperial policy continued to prove an enduring alliance.

Plate 1 Cyprus, Sir Garnet Wolseley holding a reception in the Konak, Nicosia at the Turkish Festival of Bairim. Source: Illustrated London News, 2 November 1878.

Plate 2 ‘Thirty-three years I’ve been here, man and boy, and nobody cares a tinker’s damn about me now. I’m clearing out, so I am!’ Source: Dublin Opinion, June 1955.

Plate 3 ‘As one woman to another, I think you’re making the same mistake with Cyprus that you made with me.’ Source: Dublin Opinion, June 1956.

Plate 4 ‘A plague on both your houses!’ Source: Dublin Opinion, August, 1956.

CHAPTER 5 IRISH UN FOREIGN POLICY AND THE CYPRUS QUESTION

England is our most important External Affair. Desmond Fitzgerald1 The Cyprus Question was first internationalised on 22 August 1954 when, under Prime Minister Papagos’ orders, the Greek UN Ambassador Chrestos Palamas requested that it be placed on the forthcoming UN General Assembly agenda. Although it failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority vote in order to be included, the Department of External Affairs in Dublin showed immediate interest.2 On 27 August, department officials decided it was necessary to open a new file, entitled ‘Re-union of Cyprus with Greece.’3 The file description is telling; Cyprus had never been part of Greece, a fact Iveagh House officials were well aware of. It shows how, from the outset, the official Irish interest in (as opposed to action on) the Cyprus Question was driven by the supreme Irish national interest – the reunification of Ireland. Ending the so-called ‘partition’ of Cyprus under the auspices of the UN might – just might – pave the way for a similar Irish outcome. In an effort to end its postwar isolationism, which was a direct consequence of its wartime neutrality, Ireland applied for UN membership in 1946. It was blocked each successive year from then until finally gaining admission in December 1955 as part of a

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16-nation ‘package deal’ during a brief thaw in Soviet – American relations. The ‘sore thumb’ policy, whereby Irish partition was brought up in unsuitable and irrelevant contexts, had been abandoned by the time of Ireland’s UN entry. This is not to say that the Irish UN delegation did not bring up partition – indeed it did. In many cases – those of Germany, Vietnam, Korea, West New Guinea and Algeria, for example – Ireland naturally argued against partition as a political expedient to resolve conflicts, and did so in a reserved and considered manner.4 What about Cyprus? This case was seen as being most similar to that of Ireland in terms of territorial claims. Although Irish national interests would remain inextricably linked to those of Britain, behind the scenes the second Inter-Party and Fianna Fa´il governments used the Cyprus Question as the yardstick by which to measure potential attitudes towards the raising of Irish partition at the UN.

I. The Second Inter-Party Government, UN Membership and the Cyprus Question On 2 June 1954, John Costello of Fine Gael returned to power as Taoiseach of the second Inter-Party government. While the sore thumb policy was abandoned, with Ireland anticipating eventual UN entry, the Greek request resulted in a flurry of Inter-Party diplomatic activity. Conor Cruise O’Brien, who would become one of the Irish UN delegation’s most outspoken critics of British policy in Cyprus, was then a Counsellor at the Irish Embassy in Paris. He noted that ‘the present Cyprus situation is not unlike the pre-1918 Irish situation – Turkish (Orange) minority and all – and its eventual solution may be similar’.5 On 14 December 1955, at the Tenth UN session, Ireland finally gained UN membership. Now British officials in Dublin, London and New York began keeping a close eye on the Irish government’s attitude to the Cyprus Question. The early signs were auspicious as Costello was clearly apprehensive of UN membership, reluctant to become involved in anything else that could potentially cause a headache for the vulnerable Inter-Party government. With a stagnant

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economy, the government was already in jeopardy, given the electorate’s rising dissatisfaction with growing unemployment and persistent emigration. In November 1955, a month before Ireland was accepted into the UN, Ambassador Clutterbuck claimed there was ‘one point’ on which Costello ‘was greatly relieved, namely that it now seemed very unlikely that Ireland would be elected in 1955 to membership of the United Nations’.6 Immediately after Ireland’s acceptance, British FO officials raised concerns that Irish partition could come up but appeared not overly anxious. In FO minutes dated 30 December 1955, F.A.K. Harrison confidently stated that if partition was raised, ‘we have a very sound case, and if the Irish raise the issue they may expose themselves to counter-attack in regard to their failure to curb I.R.A. activities’.7 R.S. Scrivener of the FO saw some hope in the fact that although the application, once made, must stand, Costello’s ‘personal view remained unchanged’.8 Costello saw Ireland’s entry as a troublesome business. He had no desire to raise the sore thumb of Irish partition at the UN, much to the relief of Scrivener, who asserted that this reluctance was ‘an encouraging indication of Irish level-headedness.’9 According to Scrivener, Costello envisaged ‘all kinds of things which they would much prefer to keep out of and he could imagine all kinds of difficulties arising’.10 The Cyprus Question was one such instance. British fears were also mitigated by the appointment of Frederick Boland as the Irish UN Ambassador, given that he was, as Scrivener accurately described him, ‘exceptionally anglophile’.11 An experienced civil servant, Boland was well respected in his former post as Irish Ambassador to the Court of St James. On 27 February, Robin Jasper, attached to the UK delegation in New York, met Boland, who was still in London, to discuss Irish UN issues.12 Jasper informed Sir Saville Garner, Deputy Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the CRO, that ‘as he [Boland] well knew (and here he gave a disarming smile which I took to refer to Partition) the Republic’s interests in the United Nations were comparatively limited. They were centred mainly on Europe and North America.’13 Boland told Jasper that he thought – and believed his Minister shared his view – that their relations with the UK, the US and Canada ‘must always come first . . .

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trade tradition and long-term interest combined to make this so’.14 Jasper believed Boland realised that the Irish delegation ‘will be extremely dependent on the United Kingdom Delegation if it is to perform effectively at New York. I am certain he also realises that this will only be possible on certain terms.’15 While Boland was plainly over-egging the pudding, Jasper was astonishingly naı¨ve about the Irish government’s capacity for unpredictability. After all, Costello had taken everyone by surprise in 1948 when he announced his decision to leave the Commonwealth. Had Jasper also forgotten about Irish neutrality during World War II? The more pragmatically minded Clutterbuck advised that, ‘the more we can help the Irish at this early stage by taking them into our confidence and treating them as trusted friends, the greater the response we are likely to get from them’.16 In Ireland, however, the tide of public opposition to British policy in Cyprus was turning fast. The execution of EOKA members Karaolis and Dimitriou on 10 May 1956 reignited latent republican sentiments. It was during the same week, 40 years previously, that the leaders of the failed Easter Rising of 1916 had been executed. Two weeks later, Ivor Pink, Assistant Under-Secretary of State in charge of UN affairs at the FO, met with Boland. Pink stated what many British officials obviously feared, that Ireland would come to enjoy an influence at the UN ‘out of proportion’ to their size or military importance.17 At this juncture, Pink enquired into the possible policy on Cyprus to be adopted by the Irish delegation. Following the executions in Cyprus, Boland’s reply was of little surprise to Pink: ‘I said there was very strong public feeling in Ireland about what was being done in Cyprus and, with our history, it was impossible that it should be otherwise.’18 Gurth Kimber, the British Charge´ d’Affaires in Dublin, warned that ‘there is no reason to believe that there will be any less of this as Cyprus comes up once more at an Assembly [of the UN] . . . and, politicians being what they are in this country, there is reason to fear that they may find themselves being forced to be somewhat unhelpful to us’.19 The balancing of Irish government interests between the realpolitik of the Anglo– Irish relationship and the appeasement of Irish public

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opinion was seen by Kimber as ‘the national genius for eating its cake and having it’.20 Therefore, he did expect ‘some trouble’, but with the appointment of Boland came the hope of moderation, ‘instead of some political fire-brand’.21 He concluded that, in any event, ‘“twisting the lion’s tail” is still a popular pastime not least in this country and we must expect to bear with it as best we may’.22 Clutterbuck agreed: ‘Looking ahead’, he said, ‘given the overwhelming Irish political obsession with Partition and her “historic wrongs,” it would be unrealistic to assume the Government will be able to resist indefinitely the pressures that are likely to develop for the ventilation of the national grievance’.23 But given the rising public interest, Minister for External Affairs Liam Cosgrave did a remarkable job of resisting any discussion on Cyprus in the Da´il for as long as he did, avoiding predictable jobs by the Opposition over his lack of enthusiasm for an active anti-partitionist policy. Like Costello, Cosgrave was a cautious and conservative politician. Although he came from a revolutionary background – his father, W.T. Cosgrave, had participated in the Easter Rising – he strongly disliked the school of oratory which he called ‘dying for Ireland’, and together with his dislike of the international ‘antics’ of the First Inter-Party, he was an easy target for criticism.24 Though the deportation of Archbishop Makarios to the Seychelles on 9 March 1956 was met with shock and outrage in Ireland, Cosgrave was silent. Independent TD Jack McQuillan, formerly of Clann na Poblachta and a future collaborator with Noe¨l Browne in the National Progressive Democrats in 1958, asked whether a resolution had been received in his department from any local authority in Ireland condemning the action of the British government, and, ‘if so, what action has been taken, or is proposed to be taken in the matter’.25 Cosgrave replied that, although four resolutions had been received from various local authorities protesting against the deportation, ‘no action had been, or was proposed to be taken by the Government as it was believed that no useful purpose would be served by intervention with the British government on this matter’.26 In this instance, his private views remained as such.27

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Cosgrave was also quiet following the executions of Karaolis and Dimitriou. The following letter from one member of the public to the Irish Press is indicative of the wider frustration felt at Cosgrave’s stonewalling. Written by one Brian MacGiolla, it stressed that ‘although the methods of Britain’s campaign of suppression [in Cyprus] are familiar to our fathers and for a large part, to the members of Da´il E´ireann’, and ‘though Egypt has made known her intention of supporting Greece if she takes her problem to the UNO, we remain silent though part of our island is severed forcibly from us by the same cruel forces struggling to hold together a crumbling Empire’.28 He continued with a line of argument on Cyprus that must have resonated with much of the wider Irish public, who saw Ireland’s national interests as very different from what the Inter-Party government presumed them to be: Though the nation refused to support John Redmond’s policy of ‘help Britain help us,’ we now find ourselves more solidly behind her in her efforts to crush the nationalist spirit of small nations friendly to us. That is exactly what our silence in this matter would suggest and I think our leaders should wake up from their political slumbers and save the country from slipping back into the lap of the United Kingdom, which holds no friendship for us.29 Two months later during a Finance Committee debate, McQuillan found a way to use Cyprus to illustrate this political subservience: As far as areas like North Africa and Cyprus are concerned, I have heard nothing so far from the Government or from the Minister for External Affairs deploring the treatment meted out to members of religious communities in Cyprus and the leaders of the Church there, be it the Greek Orthodox Church or any other Church. No criticism and no protest were made by this State or by the Minister’s Department. Is it because we are so closely associated with Great Britain that we are afraid to tread on her toes? Is it because we are afraid to pull the lion’s

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tail that we are afraid to make a protest about the scandalous and horrifying manner in which human beings in Cyprus and North Africa are being treated at the present time? Because it does not take place behind the Iron Curtain, we have not the courage of our convictions and we do not condemn it.30 Although individuals from Fianna Fa´il such as General Secretary Thomas Mullins wished Makarios ‘goodwill and success’, and this was no doubt a reflection of what many in the party were privately thinking, Clann na Poblachta was the only party to publicly extend its sympathy to the people of Cyprus in asserting their right to national self-determination.31 Following the Da´il debate, Clutterbuck, in his report to the CRO, stated that, ‘it was clear the Deputies were very conscious of the problem of Cyprus, more particularly in relation to their own problem of Partition’.32 The danger, as he saw it, was the pressure on the government from ‘the rather wide lunatic fringe in Ireland’.33 Of course, this ‘lunatic fringe’ still included Irish politicians such as Sea´n MacBride. While he was not a member of the second Inter-Party government, he still supported it as a Clann na Poblachta TD until withdrawing his backing in 1957. Even so, the FO was cautiously optimistic. All the signs were pointing to the Inter-Party government taking a moderate line on Cyprus. C.E. Diggines of the FO noted the ‘relative caution and indeed sanity’ of references by Cosgrave and Costello on the Republic’s forthcoming line at the UN.34 He informed Jasper of the UK delegation in New York that ‘the almost infinite capacity for political tight-rope walking’ was to be expected, as was ‘Cosgrave’s hopes of reconciling various obviously irreconcilable aims’.35 Regardless of these inconsistencies and despite ‘their audience’s known demand for a quota of references to Partition in all public speeches’, Diggines remarked that ‘neither Minister said anything to make us abandon our hopes of rational behaviour by the Irish Republican Delegation’.36 Given that communism, the big bogey among Irish politicians in the mid-1950s, remained a threat in Cyprus and the Greek civil war was still fresh in their memories, opposition criticism was not as

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persistent as it could have been. More importantly, the Inter-Party government’s reticence on Cyprus was also one way of limiting discussion on Irish partition. It could always apportion blame for the economy to the previous government’s policies. With no clear antipartitionist policy, Da´il debate on Irish partition was the real Achilles’ heel of Costello’s government.

II. The Formation and Execution of Liam Cosgrave’s Irish UN Policy On 3 July 1956, during a Da´il debate on the Department of External Affairs’ Estimates, Cosgrave had outlined three principles that would direct Ireland’s UN activities.37 Until then, it was questioned whether Ireland even had a foreign policy. The relatively inexperienced Cosgrave had Boland write the speech for him. Firstly, Ireland would maintain ‘scrupulous fidelity’ to the obligations of the UN Charter. Secondly, Ireland would try to maintain a position of independence to ‘avoid becoming associated with particular blocs as far as possible’. Thirdly, Ireland would act in the UN to preserve the ‘Christian civilisation of which we are a part’ – to prevent the spread of communist power and influence. Cosgrave recognised that Ireland ‘belonged to the great community of states made up of the United States, Canada and Western Europe’. Of course, the third principle was in conflict with the second, but it allowed Ireland freedom of manoeuvre when walking the UN political tightrope. In other words, it was another case of having its cake and eating it. Cosgrave acknowledged the difficulty in reconciling these two principles, admitting that it ‘may not always prove easy and straightforward in practice’. With a growing demand for self-determination by subject peoples around the world, he said this would make it ‘impossible for us, with our history, to regard this general development otherwise than with sympathy’.38 While Cosgrave claimed Ireland would be ‘sympathetic’ towards those seeking self-determination, this was clearly not the same thing as being supportive. Sympathy was free but a UN vote could be costly. When pressed by the Greek government, the Taoiseach gave

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no prior indication that the Irish delegation would support a Greek resolution. On 25 September 1956, Prime Minister Karamanlis sent a telegram to him stating that in order to explain the Greek official view, the Greek government had entrusted George Rhallis, Minister for Public Works and Communications, to visit Ireland as an ambassador on a ‘special mission’.39 The Taoiseach’s reply was noncommittal. He simply thanked the Prime Minister for his telegram and stated that he had asked the Irish Ambassador in London to get in touch with the Greek Ambassador.40 A few weeks later, Clutterbuck informed the CRO that he had spoken to Secretary of the Department of External Affairs Sean Murphy, who had replaced Sean Nunan. Murphy said ‘that we could rest assured that there would be no question of his Government committing themselves in any way or of giving Rhallis any encouragement’.41 Clutterbuck added that ‘it had been made quite clear to them that the Irish role would of necessity be confined to listening only and that it would be improper for them to express any views pending opening of the General Assembly’.42 It was 7 November, three weeks prior to Cosgrave’s opening speech at the UN General Assembly, before a commitment was made by him on Irish policy towards the Cyprus Question at the UN. When pressed by MacBride, Cosgrave replied ‘the Government will approach the question of Cyprus in the light of the strong attachment of the Irish people to the principle of national selfdetermination’.43 When asked by the Taoiseach (who obviously knew the answer of his Minister) if Ireland would vote for the inclusion of the Cyprus issue on the UN agenda, Cosgrave replied that if it appeared in that form, ‘the answer is yes.’44 At the Eleventh UN General Assembly, which convened on 12 November 1956, much to the relief of the UK delegation, Cosgrave, advised by the more experienced Boland, gave a very moderate speech with little reference to Cyprus. The often contradictory principles of Irish anti-colonialism and anti-communism, particularly when applied to the Cyprus case, were clear: ‘It has been something of a fashion in imperial countries recently to equate independence movements in the colonies with Communism. It is true that Communists always try to exploit such movements’,

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Cosgrave declared.45 He then went on to cite Cyprus as an example. The only – and politically necessary – reference to Irish partition was made when discussing the Israel– Arab dispute and, in doing so, he stated his aversion to the use of physical force to end partition. It seems that British officials were tolerant to Irish partitionist references as long as they were moderate and, to their relief, the partition question had not become the ‘King Charles’ head’ of the Irish delegation.46 The UK Ambassador to the UN, Sir Pierson Dixon, declared Cosgrave’s speech to be ‘by far the best yet heard in the general debate’.47 Diggines noted that Cosgrave’s speech ‘attracted much favourable comment’.48 Lord Lothian of the UK delegation noted his speech was ‘of great sincerity and considerable depth’.49 According to him, Cosgrave’s remarks on partition and colonialism were ‘just about as moderate as one could have expected’.50 He added, ‘I think his advisers (and in particular Boland) deserve considerable credit.’51 The Irish delegation had got away lightly this time. Consideration of the Suez and Hungarian crises in the UN left no time for discussion on Cyprus. As Boland saw it, there had been other fortunate consequences too: Although it may sound callous to say so in the context of such an immense and appalling tragedy, the Hungarian crisis afforded us, as a new member participating in the work of the Assembly for the first time, just the kind of opportunity we needed. It gave us at once an issue on which we could, if not play a leading role, at least display some degree of initiative and leadership. It also helped us to establish, much more quickly than we could have otherwise done, close and confident relations with the Delegations here who have the same sort of ideals as ourselves and who think as we do.52 However, Boland was soon envisaging the difficulties ahead for the Irish UN delegation. It was expected that Cyprus would be raised in the First (Political) Committee when the UN reconvened in early 1957. On 11 January, Boland, in conversation with Lord Lothian of the UK delegation, professed that his delegation would ‘probably feel

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constrained’ to make a partition speech when the Cyprus Question was next under discussion.53 But there was another complication. MacBride had been invited to the UN by the Greek government. On 14 January, he flew out to New York to advise Evangelos Averoff, the Greek Foreign Minister, on the question of Cyprus, which was due to be raised in the First Committee on 18 February. Boland was concerned. MacBride’s hostility to Britain, if reflected in the Greek address, could have consequences for the embryonic Irish– British UN relationship. Boland had stressed to Ambassador Dixon that his government had tried to dissuade MacBride. Boland himself had warned his staff not to have official dealings with him.54 Naturally, his own party’s committee members unanimously supported his acceptance of the Greek invitation in the hope that some positive press attention might help rekindle the party’s dying embers.55 Dixon maintained that Boland was ‘clearly embarrassed by this development, not least because of the complications it might cause for his own delegation when the Cyprus item comes up’.56 Contrary to Boland’s fears, some FO officials saw the presence of MacBride as a possible advantage for the UK delegation. Scrivener of the FO noted that ‘this is likely to be to our advantage. Mr. MacBride usually goes much too far.’57 W.R. Haydon, a public relations officer at the FO, agreed with him. According to Haydon, ‘this development might work to our advantage vis-a`-vis our relations with the Irish Delegation if they are genuinely embarrassed by Mr MacBride’s presence.’58 Others were clearly less enthusiastic. John Chadwick of the CRO wrote to Robin Jasper in New York informing him of MacBride’s background, ‘to give you some idea of what you may be in for’.59 Chadwick hoped that this outline of MacBride’s past would be ‘enough to convince you that the Greeks have put their hands on a real and very able troublemaker’.60 With MacBride now in the picture, Chadwick felt that ‘the shades of Partition are lengthening’.61 He warned that, ‘given his patronage to “Saor Uladh”’, the splinter paramilitary group of the IRA, ‘his attitude towards the use of physical force upon Partition is unequivocal’.62 Speaking on the fourth day of the First Committee meeting on Cyprus, Boland said that the ‘fatal expedient’ of partition should be

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avoided at all costs and that its prevention would ostensibly be of advantage to the security of the West.63 ‘As an Irishman’, he declared, ‘I venture to say to the people of Cyprus, the people of Turkey, the people of Great Britain, not partition – anything but that.’64 Boland also compared Ireland with Cyprus in raising the point on how Greek and Turkish passions in the dispute may have been intentionally inflamed, by persons who short-sightedly put their trust in the maxim ‘divide and rule’. This was rather a bold move for Boland, considering how important he considered his delegation’s relationship with their UK counterparts: I cannot help recalling that, in my own country, at a time when a peaceful settlement with our great neighbour seemed near, certain politicians deliberately set themselves to work upon arousing the fears, and inflaming the passions, of a minority – in this case the Protestant minority in the northern part of Ireland, many of whose members belong to a political institution known as the Orange Order . . . whether the same kind of calculation has been at work in Cyprus, I cannot say.65 Notably, he received very little criticism, and much praise, from British UN and FO officials in spite of his mischievous reference to the ‘Protestant minority’ incorrectly implying that Protestants constituted a minority in Northern Ireland at the time of partition. Diggines reported that Boland ‘spoke most moderately in the Cyprus debate with the minimum allusion to partition’.66 P.M. Crosthwaite of the UK delegation admitted that Boland, when discussing Cyprus, ‘from time to time had stuck pins into us where they [the Irish UN delegation] knew we would feel it’, but he felt, on the whole, that ‘things had gone as well as we could have expected’.67 But for Crosthwaite, Boland’s evident competence was also a potential danger for the UK delegation: ‘were he instructed to make things difficult for us, he could equally be a most efficient thorn in our flesh’.68 Crosthwaite’s fellow UK delegate, Robin Jasper, thought Boland was a ‘brilliant draftsman’ and lauded the Irish delegation’s ‘restraint and tact in introducing references to Partition’.69

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According to Jasper, the Irish UN delegation was ‘the most successful of the new members’, so much so that their performance at the Eleventh Session had ‘certainly enhanced the international reputation of the Republic’.70

III. ‘Bloody Mavericks’? The Return of Fianna Fa´il Fianna Fa´il’s success at the Irish general election on 5 March was, as Joseph Lee noted, ‘more a vote of no confidence in other parties than of confidence in Fianna Fa´il’.71 MacBride had forced the general election by withdrawing Clann na Poblachta’s support from the Inter-Party government in protest to the conservative economic policies of Fine Gael Minister for Finance Gerard Sweetman, and at Costello’s hostility to the IRA’s Border Campaign, which had begun in December the previous year. In what was to be de Valera’s last Cabinet, he reappointed Frank Aiken, a former IRA Chief-of Staff during the Irish civil war and one of his more pro-Axis ministers during World War II. Aiken, now arguably ‘the closest person in the cabinet to de Valera’, modelled his UN approach on the autonomous role played by de Valera at the League of Nations in the 1930s.72 In other words, Aiken would place a stronger emphasis on the ‘second principle’ as outlined by his predecessor – independence. Conor Cruise O’Brien, who shared, if not influenced, Aiken’s outlook, assumed a more visible role at the UN and was now in charge of the Political Section of the Department of External Affairs, which assumed responsibility for UN affairs. While Cosgrave had turned largely to Boland for advice on how to translate his views into effective action, Aiken now turned to O’Brien. A week after de Valera returned as Taoiseach, he sent a copy of The Irish Republic by Dorothy Macardle to Archbishop Makarios, essentially ‘an unwavering and well-written apologia for de Valera and his cause’.73 Signed by de Valera, the book’s inscription read, ‘To His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Cyprus, Mgr Makarios, with my sincere wishes from somebody who understands and sympathises.’74 However, it is clear that his intention was to keep the inscription private. The book had been forwarded to the Ethnarchy Office in

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London by Charalombous David, a Greek –Cypriot economics student at TCD. David had close links with the Ethnarchy Office, having previously secured an interview with Makarios, which featured in the college’s student newspaper, Trinity News.75 The day after the inscription to Makarios was printed in the Irish Times, David wrote to de Valera to apologise for ‘the unfortunate publication of your kind message’.76 He explained that he had been approached by an Irish Times reporter who ‘seemed to know all about the gift’ and gave the reporter the wording of the inscription on the ‘honest understanding’ that he would not publish a word without the Taoiseach’s prior approval.77 On 10 April 1957, de Valera’s Personal Secretary Marie O’Kelly, who replaced Kathleen O’Connell upon her death in 1956, replied to David: ‘he quite understands that you were not at fault. He would like you to know that the Irish Times did not ask his permission, nor did they refer to any person regarding the matter in this office.’78 It was, of course, great publicity for the enosis campaign – perhaps too juicy for David to let slide? De Valera’s exoneration of David may well have been a tacit recognition that he would have done the same in 1919. Less than a month after sending the book to Makarios, de Valera received a thank you letter back from the Archbishop, claiming the book would be read with ‘particular interest’, and sent his good wishes to the people of Ireland, ‘whose support for our struggle for liberty we greatly appreciate’.79 To de Valera’s confusion, he also thanked him for a supposed offer to visit Dublin. Makarios, who declined the offer for ‘work reasons’, mentioned that the invitation had been made by the Representative of the Republic of Ireland to ´ Nualla´in, Assistant Private the UN. Correspondence from N.S. O Secretary to the Taoiseach, to Roisı´n Nic Dhongusa, Assistant Secretary to the Minister for External Affairs, reveals that neither de Valera nor Aiken knew anything about this.80 When Aiken asked Boland about it, he said there was ‘no foundation whatsoever’ for the ‘absurd suggestion’ and was ‘unable to imagine how it arose.’81 The most likely explanation, as understood by Boland and O’Brien, was that Makarios had been invited by Sea´n MacBride, who imagined him, to Boland’s horror, to be the Irish Permanent Representative.82

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While the FO had been unduly anxious before the Eleventh Session, they were now, given the sitting government’s predilections, overly optimistic on the line that would be taken at the next UN session. The reassurances given by Boland were a strong factor in their assessment. They clearly trusted him – not a particularly large leap of faith to make given how frequently he aired his pro-British leanings. It may also explain why his successor in London, Con Cremin, was also well trusted. But Cremin was no Anglophile, he was strongly pro-American – a mistaken judgement the recently retired Permanent Under-Secretary of the FO, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, may well have made. Kirkpatrick revealed to a rather shocked Cremin when he visited him in June ‘that he was the author of the suggestion that, with a view to finding a solution to the problem, Cyprus be partitioned’.83 Kirkpatrick, after all, was a Roman Catholic from Co. Kildare. He told Cremin that the seed of the idea of partition was apparently put into his mind by the former Yugoslav Ambassador in London, Mr Vladimir Velebit, when the two of them were discussing Cyprus one evening. Velebit allegedly replied that a solution in Cyprus might not be so easy unless each of the parties could get a ‘bun’.84 The Trieste solution met this requirement in as much as Yugoslavia got one zone, Italy got another, and the AngloAmericans got the advantage of being able to withdraw their troops. Bearing in mind this advice, Kirkpatrick felt that partition might offer a real hope: the Greeks would have most of the island, the Turks would have a little of it, and Britain could expect to secure the necessary military facilities in the Turkish portion. Cremin told him that he was rather surprised to hear that partition was regarded as either a wise or feasible solution and stressed the obvious, that the Irish Government was ‘of course, against the idea’ as it was ‘an unnatural method of solving a political problem’.85 Cremin also resented the suggestion that, by being adopted in a number of cases, such a method could become an acceptable policy for overcoming political problems. Kirkpatrick remarked that he, too, regarded partition as a poor expedient, but that it seemed to offer the ‘best possibilities in this particular case’.86 He considered it ‘not impossible’ to partition Cyprus by undertaking certain transfers of

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population – involving the removal of 60,000 Turks from various points of the island to a particular area and the removal from that area of an equivalent number of Greeks.87 In later discussions with Lord Radcliffe, the latter conceded that, if it were absolutely necessary, partition could become ‘a feasible proposition’.88 Despite the fact that the idea of the partition of Cyprus was now being bandied about so frequently, particularly by the increasingly intransigent Turkish government, Boland remained, to all appearances, confident that the Irish delegation’s line would be moderate, informing Pink at the FO that Cosgrave’s three guiding principles still stood despite the change in government.89 However, he already knew that Aiken and O’Brien were anxious to press the issue of Irish partition at the next UN session. The previous month, Aiken had instructed Con Cremin to open discussions on partition with the Dublin-born Catholic Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, Permanent Under-Secretary of the CRO. While the Anglo–Irish relationship remained paramount, the Fianna Fa´il government was arguably under more pressure than its predecessors to appease Irish public opinion at the UN. Lip service by the ‘Republican Party’ on the ‘national grievance’ at the UN General Assembly was now unavoidable if the partition of Cyprus was raised, a move considered more imperative for the longevity of the Fianna Fa´il government than any conciliatory speech mollifying the UK delegation. Rather than the close alliance with Western groups that Boland had hoped for, an independent, activist stance was made apparent from the beginning of the Twelfth Session. This change of agenda, which often saw Ireland in alliance with anti-colonial and on occasion communist groupings, was made manifest when Ireland voted on the inclusion of a discussion on the question of Chinese representation at the UN in September 1957. Also, O’Brien’s speech on Cyprus in the First Committee on 11 December 1957 removed any doubt over Ireland’s reduced dependency on the British UN delegation, with his warning that the principle of self-determination be studied against the background of the fact that the United Kingdom was established originally ‘in conscious and deliberate disregard of the known wishes of one of the so-called partners, the people of Ireland’.90

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However, Irish national interests also determined what O’Brien omitted from his Cyprus speech. No remarks were made by him on the British emergency measures in Cyprus, in particular internment without trial and the alleged human rights abuses of political detainees there. For all the analogies drawn between Ireland of the past and Cyprus of that time, the fact remained that, legally, a state of emergency also existed in Ireland from 8 July 1957 until 14 March 1959. In order to deal with the Border Campaign, Fianna Fa´il brought back into force special powers of indefinite detention without trial under the Offences against the State (Amendment) Act 1940. It could only do so legally under the ECHR by claiming there was an emergency threatening the life of the nation. Though never explicitly proclaimed as such in public by any member of de Valera’s government, its reintroduction led to the arrest and detention without trial of over 200 suspected members of the IRA in the Curragh Camp, Co. Kildare. There was also an additional complicating factor. One of the Curragh internees, Gerard Lawless, had brought his case to the ECtHR a month before O’Brien’s address. Lawless, a suspected IRA member who had been arrested on 11 July 1957, had his application to the ECmHR (European Commission of Human Rights) transmitted on 18 November 1957. The case before the ECtHR centred on Lawless’ claim that the Irish government, by his detention without trial, had breached Articles 5, 6 and 7 of the ECHR, providing rights to liberty and security, fair trial and the principle of ‘no punishment without law’ respectively. As the next chapter will show, the British were already in the dock in Strasbourg with two Greek applications, cases 176/56 and 299/57 – now Ireland was too. Owing to the Lawless case, the Irish delegation was hardly in a position to comment on the alleged maltreatment of detainees in Cyprus. The UK delegation was bitterly disappointed at the Irish contribution, with Dixon reporting it as ‘one of the most regrettable features of the proceedings.’91 Though disappointed that O’Brien ‘had approached the problem from an entirely parochial point of view’, Boland remained, in the eyes of the UK delegation, the consummate diplomat.92 The general view of the UK delegation appeared to have changed little the following year at the Twelfth

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Session of the General Assembly. Boland’s interventions were described ‘as witty and competent as ever’, while O’Brien’s speech on Cyprus was considered ‘obnoxious’.93

IV. Irish Partition, the Cyprus Question and the Thirteenth UN Session On 24 January 1958, O’Brien set down a memorandum on the question of raising the partition issue formally in the UN after discussing the matter with Aiken the week before. The memorandum as it stood represented ‘only the views of the Political Section’ of the Department of External Affairs headed by O’Brien.94 In it, he elaborated on why the case of Cyprus at the UN, rather than any other territorial dispute, was the litmus test for the Irish delegation: Broadly speaking the Cyprus case is the most similar to ours of all the major political claims because Greece and ourselves are European nations with territorial claims. Both, in the measure that the claims are regarded as ‘anti-colonial,’ can expect support from the more militant among the Afro-Asians but we cannot count, as say Indonesia or Algeria can do, on the very strong and general Afro-Asian support which is generated by any struggle between white and coloured people.95 He advised that if the Irish delegation were to make such a move in the next Assembly, and make it effectively, the decision needed to be taken before the end of February. The new Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, replacing Sean Murphy, was the former Ambassador to London, Con Cremin. He as well as Boland had been sent copies of the memorandum. While O’Brien waited for their replies, he pressed ahead with the issue. By 7 February 1958, after discussions with Aiken, O’Brien asked Eoin MacWhite, First Secretary of the Political Section, to prepare a memorandum covering the technical steps that they would need to take to press ahead with the formal UN request. It seems at this stage that O’Brien felt it was a real possibility. He wrote to Cremin informing him of the steps

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MacWhite was preparing, which he claimed ‘we will need to take once we decide to go ahead with this [author’s italics]’.96 It was the Cyprus case at the UN that MacWhite examined more closely than any other to find pertinent precedents for the Irish resolution.97 For him, the most important lesson to be learned from it was the argument the British initially used to prevent its discussion: The argument against inclusion of Partition in any shape or form will certainly be based on Article 2(7) (domestic jurisdiction) and we should have to prepare a very complete brief on all relevant 2(7) decisions in the Assembly. Another point which the Cyprus case indicates may be a possible British counter if they decide they are beaten on the agenda inclusion is the possibility that they might come back with a counter item, e.g. on IRA attacks.98 On 17 February, Boland sent Cremin, MacWhite and O’Brien copies of a memorandum containing his objections against bringing up the question formally at the UN. For Boland, who was more reflexively pro-British than he was pro-American, it was out of the question that he would agree under any circumstances that the issue should be formally raised: The idea that the United Nations is a tribunal to which nations can resort in the confidence of obtaining justice is a pure illusion. The UN is simply a den of power-politics in which small, independent countries such as ours are at a complete disadvantage in conflict with countries like Britain . . . Members of the UN don’t judge questions on their merits. They vote purely in accordance with their own interests . . . The idea, therefore, that by going to the UN, we can get an expression of world moral opinion on the justice or injustice of Partition is a complete illusion.99 On 21 February, Cremin forwarded Boland’s memorandum to Aiken. He asked that Aiken examine it carefully in light of the strong objections advanced by Boland.100 As a result of Boland’s exposition

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of the harsh realities of UN diplomacy – as O’Brien well knew them to be – it was decided in Ireland’s best interests not to put forward a request to place it on the forthcoming UN agenda. In light of O’Brien’s record at the UN – though obviously unaware of his efforts to formally raise the issue of partition at the UN – Sir Alexander Clutterbuck was far more realistic in his predictions on the expected Irish approach to the Cyprus Question at the next UN session. In a conversation with CRO Assistant UnderSecretary of State Arthur Snelling, Clutterbuck said such was the strength of Irish public opinion he regarded hostility by the Irish representatives as ‘virtually inevitable’.101 But he was not overly pessimistic either: ‘after all by the same token the Indians are on our side, so Kashmir perhaps helps us, as the Black and Tans hinder us, and the two can perhaps be regarded as cancelling each other out’.102 On 1 December 1958, at the Thirteenth General Assembly in New York, the First Committee began its discussions on the Cyprus Question. Again, it was O’Brien who would speak for the Irish delegation. It was easily his most judicious exposition on the Cyprus issue and, notably, it contained no reference to Irish partition. Despite being critical of British plans for Cyprus, his language on the whole was measured and certainly less confrontational than his previous performances, editorially described in the Irish Times as ‘sane and practical’.103 On 4 December, O’Brien urged the Committee, made up of 81 nations, to approve a ten-power resolution which called for respect for the ‘integrity’ of Cyprus, dismissing as ‘utterly destructive’ any proposal that would tend towards a division of the island.104 With the proposed UN resolution on Irish partition now shelved due to Boland’s advice, O’Brien refrained from mentioning Irish partition when discussing Cyprus. It may have been in the interests of the newly elected Fianna Fa´il party to raise Irish partition so explicitly at the Twelfth Session, but in the pursuit of the government’s national interests it was not considered necessary or wise to do so again. After all, O’Brien, representing the Irish delegation, had made his, and thus Ireland’s, views very clear the year before. The Irish response was also circumscribed by the fact that de Valera had reintroduced internment without trial the previous July

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to deal with the Border Campaign. To protest against the same British emergency measure in Cyprus would leave the Irish open to charges of hypocrisy. This change of approach due to the above factors underscores how Irish political expediency, in the pursuit of national interests, was the driving force behind the Irish UN response to the Cyprus Question. The London– Zu¨rich Agreements were completed on 19 February 1959 with a proposed Cypriot constitution decided upon. Boland reported that when word of these got to the UN, ‘the degree of unanimity reached exceeded most people’s expectations’.105 According to him, given that most delegates believed that Britain ‘deliberately encouraged’ the opposition of the Turk– Cypriots to the island’s independence for her own purposes, ‘the Greco-Turkish agreement is hailed as a signal defeat for Britain’s favourite manoeuvre of “divide et impera”’ constituting, for Boland, ‘a suggestive precedent – for ourselves, perhaps, as well as others!’106 It remains unclear whether it was by coincidence or design that de Valera’s concept of external association – in the sense that it was not an absolute and would not subtract from republican integrity – manifested itself in an independent Cyprus.107 British officials did however look to the case of Ireland for possible instruction on how an independent Cyprus should be integrated into the Commonwealth. A week after the signing of the London– Zu¨rich Agreements in February 1959, the question of whether full Commonwealth Status could be given to Cyprus was already proving to be something of a headache for the CRO. At this juncture, Sir Henry Lintott, Acting Head of the CRO, thought there was a strong possibility that the Cypriots might seek some form of association or a continuance of certain benefits, as in the case of Ireland.108 The following month during a House of Commons debate, Patrick Maitland, Conservative MP and founder-member of ‘The Expanding Commonwealth Group’, asserted that citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus must be of ‘a very special kind’.109 He continued: It must be, in some ways, not unlike the citizenship of the Republic of Ireland in the sense that its citizens must be not

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foreign to Greece, not foreign to Turkey and not foreign to the Commonwealth. Whether such a position can be devised on the Irish model, I do not know, but it seems to me that something of that kind is necessary if people are to have absolute freedom of movement into and out of the Republic of Cyprus as of right, to trade and go about their commerce. But the business of being not foreign involves many legal complications, as those of us who have Irish constituents know very well.110 Two months later, Snelling at the CRO said the ‘Irish formula’ had been suggested but that the idea of ‘non-foreignness’ as advocated by Maitland had little appeal for other Tory ministers.111 The matter was eventually settled on 16 February 1961 when, by resolution of the House of Representatives, the Republic of Cyprus decided to join the Commonwealth from outside. In anticipating Ireland’s UN policy, Ambassador Clutterbuck accurately predicted that ‘a long course of eating its cake and having it has developed a taste for this attractive and nutritious diet, and we must expect that the Republic will do all in its power to maintain the regimen’.112 Although aspects of their contributions occasionally annoyed the British government, the Irish UN delegation did not jeopardise the Anglo– Irish relationship. In fact, the evidence shows that British officials clearly recognised that the Irish UN delegation would, at times, feel compelled to make reference to Irish partition in the context of Cyprus. Boland had done so without any British official retribution though, of course, they knew better than to alienate the pro-British Boland. For de Valera’s party, these partitionist utterances in New York served as a social palliative for the domestic polity during a time of republican resurgence, internment, high unemployment and persistent emigration. Although Aiken was criticised by Fine Gael for several of his initiatives at the UN, it is significant that there was no protest in the Da´il over the stance taken by O’Brien on the Cyprus Question. This gives an indication of the strength of Irish public support for Cyprus and hints at the private sentiments of many Irish politicians across the political divide.

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With so few Irish diplomatic memoirs available – O’Brien’s To Katanga and Back is a rare example of a firsthand account of Irish diplomats at work – it is hard to ascertain the private sentiments of others at the UN such as Frederick Boland.113 Mention of Cyprus in his archived papers is very sparse. What material they do contain is confined to official letters sent to the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs in Dublin. Although his professional views are clear – that Ireland should remain closely allied with the British and US delegations – in private he may have been more sympathetic to Cypriot self-determination than the official sources reveal. The Cyprus Question also provides a further example of how, in practice, the Irish UN delegation was split at times between a proWestern nucleus dominated by Boland and Cosgrave and an independent locus exemplified by O’Brien and Aiken. It illustrates the anxiety felt by British UN, FO and CRO officials and, despite the brave tightrope walk by O’Brien in December 1957, the constraints upon the Irish government in ending Irish partition using the Cyprus Question. The case of Cyprus may have provided an ideal peg upon which to hang the issue of Irish partition, but it also exposed the limits of the UN’s ability to solve disputes of this kind. While the Irish proposals to raise partition were influenced by the precedents set by the Cyprus Question at the UN, dropping partition out of the Irish diplomatic portfolio ‘was the price Ireland paid for playing in the world arena’,114 a price an increasing number in Ireland wanted it to pay. Though Ireland’s influence in the UN would wane in the 1960s as newly decolonised countries added their voices to the UN chambers, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjo¨ld’s appointment of O’Brien as his special representative in Katanga in June 1961 showed the extent to which Irish UN foreign policy had, at least in the eyes of some, recalibrated Anglo-Irish relations: Now the unsmiling Saxon surprised and diffident, greets an equal As, exemplary in the Congo, Rational in the U.N., We prospect the lands beyond Kipling’s setting sun.115

CHAPTER 6 IRELAND, CYPRUS AND THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Every year one of the Greek [Council of Europe] delegates used to make an impassioned speech about Cyprus. As his English was imperfect, he sought help from one of the Irish delegates. For several years he had the services of a conveniently antiBritish Irishman and his speeches read splendidly. Then came a change in the Irish delegation. Having to find a new helper, the Greek unluckily hit on a rather pro-British Irishman, who nevertheless agreed to look at the script. When he reached the passages about the British troops burning down the monasteries and raping the nuns, he protested: ‘You can’t say that – it’s not true!’ ‘True?’ exclaimed the astonished Greek. ‘It’s a speech!’1 With the ending of the League of Nations in 1946, the Council of Europe was Ireland’s only international political platform until its UN membership. Ireland’s departure from the Commonwealth in 1949, its refusal to join NATO and the Soviet veto on Irish UN membership until 1955 meant it was the sole arena where Ireland could be seen to be emerging from its isolationism after World War II. Ireland’s Atlanticist world view and its scepticism towards European economic integration in the postwar period did not stop it from being an active member in the Council of Europe.2 As one of the ten founding members of the Council on 5 May 1949, Sea´n MacBride

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was Ireland’s first delegate as Inter-Party government Minister for External Affairs, with the initiative to create a convention on human rights coming largely from him.3 A vocal advocate of the internationalisation of the protection of human rights, he was also undoubtedly interested in the potential repercussions it could have for Britain over the use of special powers in Northern Ireland. Between 1949 and 1953, he helped draft the Council’s Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, otherwise known as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which was finally ratified on 3 September 1953. Ireland was also the first state to make a declaration under Articles 25 and 46 of the ECHR, by which it recognised the jurisdiction of the ECHR and the right of individual petition, both important symbolic gestures. The initiative of the ECHR, piloted by MacBride, generated considerable British nervousness. Yet it was arguably the Council’s most enduring legacy during the 1950s. The fall of the first Inter-Party government in 1951 brought de Valera back to power and ushered in a change in Irish Council interests, with the External Affairs portfolio now in Frank Aiken’s hands. Their shared economic protectionist outlook ensured that, whilst acknowledging its value, their enthusiasm for the Council’s activities during the periods 1951 – 4 and 1957 –69 was considerably less than MacBride’s. Aiken’s dedication to the UN General Assembly from 1957 onwards, as shown in the previous chapter, inevitably meant a relegation of his Council of Europe responsibilities, now left in the veteran hands of Brendan O’Riordan. In December 1955, O’Riordan was accredited as the Irish Permanent Representative. Also in Strasbourg was the Fine Gael senator and lawyer James Crosbie, member and substitute member of the Irish delegation to the Consultative Assembly from 1949 until 1956. Although Clann na Poblachta was not part of the second Inter-Party Government, MacBride’s support of John A. Costello’s leadership ensured him a place as a substitute delegate from 1954 until 1956. MacBride’s return as the ‘father’ of the Irish Council of Europe membership was welcomed by many. As the Emergency unfolded in Cyprus, those ‘many’ included the Greek delegation.

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While Iveagh House officials remained cautiously silent on the Cyprus Question until the Twelfth UN Session in the autumn of 1956, Irish Council of Europe delegates Crosbie and MacBride played prominent roles in the resolution of the Cyprus Question. In the Council of Europe’s Consultative Assembly, MacBride and Crosbie gained intimate, if one-sided, knowledge of the Cyprus Question from their fellow Greek delegates. Crosbie, a member of the ECmHR from 1954 until 1960, played a key role as sub-commission member in the investigation of human rights abuses in Cyprus brought about by the Greek Inter-State Application 176/56 to the ECtHR. While Crosbie’s involvement did not exceed his Council of Europe duties as an Irish delegate, MacBride acted independently of the Council and of the Irish government. That the sub-commission’s efforts have never received substantial official recognition or consequent historical interest warrants attention. This selectivity, or rather lack of it, can be traced to four factors. Firstly, their combined efforts in the resolution of the Cypriot conflict highlighted and exacerbated Irish political difficulties. Quite predictably, the Cypriot insurgency served as anti-British fuel for Irish nationalist agitation and was particularly appropriated by those involved in the renewed Border Campaign. But perhaps more importantly, with the newly established ECtHR investigating British Emergency measures in Cyprus, including internment without trial, at a time when the Irish government had re-introduced the Offences against the State Act, it was the Irish government’s legal team who watched most closely. In many ways, Greece vs. UK (Case 176/56), the first interstate application to be declared admissible by the ECmHR (though settled by an extra-legal solution), set the precedent for the Gerard Lawless case against the Irish government – the first case to go before the European Court. Like the British government’s case under the Greek Inter-State Application 176/56, the Irish government would have to prove the existence and present extent of a public emergency threatening the life of the nation within the meaning of Article 15 of the Convention, which permitted certain derogations from the Convention.

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Secondly, given the sensitivity of case 176/56, Crosbie was prevented from making any official press statements regarding its details, and its proceedings, in Strasbourg and Nicosia, were held in camera. Thirdly, with Frank Aiken as Minister for External Affairs during the second Inter-Party government, there was a reorientation of official, press and public interest from Strasbourg to New York. Lastly, this coincided with the waning of MacBride’s national political influence. With his domestic demise, there were fewer opportunities for him to publicise his involvement with the Cyprus Question in Ireland. However, it did give him more time and energy to devote to the Cyprus Question, which he would not have had if seated in Leinster House. The Clann’s later withdrawal of support for the Irish government in early 1957, largely due to the government’s increasingly firm action against militant republicans, served to cement MacBride’s distance from Irish political life. His involvement with the Cypriot struggle was viewed with suspicion and apprehension by Fianna Fa´il and Fine Gael. Wary of his resolute republicanism, it received no official acknowledgement in the Da´il and very little journalistic coverage.

I. James Crosbie, Sea´n MacBride and the Consultative Assembly A physical force republican and a one-time IRA Chief-of-Staff until the enactment of the Irish Constitution (Bunreacht na hE´ireann) in 1937, MacBride’s sympathy for republicanism continued in spite of his move into constitutional politics, seen as dubious by many, as Clann na Poblachta founder in 1946. Called to the Bar in 1937, he made his name defending republican prisoners, and by 1955 his involvement in Irish republicanism and his drafting of the ECHR did much to favour him with the Greek Council of Europe delegates. Moreover, MacBride’s de´marche, which sought informal meetings of ministers to discuss current international events, and was eventually adopted by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann, attracted positive attention from the Greek delegates as it facilitated discussion of the Cyprus Question.4 Crosbie, too, had made his mark

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representing Ireland on the ECmHR from its first session in July 1954, a position he held until 1960.5 While MacBride had participated in the establishment of the ECHR, Crosbie, an already frequent defender of human rights in Eastern Europe, served as spokesman for the committee seeking the right of individual petition to the ECHR, and appealed for its further ratification in the Sixth Consultative Assembly in 1954.6 At the Seventh Session in July 1955, Crosbie returned to his pet theme, the ECHR, congratulating the coming into effect of the right of individual petition and declaring it ‘a major achievement which will be widely recognised as a milestone on the road to European unity’.7 He also stressed the need for a court, considering it ‘no use passing resolutions at Strasbourg if we are not sure that we are prepared to back up our votes by action at home’.8 While the ECtHR was set up under the ECHR in 1950, with individual petition admissible since 1955, its first case, Lawless vs. Ireland, was not held until 1959. Ireland’s instinctive sympathy with the Greek – Cypriot struggle to end British rule matched the larger mood of the Council’s moral role in defending human rights. Of course, this not only suited Ireland’s cautious economic and defensive foreign policies in the 1950s, it also matched the mood of the Irish political consciousness of delegates such as Crosbie and MacBride. Though the sore thumb policy was shelved by 1956, its relegation coincided with increased Greek efforts to discuss the Cyprus Question in the Consultative Assembly. At the Sixth Consultative Assembly in May 1954, with Crosbie present at the general political debate, Greek delegates Stamatis Mercouris and Anastassios Droulia raised the legitimacy of the 1950 Greek– Cypriot plebiscite, which had resulted in a 96 per cent vote in favour of enosis. Conservative MP Charles Fletcher-Cooke claimed that the Cyprus Question was ‘out of place in the European Assembly’, and that Cyprus was in any case ‘a vital link in Western defence which had to take priority.’9 With the UN refusal to place Cyprus on its agenda in 1954, and the London Conference of August 1955 designed to frustrate the Greek appeal to the UN, the Greek delegation pressed the Cyprus Question for inclusion in the Consultative Assembly debate in 1956.

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The remarks made by both MacBride and Crosbie on Suez, Hungary and Cyprus cemented Ireland’s stance as being both anticolonialist and anti-communist, but it was not uniquely Irish. This approach to international affairs was at times closely in alignment with the Greek delegation’s agenda, given Greece’s recent fight against communism and its support of Cypriot self-determination. With such similar ideological perspectives, the Greeks, quite rightly, saw the Irish delegation as a potentially useful lobby, one that had experienced firsthand a struggle to throw off the colonial yoke. This was to prove particularly true in the case of MacBride. Not only did he act in an advisory role, he was also involved in far more practical matters, such as helping draft the Greek delegation’s impassioned speeches on Cyprus.10 By the end of the Eighth Session of the Consultative Assembly, it was clear that the Irish delegation had considerable standing. Although in the end MacBride did not allow his name to be put forward, he had been expected to seek election as President of the Assembly, despite British opposition. Crosbie’s ‘long and enthusiastic service’ received recognition from the Assembly by his election as Vice-President.11 Under the ECHR, the right of states to bring complaints against other states came into operation in September 1953. At Strasbourg, the new Human Rights Department, established in January 1954, had as its head a Greek delegate, the Cypriot-born Mr Polys Modinos. With the right of individual petition accepted in July 1955, the first ECmHR competent to hold a meeting under the ECHR following its ratification was held from 19– 24 September 1955 under the chairmanship of Paul Faber of Luxembourg. Against the background of the Cypriot Emergency, Greece formally lodged the first inter-state case to the Commission on 7 May 1956, with Britain as respondent state. Frustrated by his failed attempts to place Cyprus on the UN agenda in 1954 and 1955, Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis issued instructions to Foreign Minister Averoff that the allegations of British atrocities in Cyprus should be taken to Strasbourg.12 The same day Nicolas Cambalouris, Greece’s Permanent Representative at the Council of Europe, requested the Secretary-General to transmit to the President of the ECmHR an application of the Greek government

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enclosed with his letter ‘concerning violations of the ECHR in Cyprus’. Case 176/56, was declared admissible on 2 June 1956.13 What triggered the Greek resort to the ECHR was not the deportation of Archbishop Makarios, but the refusal by the British to grant clemency prior to the executions of Michalis Karaolis and Andreas Dimitriou in Nicosia on 10 May. Because of Britain’s ratification of the ECHR, under which case 176/56 could be lodged, ‘an export trade in human rights had suddenly taken on the appearance of an import trade, and a most unwelcome one at that’.14

II. Crosbie, the European Court of Human Rights and the Greek Application 176/56 If MacBride was treated with the utmost suspicion by the British delegates, it is clear that James Crosbie was seen as a far more reliable figure. L.B. Walsh-Atkins of the British Embassy in Dublin in a letter to Sir Ronald Ross, an Ulster Unionist and Council delegate, described him as ‘a sane and friendly gentleman’ and owner of ‘that very sensible provincial paper’, the Cork Examiner.15 On 3 July 1956, a sub-commission was appointed to investigate Application 176/56. Crosbie was chosen by lot along with Paul Faber, Adolf Su¨sterhenn of West Germany and Muvaffak Akbay of Turkey (who was to be replaced following his death by Genevieve Janssen-Pevtschin of Belgium). The substitute members were Francesco M. Dominedo of Italy, Max Sørensen of Denmark and Sture Petren of Sweden.16 Presided over by Commission President Paal Berg of Norway, the British nominee was previous Commission President and Professor of Public International Law at Oxford, Humphrey Waldock. The Greek nominee was Professor Constantin Eustathiades, Deputy President of the Commission. In an FO memorandum on the individual members, Crosbie was perceived as a neutral figure with ‘no information available on the attitude he is likely to take to the Greek application’.17 Conversely, Su¨sterhenn, whom Crosbie would most identify with during the sub-commission’s visit to Cyprus, was expected to ‘probably subscribe to the usual Christian Democrat attitude about Cyprus,

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namely to be careful in public statements but to make no bones about his dislike of our policy in private’.18 The sub-commission’s overriding task, as in all admissible cases, was to endeavour to achieve a friendly settlement of the case. The Greek government was prepared to agree to this as long as the acts against which it protested ceased indefinitely. These included whipping, the imposition of collective punishment, illegal arrest and detention, deportations, and finally, violation of the privacy of homes and of freedom of opinion, expression, information and assembly. Following an oral hearing in November 1956, it was becoming clear that the sub-commission was likely to rule against the United Kingdom over corporal and collective punishment.19 On 18 December, the sub-commission proposed that whipping and collective punishment should be discontinued, and the use of curfew limited to the protection of public safety and order. It also decided to appoint a conciliation group from the sub-commission members comprised of Crosbie, Su¨sterhenn and Sørensen to try and seek a friendly settlement.20 On 18 January, the conciliation group met with the Greek government representatives, distinguished international lawyer Professor Henri Rolin, Stamatis Mercouris and Nicolas Cambalouris, Greece’s Permanent Representative at the Council of Europe. The Greek emphasis now changed from alleged atrocities in Cyprus; it was, for the first time, directed more specifically at the exile and detention of Archbishop Makarios. While the hearing, like all previous ones, was held in camera, it is clear from the reports of the British agent, Francis A. Vallat, Deputy Legal Advisor at the FO, that the issue of the deportation of Makarios, which had been pushed through by Kirkpatrick, was potentially worrisome for the FO. Indeed, the question of the deportation of the Archbishop has since been cited as ‘in all probability, the very first occasion when the European Convention became a factor to be considered in determining policy’.21 With an ‘active duty’ on the conciliation group to secure a friendly settlement, their report, as summarised by the British agent Vallat, placed the deportation of the Archbishop high on the agenda.

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Consequently, he predicted it ‘likely that the sub-commission will ask the United Kingdom Government to reconsider the detention of Archbishop Makarios in the Seychelles’, with ‘an implied threat that the Commission may find against the United Kingdom on legal grounds’.22 This was also the first hearing where the possibility of the sub-commission visiting Cyprus to carry out an on-the-spot investigation there was raised. In response to this request by the Greek delegation, and in light of the potential risk of an adverse finding with respect to the legality of the deportations, Vallat, acting as the British agent, could do little but appear conciliatory. At the sub-commission’s oral hearing on 4 and 5 September, it was agreed that an enquiry in Cyprus was necessary before a full report could be given by the ECmHR. Decided by four votes to three, James Crosbie was one of those who voted in favour of the visit. While the proposed visit was in itself a source of real anxiety for the FO, its potential implications, by setting the precedent of carrying out such an investigation, made the British administration nervous, particularly so in light of the second Greek application. Made on 17 July 1957, Application 299/57 involved 49 cases of alleged British atrocities and also included a Greek request for an investigation in Cyprus. While this latter request was ‘firmly resisted’ by Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, given the implications it would have on the Cypriot security forces and its potential to heighten inter-communal tensions, he had ‘come reluctantly to the conclusion that it would be expedient to accord the facilities’ for the first request.23 In addition, there was, according to the FO, ‘no adequate legal grounds for refusing’.24 In a letter to Colonial Secretary Lennox-Boyd, Harding stated he was ‘strongly opposed’ to the visit and opined that there was ‘a real danger’ that a visit to Cyprus ‘under present conditions would lead to bloodshed’.25 On 15 October, The Times stated that the Council of Europe ‘could hardly have chosen a worse time for proposing to send a mission of enquiry to Cyprus’.26 But on 22 October Harding resigned and was replaced by a much more amenable figure, Sir Hugh Foot. With Foot in charge, and despite the serious misgivings and contrary advice, the administration in Cyprus finally acceded, with much apprehension,

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to the demand. Crosbie, along with sub-commission members Sørensen, Waldock, Eustathiades, Dominedo and Su¨sterhenn, began their two-week investigation in Cyprus on 13 January 1958. The sub-commission’s two main aims were, firstly, to ascertain the facts relating to the existence and present extent of a public emergency threatening the life of the nation within the meaning of Article 15 of the Convention and, secondly, to investigate the circumstances in which the curfew regulations had been applied on certain occasions. No individual member was allowed to give press statements or interviews, and although the investigating committee’s report has never been released, it is possible to gain an insight into the challenges and concerns faced by Crosbie from assessments sent to the FO, albeit largely biased, by K.J. Neale, the Secretary for the Interior and Local Government in Cyprus. The investigation opened in Nicosia with oral hearings, including one from Charles Foley, editor of The Times of Cyprus, who subsequently commented on the ‘subdued Irish brogue belonging to Mr. James Crosbie’.27 Crosbie’s mood may well have been indicative of the inherent challenges of being a neutral judicial observer. Born in Cork on 27 August 1902, he was certainly old enough to remember the Easter Rising, which the Cork Examiner denounced, and was a young man during the Irish War of Independence. His political views on Irish nationalism, as expressed in the Council of Europe, appear conciliatory while his opposition to the use of force, despite his anti-partitionist stance, was not surprising given his Fine Gael background. Despite Crosbie’s apparent rationality, a week into the subcommission’s visit the newly appointed Governor Foot surmised that ‘it is difficult to believe that the sub-commission as a whole is capable of objective enquiry and impartial judgement’.28 Foot continued, ‘Crosbie and Su¨sterhenn appear to be prepared to make up their minds for themselves’, yet added, ‘Crosbie is probably inclined against us.’29 In a report to the CO, Neale reiterated Foot’s judgements. He identified Sørensen, acting as Chairman of the Committee, and Waldock as ‘the only two members of real calibre’, and added that ‘we could not have afforded the loss [of Sørensen’s] great influence on Professor Su¨sterhenn and Mr. Crosbie’.30

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Along with the Italian member, Francisco Dominedo, both Crosbie and Su¨sterhenn attended the Maronite Church in Nicosia on the morning of Sunday 19 January. A visit to the Pyla detention camp was conducted the following day. With internment without trial having been reintroduced in Ireland several months earlier, comparisons between Irish and Cypriot detentions were inevitable, in spite of Crosbie’s supposed unprejudiced professionalism. The Lawless case could not have been far from Crosbie’s mind when questioning the selected detainees. Gerard Lawless’ application had been transmitted to the ECmHR on 18 November 1957, less than two months prior to the subcommission’s Cyprus visit, and it was Crosbie who had been selected by the Irish government to defend its interests. Following the detention camp visit, Crosbie, along with Su¨sterhenn, received criticism from an indignant Neale: Both Professor Su¨sterhenn and Mr. Crosbie felt that detainees should be given more information concerning the charges against them and an opportunity to defend themselves before some kind of judicial body . . . It is ironic to think that we should be opposed on this subject by the German member whose country has an unenviable history in such matters and by the Irish member whose own country is now arraigned before the Commission on just this subject. Their unease was reflected in the written questions on detention left by the subcommission.31 Crosbie’s concerns, however, were shared by other sub-commission members. When questions of ill-treatment were put to the five selected detainees by Su¨sterhenn, Dominedo and Eustathiades, Neale protested that they too had exceeded the investigatory committee’s terms of reference. For him, ‘the reputation of the sub-commission as a whole was further impaired in the eyes of the Administration’.32 On the last day of proceedings, the Commissioner of Larnaca, G.S. Savvides, appeared as a witness before the sub-commission, his overly judicious testimony being the Cypriot administration’s

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trump care, with Neale readily admitting that Savvides’ statement was for ‘the benefit’ of Crosbie and Su¨sterhenn ‘in particular’. His reasoning, given the Pyla detention camp visit, was that Crosbie and Su¨sterhenn ‘found it difficult to disentangle their emotions from the facts’.33 Despite his several jibes at Crosbie, when summarising the individual members, Crosbie was merely unfavourably noted by Neale for accepting ‘hospitality’, the details of which were not expanded upon. Neale reserved his more caustic judgements for Eustathiades and Dominedo. He declared that apart from these two, ‘the whole party were extremely pleasant people and it was not at all difficult to maintain the easiest relationship with them’. Crosbie left Cyprus by air on 28 January 1958. Following the official report of the ECmHR on 26 September 1958, Vallat of the FO singled out the Greek, Italian, Icelandic and Belgium sub-commission members as showing a ‘distinct leaning against the United Kingdom’.34 Therefore, despite Neale’s reservations, by October 1958 Crosbie was still perceived by FO officials as undecided. Despite the alleged bias of several subcommission members, the FO could now breathe a little easier. A.D.S. Goodall of the Western Organisations Department confidently asserted to J.D. Higham of the CO that, ‘the fact that the sub-commission have found against us on none of the major issues is remarkable, and exceeds our most sanguine expectations’.35 Lennox-Boyd summarised the report’s findings as ‘so friendly to us . . . a most welcome conclusion to a very weary story’.36 In light of the sub-commission’s misgivings over the deportation of Makarios, it is unlikely that this favourable conclusion would have materialised without his release. Initially requested by the subcommission on 11 January 1957, his release was approved by the Conservative Cabinet on 27 March, one day before the subcommission was due to meet to discuss the legality of his deportation. The timing is itself a strong indication that the overriding pressure to release Makarios came from Strasbourg in its aim to secure a friendly settlement of Application 176/56. LennoxBoyd’s announcement in the House of Commons was met with

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varying measures of relief and shock – and the resignation of the Leader of the House of Lords since 1951, Lord Salisbury. That Crosbie finally emerged as a well-respected figure in his role as sub-commission member was also informed by later developments at sub-commission meetings. On 12 June 1958, with support from Crosbie, Su¨sterhenn introduced the notion that the British government had a certain ‘margin of appreciation’.37 The extent of Crosbie’s influence on Su¨sterhenn is important to note here as Su¨sterhenn ‘was not certain whether this view was right’.38 This precedent, which functioned ‘to accommodate in the majority decision some degree of uncertainty . . . as to whether it had been really justifiable to introduce emergency measures’, was accordingly adopted.39 Chosen many months earlier to represent his government at the ECtHR in the Lawless case, Crosbie, in his support for Su¨sterhenn’s introduction of the margin of appreciation, most likely was thinking of his – and his government’s – interests.

III. MacBride, Makarios and Misconceptions On 14 January 1956, Clann na Poblachta directed that a resolution that it had adopted be cabled to Archbishop Makarios. It stated that Clann na Poblachta, ‘in common with the Irish people in Ireland and throughout the world watched with sympathy and understanding the struggle of the people of Cyprus to assert their right to national selfdetermination’.40 MacBride’s colours were now firmly nailed to the Greek– Cypriot mast. Apart from his frequent Assembly diatribes against British foreign policy, he took concrete procedural measures to help resolve the Cyprus Question, much to the dismay of Irish and British delegates. On 17 April, at the Eighth Session of the Consultative Assembly, MacBride motioned for the inscription of a resolution of the Cyprus Question.41 His timing was well calculated. This was the first instance whereby the Committee of Ministers were more accountable, now answering questions directly in the Consultative Assembly, a change championed by MacBride. While the Cypriot struggle was undoubtedly one that MacBride had instinctive sympathy for, self-interest clearly played a part.

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Attacking the British colonial administration in Cyprus was one way to help legitimise Irish republican espousals of self-determination and anti-partitionism, without ever having to explicitly mention the ‘sore thumb’. MacBride’s willingness to agitate for Cypriot selfdetermination, his legal acumen and political nous, marked him out as a useful ally of the Greek delegation. As one of the first states to gain independence from Britain in the twentieth century, it is clear that the Irish nationalist struggle resonated in the Greek imagination, evidenced by remarks at the Eighth Session by Anastassios Droulia, Greece’s Council of Europe representative, that Ireland’s patriots such as Robert Emmet and Patrick Pearse were amongst ‘the great liberators of mankind’.42 In his report, O’Riordan claimed that the President of the Assembly, the Belgian Socialist Mr Fernand Dehousee, had shown favouritism to ‘British speakers vis-a`-vis the Greeks by preventing Mr. Droulia from referring to British terrorism while allowing Mr. Maclay to refer freely to Cypriot terrorism’.43 For both the British and Irish delegations, MacBride’s statements induced considerable discomfort. Following the close of the Assembly, Costello suggested to O’Riordan that the members of the Irish delegations should be ‘fully briefed, on each occasion, before going to Strasbourg’, giving the example of an earlier briefing on Cyprus by O’Riordan.44 Following MacBride’s motion to include an inscription of a resolution on Cyprus in April 1956, Charles Meade reported that, as a result, ‘things have today taken an unfortunate turn’, and claimed the ‘implacable Irishman MacBride has himself taken the initiative against the advice of his colleagues, who are most unhappy’.45 In the dispatch, Meade also testified that he was ‘reliably informed that MacBride’s performance is entirely his own idea and is not (repeat not) inspired by the Greeks’, adding ‘he has been seen a lot with the wildest one of them M. Droulia’.46 Meade may well have been correct. Whilst showing a genuine sympathy with Greek– Cypriot aims, MacBride was well aware of the precedents being set by the ECHR and their potential application to the Irish situation. Furthermore, Britain’s difficulty being Ireland’s opportunity was still a palpable adage for MacBride. On 22 October

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1956, MacBride, along with Rolin and Mercouris, attempted to involve the Consultative Assembly in Cypriot affairs by proposing the appointment of a team to visit the island and report on the situation, almost a year before the sub-commission decided a visit was necessary. This proposal received considerable support, but lost with 27 votes for, 52 against and five abstentions.47 The same month, the British Embassy in Dublin obtained information on Ireland’s punitive measures, specifically whipping and collective fines, from Sean Morrissey, Legal Adviser to the Department of External Affairs, to help fight their case at the Council of Europe against the Greek Application 176/56, the very same case on which Crosbie was a sub-commission member. The information was sent to the CRO on 23 October 1956, the day before MacBride’s Consultative Assembly proposal for a visit to Cyprus to investigate these very practices. According to Reginald Williamson, at the end of ‘an informal chat’, Morrissey handed over ‘an equally informal sheet of paper which he described as the unofficial answer to our enquiry’.48 Morrissey was well aware of the delicacy of this matter: He was sure I realised that it was politically undesirable from the Republican point of view for it to appear that any support was officially forthcoming for British policy as pursued in Cyprus (it has, in fact, received universal condemnation in this country) and, consequently, his Department would rather not commit themselves to an official reply.49 Morrissey wryly concluded that, ‘we must remember that all the Acts quoted in his note were inherited from the days of the British regime’.50 While this situation was potentially embarrassing for the Irish government, MacBride’s experience with Cypriot issues, and their appropriation in Irish affairs, also had the ability to be so. Droulia, whom Meade had referred to as the ‘wildest one’, and who had ‘been seen a lot’ with MacBride at the Consultative Assembly, paid a visit to Dublin shortly after MacBride’s failed Assembly proposal. According to the Irish Times, Greece’s invitation to

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MacBride to ‘advise the Government there on its long-term economic plans’ was reason enough for the visit on 8 November by Droulia.51 The visit evidently provided Droulia with opportunities to lobby and garner support. While there, he was received by de Valera at his office in Leinster House.52 MacBride’s economic advisory role clearly irked British officials. Gurth Kimber disparagingly claimed that MacBride ‘seems to be setting himself up as a self-appointed economic expert’.53 ‘One is tempted to believe that Mr. MacBride by choosing a field little cultivated by other public figures in this country hopes thereby to bring himself before the public eye’, he added.54 Kimber’s comments, though caustic, were hardly prescient: MacBride had been appointed as the first Vice-President of the OEEC, an office he held from 1948 to 1951. A week after Droulia’s visit to Ireland, MacBride was making plans to attend the Eleventh General Assembly in 1956 as a guest of the Greek government. On 19 November 1956, in a letter to Cosgrave, MacBride explained that the Greek government had asked him to go to New York claiming, perhaps disingenuously, that, as the message was conveyed to him by a long-distance telephone call from France, he ‘was not able to find out the details of why they wanted me to go’.55 He did stress however that Karamanlis and Averoff ‘were anxious to discuss a number of matters in regard to Cyprus with me’.56 He summarised his solution in three brief points: recognition of the right of Cyprus to self-determination, an interim period of five years for the civil government of Cyprus to be vested in the Council of Europe (exercised by a commissioner on behalf of the Council), and the naval and military defences to be vested for the interim period in NATO. MacBride continued: I certainly think that if at all possible the Cyprus question should be solved. Apart from weakening NATO, and possibly driving Greece out of NATO, the Cyprus question has done more to weaken faith in the concept of Western democracy than anything else that has happened in the Western World. Here we have a small island being trampled upon and a near state of war between three European States. This is a poor example of

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European and democratic solidarity and has done a lot to weaken our cause. Hence my interest in the last couple of years to try to get something done about it.57 In a telegram to the FO, British UN delegate Pierson Dixon asserted that, ‘Mr. Boland wanted me to know that his Government had tried to dissuade Mr. MacBride; he himself had warned his staff not to have official dealings with him.’58 Dixon maintained that, ‘Mr. Boland was clearly embarrassed by this development, not least because of the complications it might cause for his own delegation when the Cyprus item comes up.’59 The following week, Gurth Kimber warned Robin Jasper that ‘despite a superficial and international polish, he [MacBride] should be treated with the greatest caution’.60 The extent to which MacBride was seen as troublesome for the British is clearly highlighted: In the tradition of his parents he is fundamentally anti-British, and even when he is conciliatory there is likely to be some sinister motive in the background. One can only assume that in taking up the cause of Cyprus, another instance of ‘British oppression of a people struggling for freedom,’ he is hoping to add to our embarrassments and to get the international spotlight directed to the ‘wrongs’ of Ireland as well.61 However, these comments were also perhaps influenced by MacBride’s outburst on Irish partition at the Council of Europe two weeks earlier. On 10 January 1957, during a discussion demanding the end of Russian occupation in Hungary, MacBride protested that the doctrines enshrined in the Convention of Human Rights were ‘largely vitiated if powerful countries are to be permitted to infringe the national sovereignty of smaller countries’.62 ‘This is what happened in Hungary, in Cyprus and in my own country’, he added.63 However uncomfortable it was for the British delegates to be lumped with Communist Russia, MacBride’s subsequent sympathy for physical force republicanism at the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly was altogether more alarming:

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Since the last sitting of the Assembly we have had tragic examples of this in my own country, where despite the endeavours of all of the political parties a section of our young people have lost patience with the slowness of the democratic process and have resorted to armed force as a solution. It is difficult for young people to understand why they should tolerate what they consider, and rightly consider, to be an infringement of democratic principle.64 Despite Irish official misgivings and advice to reconsider, MacBride accepted the position of Greek UN consultant. On 14 January 1957, and with Crosbie now in Cyprus, MacBride flew to New York to consult with Greek Foreign Minister Averoff. One can only think of the relief, albeit short-lived, felt by some Irish officials when his flight from Shannon was delayed due to reported engine trouble.65 A clearly confident MacBride returned to Shannon on 26 January. Upon his arrival he declared he had talks with American UN representative Henry Cabot Lodge as well as with Averoff.66 No doubt still buoyant following his ‘luncheon in the Capitol with leading members of Congress’, and Greek admiration, three days later as leader of Clann na Poblachta, he motioned a no confidence vote in the Da´il.67 Three reasons were given, the first two being related to the gravity of the Irish economic climate. The third reason cited his party’s belief that the government had failed ‘to formulate and pursue any positive policy calculated to bring about the reunification of Ireland’.68 For many British and Irish politicians alike, the subsequent loss by MacBride of his Da´il seat at the General Election of 5 March must have been seen as a consolation. MacBride would never again hold a seat in Da´il E´ireann. For others, however, such as John Chadwick at the British Embassy in Dublin, MacBride’s move was unnerving. On 11 February, Chadwick informed Snelling of MacBride’s withdrawal of support. Although he described MacBride’s behaviour as ‘purely opportunist’, he admitted that ‘no one quite knows what Mr MacBride, who is a brilliant and dangerous person, is up to’.69 Chadwick surmised that ‘it is not

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beyond the bounds of possibility that he will encourage further violence if it helps his own ambitions’.70 Apparently unaware of MacBride’s recent New York trip, Chadwick asserted that ‘the only good thing about this is that he will now hardly be able to take up the duty which he had previously accepted of advising the Greek delegation to the United Nations on the Cyprus issue’.71 In fact the converse was true: MacBride now had more time than ever to devote to the Cyprus Question. Two weeks later, on 10 April 1957, MacBride was back in Athens, a week prior to the date that Makarios was due back in Greece following his release. According to the Irish Times, MacBride intended ‘staying there until the arrival of Archbishop Makarios, before going on to Cyprus’.72 On 12 April MacBride conferred with the Greek Parliament’s Chairman, Mr Takis Rodopoulos, and Foreign Minister Averoff, followed by a lunch with Gregory Kassimatis, Greek Minister without Portfolio, and the following day he presented Prime Minister Karamanlis with a copy of Frank Gallagher’s recently published book The Indivisible Island: the Story of the Partition of Ireland, an ironic choice given that Gallagher was a devotee of de Valera. The real coup, however, was his meeting with Makarios on 18 April, the day of Makarios’ return. In fact, MacBride was reported as ‘one of the first to greet the prelate’.73 MacBride never made it to Cyprus; as a marked persona non grata, the British authorities denied him a visa to enter. Due to MacBride’s direct involvement in Cypriot affairs, Makarios was now becoming interested in Irish partition. He sent ‘warm greetings’ to the Irish Anti-Partition League, read out at the Easter Rising commemoration parade in London on 22 April 1957. Makarios declared that, ‘as a Cypriot, I stand by the principles of your organisation. I wish you every success in your aspirations.’74 Archbishop Makarios, most certainly informed by MacBride of the extent of Irish public sympathy and of the IRA – EOKA compatriotism in Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs Prisons, asked MacBride to ‘convey to the Irish people our warmest thanks for their understanding and support of our struggle for self-determination and liberty’.75 In return, MacBride ardently praised and flattered his ally,

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claiming ‘It is seldom that only a single man has wielded so much influence in European affairs.’76 On 28 August, MacBride flew to Athens to meet Makarios, informing reporters that his exact purpose was ‘to confer with the Archbishop on the Cyprus issue’.77 He added that he would report on his Athens trip at a meeting in Paris later that September with, ‘Paul Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO, Guy Mollet, former Prime Minister of France, Herr Heinrich von Brentano, Foreign Minister of West Germany and Mr. Osten Unden, Foreign Minister of Sweden.’78 The next documented talks between Makarios and MacBride took place in London on 27 February 1959.79 Upon the Archbishop’s eventual return to Cyprus on 1 March, MacBride sent a telegram expressing his congratulations on behalf of Clann na Poblachta and himself.80 The following month, Makarios replied to MacBride: To express to you my sincere thanks and appreciation for all you have done in the cause of Cypriot freedom. You were amongst the first to raise your voice in support of justice and freedom for Cyprus. You have been all along on our side. Be sure that you have gained the gratitude of the people of Cyprus.81 MacBride may very well have gained the gratitude of Makarios at the time, but his role remains unacknowledged in Greek –Cypriot nationalist narratives. No account of MacBride’s involvement can be found in the Cyprus Mail or the Times of Cyprus, the Cypriot Englishlanguage dailies of the time, or in any major historical monographs dealing with the Cyprus Emergency since.

IV. Friend or Foe? Britain, Ireland and Application 176/56 Although Application 176/56 was wound up without a court decision due to the London– Zu¨rich Agreements in February 1959, the Commission’s report of 13 June 1958 showed that the majority of its members took the view that the authorities had made the right decision to introduce emergency measures in Cyprus. Although Application 299/57 was also terminated, MacBride has been

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inaccurately lauded by some historians as having fought Makarios’ case at the European Court of Human Rights and securing his release.82 The evidence shows that no such case took place, nor was MacBride in any way responsible for Makarios’ release. The nature of the Archbishop’s release was in fact one of the few aspects MacBride was not involved in, despite being the single Irish individual most closely involved in Greek and Greek – Cypriot efforts to bring about Cypriot independence. However, the source of these incorrect assumptions is unknown – they may even have come from MacBride himself. If Crosbie’s involvement was professional, for MacBride it was personal. In focusing on the Cypriot struggle – be it in Dublin, New York, Athens or Strasbourg – MacBride was pursuing his own republican ideals. Through his advancement of human rights law in relation to Cyprus, he initiated precedents that were to be used by him on both sides of the Border. For MacBride, a win for Cyprus was a potential win for Ireland. The experience gained by aiding the Greeks in the first two ECHR Inter-State Applications, 176/56 and 299/57, was to prove vital to MacBride in Lawless vs. Ireland (1957– 61) as Counsel for Gerard Lawless, the Irish government’s case initially defended by Crosbie.83 Given that Crosbie was a sub-commission member investigating Application 176/56, he was in a unique position to advise the Irish government. However, the death of his daughter in 1958 resulted in Crosbie stepping down from this position. He was replaced by ´ Caoimh. In January 1957, Ireland’s Attorney-General, Aindrias O John Hope of the CRO wrote to the Commonwealth Secretary explaining that he had received certain information from Ambassador Clutterbuck in Dublin; Hope admitted that the Irish government were seriously anxious ‘lest the adoption of stronger measures by them’ in their containment of IRA activity ‘should lead to difficulty in the Council of Europe’.84 His schadenfreude is obvious: Having had considerable experience of the Council of Europe I cannot help observing how extremely funny it would be if the E´ire Government had to announce its suspension of certain provisions of the Human Rights Convention. Year after year

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their delegates to the General Assembly have attacked partition in terms of human rights. I would go a long way to see the same delegates having to explain their Government’s latest conduct in protecting the rights of citizens north of the border. H.M. Ambassador reports that Mr. Murphy expressed anxiety about the possibility of a ‘public and controversial debate.’ Personally I think it would be positively hilarious.85 On 14 December 1961, the ECtHR gave its first judgement in favour of the Irish government.86 The margin of appreciation had allowed an Irish government to be found legally in the right after its unsound reintroduction of emergency measures: in effect, the Court accommodated the Irish government’s decision to reintroduce emergency measures without an actual formal notice of derogation under the ECHR (notwithstanding Aiken’s informal message to the Secretary-General on 20 July), and without an official public acknowledgement of the existence of an emergency in Ireland. The Court’s decision in finding the Irish government innocent of violations under the ECHR, because the existence of a public emergency as the Irish government understood it to be was ‘reasonably deduced’ by the Irish government, reads more like an article of faith than law. Despite all his formidable efforts to create the ECHR, MacBride never managed to win a case for Greek or Irish nationalists at Strasbourg.

CHAPTER 7 IRELAND, THE COLONIAL LEGAL SERVICE AND EMERGENCY LEGISLATION

Your reliance on British justice and British fairplay is entirely misplaced. Wherever in the world you should look for justice and fair play, that place is certainly not the centre of the British Empire. Michael Collins to Archbishop Kyrillos of Cyprus, 28 July 19191 In a 1930 report on the university origins of British Colonial Service appointments, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) was the sixth biggest recruiting university.2 According to Anthony Kirk-Greene, the status of Oxbridge was ‘an influence shared with Trinity College Dublin and the University of London as each went on to play a calculated and public role in the post-graduate teaching of probationers for Britain’s expanding civil service’.3 Although Irish participants in empire came from varied backgrounds, in Cyprus they were mainly TCD graduates, both Catholic and Protestant. Between 1953 and 1957, legal recruitment in the British Colonial Service almost halved, from 50 to 26 appointments, not due to a lack of positions, although Indian independence reduced opportunities, but more to such positions seeming less attractive – no longer such a

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lucrative and exotic path. Job security, indeed physical safety, was now questioned, given the Malaya and Kenya emergencies and Palestinian, Ceylonese and Burmese independence as well. As KirkGreene emphasises, ‘the morale of the Colonial Service and the sudden decline in attractiveness as a career after its flourishing in the immediate postwar years were manifest in the percentage of posts remaining unfilled when set beside the number of appointments made’.4 Irish judges were more than willing to fill this vacuum. This Irish prevalence was due to the nature and content of the legal curricula delivered in Irish universities. In Irish courts, English influence predominated, the principle precedents followed being those of the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in England. Indeed, for several decades after independence, Irish legal proceedings were ‘even more dependent upon English law than before’.5 Until the 1960s ‘discovery of the Constitution’ (when Irish lawyers began seriously studying Bunreacht na hE´ireann as a source of legal rights), virtually no Irish legal treatises were published, lawyers and law students relying on British books.6 Administering ‘British justice’ in Cyprus during the Emergency lay in the hands of several Irish judges, and even under intense stress, Cypriot confidence in the judiciary was ‘in sharp contrast to their distrust of the Administration’.7 Even in peacetime, administering colonial justice was difficult and often haphazard, and arguably even more so in Cyprus, a Crown colony with the administrative anomaly of having mostly ‘Western’ subjects. Seen as comparable to Ireland during 1916 –21, the island’s significance in its implementation of emergency law is augmented by the presence of judges from several prominent Irish families: Sir Eric Hallinan, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, his successor Sir Paget John Bourke (or P.J. Bourke, uncle of former Irish President Mary Robinson), Charles Vesey Boyle, Special Assize Court judge, and James Patrick Trainor, Special Court judge and Coroner in many prominent cases. Bourke, Hallinan and Trainor were all from Roman Catholic families, while Boyle’s was Church of Ireland. This chapter will highlight some of the more significant cases these judges were involved in and the responsibilities and challenges they faced during the Cypriot Emergency. It

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will also deal with the question of Irishness and the extent to which the backgrounds of these men shaped their experience in Cyprus.

I. Chief Justice Sir Eric Hallinan The first notable case with specific EOKA relevance was the Aghios Georghios trial, which opened on 3 May 1955 at Paphos under Chief Justice Eric Hallinan. Born in 1900 to wealthy flour miller Edward Hallinan and his wife Elizabeth in Midleton, Co. Cork, he was educated at a Roman Catholic public school, University College Cork and TCD. Called to the Irish Bar in 1924 and the English Bar in 1927, after two years practising in the Irish Free State he left in 1929 to join the Colonial Legal Service, serving in Nigeria from 1930 to 1938, as Attorney-General in the Bahamas from 1940 to 1944, as Puisne Judge in Trinidad from 1944 to 1948, and in Nigeria again from 1948 until his appointment to Cyprus in 1952, having gained much experience in politically troubled British colonies. He was knighted in 1955.8 The trial was described by Attorney-General Sir James Henry’s predecessor, Criton Tornaritis, as one of ‘unprecedented enormity, extreme gravity and . . . great public importance’.9 Greek enosis supporters and Cypriot members of PEK (the Pancyprian Farmers’ Union, Panagrotiki Enosis Kyprou) attempted to smuggle dynamite into Cyprus on board the ship Aghios Georghios (‘St George’ in Greek). What is interesting, apart from the gravity of the crime and potential damage to life and property, is that three of the guilty had fought under the British during World War II. Captain Evangelos Louca – sentenced to four years in prison – helped British servicemen evade capture as skipper of a fishing boat that made many dangerous trips in enemy-controlled waters, his counsel producing a letter from Field-Marshal Lord Alexander expressing his gratitude as proof.10 Chief Justice Hallinan’s comments are also interesting and arguably sympathetic, noting the accused stated they acted out of ‘a sincere love of freedom and their country’, the Greeks having ‘a sacred duty’ to help their Cypriot brothers.11 However, they were ‘no doubt blinded by eloquence in newspapers, on the radio and from the

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pulpit’, and had ‘lost touch with the realities of life in Cyprus – a land of peace, prosperity, tolerance and justice’.12 Addressing operation organiser Socrates Lozides, Hallinan stated that though Lozides’ intentions were sincere, ‘you were prepared through a wellplanned organisation, and by importing weapons and dynamite into the island, to introduce armed force and violence into the political affairs of Cyprus’.13 He noted that the PEK had long been ‘a hotbed of sedition’, adding ‘no doubt the accused and their fellow villagers were good farmers and good men but they must know that it was a punishable offence to impose ideas by violence’.14 After the trial concluded on 7 May, one EOKA leader, Polykarpos Georkatzis, proposed kidnapping Hallinan, regarded as a symbol of British imperialism, but the plan was never executed. The colonial regime had its own paradoxes, Nancy Crawshaw noting, ‘it was impossible to reconcile Sir Eric’s exalted position in the colony’ with him being from the Republic of Ireland, which had fought the century’s first European war of independence against the British and ‘could logically be expected to support the cause of Cyprus’.15 Despite Hallinan’s power, he found it difficult to get clear guidance from the Executive Council on how best to handle EOKA, and even the judiciary had no consistent views prior to the Emergency laws. When Hallinan discussed sentencing for illegal assemblies with his judges, ‘he found one group were fearless, another said each case had to be judged on its merits and the third were “virtually in favour of Enosis”’.16 In September 1955, the more decisive Harding replaced Sir Robert Armitage as Governor, and James Henry replaced Tornaritis, seconded to the post of Commissioner for the Consolidation of the Cyprus Legislation.17 Tornaritis was clearly crumbling under the increasing pressure. When bombs went off on 24 May, Empire Day, Governor Armitage noted that he ‘does not really get to the point and seems on many occasions too overworked [and is] too impetuous perhaps’,18 and Commissioner of Police George Herbert Robins noticed he ‘showed a great deal of strain . . . was very nervous’.19 Of course, Tornaritis knew the danger he risked as a Greek – Cypriot working for the British

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administration, being in a ‘front-line’ department making him an even greater target. Tornaritis’ replacement James Henry already had wide experience overseas, having been Crown Counsel in Tanganyika in 1946 during a period of upheaval (when it became a UN Trust Territory under a British administration), later serving as Legal Draftsman when further European settlement was in jeopardy in 1949. He was also Resident Magistrate in Jamaica in 1944, Attorney-General in Belize in 1951, and Solicitor-General in Tanganyika from 1952 until his appointment to Cyprus in 1956. However, he had briefly served as Solicitor-General in Cyprus before taking up the same position in Tanganyika. Law was in Henry’s blood. His father, the Catholic Unionist Sir Denis Stanislaus Henry, was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1918 and Attorney-General in 1919 – last in the post before partition. He then became Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland in August 1921, establishing the judicial machinery of the new jurisdiction. Under James Henry’s direction, an emergency was declared on 26 November 1955 by Governor Harding under the Emergency Powers Orders in Council Order of 1939.20 Harding cited the Malayan Emergency as a model, wanting extensive powers like those granted there to Ulster Unionist General Gerald Templer, including the mandatory death penalty.21 Before this, the death penalty was applicable only for treason and murder, but under the Emergency Regulations was considerably extended, the burden of proof now on the accused. Under Emergency Regulation 52, it became an offence, punishable by death or life imprisonment, to discharge a firearm at a person, or to throw or deposit bombs with the intention of causing death, injury, or damage to property. Regulation 53 stated that the carrying of firearms, ammunition, bombs or grenades, and of explosive or incendiary articles or substances, with intent to cause death, injury or damage to property, was punishable by life imprisonment. One month after Henry’s appointment, Hallinan was again in the spotlight; on 18 October 1955, three Nicosian youths, aged 15– 17, pleaded guilty to distributing EOKA leaflets and were given one year’s imprisonment each.22 Passing sentence, Hallinan said that

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‘while the age of the offenders continues to be a major consideration, the paramount consideration must now be the maximum restoration of law and order’,23 adding, ‘Youths have been warned many times by this court to refrain from violence. They have failed to listen to our warnings. We must now enforce the law. EOKA has regularly employed the youth of this territory as its tools.’24 Despite this, he did quash the sentence of six to ten birch-strokes imposed by an unnamed English judge on five youths for unlawful assembly, arguing the sentence was passed before the Emergency Regulations came into force.25 Hallinan’s biggest trial, beginning 24 October 1955, was of Michalis Karaolis, charged with murdering police constable Herodotus Poullis. With tensions running high, and Karaolis pleading not guilty, the court was heavily barricaded and everyone, including Hallinan himself, subjected to a body search each day.26 On 27 October, the Irish Press made a rare acknowledgment of an Irish judge’s presence in Cyprus: the front page featured a photo of Hallinan being searched.27 Despite not involving an Emergency Regulations offence, the trial was significant for several reasons. It was the first such trial for an EOKA killing, the accused aged only 22 and conforming to a British public school image – a former school prefect at Nicosia’s English School and cricketer who became an Inland Revenue Office clerk. The evidence was not considered clearcut, based on an identification given by three, possibly prejudiced, Turk– Cypriot witnesses as no Greek – Cypriot would risk death at EOKA’s hands by identifying him. In the end, Karaolis’ brotherin-law condemned him, though his evidence was weak, wavering and often contradictory, and he failed to remember basic details about a game of draughts supposedly played with the defendant. Hallinan concluded that although ‘it is difficult to test the veracity of an alibi of this kind’, nonetheless ‘sometimes a small matter may reveal the weakness of it’.28 Asked if he had anything to say following pronouncement of the death sentence, Karaolis replied, ‘Yes. I am innocent.’29 Labelled ‘the good boy’ in the Greek press,30 his sentence, the first of nine EOKA executions, provided a martyr for the Greek – Cypriot nationalist narrative. It was the first such

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sentence passed by Hallinan, and the first plea for mercy refused by Attorney-General Henry; despite international protest and a request for clemency by US Secretary of State Dulles, he did not waver. The next controversial case was that of Andreas Dimitriou, convicted of shooting British intelligence agent Sydney Taylor in November 1955. In contrast to Karaolis, Dimitriou was caught virtually red-handed. Taylor was not seriously wounded, meaning Dimitriou could have been tried under regular law, but under the Emergency Regulations, introduced two days before the shooting, discharging a firearm at a person carried the death penalty. The sentence was originally passed by Mr Justice Bernard Vidal Shaw (a cousin of George Bernard Shaw) in the Special Court, and Dimitriou’s appeal was dismissed by Hallinan when it came before the Supreme Court. Despite no-one being murdered, Hallinan remarked it was attempted murder, adding ‘the punishment for murder is and always had been death’.31 On 7 May 1956, Harding discussed this and Karaolis’ case with the Attorney-General and Executive Council.32 Both Karaolis and Dimitriou were hanged on 10 May, and on 9 August three more EOKA fighters were likewise executed; Andreas Zakos, Charilaos Michael and Iakovos Patatos. Hallinan’s next big case perhaps best captured the multifaceted nature of Irish involvement on Cyprus. Charles Foley was born in 1904 in Jhelum, Pakistan (formerly India). His father Maurice was a Royal Engineer from Co. Kerry.33 Foley, who set up the Times of Cyprus in May 1955, was a constant thorn in the British administration’s side during the Emergency. His son Julian, with him in Cyprus between 1957 and 1959, testifies that although Foley’s mother, Eileen Bennett, was from Somerset, Charles’ English heritage – like Lawrence Durrell’s – never sat easily with him, and he closely identified instead with his Irish inheritance.34 Foley’s close friend and associate on the paper, William Scobie, maintained that, ‘As an Irishman, Foley believed fervently in the rights of a small people to self-determination.’35 In Island in Revolt, Foley said he was from the same ‘small, remote island’ as Judges Hallinan, Bourke and Shaw.36 His pro-enosis stance and criticism of British policy led to mutterings of treason and attempts at charges of subversion.

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In November 1956, he was charged under Section 43 of the Emergency Regulations with publishing a ‘report or statement which is likely to cause alarm or despondency or be prejudicial to public safety or the maintenance of public order’i.37 Recollecting the case he described prosecutor James Henry as ‘like myself, long, lean and Celtic’.38 For Foley, the case was like being in the ‘Celtic twilight’, with the presiding Supreme Court judge being ‘another Hibernian’, Sir Eric Hallinan.39 In what was described by Foley as the ‘legal circus of the year’, the accused, the prosecutor and the judge were all Irish.40 Henry stressed in his final address to the court that under Section 43 the truth or falsity of Foley’s reports were immaterial, and he should be charged and his newspaper shut down. Others disagreed. Given the reports’ accuracy, Foley was acquitted, partly due to the intervention of Chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Lord Astor, and unanimous backing from his many Fleet Street friends from his days with the Daily Express.41 There was, however, some foundation for suspecting treason. Foley’s acquaintances included EOKA members Nicos Sampson, also a journalist for Foley’s paper, and Glafcos Clerides, and he was a close friend of Makarios, accompanying him to the UN in 1958, and was first to interview Colonel Grivas when he emerged from hiding. Besides, a journalist’s pursuit of information, when repressive emergency measures were being implemented, was bound to annoy the British authorities if he was not simply a government stooge. With increasing EOKA violence following the executions, the courts were becoming stretched, and allegations against British forces multiplying. The Attorney-General and Chief Justice were clearly worried about imminent cases against security force members. In a telegram to Secretary of State for the Colonies Lennox-Boyd, Harding claimed Henry and Hallinan had discussed possibly deferring authority to the Attorney-General,42 meaning no case could go ahead without Henry’s consent. Hallinan opposed this, suggesting trying them solely in the Special Court instead. Harding claimed that ‘the Chief Justice himself raised the question since he is exercised about the strain likely to be imposed on certain judges and magistrates by the trial of these cases’,43 and also that ‘obviously the

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views of the Chief Justice must be given great weight’.44 Nevertheless, this measure was eventually enacted by extending the Emergency Regulations on 26 November 1956. Hallinan became the subject of much speculation after visiting Malta in January 1957, leading to rumours that Makarios would head there after his release from exile, The Times declaring – wrongly – that Hallinan ‘is understood to be arranging these formalities with the Maltese Government’.45 By April, when Hallinan departed for his next judicial position in the West Indies, all nine EOKA executions had taken place, the last being that of Evaghoras Pallikarides on 14 March.46 Like Dimitriou, Pallikarides had not murdered anyone, but unlike Dimitriou, had not even discharged a firearm, but had merely beeen apprehended in possession of a weapon whilst hiding in the mountains. Though it was Attorney-General Henry who always refused clemency, Harding has historically been singled out for contempt, given evidence he pressured Henry to remain adamant. As Robert Holland states, ‘that terrorism deserved no mercy was not just an assumption of Harding’s, it was one of his deepest feelings’.47 Greek– Cypriot historian Doros Alastos, not an admirer of EOKA, remarked in 1960 that the executions went ahead because Harding was ‘heavy handed and lacked those flickers of humanity necessary to make the man come alive’.48 No executions took place after new Governor Sir Hugh Foot’s arrival in December 1957.49

II. Nicosia Special Court: Charles Vesey Boyle and James Trainor Despite the violence, civil courts in Cyprus continued functioning throughout the Emergency. A Special Assize Court was established in November 1955, and extra judges brought in, though not exclusively from England. Dublin men James Trainor and Charles Vesey Boyle acted as Special Court judges, with Trainor also acting as Coroner at times. Born in 1914 and educated by Christian Brothers and at UCD, James Trainor attended King’s Inns, Dublin, and Gray’s Inn, London.

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After an unsuccessful spell as a Fine Gael candidate in the 1944, 1948 and 1951 elections for the Dublin North East constituency, Trainor joined the Colonial Service in 1954, gaining experience as a magistrate in Singapore before his appointment to Cyprus.50 A solicitor’s son, Charles Vesey Boyle was born in Dublin in 1915. After attending Dublin High School, he entered Dublin University as a law student in 1933, and between 1934 and 1938 played rugby for its football club. In 1935 he was selected to play for Ireland, which he did until the outbreak of war. After qualifying for the Irish Bar in 1937, Boyle practised in Dublin for two years before joining the Royal Artillery, and afterwards the Royal Air Force.51 In January 1944 Boyle was sent to No. 13 Squadron, Royal Hellenic Air Force, to help Greek crews convert to the Baltimore plane, earning a Greek Air Force Cross of Merit.52 After the war, he joined the Colonial Legal Service, his first posting being to Malaya in 1946, as Crown Counsel and Deputy Public Prosecutor until 1950. He then transferred to Kenya as Crown Counsel and Resident Magistrate until moving to Cyprus in 1955. He returned to Kenya in 1959 when the Special Court in Cyprus was terminated as a result of the London – Zu¨rich Agreements, remaining as Senior Resident Magistrate and Acting Judge to the Supreme Court until retiring in 1963.53 With his experience prosecuting MNLA (Malayan National Liberation Army) insurgents and Mau Mau rebels in the Malayan and Kenyan Emergencies, Boyle was well aware of the potential challenges in Cyprus. A month after the Special Assize Court’s establishment, EOKA threatened the judges in a pamphlet.54 In July 1956, Special Assize Court judge Mr Justice Shaw was seriously wounded by EOKA gunmen, with unexpected effects. Known as a courageous judge before the shooting, he had not hesitated to pass death sentences, as with Dimitriou. According to Crawshaw, after the shooting he lost the confidence of the security forces, who felt that he leaned too far in favour of EOKA in ‘an over conscientious effort to ensure that his experience had in no way affected his impartiality’.55 Clearly the incident did not adversely affect Chief Justice Boyle’s judgement of EOKA suspects. Boyle was often unimpressed

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by the quality of the evidence against EOKA terrorists. His most famous case took place in September 1958, when Boyle acquitted 17-year-old Greek – Cypriot Andreas Yakoumis of murdering Sergeant Reginald Hammond. The Times stated that ‘in his reserved judgement, Mr Justice Boyle found there was no independent evidence to corroborate Yakoumis’ confessions, solely on which the case against him rested’.56 He said there was no evidence to prove the body was in fact Hammond’s, or that the two bullets exhibited in court were those taken from it, and therefore it was not established that the murder weapon was one of two pistols Yakoumis showed the police. These ‘were lamentable gaps in the Crown case which could have been prevented’,57 Boyle nevertheless declaring the confession ‘valid and admissible’, despite the defence claiming it was extracted using torture.58 After the acquittal, Boyle attacked the prosecution case for ‘having made numerous elementary mistakes’.59 Adding to the controversy, Senior Crown Counsel Mr Ronald Grey, lead prosecutor, resigned days later, stating he did ‘not have any further comment to make at this stage’.60 This was not the only occasion Boyle declared evidence insubstantial. By 1958, a clandestine British group called AKOE (‘EOKA’ written backwards, standing for ‘Anti-Killers Organisation of Expatriates’) appeared, pseudonymously signing their pamphlets ‘Cromwell’. In early September, EOKA alleged that the ‘Cromwell group’ had attacked Greek – Cypriots,61 and in response issued propaganda stating that British citizens, as well as police and troops, would now be targets. Several pamphlets were distributed under the Cromwell moniker threatening EOKA with violent retribution, one from his ‘men of iron’.62 Sir Hugh Foot included this pamphlet in a letter to Secretary of State Lennox-Boyd, claiming he had no knowledge of its origin but would do everything possible to stop ‘this damaging nonsense’.63 The Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported that, ‘amid generally grim prospects regarding the situation on the island, the British are making great efforts, both officially and on the sidelines, to quell the opposition of the Cypriot people and the National Cypriot Fighters’ Organisation (EOKA) to the plan. Two British terrorist groups,

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known as the Cromwell group and the Anti-Killers Organization of Expatriates (AKOE), have begun taking action.’64 Quoting an official statement, it said ‘the government of Cyprus denied any knowledge of the anti-EOKA proclamations signed by “Cromwell” distributed two days ago. It added that these could have been written by people with bad intentions, bent on creating trouble.’65 The Times dismissed it, declaring ‘most sane observers have regarded this as a bad joke but the Greeks have taken it seriously and are exploiting it for propaganda purposes.’66 Former British army officer David Carter, involved in undercover operations during the Cyprus Emergency, claimed the Cromwell leaflets were ‘little more than pranks instigated by a few very bored British soldiers’, but were ‘taken more seriously than they deserved by a colonial administration that was very edgy’.67 Carter said ‘Cromwell’ was a single individual, though in league with several other soldiers, who copied his pamphlets on military duplicating machines and distributed them on patrol. To avoid bad press at home, Cromwell’s collaborators were surreptitiously shipped back to the UK, including Royal Signals NCO Corporal Brian Edward Ford based at Dhekelia,68 and RAF Wing-Commander Roy MacDonald from Nicosia. MacDonald, a member of the House of Keys from 1960 to 1966, and a member of its Legislative Council from 1968 to 1978, informed Owen Dudley Edwards, in the Isle of Man in 1967 reporting for the Tribune, that he had invented Cromwell as ‘a joke’, by making prisoners chalk the name on walls before freeing them so nobody would know who it was,69 the name then spreading as service personnel like Ford printed and distributed ‘Cromwell’ leaflets. The Irish Cromwellian resonances, and the joke’s tastelessness, cannot have been far from Boyle’s mind. It was in this charged atmosphere that he acquitted an 18-year-old Greek– Cypriot on 15 September 1958 in the Nicosia Special Court, on trial for carrying four petrol bombs, once again due to insufficient evidence. He declared that if it was the intention of Crown Counsel Mr Douglas Goodbody to prove the bottles of petrol were actually bombs, it was necessary to show what the material in the necks of the bottles was.70

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These two cases, so closely coinciding, clearly embarrassed and undermined the Crown Counsel’s authority. That the evidence was considered insufficient by an Irish rather than English judge may have added to this. Charles Foley – like many in Britain – hailed cases like these as ‘evidence of the rigid propriety, if not the efficacy, of British justices under critical circumstances’.71 While Mr Justice James Trainor’s cases were not given much press attention, being of lesser significance than those reaching the Supreme Court, one or two of his cases as Special Judge, and especially his role as Coroner, are notable. On 4 January 1956, the Cyprus Mail reported that when Special Judge Trainor sentenced nine schoolboys and three girls to caning and prison terms for taking part in an unlawful assembly on 15 November 1955, their mothers broke into tears.72 In a peculiar case six months later, Trainor charged Turk– Cypriot police sergeant Mustafa Mehmet with the murder of Greek– Cypriot shepherd Anastassi Dispiros, found hanging from a tree near his village.73 Dispiros had been castigated by Trainor three weeks earlier, as witness in another case, for refusing to help when British civilian Roy Garrett was injured in an accident in which a friend of Garrett’s died. Trainor said to him, ‘If all the people in Cyprus were like you Cyprus should call itself a nation of cowards.’74 However, Trainor’s most controversial and tragic cases were as Coroner. In May 1958, EOKA’s attacks against the Left became increasingly brutal. On 23 May, in the village of Lefkoniko, left-wing trade unionist Savvas Menkas was tied to a tree and beaten to death, ‘his muscles’, according to Crawshaw’s account, ‘reduced to pulp’.75 At the inquest, Trainor declared that ‘One would not hear of a more disgraceful piece of brutality from the depths of the jungle.’76 On 3 October, the British security forces’ usual restraint broke down, the provocation being the murder of Mrs Catherine Cutliffe, wife of a Royal Artillery sergeant, in Varosha, a suburb of Famagusta, while her companion Mrs Robinson was seriously wounded. EOKA had threatened to target every English person, including women, in pamphlets distributed only days before. Based on a description from Mrs Cutliffe’s daughter Margaret, a search for the killer began. Considered EOKA’s worst atrocity, British security forces in a state of

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acute provocation and disgust rounded up about 1,000 Cypriots in two hours.77 Taken to four main centres for identification and questioning, Greek – Cypriots Panayotis Chrysostomos, aged 37, and Andreas Loukas, aged 19, were later found dead, whilst an estimated 256 Cypriots were injured.78 Trainor described the Cutliffe attach as ‘the most horrible, dastardly murder it has ever been my lot to inquire into, one which filled me with disgust, as no other case has’.79 He described the behaviour of Cypriots bystanders after Mrs Cutliffe was shot pointblank as ‘a disgrace to humanity’. On the evidence given by the daughter and Mrs Robinson, he said, ‘I find it hardly possible to believe. A brute approached the two women on the ground and laughed at them. I only think he must be mentally deranged. It is awful that there should be alive in this town a person capable of such monstrous conduct’,80 adding, ‘I cannot help remarking on the behaviour of the people on the street that day. I suppose there must have been people on that crowded street that day who boast of being Christian. I have never known such an un-Christian thing in my life. These people are a disgrace to humanity.’81 At the inquest held in December for the two men killed following the round-up, Trainor found Chrysostomos died of heart failure while suffering from respiratory complications caused by the fracture of seven ribs, but was unable to determine how the ribs were damaged.82 After a Royal Military Police captain admitted hitting Loukas, Trainor stressed that whether this was the blow that fractured Loukas’ skull was very important,83 as if the officer thought Loukas was advancing to attack him, as he had stated, then he would have been justified in striking Loukas. If, on the other hand, the boy was beaten up for no reason, Trainor would have to find that Loukas’ death amounted to murder.84 Relying on medical evidence for his verdict, Trainor noted the blow that fractured the deceased’s skull would have immediately led to unconsciousness, but the officer had not spoken of this. Therefore, it was uncertain that his blow had killed Loukas, though it could have been dealt by any number of soldiers. Although Trainor recorded Loukas died from a cerebral haemorrhage due to a blow from a blunt instrument, he had

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insufficient evidence to conclude when or by whom it was struck.85 According to Crawshaw, Trainor felt that, as with other cases he had been involved in, some witnesses were more anxious to implicate the security forces than contribute unbiased evidence.86 Nonetheless, he thought the degree of force used for the round-up was excessive. No security forces members were found personally guilty of misconduct, yet Trainor’s final comments were damning: People were so assaulted and beaten that doctors were fully occupied at Karaolis Camp and the hospital tending the wounded that evening. One can fully understand the horror, disgust and anger that filled the hearts of everyone that day, but nothing can justify the assaults on persons who had done nothing to warrant them.87 Trainor’s closing verdict received so much British press coverage that Prime Minister Macmillan felt compelled to comment in the House of Commons, ‘In view of the very full inquiries made by the coroner and the group to which I have referred, and to the fact that none of these investigations has produced evidence to identify any particular individual or individuals as having used excessive force, I do not consider that any useful purpose would be served by holding a further inquiry now’88 – none ever was. Within this atmosphere of distrust and paranoia, the loss of innocent life, such as that of mechanic Savvas Zanou, exposed the tragic challenges faced by often vulnerable British security forces and everyday Cypriots. Zanou was killed on 6 October by Corporal Thomas Cadwell, following orders by his officer to stop the suspect after a bombing. Cadwell claimed he ‘emptied’ his Bren gun at Zanou and ‘fired one burst which emptied the magazine’ because the Cypriot had targeted the bomb at a British army truck travelling through Lefkonico.89 After lengthy analysis, Trainor concluded that it ‘was clear that the unfortunate deceased had nothing to do with the bomb incident on that day’.90 His reserved verdict stated the shots were fired ‘by a member of Her Majesty’s forces in the execution of his duty when Zanou refused to halt when challenged and tried to cycle away’.91

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III. Chief Justice Sir Paget John Bourke Though the last execution took place by the time Hallinan’s successor arrived – less the Executive Council tacitly admitting its ineffectiveness and more a marker of Governor Sir Hugh Foot’s conciliatory approach – the new Chief Justice would need to be well-experienced in administering emergency law: Sir Paget John Bourke fitted the bill. A TCD graduate called to the Irish Bar in 1928, he began his colonial legal career as a judge in the Seychelles in the early 1930s. From there, he moved to Mandatory Palestine as Chief Magistrate in 1936, supporting efforts to crush the Arab Revolt of 1936 – 9, until transferring ten years later to Kenya as Puisne Judge. After negotiating the tensions in administering ‘justice’ during the Emergency, he was transferred to the Sierra Leone Protectorate in 1955 during large-scale rioting involving many tens of thousands.92 Promoted to Chief Justice in Cyprus, he was accompanied by his wife, Susan Bourke (ne´e Killeen), daughter of a Clare county registrar and a one-time girlfriend of Michael Collins.93 On 5 August 1957, Bourke dismissed an appeal by 18-year-old mechanic Nicos Sophocleous, sentenced to death for the murder of a Limassol lawyer in November 1956.94 Bourke saw no reason to alter the sentence imposed for a cold-blooded killing, the appeal being based on technical grounds. At this time, Sophocleous was the third Greek – Cypriot under sentence of death to have his appeal dismissed. Moreover, Bourke was posted at a time when inter-communal resentment and violence was at its highest, as was EOKA violence against members of the British administration. That no execution took place during his appointment had more to do with the protracted processes of trial and appeal, as Governor Foot noted in his memoirs.95 Yet Foot’s lighter touch, and thus Attorney-General Henry’s, saw many death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, with an eventual amnesty granted after the London–Zu¨rich Agreements. On 12 June 1958, the British rounded up 35 Greek– Cypriots on the outskirts of Skylloura who allegedly posed a threat to their Turkish neighbours. Instead of bringing them to Nicosia Police

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Station, they were subsequently released near the Turk–Cypriot village of Guenyeli, approximately seven miles from where they were arrested, and far from the nearest Greek villages. They were set upon by Turkish vigilantes, four hacked to death, another four dying from their wounds, and many left seriously wounded. As one of the first reported inter-communal killings, along with the explicit implication of the security forces’ wrongdoing, the event assumed an almost frenzied significance amongst the Greek – Cypriot community. Gruesome photographs, along with the reason given for the initial rounding-up being inaccurate, only added to the damage. Even the usually pro-British Cyprus Mail demanded an explanation.96 The Times acknowledged that ‘calling the events at Guenyeli a clash is probably a severe understatement’,97 describing it as a ‘tangled, tragic episode, which has not yet been completely unravelled’.98 The day after, Foot requested that Bourke write a report on the massacre, thus becoming sole Commissioner of the Report. Foot quickly recognised the enormity of the task, claiming ‘Bourke readily and courageously agreed. I say “courageously” because any findings in such an enquiry would be subject to fierce and bitter, and maybe violent, reactions from one side or the other, or very likely from both.’99 Bourke completed the Report at the start of July, and shortly afterwards a flurry of letters was sent between the Colonial, Foreign and War Offices. On 9 July, the CO’s J.D. Higham wrote to Mr Melville of the FO stating that the decision to publish the Report was ‘one of distress’ for the WO,100 adding, ‘the statement that sticks out like a sore thumb is that the course adopted by the Security Forces was, in the Chief Justice’s opinion, unlawful’.101 What is important is the extent to which Bourke’s negative findings about the security forces were sanitised by the invisible hand of the Attorney-General. Henry’s influence in determining the Report’s final draft is evident. Henry wrote a surprisingly revealing letter to Higham, urging that it be kept ‘on a personal basis as between the Colonial Office, the Governor and myself. I should not like my comments to be quoted to Bourke’,102 as otherwise the confidence between himself and Bourke might be ‘impaired for the

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future’. While important in highlighting the disparity between Henry’s and Bourke’s interpretations of what the Report should include, the letter is perhaps more important for its catalogue of the British administration’s mistakes. Firstly, Henry wanted clarification of Bourke’s announcement that the Governor intended publishing the investigating commission’s findings, Henry feeling the published Report’s content should be limited: ‘I seem to remember insisting on this limitation in a discussion at which Bourke was present, because I thought the Governor should not commit himself to publishing the whole of the Report and certainly not the evidence.’ Henry thought there was ‘obviously much in it which could do positive harm outside’. As regards the military taking the prisoners to Guenyeli being unlawful, Henry shared Bourke’s doubts: What I think caused him doubt – and I am bound to say I share it – is how it could be lawful for the authorities once it had been decided (as it was by the time they got to Wolseley Barracks) to release these men, to transport them in custody to a place such as Guenyeli, which was further away from their home, and then compel them by a show of force (via an armed patrol of Grenadier Guardsmen) to take a certain route across country to their destination. Henry agreed with Bourke’s conclusions, yet unlike Bourke was eager to cover them up as much as possible: Quaere whether the G.G. [Grenadier Guardsmen] could be regarded as an escort; if so, it tells against the Security Forces, who clearly did not go far enough with them to give the protection that was so clearly needed in the events which happened. Bourke seemed to think there might be a case of false imprisonment or even assault. Certainly I found it very difficult to see how these actions might be justified in law, although a case might be made out for them on the grounds of expediency.

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Henry then described what he felt were the grounds for expediency: ‘The circumstances were utterly abnormal, the island on the brink of civil war, the Security Forces strained.’ Although Bourke recognised this, it was not enough to clear any notion of wrongdoing. Henry also revealed that it was no anomaly: I urged this strongly on Bourke, and I think he has recognised it in his Report, but he still felt it incumbent on him, as it appears, to express a view on the legality of the practice adopted by the S.F. in this, and apparently in other cases, not only in Cyprus but elsewhere. Henry then divulged that the men’s arrest could not be justified; the need for it having passed, they should have been released immediately. Henry pointed out that ‘this was not done either at Ayios, Dhometious, or Nicosia and it seems to me there was an obligation to release on the spot as soon as it was decided not to charge the persons arrested’. He insisted there was no reason for them being taken to Guenyeli: ‘There was no particular danger to public order, or to their own safety, in putting them down in Nicosia, or indeed sending them back in their own transport.’ He then flippantly stated that, ‘Normally action like this would be merely a technical infringement of the subject’s liberty, but here the spotlight has been turned on it.’ The transporting and then dumping of innocent men in remote places had, according to Henry, taken place before: ‘Colonel Hamilton, of the Army Legal Service, who appeared at the hearing, did not, if I understood him correctly, consider it lawful, although often useful.’ Though Henry had ‘hoped that Bourke would not think it necessary to pronounce on the legality of this “practice” in the Report’, as he had done so, Henry offered two alternate approaches to Higham to get this removed from the final draft; firstly, that the actions’ legality was not within the Commission’s terms of reference to ‘investigate and determine the facts concerning the incidents which occurred at Guenyeli on 12 June 1958’, and secondly that finding the actions unlawful would prejudice the decision of a court

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having to adjudicate in other proceedings, civil or criminal. Henry admitted to Higham that the first point ‘might be difficult to put to Bourke’ except in conjunction with the second, Henry’s reason being that Bourke ‘had said during the enquiry the law is always there, and if the authorities want powers to make people walk home they should take them by Emergency Regulations’. He added that ‘one cannot very well ask a Commissioner to restrict comment on that matter’, and if such comment prejudged the subsequent proceedings, ‘it is clearly going to be embarrassing’, and so noted: We could therefore ask Bourke whether it is such an integral part of his findings under the terms of reference that it ought to be included . . . I know he was very anxious to leave the judge in any criminal proceedings quite free to make up his own mind. Moreover, he may have to sit in the Supreme Court on appeal in some of these cases and could again be confronted by the same issue. Henry was also ‘exercised about’ paragraphs 45 and 46 of the Report, feeling they might exacerbate inter-communal violence. Paragraph 45 suggested the Turks of Guenyeli and Konli might have planned the attack, and paragraph 46 that they set fire to their own crops to cut off the Greeks’ retreat. He concluded these ‘startling conclusions’ might have ‘unwelcome repercussions’. The following month, Bourke wrote to John Peck, one of the few FO officials informed of the proceedings, to discuss Henry’s letter.103 As to what parts of the Report would be published, Bourke said it was no longer up to him as the Governor, on whom he seemed keen to shift responsibility, had ‘approved its form’: I do not know whether his intention is to publish the whole report or parts of it or a short statement of the bald facts, which anyone could draw up from the Report. My work as Commissioner under the Commissions of Inquiry Law was concluded on furnishing the Report and I am not inclined to prepare a further shorter statement of conclusions.104

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Bourke also claimed the Governor would be justified in not mentioning his criticism of transporting men to places like Guenyeli, found in paragraph 38: ‘It seems to me that the Governor would be fulfilling his undertaking to publish the findings (in whatever form that is to be done) if the opinion was excluded.’105 Bourke said the attack ‘was of the most savage nature and the injuries inflicted indicate an extraordinary blood-lust’.106 Although not planned, it was, as Holland states, ‘coloured by the deeply prejudicial feelings’ which had become ‘widespread in the British civil and military ranks’.107 Yet no-one was ever charged for the acts committed at Guenyeli. On 23 August, all nine Turkish suspects were acquitted by the Special Court’s Mr Justice Vesey Boyle on the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’.108 All potentially inflammatory wrongdoings revealed by Henry to Higham were whitewashed, with one exception. The remaining accusation regarded the lawfulness of the troops taking the released men in custody to Guenyeli, the Report issuing a slight rebuke to the senior army commanders over this practice of ‘bussing’. It merely stated the order given and action taken was unreasonable, which displeased Commander-in-Chief General Roger Bower, who wanted the entire paragraph removed.109 Under Foot’s persuasion, Bourke removed the most damning sentences: ‘The only conclusion I can reach is that the course adopted was unimaginative and ill-considered. It was, also, in my opinion unlawful.’110 He also removed all Major Redgrave’s evidence, who had ordered the men be dropped in Guenyeli. His lack of empathy when questioned is evident in the rough draft, leading Bourke to state in the Report that ‘his attitude’ was revealed under cross-examination: Q. So your instructions were to take them out into the country and tell them to walk home? A. Quite right. Q. And you chose to give instructions to take them north of Guenyeli? A. Yes. Q. Most probably you estimated the distance they had to walk?

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A. Not really. It was under ten miles. Q. Ten miles is a very small distance for people to be forced to walk? A. I said it was under ten miles. I did not bother to measure it. Q. You did not care about it? A. Why should I? They were about to cause trouble for a second time. Q. What trouble they were going to cause, you did not know, nor did not enquire? A. It is not for me to use my imagination to what they could do with their stones and sticks.111 The men were in fact unarmed. This evidence, and Bourke’s indictment, was also removed. The Report was finally published in full on 9 December 1958, Foot claiming publication was delayed until inter-communal tension had decreased.112 However, the evidence shows the real reason was indecision over its final form. Eventually, Bourke approved a modified version after much persuasion from WO officials. Foot followed the publication by praising the security forces: Had it not been for their efforts carried out with the greatest zeal the loss of life and damage to property would have been far heavier. I greatly admire the courage and resolution and tireless energy with which they carried out a task of the utmost difficulty and I am very glad that the Inquiry has wholly disproved the ‘wild and horrible’ allegation made against them.113

IV. Attorney-General James Holmes Henry Underpinning all these cases – and particularly the Guenyeli Report – was the pivotal role of James Holmes Henry. The breadth of Henry’s powers as Attorney-General, and thus his value as an Executive Council member, cannot be overstated. Although administering justice ultimately rested with the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, as he could also alter the lower courts’ decisions, maintaining law and order,

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the colonial government’s primary function, was Henry’s responsibility as head colonial legislator. As the Governor’s chief legal advisor on all departmental policy his position was paramount, pronouncing solely not only on its legality but its wisdom and justice – no easy feat when proposing legislation such as the Emergency Powers. In the event of a death sentence, the decision on whether or not mercy was granted rested with the Attorney-General. He had substantial power over the Chief Justice, permitted to stop prosecutions at any stage with a nolle prosequi, a legal phrase meaning ‘do not pursue’,114 which sometimes led to differences of opinion, such as those during the Guenyeli Massacre investigation. He could also appear as the government’s advocate in any criminal or civil case, though this occurred rarely and only when the Crown needed its heaviest artillery, as during the trial of the most notorious EOKA gunman in Regina vs. Nicos Sampson in May 1957.115 The Attorney-General also presided over army misconduct cases, and could prevent members of the public taking proceedings against police officers, armed forces personnel or government officials without his consent. From August 1956 onwards, capital cases under the Emergency laws rose steadily, as did alleged atrocities against innocent civilians by British soldiers, who by September numbered 30,000 on the island. As Holland notes, ‘the building up of tension in Cyprus reflected also the rising crescendo of Suez’.116 The Egyptian fiasco expediently coincided with an increase in EOKA’s efforts. Many of the troops in Cyprus normally available for local operations were, from 31 October onwards, either on 48-hour stand-by or engaged at Akrotiri, loading up supplies for the Egypt landing. Thus, at EOKA’s hands, the first three weeks of November 1956 had a higher casualty rate than any other time during the Emergency. In response, Harding decided to extend the Emergency Regulations. Despite raised eyebrows in Whitehall, Henry approved additional laws, which came into force on 26 November. He widened the mandatory death penalty to include consorting with those possessing arms and assisting explosives manufacture, and further controls were placed on the press. Harding’s wish for an immunity

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law for public servants was rejected, yet further laws were passed making it increasingly difficult and costly to institute a private prosecution against a public servant. As mentioned earlier, despite Hallinan’s advice, no prosecution could go ahead without the Attorney-General’s fiat. Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 December 1956, William Francis Hare, Earl of Listowel and previously Minister of State for Colonial Affairs under the Labour government from 1948 to 1950, questioned the extension of the death penalty: This new regulation extending the death penalty, among other things deprives judges of the option of giving a prison sentence if a person is convicted of carrying arms or ammunition. I believe that it would shock opinion here if a child of twelve – and that is the age of criminal responsibility in Cyprus – was found carrying a bomb and sentenced to death by hanging. Your Lordships may remember a case reported last week in Nicosia in which two girls of seventeen were convicted of carrying bombs. If they had been prosecuted under the new regulation, the one I am dealing with, they would have been sentenced to death. The judge would have had no option.117 He then contested the Attorney-General’s power in relation to private prosecutions against public servants: May I now say one word about the last of these regulations, which seems to be the most difficult of all to defend. It prevents members of the public from taking proceedings against any police officer, member of the armed forces or Government official, without the consent of the Attorney-General. Surely it is contrary to our ideas of fair play and the liberty of the subject that the Attorney-General, who is himself a member of the Government, should be able to prevent an ordinary citizen from going to law when he believes that he has been wronged by the Government or by any of their servants. If prior consent is considered to be necessary – it may be – before

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access to the courts is permitted, it ought surely to be given by a judge, by an independent person, and not by a member of the Executive.118 Members of the House of Commons also protested the regulation, Labour MP Kenneth Robinson denouncing it as ‘a quite intolerable situation’.119 He added, ‘If cases like these are not properly investigated, and if the power and influence of the Attorney-General is used to prevent prosecutions against members of the security forces, then people all over the world will draw the most sinister conclusions.’120 Along with these pressures, Henry also had to deal with an investigation by the Council of Europe’s Sub-Commission on Human Rights in January 1958, proving himself a strong, fearless and capable Attorney-General, one invaluable to the British government during the insurgency. Yet given his extensive powers and role in shaping Cypriot events, it is striking how rarely he features, and with what little importance, in the major historical works on the Emergency. Even remaining archival sources are very thin. There is no doubt that Chief Justices Hallinan and Bourke and Special Court Judges Boyle and Trainor were working in extraordinary circumstances and under incredible duress, threats of harm to them and their families being very real.121 Added to this was a huge workload; in 1956 and 1957 the number of persons dealt with in the Special Court alone reached 19,204.122 Despite their collective experience of trouble-spots, Cyprus was unique in that the majority of its population was white, European and Christian. British rule in Cyprus could not be as easily legitimised by ideologies of racial superiority as applied implicitly or explicitly to African and Asian subjects. These paradoxes placed them closer to the complicated Irish colonial legacy, ironic given the Irish judicial dominance of Cyprus’ Supreme Court throughout the Emergency. Governor Foot was aware of the parallels drawn between Ireland and Cyprus. In Guilty Men, published the same year as his gubernatorial appointment, and co-written by his brother Michael

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Mackintosh Foot and Mervyn Jones, several comparisons between British policy in Ireland and Cyprus were made,123 as well as between Kevin Barry and Michalis Karaolis.124 Even the Emergency Regulations were extended, The Times of Cyprus, often critical of British policy, stating that ‘it is a matter of pride that judges in Cyprus maintain the high standards of British justice’.125 The liberal Manchester Guardian journalist Nancy Crawshaw, stationed in Cyprus, claimed the Cypriots maintained their confidence and trust in the judiciary despite their great distrust of the administration.126 Rather than seeing it as an instrument of repression, Deputy Governor of Cyprus Sir George Sinclair was ‘quite convinced’ that the Special Court was ‘a great source of relief’ to Cypriot judges and magistrates living ‘under the moral constraint of EOKA’s campaign of intimidation’.127 Also, as trial by jury was unused in Cyprus, judges decided the verdict as well as imposing the sentence. That they did so and were still seen as impartial is telling. Hallinan’s insistence that he should be searched during the Karaolis trial was clearly to maintain high judicial standards. He reasoned that ‘should any incident accompanied by violence occur at the trial, any possibility of suspicion falling on anyone connected with the administration of justice should be excluded’.128 The Yakoumis case was only one of many where the evidence was declared insufficient or inadmissible due to how confessions were extracted. With government prosecutions going embarrassingly wrong, the foundations of British policy were weakened. The judiciary was arguably the one institution in which most Cypriots retained confidence throughout the Emergency.129 Harsh sentences, frequently administered to minors, reflected more the Conservative government’s desperation and Governor’s duties than judges’ severity. The intensity of cases and horrors perpetuated on all sides reveal the challenges the legal administration faced, clearly illustrated by Earl Jowitt. As Lord Chancellor during Attlee’s 1945 – 51 Labour government, he had been responsible for efficient and independent courts. Speaking after the extension of Emergency Powers in November 1956, Jowitt protested the mandatory use of the death

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penalty, unequivocally blaming the Executive, though the sanction for such legislation rested with the Attorney-General: It seems to me that this regulation bears this stamped upon its face: that the Executive no longer trusts the judges. Have not the judges exercised their discretion wisely and sensibly? Have they not, in those cases where there was no real excuse, sentenced to death those people who were discovered carrying bombs or carrying firearms?130 That so few security forces members had been prosecuted for misconduct despite widespread allegations was also down to the Attorney-General rather than the judges. Jowitt accepted occasional misconduct being probable, but criticised the extent of Henry’s power: I now come to the question that there should be no prosecution without the consent of the Attorney-General. In this country we have had cases of people vested with authority who have abused their authority. The legal phrase is colori officii – under the colour of some office you try to distort in one way or another . . . suppose there were a case of some civil servant acting as a petty tyrant. Is it right that the chance of the citizen to bring an action against him and show him up in the courts should be subject to the consent of the Attorney-General, subject to the Executive? It means placing the law absolutely under the Executive, instead of the other way round.131 Labour politician and former Cypriot Governor Lord Winster agreed with him, declaring that the people of Cyprus and Britain ‘will be most grateful to him for the powerful aid which he has rendered in this matter by his perfectly devastating criticism of these new regulations’.132 Lord Chorley, Labour peer and legal scholar, cited Ireland as an example in response to those denying possible misconduct, speaking of the ‘conduct of a small section of British troops in the Black and Tans in Ireland’, and saying that ‘member

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after member of the Government of the time denied that they had acted improperly’.133 Far from being exceptional, ‘Celtic twilight’ cases such as the Foley trial, whereby it was ‘the Irish against the Irish’, were inevitable, given the prominence and diversity of Irish roles in empire, incidentally given greater visibility through legal proceedings. In Hong Kong in 1951 an Irish Jesuit priest at Wah Yan College, Fr Terence Sheridan, editor of Echo magazine, was accused of contempt of court for writing and publishing an article that criticised the Colonial Legal Service.134 Sheridan’s being a cleric did not stop Chief Justice Sir Gerald Howe, a Dubliner and Catholic to boot, from convicting him.135 What was unique were echoes of Ireland’s semi-colonial past – particularly the War of Independence. Yet however much the nine executions ignited international protest and paramilitary violence in Cyprus, they were a fraction of those in Malaya and Kenya. Even in Britain itself at that time, 12 people on average were executed annually, despite calls to abolish capital punishment by many in the House of Commons.136 Following the first two executions, Labour MP Sydney Silverman, founder of the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, proposed a Private Members’ Bill on the subject. Passed in the House of Commons by 200 votes to 98 in June 1956, it was defeated in the House of Lords. Therefore, some doubted whether it was defensible to carry out executions in Cyprus while the matter was being discussed at Westminster. Yet despite Henry’s power, his scope to act independently was subject to pressure from the Governor: Foot’s memoirs note that a governor ‘hears the advice of his Attorney-General and his Executive Council but when he has heard the advice he must take his decision alone’.137 Accordingly, Henry’s autonomy should not be over-estimated. Official records in the Cyprus State Archives in Nicosia remain closed, and until they can be researched it should be remembered that Harding commuted many death sentences to life imprisonment, though Foot noted ‘he got no credit for that’.138 How much Henry influenced Harding remains unknown until these files are released. Governor Foot’s moderation, and thus Henry’s, also

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saw many death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, with eventual amnesty under the London– Zu¨rich Agreements. Despite Foot’s awareness that ‘if and when I confirmed a death sentence any hope I had of contributing to a settlement, to reconciliation, would be gone’, he was forced to condemn two Greek– Cypriot youths for murdering a fellow Greek – Cypriot.139 After listening to the Attorney-General, he realised there was ‘not the slightest justification for a reprieve’140 – remarking ironically that he was also signing his ‘own political death warrant’.141 However, less than an hour before the executions Foot was called by Secretary of State Lennox-Boyd, who informed him that the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Turkey, Averoff and Zorlu, had jointly asked British Foreign Secretary Lloyd to halt the executions. Lloyd duly informed Prime Minister Macmillan and Lennox-Boyd, who deferred to Foot, backing whatever decision he made. Foot ‘had no difficulty in deciding’,142 and – with ten minutes to go – reprieved the sentences. Although details of their working relationship remain unknown, after the Emergency Henry expressed his gratitude to Foot ‘for everything you have done . . . and stood for, these past two years’,143 proclaiming that, ‘even after all the dust and blood . . . I shall never regret having gone’ to Cyprus.144 Foot thanked Henry for ‘all the magnificent official help’ he had given, praising his ‘wonderful good humour’, which - and elsewhere apparently ‘always showed, even in the worst of times’.145 The Irish judicial presence in Emergency Cyprus reveals that class, not religious background, was the determining factor for a Colonial Legal Service career in the 1950s. If one could afford the qualifications, regardless of one’s university, there was certainly opportunity,146 though to reach the Supreme Court, family history and connections still mattered. The families of Chief Justices Hallinan and Bourke were from the Castle Catholic tradition, both having strong connections with Queen Victoria and the Empire. Hallinan’s mother, Elizabeth Dennehy, was the daughter of MajorGeneral Sir Thomas Dennehy. Born in Fermoy, Co. Cork, he became an administrator in India, helped suppress the Sonthal Rebellion

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(1855– 6) and Indian Mutiny (1857), was Political Agent in Dholpur from 1879 to 1885, and extra Groom in Waiting to Queen Victoria in 1888 and to Edward VII in 1901. Hallinan’s older brother, Victor, born in 1897, was a godchild of Queen Victoria.147 Bourke’s father (former President Mary Robinson’s grandfather) Henry Charles Bourke was a Mayo solicitor and constitutional nationalist with links to Cumann na nGaedheal, who nonetheless ‘retained a certain sympathy for the Empire’.148 His brother (and son’s namesake) Paget John Bourke was a British Household Cavalry captain and part of Victoria’s Royal Bodyguard, while cousin Sir James Paget was Queen’s Surgeon.149 Victoria clearly had a soft spot for her Irish bodyguard: when the anti-Treatyite Susan Killeen got engaged to Bourke, the ring was one given to his uncle by the Queen. Their ethnicity was clearly reconcilable with their duties as judges, and they upheld the Queen’s law as impartially as possible. So did nationality matter in the mid- to late-1950s? Clearly it could: if they had brought the British administration in Cyprus into disrepute or damaged the Conservative government’s reputation, as Mr Justice Patrick Devlin’s Report of 1959 did, their nationality or religion could well have been brought up to slander their judgement. The Devlin Commission was highly critical of British policing in Nyasaland, and Macmillan, worried about the forthcoming elections, reacted by saying the result was to be expected from a lapsed Catholic with ‘Fenian blood that makes Irishmen anti-Government on principle’.150 Informed by the Irish experience, the Irish judges understood the dilemma between Cypriot self-determination and the authorities’ need to quell violence – one man’s freedom-fighter was another man’s terrorist. That Hallinan favoured self-determination in Cyprus did little to appease West Indies residents when he was later appointed their new Chief Justice. Sir John Mordecai, Deputy GovernorGeneral of the short-lived Federation of the West Indies (1958– 62), said Hallinan’s 1958 appointment created ‘concern and apprehension’.151 Ironically, the first judge to be elected President of the Cypriot High Court upon independence in 1960 was Irish, newly

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inaugurated President Archbishop Makarios and his Turk–Cypriot Vice-President Dr Fazil Kutchuk having requested the Irish government recommend someone.152 Mr Justice Barra O’Briain from Dublin was picked from a field of eight headed by Mr Justice Cahir Davitt, President of the Irish High Court,153 the appointment perhaps indicating the good reputation of his Irish predecessors in Cyprus. Yet the judges may not have been easily identifiable as Irish. In accent and manner, they were more akin to English publicschooled ‘gentlemen’ than any reductive Irish stereotype – one Athens Radio commentator, present at a trial presided over by Hallinan, merely described him as ‘British’.154 No ex-EOKA members interviewed for this book, all of whom had been through the courts and sent to Wakefield Prison, were aware of the Irish judicial presence in Cyprus. Even Turk–Cypriot Go¨kalp Kamil, harboured by Hallinan after making the EOKA hit-list for identifying a bomber, does not mention Hallinan’s nationality in his memoirs.155 The Times saw another reason for O’Briain’s appointment, drawing on his IRA involvement and participation in ‘the bitter street fighting with the British forces in the capital in 1921 and 1922’.156 It described his appointment as ‘appropriate, for, like the new Republic of Cyprus, he has turned to the rule of law after a revolutionary background’.157 O’Briain was not alone: the following November, William Henry Irwin from Co. Sligo, having served in various Caribbean and African colonial outposts since joining the Colonial Legal Service in 1936, became Resident Judge of the court in the sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia.158 While legal historian Brian Simpson is right in claiming the Cyprus executions ‘had a significance which resembles that of the fifteen executions after the Easter Rising of 1916’, the ones during the Irish War of Independence bore an even closer resemblance, partly because the Easter Rising was essentially a pro-German act.159 Comparisons drawn between the Barry and Karaolis executions, made explicit by the NSC protests, were striking, and would profoundly influence events in their respective countries, and mark the point where the possibilities of political agreement were compromised. Their deaths also resulted in increased public hostility

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towards British forces, recruitment surges for the IRA and EOKA respectively, and consequently revenge killings. As colonial law dictated, all those executed in Nicosia Central Prison and Mountjoy Prison were buried within the grounds, in unmarked graves in unconsecrated ground. Yet despite the numerous comparisons made, the most striking connection of all went unnoticed. The nine EOKA members executed in Nicosia Central Prison were all refused clemency by the one person with legislative authority to do so, Attorney-General James Henry. Likewise, the 24 IRA members executed during the Irish War of Independence, which preceded the 77 official executions by the Irish Free State authorities, could only have had their sentences legally overturned by one person – James Henry’s father, Denis Henry, the Attorney-General of Ireland at the time.

CHAPTER 8 THE IRISH INVOLVEMENT IN BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY IN CYPRUS

One particular village gave a lot of trouble with slogans, which said ‘Cyprus is Greek,’ but one morning, after one of our NCO-led patrols had failed yet again to ambush anyone, the local gymnasium headmaster complained of a whitewashed message on the school wall, announcing that ‘Cyprus is Irish!’ Strangely, that did the trick and there were no more painted slogans.1 In a November 1954 House of Commons debate on Irish citizens in the British army, Dublin-born Catholic Conservative MP William Teeling announced, given the large numbers, ‘I do not know what we would do without them’,2 his fellow Conservative Party member, Under-Secretary of State for War Mr Fitzroy Maclean, adding: While we are discussing this subject, I should like to say how glad the British Army is to receive recruits from Southern Ireland. The Irish – and here I would not venture to draw a distinction between North and South – have always been famous for their fighting qualities. When it comes to a fight, the honours are fairly even between the two. Certainly the tradition of

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Irishmen serving in our Army is very old and glorious. I hope that it will continue and flourish for many years.3 The following year, the Emergency in Cyprus was declared, the extent of Irish participation in British armed forces throughout the period revealing how Maclean’s hopes were well placed. However, given the dominance and selectiveness of the Irish nationalist narrative, the contribution of men from the Twenty-Six Counties has never been acknowledged – until now. Indeed, this negation is not exceptional, a similar silence prevailing over Irish involvement in major campaigns in India, Palestine, Malaya and Kenya during the latter 1940s and 1950s. It is easier to locate high-profile Irish figures involved in the Cyprus campaign than trace individual soldiers and their exact numbers in each regiment in Cyprus. Alvin Jackson states Irish neutrality during World War II ‘did little to undermine the tradition of Irish service in the forces of the Crown’.4 Sixty thousand apparently fought with the British, though officially Ireland maintained this never happened, until the May 2013 amnesty for Irish Defence Forces members who volunteered to fight fascism.5 For many young men facing the prospect of unemployment in Ireland or emigration to England during the economically depressed 1950s, recruitment to the British armed forces was seen as a far more attractive and secure career than could be gained in Ireland. Despite at times little empathy back home, the absence of ideological justification for joining up (as was available during World War II) did little to weaken a tradition strengthened by poverty, and, of course, with recruitment came social mobility. Still, exact figures for Irish recruitment in the 1950s remain unknown, and the eventual removal of the Data Protection Act will help little as, with British military records reorganised in 1945, individual enlistment records no longer noted nationality, merely the place of recruitment. However, newspaper reports, official papers and archival material reveal that numbers from the Twenty-Six Counties serving in Cyprus were significant, and oral testimony – a particular window of opportunity that is steadily closing – and other individual accounts

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reveal the variety of regiments joined and the challenges and dangers faced, many illustrating how much economic necessity was a motive for joining up. These sources expose an Irish identity more protean than rigid, with allegiances held, simultaneously, to both Ireland and Britain, which sits uneasily with the narrowly fixed notion espoused by the two leading Irish political parties at that time, an identity that matched what J.J. Lee has called the ‘corresponding ideologies of illusion’.6 The relevant census figures for 1951, 1956 and 1961 have not been tabulated and will not be anytime soon, but when they are one problem is that when questioned on occupation a distinction was not always made between Irish and British within the armed forces, this ambiguous response itself part of a longer Irish tradition. Many merely wrote whether they were sailor, soldier or pilot, not always indicating which armed forces they served with, nor was this specified in the questions. These will then have to be checked against Irish armed forces records to find the actual numbers of Irish in the British army, navy and air forces who continued to live in the Republic. Paradoxically, Irish recruitment in the British armed forces, if the Cyprus figures are symptomatic of wider involvement in British counter-insurgency operations in the 1950s, served as an important safety valve, stymieing social unrest in Ireland. For these reasons, one could argue its value actually increased during the 1950s Irish economic crisis, illustrating the continued importance of the Empire to Irish affairs long after independence. For those from less humble backgrounds simply wishing to pursue a military career, the British army offered more exciting opportunities than could the Irish, along with better pay and working conditions.7 For those who did emigrate, the available records are revealing. In the 1951 census, 6,503 men, born in the Republic but living in England and Wales, were in the British armed forces.8 For those who remained in Ireland, signing up merely required a quick trip across the border to the British army recruiting office in Belfast. Because of the Ireland Act 1949, Republic of Ireland citizens serving in the British army were not treated as aliens but on the same terms as UK citizens, despite Ireland’s departure from the Commonwealth.

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I. ‘Taking the Shilling’: Irish Recruitment to the British Army and Service in Cyprus Throughout the 1950s, the Republic of Ireland provided a significant source of recruits, not least for Irish infantry regiments in the British army. Even in the late 1950s, one quarter of Royal Irish Fusiliers officers, and over 40 per cent of the men, had Irish home addresses.9 But what about Irish regiments that served in Cyprus during the Emergency? The Second Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers served in Cyprus from August 1954 until February 1956. This initial build-up was not due to social unrest, but to the transfer of the Middle East Land Forces (MELF) and Middle East Air Force (MEAF) headquarters from Egypt. The First Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR) was stationed in Cyprus from May 1957 until November 1959. The RUR, originally formed by amalgamating the 83rd and 86th Regiments, had a long tradition of recruits from the Republic, and with the 83rd Regiment originally raised in Dublin, this continued after Irish independence. Other regiments such as the Irish Guards also maintained high recruitment from the Republic. Sent out in November 1957 as part of the 50th Infantry Brigade to support the First Battalion of the Welch Regiment, their numbers were reinforced in mid-June 1958 when their First Battalion were sent with the First Guards Brigade. They stayed until November 1958, checking internal security. 600 Irish Guards served in the Cyprus Emergency, 124 of these (21 per cent) from the Republic. Though Dublin provided most of these recruits, totalling 74 men, 22 of the Twenty-Six Counties also provided recruits.10 Outside of these traditionally popular regiments, Irishmen could be found in many others stationed in Cyprus, in addition to the RAF and Police Force. Where possible, their families came too, many settling in Tyrone Street in Episkopi, near the Akrotiri military base. Although British military service was generally regarded suspiciously by extreme Irish nationalists (though at least two Saor Uladh members – Connie Green and Phil O’Donnell – had served in

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the British army), it could be treated sympathetically. As seen in Chapter Three, there was a clear acknowledgement in the United Irishman that Irish regulars were often just trying to scrape a living as best they could. For Northern and Southern Irish troops in Cyprus, loyalties were less conflict-ridden than they would become with the violence in late-1960s Northern Ireland and deployment of regular troops in the Province. Notwithstanding the vagaries of memory, Corporals George Duke and David Cranston of the First Battalion both remember songs such as ‘The Sash’ being benignly followed by ‘Kevin Barry’ and vice versa. Along with national servicemen, the London Irish also made up a substantial proportion of the Irish battalions. According to one contributor to the winter 1959 issue of RUR regimental journal Quis Separabit, styling himself ‘Spokeshave’ of A Company, First Battalion, it was ‘with Cockney accents and Irish brogue, we rid the country of terrorist rogue’.11

II. The Cyprus Emergency and the Anglo-Irish Military Tradition The Irish officer class, most still belonging to the Anglo-Irish tradition, more readily identified with British imperialism, some for anti-communist reasons but also because of long-held family loyalties.12 Several members of the Irish Ascendancy tradition (or what was left of it by the 1950s) reached high rank in the British armed forces, playing prominent roles in planning and executing counter-insurgency in Cyprus, also a mark of continuity rather than change in the Irish military tradition within empire. Given the importance of Cyprus for ‘Operation Musketeer’, their duties during the latter half of 1956 were bound up with the tripartite Suez invasion. Approved by the Cabinet in principle in December 1952, by early 1955 the MEAF and MELF transfer from Egypt was complete.13 A comprehensive study of the Irish role in the Suez crisis is beyond the remit of this research, but the following indicates how it might advance our limited understanding of the Irish military interaction with empire after World War II, an era of anti-colonial nationalist turbulence.

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British counter-insurgency in Ireland, ‘seriously hampered by the overlapping and sometimes conflicting responsibilities of the civil and military authorities’, provided few constructive examples for Cyprus.14 Nor did subsequent British campaigns, until General Sir Gerald Templer’s policy in Malaya coordinated efforts against insurgents across all relevant institutions. Born in Colchester, Essex, and educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, Templer was commissioned into his father Walter’s regiment, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, in 1916, fighting in World War I. Although a native of Co. Armagh, Walter’s was the first, and only, Templer generation born in Ireland. With ancestry tracing back to Devon, Gerald ‘detested being numbered among the Ulster field marshals’.15 In January 1952, Churchill’s Conservative Government appointed Templer High Commissioner and the army’s Director of Operations. The combination of offices, held until 1954, gave him an influence his predecessors lacked and he was quickly able to place the governmental machine on an effective war-footing. Although the Malaya Emergency lasted from 1948 until 1960, by late 1952 he was able to declare the jungle neutralised of communist insurgents, counter-insurgency tactics having met with limited success until his appointment. When the first EOKA explosions went off on 1 April 1955, it was Templer who was sent to assess the security forces’ efficiency. Threats against them quickly mounted. On 16 June 1955, a grenade was thrown into the Palms Bar in Famagusta. Corporal Myles O’Connor from Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, attached to the RAF’s No. 264 Signals Unit, threw it back out the window, whilst urging everyone to take cover – it went off without causing grave injury. The London Gazette stated that, ‘In tackling the grenade while the fuse was burning, Corporal O’Connor displayed commendable courage and great presence of mind, and probably averted grave injury or even loss of life among those present at the time.’16 O’Connor received the British Empire Medal for his bravery.17 With security seriously lacking, Governor Robert Armitage was soon replaced, his successor Field Marshal John Harding arriving in October 1955, with Templer replacing Harding as Chief of the

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Imperial General Staff (CIGS). The previous June, Harding was sitting next to Frederick Boland at a dinner in London and told the Ambassador that the only real danger of war in future was if ‘as a result of miscalculation or of yielding to emotional public pressures, one of the major powers on either side would stumble into a situation from which it would find it impossible to withdraw but which it could not maintain without precipitating a conflict.’18 Though referring to Cold War tensions, this proved uncannily prophetic regarding Turkey and Greece over the Cyprus Question. By appointing a soldier as Governor, all government activities were incorporated as one under Harding’s authority. The Sunday Press drew comparisons with Macready, but there was already a precedent in Cyprus – Irishman Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley, former High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief. Templer’s methods used so successfully in Malaya, including his ‘hearts and minds’ approach, were to be immediately applied in Cyprus.19 Harding was so impressed by Templer’s success in Malaya that when he visited Kenya in 1953 he was shocked that none of the lessons of Malaya seemed to have been learned, or implemented, by the British administration there. Others, too, recognised that Templer’s Malayan exemplar was needed in Cyprus. In September 1955, during his time as Foreign Secretary, Macmillan noted, ‘We need a Gerald Templer for Cyprus.’20 Despite Templer’s summary of Cyprus at the time as the ‘sad sight of friend attacking friend for an illusion’, he was far from liberal regarding British policy.21 Even in Malaya he envisioned independence as fortifying, not liquidating, the Empire. Supportive of the Suez invasion, as CIGS he believed the ‘application of overwhelming force was the sine qua non of any military operation against Egypt.’22 Cyprus was the springboard to launch Anglo-French airborne assaults. For him, British sovereignty there was sacrosanct. Templer’s tough stance was shared by the ‘small, immensely energetic and self-confident Irishman’, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Permanent Under-Secretary of the FO from 1953 to 1957.23 Unafraid of speaking his mind to superiors, Kirkpatrick’s authoritative manner was apparent in his support of using force to

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recover the Suez Canal and his firm position on Cyprus. As early as December 1954, he advised a ‘tough, realistic and energetic Cyprus policy’ be drafted: otherwise, ‘we should drift from one setback to another – like the French’.24 As mentioned earlier, Kirkpatrick told the Irish Ambassador in London that he suggested Cyprus be partitioned,25 and also pressed for Makarios’ deportation, despite its dubious legality. Templer followed a similarly tough-minded strategy as CIGS. From January 1956, joining Templer in Chiefs-of-Staff and Cabinet meetings was newly appointed Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) Sir Dermot Boyle, from Rathdowney, Co. Laois, an appointment held until late 1959. From Protestant landowning stock, his father Alexander, from Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny, managed Lord Ashbrook’s estate near Durrow, South Laois, in addition to his own farm at their home, Belmont House, and two others he owned. His mother was descended from the Nixons of Nixon Hall, Co. Fermanagh. While saying little about his father, who died in 1919 when he was 15, Boyle’s memoir describes his mother as ‘devoted to England, its history, achievements and above all its Royal Family’.26 Educated at St Columba’s College, Dublin, then the newly established RAF College at Cranwell in 1922, Boyle quickly achieved distinction after graduating. He started as CAS despite never having served on the Air Council, the usual prerequisite, the first not to have served in World War I. His first year was his most turbulent. In February 1956, he had to cancel his first press conference as overseas correspondents refused to attend, in protest against not being issued press passes for Nicosia civil airport,27 press facilities having been withdrawn after it became a protected area under the Emergency Regulations.

III. Irish Involvement in the Deportation of Archbishop Makarios February 1956 marked the final breakdown of the Harding–Makarios negotiations. With no progress against EOKA and increasing street disorder, Harding, incensed that Makarios refused to condemn

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terrorism, decided to remove him in the misplaced hope that ‘moderates’ amongst the Greek– Cypriots would come forward. On 9 March, under Boyle’s authority as CAS, Makarios, the Bishop of Kyrenia and two secretaries were flown out of Cyprus under ‘Operation Airborne’. Planning and supervising the exile was Group Captain Norman de Warrenne Boult from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. Considered ‘one of the RAF’s most outstanding pilots and flying instructors’, in 1936 he was badly injured, with only one eye left, as a passenger in an aircraft crash in Egypt, which left six of the 11 occupants dead.28 During World War II, the Greek government awarded him the Royal Hellenic Air Force Cross for training pilots. In 1954 he became Senior Air Staff Officer, Iraq Command, which later became Levant Command and moved to Cyprus. Given Cabinet reservations about Makarios’ deportation, Operation Airborne needed smooth execution. They flew to Aden for refuelling, and then to Mombasa, Kenya, where the deportees were entrusted to the Royal Navy. Kenyan officials had been expecting ‘Operation Apollo’, the object ‘to afford staging facilities in Kenya for high ranking clerics, who may be deported from Cyprus’.29 The operation, prepared six month’s previously, could be executed at six hours’ notice on any date.30 From the clerics’ arrival until boarding HMS Loch Fada, the Kenya Police were responsible for security, under arrangements by Desmond O’Hagan, Assistant Commissioner, Coast Province, and Kenyan Minister for Defence and Internal Security John Cusack.31 Cusack was born in 1907 in Ballsbridge, Co. Dublin, his father a Roman Catholic Unionist and Irish county judge from Newry, Co. Down,32 and had been with the Kenyan Colonial Service since 1930. O’Hagan was born in 1909 in Devlin, Co. Westmeath, moving to Kenya shortly before World War I when his parents decided to start a coffee estate.33 In Kenya, Makarios maintained his sense of humour. On 10 March 1956, preparing to board, he remarked, ‘There is no finer way of learning geography than as a guest of Her Majesty the Queen.’34 Brought to Mahe´, largest island in the Seychelles, they spent their exile in the not uncomfortable lodgings of Sans Souci, country retreat of Governor Sir William Addis.35

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Deportation took much responsibility off Makarios’ shoulders, as it had done for Parnell when arrested under the Coercion Acts in October 1881. For Harding, the pressure only amplified. In March 1956 there were 246 EOKA attacks, including another attempt to assassinate the Governor, the offensive continuing through April and May. Matters further deteriorated when the first two EOKA prisoners were hanged. In one of many reprisals, Corporal Hale from Co. Sligo was shot dead while working at Nicosia Airfield. Two of the accused, Michael Koutsoftas and Andreas Panayides, were found guilty by Mr Justice Shaw and executed the following October. Despite increasing EOKA activity, for de Warrenne Boult and Boyle, Operation Airborne had succeeded, but what were Boyle’s views as CAS on British policy? In June 1956, in a Defence Committee Meeting of the Chiefs-of-Staff to discuss the paper ‘Facilities Required By Her Majesty’s Forces in Cyprus in Peace and War’, Boyle stated that Cyprus was not necessarily an essential base.36 He disliked being tied to the former position of the Chiefs-of-Staff that ‘we could not relinquish our sovereignty over Cyprus for at least 15 years’, as he was not convinced that Cyprus was required to safeguard oil supply,37 asserting ‘no-one could say at the present time what changes might take place in the near future. It might well be that we might have no further use for Cyprus after, say, seven years and we should make this point clear.’38 This contrasted with Templer’s analysis, who doubted ‘whether the paper stressed sufficiently the importance of maintaining our position in Cyprus’.39 For him, ‘the psychological value’ of the military presence was ‘very great’,40 troops remaining on the island having ‘a stabilising influence on Middle East countries’, and thus helping secure the oil supply.41 Despite these differences, Templer got along ‘extremely well’ with Boyle, considering him ‘his real ally’,42 while Boyle thought that Templer was ‘firm, honest, [and had] a very clear brain, coupled with a great depth of human understanding and courage’.43 Compare Templer’s relationship with First Sea Lord Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, whose liberal views on defence strategy were a source of friction between them.44

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IV. Ireland, Cyprus and the Suez Crisis The following month Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. Boyle was ‘in it from the very beginning’ – he had been dining at No. 10 Downing Street on the evening of 26 July 1956 when the news broke.45 British military preparations against Egypt now had direct consequences for Cyprus, Boyle ‘anxious’ that ‘a great assembly of troops’ provided a ‘very tempting target for the enemy Air Force’.46 The build-up of troops on the island, numbering 30,000 by mid-September, also provided EOKA with easier targets, and Grivas took full advantage. EOKA’s monthly ‘kill-rate’ rose from ten to 26 in the months prior to the Suez invasion.47 The army, already stretched, had to provide security for the extra military facilities.48 Nevertheless, the large army presence allowed Harding to launch a fresh offensive in the Kyrenia Mountains to inflict as much damage on EOKA before Operation Musketeer sapped the island of troops: Operation Sparrowhawk was launched in early October. One of the most successful achievements of Sparrowhawk was the capture of six key EOKA men by 22-year-old Private Kieran O’Donnell, as mentioned before.49 Searching a farmhouse, O’Donnell lifted a coat from a hook and discovered a six-inch hole in the wall, behind which the men were hiding. When his colleague Private Robert Pearse fired a shot through the hole, they surrendered and climbed out through a trapdoor, the only entrance, which was covered by straw. One, Andreas Charalambous, a wanted man with a £5,000 reward on his head, had escaped from Nicosia Prison. Another, Thassos Themistocleous, was alleged to be the EOKA leader in the Kyrenia Mountains and another, Fotis Christofi, his chief lieutenant.50 Arms and equipment captured included four revolvers, three machine guns, six shotguns, a two-inch British-made mortar, 10 mortar bombs, 12 grenades, 23 home-made bombs, one mine, a 25-pounder bomb, nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition, and cartridges, safety fuses, detonators and explosives.51 The operation was commanded by Brigadier Mervyn ‘Tubby’ Butler, a wiry ‘fighting Irishman of great energy and enthusiasm’,52 in charge of the 16th Independent Parachute Brigade from 1955 to

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1957. Butler, from Rathgar, Co. Dublin, belonged to an Anglo-Irish family that had provided the British army with officers for several centuries. His father, Major James Butler, had served in both world wars with the RUR and RAF.53 His great-grandfather, William Pierce, was selected by the Duke of Wellington to command a cavalry brigade on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.54 Educated at St Columba’s College, Dublin, and Sandhurst, Butler became Second Lieutenant in the Prince of Wales Volunteers (South Lancashire Regiment) in 1933 and was his battalion’s adjutant during operations in Belgium and Northern France in 1940. After Dunkirk he was awarded the Military Cross, going on to serve as a senior airborne officer on the British army staff in Washington.55 In January 1956, Butler’s 16th brigade left for Cyprus from Blackbush Airport near Aldershot, Hampshire, ITV Late Evening News showing their departure with Butler waving goodbye to his teary wife.56 ‘We are going there to be ready for anything’, he declared confidently.57 They were dispatched not to deal specifically with EOKA, but because of the general deterioration of British influence in the area. The previous November, Templer had failed to persuade Jordan’s King Hussein to join the Baghdad Pact. However tempted by Templer’s offer to double the Arab Legion’s size – and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said’s co-offer of over £1 million in aid – riots and a threatened revolution forced Hussein to refuse. While Dulles concluded the fiasco constituted a ‘most serious blow for British prestige in that part of the world’, Macmillan admitted that although ‘we have lost the first round [to Egypt] . . . the game is not over yet; and we have got to win . . . For if we lose in the Middle East . . . we cannot live’,58 this diary entry made the same day Butler’s brigade left for Cyprus. However, Jordan, not Cyprus, loomed large in Butler’s mind, though Operation Sparrowhawk showed they were a valuable reserve for major offensive operations. On 29 October 1956, three weeks after Operation Sparrowhawk, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Despite the UN General Assembly approving an Israeli – Egyptian ceasefire plan on 2 November, the Anglo– French airborne assault went ahead three days later. The stakes were huge. The Soviets agreed with American

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opposition, as did the Afro-Asian bloc. With the Hungarian crisis simultaneously unfolding, the invasion could be seen as mirroring Khrushchev’s actions in Budapest. Given the possible political fallout, only three FO officials were informed of all intelligence and planning – one being Kirkpatrick.59 Valletta in Malta was the maritime staging-post, and Cyprus the platform for the airborne assaults due to lacking deep port facilities. On the evening of the invasion, 5 November, Butler dropped with his men on El Gamil airfield and assumed the role of Senior Allied Commander on the ground. In that otherwise ill-fated, controversial operation, Butler established an ‘excellent rapport’ with French Foreign Legion commander General Jacque Massu,60 who later credited Butler with insisting on Egyptian surrender to avoid civilian casualties.61 Kirkpatrick’s intransigence over Suez did little to ease the resultant American anger. Washington blocked Britain’s rights to IMF funds, sold sterling and refused to help with its oil shortfall: it was a watershed in Anglo-American relations. Yet on 27 November, Kirkpatrick told American Ambassador Winthrop Aldrich that if the UN let Britain down on a vote over clearing the Canal – by implication, if it refused to influence its client nations – Britain should quit the UN.62 Throughout the Suez de´baˆcle, Kirkpatrick displayed an authoritative ‘will of iron’ in relentlessly supporting Eden’s goal.63 Boyle summed up the invasion as ‘a sad episode nationally but militarily nothing to be ashamed about’,64 practically speaking ‘a success’ but politically ‘ill-judged in that world opinion in general, and American opinion in particular, turned against the whole project and even forced us to abandon it’65 – ‘American opinion’ meaning government opinion, the US public more bewildered by the invasion than hostile to it. The military preparations left Harding with little time or leverage for negotiations on Cyprus’ political future. For him, the invasion was a serious setback to operations against EOKA. Drained of paratroopers on the island, he told Minister of Defence Antony Head he had ‘little doubt that if it had been possible to continue active operations against them on that scale for several months, their defeat would have been completed’.66 Instead, ‘Black November’ had left

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39 people dead, 21 of them British. With withdrawal from Port Said at the end of that month, diplomatic and military attention was focused, once again, on Cyprus. The Suez crisis brought into sharp focus the strategic usefulness of Cyprus, considered useless by many not only for the absence of suitable harbours but also the inadequacy of its airfields. While Kirkpatrick conceded that Kenya was better suited as the area’s principal base, Templer disagreed. Boyle still had doubts how long the island would be useful, but Templer had the highest authority. Despite their differences, Boyle supported him. In November 1957, Harding was replaced by Sir Hugh Foot, an experienced colonial official who had served as Colonial Secretary of Cyprus from 1943 to 1945. In his first meeting with the Chiefs-of-Staff, they informed him that although they had ‘carefully examined’ the implications of constitutional changes, they had nonetheless concluded that ‘only continued sovereignty over the whole island’ could guarantee Britain’s strategic requirements.67 From December to March, security forces dealt EOKA a series of damaging blows, such that Grivas ordered another ceasefire, conditional on Makarios’ release. But the atmosphere on the island grew foul amid allegations of torture and misconduct by the security forces, even prosecutions of suspected EOKA members going uncomfortably wrong as judges began to declare confessions inadmissible. With Makarios’ release – though he still could not return to Cyprus – Turk– Cypriots feared another push for enosis, though this was allayed by greater support from Turkey. By the time Makarios arrived in Athens on 17 April 1957, the partitionist campaign in Turkey had intensified. For Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and Minister for Foreign Affairs Fatin Zorlu, it was a timely distraction from their country’s economic deterioration and growing unrest. Though posing no threat to her borders, Syria’s emergence as a Soviet proxy gave Turkey extra leverage with Whitehall. For Britain, the Baghdad Pact was more important than ever. While the Syrian crisis lasted, Menderes and Zorlu were placated to ensure loyalty to the Pact.

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V. Coercion and Conciliation in Cyprus: The Case of Michael Boyd Although the ceasefire held until March 1958, British forces were still under considerable duress. In the interim, communal tension increased and the Turk–Cypriots grew ever bolder, the blame arguably lying with the British armed forces, who tolerated the planning of the pro-partitionist, paramilitary TMT as a counterweight to EOKA. They were to pay for this neglect, as the Boyd case showed. Major Michael Boyd, from Rathgar in Dublin, an Irish Guard serving with the 50th Infantry Brigade, was remanded under section 70 of the Army Act 1953 after his Land Rover drove into a protesting crowd in Ataturk Square, Nicosia, knocking down four Turk– Cypriots, including elderly woman Sherif Mehmet, who died.68 This happened in late January 1958, when serious disturbances in and around Ataturk Square injured over 100 people and caused several deaths. Lawyer and TMT founder member Rauf Denktash held an illegal rally, the first time during the Emergency that Turkish demonstrators clashed with security forces and that Nicosia’s Turkish quarter was put under curfew, reflecting how much British– Turkish collaboration broke down as inter-communal tensions heightened. Greek observers accused the British of arriving late and hesitating to restore order. Holland notes, ‘Given the acute awareness of British dependence on Turkish cooperation . . . such loathness was entirely natural.’69 BBC Foreign Correspondent Douglas Stuart, then stationed in Cyprus, witnessed the incident, later describing it as ‘a classic example of how not to control a riot’.70 Menderes and Zorlu, needing a diversion from the Turkish electorate’s growing dissatisfaction, formally complained, suggesting it was ‘a deliberate attempt to intimidate Turkish Cypriots’, the Cypriot Government ‘entirely responsible for the bloodshed which resulted’.71 In February, Governor Foot admitted to Lennox-Boyd that Boyd’s actions had ‘a big impact’, causing ‘bitter resentment against the Security Forces’ and ‘an explosive state of tension’ amongst Turks in Cyprus.72 For both Boyd and the army, it was crucial his name be cleared.

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In April 1958, charged with manslaughter, Boyd told the court that driving straight through the crowd was the ‘lesser of two evils’,73 the greater being stopping and opening fire to prevent the heavy, continuous stoning of the vehicle, missiles having struck him through the smashed windscreen.74 Summing up for the defence, Mr R.G. Lomer said Boyd acted with ‘utmost resolution, courage and propriety’.75 However, prosecutor Lieutenant-Colonel F. Bonella thought Boyd’s speed ‘excessive’,76 adding the Land Rover was ‘hurled’ into the crowd like ‘a hand grenade’.77 Driver Lance-Corporal Lloyd of the Welch Regiment’s First Battalion admitted Boyd ordered him to ‘keep your hand on the horn and keep going’.78 The court-martial made up of a brigadier and four colonels deliberated for 40 minutes before honourably acquitting Boyd. Summing up, Judge Advocate-General Mr F.H. Dean said that: Under the circumstances, the evidence shows there is little doubt that this was not the case of a high-spirited officer looking for fun and falling into trouble, but one who rightly believed urgent duties awaited him at the police station, and it was therefore his duty to show all proper determination to reach his objective.79 He asked that consideration be given to the decision being taken ‘very quickly’ amid ‘considerable excitement, alarm and hazard’.80 For Greek – Cypriots, the incident showed, at least on this occasion, the British armed forces’ impartiality. Duty in Cyprus continued to be hazardous – consider the aforementioned 19-year-old Rifleman Kinsella, killed fighting EOKA guerrillas during the Battle of Liopetri. Fellow rifleman John Joseph Bowers from Tipperary, also 19, was seriously injured in the same battle.81 James Lane, from Ranelagh in Dublin, Staff Sergeant of the Signal Platoon of the RUR, aged 23, was killed by friendly fire on 3 October 1958. Tensions were at perhaps their highest since the Emergency began, and the day saw much local security force discipline break down. It was earlier the same day that Catherine Cutliffe was shot. During the round-up of suspects,

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Lane was accidentally shot82 – not all casualties were due to EOKA. In December, Private Edward Kelly from Galway, aged 21, serving with the Parachute Regiment’s First Battalion, was seriously wounded in a mine explosion in the Cyprus Mountains.83 It was with ‘very few regrets’ that the RUR’s First Battalion left Cyprus in November 1959.84 But others apparently preferred Cyprus to subsequent postings. Superintendent Luke Hannon, from Ballaghaderreen, Co. Roscommon, served in the Cyprus Police Force alongside Superintendent Terry Burke from Dublin85 and Gus Burke (no relation) from Monkstown in Dublin, Chief Superintendent of Police since 1956,86 all having several years’ counter-insurgency experience in Palestine. However, apart from these three, most of the Cyprus Police Force were volunteers from amongst British police, though Harding vetoed RUC recruits because of their ‘heavy-handed reputation.’87 In July 1960, Hannon wrote to Foot complaining about his new post as head of the Bahamas’ Criminal Investigation Department. Stationed in Nassau, he grumbled about the cost of living, adding, ‘every police wife including the Police Commissioner’s has to take a job to balance their budgets’.88 He continued, ‘In short I am giving strong consideration to terminating my agreement even with all the financial loss it entails in the way of passage money out and back.’89 Rather than another posting elsewhere, he was keen to leave the Service altogether and return to Ireland, telling Foot he wanted very much to join Guinness in Dublin. As this was a ‘difficult firm to get into without a push’, he hoped Foot would help by mentioning his request to LennoxBoyd.90 It was no coincidence that these three officers had all served in Palestine, which shaped colonial policing practice not just in Cyprus, but throughout the Empire, becoming the unofficial training and recruiting ground for senior colonial police.91 But regardless of their experience, policing inter-communal conflict while simultaneously combating EOKA seriously tested them. However, none of these stories of courage, court-martials, leadership and lives lost ever made the pages of the Irish Press or the Irish Independent.92 As Hugo Hamilton recounts in his memoir of 1950s Ireland, there were still those unwilling to acknowledge Irish participation in empire:

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Some things are not good to know in Ireland. I had no idea that I had an Irish grandfather who couldn’t even speak Irish. His name was John Hamilton and he belonged to the navy, the British navy, the Royal Navy . . . Even if he was still alive and came to visit us and was ready to tell us all about his travels around the world on those ships, about all the cities and ports he had been to, I could not have asked him any questions.93 As seen earlier, only the United Irishman provided debate on this issue, primarily to point out the failure of Irish constitutional politics. Strong pro-Greek – Cypriot feeling in Ireland and the Irish troop presence on the island sat uneasily together, but the United Irishman willingly exploited these issues to pursue its militant republican aims. Furthermore, contributions such as Norman de Warrenne Boult’s were ill-fitted to mainstream nationalist images of Ireland’s interaction with empire after World War II, where officialdom still expounded a highly prescriptive sense of Irish identity. But silence on the Irish contribution was also due to parallels made between Ireland during 1919–21 and Cyprus at that time, and not just in Irish public or press opinion: as already noted, Irish–Cypriot comparisons were frequently drawn in the British popular press. Even a guerrilla expert such as Robert Taber would claim that ‘the struggle that led to the independence of Cyprus was almost blow for blow a repetition of “the troubles” that had freed Catholic Ireland from the English rule more than three decades earlier’.94 Parallels were also frequently drawn between British troops in Cyprus and the paramilitary-style police force of largely British ex-servicemen, the Black and Tans, even by those who had firsthand experience of the former, such as ex-officer Richard Bennett.95 Poet Christopher Logue, a private in the Black Watch, wrote in his poem, ‘The Song of the Dead Soldier’: When the conscript is sent to Cyprus And three by three through our curfew Mother we marched like Black and Tan.96 The irony was not lost on a Time correspondent who remarked after Corporal Hale’s death that when he ‘left his native County Sligo in

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Ireland to volunteer in the Royal Air Force, he probably never imagined that duty would take him to a country some of whose inhabitants might regard him as a kind of latter-day Black and Tan sent by the British to frustrate a legitimate demand for selfdetermination’.97 Of course, there were a few bad apples, yet the parallels were tenuous at best and at worst deeply unfair, given that half the troops in Cyprus were inexperienced teenage conscripts. Were the experiences of Hale and other recruits from the TwentySix Counties substantially different to those of their British colleagues? Half of all British armed forces stationed in Cyprus during the Emergency were national service recruits. Some had less than the obligatory 12 weeks of training.98 Many held no strong views as to the rights or wrongs of British policy, however repulsive they may have found EOKA violence. In his ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ column for the Irish Times, the iconoclastic Myles na Gopaleen admitted, ‘It is naturally pitiful that a young Britisher should be conscripted, rammed into uniform, compelled to do some squarebashing and then despatched to unhappy Cyprus, there to have his puzzled life ended by a bullet.’99 For young national servicemen the prospect of adventure in sunnier climes held sway, as testified by former television war correspondent Martin Bell, who was stationed in Nicosia as an acting corporal in the Suffolk Regiment’s First Battalion between 1957 and 1959.100 He admits, ‘I did not have a political thought in my head at the time – why we were in Cyprus, what on earth we thought we were doing and so on.’101 According to Douglas Stuart, ‘deterring terrorists was their job not their crusading mission’.102 Missing home and family, they grumbled ‘as always about lack of leave, poor rations and inadequate recreation’.103 As Bernard Porter showed, there was no widespread imperial ‘mentality’,104 what little of it that existed (and continued to in certain Conservative party circles, as Rhodesia would later show) was further eroded by condemnation in Britain, and internationally, of government policy in Cyprus, the Suez crisis arguably serving to increase dissent. This ambivalence evidently extended to the troops stationed in Cyprus. In an interview given by Sergeant Major T. McCullough to ITV News on the return of 550 officers of the

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Second Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers to Liverpool in February 1956, he described his lucky escape following an EOKA ambush. The ambush, in the town of Paralimni in December 1955, left three fusiliers under his command injured.105 When asked, however, if he thought the problem had a solution, McCullough replied that, though ‘no politician’, he thought that ‘it will be a grand day when these people get what they want, to some degree, in order that life would be more pleasant for the troops out there’.106 There is also evidence that Catholicism and service in the British armed forces were not necessarily perceived as irreconcilable. In a letter to the Standard’s editor, J.F. Fields of the Air Ministry Directorate-General of Works in Nicosia explained that, ‘having satisfied the requirements of the bulk of the Catholic population (which is of course predominantly English) I sought to serve the infinitely more valuable Irish section (need I tell you where I come from?) and for a start ordered a half a dozen copies of your paper as an experiment.’107 It appears that for Fields, religion came first, with nationality delegated second, the letter significant for his nonapologetic, affirmative tone in being Catholic, Irish and a member of the British armed forces. Although Fields’ position was far from uncommon, evidence of such sentiments is rare. Regardless of individual opinions, armed forces members were there to do their job. Their loyalty, first and foremost, was to their regiment, regardless of religion or whether they were from Northern Ireland or the Republic, England, Scotland or Wales. In this respect, seemingly neither their religion nor sense of Irishness made a significant difference to their experience of service in Cyprus. Others, however, such as Corporal Ronald Shilton, hoped it might. Shilton was a coalminer’s son from Hucknall, England, both parents natives of Nottinghamshire.108 Captured by EOKA, he desperately tried to save his life by claiming he was Irish. Following Karaolis’ and Dimitriou’s death sentences in mid-April 1956, EOKA warned of immediate reprisals. When they were executed in May, Shilton was duly hanged, EOKA relaying the story he gave them. He told them his father was an Irish doctor in America and his mother was Italian.109 EOKA distributed his account in leaflets to prove they

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had indeed executed him. Officials conceded that Shilton ‘might have given the underground false information in hopes of saving his life’.110 Seemingly troops from the Republic were rarely seen as ‘different’, despite Ireland’s constitutional independence. But one day each year a distinction was made, although extended to all Irish troops, north and south of the border. On St Patrick’s Day each year, all Irish prisoners were let out of Waynes Keep Military Prison in Nicosia for the day, then duly returned, many no doubt worse for wear, under prison escort.111 However troubled Ireland’s official history with Britain may have been, and continued to be with partition, on a personal and professional level it seems more united than divided servicemen during their years in Cyprus. Did Irish sympathy towards ordinary Greek–Cypriots, inadvertently caught up in the mayhem, manifest itself differently from that felt by British soldiers? Even the CO recognised that many in internment camps were ‘man-in-the-street-ish’ rather than tough killers, and so the press should be made to steer clear of them.112 For many, it seems, it was just a job. Even the term ‘British’ remains problematic. Graffiti such as ‘Home Rule for Scotland’, ‘Home Rule for Wales’ and ‘Up the IRA’ was scrawled on walls, alongside enosis slogans. Perhaps they were simply done by bored soldiers in jest; perhaps it was indicative of how varied ‘British’ identity really was in Cyprus. It is personal accounts like these, snippets of the random and quotidian, which best shed light on the vagaries of Irish identity. Even the Essex-born ardent imperialist Templer, ‘according to his whim of the moment’, was, or was not, an Irishman.113 The extent to which it was negotiable in Cyprus is succinctly, and rather amusingly, exemplified by one soldier’s wife who waited by the Liverpool dockside for the arrival of her husband, from the Second Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, on board HMS Lancashire. The woman, Mrs Kane, who had lived in Cyprus while her husband was stationed there, was asked by the same ITV News reporter who interviewed Sergeant McCullough whether there had been any Cypriots living on her street. She replied, in the thickest Cork accent imaginable and with no hesitation, ‘Oh yes there were, in fact I was [sic ] the only English family on the road.’114

CONCLUSION

‘You have heard of ENOSIS?’ said Hadji. ‘Yes, Hadji?’ ‘And the “Cyprus is Turkish” Association?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, tonight this is the “Cyprus is Irish” club.’1 Notwithstanding the complexities of human motivation, the real or apparent need for Peter Paris to adopt a pseudonym in recalling the extent of the Irish imperial traffic in Cyprus during the Emergency period is striking in what it reveals about the anticipated hostility to the book’s revelations. In its tone and content, far from being a simple compendium of the Irish abroad and their achievements, it underscores the disjuncture between a postwar Ireland defined by its sustained struggle and eventual triumph over ‘perfidious Albion’ and its reality, regardless of its constitutional status, as a vigorous imperial sub-centre. As can be seen from the Private Secretariat Files, the Irish presence permeated all departments of the British administration in Cyprus, and outside of the police and armed forces, there were many more whose presence was likely to have been perceived as inherently benign.2 Such examples include Sister Antonine and Sister Bethilde, both from Co. Limerick, who were two of the several Irish nuns that taught multinational students of all faiths at St Joseph’s School in

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Nicosia.3 Along with the nurses, doctors, judges, engineers and teachers in Cyprus during the Emergency, Ireland provided the British administration with a Director in the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, a Chief Veterinary Officer and a Director of Public Works. Fittingly, British Cyprus ended as it had begun – with Irish involvement. Dublin-born Peter Megaw, the above-mentioned Antiquities Department Director from 1936 until 1960, and Public Information Officer and Censor in regard to press matters until Lawrence Durrell took up the post in 1954, was clearly more than ‘a quite exceptional archaeological officer.’4 Involved in the delicate negotiations leading up to Independence Day on 16 August 1960, he is visible in photographs of the signing of the Treaty of Guarantee. Our understanding of how other Cypriots, apart from Dr Hadji, viewed the wider Irish presence on the island during the Emergency is limited but instructive. It seems events such as the St Patrick’s Eve dinner at the Acropole Hotel in 1957 with its 130 guests passed without public comment, though other incidents invariably drew attention to the Irish role in counter-insurgency.5 The Cypriot poet, novelist and Nobel Prize nominee Costas Montis recalled his response to the ‘strange story’ of Daniel Kinsella, the Irishman killed in September 1958 following at the Liopetri battle: ‘It was a great shock to hear you were killed, Daniel, and that we were the ones who had killed you. We weren’t aware that you were fighting against us, we couldn’t imagine that you were our enemy.’6 Was the wider invisibility of the Irish in Cyprus due to its incompatibility with the pervasiveness and influence of the Irish expressions of support for the Cypriot insurgency? Or was it indicative of how malleable, and subsequently indistinguishable, Irish and British identities could be? Montis was better informed than most, having visited Ireland himself to see his friend and cofounder of the Lyriko Theatre, Phivos Moussoulides, who moved to Ireland with his family in 1954.7 In speaking of Kinsella’s death, and the shock upon discovering he was Irish, Montis recounted: The slogans written on your bridges about the struggle in Cyprus (just like the slogans we write on our bridges and

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houses in Nicosia), and to your newspapers that were captivated by the tale of the heroic little island, and to your poets who sang and cried over the boys in the gallows.8 Further afield, it was made known to Frederick Boland that ‘all the Greek community in Boston were delighted’ with the Irish interventions in the Cyprus debates at the UN.9 Did these gestures of Irish support trickle down to the ordinary Greek – Cypriots in Cyprus? The direct Irish contribution to the Cyprus Question was not widely acknowledged in the Cypriot press, nor were Irish expressions of Greek – Cypriot support ever featured. Although James Crosbie’s participation in investigating human rights in Cyprus on behalf of the Council of Europe was noted by the Times of Cyprus, no mention was made of Sea´n MacBride’s advisory role to the Greek government or to Archbishop Makarios. And despite MacBride’s assistance to the Greek Foreign Minister, Evangelos Averoff, at the UN in 1956, Averoff makes no mention of him in his memoirs when describing the UN proceedings.10 Admittedly, the Times of Cyprus referred to the glowing credentials of the Irish UN delegation: ‘Its history allows it to speak as the superior in suffering to any of the excolonial powers.’11 It added that the delegation’s Permanent Representatives are ‘exceptionally sophisticated’, yet named none.12 So was Irish support an assumption on their part, given the Irish historical experience? The British journalist and Labour MP Richard Crossman was reminded ‘time after time’ during his stay in Cyprus in January 1955 that ‘E´ire set the precedent of opting out of the Empire.’13 Therefore, the wider Greek – Cypriot population could not possibly envisage Ireland being anything but supportive. The generous Greek – Cypriot assessment of Irish sympathy may also have been due in no small part to the work carried out by well-known public figures in Cyprus born outside of Ireland but with Irish roots, such as the ubiquitous Charles Foley. However, EOKA drew precedents from an earlier period in Irish history. The Greek radio programme Voice of the Fatherland compared the position of Cyprus to that of Ireland in the nineteenth century, with the difference that ‘this was no longer the age when revolt could be suppressed with

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blood’.14 Thus, it was the uncompromising militancy of the Fenian tradition in the 1860s, rather than the violent expression of Irish republicanism between 1919 and 1921, that most closely resonated with EOKA insurgents. Though parallels were made between the Irish and Cyprus cases, there is little evidence to show that they knew more than the superficial particulars of the Irish experience. This is not to imply Irish exceptionalism, but more a recognition that Cypriots were not immune to the same trait of insularity. Despite its strategic position, Cyprus was a small, mostly Christian, agriculturally-based island at the other extremity of Europe. As a British colony, what international news it did receive was inevitably filtered by colonial press officers. It is clear that Ireland was viewed by leading Greek and Greek – Cypriot political figures at the time of the Emergency as clearly supportive of Greek – Cypriot, rather than Turk– Cypriot, national aspirations. De Valera had made his feelings clear by sending a copy of Macardle’s The Irish Republic to Archbishop Makarios shortly after he returned as Taoiseach in March 1957, with such gestures of Irish support reciprocated privately and publicly by Makarios. This was made manifest by the Irish delegation’s speeches and voting patterns on Cyprus in the UN and at the Council of Europe, and through the actions of individuals like Sea´n MacBride, be it in Strasbourg, Athens or New York. Dennis Carayannis, First Secretary of the Greek Permanent Mission to the UN, informed the Irish UN Counsellor, Eamon Kennedy, that his delegation ‘was deeply grateful’ for the Irish UN intervention in the Cyprus debate.15 Mr Delivanis, Counsellor of the Greek Embassy in London, ‘spoke very warmly’ of the Irish attitude towards the Cyprus Question at the UN, having attended several of the sessions where it was discussed.16 No such tokens of Irish support were extended to leading Turk or Turk– Cypriot figures, something they were very much aware of. According to Dennis Devlin, the Minister Plenipotentiary in Rome who was also accredited to Turkey, when he met with Turkish officials in July 1958 they showed ‘unusual concern’ over the Irish UN delegation’s opposition to Turkish policy on Cyprus.17 Though one hyperbolic Turkish official went so far as to call it ‘an inimical

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campaign against them’, the undeniable disregard for the Turk– Cypriot minority on the part of the Irish political coterie, and indeed the Irish populace, is striking.18 This indifference had less to do with the sticky issue of the Protestant minority in the Republic and more with the extent to which Irish and Greek –Cypriot nationalisms were imperfectly perceived as similar. When compared to the variety of desired outcomes of the Irish Question – dual monarchy, repeal of the Act of Union, Home Rule, federation, devolution, full separation – the Greek– Cypriot demand for enosis displayed an arguably high degree of continuity and singularity of purpose. For all the comparisons drawn between the Irish War of Independence and the Cyprus Emergency, the fixation of Greek – Cypriots with enosis was closer to the unionist vigour behind Orangeism than Irish separatist nationalism. According to Holland, the same observation once made by R.M. Henry with regard to the appeal of Orangeism in Protestant Ulster applies to enosis: that nobody could understand the scope and strength of the feeling except those who shared it.19 Enosis enthusiasts, essentially unionists, would have been incredibly reluctant to admit to such comparisons. The similarities that did exist between Irish and Greek– Cypriot nationalism, such as the role schools and churches played in the fostering of a strong nationalist tradition, the heightened use of myth and the corresponding cultural insularity, can be found not only in Turk– Cypriot nationalism but in its variant strains globally. Irish separatist nationalism was far from being the antecedent of Greek– Cypriot anti-colonial agitation. Enosis had been a staple element in Greek –Cypriot culture since the time of Wolseley’s arrival at Larnaca Bay in 1878. Though it appeared sometimes to lead a ‘curiously submerged life’ until the first violent demonstrations against colonial authority in 1931, Greek – Cypriots had ‘never ceased’ to make plain their penchant for enosis.20 As the celebrated archaeologist and historian Sir George Hill put it shortly before his death in 1948, ‘Hardly a year has passed since the Occupation without the “Hellenic idea” finding expression in some form or another.’21 Although Ireland had set the precedent by separating

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from Britain – a fact General Grivas and EOKA were well aware of – its independence was, nonetheless, seen as incomplete. When Martin Monaghan, an officer in the Irish army reserve, wrote to Grivas drawing a comparison between the Irish fight for freedom and that of the Greek –Cypriots, Grivas’ reply conveyed his wish ‘for a free and united Ireland’.22 There is no evidence that Grivas copied the military tactics used by the IRA and, notably, the Irish experience warrants no mention in the General’s diaries. He did not need to look that far back in history, to an island on the opposite extremity of Europe. If anything, Grivas modelled EOKA tactics on the guerrilla tactics used so successfully by the Greek communists he fought against for three years, alongside the British, in the Greek Civil War. Nor did Ireland set the precedent of a white, Christian and ‘civilised’ nation being violently suppressed by the British. This had been set with the aggressive British challenge to the Boers. Similarities are to be found, however, in the funding of both the Irish and Greek – Cypriot insurgencies: money from America was crucial. Just as IrishAmerican groups such as Clan na Gael had done between 1916 and 1921, Greek – American associations provided most of the finances for the enosis movement in Cyprus. Yet despite the lack of Irish influences on EOKA, in the history of the British Empire, no closer relationship was formed linking the IRA and foreign anti-colonial guerrilla fighters than that which existed between them and EOKA. Moreover, it was EOKA who would influence the future Provisional IRA, as Sea´n MacStı´ofa´in would later recount in his autobiography. Their strong ties were not simply due to the fact that the IRA and EOKA campaigns occurred contemporaneously. Neither party actively sought the other out. Rather, it was a direct result of the somewhat naı¨ve British policy of incarcerating EOKA and IRA prisoners together in Wormwood Scrubs and Wakefield Prisons. While the general pattern of the British response to the IRA insurgency from 1919 to 1921 bears close resemblance to the reaction to EOKA violence, there is little indication that the Irish experience was the template. Rather, it was the methods which Templer had used so successfully in Malaya which were applied. If anything, there was a great desire to avoid a

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repetition of what had happened in Ireland. The fact that similar, unusually firm methods of repression were employed was a clear indication of the British administration’s inability, indeed desperation, to remain in control of events. The Malayan model was ill-fitted to anti-guerrilla warfare in Cyprus as the British only succeeded in suppressing the uprising in Malaya because the communist guerrillas, being mostly Chinese, were not accepted by most Malays, who were a majority in the countryside. EOKA had the benefit of a large rural population who, if not ideologically supportive initially, quickly grew so as British actions descended to the draconian which, as in Ireland, alienated much moderate local opinion. There certainly remained Greek – Cypriots who privately thought that armed resistance was an incorrect path but, like the attitude of many Irish people to the IRA, very few of them were willing out of fear or loyalty to help the British authorities by giving information to the security forces or by public criticism of EOKA. Cyprus for the British was quite simply a case of lessons unlearned. While EOKA viewed the IRA as fellow ‘insurgent compatriots’, the Turk– Cypriot leader during the Emergency, Dr Fazil Kutchuk, used the example of the IRA to protest against Cypriot self-determination. Speaking in December 1955, Kutchuk argued: When the IRA force Britain to hand over Northern Ireland, then and only then, can the Cypriot Greeks seeking union with their Motherland, Greece, have their case heard in the British Parliament. Cyprus never was Greek. Self-determination is eyewash.23 How does the wider Irish nationalist connection with Greek – Cypriots compare? Concrete connections between Irish and Indian nationalists predated Irish-Cypriot links and lasted longer. Nonetheless, pleas to London for enosis had been a regular occurrence since the British occupation in 1878 and early enosists were clearly aware of the efforts of T.P. O’Connor. While his concern and sympathy was undoubtedly motivated by his strong philhellenism, for other Irish nationalists the British occupation of Cyprus was of little apparent

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interest in comparison to South African, Egyptian and Indian affairs. For yet others, such as Michael Collins, interest in the Cyprus Question was aroused only because enosis enthusiasts such as Archbishop Kyrillos sought out their support, not the other way round. While Indian nationalists mainly looked to Ireland for inspiring examples of non-violent resistance, Greek – Cypriot nationalists, when they referred to Ireland at all, sought examples of violent resistance, predominantly from the Fenian and revolutionary periods. Montis had the names of Irish nationalist martyrs such as Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh and Francis Flood at the ready to compare them with those executed in Cyprus.24 At the Council of Europe’s Consultative Assembly in April 1956, the Greek representative, Anastassios Droulia, declared that Irish patriots such as Robert Emmet and Patrick Pearse were amongst ‘the great liberators of mankind’.25 The Greeks also used the captured diaries of General Grivas to draw comparisons with Irish individuals. In February 1957, Greek Foreign Minister Averoff compared the diaries, which had been authenticated by this time, with Sir Roger Casement’s ‘Black Diaries’: ‘How can I fail to recall that Ireland has repeatedly asked to examine the diary of Roger Casement? Even today 40 years later nobody has been given an opportunity to examine that document which Ireland regards as a forgery’, he argued.26 It is true that doubts as to the authenticity of Casement’s diaries were widespread in 1957, but the parallel, given that it was Casement’s homosexuality that was in question, was wholly irrelevant to his part in the Easter Rising and his subsequent execution. However, Irish examples of physical force nationalists particularly suited the leadership, purpose and intensity of the EOKA Campaign. For some Greek – Cypriots, Ireland was more than a supportive other small island nation. It was also seen as a place of refuge and protest during the Emergency. Shortly before Makarios’ release, Ambassador Con Cremin informed Dublin that there were very strong rumours in Fleet Street that the Archbishop, if released from exile, was contemplating Dublin as a possible location for the headquarters for his negotiations with the British.27 The Irish Times

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reported on this too, saying it had learnt from ‘authoritative Greek sources in London’ that ‘some Greeks made the suggestion that the Archbishop should be sent to Ireland where he would be free in neutral and sympathetic surroundings and yet easily available as far as the British government is concerned’.28 Ireland was also considered as a potential site for EOKA military action against the British. Though only one was successful (and only partially so), several IRA– EOKA joint escape plans at Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs Prisons were hatched, with much talk of EOKA members joining the IRA in its Border Campaign until they could feasibly return to Cyprus. The British Embassy in Dublin provided one Cypriot with an opportunity to protest against British rule in Cyprus. In March 1958, 25-year-old Yepron Karaheyekian, having spent several days in Cork after getting the boat from England, travelled to Dublin and threw a bottle through the window of the British Embassy in Merrion Square.29 When charged in Dublin District Court, he was defiant: ‘I have nothing to say – the charge is right. I did it.’30 When District Justice Kenneth Reddin asked what quarrel he had with the British, Karaheyekian replied, ‘That is a difficult question.’31 It should pose a difficult question, too, for Irish nationalist historians, given the generational hybridity of Irish-British identity over the centuries. Roy Foster’s ‘varieties of Irishness’ are perhaps best exemplified in the ‘legal circus’ surrounding Charles Foley in Nicosia during November 1956 – the accused, the prosecutor and the judge were all Irish. Bearing this in mind, Mr Demetrakis’ comments to Peter Paris that St Patrick’s Eve at the Irish Club appear astutely indicative of the true nature of the Irish presence in Cyprus: ‘Who are the British? Irish. It is Irish against the Irish.’32 In the wider context, this was also often the case. The deportation of Archbishop Makarios caused a huge outcry in Ireland, yet the responsibility for the planning and supervision of his exile lay with Group Captain Norman de Warrenne Boult, from Co. Tipperary. In Ireland there was strong support for EOKA, enough to effectively ban the word ‘terrorist’ by Radio E´ireann to describe any EOKA members. Yet Irish Catholic soldiers were often directly responsible

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for their capture, as in the case of Private Kieran O’Donnell from Co. Mayo. Moreover, Operation Sparrowhawk – the biggest military offensive against EOKA – was under the direct command of Brigadier Mervyn Butler from Co. Dublin. The first execution of an EOKA member, Michalis Karaolis, was met with shock and outrage, but what was largely unknown in Ireland was that his sentence had been passed by Chief Justice Eric Hallinan, from Co. Cork. At the UN, the Irish delegation spoke out in opposition to British policy in Cyprus, yet the Irish government assisted Britain in their case at the Council of Europe against the Greek Application 176/56 by providing information on Irish corporal punishments, the very same case in which it was James Crosbie’s duty, as a sub-commission member of the ECmHR, to investigate British conduct in Cyprus. Sea´n MacBride advised the Greeks in this same case but it was Crosbie who supported the notion of a ‘margin of appreciation’ to help save Britain from a damning verdict before the ECtHR. Finally, the partition of Cyprus was anathema to the majority of Irish Catholics, yet Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, from Co. Kildare, readily admitted to the Irish Ambassador in London that he was the original architect of this plan. These examples show, at its most acute, how post-independent Ireland was, as Alvin Jackson succinctly put it, ‘simultaneously a bulwark of the Empire, and a mine within its walls’.33 They also add force to Kevin Kenny’s assertion that ‘just as Irish history does not make sense without this imperial entanglement, British imperial history assumes its full dimensions only if Ireland is included’.34 The extent of Irish participation in Cyprus between 1955 and 1959 underscores the need to treat the wider Irish imperial involvement during the 1950s as an integral part of the larger picture of the Irish exodus experienced at this time. Whether they left for Britain or a colonial outpost, for some it was an act of volition, for others desperation. While Irish politicians were well aware of Irish emigration figures to Britain in the 1950s, de Valera and some of his cohort were disingenuous in their earlier argument that it was driven by crass materialism. For the thousands who left with ‘bag[s] bulging with faded nothings’,35 de Valera’s claim, made in 1951, that work

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was ‘available at home, and in conditions infinitely better from the point of view of health and morals’,36 could only have exacerbated Irish emigrants’ disillusionment with an independent Ireland that clearly could not provide for its citizens nor confront the reasons behind their departure. Given the level of official denial about the causes of large-scale emigration to Britain, it is no surprise that the Irish participation in Cyprus went unacknowledged. What remains difficult to discern is the level of awareness amongst the Irish political e´lite of Ireland’s second safety valve. Given the opportunities empire provided for Irish people of all backgrounds, religions and classes, it undoubtedly served as a social palliative during the 1950s by alleviating unemployment and consequently discontent. It is clear that Ireland’s departure from the Commonwealth in 1949 was followed by an increased dependence on empire soon after. Was this state of affairs palpable during the 1950s? If so, was it construed as a predicament, sheepishly acknowledged within Leinster House? Or was it received with quiet satisfaction in the recognition that it was yet another case of Ireland having its cake and eating it? As previously shown, several British diplomats at the Council of Europe and at the UN evidently thought so but with the intentional or coincidental lack of documentary evidence, the answer is still unknown, compounded by British officialdom’s tendency to also fudge the specific Irish contribution into a more usefully homogenous, unifying British imperial motif. What is evident is that the cumulative effect of political and press obscurantism, along with an equally self-serving national education curricula, functioned to manufacture consensus in the name of nation-building from the early 1920s onwards. For commentators with a broad brush like Garvin, 1950s public opinion was: constrained by a nationalist and often sectarian orthodoxy that gripped sometimes the minds and more often the wills of the citizenry. A noisy and militaristic rhetoric about reunification and emotional reference to the tyrannical rule of past centuries was engaged in by politicians of all stripes, as it distracted

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attention from the real and insistent social and economic problems that beset Ireland’s little independent polity.37 This powerful and lengthy ingestion of nationalist ideology simultaneously muted public discourse on the fissiparous nature of Irish identity and eschewed the Irish participation in empire by compartmentalising Ireland’s spiritual empire as distinct from any pejorative materialistic conceptions of British imperial power. With Ireland’s transformation into an ‘international good citizen’ on the world stage from the time of its UN membership onwards, considerations of Irish identity shaped by its continued role in empire, as agent rather than victim, had no place in the national narrative, at home or abroad. Even at a very local level, this was also the case. By the spring of 1950, government statistics made clear that tourism was now Ireland’s second most important industry behind agriculture.38 This rising dependence on tourism revenue to revitalise the Irish economy further calcified the need to portray a distinct cultural identity, with a simplified, sanitised version of Ireland’s past, and present, deemed necessary for optimum tourist consumption. While traits of distinctiveness and exceptionality are integral to tourist marketing almost anywhere in the world, as Eric Zuelow notes, ‘what is remarkable is how actively involved many people from across Irish society were in determining how their unique national identity would be shaped and presented’.39 Indeed, he succinctly demonstrates what was essentially a success story, of ‘how a very large cross-section of Irish society, irrespective of rank or social class, took part in the process of making Ireland Irish . . . a people who were very much involved not only in defining their tourist product but in defining themselves.’40 Within this process, the inclusion of the complex legacy of Irish agency within empire risked impugning the national character with its foundational paradigm of Gaelic particularity borne out of victimhood as well as fighting for, and winning – albeit an incomplete victory in some eyes – independence against the British. The extent to which local communities were imagined and, to a remarkable degree, manifested, in 1950s Ireland

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is most clearly evident during the To´stal series of festivals held between 1953 and 1958, as local To´stal event organisers were advised by Bord Fa´ilte E´ireann to place the strongest possible emphasis on a supposed ‘authentic’ Irish Ireland – Gaelic history, language and culture. Despite its failure to draw sufficient tourist numbers during the off-peak season, To´stal marketing played a crucial role in subsequent commercial representations of Irish history and culture, as well as the aesthetic reality of the Irish landscape itself. Accompanying the success of situating Irishness as distinct from Britishness was the vanishing of discussions on the role the British Empire had played, and continued to play, in shaping Ireland’s public and private spheres, an area of study that deserves substantial attention. Compounding this historical amnesia is the more recent, and understandably proud, legacy of the Irish role with the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). Established in March 1964 following a sharp spike in inter-communal violence, Irish force numbers were further increased following a Greek-backed coup led by Nicos Sampson in July 1974 and the subsequent Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus. Despite EU membership, UNFICYP personnel remain deployed on the still-divided island along the Buffer Zone that separates the de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from the South, and to ensure there is no alteration of the status quo along the two ceasefire lines drawn on 16 August 1974. According to official figures of the Irish Defence Forces, between March 1964 and May 2005 when their duties in Cyprus officially ended, 9,655 Irish troops served on the island with nine fatalities.41 Though the UK has historically provided the greatest logistical and personnel contribution, and with military personnel drawn from 22 countries, the impressive Irish record in UNFICYP provided essential experience for the majority of Irish soldiers without World War II experience and helped institute Ireland’s continuing peacekeeping tradition.42 With several officers of An Garda Sı´ocha´na (the Irish Police Force) currently serving in the peacekeeping mission’s civilian police section, the tradition continues.

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Utilising the independent Irish nation state in analysing empire, as has been done here in the case of British Cyprus, provides one particular element of what is essentially, post-Treaty, a five-nation jigsaw of imperial history. David Fitzpatrick has claimed that ‘Ireland’s influence on the Empire cannot be precisely assessed, since the impact of particular Irish men and women was only partly and dubiously attributable to their ethnicity.’43 It has been this author’s intention to prove Fitzpatrick correct on one level – namely in his assertion that ‘the impact of particular Irish men and women was only partly and dubiously attributable to their ethnicity’. But this reasoning may also justifiably apply to those English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish who participated in the postwar British Empire. Ethnicity is far from being a useful marker of how supportive one was of empire; class rather than ethnicity was ‘by far the most important factor influencing people’s attitudes to the Empire’.44 However, this should not deter historians from trying to assess each nation’s influence in empire. By examining the extent and nature of the Irish participation in British Cyprus, it is clear that Irish individuals had considerable influence in the formation and execution of British policy there. That their impact was ‘only partly and dubiously attributable to their ethnicity’ does not make them any less Irish. This matters greatly when one considers how effectively the Irish nationalist narrative – that of a selective, politically charged memory – airbrushed these types of Irish identities out of existence. While a much wider net needs to be cast before we can speak with confidence about a distinctive postwar Irish imperial contribution – if indeed one even existed – the extent of the Irish legal contribution in Cyprus, far from being an anomaly, is illustrative of the pervasiveness of the Irish intra-imperial legal network in the postwar British Empire. The historical irony is salient: a country so long defined by its struggle for independence from the British Empire contributed significantly to empire’s maintenance, and arguably its defence, elsewhere. The chronicling and mapping out of independent Ireland’s interaction with empire elsewhere through other case studies using a single analytical frame is essential scaffolding for the construction of

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interlocking, transnational histories. Fresh voices and new vantage points can help answer questions that still elude us to a remarkable degree, such as the ways and extent empire shaped the public and private lives of those who fought with the British army in places such as Palestine, Malaya and Kenya and subsequently returned to Ireland. Can their experiences shed light on the trappings of identity politics and help us unpack the contributory factors of performativity, of accommodation and adaptation depending on one’s audience, context and location? As nationality or religion certainly did not preclude one from participating in the sharp end of empire, what might these answers mean for Ireland’s public histories? Some of these silences, though perhaps distinctive in their contingent causes, are not unique. However incomprehensive the answers may be, questions such as ‘why the dissolution of empire produced such a muted reaction in Scotland’ are also increasingly asked.45 Though not without its challenges, an integrationist approach helps us transcend any rigidly dichotomised nationalist-revisionist deductions. The specificity of the above examples, in the case of British Cyprus during the period of the EOKA insurgency, throws this complexity into sharp relief. The use of a multi-pronged approach – the acknowledgement of Ireland’s support for decolonisation where it genuinely existed, and its uncomfortable complicity in maintaining these regimes and everything in between – is essential if we are to significantly broaden the still narrow contours of what is recognised as Irish history. Future collaboration, not competition, between historians who use the nation state model and those who focus on local, regional and transnational frameworks is essential, as is their inclusion into comparative studies of nationalism and empire elsewhere. Without disregarding the valuable existing contributions on Ireland and empire, that so much work remains to be done, not least on post-independent Ireland’s interaction with empire almost everywhere, is surely one of the main reasons why Michael de Nie and Joe Cleary can so confidently – and quite correctly as far as this author is concerned – declare that ‘Ireland and empire is now one of the most vibrant fields of inquiry in Irish studies’.46 It is tentatively hoped that the positive developments in Northern Ireland since the

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Good Friday Agreement will continue to enable a less myopic, less combative view of Irish history to emerge. What this means in practice is a concentration on narratives of inclusion, which perhaps individual examples best illustrate. Looking down on the Independence Day celebrations in Nicosia from the nearby hills of Ayia Paraskevi was Lorraine Meredith, Dr Gillespie’s mother-in-law. It is undeniable that her strength of emotion that day was profoundly shaped by her strong support for, and her husband’s active involvement in, the revolutionary Da´il government between 1919 and 1922. The entangled history of Ireland and empire, though less useful as a political instrument, brings us closer to these past realities, past lives as lived: Uisce: water. And fionn: the water’s clear. But dip and find this Gaelic water Greek: A phoenix flames upon fionn uisce here. Strangers were barbaroi to the Greek ear. Now let the heirs of all who could not speak The language, whose ba-babbling was unclear . . . . . . Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak, From middle sea to north sea, shining clear As phoenix flame upon fionn uisce here.47

NOTES

Introduction 1. Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People (London, 2003), 283. 2. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service, 1939– 1966 (London, 1991), 137. Dr Gillespie’s wife, Moira Meredith, was the daughter of James Creed Meredith (1874 – 1942). James and his wife Lorraine were active supporters of Sinn Fe´in and the revolutionary Da´il government between 1919 and 1922. He was appointed by the First Da´il (1919 – 21) as its Supreme Court Judge and nominated by de Valera to chair the committee to provide a constitution for the new Irish State. 3. Peter Paris, The Impartial Knife: A Doctor in Cyprus (London, 1961), 20. 4. Ibid., 15. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 42. 7. Ibid., 44. 8. R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600 –1972 (London, 1988), 3. 9. Anthony Carey, who was commissioned by the FCO to investigate the files, discovered that 294 boxes of files were ‘found’ which are part of a much wider collection of ‘about 8,800 files in total covering former colonies such as Cyprus, Singapore, Malaya and Malta’. See Mandy Banton, ‘Migrated Archives – Destroy? ‘Migrate’? Conceal? British Strategies for the Disposal of Sensitive Records of Colonial Administrations at Independence’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40/2 (2012), 323. 10. Irish Independent, 24 December 2012. 11. Tim Pat Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (London, 2000), 646. 12. H.V. Bowen (ed.), Wales and the British Overseas Empire: Interactions and Influences, 1650– 1830 (Manchester, 2012); John M. MacKenzie and T.M. Devine (eds),

230

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

NOTES TO PAGES 4 –6 Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2011); Catherine Hall and Keith McClelland (eds), Race, Nation and Empire: Making Histories, 1750 to the Present (Manchester, 2010). Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford, 2000), 55. Also see Barry Crosbie, Irish Imperial Networks: Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century India (Cambridge, 2012); Patrick O’Leary, Servants of the Empire: The Irish in Punjab, 1881– 1921 (Manchester, 2011); Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India: Nationalism, Empire and Memory (Basingstoke, 2009); Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004); and Keith Jeffery (ed.), An Irish Empire?: Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996). See Dermot Keogh, Finbarr O’Shea and Carmel Quinlan (eds), The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s (Cork, 2004). In his review of The Lost Decade, the Dublin writer Dermot Bolger justifiably claimed that the 1950s ‘remain perhaps the least explored decade in modern Irish history’. Dermot Bolger, ‘Provocative Essays on Ireland’s Missing Years’, Sunday Business Post, 6 June 2004. Diarmaid Ferriter has also stressed that the 1950s ‘remain under-researched’. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900– 2000, rev. edition (London, 2005), 23. See above. Also see Tom Garvin, News from a New Republic: Ireland in the 1950s (Dublin, 2010). Deirdre McMahon, ‘Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth’, in Judith Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century, Vol. 4 (Oxford, 1999), 138– 62. Also see Deirdre McMahon, ‘Ireland, the Empire, and the Commonwealth’, in Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire, 182– 219. Kevin O’Sullivan, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire: Small State Identity in the Cold War, 1955– 75 (Manchester, 2013); Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish Radical Connections, 1919– 1964 (Manchester, 2008). Ashley Jackson, ‘Empire and Beyond: The Pursuit of Overseas National Interests in the Late Twentieth Century’, English Historical Review, 123/499 (2007), 1358. John Darwin, ‘Was there a Fourth British Empire?’ in Martin Lynn (ed.), The British Empire in the 1950s. Retreat or Revival? (Basingstoke and New York, 2006), 16 – 31; Ashley Jackson, ‘Empire and Beyond’, 1358. Robert Holland, ‘Patterns of Anglo-Hellenism: A “Colonial” Connection’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36/3 (2008), 383. See Crosbie; O’Leary; Silvestri; and O’Malley. Also Kaori Nagai, Empire of Analogies: Kipling, India and Ireland (Cork, 2007); Tadgh Foley and Maureen O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and India (Dublin, 2006); C.A. Bayly, ‘Ireland, India and the Empire, 1780– 1914’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 10 (2000), 377– 97; Michael Holmes and Denis Holmes (eds), Ireland and India: Connections, Comparisons, Contrasts (Dublin, 1997); and S.B. Cook, Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth Century Analogies and Exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi, 1993).

NOTES TO PAGES 6 –13

231

22. Joe Cleary, ‘Amongst Empires: A Short History of Ireland and Empire Studies in International Context’, E´ire-Ireland, 42/1 –2 (2007), 18. 23. Ibid., 23. 24. See Kevin Kenny, ‘Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction’, in Kenny, Ireland and the British Empire, 2 – 3. For an analysis of the ‘peculiarity of Cyprus’, see Robert Holland and Diane Markides, Britain and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850– 1960 (Oxford, 2006), 162– 88. A ‘parallel history’ exists which long predates the British presence in Cyprus. Charles O’Kelly (1621 – 95), an Irish army officer and historian, wrote an account of the Williamite war in Ireland from 1689– 91. Written in 1692, all of the mentioned participants and places are disguised by classical names. Ireland is referred to as Cyprus, and England as Cilicia. James II, William III, St Ruth, and Tyrconnell are given the names Amasis, Theodore, Phyrrus, and Coridon. Sarsfield is given that of the Spartan general Lysander. However, the events described by O’Kelly never occurred in Cyprus, and could clearly not have happened under such varied names. See Charles O’Kelly, Macariae Excidium, or the Destruction of Cyprus; Being a Secret History of the War of the Revolution in Ireland, (ed.) John Cornelius O’Callaghan (Dublin, 1850). 25. Simon J. Potter (ed.), Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the British Empire, c. 1857– 1921 (Dublin, 2004), 22. 26. Owen Dudley Edwards, The Sins of Our Fathers (Dublin, 1970), 299. 27. R.B. McDowell, The Church of Ireland, 1869– 1969 (London, 1975), 135– 6. 28. See Joseph Morrison Skelly, ‘Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations’, in Michael Kennedy and Deirdre McMahon (eds), Obligations and Responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations 1955– 2005: Essays Marking Fifty Years of Ireland’s United Nations Membership (Dublin, 2006); Michael Kennedy and Joseph Morrison Skelly (eds), Irish Foreign Policy 1916– 1966: From Independence to Internationalism (Dublin, 2000). 29. Dermot Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland: Revolution and State Building, 2nd edition (Dublin, 2005), 235. 30. Michael Kennedy and Eunan O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe: From Isolation to Integration (Strasbourg, 2000). 31. Elizabeth Keane, An Irish Statesman and Revolutionary: The Nationalist and Internationalist Politics of Sea´n MacBride (London, 2006), 182. 32. Hiram Morgan, ‘An Unwelcome Heritage: Ireland’s Role in British EmpireBuilding’, History of European Ideas, 19/4– 6 (1994), 619– 25. 33. Irish Times, 24 September 1956. 34. See Donald H. Akenson, If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630– 1770 (Liverpool, 1997). 35. Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996). 36. Quoted in Kevin O’Sullivan, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire, 30.

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NOTES TO PAGES 14 –18

The Evolution of Enosis and the Irish Interaction with British Cyprus, 1878 –1954

1. E.V. Page, ‘What Shall We Do With Cyprus?’, comical topical song cited in Andrekos Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878– 1915: The Inconsequential Possession (Manchester, 2009), 285– 7. 2. Liam Kennedy, Colonialism, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Belfast, 1996), 217– 8. 3. See Varnava, British Imperialism in Cyprus, passim. 4. It is noteworthy that when Gladstone returned to power in 1890, he did not repudiate the Cyprus Convention. 5. Robert Holland and Diane Markides, Britain and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850– 1960 (Oxford, 2006), 163– 4. In France, it was rumoured that Lord Beaconsfield had been made Duke of Cyprus. See Times, 24 July 1878. 6. Paul A. Townend, ‘Between Two Worlds: Irish Nationalists and Imperial Crisis 1878 – 1880’, Britain and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850– 1960 (Oxford, 2006). 7. Ibid., 172. 8. Niamh Lynch, ‘Defining Irish Nationalist Anti-Imperialism: Thomas Davis and John Mitchel’, Eire-Ireland, 42/1 –2 (2007), 83; Matthew Kelly, ‘ Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire in the 1850s and 1860s’, Past and Present, 204 (2009), 130. 9. Pauline Collombier-Lakeman, ‘Ireland and the Empire: The Ambivalence of Irish Constitutional Nationalism’, Radical History Review, 104 (Spring 2009), 60 – 1. 10. H.C. Deb. Vol. 265, Cols 501– 2, 19 August 1881. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. H.C. Deb. Vol. 265, Cols 97 – 8, 16 August 1881. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid, Cols 502– 3. In the 1890s, seven of India’s eight provinces were governed by Irishmen, indicative of the prominence of Irish leadership roles in India at this time. See Bruce Nelson, Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race (Princeton, 2012), 123. 16. Nation, 27 July 1878. 17. Thomas W. Gallant, Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity, and Power in the British Mediterranean (Notre Dame, 2002), 20. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 26. 20. Ibid., 43. 21. Samuel White Baker, Cyprus as I Saw It in 1879 (London, 1879), 162.

NOTES TO PAGES 19 –23

233

22. Robert Dyer Lyons, Irish (Intermediate) Education and the Civil Service of Cyprus: A Letter to the Earl of Beaconsfield (London, 1878), 7. 23. Ibid., 9. 24. In September 1955, when Field-Marshal Sir John Harding became Governor of Cyprus, he immediately ordered all senior personnel in the Cyprus administration to start learning Greek, ‘on the grounds that their omission to do so before explained why the Government had found itself bereft of vital information.’ See Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954– 1959 (Oxford, 1998), 99. 25. Gerard Moran, ‘Philip Callan: The Rise and Fall of an Irish Nationalist MP, 1868– 1885’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 22/4 (1992), 405. 26. Freeman’s Journal, 7 April 1885. 27. He was the eldest son of John B. Creagh from Ballyandrew, Co. Cork and Martha Wolseley, sister of Lieutenant-General Wolseley. 28. McCalmont served as an Ulster Unionist MP from 1895 until 1899. His maternal uncle, Robert Martin of Ross, Co. Galway, was the author of the famous broadside ballad, ‘Ballyhooly.’ Martin’s younger sister and McCalmont’s aunt, Violet Martin, was better known as ‘Martin Ross’, the friend and collaborator of Enone Somerville. See Times, 3 May 1924. 29. Parsonstown is now known as Birr. King’s County was renamed Co. Offaly in 1922. 30. Elliott O’Donnell, The Irish Abroad: A Record of the Achievements of Wanderers from Ireland (London, 1915), 131. 31. Standard, 26 July 1878. 32. Given its folkloric position, it is quoted in almost all of the authoritative works on Cyprus. See Robert Stephens, Cyprus, A Place of Arms: Power Politics and Ethnic Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean (London, 1966), 108. 33. Holland and Markides, Britain and the Hellenes, 174. 34. Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J.C.C. Davidson’s Memoirs and Papers, 1910– 37 (London, 1969), 14. 35. Holland and Markides, Britain and the Hellenes, 174. 36. Ibid., 174. 37. Ibid., 175. 38. Irish Independent, 23 October 1915. 39. Kerryman, 30 October 1915. 40. Leitrim Observer, 29 January 1916. 41. Compton Mackenzie, First Athenian Memories (London, 1931), 237. 42. Ibid. 43. Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798– 1998 (Oxford, 1999), 301. 44. Quoted in Richard Clogg, Politics and the Academy: Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair (London, 1986), 12. O’Connor founded and edited many papers between 1891 and 1902; the Weekly Sun (1891), the Sun (1893), the Star (1887) and T.P.’s Weekly (1902). 45. Silvestri, 18.

234

NOTES TO PAGES 24 –29

46. Vice-Admiral John de Robeck to the Secretary of the Admiralty, 18 September 1919, NAI Air 2/1465. 47. Quoted in Deirdre McMahon, ‘Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1900– 1948’, in Judith Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1999), 147. 48. G.S. Georghallides, A Political and Administrative History of Cyprus, 1918– 1926 (Nicosia, 1979), 123. 49. Irish Times, 9 December 1959. Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (eds) and James Joyce, Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition (New York, 1984), 547. The Attorney-General at this time was Sir Charles Cyril Gerahty (1889– 1978) from Essex, whose father was from Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. Gerahty, who had been Chief Justice since 1926, was succeeded by the Australian Sir Charles Belcher (1876– 1970) in 1929, whose father, George Belcher, was from Old Dominick Street in Dublin. 50. Irish Times, 17 September 1936. 51. Anthony P. Quinn, Wigs and Guns: Irish Barristers in the Great War (Dublin, 2006), 50. 52. Times, 6 June 1936. 53. H.C. Deb. Vol. 134, Cols 1519– 20, 15 November 1920. 54. H.C. Deb. Vol. 127, Cols 709– 11, 25 March 1920. 55. G.S. Georghallides, Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (Nicosia, 1985), 204. 56. Irish Independent, 29 July 1922. 57. Nelson, Irish Nationalists, 237. 58. Southern Star, 14 October 1916. 59. Limerick Leader, 28 November 1917. 60. Cited in Nelson, 148. 61. Nelson, 234– 7. 62. Leonard Woolf, Growing: An Autobiography of the Years 1904 –1911 (London, 1961), 97. 63. Georghallides, History of Cyprus, 176. 64. Rebecca Bryant, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London, 2004), 75. 65. Sir Michael Stevenson to Winston Churchill, 25 December 1921, CO67/197, NAUK. 66. Donegal News, 27 January 1923. 67. This is not to say that Turkey no longer saw the island’s future status as an exclusively Anglo-Greek problem. The foundation of Kemal Atatu¨rk’s Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923 did not mean the end of Pan-Turanism, the political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples, which included Turk–Cypriots. Furthermore, the Panturanist dimension, which would later influence Turkey’s foreign policy on Cyprus, was ‘at the heart of Kemalist philosophy.’ Costas Yennaris, From the East: Conflict and Partition in Cyprus (London, 2003), 49–50. 68. Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London, 1937), 550.

NOTES TO PAGES 29 –37

235

69. Ibid. 70. G.S. Georghallides, Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (Nicosia, 1985), 240. 71. Ibid, 260. 72. Times, 23 October 1931. 73. Georghallides, History of Cyprus, 177. 74. Times, 23 October 1931. 75. Ibid. 76. Irish Independent, 23 October 1931. 77. Irish Press, 18 November 1931. 78. Manchester Guardian, 23 October 1931. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Irish Times, 24 November 1941. 82. Georghallides, Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs, 84. 83. Ibid., 399. 84. Spectator, 24 March 1939. 85. Irish Press, 18 April 1939. 86. Holland and Markides, Britain and the Hellenes, 215. 87. Jan Asmussen, ‘“Dark-skinned Cypriots will not be accepted!” Cypriots in the British Army 1939–1945’, in Hubert Faustmann and Nicos Peristianis (eds), Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism 1878–2006 (Manheim, 2006), 172. 88. Ibid., 168. 89. Ibid,. 168, n.7. 90. During the war, ‘Ankara attempted to come to an understanding with Nazi Germany concerning the postwar future of Cyprus in the case of a Nazi victory.’ Quoted in Yennaris, From the East, 250, n.7. 91. Sunday Independent, 20 June 1948, 4. 92. Quoted in Stanley Mayes, Cyprus and Makarios (London, 1960), 24. 93. H.C. Deb. Vol. 531, Cols 504– 6, 28 July 1954. 94. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 54. 95. Quoted in Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918– 1968 (Cambridge, 2006), 31.

Chapter 2 The Irish Press Response to the Cyprus Emergency: A Comparative Analysis 1. Sir Alexander Clutterbuck to Lord Home, 13 April 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 2. This was the Welsh Labourite Aneurin Bevan’s pithy answer when asked at a Tribune meeting in Newcastle City Hall on 27 May 1956 about British rule in Ireland during a discussion on Cyprus. See Times, 26 May 1956.

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NOTES TO PAGES 37 –42

3. Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945– 1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, 1984), 206. 4. H.C. Deb. Vol. 547, Cols 92 – 3, 5 December 1955. 5. Ibid., Cols 92 – 4. 6. H.C. Deb. Vol. 549, Col. 1720, 5 March 1956. 7. In 1948 three quarters of the British population did not know the difference between a dominion and a colony, and half could not name a single British colony. Quoted in Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850– 1995, 3rd edition (London, 1996), 317. 8. Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918– 1964 (Oxford, 1993), 231. 9. Ibid. 10. Christopher Hollis to Anthony Nutting, 5 August 1954, FO 371/112851, NAUK. 11. C.M. Woodhouse, Something Ventured (London, 1982), 133. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 134. 14. Manchester Guardian, 29 May 1956. 15. Frederick Boland to Sea´n Murphy, 30 May 1956, Papers of Frederick Boland, MS 10470/46, Manuscripts Department, TCD. 16. Conversely, the Tory party used Ireland to stress the differences between the Irish and Cypriot situation. 17. Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922 –2002 (London, 2004), 205. 18. Peter Somerville-Large, Irish Voices: An Informal History of Ireland, 1916 to 1966 (London, 2000), 261. 19. Quoted in J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912– 1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), 373. 20. Dermot Keogh, Twentieth-Century Ireland: Revolution and State Building (Dublin, 2005), 249. 21. John Banville, ‘Memory and Forgetting: The Ireland of de Valera and O´ Faola´in’, in Dermot Keogh, Finbarr O’Shea and Carmel Quinlan (eds), The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s (Cork, 2004), 25. 22. Quoted in Enda Delaney, Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921– 1971 (Liverpool, 2000), 226. 23. Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London, 2007), 323. 24. Lee, Ireland 1912– 1985, 606. 25. Ibid. 26. The 1955– 6 series of Thomas Davis lectures was edited by Conor Cruise O’Brien and published under the title The Shaping of Modern Ireland. 27. Dorothy Macardle, ‘James Connolly and Patrick Pearse’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien (ed.), The Shaping of Modern Ireland (London, 1960), 187. 28. Ibid., 186–7.

NOTES TO PAGES 42 –47

237

29. Keogh, Twentieth-Century Ireland, 236. 30. Stephen Kelly, ‘“Conditional Constitutionists”: The Reaction of Fianna Fa´il Grass-Roots to the IRA Border Campaign, 1956– 62’, in William Sheehan and Maura Cronin (eds), Riotous Assemblies: Rebels, Riots and Revolts in Ireland (Cork, 2011), 210. 31. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London, 2003), 75. 32. John A. Murphy, ‘“Put Them Out!” Parties and Elections, 1948– 69’, in J.J. Lee (ed.), Ireland, 1945– 70 (Dublin, 1979), 4. 33. Irish Press, 27 November 1956. 34. Irish Times, 6 May 1954. 35. Irish Times, 12 May 1954. 36. Michael Foot and Mervyn Jones, Guilty Men, 1957: An Attempt to Analyse the Conduct and the Political Philosophy Considered Right by those who Rule Britain (London, 1957), 142– 3. 37. Irish Press, 19 November 1955. 38. Ibid. 39. The Leader, 25 February 1956. 40. Times, 2 January 1956. 41. Dublin Opinion, June 1955. 42. Sunday Press, 17 June 1956. However, another feasible comparison went undocumented. By appointing a soldier as governor, all activities of government were to be incorporated to act as one under Harding’s authority, as had happened in Ireland in 1916 under Major-General John Maxwell. 43. On 6 March 1956, Zenon Rossides, the chief Ethnarchy spokesperson abroad and a Greek UN delegation member, told the Irish Independent’s London correspondent that he intended to visit Cork to address members of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. However, it never materialised. The Archbishop’s deportation three days later inevitably meant he had more pressing engagements. See Irish Independent, 7 March 1956. 44. Sir Saville Garner to Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, 9 April 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 45. Irish Republic Fortnightly Summary, Unsigned, 16 March 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 46. Irish Times, 14 May 1956. 47. Irish Press, 24 May 1956; Irish Independent, 8 June 1956. 48. Dublin Opinion, June 1956. 49. Quoted in Shane Leslie, ‘Archbishop Walsh’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien (ed.), The Shaping of Modern Ireland (London, 1960), 101. Also see Pa´draig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Dublin, 2000), 235. 50. Leslie, ‘Archbishop Walsh’, 98. 51. Dermot Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics 1919 – 39 (Cambridge, 1986), 48. 52. New York Times, 18 July 1920. 53. Irish Press, 12 March 1956.

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NOTES TO PAGES 48 –53

54. Ibid. In 1918, when Sinn Fe´in leaders instigated anti-conscription feeling, the Viceroy Lord French claimed there was a ‘German Plot’ between Sinn Fe´in and the Germans. Although widely considered a fabrication, the alleged plot was the pretext needed to arrest and intern all the leading Sinn Fe´in figures. 55. Irish Times, 2 April 1956. 56. Irish Independent, 10 March 1956. 57. Gene Kerrigan, Another Country: Growing Up in ‘50s Ireland (Dublin, 1998), 165. 58. Ibid., 166. 59. F.X. Martin, ‘The Thomas Davis Lectures, 1953– 67’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 15, No. 59 (March 1967), 280. 60. Ibid. It was not until 1963 that a Thomas Davis series dealt in any real depth with these troubled periods. The 1963 series, ‘The Years of the Great Transition, 1916– 26’, was broadcast under the editorship of Prof. T. Desmond Williams. As Martin noted, ‘Although it aroused some minor controversies in the correspondence columns of the newspapers, the series won such wide approval that it was re-broadcast during the following autumn and winter.’ Martin, ‘The Thomas Davis Lectures, 1953 –67’, 280– 1. 61. Irish Times, 10 May 1916. 62. Jackson, Ireland, 307. 63. Irish Independent, 27 April 1916. 64. Irish Independent, 10 May 1956. 65. Gurth Kimber to Richard C. Ormerod, 14 May 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 66. Minutes by R.S. Scrivener, 17 April 1956, FO 371/123880, NAUK. 67. Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1956. 68. H.C. Deb. Vol. 550, Col. 438, 14 March 1956. 69. Ibid. Col. 440. 70. Manchester Guardian, 27 August 1956. 71. New Statesman and Nation, 1 September 1956. 72. H.C. Deb. Vol. 558, Col. 366, 14 September 1956. Earl Attlee also drew the same comparison in welcoming a return to ‘common sense’ after the release of the Archbishop. See Times, April 12 1957. 73. Gurth Kimber to Charles E. Diggines, 11 July 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 74. In 1924, he was quoted as saying that ‘any government that desires to hold power in Ireland should put publicity before all’. Quoted in Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London, 1993), 362. 75. Ibid., 31. Frank Gallagher was one of the most skilful propagandists of Irish republicanism, so much so that he was termed the ‘Irish Doctor Goebbels’ by the US Minister in Ireland during World War II. See Graham Walker, ‘“The Irish Dr. Goebbels”: Frank Gallagher and Irish Republican Propaganda’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 1992), 150. 76. O’Brien, De Valera, 32. 77. Noe¨l Browne, Against the Tide (Dublin, 1986), 232. It should be noted, however, that the Sunday Press glorified violent episodes in Irish history in a far more explicit manner.

NOTES TO PAGES 54 –59

239

78. O’Brien, De Valera, 68. 79. John Maguire, ‘Internment, the IRA and the Lawless Case in Ireland, 1957– 61’, Journal of the Oxford University History Society, Issue 2 (Michaelmas 2004), 6. 80. Irish Times, 19 July 1957. A later analogy was drawn in a letter sent to de Valera by Mary Caughey, a close friend of Jack B. Yeats during his time in New York and the subject for his charcoal drawing, The Cavalier’s Wife. She claimed that the internment camps in the Republic ‘makes one feel that Ireland is going to be a second Cyprus’. See Mary Caughey to E´amon de Valera, 6 October 1958, DT S16057C, NAI. 81. Patrick Maume, ‘The Irish Independent and Empire, 1891– 1919’, in Simon J. Potter (ed.), Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the British Empire, c. 1857– 1921 (Dublin, 2004), 124. 82. O’Brien, De Valera, 4. 83. John Horgan, Irish Media: A Critical History since 1922 (London, 2001), 67. 84. National Observer, July 1958. 85. Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 11 October 1955, DFA 313/31A, NAI. 86. Gary Murphy, ‘The Politics of Despair: Independent Newspapers and PostWar Irish Society’, in Mark O’Brien and Kevin Rafter (eds), Independent Newspapers: A History (Dublin, 2012), 118. 87. Quoted in A.W. Snelling to J.R. Banks, 22 April 1958, DO 35/10772, NAUK. 88. Ibid. 89. Brown, Ireland, 98. 90. Quoted in Mark O’Brien, The Irish Times: A History (Dublin, 2008), 61. 91. In 1911 the Church of Ireland had 249,535 members in the Twenty-Six Counties. By 1926, this had dropped to 164,215 and to 145,030 in 1936. See O’Brien, The Irish Times, 58. For a balanced account of the Protestant minority, see Jack Whyte, Minority Report: The Protestant Community in the Irish Republic (Dublin, 1975). 92. O’Brien, The Irish Times, 81. 93. Quoted in Donal O Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939– 1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (Cork, 1996), 165. 94. Apart from the paper’s editorials, the popular ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ column by the incomparable Brian O’Nolan, writing under the pseudonym ‘Myles na Gopaleen’, often contained characteristically plucky evaluations of British policy in Cyprus. See especially the following dates in the Irish Times: 29 September 1955, 27 September 1956; 13 October 1956 and 21 January 1959. 95. Quoted in Robert Tobin, ‘“Tracing Against the Tiny Snail Track”: Southern Protestant Memoir since 1950’, The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (January, 2005), 171. 96. See Lavinia Greacen, Chink (London, 1989), 313– 4. 97. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (eds), War Diaries, 1939– 1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (Berkeley, 2003), 224.

240

NOTES TO PAGES 60 – 69

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

Irish Times, 19 December 1957. Greacen, Chink, 5. Edwards, The Sins of Our Fathers, 306. Irish Times, 15 May 1956. Irish Times, 5 July 1956. Irish Times, 15 May 1956. Irish Times, 17 May 1956. Ibid. Irish Times, 18 May 1956. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Irish Times, 12 November 1956. Ibid. Irish Times, 6 January 1958. Ibid. Ibid. Irish Times, 30 April 1955. Irish Times, 16 March 1956. Cork Examiner, 24 October 1956. National Observer, April 1959. Times, 1 June 1959. Quoted in Frank Biggar to Con Cremin, 8 June 1959, DFA 313/31E, NAI. G.K. Peatling, British Opinion and Irish Self-Government, 1865– 1925: From Unionism to Liberal Commonwealth (Dublin, 2001), 181. 122. Fallon, ‘Reflecting on Ireland in the 1950s’, 41. 123. Douglas Gageby, ‘The Media, 1945– 70’, in J.J. Lee (ed.), Ireland, 1945– 70 (Dublin, 1979), 131. 124. Observer, 26 November 1961.

Chapter 3 Insurgent Compatriots: Irish Republicanism and the EOKA Campaign 1. Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune: 1945– 1955 (London, 1969), 663. 2. See J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: A History of the IRA 1916– 1970 (London, 1971), 374– 8; Sea´n MacStı´ofa´in, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (London, 1975), 70 – 9. 3. Robert W. White, Ruairı´ O´ Bra´daigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, 2006), 40. 4. Irish Press, 28 May 1956. 5. Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (London, 1995), 292.

NOTES TO PAGES 69 –75

241

6. These figures, published in the United Irishman, must obviously be used with caution. See United Irishman, September 1957; United Irishman, December 1957. 7. United Irishman, January 1955. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Times, 17 December 1954. 11. Howe, Ireland and Empire, 47. 12. For an account of the role sacrificial myth played in Irish nationalism, see Richard Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy (London, 1997), 108– 21. 13. Irish Times, 11 January 1955. 14. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 27 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 15. Breanda´n O´ Dubhghaill to Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, 10 May 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 16. Irish Press, 11 May 1956. 17. Breanda´n O´ Dubhghaill to Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, 10 May 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 18. Gurth Kimber to R.C. Ormerod, 14 May 1956, DO 35/8017, NAUK. 19. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 23 May 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 20. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to F.A.K Harrison, 10 November 1955, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 21. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 23 May 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Coogan, The IRA, 294. 25. Ibid., 295. 26. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 27 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Michael Carmody and Rory O’Donnell-Kelly to Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, 21 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. The use of the title ‘Kevin Barry Cumann’ was also the same name given to Fianna Fa´il’s university branches. 34. Michael Carmody and Rory O’Donnell-Kelly to Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, 21 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 35. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 27 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. 36. Ibid.

242 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

NOTES TO PAGES 75 –81 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to C. Green, 4 October 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Draft letter by L.B. Walsh-Atkins to General Bishop and Ian MacLennan, 4 October 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to R.P. Williamson, 9 October 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Ibid. Evening Mail, 21 September 1956. Irish Times, 22 September 1956. Ibid. Irish Times, 2 November 1956. Sunday Press, 20 November 1956. J. Ward to J. Shattock, 5 May 1956, FO 371/123882, NAUK. Quoted in R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 27 September 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Irish Times, 3 November 1956. Irish Press, 3 November 1956. Ibid. Irish Press, 3 November 1956. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to General Bishop and Ian MacLennan, 14 November 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to R.P. Williamson, 16 November 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to B. Cockram, 16 November 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Ibid. Memorandum, ‘Colonial Students in Dublin as at December 1956’, 17 December 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 23 November 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Ibid. R.P. Williamson to L.B. Walsh-Atkins, 23 November 1956, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Peter Beresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class, 2nd edition (London, 1996), 296. Gurth Kimber to Sir Charles Dixon, 27 May 1957, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Times, 22 January 1957. Gurth Kimber to Sir Charles Dixon, 27 May 1957, DO 35/5413, NAUK. Ibid. The announcement of the Act’s reintroduction occurred at the end of May, although the Act was not officially put into force until 5 July. Bell, The Secret Army, 354. Ibid., 360.

NOTES TO PAGES 81 –89

243

70. Vias Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners Held in British Prisons 1956– 1959 (Nicosia, 2008), 11. 71. MacStı´ofa´in, Memoirs, 74. 72. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 40. 73. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 46. 74. MacStı´ofa´in, Memoirs, 75. 75. Ibid., 77. 76. Ibid., 78. 77. Livadas, Cypriot and Irish Political Prisoners, 69. 78. The harshness of the sentences helped, rather than hindered, IRA recruitment. Reporting from London, Ambassador Boland noted that ‘a surprisingly large number of purely English people have told me that they were astonished that the sentences were so harsh’. He was also critical of the sentences: ‘Assuming that the current activities of the IRA have a primarily propagandist aim, the judge and prosecutor at the trial could have hardly have done better if they had been in IRA pay!’ See Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 11 October 1955, DFA 313/31A, NAI. 79. Bell, The Secret Army, 378. 80. Ibid. 81. United Irishman, April 1958. 82. Ibid. 83. Bell, The Secret Army, 374. 84. Irish Independent, 13 February 1959. 85. National Observer, March 1959. 86. Ibid. 87. For example, de Valera had escaped from Lincoln Prison in England in February 1919. 88. United Irishman, March 1959. 89. MacStı´ofa´in, Memoirs, 79. 90. Saoirse, June 2001. 91. Roy H.W. Johnston, Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical Father– Son View of the 20th Century in Ireland (Dublin, 2006), 193. 92. Maria Maguire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (London, 1973), 78. Also see Paul Dixon, ‘Rethinking the International and Northern Ireland: A Critique’, in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds), A Farewell to Arms?: Beyond the Good Friday Agreement (Manchester, 2006), 414. 93. MacStı´ofa´in, Memoirs, 77. 94. White, Ruairı´ O´ Bra´daigh, 67. 95. United Irishman, November 1956. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Quoted in Kerrigan, Another Country, 164– 5. 100. United Irishman, November 1956.

244 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

NOTES TO PAGES 89 –96 Ibid. United Irishman, December 1956. Ibid. Joseph V. O’Brien, Dear Dirty Dublin: A City in Distress, 1899– 1916 (Berkeley, 1982), 243. Irish Times, 4 September 1958. United Irishman, October 1958. Ibid. United Irishman, November 1958. United Irishman, May 1957. United Irishman, June 1957. United Irishman, July 1957. United Irishman, October 1957. United Irishman, November 1957. United Irishman, November 1958. Caoilfhionn Nı´ Bheacha´in, ‘“The Mosquito Press”: Anti-Imperialist Rhetoric in Republican Journalism, 1926– 39’, E´ire-Ireland, Vol. 42, Nos 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2007), 259. Also see Caoilfhionn Nı´ Bheacha´in, ‘We Are Of Necessity Anti-Imperialists: Irish Republicans and Empire’, in Eo´in Flannery and Angus Mitchell (eds), Enemies of Empire: New Perspectives on Imperialism, Literature and History (Dublin, 2007), 58 – 71.

Chapter 4 The Irish Religious Response to Cypriot Self-Determination 1. Austin Clarke, ‘Mother and Child’, Ancient Lights: Poems and Satires, 1st series (Dublin, 1955), 17. 2. John Whyte, ‘Church, State and Society’, in J. J. Lee (ed.), Ireland, 1945– 70, (Dublin, 1979), 73. 3. John Banville, ‘Banville on 1950s-Era Ireland’ [http://www.benjami nblackbooks.com/1950sIreland.htm] accessed 11 August 2013. 4. According to the available census statistics, in 1946 the percentage of Irish Roman Catholics in the Republic was 94.3. In 1961, this increased slightly to 94.6 per cent. In 1946, the percentage of the Church of Ireland population was 4.2. By 1961, it had decreased to 3.7 per cent. Quoted in Delaney, Demography, State and Society, 248. 5. Paul Blanshard, The Irish and Catholic Power: An American Interpretation (London, 1954), 285. 6. R.B. McDowell, The Church of Ireland, 1869– 1969 (London, 1975), 135– 6. 7. Formerly known as the Church of Ireland Gazette and Family Newspaper, it was shortened to the Church of Ireland Gazette in February 1955. In July 1963 the Standard was renamed the Catholic Standard.

NOTES TO PAGES 97 –105

245

8. Frank Callanan, T.M. Healy (Cork, 1996), 228. 9. See the following dates in particular: 23 December 1954, 15 March 1956, 5 April 1956, 6 September 1956, 29 November 1956, 9 October 1958 and 12 March 1959. 10. Irish Catholic, 12 March 1959. 11. Standard, 23 December 1960. 12. Ibid. 13. Whyte, ‘Church, State and Society’, 70. 14. John Horgan, ‘Anti-Communism and Media-Surveillance in Ireland, 1948– 50’, Irish Communications Review, Vol. 8 (2000), 32. 15. Standard, 22 November 1957, 1. 16. Kenny, Goodbye to Catholic Ireland, 182. 17. John Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, 1923– 1970 (Dublin, 1971), 71. 18. Standard, 4 July 1958. 19. Ibid. 20. Standard, 13 July 1962. 21. John Cooney, The American Pope: the Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (London, 1984), 206. 22. Patrick O’Connor, ‘How Religious News is Reported’, The Furrow, Vol. 8, No. 8 (August 1957), 511. 23. Peter Murtagh, The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance (London, 1994), 17. 24. Standard, 26 February 1954. 25. Ibid. 26. Times, 4 November 1957. 27. Standard, 20 January 1956. 28. John Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (Dublin, 1999), 217. 29. Archbishop John Cardinal D’Alton, ‘Communism and Religion’, Christus Rex, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1956), 200. 30. Enda Delaney, ‘Anti-Communism in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, English Historical Journal, cxxvi/521 (August 2011), 900. 31. Nancy Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt: An Account of the Struggle for Union with Greece (London, 1978), 212. 32. Irish Catholic, 2 August 1956. 33. Irish Catholic, 9 January 1958. 34. Ibid. 35. Raymond Ettledorf, ‘The Church in Greece’, Month, August 1961, 102. 36. Irish Catholic, 29 January 1959. 37. Ibid. 38. Irish Catholic, 3 August 1961. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid.

246

NOTES TO PAGES 106 –114

42. Irish Catholic, 9 November 1961. 43. Ibid. 44. Conversely, official relations between the Irish Catholic Church and the Church ´ Corra´in, ‘glacial’ throughout the 1950s. of Ireland were, according to Daithı´ O He claims there were ‘virtually no points of contact as both churches competed in sanctimonious sniping from sandbags of ancient mistrust’. See Daithı´ O´ Corra´in, Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–73 (Manchester, 2006), 183. 45. Quoted in Irish Times, 18 November 1958. 46. Quoted in Church of Ireland Gazette, 19 December 1958. 47. W.B. Stanford, Stanford: Regius Professor of Greek, 1940 –80, Trinity College, Dublin: Memoirs (Dublin, 2001), 168– 9. 48. Irish Times, 18 November 1958. 49. Hibernia, May 1959. 50. Church of Ireland Gazette, 20 April 1956. 51. Ibid. 52. Church of Ireland Gazette, 11 May 1956. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Church of Ireland Gazette, 28 October 1955. 57. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 75. 58. Church of Ireland Gazette, 28 October 1955. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 75. 62. Church of Ireland Gazette, 28 October 1955. 63. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 137. 64. Quoted in Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 171. 65. Church of Ireland Gazette, 23 March 1956. 66. Ibid. 67. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 123. 68. Ibid. 69. Church of Ireland Gazette, 18 May 1956. 70. Church of Ireland Gazette, 24 August 1956. 71. Church of Ireland Gazette, 7 September 1956. 72. Church of Ireland Gazette, 24 August 1957. 73. Ibid. 74. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 249. 75. Ibid., 250. ´ Corra´in, Rendering to God and Caesar, 70. 76. O 77. Fiona Bateman, ‘Ireland’s Spiritual Empire: Territory and Landscape in Irish Catholic Missionary Discourse’, in Hilary M. Carey (ed.), Empires of Religion (Basingstoke and New York, 2008), 283.

NOTES TO PAGES 115 –119

247

Chapter 5 Irish UN Foreign Policy and the Cyprus Question 1. Quoted by Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘Ireland in International Affairs’, in Owen Dudley Edwards (ed.), Conor Cruise O’Brien Introduces Ireland (London, 1969), 107. 2. The Department of External Affairs was renamed the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1971. 3. The file in question is DFA305/148A, NAI. 4. Quoted in Skelly, Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 22. 5. Conor Cruise O’Brien to Michael Rynne, 27 August 1954, DFA305/148A, NAI. 6. R.S. Scrivener to A.W. Glanville, 20 January 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 7. FO Minutes, 30 December 1955, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 8. R.S. Scrivener to A.W. Glanville, 20 January 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. FO Minutes, 17 April 1956, FO 371/123880, NAUK. 12. Robin Jasper to Sir Saville Garner, 28 February 1956, DO 35/10772, NAUK. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Sir Alexander Clutterbuck to Sir Saville Garner, 13 April 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 17. Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 25 May 1956, Papers of Frederick Boland, MS 10470/45, Manuscripts Department, TCD. 18. Ibid. 19. Gurth Kimber to C.E. Diggines, 11 July 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 20. Ibid. His view that the Irish government wanted to have the best of both worlds was undoubtedly shaped by Ireland’s pro-Ally neutrality during World War II. A later example could be found in the fact that although Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1948, in its dealings with Britain, as outlined in Britain’s Ireland Act of 1949, it continued to work through the Commonwealth Relations Office as a non-foreign country. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Report, ‘Irish Republic: Debate on External Affairs’, 26 July 1956, DO 35/10772, NAUK. 24. O’Brien, ‘Ireland in International Affairs’, 128. W.T. Cosgrave went on to become the first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1932. 25. Da´il Debates, Vol. 156, Cols 552– 3, 18 April 1956. 26. Da´il Debates, Vol. 156, Cols 553– 4, 18 April 1956. Also see Irish Times, 19 April 1956.

248

NOTES TO PAGES 119 –125

27. In Ireland’s first UN General Assembly the following November, when discussing the Hungarian uprising, Cosgrave declared that ‘deportation was the last resort of tyrants, as my country has reason to know’. UK Delegation Report, 21 November 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 28. Irish Press, 18 May 1956. 29. Ibid. 30. Da´il Debates, Vol. 159, Cols 212– 13, 4 July 1956. 31. Irish Times, 16 January 1956. 32. Report, ‘Irish Republic: Debate on External Affairs’, 26 July 1956, DO 35/10772, NAUK. 33. Ibid. 34. C.E. Diggines to Robin Jasper, 24 August 1956, DO 35/10772, NAUK. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Da´il Debates, Vol. 159, Cols 127– 226, 3 July 1956. The following quotes are all taken directly from this speech. 38. Ibid. 39. Telegram from Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis to Taoiseach John A. Costello, 25 September 1956, Papers of John A. Costello, P190/694(30), Archives Department, UCD. 40. Ibid. 41. Telegram from Sir Alexander Clutterbuck to CRO, 3 October 1956, FO 371/123930, NAUK. 42. Ibid. 43. Da´il Debates, Vol. 160, Cols 638– 9, 7 November 1956. 44. Da´il Debates, Vol. 160, Cols 639– 40, 7 November, 1956. 45. Text of Liam Cosgrave’s address to the UN General Assembly, 30 November 1956, Costello papers, P190/694, UCD. 46. This is how Lord Pakenham, a strong supporter of Irish UN entry, described it during a lecture he gave to the International Institute of Foreign Affairs at Chatham House on 20 November 1956. Frank Biggar to Sean Murphy, 23 November 1956, DFA /313/31B, NAI. 47. Telegram from Sir Pierson Dixon to FO, 1 December 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 48. C.E. Diggines to Robin Jasper, 5 March 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 49. Extract of letter by Lord Lothian, 6 December 1956, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 26 December 1956, DFA 313/36, NAI. 53. Telegram from Sir Pierson Dixon to FO, 12 January 1957, FO 371/130124, NAUK. 54. Telegram from Pierson Dixon to FO, January 15 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK.

NOTES TO PAGES 125 –130

249

55. Clann na Poblachta Committee Meeting, 23 November 1956, Papers of Sea´n MacBride (Private Collection, Property of Caitriona Lawlor). 56. Ibid. 57. FO Minutes, 15 January 1957, FO 371/130124, NAUK. 58. Ibid. 59. John Chadwick to Robin Jasper, 18 January 1957, FO 371/130124, NAUK. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Norman MacQueen, ‘Ireland and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 1983), 96. 64. Irish Times, 22 February 1957. 65. E´ire-Ireland: Weekly Bulletin of Dept. External Affairs, 25 February 1957, 8. 66. C.E. Diggines to Robin Jasper, 5 March 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 67. P.M. Crosthwaite to J.D. Murray, 10 April 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 68. Ibid. 69. Report on the Eleventh Assembly by Robin Jasper, May 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. 70. Ibid. 71. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985, 327. 72. Ibid. Also see Owen Dudley Edwards, E´amon de Valera (Cardiff, 1987), 135– 7. 73. Patrick Murray, ‘Obsessive Historian: Eamon de Valera and the Policing of his Reputation’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 101, No. 2 (2001), 61. 74. Irish Times, 29 March 1957. 75. In this interview, Makarios made little reference to Ireland apart from the tokenistic citing of Ireland of the early 1920s as a reminder to the British. See Irish Times, 10 February 1956. 76. Charalombous David to Taoiseach E´amon de Valera, 29 March 1957, Papers of E´amon de Valera, P150/2918, Archives Department, UCD. 77. Ibid. 78. Marie O’Kelly to Charalombous David, 10 April 1957, de Valera papers, P150/2918, UCD. 79. Archbishop Makarios to Taoiseach de Valera, 6 May 1957, DT S16230A, NAI. ´ Nualla´in, Assistant Private Secretary to the Taoiseach, to 80. Minute from N.S. O Roisı´n Nic Dhongusa, Assistant Secretary to the Minister for External Affairs, 11 May 1957, DT S16230A, NAI. 81. Roisı´n Nic Dhongusa to N.S. O´ Nualla´in, 13 May 1957, DT S16230A, NAI. 82. Conor Cruise O’Brien to Frederick Boland, 14 June 1957, DFA 305/148A, NAI. 83. Con Cremin to Sean Murphy, 1 July 1957, DFA 313/31C, NAI. 84. Con Cremin to Sean Murphy, 1 July 1957, DFA 313/31C, NAI. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid.

250 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

NOTES TO PAGES 130 –137 Ibid. Ivor Pink to P.M. Crosthwaite, 24 July 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. Irish Times, 12 December 1957. Telegram from Sir Pierson Dixon to FO, 18 December 1957, FO 371/130136, NAUK. UK Delegation Report to FO, Unsigned, 14 December 1957, FO 371/130136, NAUK. Report on Commonwealth Delegations at Twelfth Session of the General Assembly, 6 February 1958, DO 35/10625, NAUK. Political Section Memorandum by Conor Cruise O’Brien, 24 January 1958, Papers of Frank Aiken, P104/6115, Archives Department, UCD. Ibid. Conor Cruise O’Brien to Con Cremin, 7 February 1958, Aiken papers, P104/6116, UCD. ‘Notes on Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly Concerning Placing an Item on the Agenda’ by Eoin MacWhite, Undated, Aiken papers, P104/6116, UCD. Ibid. Ibid. Con Cremin to Frank Aiken, 21 February 1958, Aiken papers, P104/6117, UCD. Report by Arthur Wendell Snelling, 22 April 1958, DO 35/10772, NAUK. Ibid. Irish Times, 3 December 1958. Irish Times, 5 December 1958. Confidential Report by Frederick Boland, 18 February 1959, DFA 305/148B, NAI. Irish Times, 5 December 1958. Nicholas Mansergh, The Unresolved Question: The Anglo-Irish Settlement and its Undoing, 1912– 72 (London, 1991), 184. Hugh McCann to Sean Murphy, 24 February 1959, DFA 313/31E, NAI. H.C. Deb. Vol. 602, Cols 718– 9, 19 March 1959. Ibid. Frank Biggar to Sean Murphy, 15 May 1959, DFA 313/31E, NAI. Sir Alexander Clutterbuck to Lord Home, 26 July 1956, DO 35/10772, NAUK. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back: A U.N. Case History (London 1962). Donald H. Akenson, Conor: A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien, Vol. I (Montreal and Kingston, 1994), 155. John Montague, ‘The Rough Field’, Collected Poems (New York, 1995), 66.

NOTES TO PAGES 138 –147

251

Chapter 6 Ireland, Cyprus and the Council of Europe 1. C.M. Woodhouse, Something Ventured (London, 1982), 150. The ‘anti-British Irishman’ to whom he was referring was Sea´n MacBride. The ‘rather pro-British Irishman’ was the Fine Gael politician and Council of Europe delegate Sir Anthony Esmonde. 2. Kennedy and O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe, 14. 3. A.W.B. Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (Oxford, 2001), 665. 4. Ibid., 83. 5. Ibid., 126. 6. Ibid., 108. 7. Sea´n Ronan to T.J. Kiernan, 6 April 1955, DFA 417/39/214, NAI. 8. Ibid. 9. Irish Times, 26 May 1954. 10. Woodhouse, Something Ventured, 150. 11. Kennedy and O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe, 113. 12. Simpson, Human Rights, 923. 13. Philip Alston and Karel Vasak, The International Dimensions of Human Rights (Westport, 1982), 473. 14. Simpson, Human Rights, 923. 15. L.B. Walsh-Atkins to R. Ross, 15 July 1954, DO 35/7007, NAUK. James Crosbie was the grandson of Thomas Crosbie who took over the Cork Examiner newspaper in 1872 on the death of his business partner, John Francis Maguire, its founder (in 1841) and Nationalist MP in the British Parliament. 16. Simpson, Human Rights, 940. 17. FO Memorandum, Undated but most likely July 1956, FO 371/123908, NAUK. 18. Ibid. 19. Simpson, Human Rights, 961. 20. Ibid., 960. 21. A.W.B. Simpson, ‘The Exile of Archbishop Makarios III’, European Human Rights Law Review, No. 4 (1996), 395. 22. Report by Francis A. Vallat, 22 January 1957, FO/371/130141, NAUK. 23. Quoted in Simpson, Human Rights, 986. 24. Telegram from FO to Ankara, 25 November 1957, FO 286/1439, NAUK. 25. Telegram from John Harding to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 23 September 1957, FO 371/130145, NAUK. 26. Times, 15 October 1957. 27. Times of Cyprus, 14 January 1958. 28. Hugh Foot to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 18 January 1958, CO 936/491, NAUK. 29. Ibid. 30. Report by K.J. Neale, February 1958, CO 936/489, NAUK.

252 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

NOTES TO PAGES 148 –155 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Report by Francis A. Vallat, 15 October 1958, FO 371/136407, NAUK. A.D.S. Goodall to J.D. Higham, 16 October 1958, FO 371/136407, NAUK. Alan Lennox-Boyd to Sir Harry Hilton Foster, 31 October 1958, FO 371/136407, NAUK. Simpson, Human Rights, 1003. Quoted in Simpson, Human Rights, 1002. Ibid., 1004. Irish Times, 16 January 1956. Report by Brendan O’Riordan, 19 April 1956, DFA 417/39/228, NAI. Ibid. Ibid. Mr John S. Maclay, a National Liberal and Unionist MP, later Viscount Muirshiel, was Secretary of State for Scotland between 1957 and 1962. Memorandum, 20 April 1956, DFA 417/39/232, NAI. Telegram from Charles Meade to FO, 17 April 1956, FO 371/123883, NAUK. Ibid. Telegram from Charles Meade to FO, 22 October 1956, FO 371/123593, NAUK. R.P. Ross Williamson to W.G. Lamarque, 23 October 1956, FO 371/123954, NAUK. Ibid. Ibid. Irish Times, 8 November 1956. Irish Press, 8 November 1956. Gurth Kimber to Robin Jasper, 23 January 1957, DO 35/5195, NAUK. Ibid. Sea´n MacBride to Liam Cosgrave, 19 November 1956, Costello papers, P190/694(36), UCD. Ibid. Ibid. Telegram from Pierson Dixon to FO, January 15 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. Ibid. Gurth Kimber to Robin Jasper, 23 January 1957, DO 35/5195, NAUK. Ibid. Irish Times, 11 January 1957. Ibid. Ibid. Irish Times, 16 January 1957. Irish Times, 26 January 1957. Ibid. Irish Press, 29 January 1957. John Chadwick to Arthur Snelling, 11 February, 1957, DO 35/5195, NAUK.

NOTES TO PAGES 156 –161 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86.

253

Ibid. Ibid. Irish Times, 11 April 1957. Irish Times, 18 April 1957. Irish Times, 22 April 1957. Irish Times, 25 April 1957. Ibid. Irish Times, 28 August 1957. Ibid. Irish Times, 2 March, 1959. Ibid. Irish Times, 20 April 1959. Elizabeth Keane, An Irish Statesman and Revolutionary: The Nationalist and Internationalist Politics of Sea´n MacBride (London, 2006), 182. Also see Carla King, ‘MacBride, Sea´n (1904– 1988)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, May 2013 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/65847] accessed 31 July 2013. For the most detailed account of the Lawless case, see Maguire, IRA Internments and the Irish Government, 148– 72. Telegram from John Hope to Lord Home, 3 January 1957, DO 35/10625, NAUK. Ibid., 1004. Lawless vs. Ireland Case, Judgement of the European Court of Human Rights, 14 November 1960 [http://www.cajpe.org.pe/RIJ/bases/excep/lawless.htm] accessed 14 October 2012.

Chapter 7 Ireland, the Colonial Legal Service and Emergency Legislation 1. Quoted in Deirdre McMahon, ‘Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1900– 1948’, 147. 2. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837– 1997 (London, 1999), 25. 3. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858– 1966 (Basingstoke, 2000), 21. 4. Ibid., 65. 5. Janet Sinder, ‘Irish Legal History: An Overview and Guide to the Sources’, Law Library Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2 (Spring 2001), 253. 6. Bryan M.E. McMahon, ‘Developments in the Irish Legal System since 1945’, in J.J. Lee (ed.), Ireland, 1945– 70 (Dublin, 1979), 87. 7. This was the verdict of Manchester Guardian journalist Nancy Crawshaw who was based in Cyprus for the duration of the Emergency. See Nancy Crawshaw,

254

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

NOTES TO PAGES 161 –167 ‘Justice in Cyprus – The Special Courts’, Manchester Guardian, 2 July 1957. Also see Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 190. His spell in the Bahamas was not without incident. As Attorney-General, he was involved in the murder case of Sir Harry Oakes and served under the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII)), the Governor of the Bahamas. Cyprus Mail, 3 May 1955. Also quoted in Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 116. Times, 7 May 1955. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 117. Ibid., 117. Times, 7 May 1955. Times, 7 May 1955. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 119. Baker, Retreat from Empire, 144. Colonial Office, The Colonial Office List (London, 1956), 77. Baker, Retreat from Empire, 141. Ibid. ‘Declaration of Emergency by Governor John Harding’, 26 November 1955, FO 371/123891, NAUK. Simpson, Human Rights, 909. Times, 19 October 1955. Ibid. Ibid. Times, 23 December 1955. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 141. Irish Press, 27 October 1955. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 91. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 144. Quoted in Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 90. Times, 21 February 1956. Telegram from Harding to Lennox-Boyd, 6 May 1956, FO 371/123887, NAUK. Correspondence with Julian Foley, 10 February 2009. Ibid. William Scobie, ‘Obituary of Charles Foley’, Times, 2 June 1995. Foley, Island in Revolt, 137. Although Mr Justice Shaw was born in London, Foley clearly identified Shaw as Irish, depicting him as a ‘spry, alert, Irishman’ who ‘did more than anyone else to keep alive some faith in British justice’. See Foley, Island in Revolt, 88. Times, 29 November 1956. Foley, Island in Revolt, 121. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 127–8.

NOTES TO PAGES 167 –172

255

42. Telegram from Governor Harding to Secretary of State for the Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, 25 October 1956, FO 371/123953, NAUK. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Times, 7 January 1957. 46. After his position in Cyprus, Hallinan served as Chief Justice of the West Indies from 1957 to 1961. From 1966 to 1968, he was Justice of Appeal, Bahamas and Bermuda. 47. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 91. 48. Ibid., 147. 49. Given his family’s left-wing political leanings, Governor Foot’s more conciliatory approach in Cyprus was not unexpected, despite the fact that he was appointed under Macmillan’s Conservative government. 50. Trainor was the second Fine Gael candidate in the Dublin North East constituency whose most popular vote-getter was frequently the Fianna Fa´il Minister Oscar Traynor. 51. Charles Vesey Boyle, ‘A Tribute to Trinity Rugby’, in Trevor West (ed.), Dublin University Football Club, 1854– 2004: 150 Years of Trinity Rugby (Wicklow, 2003), 43. 52. ‘Obituary’, Daily Telegraph, 30 March 2007. 53. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service 1939– 1966 (London, 1991), 40. 54. Irish Times, 2 December 1955. 55. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 247. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Times, 11 September 1958. 59. ‘Obituary of Charles Vesey Boyle’, Telegraph, 30 March 2007. 60. Times, 15 September 1958. 61. Ibid. 62. ‘Cromwell’ Propaganda Pamphlet, September 1958, CO 926/953, NAUK. 63. Hugh Foot to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 16 September 1958, CO 926/953, NAUK. 64. Kathimerini, 12 September 1958. 65. Ibid. 66. Times, 15 September 1958. 67. Unpublished notes on ‘Cromwell’ provided by David Carter. 68. For details of Ford’s court case, in which he was sentenced to nine month’s detention (later reduced to 56 days following protests at Westminster) for printing and distributing ‘Cromwell’ leaflets, see Evening Standard, 5 November 1958. 69. Information provided by Owen Dudley Edwards. 70. Times, 16 September 1958. Douglas Goodbody, who was born in Liverpool in 1905, was of Irish Quaker extraction. His father, Cecil Goodbody, from

256

71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

NOTES TO PAGES 172 –176 Tullamore, Co. Offaly had immigrated to Liverpool with his family when he was six years old. Charles Foley and William Scobie, The Struggle for Cyprus (Stanford, 1975), 117. To pass a sentence such as caning was perhaps not such an unusual task for Trainor. In Ireland during the 1950s not only did the courts reaffirm a parent’s right and responsibility to use corporal punishment, but the Summary Jurisdiction over Children (Ireland) Act of 1884 also gave courts the authority to hand down corporal punishment sentences on delinquent children. Times, 17 July 1956. Ibid. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 307. Manchester Guardian, 6 October 1958. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 321. Ibid., 320. Times, 25 November 1958. Ibid. Ibid. Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, 321. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 322. Ibid., 322. Cyprus Mail, 4 December 1958. Also see Times, 4 December 1958. H.C. Deb. Vol. 597, Cols 344– 5, 10 December 1958. Times, 29 November 1958. Times, 5 December 1958. Ibid. Times, 26 February 1957. Born in 1906, he was educated privately and later attended Mount St Mary’s College, a Roman Catholic School in the Jesuit tradition, in Derbyshire. Chrissy Osborne, Michael Collins, Himself (Cork, 2003), 65. She had been romantically involved with him from 1914 until 1917. Interestingly, while Paget Bourke’s family had strong ties with the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal party, Susan Killeen had been very much anti-Treaty, so much so that her friendship with Collins ended in 1922. Times, 06 August 1957. Hugh Mackintosh Foot, A Start in Freedom (London, 1964), 178. Cyprus Mail, 16 June 1958. Times, 14 June 1958. Ibid. Foot, A Start in Freedom, 173. J.D. Hingham to Mr. Melville, 9 July 1958, CO 926/906, NAUK. Ibid.

NOTES TO PAGES 177 –185

257

102. James Henry to J.D. Higham, 24 July 1958, CO 926/906, NAUK. All of the following quotes are from this letter until further indicated. 103. John Peck had intimate knowledge of the Cypriot situation. Between 1954 and 1956, he served as Political Advisor to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Middle East Land and Air Forces in Cyprus. See John Peck, Dublin from Downing Street (Dublin, 1978), 89 – 93. He later served as the British Ambassador in Dublin from 1970 to 1973. 104. Sir Paget Bourke to John Peck, 30 August 1958, CO 926/906, NAUK. 105. Ibid. 106. Times, 10 December 1958. 107. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 255. 108. Ibid. 109. C-O-C General Roger Bower to Governor Hugh Foot, 21 October 1958, CO 926/906, NAUK. 110. Hugh Foot to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 4 November 1958, CO 926/906, NAUK. 111. Rough draft of Guenyeli Report, Undated, CO 926/906, NAUK. 112. ‘Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Incident at Guenyeli on 12 June 1958’, FO 371/136288, NAUK. 113. Foot, A Start in Freedom, 174. 114. Sidney Abrahams, ‘The Colonial Legal Service and the Administration of Justice in Colonial Dependencies’, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, Vol. 30, No. 4 (1948), 3. 115. Regina vs. Nicos Sampson Georghiades, Cyprus Supreme Court, The Cyprus Law Reports 1957– 60 (Nicosia, 1960), 102– 12. 116. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 154. 117. H.L. Deb. Vol. 200, Cols 816– 17, 6 December 1956. 118. Ibid., Cols 817– 18. 119. H.C. Deb. Vol. 565, Cols 308– 9, 19 February 1957. 120. Ibid., Cols 309– 10. 121. However for Bourke, Dublin was to prove the most dangerous place of all. In April 1975, after his knighthood ceremony at Buckingham Palace, attended by his mother and brother (Mary Robinson’s father Aubrey), he returned to Dublin where he was kidnapped. He was held in captivity for less than a day in what was believed to have been a case of mistaken identity. The target was thought to be the British Ambassador in Ireland, in a bid to force the release of a republican activist, Dr Rose Dugdale, who was on hunger strike in Limerick prison. See Lorna Siggins, Mary Robinson: The Woman Who Took Power in the Park (Edinburgh, 1997), 24 – 5. 122. Quoted in Charles Foley, Island in Revolt (London, 1962), 121. 123. Michael Foot and Mervyn Jones, Guilty Men: Suez and Cyprus (London, 1957), 148. Guilty Men was published the same year that Hugh Foot became Governor of Cyprus. 124. Ibid., 149. 125. Times of Cyprus, 27 May 1957.

258

NOTES TO PAGES 185 –191

126. Manchester Guardian, 2 July 1957. 127. George Sinclair to Hugh Foot, 10 January 1958, Papers of Sir Hugh Foot, MSS.Medit.s.35/1/4, Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford. 128. Irish Times, 24 October 1955. 129. Holland and Markides, Britain and the Hellenes, 230. 130. H.L. Deb. Vol. 200, Cols 820– 1, 6 December 1956. 131. Ibid., Cols 822– 3. 132. Ibid., Cols 825– 6. 133. Irish Times, 28 February 1957. Lord Chorley’s use of the word ‘troops’ to describe the Black and Tans is somewhat inaccurate; they were part of the Royal Irish Constabulary, albeit mostly comprised of British ex-soldiers. 134. Patrick Shuk-siu Yu, Tales from No. 9 Ice House Street (Hong Kong, 2002), 11. 135. Ibid., 12. 136. Simpson, Human Rights, 920. 137. Foot, A Start in Freedom, 178. 138. Ibid., 177. 139. Ibid., 178. 140. Ibid. 141. Ibid. 142. Ibid. 143. Sir James Henry to Sir Hugh Foot, 12 July 1960, Foot papers, MSS.Medit. s.35/16/6, RHL. 144. Ibid. 145. Sir Hugh Foot to Sir James Henry, 30 July 1960, Foot papers, MSS.Medit. s.35/16/6, RHL. 146. There was also a certain sense of congeniality within the Irish legal system facilitated by the fact that both Dublin University and University College Dublin law students shared the Irish Law Library. 147. Edward Hallinan, telephone interview with author, 12 February 2009. 148. Quoted in Siggins, Mary Robinson, 23. 149. John Bourke, telephone interview with author, 4 February 2009. 150. See Alistair Horne, Macmillan: 1957– 1986 (London, 1989), 181. July of that year. To no-one’s surprise, it backed Britain’s role there. 151. John Mordecai, The West Indies: The Federal Negotiations (Chicago, 1968), 66. 152. Irish Times, 9 August 1960. 153. Ibid. 154. Transcript of talk given on ‘Voice of the Fatherland’ by Mr Karaiorges, 29 May 1956, FO 371/123905, NAUK. 155. Go¨kalp Kamil, To Catch The Rainbow (Lefkos¸a, 1997), 7 – 17. 156. Times, 10 November 1960. 157. Ibid. 158. Times, 8 November 1961. 159. Simpson, Human Rights, 921.

NOTES TO PAGES 192 –197

259

Chapter 8 The Irish Involvement in British Counter-Insurgency in Cyprus 1. Corran Purdon, List the Bugle: Reminiscences of an Irish Soldier (Greystone, 1993), 115. Born at Rushbrooke, Co. Cork in 1921, Purdon served in Cyprus as Company Commander with the RUR in 1958. 2. H.C. Deb. Vol. 532, Cols 565– 6, 3 November 1954. 3. H.C. Deb. Vol. 532, Cols 567– 8, 3 November 1954. 4. Jackson, Ireland, 303. 5. For an account on the problematic nature of Irish enlistment records, see Bernard Kelly, Returning Home: Irish Ex-Servicemen after the Second World War (Dublin, 2012), 6 –7. 6. J.J. Lee, ‘Continuity and Change in Ireland, 1945– 60’, in J.J. Lee (ed.), Ireland, 1945– 70 (Dublin, 1979), 173. 7. Keith Jeffery, ‘The Irish Military Tradition and the British Empire’, in Keith Jeffery (ed.), An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), 102. 8. Census 1951, England and Wales, Occupation Tables, Table Number 26. 9. Keith Jeffery, ‘The British Army and Ireland Since 1922’, in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), 447. 10. Figures kindly provided by Denis Cleary, Irish Guards Archivist, The Guards Museum, London. 11. Quis Separabit, Winter 1959, 79. 12. For an earlier account of Irish Protestant and Catholic elite perspectives on empire, see Jennifer Ridden, ‘Britishness as an Imperial and Diasporic Identity: Irish Elite Perspectives, c. 1820– 70s’, in Peter Gray (ed.), Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837– 1901 (Dublin, 2004), 88 – 105. 13. Memorandum by Minister of Defence Earl Alexander of Tunis, 23 January 1954, CAB 129/65, NAUK. 14. Jeffery, ‘The Irish Military Tradition and the British Empire’, 12. It should be noted that as part of the United Kingdom, Ireland was never declared to be in a ‘state of emergency’. The suppression of the 1916 Rising was carried out under the Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA). However, these were in force throughout the whole UK since the beginning of World War I. When the special powers under DORA lapsed with the end of the war, special legislation was not brought in until August of the following year under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, which stopped short of ‘statutory martial law’. See Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (London, 1986), 53 – 6. 15. John Cloake, Templer, Tiger of Malaya: The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer (London, 1985), 3. 16. Quoted in the Irish Times, 12 October 1955.

260

NOTES TO PAGES 197 –201

17. Irish Times, 12 October 1955. Born in 1924, O’Connor had been a factory worker prior to joining the RAF in 1946, where he became a cook. He joined the Middle East Air Force in April 1955. 18. Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 24 June 1955, Papers of Frederick Boland, MS 10470/47/1, TCD. 19. Michael Carver, Harding of Petherton (London, 1978), 195– 6; 203– 4. 20. Peter Catterall (ed.), Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years 1950– 1957 (London, 2003), 468. 21. Cloake, Templer, 335. 22. Anthony Gorst, ‘“A Modern Major General”: General Sir Gerald Templer, Chief of the Imperial Staff’, in Anthony Gorst and Saul Kelly (eds), Whitehall and the Suez Crisis (London, 2000), 35. 23. Keith Kyle, Suez (London, 1991), 88. Also see Sir Con O’Neill, ‘Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick’, in E.T. Williams and C.S. Nicholls (eds), Dictionary of National Biography, 1961– 1970 (Oxford, 1981), 616– 7. 24. Quoted in Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 45. 25. Con Cremin to Sean Murphy, 1 July 1957, DFA 313/31C, NAI. 26. Unpublished Memoirs of Sir Dermot Boyle, MF 10100, Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, 15. 27. Irish Times, 3 February 1956. 28. ‘Obituary’, Times, 5 March 1998. Also see Daily Telegraph, 5 March 1998. 29. John Cusack to E.A.W. Gibbs, 15 November 1955, ADM 1/26590, NAUK. 30. Report on Operation Apollo by EAW Gibbs, Resident Naval Officer of Mombassa, 14 March 1956, ADM 1/26590, NAUK. 31. John Cusack to E.A.W. Gibbs, 15 November 1955, ADM 1/26590, NAUK. 32. See ‘Obituary’, Times, 2 September 1968. Implicated in the Hola Detention Camp massacre, Cusack was forced to resign in July 1959 after 29 years in the Colonial Service. See Times, 30 July 1959. 33. ‘Obituary’, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2002. 34. Report on Operation Apollo by EAW Gibbs, Resident Naval Officer of Mombassa, 14 March 1956, ADM 1/26590, NAUK. 35. Incidentally, during Makarios’ interlude at Sans Souci Lodge, he was fond of reading from De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s moving essay on spirituality and faith written during his incarceration in Reading Gaol. Stanley Mayes, Makarios: A Biography (London, 1981), 97. 36. Minutes, Chiefs of Staff Meeting, 5 June 1956, FO 371/123894, NAUK. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Cloake, Templer, 370. 43. Boyle Memoirs, 132.

NOTES TO PAGES 201 – 207

261

44. Gorst, ‘“A Modern Major General”: General Sir Gerald Templer, Chief of the Imperial Staff’, 33. 45. Ibid., 107–8. 46. Ibid., 108. 47. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 154. 48. A total of 15,000 French troops, seconded from Algeria, also arrived on the island prior to the Suez invasion. 49. Irish Times, 12 October 1956. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Carver, Harding of Petherton, 216. 53. Irish Times, 14 January 1956. 54. Irish Times, 13 December 1939. 55. Times, 26 January 1976. 56. ITV Late Evening News, 12 January 1956. 57. Irish Times, 13 January 1956. 58. Quoted in Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945– 1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War (London, 1991), 198– 9. 59. The other two were Sir Patrick Dean, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and his deputy, Geoffrey McDermott. See W. Scott Lucas, ‘The Missing Link? Patrick Dean, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee’, in Anthony Gorst and Saul Kelly (eds), Whitehall and the Suez Crisis (London, 2000), 120. 60. Times, 6 January 1976. 61. Kyle, Suez, 449. 62. Ibid., 509. 63. Wm. Roger Louis, ‘The Tragedy of the Anglo-Egyptian Settlement of 1954’, in Wm. Roger Louis and Roger Owen (eds), Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences (Oxford, 1989), 70. 64. Boyle Memoirs, 108. 65. Ibid. 66. Quoted in O’Malley and Craig, The Cyprus Conspiracy, 43 – 4. 67. Minutes, Meeting of Governor Foot and Chiefs of Staff, 26 November 1957, Papers of Sir Hugh Foot, MSS.Medit.s.35/1/3, RHL. 68. Richard G.M.L. Stiles, Mayhem in the Med: A Chronicle of the Cyprus Emergency 1955– 1960 (London, 2006), 208. 69. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 228. 70. Douglas Stuart, A Very Sheltered Life: The Recollections of a BBC Foreign Correspondent (London, 1970), 156. 71. Telegram, Alan Lennox-Boyd to Sir Hugh Foot, 31 January 1958, Foot papers, MSS.Medit.s.35/2/1, RHL. 72. Telegram, Sir Hugh Foot to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1 February 1958, Foot papers, MSS.Medit.s.35/2/1, RHL. 73. Irish Times, 16 April 1958.

262 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

NOTES TO PAGES 207 –210 Ibid. Times, 16 April 1958. Ibid. Times, 15 April 1958. Ibid. Irish Times, 17 April 1958. Times, 16 April 1958. Ibid. Oliver Murphy, The Cruel Clouds of War (Dublin, 2003), 115– 16. Irish Times, 23 December 1958. Quis Separabit, Summer 1960, 4. Roscommon Herald, 18 January, 2006. Irish Times, 15 July 1957. David Anderson, ‘Policing and Communal Conflict: The Cyprus Emergency, 1954– 60’, in David Anderson and David Killingray (eds), Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917– 65 (Manchester, 1992), 190. Luke Hannon to Hugh Foot, 30 July 1960, Foot papers, MSS.Medit. s.35/16/6, RHL. Ibid. Ibid. Lennox-Boyd, who had been Colonial Secretary until the previous year, had married into the Guinness family in 1938 and was now the Managing Director of Guinness and Sons. Georgina Sinclair, At the End of the Line: Colonial Policing and the Imperial Endgame, 1945– 80 (Manchester, 2006), 115. A certain level of selectivity also existed in the British ‘paper of record’. Although The Times noted the names of those from the Republic of Ireland who died whilst serving in Cyprus, the paper repeatedly failed to cite their nationality. Hamilton, The Speckled People, 12 – 13. Robert Taber, War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare (London, 1970), 92. Richard Bennett, The Black and Tans, revised edition (Staplehurst, 2001), 111– 12. Christopher Logue, ‘The Song of the Dead Soldier’, Songs (London, 1959), 6. Time, 1 October 1956. H.C. Deb. Vol. 548, Col. 737, 31 January 1956. Irish Times, 21 January 1959. Correspondence with Martin Bell, 18 February 2009. Ibid. Stuart, A Very Sheltered Life, 154. Ibid. Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004), 320.

NOTES TO PAGES 211 – 216

263

105. ‘Return of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers’, ITV Late Evening News, 14 February 1956 (Source: NFO ‘Newsfilm Online’). 106. Ibid. 107. Standard, 18 November 1955. 108. Ibid. 109. Irish Press, 30 May 1956. 110. Ibid. 111. Correspondence with Ken Castle, 22 February 2009. 112. Quoted in Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 190. 113. Cloake, Templer, p. 4. 114. ‘Return of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers’, ITV Late Evening News.

Conclusion 1. Peter Paris, The Impartial Knife: A Doctor in Cyprus (London, 1961), 41. 2. Annual Confidential Reports, Government of Cyprus Administrative Lists, PSC1/6037/46– 53, PROC. 3. Standard, 29 August 1958. 4. Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (London, 2000), 108. Although born in Dublin, Megaw came from a prominent Belfast family. His father was the honorary secretary of the Linen Hall Library until the family moved to Dublin. See Kirk-Greene, Biographical Dictionary, 249. 5. Times Pictorial, 29 March 1957. 6. Costas Montis, Closed Doors: An Answer to Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, Trans. Soterios G. Stavrou and David Roessel (Minneapolis, 2004), 106. Montis served as political advisor to EOKA members in the Nicosia District and as literary editor of the Times of Cyprus between 1956 and 1969. 7. Moussoulides founded the Irish Hellenic Society in 1964 and served at various times as the Greek Consul to Ireland, and the Cypriot Consul to Ireland. Upon returning to Cyprus in the 1980s, he founded the Cyprus Irish Society. See Cyprus Mail, 24 January 2013. 8. Montis, 108. 9. Frederick Boland to Sean Murphy, 23 May 1957, DFA 313/36, NAI. 10. See Evangelos Averoff, Lost Opportunities: The Cyprus Question, 1950– 1963 (New York, 1986). 11. Times of Cyprus, 4 October 1957. 12. Ibid. 13. Richard Crossman, ‘A Visit to Cyprus’, New Statesman and Nation, 29 January 1955. 14. Times, 14 September 1955. Ironically, Lord Radcliffe drew the same comparison. In July 1956, the British government appointed the jurist

264

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

NOTES TO PAGES 216 –224

Radcliffe to the post of Commissioner for Constitutional Reform. After a visit by him to Cyprus from 15 July to 2 August, Radcliffe, in a report drawn up for Lennox-Boyd, associated Greek – Cypriots in the extent of their almost infantile delusion for enosis with the apparently similar deluded intransigence of nineteenth-century Irishmen. See Note by Lord Radcliffe, 8 August 1956, CO 926/244, NAUK. Eamon Kennedy to Sean Murphy, 15 August 1957, DFA 313/36, NAI. Frank Biggar to Con Cremin, 9 March 1959, DFA 305/148B, NAI. Denis Devlin to Sean Murphy, 11 July 1958, DFA 305/148A, NAI. Ibid. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 10. Also see R.M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Fe´in (Dublin, 1920), 137. Holland and Markides, Britain and the Hellenes, 170. Also see Stephens, Cyprus, 105. Quoted in H.D. Purcell, Cyprus (London, 1969), 229. Irish Times, 22 April 1959. Irish Times, 2 December 1955. Montis, 109. Report by Brendan O’Riordan, 19 April 1956, DFA 417/39/228, NAI. Irish Times, 20 February 1957. Con Cremin to Sean Murphy, 25 March 1957, DFA 305/148A, NAI. Irish Times, 21 March 1957. Irish Times, 21 March 1958. That same year there were also rumours that a member of EOKA might arrive in Castletownshend in Cork to ‘take a pot shot’ at a retired English officer who, injured whilst serving in Cyprus, arrived there to recuperate. The local Ga´rdaı´ took precautions, despite the fact that a British embassy official, who described the EOKA story as ‘simply crazy’, asked them to immediately dismiss it. See Eunan O’Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies Since 1922 (Oxford, 1999), 291. Ibid. Ibid. Paris, The Impartial Knife, 44. Alvin Jackson ‘Ireland, the Union and the Empire, 1800– 1960’, in Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire, 123. Kevin Kenny, ‘Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction’, in Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire, 1. Taken from Brendan Kennelly’s poem ‘Westland Row’. Quoted in Brown, Ireland, 226. Quoted in Delaney, Demography, State and Society, 194. Garvin, 212. Eric G.D. Zuelow, Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National Identity since the Irish Civil War (New York, 2009), 58. Ibid., xxvi. Ibid., xxxiii.

NOTES TO PAGES 225 –228

265

41. [http://www.curragh.info/overseasunits.htm ] accessed 16 October 2013. 42. See Norman MacQueen, ‘Ireland and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus’, Review of International Studies. Vol 9, No. 2 (1983). 43. David Fitzpatrick, ‘Ireland and the Empire’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 1999), 515. 44. Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists, 311. 45. MacKenzie and Devine, Scotland and the British Empire, 28; Alexander Hendrickson, ‘Critics of Decolonisation in Scotland, c. 1950 – 1963’ (University of Aberdeen, forthcoming). 46. Michael de Nie and Joe Cleary, ‘Editors’ Introduction’, E´ire-Ireland, Vol. 42, Nos 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2007), 5. 47. An extract from ‘Beacons at Bealtaine’ by Seamus Heaney composed for, and delivered at, the EU Enlargement Ceremony in Phoenix Park, Dublin on 1 May 2004. [http://web.archive.org/web/20041221223016/www.eu2004.ie/tem plates/news.asp?sNavlocator¼66&list_id¼641] accessed 17 September 2013.

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INDEX

Afxentiou, Gregoris, 82 Aghios Georghios trial, 162–163 Aiken, Frank, 10, 54 – 55, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 136, 137, 139, 141, 159 Akbay, Muvaffak, 144 AKEL, 32 – 33, 34, 43, 44, 101 AKOE (‘Anti-Killers Organisation of Expatriates’), 170– 171 Alanbrooke, Lord, 59 Aldrich, Winthrop (American Ambassador), 204 Alexander, King of Greece, 23 Allenby, Field Marshal Edmund, 24 Amery, Leopold (Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies), 25, 27 An Garda Sı´ocha´na (Irish Police Force), 225 Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, 96, 106– 107 anti-colonialism, 8, 9, 15, 16 – 17, 38 – 39, 44, 56, 93, 123– 124, 143 Anti-Partition League/Association, 69 Antonine, Sister, 213– 214 Armitage, Sir Robert (former Governor of Cyprus), 163, 197 Astor, Lord (Commonwealth Press Union Chairman), 167

Athenagoras I, Patriarch of Istanbul, 103, 106– 107 Averoff, Evangelos (Greek Foreign Minister), 125, 143, 153, 155, 156, 188, 215, 220 Baghdad Pact, 203, 205 Baker, Sir Samuel White, 18 Barry, Kevin, 49, 68, 75, 89, 185, 190– 191; comparison with Karaolis, 77; ‘Kevin Barry’ (song), 196 BBC radio/television, 40 Beaconsfield, Lord, 15, 19 Beaverbrook, Lord, 39 Behan, Brendan, 41 Bell, J. Bowyer, 68, 81, 84 Bell, Martin (television reporter), 210 Berg, Paal, 144 Bergin, Patrick, 79 Bethilde, Sister, 213– 214 Biggar, Joseph, 16 Birrell, Augustine, 20 Black and Tans, 2, 44, 61, 65, 77, 91, 134, 209, 210 Boland, Frederick, 39 – 40, 76, 78, 117–118, 119, 123, 124– 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131– 132,

278

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

133– 134, 135, 136, 137, 154, 198, 215 Bourke, Sir Paget John, 1 – 2, 161, 175– 181, 184, 188, 189 Bourke, Susan (ne´e Killeen), 175, 189 Bowen, Lord George, 17 Bower, General Roger, 180 Boyd, Major Michael, 206– 207 Boyle, Sir Dermot (CAS), 199, 200, 202, 204, 205 British army, Irish in: 13, 87, 88, 89 – 90, 192– 195; Anglo – Irish military tradition, 196–199, 200, 203; contribution to counterinsurgency, 87, 93; in Cyprus, 195–196 British army: counter-insurgency campaigns, 4, 5, 12, 194, 197, 208; emergency measures, 139, 140; media coverage, 38; troop transfer from Cyprus to Northern Ireland, 68, 91, 92; wrongdoing by security forces, 143, 145, 146, 176 British army: recruitment, 193, 210; ban on ‘dark-skinned Cypriots’, 32; Cypriot enrolment, 32 British Colonial Service, 160– 161 British Council of Churches (BCC), 96, 108 Broadcasting Authority Act 1960, 43 Browne, Noe¨l (National Progressive Democrats), 119 Burke, Gus (Cyprus Police Force), 208 Burke, Terry (Cyprus Police Force), 208 Butler, Brigadier Mervyn ‘Tubby’, 202– 203, 204, 203, 222 Butler, Sir William Francis, 19 – 20 Cadwell, Corporal Thomas, 174 Callan, Philip, 19 Cambalouris, Nicolas (Council of Europe), 143– 144 Cambalouris, Nicolas, 145

Canning, Manus, 82 Carayannis, Dennis (Greek UN Mission), 216 Carmody, Michael, 74 – 75 Carter, David (former British army officer), 171 Carty, James, 48, 49, 89 Casement, Sir Roger, 220 Chadwick, John, 125, 155– 156 Charalambous, Andreas (EOKA), 202 Childers, Erskine, 27 Chorley, Lord, 186– 187 Christle, Joseph, 69; Christle, 70, 71, 72– 73, 75, 84– 85, 92 Christofi, Fotis (EOKA), 202 Chrysostomos, Panayotis, 173 Church of Ireland, 95, 111, 112, 113; Church of Ireland/Catholic, 108–109; Church of Ireland/ Orthodoxy, 96, 106; response to Cyprus, 9, 95 Church, (Cypriot) Orthodox: 33, 34, 95; anti-Catholic intolerance, 96, 103–105; anti-communism, 95– 96; Catholic minority in Greece, 104; Greek Orthodoxy, 9, 46; Orthodox Church and enosis, 30; Orthodoxy/Roman Catholicism, 107; Seat of Catholic Byzantine Rite vacant, 104–106 Church, (Irish) Catholic: American/ Vatican interests, 95, 101; Catholic popular opinion, 57; Catholic press response, 96; Catholicism and British colonialism, 12; nationalist clergy, 47 Church, Roman Catholic, 94: anti-communism, 56, 61, 100–101; martyrdom, 101; response to Cyprus, 9, 95; scandals, 3, 94; silence on Cyprus, 112, 113, 114; Vatican, 102, 103, 109, 110; Vatican/Greek Orthodox relations, 106; Vatican

INDEX support for Greek-Cypriots, 104; Vatican Radio, 99 Churchill, Winston, 20 –21, 28, 32, 197 Civil War, Irish, 45, 49, 50, 53, 58, 64 Clan na Gael (Irish-American group), 218 Clann na Poblachta, 10, 60 – 61, 81, 119, 121, 127, 139, 141, 155, 157 Clarke, Philip, 70, 75 Clerides, Glafcos, 167 Clutterbuck, Sir Alexander, 36, 57, 71, 76, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 134, 136, 158 Cockram, B. (CRO), 79 Cold War, 95, 98, 113, 198 Collins, Michael, 24, 25, 58, 175, 220 Colonial Office (CO), 111 Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), 96, 108, 113 Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), 46, 50, 57, 117 communism: 95, 62, 64, 121– 122; anti-communism, 9, 38, 43 – 44, 56 – 57, 99, 103, 123– 124, 143; Cypriot communists, 43; Greek communists, 100, 102 Communist Party of Cyprus (CPC), 30, 32 – 33 Congress of Irish Unions (CIU), 55 Connolly, James, 41 – 42, 49, 51 Constantine I, King of Greece, 22 Cosgrave, Liam, 119, 120, 122, 123– 124, 127, 130, 137, 153 Costello John (Taoiseach), 59, 116, 117, 118, 122– 123, 139, 151 Council of Europe, 10, 138– 141, 146, 154, 215, 216, 220, 223 Council of Europe’s Sub-Commission on Human Rights, 140– 141, 145, 147, 150, 152, 184; Pyla detention camp, 148, 149; visit to Cyprus, 146, 148

279

Cranston, Corporal David, 196 Crawshaw, Nancy (Manchester Guardian journalist), 185 Cremin, Con, 129– 130, 132– 133, 220 Croke, Dr Thomas William, 47 ‘Cromwell’ group, 170– 171 Crosbie, James, 10, 11, 139, 140, 141–142, 143, 145, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 155, 158, 215, 222 Crossman, Richard (Labour MP) 215 Crosthwaite, P.M., 126 Cumann na nGaedheal, 47, 50, 56, 58 Cusack, John (Kenyan Minister for Defence), 200 Cushing, Archbishop Richard, 99 Cutliffe, Catherine (murder victim), 172–173, 207–208 Cyprus Emergency: declaration of emergency (1955), 37, 44, 164, 175, 193; Emergency Regulations, 131, 135, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 179, 182– 184, 185, 199; opposition to measures, 39; specially trained British police force, 44 – 45 Cyprus: British occupation (1878), 7, 14– 15, 18 – 19, 219; becomes Crown colony (1925), 28; Cypriot constitution, 85, 135; formal annexation (1914), 22; Greek – Cypriot Hellenism, 29; Independence Day, Cyprus, 214, 228; an ‘Irish affair’, 11, 19– 20, 24– 25; never expect full independence, 34; offered to Greece (Sir Edward Grey), 14 – 15, 22– 23, 26; republican response, 8– 9; strategically useful, 24, 33, 35, 201, 205; on UN Agenda, 34, 115 Cyprus– Ireland-analogies, 36 – 38, 40, 44, 46, 47 – 48, 54, 55, 51, 59,

280

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

148, 184– 185, 216; how Ireland perceived by Cypriot, 13 Cyprus Police Force, 208 D’Alton, Cardinal John Francis, 102– 103 David, Charalombous, 43 – 44, 128 Davies, Clement (Liberal Party), 37–38, 51–52 de Robeck, Vice-Admiral John, 24 de Valera, E´amon, 10, 27, 28, 31, 40, 48, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 64, 80, 81, 85, 127– 128, 131, 134– 135, 136, 139, 153, 156, 216, 222– 223 de Vere, Robert Vere, 24, 25 de Warrenne Boult, Group Captain Norman, 200, 201, 209, 221 Dean, F.H. (Judge Advocate-General), 207 Deery, Monsignor Joseph, 97 Dehousee, Fernand, 151 Denktash, Rauf (TMT founder), 206 Devlin, Dennis (Minister Plenipotentiary, Rome), 216 Devlin, Mr Justice Patrick (Devlin Commission Report 1959), 189 Diggines, Charles E., 53, 121, 124, 126 Dimitriou, Andreas, 45 – 46, 49, 71, 118, 120, 144, 166, 166, 169, 211 Dispiros, Anastassi, 172 Dixon, Sir Pierson, 124, 125, 131, 154 Dominedo, Francesco M., 144, 147, 148, 149 Dorotheos, Archbishop, 104, 105 Doyle, Joseph, 83 Doyle, Tom (Sinn Fein), 89 Droulia, Anastassios, 142, 151, 152– 153, 220 Dudley Edwards, Owen, 9, 171 Duke, Corporal George, 196 Dulles, John Foster, 99, 109– 110, 166, 203 Durrell, Lawrence, 166, 214

Easter Rising, 49, 50, 51, 56, 59, 118, 147, 161, 190 Ecumenical News Service/Lutheran World Federation News Service, 106 Eden, Sir Anthony, 32, 34, 39 – 40, 204 Education Law, 30 Egypt, 28, 182, 195, 196, 203, 220 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 99 Emmet, Robert, 151, 220 enosis (union with Greece), 7, 16, 20, 20– 21, 23, 24, 32, 33, 37, 39, 56, 64, 100, 107, 128, 205, 218; Crete’s union with Greece 1913, 22; deportation of agitators, 28, 48; enosist agitation, 27; Hellenic irredentism, 20, 21 and Irish Home Rule, 22; NSC support, 71; plebiscite, 33, 43, 142, 142 EOKA, 12, 34, 37, EOKA, 100, 101, 111, 190, 197, 202, 205, 206, 211–212, 218, 219; campaign, 34– 35, 43; EOKA/IRA prisoners, 2, 35, 67 –68, 93, 156; falsely linked to communism, 44; hangings, 50; IRA learns from EOKA, 85 – 86; Irish ambivalence towards EOKA violence, 43, 46; joint prison escape efforts, 76, 81 –87; Makarios support, 52; model for Grivas’ tactic; violence against British administration individuals, 175 European Commission of Human Rights (ECmHR), 10, 131, 140, 142, 143, 146, 148, 149, 222 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), 11, 54, 131, 139, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151, 154, 159; human rights, 139, 142; human rights law, 158 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), 10 –11, 131, 142, 140, 158, 159, 222

INDEX

281

Faber, Paul, 143, 144 Farrelly, Pat, 84 – 85 Fianna Fa´il, 10, 50, 53, 54, 58, 116, 127– 132, 134, 141 Fianna Uladh (Warriors of Ulster), 72 Fields, J.F. (Air Ministry), 211 Fine Gael, 10, 56, 58, 141, 147, 116, 127 Fisher, Geoffrey, Archbishop of Canterbury, 108, 111– 112 Fitzgerald, Alexis, 72 Fitzmaurice, Gerald (‘wizard of Stamboul’), 22 – 23 Fletcher-Cooke, Charles (Conservative MP), 142 Fleury, Captain Arthur, 30 Flinn, Major William, 31 Fogarty, Liam, 74, 76, 77 Foley, Charles (Times of Cyprus editor), 147, 166– 167, 172, 187, 215, 221 Foot, Michael Mackintosh, 184–185 Foot, Sir Hugh (Governor of Cyprus), 2, 146– 147, 168, 170, 175, 176, 180, 184– 185, 187– 188, 206, 205 Ford, Corporal Brian Edward, 171 Foreign Office (FO), 46, 117, 125, 126, 129, 176, 204 Free State, 58 Freeman’s Journal, 17, 19 Fuchs, Karl (atom spy), 85

Georkatzis, Polykarpos (EOKA), 163 ‘German Plot’, 47 Gifford, Eric, 31 – 32, 33 Gladstone, William, 15, 16, 19 Good Friday Agreement (Northern Ireland), 227– 228 Goodall, A.D.S. (FO), 149 Goodbody, Douglas (Crown Counsel), 171 Goold-Adams, Major Sir Hamilton, 21, 22, 27 Goulding, Cathal, 82, 83 Greaves, Charles Desmond, 61 – 62 Greece: Greek Civil War, 33, 93, 121, 218; Hellenic ideal of Greek unification, 17; Ionian Greek stereotype (‘Mediterranean Irish’), 17– 18; Turkish anti-Greek riots, 108, 109, 113 Greek Democratic Army, 100 Greek Inter-State Application 176/56 (Greece v. UK), 10 –11, 131, 140, 141, 143– 144, 157– 158, 222 Greek Inter-State Application 299/57, 131, 146, 158 Greek-American associations, 218 Gregg, Most Reverend Dr John, 106, 107 Grey, Ronald (Senior Crown Counsel), 170 Grey, Sir Edward, 22 – 23 Griffith, Arthur, 51, 52 Grivas, Georgios, 83, 93, 167, 202, 205, 218, 220 Guenyeli Massacre, 175–181, 182

Gageby, Douglas, 65– 66 Gallagher, Frank, 53, 156 Garland, Sea´n, 86 Garner, Sir Saville, 46, 117 Garrett, Roy, 172 Gazette, the, 108 Geary, Frank, 44, 57 George I, King of Greece, 18

Hackett, Colonel Robert, 20 Hackett, Colonel Simpson, 20 Hale, Corporal Paddy, 201, 209– 210 Hallinan, Sir Eric (Chief Justice, Cypriot Supreme Court), 80, 161, 162–163, 164–168, 175, 184, 185, 188– 189, 190, 222 Hamilton, Hugo, 208– 209

Eustathiades, Professor Constantin, 144, 147, 148, 149

282

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Hammarskjo¨ld, Dag, 137 Hammond, Sergeant Reginald, 170 Hannon, Luke (Cyprus Police Force), 208 Harding, Sir John (Governor of Cyprus), 37, 39, 45, 88, 92, 101, 111, 146, 166, 167, 168, 182–183, 187, 197–198, 199–200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 208 Hare, William Francis, Earl of Listowel, 183– 184 Harrison, F.A.K., 117 Haydon, W.R., 125 Head, Antony (Minister of Defence), 204 Healy, John, 58 Hennigan, J., 55 Henry, Denis (James Henry’s father), 191 Henry, R.M., 217 Henry, Sir James (Cypriot Attorney-General), 2, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 175, 176– 180, 181– 184, 186, 187– 188, 191 Higham, J.D. (CO), 149, 176, 178, 179, 180 Hill, Sir George, 217 Home Rule, 16, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 Hope, John (CRO), 158– 159 Hopkinson, Henry, 34 Hungary, 79, 204, 100–101, 112, 124, 143, 154 Hussein, King of Jordan, 203 India, 6, 15, 19, 28, 53, 193, 220; nationalism, 219, 220 Intermediate Education (Ireland) Bill of 1878, 18 – 19 Ioannou, Giorgos (EOKA), 83, 84 Ioannou, Nicolas (EOKA), 84 IRA, 37, 41, 54, 59, 91, 127, 218, 219; Arborfield raid, 82, 83; Border Campaign, 42 – 43, 52 – 53, 54,

59, 67, 68, 69, 84, 86, 140, 221; Derrylin RUC Barracks raid, 86; Felstead raid, 82; IRA Army Council, 71, 72; IRA– EOKA joint escapes, 67, 69, 218, 221; NSC and Border Campaign, 80– 81 Ireland Act 1949, 194 Ireland, 1950s, 4 – 5, 6 –7, 9, 11, 12, 62– 63, 94, 194, 208– 209, 223, 224; conformist spirit, 98; depressed economy, 13, 41, 90, 193; imperial involvement, 63, 222; public opinion, 223– 224 Ireland, identity, 3, 11 –12, 43, 62 – 63, 66, 194, 212, 224, 226; Irish-British identity, 40, 221 Ireland: diaspora, 6, 223; 1879 famine, 15; Irish press, 8, 64, 78; To´stal festivals, 225; tourism, 224– 225 Ireland: highly anglicised, 40; Anglo–Irish traditions, 59, 66; Castle Catholic tradition, 188–189 Ireland: attitudes to Greek–Cypriot cause, 6, 7–8, 9, 10, 17, 31, 36–40, 48–49, 142, 212; departure from Commonwealth, 1948, 5, 58, 118, 138, 223; Inter-Party governments, 81, 116, 122, 127, 139, 141; Irish Emergency (1957– 59), 54, 80, 131, 140, 147, 159; Irish/Greek-Cypriot nationalism, 13, 21, 26, 28 – 29, 35, 78, 81, 140, 217; participation in empire, 62, 63; seen as last unfree white nation, 26 – 27; reunification, 115; republicanism, 75, 78, 87 – 88, 91– 92, 141 Ireland: UN membership in 1946, 115–116; gained membership 1955, 116; Irish UN policy, 122–127 Irish Catholic, 96 – 100, 105, 109, 110, 112–113, 114

INDEX Irish Club, 1 – 2, 213, 221 Irish Constitution (Bunreacht na hE´ireann), 141, 161 Irish Defence Forces, 225 Irish Guards, 195, 206 Irish Independent, 11, 55 – 57 Irish Ireland, 58, 225 Irish Press, 53– 54 Irish Times, 11 – 12, 57 – 61, 62, 63, 64, 65 – 66, 87, 128, 156 Irwin, William Henry, 190 Islam, 95 Israel– Arab dispute, 124 ITV News, 203, 212 Jasper, Robin, 117– 118, 121, 125, 126– 127, 154 Jodrell, Sir Neville, 25 – 26 Jowitt, Earl (Labour Lord Chancellor), 185– 186 Kamil, Go¨kalp, 190 Karaheyekian, Yepron, 221 Karamanlis, Konstantinos (Greek Prime Minister), 123, 143, 153, 156 Karaolis, Michalis, 45 – 46, 49, 71, 77, 118, 120, 144, 165–166, 185, 190– 191, 211, 222 Kassimatis, Gregory (Greek Minister without Portfolio), 156 Katalanos, Nikolaos, 28 Kelly, Liam, 72, 73, 79 – 80, 81 Kelly, Private Edward, 208 Kennedy, Eamon (Irish UN Counsellor), 216 Kenya, 4, 5, 38, 161, 169, 175, 187, 193, 198, 200, 205, 227 Khrushchev, Nikita, 204 Kimber, Gurth (British Charge´ d’Affaires), 50, 53, 71, 118, 119, 153, 154 Kinsella, Rifleman Daniel, 90, 207, 214– 215

283

Kirkpatrick, Sir Ivone (FO Permanent Under-Secretary), 129– 130, 198–199, 204, 205, 222 Kitchener, Lieutenant-General Horatio, 20 Korizis, Alexander (Greek Prime Minister), 32 Koutsoftas, Michael, 73, 201 Kutchuk, Dr Fazil (Turk – Cypriot Vice-President of Cyprus), 190, 219 Kyrillos III, Archbishop, 23, 24, 220 Laithwaite, Sir Gilbert, 130 Lane, James (RUR Staff Sergeant), 207–208 Lanitis, Nikolaos, 26 Larkin, Denis, 46 Lawless, Gerard, 131, 140, 142; Lawless case (Lawless v. Ireland), 148, 150, 158 League of Nations, 127, 138 Legislative Council, 29, 30, 31 Lehane, Con, 60 – 61 Lennox-Boyd, Alan (Colonial Secretary), 38, 51, 52, 112, 146, 149–150, 167, 170, 188, 206, 208 Lintott, Sir Henry, 135 Liopetri, Battle of, 207, 214 Livadas, Vias, 81, 82, 83 Lloyd George, David, 24, 47 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 155 Logue, Christopher, 209 London Conference, August 1955, 142 London-Zu¨rich Agreements 1959, 85, 135, 157– 158, 169, 175, 188 Lothian, Lord, 124– 125 Louca, Evangelos (EOKA), 162 Loukas, Andreas, 173– 174 Lozides, Socrates, 163 Lucey, Bishop Cornelius, 103 Lyons, Robert Dyer, 19

284

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Macardle, Dorothy, 41 – 42, 49, 127– 128, 216 MacBride, Sea´n, 10 – 11, 72, 81, 121, 123, 125, 127, 128, 138– 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 150– 152, 153– 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 215, 216, 222 MacDonald, Roy (RAF Wing-Commander), 171 MacGiolla Bhrighde, Niall, 25 MacGiolla, Brian, 120 Mackenzie, Compton, 23 Maclean, Fitzroy (Under-Secretary of State for War), 192– 193 Macmillan, Harold, 39, 57, 67, 111, 174, 188, 189, 198, 203 Macready, Sir Nevil ‘Make-Ready’, 45, 198 MacStı´ofa´in, Sea´n (IRA), 68, 82, 83, 85 – 86, 88, 218 MacWhite, Eoin, 132– 133 Magan, Tony (IRA), 72 Maitland, Patrick, 135– 136 Major Sir John Clauson, 22 Makarios II, Archbishop, 33 Makarios III, Archbishop (Michael Mouskos), 10, 11, 33 – 34, 33– 34, 74, 83, 86, 112, 127– 128, 146, 150, 156– 157, 167, 190, 200, 205, 215, 216; compared with Michael Collins, 51, 52; compared with Mannix, 47 – 48; deportation, 45 – 46, 47, 48, 50, 56, 101, 102, 108, 110– 111, 113, 119, 144, 145, 149, 199– 201, 221; myth of martyrdom, 70 – 71; support for IRA, 84 Malaya, 4, 5, 38, 92, Malaya, 161, 164, 169, 187, 193, 197, 198, 218, 219, 227; MNLA (Malayan National Liberation Army), 169 Malta, 204 Mannix, Archbishop Daniel, 47

Martin, Hugh, 26 Massu, General Jacques (French Foreign Legion), 204 Mavromatis, Stelios, 73 Maxwell, Rev Raymond E. (WCC), 109 McCallum, Seamus, 83 McCarthy, Senator Joseph, 96, 99 McCullough, Sergeant Major T., 210–211 Mcguigan, Thomas (Clan na Gael), 84 McMahon, Inspector Philip (Special Branch, Ga´rdaı´ Sı´ocha´na), 73, 75, 76– 77, 79 McQuaid, Archbishop John Charles, 102 McQuillan, Jack, 119, 120– 121 Meade, Charles, 151, 152 Meade, Tony, 84 Megaw, Peter (Department of Antiquities), 214 Mehmet, Mustafa (Turk-Cypriot police sergeant), 172 Menderes, Adnan (Turkish Prime Minister), 205, 206 Menkas, Savvas (trade unionist), 172 Mercouris, Stamatis, 142, 145, 152 Middle East Air Force (MEAF), 195, 196 Middle East Land Forces (MELF), 195, 196 Miller, Arthur, 66 Milne, Ewart, 62 Mindszenty, Jozsef, 112 Mitchell, Tom, 75 Modinos, Polys, 143 Monaghan, Martin, 218 Montis, Costas, 214–215, 220 Morrissey, Sean, 152 Mountbatten, Lord, 201 Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF), 38 Mullins, Thomas, 48, 121 Murphy, Donal, 82 Murphy, Seamus, 83, 85

INDEX Murphy, Sean, 123, 132 Murphy, William Martin, 55 – 56 na Gopaleen, Myles, 210 Nasser, Gamal Abdel (Egyptian President), 202 Nation, the, 17 National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, 187 National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) News Service, 99 – 100 National Students’ Council (NSC), 68 – 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 78, 79, 81, 84, 92; colonial student protests, 78 – 79, 92; Omagh Military Barracks, 70, 72; pro-enosis activity, 70 – 71; student protests, 68, 190 NATO, 109– 110, 153– 154 Neale, K.J., 147, 148, 149 Newman, Alec, 59 Nic Dhongusa, Roisı´n, 128 Noel-Baker, Philip (Labour MP), 52 Nunan, Sean, 123 Nyasaland, 189 ´ Bra´daigh, Ruairı´, 68, 86 – 87 O ´ Caoimh, Aindrias (Attorney-General), O 158 ´ Ceallaigh, Sean T., 27 O ‘O’Donnell-Kelly, Rory’ (NSC pseudonym), 74– 75 ´ Dubhghaill, Breanda´n (NSC), 71, 78 O ´ Nualla´in, N.S., 128 O O’ Donovan, Michael ‘Pasha’ (United Irishman), 69 O’ Hanlon, Fergal 81 O’Briain, Mr Justice Barra, 190 O’Brien, Conor Cruise, 9, 41, 116, 127, 128, 130– 132, 133, 134, 136, 137; ‘Cruise O’Brien Law of Clerical Pressure’, 9 O’Brien, George Thomas, 20 O’Casey, Sean, 61

285

O’Connell, Daniel, 16 O’Connor, Arthur, 16 – 17 O’Connor, Corporal Myles, 197 O’Connor, Father Patrick, 99 –100 O’Connor, T.P., 23 – 24, 25 O’Connor, T.P., 7, 219 O’Curry, Peadar, 97 O’Donnell, Frank Hugh (Irish MP), 16, 17 O’Donnell, Private Kieran, 88, 83, 89, 202, 222 O’Faolain, Sean, 33, 61 O’Gowan, Eric Dorman ‘Chink’, 59– 60 O’Hagan, Desmond (Assistant Commissioner, Kenya), 200 O’Kelly, Marie, 128 O’Nolan, Brian, 41 O’Riordan, Brendan, 139, 151 O’Sullivan, Tadgh (Irish Ambassador to Nigeria), 13 Occupy Ireland, 62 OEEC, 153 Offences against the State (Amendment) Act 1940, 54, 55, 80, 131, 140 ‘Operation Dooley’, 85 ‘Operation Harvest’, 80, 91 ‘Operation Musketeer,’ 196, 202 ‘Operation Sparrowhawk’, 88, 202–204, 222 Orangeism, 217 Ormerod, Richard, 71 Palamas, Chrestos (Greek UN Ambassador), 115 Palestine, 193, 208, 227 Pallikarides, Evaghoras, 168 Panayides, Andreas, 201 Panayides, Andreas, 73 Papagos, Alexander (Greek Prime Minister), 34, 43, 115 Parliament Act 1911, 21 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 16, 47, 55, 201

286

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

partition, 79; Cypriot partition, 9 – 10, 37, 59, 115, 129– 130; Irish partition (‘sore thumb’ policy), 8, 9 – 10, 54, 64, 78, 79, 97, 116, 117, 119, 121, 125–126, 132, 142, 151, 156; Radcliffe, (Lord) Plan, 84, 130; Trieste solution, 129 Pearse, Patrick, 25, 41 – 42, 49, 51, 70, 89, 151, 220 Peck, John (FO), 179 PEK (Pancyprian Farmers’ Union), 162, 163 PEO, 101 PEON (Pancyprian Youth Organization), 33 – 34 ‘Peter Paris’, 1 – 2, 213, 221 Petren, Sture, 144 philhellenism, 23 – 24, 25 – 26, 29, 39, 219 Pilina, Katrina, 85 Pink, Ivor (FO), 118, 130 Pope Pius XII, 97 Printesis, Archbishop Benedictus, 105 Queen Elizabeth, 3 Queen Victoria, 188, 189 Radio E´ireann, 41, 43, 221 Reddin, Kenneth (District Justice), 221 Redgrave, Major, 180 Redmond, John, 120 Rhallis, George, 123 Rhodes, Cecil, 16 Robinson, Kenneth (Labour MP), 44, 184 Robinson, Mary (Irish President), 161, 189 Rodopoulos, Takis, 156 Rolin, Professor Henri, 145, 152 Ross, Sir Ronald, 144 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), 86, 208

Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR), 92, 195, 196, 208 Ryan, John J.M., 97 Salisbury, Lord, 15, 150 Sampson, Nicos, 83, 85, 86, 167, 225; Regina v. Nicos Sampson, 182 Saor Uladh (Free Ulster), 68, 72, 78, 79– 80, 81, 92, 195– 196; EOKA tactics, 73 Savvides, G.S. (Commissioner of Larnaca), 148–149 Schumann, Robert (French Foreign Minister), 141 Scrivener, R.S. (FO), 51, 117, 125 Selwyn Lloyd (Foreign Secretary), 57, 146, 188 Shake Hands with the Devil, 65 Shaw, George Bernard, 26 Shaw, Mr Justice Bernard Vidal, 166, 169, 201 Sheridan, Fr. Terence, 187 Shilton, Corporal Ronald, 211– 212 Shuckburgh, Sir John, 29 –30 Silverman, Sydney (Labour MP), 187 Sinai, 203 Sinclair, Sir George (Deputy Governor of Cyprus), 185 Sinn Fe´in, 26, 28, 43, 75, 86 Smyllie, Robert (Irish Times editor), 58– 59, 65 Smyth, P.J., 16 Snelling, Arthur Wendell (CRO), 57, 134, 136, 155 Sophocleous, Nicos, 175 Sørensen, Max, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149 South Africa, 28, 53 South, Sea´n, 81 Spanish Civil War, 54 Special Branch, 76, 97 Spellman, Cardinal Francis, 99, 103 Spyridon, Archbishop, of Athens, 107–108

INDEX Standard, the, 96 –99, 100, 101– 102, 109, 110, 112– 113 Stanford, William Bedell, 106– 107 Stevenson, Sir Michael, 27 – 28, 29, 48 Storrs, Sir Ronald, 29, 30 Stronge, Sir Herbert Cecil (Chief Justice), 25, 31 Suez, 33, 34, 60, 88, 112, 124, 143, 182, 196, 198 – 199, 202 – 205, 210 Sullivan, T.D. (Irish Catholic), 16, 97 Su¨sterhenn, Adolf, 144– 145, 147, 148, 149, 150 Sweetman, Gerard, 127 Syria, 205 Taylor, Sydney (British intelligence agent), 166 Teeling, William (Conservative MP), 192 Templer, General Gerald, 92, 164, 197– 198, 199, 203, 205, 212, 201, 218 Themistocleous, Thassos (EOKA), 202 Theoklitos, Archbishop, 105 TMT (Turkish Defence Organisation), 101, 206 Tornaritis, Criton (former Cypriot Attorney-General), 162, 163– 164 Trainor, James Patrick (Special Court judge and Coroner), 161, 168– 169, 172– 174, 184 Treaty of Guarantee, 214 Treaty of Lausanne, 28, 106 Treaty of San Stefano, 15 Tribute, the, 20 – 21, 29, 31 Trinity College Dublin (TCD), 43– 44, 78, 80, 91, 160 Turk-Cypriots, 21 – 22, 33, 57, 60, 135, 109, 206, 216– 217; taksim, 64; as minority, 64; ‘Union with Turkey’, 28 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, 225 Turton, Robin, 44

287

Ulysses (James Joyce), 24 United Irishman, 69 – 70, 87– 88, 90 – 91, 92, 93, 196, 209 United Nations, 9 – 10, 33, 34, 98, 126, 139; ‘atheistic’ UN, 97; Eleventh Session, 123– 124, 129; Thirteenth Session, 132, 134; UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), 225 University College Dublin (UCD), 68, 72, 78, 79 UNO, 118, 120 Vafiades, Markov, 100 Vallat, Francis A., 145– 146, 149 Velebit, Vladimir, 129 Venizelos, Eleftherios (Greek Prime Minister), 23, 24 Vesey Boyle, Charles, 91, 161, 168–172, 180, 184 Vietnam, 99 Visser ‘t Hooft, Dr Willem (WCC), 109 Waldock, Professor Humphrey, 144, 147 Walsh, Dr Patrick, 24 – 25, 25 Walsh, Dr William Joseph, 47 Walsh-Atkins, Leonard Brian (CRO), 71– 72, 73, 74, 76 –77, 78 –79, 144 War of Independence, Irish (1919– 21), 8, 12, 25, 35, 37, 45, 50, 51, 53, 61, 64, 77, 102, 147, 187, 190, 191, 209, 217, 218 Ward, Jack (FO), 77 Waterloo, Battle of, 203 White, Terence de Vere, 72 Williams, Professor T. Desmond, 41, 63 Williamson, Reginald P., 71, 73 – 74, 75, 76 –77, 78, 79 Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry, 35

288

IRELAND AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Winster, Lord (former Governor of Cyprus), 186 Wolseley, Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet (High Commissioner), 19 – 20, 198, 217 Woodhouse, C.M., 39 Woolf, Leonard, 27 World Council of Churches (WCC), 96, 108, 113 World War II, 3, 4, 32 – 33, 54, 58, 59, 100, 118, 138, 169, 193, 200, 225; Hellenic sentiment during, 32; Irish fighting in British army, 3, 4, 193

Yakoumis, Andreas, 170, 185 Young Irelanders: Arthur Griffith, 69; Charles Gavan Duffy, 15 – 16, 27, 97; John Blake Dillon, 97; John Mitchel, 15, 16, 69; Thomas Davis 15, 97; William Smith O’Brien, 15– 16 Zannettos, Dr Philios (Mayor of Larnaca), 28 Zanou, Savvas, 174 Zorlu, Fatin (Turkish Foreign Minister), 188, 205, 206 Zuelow, Eric, 224