1979 State Papers (page 10)

‘Do not empower councils’ warning

THE Thatcher government was warned by a leading Stormont official in 1979 that any return of major powers such as housing allocation to local government in the north would be disastrous to a long-term settlement.

In the late 1970s the Ulster Unionists under James Molyneaux pressed Westminster to introduce a new tier of local government in Northern Ireland with real powers.

However, in a trenchant memo to direct-rule ministers on November 7 1979 senior Stormont official Ken Bloomfield (now Sir Kenneth) warned that the issue of discrimination in local government had “not gone away”.

Writing to the permanent under secretary at the NIO, Sir Brian Cubbon, he highlighted the role of discrimination at council level in the outbreak of the Troubles in 1968.

“No-one who has lived through the recent history of Northern Ireland can fail to be aware that discrimination in local government contributed to the origins of our present disturbances,” Sir Kenneth wrote.

“Such discrimination was not universal and its extent of impact were frequently exaggerated; but the basic judgment of the [1960] Cameron Commission that discrimination by some local authorities, particularly in the areas of council employment and housing, contributed significantly to a build-up of resentment remains valid.”

In his view, to avoid a recurrence, the British government had acted to withdraw functions from local government and transferring them to central government or statutory bodies and by providing a series of specific remedies against religious and political discrimination.

Sir Kenneth warned that any attempt to widen the responsibilities of councils “could involve a return to old evils”.

While some councils had sought consensus, others appeared to have learnt nothing over the last 10 years.

“Blatantly offensive sectarian and political statements continue to be made by a minority of councillors,” Sir Kenneth wrote.

“There continue to be allegations that particular council appointments have been made or not made for reasons of discrimination.”

Thus, he wrote, on a policy issue like the creation of a new Catholic housing estate at Poleglass in the Lisburn council area, “there tends to be a competition in comparative obduracy”.

Sir Kenneth concluded that “the impact of unchanged attitudes on restored powers could be disastrous”.

Secret brief for secretary of state

ONE file made public contains confidential briefing material for the incoming Conservative secretary of state, Humphrey Atkins, in May 1979. It contains a potted history of Northern Ireland from 1920 to the escalating H-Block protest and informs the new minister that from December 1978 “350 PIRA prisoners at Her Majesty’s Prison Maze have been engaged in a defiant campaign for POW status”.

In a media survey The Irish News, then edited by Terry O’Keefe, is described as “widely read by Catholics” with a circulation of 49,000.

According to the brief, “its journalistic quality is generally low and it is vulnerable from the Provisional IRA and other republican groups, not necessarily because of its sympathy with extremists but to minimise intimidation and keep its premises intact.”

The News Letter was “pro-union and loyalist with little sympathy for power-sharing” while the now defunct Irish Press was “an aggressive, hard-line pro-republican newspaper” that backed Fianna Fail.

Books recommended to the minister included The Orange State by former civil rights leader Michael Farrell and Andrew Boyd’s classic work on Belfast riots, Holy War in Belfast.