A little subversion in Ireland PDF Print E-mail
Niall Meehan, 16 September 2005

‘Cock-up’ rather than conspiracy. That is the Irish Times view of why the paper failed to adequately report secret meetings between the then Chief Executive of the Irish Times, Major Thomas B McDowell and the British Ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, in 1969. The British Public Records Office in Kew released the correspondence under the thirty-year rule in January 2000. Rachel Donnelly of the Irish Times London office reported the story on January 3 2000. The Irish Independent also reported the story, though with significant information that the Times left out.

While the Irish Times has said that it published the information available to its reporter, Guardian Media commentator, Professor Roy Greenslade, argued in April 2004 that 'The Irish Times’ record in this matter is hardly beyond criticism'.

New evidence revealed here may cast some new light on the controversy, not least whether the Irish Times was aware of attempts by Major McDowell to undermine his Editor in meetings with British Officials

This is the story of what happened.

Editor a “white nigger”

The British Public Records Office in Kew released British correspondence detailing the meetings under the thirty-year rule in January 2000. Rachel Donnelly of the Irish Times London office reported the story on January 3 2000 with: “McDowell prepared to act as 'link'”. The story’s emphasis was on attempts by Major McDowell to bring the two sides together in Northern Ireland.

A significant letter dated October 2 1969, was not reported. The letter’s author, British Ambassador to Dublin Sir Andrew Gilchrist, reported that Major McDowell called his Editor, the late Douglas Gageby, “a renegade or white nigger” in relation to Gageby’s coverage of Northern Ireland. Both McDowell and Gageby were Protestants from Belfast and both were executive directors of the paper.

The full passage from the October 2 1969 letter is as follows:

"McDowell is one of the five (Protestant) owners of the Irish Times, and he and his associates are increasingly concerned about the line the paper is taking under its present (Protestant, Belfast-born) Editor, Gageby, whom he described as a very fine journalist, an excellent man, but on northern question a renegade or white nigger. And apart from Gageby's editorial influence, there is difficulty lower down, whereby sometimes unauthorised items appear and authorised items are left out."

The correspondence revealed that McDowell had attempted to "offer his services" to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 10 Downing Street soon after British troops arrived on the streets of Derry and Belfast in August 1969. After contact was made, British officials reported that McDowell’s ticket to “acceptability in Whitehall terms” was his position as a court marital judge in the Judge Advocate General’s department. Originally Harold Wilson thought that
 

“Major McDowell’s offer of assistance may relate more to intelligence than to journalistic activity.”


However, a month later (October 16 1969) the Foreign Office clarified the point:

 

Aside from any quibble about whether both observations cover the term “intelligence” activity, this point assumes importance in the context of the Irish Times’s attempt to change the context in which the word “moderation” is used and to ignore the repeated reference to McDowell’s secret differences with his Editor. The point is discussed below. It is important to point out that at this early stage of 'the troubles' there was no IRA on the scene. The Irish 'extremists' were the civil rights movement and those who sought to defend nationalist areas from sectarian unionist attack.

Jack Lane of the Aubane Historical Society came across the infamous October 2 1969 letter in the PRO in January 2003. He sent it to Geraldine Kennedy, the Irish Times Editor, on January 10 2003. She demonstrated little apparent interest in either publishing it or in discovering why it had not been found earlier. The letter was published on January 26 2003 in the Sunday Independent. The following day, in a piece without a by-line, the Irish Times responded with, “Major McDowell rejects UK envoy's claim”. McDowell denied that he had uttered the reported racist epithet ever, about anyone. Sir Andrew Gilchrist, a highly experienced British diplomat, was effectively accused, not of being sent abroad to lie for his country, but of lying to it.

 

One letter or two?

 

Conor Brady, the Editor of the Irish Times in 2000 and Douglas Gageby’s successor, wrote to the paper on April 29 2004, after the controversy resurfaced in the Irish Times, The Guardian, and in Indymedia.ie:

“Roy Greenslade has rushed to judgment in his letter of April 23rd, compounding his earlier, acknowledged inaccuracy. There was no "cover up" (his term) in The Irish Times's reportage of the 1969 British government papers, released to the public in January 2000 under the 30-year rule.

[Rachel Donnelly] identified one letter, written on December 29th, 1969 by the head of the Irish section at the Foreign Office, Mr Kelvin White, to the British Ambassador in Dublin, Sir Andrew Gilchrist.

In this letter Mr White wrote of Major T.B. McDowell's willingness to act as a link between the British and Irish governments and to have The Irish Times play a role in organising a conference of "prominent people".

Major McDowell was then one of a number of directors of The Irish Times Ltd. Later he became chairman.

Over recent days I have confirmed with the London Editor of The Irish Times, Mr Frank Millar, that Ms Donnelly's examination yielded only this one letter. She did not come across another letter, dated October 2nd, 1969, from the ambassador to Mr White." 

Unfortunately, the information relayed to Conor Brady was not correct. Ms Donnelly reported two letters on January 3 2000, one a “November” 1969 letter (dated 7 November), the other a letter written in December (on December 22 1969 actually, and not, as the Times reported, December 29). A simple reading of her article and a comparison with the letters confirms this. The point assumes importance if we examine what was left out of the Irish Times account of the "November" letter. It assumes greater importance when we consider what the Irish Independent reported.

 

October 2 letter referenced

 

In the “November” letter, WKK White of the Foreign and Commonwealth office referred directly to “your [Gilchrist’s] letter of 2 October” (the ‘white nigger’ letter). It is would be interesting to know why, as a consequence, Rachel Donnelly did not look for the October 2 1969 letter, or, alternatively, if any impediment prevented her from discovering and reporting it. Donnelly, who no longer works in Journalism and who I have been unable to contact, may be able to answer this question. I have been informed that another researcher in Kew at the same time, and working for an Irish newspaper, did have sight of the October 2 1969 letter, but did not think it "merited publication" and did not show it to anyone else.

 

Failure to search for the October 2 1969 letter is also surprising, given that parts of the “November” letter contained comments about Douglas Gageby. The comments were not reported by the Irish Times, while other more innocuous parts of the letter were.


In the “November” letter Major McDowell reportedly said he was not looking for “ammunition” to use against Douglas Gageby but he “did, as you [Gilchrist] forecast, mention apologetically that Editor’s excessive zeal”. The British Ambassador's forecast refers back directly to the
"renegade or white nigger" comment in the October 2 letter. The Irish Independent report of January 3 2000 carried this passage. This indicates that the Irish Times knew on January 3 2000 that its reporting of the letter was incomplete. It did nothing publicly to rectify the situation, though there is a suggestion that Major McDowell or his representative may have gone to Kew subsequently to investigate what was in the file. There is no evidence that the Irish Times attempted to investigate further in an editorial or journalistic context.

 

Major Denial

 

There are other letters in the series in the PRO file that demonstrate Major McDowell’s opposition to his Editor. Major McDowell is reported as seeking British government help in promoting “the moderates’ cause”, represented by Major McDowell and “one or two of his friends on the Board”. In other words, McDowell sought a foreign government’s help in undermining the editorial line of the newspaper.

 

In its original report of January 3, 2000 emphasis was placed by the Irish Times on the Major acting as a “link” between the protagonists in the rapidly developing conflict in Northern Ireland. The later Irish Times report of January 27 2003, in which Major McDowell denied that he had used the term “white nigger”, also placed the emphasis on McDowell’s role being the promotion of moderation and as a “link”. The “November” 1969 letter was quoted again in the context of promoting “the moderates’ cause in the paper”.

 

Unfortunately, this will not do.

 

In every case where the term “moderates” is used in the correspondence it refers directly to McDowell’s secretive difference with Gageby. The implication is that McDowell is the pro-British moderate and Gageby, by extension, the Irish extremist. Since the Irish Times did not report this context, readers are left with a mistaken view that McDowell is being encouraged to promote nationalist and unionist moderates from Northern Ireland in the Irish Times, that he offered his services as a “link” between the two.

Trust broken

It has been suggested to me that there is no evidence that Major McDowell or his allies succeeded in the attempt to turn the paper in a direction more to the liking of British policy makers, and that therefore the whole episode is of little substance. Unfortunately, the misreporting of the story, for whatever reason, has clouded that debatable point for the moment.

It is certainly true that Major McDowell did take over the effective control of the ownership of the paper after the setting up of the Irish Times Trust in 1974, in which task he was heavily advised by Harold Wilson’s ‘fixer’, Sir Arnold Goodman. Douglas Gageby retired at that time with a considerable windfall represented by the controversial buyout of existing shareholders by the Trust. However, Gageby returned as Editor in 1977, in a situation of financial and editorial crisis for the paper, partly fuelled by the original loan buying out Gageby, McDowell and other shareholders. Bank of Ireland Finance, who held the loan, may have insisted on the return of Gageby’s steady hand. This also had the effect of quelling the anger of journalists on the paper, who were demanding substantial change.

Uncertainty

It may be speculated that many who were sure of their views on the North in 1969 were swayed into uncertainty and fear by the descent into violence that was promoted in those early years by British policy and action, and by the reaction to it, at that time from the Official and emerging Provisional IRA. As Senator Martin Mansergh put it:

The British military brought to Northern Ireland lessons from conflicts in Aden, Malaysia, Kenya and Cyprus… It is doubtful if the British officer class held the Irish Catholic and nationalist population, let alone the IRA, in much higher esteem than native peoples and insurgents elsewhere, though because of the greater media spotlight they had to be more careful.

Though not in those early years, careful enough, though this point indicates why the battle for influence over the information flow was also central to the strategy of all protagonists.

Support for the newly formed Provisional IRA in 1969 was fuelled by attitudes and actions of British forces appearing to act to preserve unionist dominance in Northern Ireland. Where British forces were involved in violence, it had a specific political and propaganda purpose.

Bombings ‘helpful’

In 1974, three days after the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in which 33 people died, the then British Ambassador, Arthur Galsworthy, telegrammed London on the “healthy” and “helpful” effect the bombings were having on southern opinion. For the British, the bombings had a desired outcome in helping to change southern Irish attitudes.

 

Judge Henry Barron, in his recent report into possible British collusion in the bombings and the official Irish response to them, found it likely that British security force members either participated in, or were aware of, preparations for the bombings. He also found that the Irish government and the Gardai were less than diligent in pursuing the perpetrators. In fact Barron accused them of lacking interest in the investigation. The then government of Liam Cosgrave, Patrick Cooney and Conor Cruise O’Brien appeared more interested in scoring propaganda points aimed at opponents of their northern policy.

 

In such a context, many who were sympathetic to the British position may, ironically, have felt less apprehensive about the direction that events were taking. It may be that the original contacts were overtaken by events. However, Major McDowell is one of two actors in this saga who has been less than forthcoming about some of the details of this story. Until they are known, no definitive verdict can be handed down and any one form of speculation is, at this stage, as valid as another.

 

Narrow point

 

To concentrate only on the narrow and, at this point, under-researched context of the immediate effect on the Irish Times is to miss the wider ramifications of the story, the willingness of the British authorities to provide “ammunition”, if such was asked for, against Douglas Gageby. Why should this willingness be doubted when we consider the well documented role of Sir Andrew Gilchrist in the media manipulation that obscured the slaughter of over 500,000 in Indonesia in 1965? Gilchrist had famously (or 'infamously') observed in relation to the genocide that "a little shooting" would be the precursor to "effective change" in Indonesia. Gilchrist arrived in Ireland with a sophisticated understanding of the importance of control of the information flow in deflecting political action. The morality of violence was not an issue for him, the measure of its political utility was.

 

Concentrating on the narrow point also deflects attention away from a proprietor prepared to subordinate the interests of a national newspaper to the policy goals of a foreign government. Such is the jaded political currency of a concept of an Irish national interest these days that this aspect of the story is barely noted.

 

Whatever about the short, medium or long-term effects, if any, of the Major's meeting with British Officials, this new evidence supports the contention that the Irish Times gave a decidely one-sided views of the correspondence it had in is posession. It also indicates that Major McDowell's oppostion to Gageby was a continually reported feature of his contacts with British Officials, and no the result of a once off outburst.

The jury is still out in relation to the success or failure of British information policy in Ireland over forty years ago, at the start of the troubles. It needs more research, as does what exactly happened in the British Public Records Office in Kew over five years ago.