Peter Costello
Archives | State Papers
Echoes of the past from the archives
The ‘Cold War’ that followed World War II, and some of the events connected with it such as the Korean War (1950-1953) and the testing of atom bombs by Soviet scientists convinced the Irish government in the early 1950s that preparation had better be made to prepare for a coming war.
All government departments were asked to prepare a ‘War Book’ for what would need to be done by way of planning and resourcing. A file relating to the preparations by the Stationary Office casts a little light on the background to this.
The move dated back initially to September 1944 with the creation of a war book to cover matters of public safety and the preservation of the State prior to, at the outset of war and “at various stages in the course of any similar emergency in the future”. These documents were to be kept secret.
In August 1950 (just weeks after the beginning of the Korean War), the Taoiseach (then J. A. Costello) established an Inter-Department Emergency Preparation Committee to plan for “the dangers which would confront this country in the event of the outbreak of a world war”. This work continued under later governments
At the start of September 1962 a document laid out the basic assumptions about the future event.
It was assumed that “any major war in the near future will be fought between Western Nations and the Communist Bloc”; that “In a major war, this country might be (a) neutral, or (b) a forced participant, or (c) a willing belligerent.
The admission that Ireland would be “a willing belligerent” ran counter to the strident claims always made of neutrality.
It was assumed that the “most likely hazard to the country “is liable to be subjected to, in varying degrees, to radioactive fall-out – particular account being taken of the probability of deliberative nuclear attacks on targets in Britain and the Six Counties. There was a direct danger too from nuclear devices up to one-megaton yield and conventional high explosives or incendiary devices”.
The constitution (art 28, 3:3) laid out the declaring of a “time of war” as a matter for the Dáil. But external war was not the only worry. Thought was to be given also to the matter of “armed insurrection” within the State – this seems to have been conceived as coming from the far left, and from illegal organisations of a republican kind which had become very active in the early 1950s, and became a reality again after 1969 in Northern Ireland.
Protection
The documents do not however reveal what the plans were to protect the members of the government of the day.
These papers hint at the existence of an Irish ‘Secret State’, of the kind later discussed by Peter Laurie (Beneath the City Streets, 1981) and Duncan Campbell (War Plan UK, 1982) both of whom claimed that when Armageddon came “the select few” would be the ones with privileged protection. The rest of us will be left to die, to be shot by the security forces if we caused trouble, or starved when essential supplies run out.
The general plans now in force to protect Leo Varadkar and his colleagues doubtless still follow the same lines.