Martin O'BrienMartin O’Brien meets a man at the heart of government in the North during some of the most important events of the Troubles, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield
When Albert Reynolds died last month, much was rightly made of the critical role the Joint Declaration which he negotiated with John Major played in finally bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
A key sentence of the Declaration signed in Downing Street in December 1993 stated that the British Government “have no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”.
Those words were of particular interest to P. O’Neill, aka the IRA leadership.
In November 1990, they were uttered for the first time by Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in a landmark speech at the Whitbread Restaurant in London.
Mr Brooke also stated in what became known as the Whitbread speech: “It is not the aspiration to a sovereign, united Ireland against which we set our face, but its violent expression.”
He added: “Britain’s purpose is not to occupy, oppress or exploit but to ensure democratic debate and free democratic choice. Partition is an acknowledgement of reality, not an assertion of national self-interest.”
Career
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, then Northern Ireland’s most senior civil servant, wrote that speech as he neared the end of a remarkable career that had begun in 1952 when he joined the Stormont Ministry of Finance. He was armed with a degree in modern history from Oxford, where he had rubbed shoulders with Tony Benn, Robin Day and Michael Heseltine.
Today Sir Kenneth, 83, a “non-practising Anglican” who retired from the civil service in 1991, is co-commissioner of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, a post he has held since its inception in 1999.
A scholarship boy of English parents from east Belfast, he was for 40 years right at the heart of government in a region that would experience the worst civil conflict in Ireland since Partition.
When he attended the historic meeting between Sean Lemass and Terence O’Neill in 1965 (the first between Ireland’s two prime ministers in 40 years) or when he coined the phrase “the Irish dimension” in a seminal British Government paper he wrote in 1972, he could not have known that the ongoing conflict would almost claim his own life and that of his wife and family in an IRA bomb attack on their home in 1988.
As a senior advisor first to the old Stormont Government, to the short-lived 1974 power-sharing Executive and to successive direct rule administrations, Sir Kenneth has probably written thousands of speeches and policy papers. They include O’Neill’s famous “Crossroads” TV address of December 1968 in which he prophetically warned “our conduct over the coming days and weeks will decide our future”.
But looking back, he says the Whitbread speech “was arguably the most important and most influential.
“It wasn’t a brilliant idea that came into my mind. I think the idea was around. It takes somebody to give shape and words to an idea that is around so, in that sense, it was my initiative.”
Was it meant specifically for the ears of P. O’Neill?
“No, it was written for everybody’s ears. But of course I was aware of P. O’Neill and those around him.”
Sir Kenneth, head of the NI Civil Service and second permanent secretary at the NIO, was made painfully aware of P. O’Neill in a deeply personal way shortly before dawn on the morning of September 12, 1988. The IRA placed what was described as “a necklace of Semtex” around his home.
Mercifully neither he nor his wife, Lady Elizabeth, or son who were asleep at home were injured.
Two of four bombs exploded causing serious structural damage and the detonator of a third went off.
There were no security personnel protecting the house. Neighbours and police arrived to offer assistance and an ambulance took them to hospital to be checked.
In Stormont in Crisis – A Memoir, Sir Kenneth wrote: “We did not realise at the time that we were being hustled out over the top of a fourth and unexploded bomb, literally on the doorstep.”
Speaking in the drawing room of his home near Belfast to which the family later moved, Sir Kenneth recalls being “very angry and very emotional” at the time.
He believes his wife probably saved their lives. Lady Bloomfield had been feeling unwell and had gone to the bathroom in the early hours, switching on a light which may have disturbed the bombers before they could successfully prime all bombs.
“We were very lucky. I have not the slightest doubt that, if all four bombs had gone off as planned, the whole house would have come in on top of us. Only by the grace of God nobody in the house was killed. If my beloved daughter had been in the house instead of being in college in England, she would have died certainly because her bedroom was in shreds.”
One of his most prized possessions is a first edition of Terence O’Neill’s book of speeches Ulster at the Crossroads – speeches drafted by Sir Kenneth himself and personally inscribed by O’Neill with the words ‘From the author of the title to the author’.
He reveals that, like many of his books, it bears shrapnel scars from the explosions.
But what of the scars of conflict that continue to mark Northern Ireland?
Sir Kenneth, a survivor of the conflict himself, knows more about victims than most, having been appointed the North’s first victims commissioner by Mo Mowlam and commissioned by her to write the We Will Remember Them report in 1998.
His ongoing responsibilities as a co-commissioner overseeing the search for the remains of the disappeared contributes to his authority on the subject.
At one point in our interview, his eyes fill up with tears when asked about his work with the relatives of the disappeared.
“I have twice been to Masses in Crossmaglen and, during my career, if I said I was going to Crossmaglen, people would have said I would need my head examined.
“After one of the Masses everyone was invited to a meal at the Crossmaglen Rangers GAA clubhouse. My wife and I went along and found it very touching.”
He comes close to supporting an amnesty for Troubles-related offences.
“Yes, I am coming close to that [an amnesty]. It is not for me to dictate what should be done but it is for the politicians to thrash it out.”
Nasty
things
He is not convinced that “digging and digging and digging and finding more horrible and nasty things” is going to help the situation, and points out that it is unlikely that those with information will make it available.
“It’s not a very popular thing to say, but are we going to go on and on and on? I mean, we have got to begin to heal and to reconcile. We have got to begin to think of each other. It would be very, very easy to say I hate them to hell, I’d love to see them hanged on the nearest tree. Cui bono? [who would that benefit]”
Sir Kenneth says that the current Executive at Stormont is seriously flawed because it is not based on the principle of collective Cabinet responsibility, unlike the Sunningdale Executive which he served as Executive Secretary.
He has contrasting views on Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, pointing out that the former denies he was ever in the IRA, while the latter has admitted at least a partial role.
Mr Adams’ denial he finds “such utter rubbish that I find it very hard to stomach”.
He describes Mr McGuinness as “a man of presence and ability.
“You ask yourself the question, if I had grown up in those circumstances in Derry and the best job anyone could offer me was to be a butcher’s boy, what would I have done? I hope I wouldn’t want to blow anybody up or shoot anyone. But how can you be absolutely sure?”