Airey Neave was the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland until he was assassinated by the INLA in 1979. Dr Stephen Kelly argued that Neave is a neglected figure in Anglo-Irish politics, known mainly for his alliance with the secret intelligence services.
Dr Kelly’s lecture to the branch in December was based on his research into the papers of both Neave and the late prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Her papers are held at Churchill College, Cambridge, and show that by the time she became prime minister, and certainly after the Brighton bombing, Northern Ireland figured high on her list of priorities – she had to consider negotiating with terrorists. Airey Neave’s personal papers are held in the House of Parliament archives but have never really been used.
Dr Kelly, of Liverpool Hope University, set out to debunk the myth that Neave was just a militarist. Instead, he argued that Neave was a remarkable individual. Not only did he have close links to the intelligence services, he was also a barrister and lived for a short time in Germany during the 30s. He served the British during the war, he even escaped Colditz, but this period shaped his views against fascism and nazism. He then became involved in MI9. As well as being a political writer, in 1953 he was elected to the House of Commons as a member of Conservative Party. He retained his seat until his assassination. Neave’s political career blossomed after Thatcher’s election as party leader in 1975. He wasn’t well liked within the party but she needed to reward him for his loyalty, since he had played a big role in an election which no-one believed she would win.
Dr Kelly explored Neave and Thatcher’s attitude to Northern Irish devolution and their interest in power sharing or majority rule. Thatcher had never played any role in conservative Irish policy so she followed Neave’s policy. Warning the audience to bear in mind that the 1975 Labour administration was contemplating leaving Northern Ireland altogether and letting the UN take over, Dr Kelly pointed out that Neave chenged his policy on that north at that time. Having initially suported develotution, by 1975 he could see that it wasn’t working, so insted, he suggested regional councils.
The Conservative Party was opposed to British withdrawal. Likewise, it refused to make concessions, negotiate nor surrender to republican terrorists and would not give political status to paramilitary prisoners. The Conservative government even considered the reintroduction of the death penalty, especially after Birmingham pub bombings. Dr Kelly claimed that Thatcher and Neave both supported this policy but they were overruled by the cabinet. Although it is clear that she permitted top level talks in the 1980s, this was due to the fact that by then she’d been worn down.
Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Aberystwyth, Martin Alexander, spoke to the branch in early November about the significance of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It was an excellent evening with an audience worthy of the speaker – our numbers were swelled by visiting donors to the school. The title of Prof. Alexander’s talk was ‘Today is a good day to fight – the Montana campaign and Battle of the Little Big Horn’.
He began by ascribing the conflict to the pressure of whites moving westwards into native American territories. The driver for this migration was economics, as gold had been found in the Black Hills. But the migrants were desperate for gold because there’s been a catastrophically deep economic crash, not because of greed. The industrial heartlands of Pittsburgh & Chicago were facing particularly hard times and high levels of unemployment. Those without jobs went west, not looking for fortunes but to survive and subsist. They wanted to ranch, work on farm or to prospect for gold.
Sherman and Sheridan were the commanders of the army, but although they were field marshals, they were not the grand masters of the campaign. They believed fully in the manifest destiny of the whites to settle these areas. Sheridan was in the cavalry and organised a three pronged force. Many of the commanders were experienced soldiers, but not experienced in fighting irregular forces such as the natives. It was Custer who was experienced in this area, so he was the field he key general was Custer. Although he’d nearly been thrown out of military training and come bottom of his class at West Point, he’d performed great service in the civil war. In the eyes of many union commanders and his own soldiers he could do no wrong. According to Prof. Alexander, Custer was brave but not always smart. He came from a quite poor background and he wanted glory and fame, in what was the first modern media age. On the expedition in the 1876 campaign he had with him a Canadian journalist.
Three main characters populated Dr Fletcher’s lecture: Pope Alexander VI (elected in 1492); his illegitimate son, Cesare, Duke of Valentinois; and Lucretia, Alexander’s daughter. Another important person was another son – the Duke of Gandia – Juan or Giovanni. He was murdered and his body thrown in the Tiber. His killer was never identified, not least because there were many people with grudges. The Pope refused to blame various people who’d been identified as possible culprits, which suggested that he knew who had commited the murder but wouldn’t say for political reasons. Cesare comes into the frame because he benefited from Juan’s death and rumours that he was responsible for the murder surfaced 9 months later. This led people to wonder whether the pope abandoned the search for Juan’s murderer because it was his own son?
Dr Fletcher then examined the story’s cultural journey from actual history to myth, and in doing so, she provided the audience with a fascinating glimpse into the way history reflects the time in which it was written. The blackening of the Borgia name began with the election of Pope Julius II. Italians were xenophobic and resented foreigners, and Naples was invaded – Italy was being used as a battlefield by other powers. Stories circulated that Alexander’s election was a result of a pact with the devil. Protestants lapped this up and spread the tale. One of the principal agents in this was the English printer, John Bale, who wrote his Pageant of the Popes in 1550. Now the Pope was equated with the Devil.
Among the ridges, steep bluffs, and ravines of the Little Bighorn River, in south central Montana on June 25-26, 1876, The US 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, fought with warriors of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne & Arapaho tribes in a battle that would come to be seen as a showcase of American heroism and glory, as well as a clash of two fundamentally different cultures.
Historical Association Bolton Branch 