I saw Mr. Noel-Baker today and explained that owing to my giving on Friday evening last, a reception to the Representatives of my Government and his, who had been engaged in conference here on Nationality questions, I had been unable to present personally my Government's Aide Mémoire of the 7th January on the subject of the British Communiqué about the discussions between the Members of his Government and those of Northern Ireland.²

He said that he had read the document but was at the present moment unable to say anything in reply. There had been discussions on a number of subjects at the conference between the two Governments and details were now being worked out by their respective officials. The terms of the Communiqué seemed to him to be rather harmless and he wondered what was meant by the reference in our Aide Mémoire to implications. I said that I had not had an opportunity of talking to my Minister but thought he might well have in mind the disquieting mention in the British Communiqué of the possibility of 'legislation by the Parliament at Westminster in order to maintain the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom'. Side by side with this were the references in several of the usually well informed newspapers, to the possibility of some limitation on the voting rights of our people in the Six Counties. I couldn't help remembering, I added, that when the Six County Government in October, 1942 brought in the regulation governing conditions of residence there, it was originally announced as a means of giving ex-Service men a better chance of obtaining employment. Soon after this, that is to say on the 9th December, Mr. Andrews³ at a lunch of the Grand Orange Lodge in Sandy Row said they would have to make sure that people who came to the Six Counties to work were not allowed to settle down there and become residents and voters. The pretence of protecting the ex-Service men's interest was a screen cynically erected to prevent Irishmen having votes in a part of their own country. The last paragraph of the Aide Mémoire, it seemed to me, said what anybody who knew the situation in Ireland really felt.

Noel-Baker blandly disavowed any knowledge of the situation in 1942 and said in any case there was no reference in the Communiqué to the question of voting rights. It was, he repeated, too early to say what would be the outcome of the discussions in question.

He next said that the Six County Ministers were afraid that there were still some men in the South 'who had lived on gun work' and were neither disposed, nor equipped, to live on any other kind of work. Although they felt that the Irish Government had no sympathy with these men and would do all they could to suppress them, Brooke and his colleagues feared the gun men might, nevertheless, come into the Six Counties when a conflict between them and Six County extremists could easily begin. When I suggested that the possibility of force had been greatly exaggerated, Noel-Baker rejoined that the Minister had said to him that if he were a young man, he would probably find it difficult to reject the idea of force. A moment or two later, he corrected himself by saying 'No, it wasn't Seán MacBride who said that - it was de Valera'.

The British Cabinet were still unsure as to what line the Tory Party would take when the requisite legislation was introduced. I said I would not be surprised to find that the more progressive wing of Tory opinion would be against any total rejection. Noel-Baker said that that would probably prove to be the case, but at this moment what the Tory Party would do was unpredictable. 'Still', he concluded, 'we are going to carry our proposals through no matter what line the Tories may take'.