Volume 9 1948~1951


Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 427 NAI DFA/10/P12/14(3)

Confidential report from John W. Dulanty to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)
(Secret Report No. 6)

London, 18 March 1950

Yesterday morning Mr. Warnock,1 Attorney General in the Six County Government, came into this Office to ascertain the address and telephone number of Mr. Cecil Lavery.

He said that if I were free, he would like to make a courtesy call and, of course, I saw him.

My acquaintance with him is limited to a short conversation in the Diplomatic Gallery of the House of Commons when the extension of the Special Powers to Stormont was under debate. He then told me that he had been disappointed in the Six County Members in the British Parliament. As the conversation went on, I found that whilst he deplored their lack of resourcefulness in the Debate, he was further aggrieved because, as he said, none of them had asked him if he had a mouth on him!

In yesterday's conversation he told me that he had had a long sitting the previous day with Lord Jowitt who was lyrical in his praise of the Minister. Warnock said that he had not met the Minister but from all he heard, he was a man of outstanding ability. I ventured the suggestion that if he found himself in Dublin, there would be no difficulty about his meeting the Minister.

Lord Jowitt's high appreciation is not without significance in that it was made to a Six County Minister. It came rather quickly upon another conversation I had had with Lord Pakenham who told me that after his last visit to Dublin, he was called to No. 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister. There was no question, Pakenham said, of the Prime Minister's interest in Ireland. Our country and India were much in his mind. He (Mr. Attlee) was attracted by the Minister's personality and felt sure he was a man he could do business with.

1 John Edmond Warnock (1897-1972), Attorney General of Northern Ireland (1949-56).