Page "The Emergency (Ireland)" Paragraph 13

By June 1940, the British representative in Ireland, Maffey, was urging that " the strategic unity of our island group " should take precedence over Ulster Unionism, and Churchill was making clear that there should be no military action taken against Ireland.

The British Minister for Health, Malcolm MacDonald, who had negotiated the 1938 trade agreement with Ireland whilst Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, was sent to Dublin to explore possibilities with De Valera.

From these Chamberlain produced a six-point proposal that committed the UK government to a united Ireland and proposed the setting-up of a joint body to effect this.

A Joint Defence Council would be set up immediately and the State provided with military equipment.

In return the State would join the Allies and intern all German and Italian aliens.

Rejected by the Irish government, the proposal was then amended to strengthen the steps towards a united Ireland, and no longer requiring Ireland to join the war, but only to invite British forces to use Irish bases and ports.

De Valera rejected the revised proposal on 4 July and made no counter proposal.

One reason for this would have been the difficult calculation of how damaging the inevitable split in Ireland would be if such a proposal was accepted.

One of the main reasons was that the Irish Government thought that the UK would lose the war and did not want to be on the losing side: during the negotiations Walshe had produced two memoranda for De Valera ( one entitled Britain's Inevitable Defeat ) predicting the isolation of Britain, the dismemberment of its empire, and finally its inevitable crushing by Germany.

Walshe also wrote approvingly of the character of the Pétain government.

Walshe's memoranda affected de Valera, with him telling MacDonald that Britain could not destroy this colossal machine.