Abstract
This article analyses the responses of unionists and nationalists to the arrival of American forces in Northern Ireland in January 1942, and how traditional narratives, particularly those dealing with links to the United States, were reordered in the light of this development. For unionists, it was an opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to the war effort and reinforce a sense of Britishness, particularly after efforts in 1940 to end partition in return for Éire’s entry into the war. In addition, it offered the possibility to forge a bilateral relationship with the United States, by being a good ally and resurrecting links between Ulster and America. Nationalists saw the arrival as America legitimising partition and were outraged that Éire’s government was not consulted (despite having no jurisdiction). Ordinary Protestants and Catholics were much more phlegmatic about the political implications of the Americans’ arrival, and after the initial burst of publicity, subsequent deployments garnered much less publicity.
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Four American destroyers arrived without fanfare in Londonderry on 21 January 1942. T. Ryle Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality during World War II (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009), 200.
Brian Barton, The Blitz: Belfast in the War Years (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1989), 273
Norman Longmate, The GI’s: The Americans in Britain, 1942-1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 1. Much has been written on Éire’s neutrality during the war and on the American presence in the UK, but Northern Ireland’s role is understated in the historiography. This has begun to change in recent years with the publication of work by Olleren-shaw, Wood and Woodward.
Philip Ollerenshaw’s, Northern Ireland in the Second World War: Politics, Economic Mobilisation and Society, 1939-45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) is an excellent and welcome addition; however, it spends very little time looking at the American presence.
Ian S. Wood’s Britain, Ireland and the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2010) concentrates on British-Irish-Northern Irish relations during the war, thus sidelining the role of the Americans, as does and Guy Woodward’s Culture, Northern Ireland, and the Second World War (OUP, 2015). Barton’s The Blitz: Belfast in the War Years is the best account of the period. Leanne McCormick and Francis M. Carroll have written good article-length studies of the Americans in Northern Ireland, while my previous work dealt with the transposition of American racism to the province.
Francis M. Carroll, ‘United States Armed Forces in Northern Ireland During World War II’, New Hibernia Review 12, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 15–36
Leanne McCormick, ‘“One Yank and They’re Off”: Interaction between US Troops and Northern Irish Women, 1942-1945’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 2 (May 2006): 228–57.
Simon Topping, ‘“The Dusky Doughboys”: Interaction between African American Soldiers and the Population of Northern Ireland during the Second World War’, Journal of American Studies 47, Special Issue 04 (November 2013): 1131–54. Topping, ‘Laying down the law to the Irish and the Coons: Stormont’s response to American racial segregation during the Second World War’, Historical Research 86, no. 234 (November 2013): 741-59.
Northern Whig (NW), 27 January 1942. Barton, Blitz, 275.
NW, 27 January 1942.
The terms ‘nationalism’ and ‘unionism’ (along with Catholic and Protestant) are used very broadly in this piece, to indicate support for an all-Ireland state, or remaining in the United Kingdom, respectively. It is not to suggest that any of these terms are entirely homogenous.
Unionists using the war to enhance their British identity, previously (and subsequently) hampered by sectarianism and being seen as different by the rest of the UK, will be dealt with only briefly here. For a longer discussion, see James Loughlin, Ulster Unionism and British National Identity Since 1885 (New York and London: Pinter, 1995).
Craigavon to Chamberlain, 27 June 1940, PRO PREM 3/131/2. Cited in John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 231.
For the return of the ports, see Robert Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983), 40–7; Fisk offers the most comprehensive account of the June 1940 offer to end partition. Fisk, 186–219. See also, Bowman, 225-39
Thomas Bartlett, Ireland: A History (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 453
Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789-2006 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 469–71.
Fisk, 323-6; Dwyer, Green Curtain, 192-3. This ‘was apparently one of a large number of euphoric telegrams Churchill had fired off to all corners of the globe in the wake of America’s entry into the war’. John P. Duggan, Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1975), 173. De Valera visited the United States on a number of occasions before and after Irish independence, most notably for eighteen months between June 1919 and December 1920.
See Dave Hannigan, de Valera in America: The Rebel President and the Making of Irish Independence (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010).
NW, 27 and 29 January 1942. Many Americans would cross the border freely. See, for example, Carroll, New Hibernia Review, 31. This was both for ancestral reasons and because pubs (and much else) did not open in Northern Ireland on Sundays.
Lt. Cmdr. Robert E. Vining, rpt 26 April 1942. David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945 (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 24.
Belfast Telegraph (BT), 4 March 1942. The Pocket Guide to Northern Ireland was published in 1942, for subsequent American arrivals (it refers to de Valera’s protest). A Pocket Guide to Northern Ireland, prepared by Special Service Division, United States, War And Navy Departments, Washington, DC, 1942. A similar pamphlet prepared for British troops, viewed Northern Ireland’s population as largely homogenous and loyal. PRONI CAB 3/A/52 ‘Q’ (Movements). Cited in Fisk, 447. In 1943, A Short Guide to Great Britain was published, warning Irish-American soldiers that it was ‘No Time to Fight Old Wars’. A Short Guide To Great Britain, Special Service Division, United States, War And Navy Departments, Washington, DC, 1943. Similar guides were issued in other parts of the world where Americans were sent. See also, A few tips’ by Major Boyd E Shriver, AGD, Adjutant General, PRONI, CAB9CD/225/1.
Pocket Guide.
According to Lord Beaverbrook. Derry Journal (DJ), 30 January 1942.
Churchill claimed it was Roosevelt’s idea to send the troops to Northern Ireland, but General George C. Marshall suggested that it originated with Churchill. See Prime Minister to War Cabinet and C.O.S. Committee, 23 December 1941, in Churchill, Grand Alliance, 664-5; and Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 268. John Day Tully, ‘Identities and Distortions: Irish Americans, Ireland, and the United States, 1932-1945’ (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2004), 143, n 12.
PRO CAB 65/25, WM 8 (42) 2n mtg., 23 December 1941 [FDR] cf. WO 193/331 cited in Reynolds, 14.
Reynolds, 90. The second wave of arrivals from late 1943 until June 1944 was much larger, with 100,000 Americans in Northern Ireland on the eve of D-Day, and 300,000 in total passing through during the war.
Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1992), 574. New York Times (NYT), 28 January 1942.
NYT, 27 January 1942. In October 1941, Éire’s Foreign Minister Robert Brennan complained to US Secretary of State Cordell Hull about not being informed, claiming that Northern Ireland was ‘part of the national territory’. Brennan to Hull, 15 October 1941. FDR Office File, Part One, Declassified File. Hull told Brennan, at Roosevelt’s behest, to take it up with the British. Cordell Hull, Memoirs, 2: 1534, cited in Dwyer, Green Curtain, 201.
For an account of the 1940 British plan ‘W, the invasion of Éire in the event of a German landing, see Fisk, 235-44.
‘Establishment of US Forces in North Ireland’, Report by the US-British Joint Planning Committee; US ABC-4/7; British WW12, 11 January 1941. FDR, Official File, Part One, ‘Safe’.
In September 1942, American intelligence reported that an invasion Éire would face only ‘token resistance ....to satisfy honor’, but recommended that if it persisted then, ‘military justice must be swift, certain and harsh’, because ‘the SOUTHERN IRISH are the most treacherous people on earth’. Reynolds, 119.
For Éire’s defence plans, see Fisk, 246-64.
Churchill had a long and inconsistent relationship with Ireland, dating back to the Home Rule crisis; he had also been involved in the negotiations that led to the partition of Ireland in 1921, although his dealings were primarily with Michael Collins. When de Valera scuppered a deal he had agreed with Collins over partition, Churchill told the cabinet that ‘the Irish have a genius for conspiracy rather than government’. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1991), 446. Shortly after VE Day, Churchill condemned Éire’s neutrality; however, de Valera’s understated but firm response is judged a triumph by most historians. See, for example, Fisk, 537-41.
NYT, 1 February 1942. Regardless, the Americans were usually referred to as the AEF
Barton, Blitz, 273.
Loughlin, 105.
Ibid., 104. Loughlin argues that ‘anxiety about the nationalist threat made a consciousness of their British identity a permanent feature of the Ulster Unionist outlook, this was not the case in Britain, where a consciousness of national identity was only likely to emerge partially and temporarily’, for example, during the Second World War. Ibid., 116.
As Bowman notes, a substantial Catholic minority ‘precluded the development of a unified state in Northern Ireland’. Bowman, 24.
Reynolds, 193. Members of hospitality committees were overwhelmingly Protestant. MOI rpt US forces 21 April 1943. Cited in Reynolds, 194. For more details, see PRONI CAB9CD/225/19.
On the first anniversary of the landing, for example, a memorial column was unveiled at Dufferin docks (later moved to Belfast City Hall).
See, for example, Londonderry Sentinel (LS), 27 January 1942; NW, 28 May 1942; NW, 8 June 1942; BT, 6 October 1942; NW, 10 October 1942.
Brooke diary, 28 October 1943. PRONI D/3004/D/33. America had a minister (‘Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary’) rather than an ambassador in Dublin until 1950. Gray was married to Eleanor Roosevelt’s aunt and owed his position to this connection, having had no previous diplomatic experience. He arrived hoping to broker an end to partition, but his relationship with de Valera became increasingly fractious as the war progressed. For Gray’s initial efforts regarding partition, see Dwyer, Green Curtain, 52-5.
In February 1944, William Lowry, Minister for Home Affairs, caused storms of protests including from Gray, after joking about having an Orange Hall fumigated after it was used for mass by American forces. Lowry made something of an apology, to the Americans if not Catholics more generally. Fermanagh Times, 10 February 1944. Brooke had infamously declared in the 1930s that he would not employ Catholics and urged other Protestants to do likewise. Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 51.
Bartlett argues that the war raised the prospect of a regional identity as unemployment fell and living standards rose for both Catholics and Protestants. Bartlett, 465.
Prior to mass Catholic Irish migration during and after the famine of the 1840s, Irish immigration had consisted largely of Ulster-Scots Presbyterians (the ‘Scotch-Irish’). Broadly speaking, by the twentieth century, the latter were generally referred to as Scotch, with the ‘Irish’ element dropped, distinguishing them from Catholic Irish immigrants whose Irishness became synonymous with their religion, and ‘Ulster’ dimension of the Scotch was also increasingly ignored. For a very brief account of this process, see Patrick R. Ireland, ‘Irish Protestant migration and politics in the USA, Canada, and Australia: a debated legacy’, Irish Studies Review 20, no. 3 (August 2012): 263–81.
For more details on Ulster’s links with the United States see, J.G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962)
Henry Jones Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915)
and Warren R. Hofstra, ed., Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680-1830 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012).
DJ, 30 January 1942.
BT, 4 July, p2.
‘Northern Ireland premier’s greeting to American troops’, 27 January 1942. PRONI CAB9CD/225/1.
American troops in Northern Ireland: Prime Minister’s Welcome in the name of Parliament and People’, 27 January 1942. Ibid.
The NILP did not formally take a stance on partition.
For a short account of domestic politics during the war, see Brian Barton, ‘Northern Ireland: the impact of war 1939-45’, in Ireland and the Second World War: Politics, Society and Remembrance, ed. Brian Girvin and Geoffrey Roberts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 47–6. For Northern Ireland’s problems in the 1930s, see Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1980), 150; Bew, 460.
Barton, Blitz, 54.
Ibid., 263.
Ibid., 55.
Barton’s continues to be the most comprehensive and most important account of the Belfast Blitz.
The three Belfast unionist newspapers met with British and American military spokesmen in August 1942 to discuss managing news about the Americans, particularly friction with British troops, and agreed to use discretion when discussing incidents. MOI, American File, 21 August 1942. PRONI CAB9CD/225/19.
BT, 27 January 1942.
LS, 27 January 1942.
Ibid.
BT, 27 January 1942.
NW, 29 January 1942.
See, for example, Dungannon Observer, 31 January 1942.
A discussion of these complex issues is far beyond the scope of this article; however, Wilson’s work supports the general points made here, arguing: ‘the British government did not impose partition but sought rather to prevent it’. Indeed, he asserts that the divisions between nationalists and unionists were such that partition became the only realistic solution. Tom Wilson, Ulster: Conflict and Consent (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 56. Wilson also stresses that the 1925 agreement on the border was ‘the recognition of partition by the government of the Irish Free State’. Wilson, 67 (emphasis in original). See also, Bowman, 11.
Bew, 473.
DJ, 28 January 1942.
Ibid. Both nationalists and unionists invoked the memory of Lincoln for their causes, especially during the Home Rule crisis and later war of independence, arguing respectively for an undivided Ireland and the maintenance of the United Kingdom. See, for example, Adam Smith’s comments in Eugenio F. Biagini and David W Blight, ‘Interchange: The Global Lincoln’, The Journal of American History, 96, no. 2, Abraham Lincoln at 200: History and Historiography (Sep., 2009), 493-5.
Longmate, 2.
LS, 13 March 1942 (see also PRONI CAB9/CD225/1).
Ibid. Savory quoted Alison Phillips’ book, The Revolution in Ireland (1926). Savory became best known for his investigation of the Katyn massacre.
Gray to Roosevelt, 27 January 1942. FDR Office File, part 2, Diplomatic Correspondence File (henceforth FDR/OF/DPC).
Dwyer, Strained Relations, 27.
Kearney to Robertson, 20 February 1942, 822-39c, NAC. Cited in ibid.
Dwyer, Green Curtain, 201; Dwyer, Strained Relations, 26; Bowman, 248.
‘Memorandum on the State of Ireland’, 8 September 1942. FDR/OF/DPC.
Dwyer, Green Curtain, 201; Fisk, 529.
Bowman, 248.
According to Brennan’s account of a meeting with Roosevelt in June. Brennan insisted de Valera acted because ‘we all felt deeply about partition’. Brennan to Walshe, 10 June 1942, NAI, DFA/P12/6. Tully, 145, n19.
Bowman, 206.
Bartlett, 454.
Memorandum on the State of Ireland, 8 September 1942. FDR/OF/DPC. Gray believed that de Valera was ‘looking for a grievance of political value rather than a solution’ when it came to partition. Gray to Roosevelt, 6 November 1942. Ibid.
Robert Cole, Propaganda, Censorship and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 107. British servicemen interned in Éire were not necessarily closely guarded, unlike their German counterparts, and often made their way across the border without impediment. See Fisk, 327-32.
Dwyer, Strained Relations, 27.
Cole, 109.
Reynolds, 118.
Welles Memo, 6 February 1942, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, volume I (Washington: US Government Printing office, 1960), 755-6.
Harold Ickes, MS Diary, LC 7 February 1942 [FDR] cited in Reynolds, 118. On 26 February 1942, Roosevelt assured de Valera that America had no intention of invading Éire and that the Americans offered security to the entire British Isles. Dwyer, Strained Relations, 29.
NW, 29 January 1942. See also LS, 29 January 1942 and PRONI CAB9CD/225/1. Andrews was still privately congratulating himself for this eight years later, remarking that ‘when de Valera had the impudence to protest & endeavoured to make trouble, I got the opportunity to set him “back on his traces”. J.M. Andrews to Ethel, 18 July 1950, D/3655/A/7/2, PRONI. Cited in Carroll, FN26.
NW, 29 January 1942.
LS, 31 January 1942.
For gerrymandering in Londonderry, see, for example, Wilson, 69.
House of Commons, United States Troops, Northern Ireland (Éire Protest), Questions by Professor Savory, MP, 11 February 1942. PRONI CAB9CD225/1.
Undated, confidential memorandum. PRONI CAB9CD225/1.
Bew, 470; Barton, 123; Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland (London: Pal-grave-Macmillan, 2000), 85. The conscription controversy had faded by January 1942.
These comments were widely reported. NW, 29 January 1942; DJ, 30 January 1942; LS, 29 January 1942. The New York Times briefly quoted Maxwell. NYT, 29 January 1942.
Dungannon Observer, 31 January 1942; DJ, 30 January 1942.
DJ, 30 January 1942. Capitalisation in original.
Ibid., 6 February 1942.
Duggan notes, for example, that ‘the war extinguished any sympathy for Irish neutrality even among Irish-Americans’, 176.
Cole, 108.
NYT, 27 January 1942.
The Nation, 31 January 1942.
Ibid., 7 February 1942.
Ibid.
LS, 3 February 1942.
NW, 2 February 1942.
DJ, 30 January 1942.
War Cabinet. Defence Committee, minutes, 9 January 1942. PRONI CAB9CD/255/3.
Maxwell to Grandsen, 10 January 1942. Ibid.
War Cabinet. Defence Committee, minutes, 9 January 1942. Ibid. See also, Henderson to Gransden, 26 January 1942. Ibid.
There is nothing in US archives to suggest that the Americans had any plans or intention to involve themselves in Northern Ireland’s internal problems.
Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland in the 20thCentury (London: Arrow, 2004), 333 [fn4]; Farrell, 163. The commander is not named.
Bardon, 582. An IRA campaign in England in 1939–1940 left seven people dead, but saw the group suppressed. Hennessey, 86. NW, 2 September 1942.
BT, 4 March 1942; BT, 5 March 1942; NW, 17 June 1942; NW, 20 July 1942; News Letter (NL), 13 November 1942; NL, 27 November 1942.
BT, 11 February 1942; ibid., 6 December 1943.
DJ, 24 April 1942; BT, 20 April 1942; LS, 21 April 1942.
For more on killings by US servicemen, see: Simon Topping, ‘Racial Tensions and U.S. Military (In)Justice in Northern Ireland during World War II’, Journal of African American History, Volume 102, Issue No.2 (Spring 2017), 157–183. The idea that courts martial appeased local anger is perhaps overstated.
Eleanor Roosevelt visited in November 1942. NL, 11/12/13 November 1942. Glenn Miller, Al Jolson, Bob Hope, Merle Oberon, Frances Langford, and Irving Berlin also came to Northern Ireland. Carroll, 29; NW, 2 September 1942.
PRONI CAB 9CD/22/19 esp. 10 September 1942; Stronge/Adams memo 4 March 1943; MOI rpt US forces 21 April 1943. Cited in Reynolds, 194.
Tom Harrison, Head of Mass Observation, May-June 1942. Cited in ibid., 257.
Buhrman to Gray, 26 February 1942. NA RG84/Confidential File/1942 File no. 800.
Consul General Parker Buhrman to the Embassy, 8 September 1942. ibid.
Brigadier K.N. Crawford (British Troops Northern Ireland) told Gransden that there would be no formal reception for the second arrival in March 1942. K.N. Crawford to Gransden, 28 February 1942. PRONI CAB9CD/225/1.
Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 218.
Barton, Blitz, 267. Hennessey argues that ‘political tensions between the two communities were never far beneath the surface’. Hennessey, 91-2.
The same cannot be said of Éire, whose ports retained symbolic importance, for the Americans rather than the British, long after their practical worth had disappeared.
Cinemas would eventually start opening on Sundays - under British military control - in March 1942. PRONI CAB 3A/47 file no. 11.
Hennessey, 92.
For example, Churchill’s praise of Northern Ireland at the end of the conflict, the commitment of the post-war Labour government to maintaining partition and the establishment of the welfare state in Northern Ireland.
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Simon Topping is Associate Professor of United States History at the University of Plymouth and is working on a number of projects related to the United States and Northern Ireland during the Second World War. Thus far, he has written three articles on the transposition of American racism to Northern Ireland, appearing in Journal of American Studies, Historical Research (both 2013) and the Journal of African American History (2017), and is writing a book on the overall impact of the American presence in Northern Ireland on local politics, contracted with Bloomsbury and due for publication in 2020. He is the author of Lincoln’s Lost Legacy: The Republican Party and the African American Vote, 1928–1952, published with University Press of Florida (2008). He received his PhD from the University of Hull in 2002, MA from Sheffield (1996), BA from Ulster (1993) and studied at the University of Mississippi (1991- 1992).
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Topping, S. ‘A hundred thousand welcomes’? Unionism, nationalism, partition and the arrival of American forces in Northern Ireland in January 1942. J Transatl Stud 16, 81–100 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2018.1423605
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2018.1423605