The case of Biafra: Ireland and the Nigerian civil war

Abstract

In the 1940s and 1950s, irrespective of the government in power, Irish foreign policy faced strong domestic pressure to remain within parameters defined by religious sentiment, anti-communism and anti-colonialism. Yet two contrasting attitudes, corresponding to party allegiances, were nonetheless discernible: that of Fine Gael, which held constantly to a pro-Western line, and that of Fianna Fáil, which was capable of occasionally departing from it. By the 1960s the two approaches had converged, as Fianna Fáil under Seán Lemass repositioned itself more clearly in the American-led camp, a change most strikingly exemplified by Ireland’s response to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yet before the end of the decade an issue was to arise in which Dublin’s Department of External Affairs was to find itself steering a course independent of forces both within the country and outside it.The war which erupted in Nigeria in the summer of 1967, when its Eastern Region seceded, was to reverberate across the world, causing a response in Ireland unequalled by the reaction to any foreign civil conflict between that of Spain in the 1930s and that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It was to bring about the greatest emotional involvement with an African problem since Ireland’s participation in the Congo conflict, leading directly to the foundation of the Africa Concern and Gorta organisations and marking a turning-point in the nature of Irish overseas aid.