‘I knew Lynch very well because he had been minister for finance when I had been chancellor. For years before I knew him and thought him to be a very sensible man, and when he said he was going to put hospital beds on the borders, I thought “How absurd! What’s gone wrong with you?” And we sent our ambassador to see him and they had a talk. Shortly afterwards, Jack Lynch reversed and he started to row back very gradually indeed. I think he had a rush of blood to the head.’
In the short term, however, the effects within Northern Ireland of Lynch’s broadcast were profoundly destabilising; many working-class Protestants genuinely feared an invasion by the Irish army.