So far as they considered this proposal at all (and it wasn't very far at all) it was only in desperation. And it's only fair to mention that the 30-year disclosures have also revealed that the Tory foreign secretary of the day (and former PM) Alec Douglas-Home was in favour then (1972) of a united Ireland.

But I'm puzzled by Mudcat's pre-occupation with Ireland. I know many emigrated to America from Ireland, but millions did too from mainland Europe where religious intolerance has wrought far greater mayhem. Right now I'm doing a piece for a London paper about the slaughter of Orthodox Christians in Croatia in 1941-44 - more than 700,000 killed, often buried alive, thousands at a time, or sometimes sliced up by robed catholic priests and Franciscan religious after having their eyes gouged and tongues pulled out.

The Nazi puppet regime, the Ustashe, had the blessing of the catholic archbishop of Zagreb, who was a member of the country's governing council, and is now on course - incredibly - for sainthood. As evidence of miracles, or other magic, in his name might be hard to find, he will be canonised on the strength of his martyrdom. (That is to say, he died about nine years after being released from prison, having served only a small part of the sentence he got for his war crimes. Some martyr.)

So bravo, Pope Pius XII, and bravo John Paul II. And bravo USA administrations that paved the way for Tuddjeman's more recent regime in Croatia, in which he restored all the symbols and insignia of the clero-fascist Ustashe. Such ready accommodation of brutality beyond belief helped pave the way for the horrific, genocidal retaliation by the Serbs a few years ago. What the Serbs did was beyond excuse certainly, but in Croatia they had been on the receiving end of the most depraved mass cruelty since the dark ages, and done in the name of God.

Yet the doctrinal differences between the eastern and western (catholic) churches were trivial against those between catholicism and the reformed churches in Ireland. It came down to whether it should be leavened or unleavened bread that was turned into the flesh of Jesus (while mysteriously retaining the smell, taste and texture of bread!). In Ireland partition was wrong, but it allowed northern protestants to divorce and use contraceptives. And it allowed southern catholics to use their public parks and swimming pools on Sundays.

On the whole, Ireland (and the UK) has escaped lightly from imbecile religious differences that have ravaged Europe. But anyone researching the subject a few centuries hence would never know it from the Mudcat archive.