to the Northern conflict: "Opinion polls now confirm what one knew from experience in the Sixties, that most Catholics did not want to join the Republic. That fact is, however, of no electoral consequence". Clifford also criticised the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of violence as futile: "The IRA wants to revolutionise the Irish State to make it fit for Irish unity. But nothing is less likely than a revolution in the Republic, and all concerned know it". Clifford also defended the British Monarchy, arguing it played a socially beneficial role in British society. Clifford opposed the Gulf War (1990–1991); he was dismayed at Irish academic Fred Halliday's support for the conflict and wrote a Bevin Society pamphlet, The New Left Imperialist, that was strongly antagonistic toward Halliday. In the 1990s, Clifford and Lane published several books on Irish history, including Notes on Eire: Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940–2, an account of Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen's World War II intelligence reports to Britain. The book marked an abandonment of the opposition to Irish nationalism that had characterised Clifford's earlier work. This book provoked some controversy because Clifford argued the Anglo-Irish Bowen was not in any way an Irish writer. Clifford stated Franco's rule brought political stability to Spanish society: "Spain evolved under Franco. It is doubtful in the extreme whether the Spanish Republic which he overthrew was capable of evolving". Clifford has also argued Britain, not Germany, bears responsibility for starting World War II: "Going over the events of 1939 one can hardly suppress the thought that Britain decided to aggravate Germany over the last national issue remaining from the Versailles arrangement and make it an occasion for war, lest no further opportunity for war should present itself, and the Munich Agreement [(1938)] should prove to be a settlement". Discussing the book The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 in an essay in Notes on Eire, Clifford argues that Hitler's speeches are "coherent arguments" and claims he can see how Hitler was able to persuade the Germans to follow him. Clifford also argues that pre-World War II British governments had no interest in stopping the Nazi persecution of the Jews and that the importance of the Holocaust in World War II has been exaggerated by modern historians: "the extermination of the Jews was an obscure incident in the hinterland of the German-Soviet War.... The Jews were