De Valera's Irelands (13 page)
Read De Valera's Irelands Online
Authors: Dermot Keogh,Keogh Doherty,Dermot Keogh
Tags: #General, #Europe, #Ireland, #Political Science, #History, #Political, #Biography & Autobiography, #Revolutionaries, #Statesmen
Bishop Patrick O'Donnell in Armagh, who also stood far apart from him on politics, spent âthe entire evening' trying to get through to Dublin. He got through after a few hours and sent his âmost earnest representations against the executions.'
86
But the mercy plea did not prevail. Ironically, when the anti-Treatyites took local reprisals after the executions, among the large houses burned down were Bishop O'Donnell's family home just outside Glenties.
87
Donegal, which had been relatively quiet, became involved âin grim earnest in the turmoil of the Civil War.'
88
Military victory was in sight for the government forces. Peace initiatives, from whatever quarter, failed. The Archbishop of Cashel, Harty, did not meet with success and neither did the ill-fated representative of the pope, Salvatore Luzio.
89
He arrived in Ireland on 19 March. The hierarchy treated his mission with great suspicion. He was snubbed by the government and almost arrested when he went to meet Eamon de Valera at a secret rendezvous. The government sent an emissary to the Holy See and he reported on 24 April that Luzio was being recalled. The monsignor left for Rome on 7 May, glad to get away from the cold of the climate and the heat of the politics. He is believed to have remarked in disgust that he had come to meet the bishops and met twenty-six popes.
There had been considerable activity within the ranks of the IRA men in the south to secure a negotiated peace, with Tom Barry prominent among them. Despite the danger, a decision was taken to call a meeting of the army executive of the anti-Treatyites. They met on 24 March in a cottage in the Nire valley, County Waterford. During four days of discussions, de Valera placed peace proposals before the meeting based on three principles:
1) the inalienable right of the Irish people to sovereign independence;
2) recognition that the Irish people were the ultimate court of appeal;
3) no oath or test would debar a person taking a full share in the nation's political life.
90
A divided executive agreed to meet on 10 April. But news of that meeting leaked to the government side and large numbers of troops were deployed in the area. Liam Lynch was fatally wounded on 10 April in an engagement with government forces in the Comeragh mountains, County Waterford. Further arrests were made of senior IRA leaders in the days that followed.
At a meeting of the anti-Treatyite military executive on 20 April, Frank Aiken was elected to succeed Lynch. An Army Council of four was also appointed. It met in Dublin on 26 April together with de Valera and three members of his âcabinet'. A unanimous decision was taken to sue for peace, and to suspend all offensive action effective from 30 April. Both de Valera and Aiken issued statements on 27 April to that effect. De Valera then used the good offices of Senators Andrew Jameson and James Douglas to make contact with the government. They met on 1 May and took de Valera's message to Cosgrave. The latter, however, refused de Valera's request for personal negotiations. Instead, he gave Jameson a document for de Valera which set out the terms for surrender.
91
De Valera, countering, drafted another document which was rejected by Cosgrave on 8 May. The anti-Treatyite cabinet and Army Council met on 13 and 14 May. They took a decision not to surrender but to dump arms. That order was given on 24 May and it was accompanied by a statement from de Valera addressed to the âSoldiers of the Republic, Legion of the Rearguard'. The Civil War was over.
Writing to Mrs Jim Ryan on 26 December 1923, Mgr John Hagan, who had remained on the republican side, reflected on the events of the previous two years and wondered if they justified his âtheory that there was never such a thing as genuine Irish nationality, and that we really are an amalgamation of clans, each well pleased with itself if it secures a job or prevails in some similar way over the other.'
92
A general election was held on 27 August while the country was still in an unsettled state. Sinn Féin got 43 out of 153 seats. The Labour Party retained only 14 seats. The government party, Cumann na nGaedheal, which had been founded in March 1923, took a disappointing 63 seats in a Dáil which had been enlarged from 128. That was a gain of only five seats. Eamon de Valera had been arrested on an election platform in Ennis on 12 August 1923. He polled 17,762 to his Cumann na nGaedheal opponent's 8,196. In jail, he joined about 10,000 anti-Treatyite internees, some of whom went on hunger strike. There was no official willingness, despite protestations from prominent clergymen, to allow an early mass release. De Valera was to be kept in jail until his release on 16 July 1924.
93
Why did the Free State forces wait until August 1923 to arrest de Valera? He had been quite visible during the Civil War, spending most of the time in Dublin shifting from one safe house to the next. It was not beyond the wit of Free State intelligence to track him down and to arrest him if they had wanted to do so.
Unfortunately military archives, which ought to be able to provide the answer to this question, do not have a file on Eamon de Valera. Neither is that missing file â or related files â to be found in the de Valera papers. Could it have been that he was seen â for all his faults â as a restraining influence on the anti-Treatyites and left in circulation for that very reason?
While the Civil War was not de Valera's finest hour, he had the imagination and the constitutional subtlety to propose a compromise which was employed by a more flexible generation of English politicians in India in 1947. De Valera was not the revolutionary die-hard depicted in Free State and British propaganda of the time. He was a politician who, during the early months of 1922, continued to believe in his ability to rekindle the spirit of national unity fostered during the War of Independence. Naively, he did not believe that civil war was likely. But he did fear the âmalevolent' hand of the British and the ability of London politicians to interfere in Irish affairs. The outbreak of the war took him completely by surprise. His early impulse may have been to hold the field for a time until honour had been settled. But the adoption of guerrilla tactics, against his wishes, determined that the conflict would not be over in a few weeks. The war dragged on and de Valera found himself marginalised. He may have hoped that the Catholic hierarchy would intervene and bring about an end to the fighting. His hopes of that were dashed following the October pastoral. The bishops of his church had sided with âthe enemy'. His efforts to bring the anti-Treatyite military under effective political control failed. The shooting of Erskine Childers and the policy of executions further removed any remaining possibility of a cessation of violence. Each side had its own new martyrs. The actions of the respective sides provided the rationale for their opponents to continue the fight. De Valera was sustained in his view by the belief that the British were to blame. It was his role to restore national unity and bring about national regeneration.
94
Nicholas Mansergh has written that de Valera was:
at heart something of a Gandhian looking back in his case to the hard, independent country life of his childhood at Bruree, freed from foreign influences, its indigenous character reinforced by the use of the indigenous tongue, as the source of national virtue and the ideal of national regeneration.
Owen Dudley Edwards is more inclined to see de Valera as a Nehru. I am also reluctantly inclined to agree with Owen Dudley Edwards' judgement:
He was Jeremiah. He was Jonah. Above all, he was Pilate.
95
1
See Dwane, David T.,
Early Life of Eamon de Valera
, Talbot Press, Dublin, 1927, for an example of a very reverential and pious work. One highly interesting study is à Faoláin, Seán,
The Life Story of Eamon de Valera
, Talbot Press, Dublin and Cork, 1933. Subsequently disowned by its author, this book proved to be an embarrassment given the very positive evaluation of its subject contained therein. McCartan, Patrick,
With de Valera in America
, Brentano, New York, 1932 is a useful but uncritical account of the author's time in the United States in the company of de Valera. MacManus, M. J.,
Eamon de Valera
, Talbot Press, Dublin and Cork, 1944 was very severely reviewed by à Faoláin in
The Bell
; see à Faoláin, Seán, âEamon De Valera',
The Bell
, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1945. A central text is Macardle, Dorothy [with a preface by de Valera],
The Irish Republic: a Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Partitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916â1923
, Irish Press edition, Dublin, 1951. This is as close to an official account of the early life of de Valera as came to be written before the publication of the Longford/O'Neill biography. It is a very useful work as it provides access to a wide range of documentary sources. Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, New English, London, 1956 was written with a little assistance from de Valera who tended to be shy in helping his many biographers; it is, however, an interesting account of his life. Browne, Kevin J.,
Eamon de Valera and the Banner County
, Glendale, Dublin, 1982 provides some useful information on de Valera's local career in Clare politics.
2
à Faoláin, Seán,
The Life Story of Eamon de Valera
, pp. 94â5.
3
à Faoláin, Seán,
De Valera
, Penguin, London, 1939, pp. 105â6.
4
MacManus,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 229.
5
ibid, pp. 228â9.
6
The critical works abound and contemporary accounts tend to be increasingly more critical of de Valera. See Gwynn, Denis,
De Valera
, Jarrolds, London, 1933. This is a relatively gentle but critical account of de Valera's life. Ryan, Desmond,
Unique Dictator â a study of Eamon de Valera
, Arthur Barker, London, 1936, is the work of a left-wing journalist and political activist who reveals his disappointment with de Valera in power. à Faoláin, Séan,
De Valera
, provides a radically revised view of de Valera â written after experiencing Fianna Fáil in power since 1932. See also O'Faoláin, âEamon De Valera',
The Bell
, op. cit., for a very severe review of the MacManus biography. The title of Ireland, Denis,
Eamon de Valera Doesn't See it Through: a Study of Irish Politics in the Machine Age
, Forum Press, Cork, 1941 speaks for itself. Younger, Calton,
A State of Disunion: Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, James Craig, Eamon de Valera
, Fontana, London, 1972, provides a useful comparative sketch of de Valera. Regarding McInearney, Michael (ed.),
Eamon de Valera 1882â1975
, Irish Times, Dublin, 1976, like Desmond Ryan, the writer provides a critique of de Valera from the perspective of the republican left. It is a book of some insight. Coogan, Tim Pat,
De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
, Arrow Books, London, 1995. This book is the most critical to date. It is unrelentingly hostile to de Valera. But it is based on considerable research in archives in Ireland and abroad. Dwyer, T. Ryle,
Eamon de Valera
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980; Dwyer, T. Ryle,
De Valera: the Man and the Myths
, Poolbeg, Dublin, 1992; Dwyer, T. Ryle,
Big Fellow, Long Fellow: a Joint Biography of Collins and De Valera
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1999. This author has provided a range of studies based on work in Irish archives and abroad, in particular the United States.
7
Coogan, Tim Pat,
De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
, p. 300.
8
ibid.
9
ibid., p. 305.
10
ibid., p. 315.
11
ibid., p. 311.
12
ibid., p. 314.
13
ibid.
14
ibid., pp. 312, 313 and 316.
15
A number of studies of de Valera, or of an aspect of his life, do not fit in either of the two extreme categories. See in particular, Dudley Edwards, Owen,
Eamon de Valera
, GPC, Cardiff, 1987. This work provides a very strong analysis of de Valera's career and seeks to set in wider historical context the role played by him in the struggle for Irish independence and the development of the Irish state. Also McCartney, Donal,
The National University of Ireland and Eamon de Valera
, University Press of Ireland, Dublin, 1983; this work treats of a very important aspect but usually neglected part of de Valera life. Farragher, Seán P.,
Dev and his Alma Mater âEamon de Valera's Lifelong Association with Blackrock College, 1898â1975
, Paraclete Press, Dublin 1984; his work is of major historical significance. It has opened up many avenues of research yet to be undertaken by other historians. McMahon, Deirdre,
Eamon de Valera and the Irish Americans
, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, 1986; this work ought to be read together with her excellent monograph,
Republicans and Imperialists â Anglo Irish Relations in the 1930s
, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1984. Bowman, John,
De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917â1973
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989; this work is a critical but fair analysis of the partition policies of de Valera; O'Carroll, J. P. & Murphy, John A. (eds),
De Valera and his Times
, Cork University Press, Cork, 1984; this edited volume provides a good review of different aspects of de Valera's life; Brennan, Paul, et al,
Eamon De Valera
, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, Paris, 1986; a satisfactory collection of essays. Travers, Pauric,
Eamon de Valera, Historical Association of Ireland
, Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, 1994, offers a good short summary of de Valera's life. Lee, J. J.,
Ireland 1912â1985: Politics and Society
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989; this volume is among the most detailed accounts of the life and times of de Valera, containing a portrait that is the distilled analysis of years of work in archives.
16
Anon.,
Correspondence of Mr Eamon de Valera and Others
, Alex. Thom, Dublin, 1922.
17
Anon.,
The Hundred Best Sayings of Eamon de Valera
, Dublin and Cork, 1924, National Library of Ireland P2027. See footnote reference to this pamphlet in Murphy, John A., âThe Achievement of Eamon de Valera' in O'Carroll, J. P. & Murphy, John A. (eds),
De Valera and his Times
, p. 16. The editor of this pamphlet may have been Frank Gallagher, a veteran of the period 1916â1923, an author, a future editor of the
Irish Press
and a member of the Irish Government Information Service. Robert Brennan, another veteran of those years and a future Irish ambassador to the United States, may also have been involved in its production.
18
Anon.,
Peace and War: Speeches by Mr de Valera on International Affairs
, Gill & Son, Dublin, 1944.
19
Anon.,
Ireland's Stand: Being a Selection of the Speeches of Eamon De Valera During the War (1939â1945)
, M. H. Gill, Dublin, 1946.
20
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980.
21
Mac Aonghusa, Proinsias,
Eamon de Valera: na Blianta Réabhlóideacha
, Clóchomhar, Baile Ãtha Cliath, 1982; Mac Aonghusa, Proinsias,
Quotations from Eamon de Valera
, Mercier Press, Cork, 1983.
22
Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, Hutchinson, London, 1970, Acknowledgements, xvâxvi.
23
See Bowman, John, âEamon de Valera: Seven Lives' in O'Carroll, J. P. & Murphy, John A. (eds.),
De Valera and his Times
, p. 191.
24
O'Neill, Thomas P. & à Fiannachta, Pádraig,
De Valera
, 2 vols, Cló Morainn, Baile Ãtha Cliath, 1970.
25
Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 185.
26
ibid., pp. 187â8.
27
ibid., p. 211.
29
The opening of the de Valera papers was a most important event for the historical profession with a specialist interest in the twentieth century, in the development of Irish nationalism and in the establishment of the Irish state. The Franciscan community, in whose possession the papers resided for many years, worked heroically to open up the collection to bona fide scholars. Without any warning to the Irish scholarly community, the de Valera papers were transferred to University College Dublin. Most of the collection had been closed indefinitely while the entire archive was being catalogued again. Scholars should congratulate the Franciscans, and Fr Ignatius Fennessy in particular, for the manner in which such an extensive collection was opened for research while under their jurisdiction. UCD are to be congratulated for the manner in which the archives have now been catalogued and opened.
30
Dáil Ãireann (private sessions), 14 December 1921, cols 110â111.
31
De Valera to John Hagan, 13 January 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
32
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera
, pp. 94â117.
33
ibid., p. 98.
34
ibid., pp. 99â101.
35
Coogan, Tim Pat,
De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
, p. 313.
36
â1926
, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1966, pp. 127â8.
37
O'Faoláin, Seán,
The Life Story of Eamon de Valera
, pp. 93â4.
38
Brennan, Robert,
Allegiance
, Browne and Nolan, Dublin, 1950, p. 343.
39
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera
, p. 107.
40
Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, p. 179.
41
De Valera papers, 205/3 (see also note 29).
42
T. P. O'Neill minute, de Valera papers, 205/3.
43
Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, p. 183.
44
De Valera diary, 11 August 1922, de Valera papers, 2122.
45
Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, pp. 182â3.
46
De Valera diary, 12 August 1922, de Valera papers, 2122.
47
Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, p. 183.
48
De Valera diary, 13 August 1922, de Valera papers, 2122.
49
ibid. 14 August 1922, de Valera papers, 2122.
50
T. P. O'Neill minute, de Valera papers, 205/3.
51
MacArdle, Dorothy,
The Irish Republic: a Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Partitioning of Ireland, with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916â1923
, pp. 711â2.
52
ibid. p. 712.
53
O'Kelly to Hagan, 26 August 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
54
ibid.
55
Mulcahy to Hagan, 11 September 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
56
De Valera to Ms Ryan, 21 September 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
57
Earnan à Maille to de Valera, 3 September 1922, de Valera papers, 215.
58
Keogh, Dermot,
The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 96.
59
Moynihan, Maurice,
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera
, p. 108; see also de Valera papers, 1452.
60
Thomas O'Doherty to Hagan, 11 November 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
61
He had been caught in possession of a pistol which had been given to him as a gift by Michael Collins. On the morning Childers stood trial at Portobello Barracks, 17 November, four men who had been caught in Dublin in possession of weapons were executed.
62
The first death sentences under the new legislation had been handed down in Kerry but they had not been carried out.
63
Dáil Ãireann Debates, 28 November 1922, cols 2356â74; 29 November, cols 2387â431, 2445â60.
64
Patrick O'Donnell to Hagan, 25 November 1922, Hagan papers, Irish College, Rome.
65
Keogh, Dermot,
The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics
, p. 97.
66
Keogh, Dermot,
Twentieth Century Ireland
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1994, p. 14.