De Valera's Irelands (17 page)

When John Maynard Keynes lectured on ‘National Self-Sufficiency' at UCD in 1933, he was in full retreat from the Victorian ideology of
lais­sez-faire
, and shocked some of his audience by expressing sympathy for Fianna Fáil economic policies. Although privately regarding the new gov­ernment's drive to grow more wheat as ‘insane', Keynes was attract­ed to its other developmental plans. He met de Valera ‘who impressed me distinctly favourably', and helped pave the way for a visit by Josiah Stamp, a retired senior British civil servant who was an expert of debt negotiations. Stamp in turn found de Valera ‘very charming'.
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It is ironic that it was the abdication crisis of 1936 that formed a land­mark in the improvement of British assessments of de Valera. By Novem­ber 1936, Baldwin's government was privately facing the fact that Ed­ward VIII would have to go. Among the many sensitive elements in the situation was the complication that the Statute of Westminster of 1931 had given the dominions a right of veto over any change in the succes­sion to the throne. Thus de Valera, who fifteen years earlier had refused to accept the crown, now found his consent required to get rid of the king. Naturally, a desire to oblige the British formed little or no part in de Valera's handling of an issue that he found an ‘acute embarrassment'.
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However, the abdication provided a direct opportunity to distance Ire­land from the crown by passing the External Relations Act, and eased the way for the adoption of the 1937 constitution. Given the gains on offer, there could be little incentive for de Valera to muddy him­self in the technical handling of issues as alien as monarchy and divorce. Securing Irish acquiescence was the responsibility of Sir Harry Batterbee of the Dominions Office. Not surprisingly, it required a personal visit to con­firm that de Valera would agree to ratify Edward VIII's departure, if only to prevent Wallis Simpson from becoming queen of Ireland. In his des­peration, the British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, had refined the ideal­istic headmaster into yet another de Valera: ‘he is such a gentleman he won't kick an enemy when he is down.'
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Baldwin was full of gratitude when Batterbee returned with the news that Dublin would co-operate. According to Whitehall folklore, Batterbee suggested that the prime minister should direct his thanks to divine providence. ‘De Valera has always counted on winning any argument by towering over his adver­sary. As you know he is 6 feet 1. But the good God made me 6 feet 4!'
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As an analysis of British-Irish relations, the story was otiose, but it does suggest the beginnings of a view of de Valera as a personality in his own right.

Part of de Valera's projection of Ireland as an independent state was his use of the League of Nations, a stage handily provided for him by the Cosgrave government decision to seek election to the League Council in 1930. Paradoxically, Geneva also provided de Valera with an environment where he could temporarily be free from the overwhelming bagg­age of Irish nationalism. Gunther reported that although a teetotaller at home, ‘an odd point, he drinks wine or beer when he is on the continent. He likes nothing better than to sit in a café … sipping a glass of beer and watching people.'
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It was partly through the League of Nations that de Valera established an extraordinary but unfortunately short-lived meas­ure of understanding with Baldwin's successor, Neville Chamberlain.

This rapprochement certainly helped to bring about the wide-rang­ing settlement of differences between the two countries in 1938. British civil servants regarded de Valera as ‘stubborn, almost fanatical',
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but the Dominions Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, was anxious to establish a personal relationship. Unofficial talks were held on several occasions in 1936 at a London hotel while de Valera was on his way to visit an eye specialist in Switzerland. MacDonald was ‘taken by surprise' at their first meeting: he had expected the ‘tall, austere figure' of press photo­graphs, but instead of the ‘prim, stern countenance' that he had expect­ed, there was a ‘friendly smile which lit his face as he greeted me'. In­deed, de Va­lera occasionally ‘revealed a pleasant sense of humour which was incon­sistent with the grim image of him portrayed in the British press.' The Irish leader was ‘courteous and considerate', ‘a quietly charming man' who ‘never stood on ceremony … no doubt because of his absolute con­fidence in himself and the rightness of his cause'.
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More formal discus­sions followed from the autumn of 1937. At one point, MacDonald ap­pealed to de Valera ‘as a realist' to recognise that Britain as well as Ire­land faced political difficulties in reaching a settlement. To J. J. Lee, those three words ‘spoke volumes': ‘adult' politicians in Britain were begin­ning to recognise de Valera as ‘a practical politician of uncom­mon capa­city'.
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This may make more of the phrase than is fully warrant­ed: the British in 1921 had consistently demanded that de Valera prove his real­ism by endorsing their view of their own internal difficulties. In 1937–8, the British government was prepared to make extensive concess­ions, but de Valera was prepared to concede little in return, beyond explicit accep­tance of membership of the commonwealth now that he had effectively emasculated the crown. MacDonald himself complained that de Valera was ‘unyielding' and expected ‘us British to do almost all the giving; and to hope only for the gift of Irish goodwill.' The Irish lead­er was ‘a trans­parently honest and sincere man' who ‘repeatedly and fervently' urged an end to partition. When arguing his case, his face became ‘unchange­ably solemn', while his ‘quietly reasonable voice' was ‘sometimes vibrant with intense emotion'.
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The prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, backed MacDonald in taking a chance on the goodwill of de Valera. ‘I am satisfied,' Chamber­lain wrote in January 1938 ‘that, queer creature as he is in many ways, he is sincere, and that he is no enemy of this country.'
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When the agreement was finally signed at 10 Downing Street three months later, it was in a far more relaxed atmosphere than that of December 1921. Chamberlain an­nounced that he wished to return an item of lost property; twenty-two years earlier, de Valera's field glasses had been impounded following his surrender at Boland's Mills. ‘The recipient examined them carefully when they were handed across the table and agreed that they were his.' It was a gesture that could succeed only within an atmosphere of good­will: de Valera had told Smuts in 1921 that he was reluctant to go to London and be placed in the position of an errant schoolboy.
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Yet if the act of resti­tution suggested a new chapter in British-Irish relations, it also carried with it final overtones of the belief that de Valera, like Smuts, might tread the path of Smuts from defeated foe to loyal ally. In this, the British were to be disappointed.

The warm relationship between Eamon de Valera and Neville Cham­berlain was unlikely but genuine. The British prime minister was the son of Joseph Chamberlain, the radical whose defection to unionism had helped kill Home Rule in Parnell's day, and the half-brother of Austen, one of the signatories of the Treaty of 1921. Lee suggests that the two were drawn together by the features that they shared, including ‘their head­masterish temperaments … and their intimations of personal infalli­bility'.
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One can only comment that such personalities rarely man­age to co-exist, as de Valera had shown in his dealings with Smuts. Rather, they were drawn together by another quality identified by Lee, their commit­ment to peace in Europe. When news broke during the Munich crisis of September 1938 that Neville Chamberlain was to fly to see Hitler in per­son, de Valera was attending an official dinner in Geneva, in the remark­ably un­likely company of the socialite, Diana Duff Cooper. She recalled that it was de Valera who broke the solemn silence with the words: ‘This is the greatest thing that has ever been done'.
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Sadly, the Munich settle­ment unravelled within a matter of months, but the beleag­uered Cham­berlain continued to draw encouragement from the support of his Irish counter­part. They held a two-hour meeting at Downing Street in March 1939, and Chamberlain reported in a family letter: ‘He is strongly of opinion that I have been right all through & am right now.'
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When Cham­berlain fell from power in May 1940, one of the most glow­ing tributes that he received came from Eamon de Valera.
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So ended the brief period when
Dublin Opinion
believed that ‘Nev and Dev under­stood one an­other'.
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John Gunther provides a sketch of de Valera as head of government in the 1930s. In the summer of 1937, the American journalist was permit­ted ‘a brief chat' on the understanding that nothing would be quoted on Irish affairs. Gunther outlined a conventional profile – Ameri­can birth, Bo­land's Mills, de Valera's family, his enthusiasm for mathe­matics, his indifference to money: ‘rigid self-control; fanatic faith in his duty to Ire­land; extreme seriousness of mind; complete unworldliness; a certain di­dac­ticism; stubbornness, humanity.' His ‘single-track mind' made him work hard: ‘one may see lights in the President's quarters till after midnight. He has bread and butter for supper. He has never, except for reasons of illness, taken a holiday.' At weekends, followed by an official car and a private detective, he walked energetically for exercise in the hills near Dublin, to preserve ‘the spare but rugged frame that fanatics need'. To lighten the picture, Gunther added that ‘when he laughs, he laughs very heartily.' While de Valera was ‘extremely religious … his Catholi­cism is neither ostentatious nor bigoted; several of his friends are Protes­tant'. One member of his staff commented that de Valera's ‘whole life is a prayer'.
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Despite himself, Gunther was impressed. He had come to Dublin intending to fit de Valera into a pattern of fanatical leaders who were keep­ing the margins of Europe aflame with petty nationalisms: ‘In Jugoslavia, in Bulgaria, in Syria and Egypt and Palestine, I have met young de Va­leras of various breeds.' Given his preconceptions, he found it diff­icult to accommodate the fact that he had encountered ‘an alert, interest­ed and extremely courteous' man, eager to quiz his visitor on his impres­sions of continental politics and quick to pounce good-humouredly on an un­guarded allusion to ‘the British Isles'. ‘De Valera looks less severe than his pictures. The long nose and the deep lines to the mouth are his most characteristic features.' When, however, his host turned to Irish issues, Gunther's doubts returned. ‘He was patient, explicit, and formid­ably, sombrely reasonable. But in that gaunt face I saw the eyes of a fanatic.'
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Gunther was especially struck by the distance that de Valera main­tained between himself and his people. Everyone in Ireland referred to this ‘tall, gaunt man' as ‘Dev', but few dared to address him so to his face. At public events, ‘he does not smile or nod to the crowd. He walks straight ahead, very reserved, and seems to pretend that the crowd is not there.' Perhaps only an American observer would have commented that de Valera was ‘very attractive to women … They follow him about at functions; he is smiling and reserved, and, without ever being rude or pompous, manages to create a sense of distance between himself and them.'
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Another visitor, the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, noted a less attractive aspect of the isolation of ‘the Chief'. ‘The very clerks in the offices stood promptly and rigidly to attention as he strode past. His ministers … spoke with freedom – but with no disloyalty – in his ab­sence, but were restrained and obedient in his presence.'
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Malcolm Mac­Donald once asked what happened if the Executive Council dis­agreed with the Taoiseach. A laughing Seán Lemass replied that a decis­ion would be taken ‘by a minority of one'.
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By contrast, de Valera seemed indifferent to the trappings of power. ‘His office is a simple small room, with “President” printed in black on the frosted window,' Gunther noted, likening it to ‘the kind of room which a modest executive official of a very modest business might use. No par­ti­cular decoration; no covey of secretaries; no swank.'
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Harold Nicolson thought the Taoiseach's office ‘ill-designed, with cold, high windows' and ‘a clock that strikes the quarter-hours with a loud noise'. However, even the Irish government had adopted modern technology. ‘On his desk he has a telephone box which buzzes occasionally and to which he talks in Gaelic.'
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One of the few decorations was a facsimile copy of the Ameri­­can Declaration of Independence, which de Valera described to the Brit­ish socialist Aneurin Bevan as ‘my political bible'.
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In the dark years of the war, the British found Irish neutrality incom­prehensible, and negative perceptions of de Valera easily reasserted them­selves. Churchill, whose ideas on dominion status had evidently not fully caught up with the evolution of the commonwealth, was convinced that legally Ireland was ‘at war but skulking'.
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De Valera just­ified neutrality to Menzies, by explaining that his country was ‘virt­ually defenceless', an objection that the Australian leader thought might be overcome by the supply of anti-aircraft guns. ‘He would step across to the window, and gaze out, and say, ‘My beautiful Dublin could be destroyed.'
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The Anglo­phile American statesman, Wendell Willkie, ‘did not conceal his contempt' when de Valera told him that he feared that if he allowed the British base facilities in Ireland, Dublin would be bomb­ed.
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Cardinal Hinsley, leader of the English Catholics, dismissed the argument as hypocrisy, pointing to the fact that de Valera had ignored German threats of retaliation when he had sent the Dublin fire brigades into the Belfast blitz. De Valera dis­mis­sed that argument. ‘When an Irish city's on fire,' he told Grattan O'Leary, ‘no matter in what part of Ireland, it's our duty to help put it out.' If the German ambassador chose to complain, ‘I'll kick him out of my office.'
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