De Valera's Irelands (37 page)

With O'Connell and Parnell, de Valera was one of three Irish political lead­ers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who had not alone the capa­city and the ability to play a major political role over an extended period of time, but also the opportunity to do so. There are others who, if they had lived and had had the opportunity to exercise their remark­able talents in the political sphere under conditions of peace, might have rivalled or even outshone some or all of these three – most notably Mich­ael Collins in this century. But those whom the gods love die young, and the nature of Ire­land's almost always tragic, but at times heroic, history has been such that many men of exceptional talent have died or, more frequently, been killed before they reached the age of 35, no more than a third of the way through their potential working life.

All three of the men I have mentioned – O'Connell, Parnell and de Va­lera – excited controversy and division amongst Irish nationalists at some point in their lives. O'Connell especially, perhaps, towards the end of life, when he and the new generation of Young Irelanders found them­selves at odds, and Parnell also at the end of his career and life. De Va­lera, by contrast, became a controversial figure amongst Irish nation­alists before he was 40 and, inevitably, living longer than any other major poli­tical figure, well into his 90s, continued to divide Irish politics there­after. This has made especially difficult an objective assessment of his achieve­ments and defects within his own lifetime, or even within the generation following his death in 1975.

The political system of the Irish state remains today largely based upon a party system, the origins of which are to be found substantially in a polarisation around de Valera. The issues that led to this polarisation ceased to have any current relevance in domestic politics many decades ago, and the two major political parties moved on to seek, and find, new roles as they addressed the complex and difficult problems of Ireland in the last third of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the mem­ory of the circumstances that brought these two parties into existence lingers on and while virtually none of their members have any direct recollections of these events, even the youngest voters continue to assoc­iate these two parties vaguely with their historical origins. Because of this, many Irish people still have difficulty in seeing the two parties in question as they actually are today, with their current policies and diff­erent styles of leader­ship and organisation. To many Irish people, and especially to those who support other parties or none, they remain the two ‘civil war parties'.

In a very real sense, therefore, de Valera's influence still pervades the Irish political system as it is perceived by those outside it, even though to the vast majority of those within the system, the active practical poli­ticians, the divisions that led to their parties coming into existence are almost totally irrelevant and long forgotten.

Thus in twenty-seven years in active politics, I cannot recall a single disagreement or argument with an active politician of the Fianna Fáil party founded by de Valera that related to that distant past – the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 or Civil War of 1922–23, or indeed to the other events of the 1920s and early 1930s that provided the original basis for the main divide in the party system that we know today. Consequently I – and I believe most other active Irish politicians of these two parties – are often frustrated, and indeed irritated, to hear people outside politics referring to ‘the perpetuation of civil war politics' in our party system. Yet in so far as this is the external perception of so many outside politics it is, like all myths that are still believed, a reality we have to face.

I have made this point at the outset for several reasons. First, in so far as our existing political party system owes its origins to divisions eighty years ago in which de Valera played a crucial role, this represents a signi­ficant part of his influence on contemporary Ireland.

Second, because however anachronistic – in the eyes of active poli­ticians at least – may be the common public perception that what divides the parties and their political representatives in parliament today is still ‘civil war politics', this belief is a reality of modern Ireland that is equally a product of the controversial events eighty years ago.

And, third, because having made these two points I do not feel that it is necessary, or indeed, relevant to contemporary Ireland to discuss the controversial role of de Valera in those historical events, except where in very specific, but relatively limited, ways that role may impinge indirect­ly upon the contemporary scene.

What is, I think, more relevant is to consider how the actions and policies of de Valera in the period after the Civil War that ended in May 1923 have left their mark upon the institutions, and possibly in some res­pects upon the character, of contemporary Ireland. In attempting even a provisional assessment of this influence one must have regard, first, to the problems that faced the new Irish state in the aftermath of the Civil War, and, second, to the condition of Ireland today eighty years later. What has been achieved, what has been left undone, and what has been made worse over this period? And in relation to each of these ques­tions, what was de Valera's role?

Legitimacy

The most fundamental problem facing the Irish state after the Civil War of 1922–23, in which those who wished to continue the struggle with Britain for an independent republic rejected dominion status within the British Commonwealth, was the stability of the state itself.

A substantial proportion of its people – at least one-third, on the evi­dence of the general election of summer 1923 called in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War – withheld their consent from the new state in its early years and by so doing challenged its legitimacy. The resolution of this fundamental problem of the legitimacy of the state required a de­velopment of its initial status. For, like the other dominions of the com­monwealth at that time, that state when established was an autonomous, self-governing, political unit – but one with a question mark over its com­plete sovereignty vis-à-vis Britain.

Another different but related problem was that created by the parti­tion of the island, that had been brought about by the decision of the provincial parliament in Northern Ireland to opt out of the new state on the day after its foundation as an internationally recognised political unit through the enactment of its constitution, vis., 6 December 1922. This right for Northern Ireland to opt out had been agreed as part of the Treaty terms and, contrary to popular mythology, had not been the subject of much dis­cussion in the debate on the Treaty in Dáil Éireann which had preceded the outbreak of the Civil War. That debate had, of course, centred instead on the issue of the symbols of monarchy that the Treaty had imposed upon the independent Irish state. Would this division of the island, a divi­sion that had no historical prec­edent, endure – or could it be re­versed, and the parts brought together again?

Next, there was a fundamental question as to what would be the political ethos of this new state. Would it be pluralist, giving full recog­nition to the cultural and religious tradition of many centuries of settlers, as well as the native cultural and religious tradition, or would it attempt to become mono-cultural, elevating to a position of primacy the native Gaelic and Catholic tradition of the great majority of its people – those who had sought and secured its independence – with all the problems that this might create for an eventual coming-together of the predom­i­nantly Protestant north with the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic state comprising the remainder of the island?

There was also the problem of the economics of a country that had suffered colonial exploitation in the eighteenth century and earlier, as well as considerable neglect at the hands of laissez-faire Britain during much of the nineteenth century. This unhappy economic history, to­geth­er with the state's peripheral geographical location, had deprived Ire­land of the possibility of industrial development. And this had left it a predominantly agricultural country with a high fertility and birth-rate.

In the absence of opportunities for employment in its weak agricul­tural sector, the state continued to suffer a massive erosion by way of emigration of a high proportion of those born within its territory during the first quarter-of-a-century of political independence. Of that genera­tion one-third had emigrated by the age of 35, and one-sixth had died, principally due to infantile mortality or TB, thus reducing the size of each age cohort by one-half.

Finally, there was the question of the social organisation of the new state: would it develop into a property-owning democracy or into a soci­alist state; and, if the former, would it be a socially-conscious democracy, caring for the under-privileged in Irish society?

These were the five main challenges that faced the new state, al­though, of course, there were many others, including the immediate task of physi­cal reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of a civil war that had in­volved much more damage to its infra-structure than the struggle against Britain that immediately preceded independence.

Consensus and Legitimacy

In the midst of the Civil War, in which the very foundations of the new state were challenged in arms, albeit unsuccessfully, the legitimacy of the new state was juridically established and internationally recognised. In 1923 it also became a member of the League of Nations. Moreover, by mid-1923 domestically the authority of the state was established with the defeat of those who opposed the Treaty.

But there remained the problem of securing free acceptance of this legitimacy and authority on the part of those who had rejected it at the outset. This posed a problem both for victor and vanquished in the Civil War.

The victors were, of course, the government led by W. T. Cosgrave, the supporters of which had during the latter stages of the Civil War formed themselves into a political party, Cumann na nGaedheal. Later, in the aftermath of their loss of power in 1932, and following a merger with several other groups, this party developed into the present Fine Gael party.

Cumann na nGaedheal's contribution to securing acceptance of the authority of the new state lay partly in a sustained external diplomatic campaign to transform the dominions of what was then commonly known as the British empire into sovereign independent states within a commonwealth in which Britain would no longer claim or exercise any authority over the countries enjoying dominion status. In this diplo­matic battle Canada played a willing part, although the primary impetus in the crucial period from 1926 to 1931 has been attributed, with, I be­lieve, some justice, to the Irish government. Indeed the extent of the Irish contribu­tion has been well reflected in the title, as well as in the contents, of the authoritative work on the subject by David Harkness:
The Restless Domi­nion
.

By 1931, British resistance had been overcome and, through the Sta­tute of Westminster, Ireland and Canada, as well as the other dominions, including a rather reluctant Australia and New Zealand, had secured their unfettered sovereignty.

But this achievement did not itself satisfy the aspirations of the many Irish people who remained hostile to the monarchical form of dominion status, under which the crown remained the nominal fount of authority in each of the several dominions. Given the importance of symbols, which in Ireland as in many other countries sometimes count for more than re­ality, this was an important qualification. In these early years of the new state there were in fact few indications that political independence and sovereignty achieved within a theoretical monarch­ical structure would in­duce those who had been defeated in the Civil War to go beyond a mere cessation of hostilities and enable them to accept and join in the political institutions that had been established.

Moreover, even if such a degree of popular acceptance of this status could have been achieved, there was the further potential problem of se­curing that, if and when the political representatives of the anti-Treaty tra­dition, having entered parliament, came to secure a popular mandate to govern, the resultant hand-over of power could be accomplished smooth­ly and without any attempt to inhibit it on the part of the army. For that army had established the authority of the state during the Civil War and might perhaps be expected not to relish serving within a few years un­der a government drawn from among those whom they had defeated in that struggle.

On the other hand, those who had been defeated in the Civil War faced the reverse side of this coin.

The de Valera of the post-Civil War era found himself the leader of a dispirited group, many of whom at that point did not hold him in high regard – a group which, after its military defeat, was overwhelmingly rejected by the Irish people politically in the post-Civil War general elec­tion of August 1923. In that election republicans – admittedly at the low­est ebb of their fortunes – received only about one-third of the votes cast.

And, in any event, those whom de Valera led had rejected the con­stitutional foundations of the new state, and were little disposed, as they emerged from internment in 1924, to sit down to work the system which they had fought to reject.

To many people in that situation the way ahead must have seemed hopeless – and many did indeed give up hope and emigrate to the Unit­ed States. For what chance was there that, if a political U-turn were to be attempted involving the recognition and acceptance of that which they had just sought to reject in arms, the Irish people would accord respect or support to those who had undertaken this humiliating policy rever­sal? For such a U-turn was bound to leave those engaged in it open to a challenge: if you can accept the constitution now, why did you seek to re­­ject it in arms several years ago and destroy much of the country in the process?