De Valera's Irelands (4 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
The persuading of the Irish people raises another and less admirable American legacy: the
Irish Press
. De Valera deserves credit as the saviour of Ireland from fascism, if anyone does. In part he may have done so by containing political Catholicism which elsewhere in Europe facilitated a slide or a capitulation to totalitarianism. The varying fates of Spain, PorÂtugal, Austria, France and Belgium are all instructive in this regard. One strength he had in state-building arose from his American experience, where his half-brother, whose friendship he had cultivated by correspondÂence long before they met, could inform him frankly as a priest how the American system of Church and State worked. We have no record of what was said in such talks during de Valera's long visit to America in 1919â20, but it is doubtful if Father Thomas Wheelwright differed from his brethÂren in holy orders.
People did not say so publicly, but the Roman Catholic Church was hopelessly if silently split on the issue as between the USA and the rest of the world. The Roman Catholic Church had suffered some degree of persecution in colonial America, above all in Maryland when it passed from the hands of its Catholic founders. The advent of the American ReÂvolution offered what Catholics united with the new USA found an admirÂÂÂable solution. The separation of Church and State under the First AmendÂÂment to the constitution meant that nobody could persecute anyone else. The former Jesuit and future Bishop of Baltimore who advised the reÂvoÂlutionaries on Catholic questions, John Carroll, saw states under CathoÂlic auspices as a potential danger to the Church: such states had persuadÂed the papacy to suppress the Jesuits. The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States had been on that basis of separaÂtion, and the wealth contributed by American Catholicism to the Church across the world meant that it behoved Rome to walk warily in its criticisms of its most generous daughter. (This still applies today: Cardinal Ratzinger feels himself entitled to rebuke the makers of the European constitution for its secular character, but is very careful to say nothing of the kind resÂpecting the 200-odd year old American variety. The Vatican is in no hurry to take the vow of poverty).
De Valera's constitution of 1937 followed a secular instrument creatÂed by London and Dublin in 1922. Historians have ably charted the presÂsures upon him and on twentieth century Irish politicians in general from advocates of confessional statism in Ireland, Dermot Keogh and FinÃn O'Driscoll are surveying Irish political Catholicism for a volume of European scope and hence comparative data.
43
They show a courteous patriarch, now thanking a self-appointed Catholic ideological lobbyist for the gift of a book which he deemed to be useful but whose author had hoped he would make prescriptive, now establishing a commission to investigate the possibilities of vocational organisation. Those sittings were protracted by its argumentative personnel and the report was ulÂtimately set aside with ministerial contempt. De Valera in fact contained political Catholicism, partly by producing a constitution which opened with salutations to the Blessed Trinity and recognised the special posiÂtion of the Roman Catholic Church as the majority religion (a feat well within the power of any individual of adequate vision), but which conÂceded little beyond existing usages such as the ban on divorce. De Valera listed several faiths also recognised by the state, including the Friends (non-Trinitarian) and the Jewish congregations (non-Christian), regardÂless of the Preamble. As Joseph Lee remarked, the recognition of the Jews is one bright moment in the bleak panorama of Europe in the 1930s.
44
It was in fact a variation on the United States' separation of Church and State, but in a specifically positive fashion, one where de Valera could both protect the vulnerable and distance the clericalists. He would have liked Vatican endorsement which, having failed to make Roman CatholiÂcism the state religion, he did not get: but that price he had no intention of paying. It kept at bay also the most sinister threat, one posed, for inÂstance, by Professor Michael Tierney, seeking an Irish version of MussoÂlini's doctrines integrated with papal encyclicals.
45
De Valera was preparÂed if necessary to alienate bishops who sought to pressurise in favour of confessional or corporate states, and he made much of his friendship with his Jewish devotee, Robert Briscoe, TD, deliberately sacrificing any potential electoral gains from sectarian displays. This was not necesÂsarily an American social legacy â Irish-American relations with Jewish-Americans could be very nasty, as the Kennedys knew and some of their associates showed. But it did adhere to American constitutional faith, which probably deserves the credit for de Valera's courageous and honÂourÂable stance. Daniel O'Connell had certainly been a crusader for JewÂish emancipation after Catholic, but the physical force tradition in Irish nationalism which had produced de Valera showed no such ecumenism.
46
Yet, in one respect de Valera may have prevented Irish fascism by diverting anger in a specific direction. Anglophobia may have been the safety-valve which enabled Ireland to escape other forms of nativism. The
Irish Press
pumped it up day after day. The wrongs of Ireland, real and imaginary, were forever paraded through its columns and those of its stable-mates. Akin to these themes was an unconcealed celebration of physical force over constitutionalism, which duly yielded its crop of IRA activists. Its sensationalism appears small by today's lack of standards, and even in its time it probably compared favourably to the
Daily Mirror
. But its inspiration is obvious: William Randolph Hearst, whose repreÂsentative John Kennedy we met at the beginning. Hearst had been at the height of the anti-Treaty demagoguery during de Valera's eighteen-month stay in 1919â20. He was busily at work, for instance, denouncing Herbert Hoover as a British agent, and he had five million readers to whom to do it. De Valera, driven from his natural sympathy for Wilson's ideas, was forced to accept the alliance of the Hearst lynch-mob against him. It might be the better part of wisdom to make oneself the Irish Hearst, but it provÂed a Frankenstein monster, and it proved a long fuse with effects in creatÂing the thirty years' war in Northern Ireland at the end of the century. All the more did de Valera see the need for such support in his future poliÂtical career when the Civil War was over and his jail term had been servÂed. He had learned what unscrupÂulous former supporters could do to his reputation when John Devoy started operations in his
Gaelic AmeÂrican
. He had seen something of the power of William Martin Murphy in questioning the Catholic credentÂials of his enemies, and MurÂphy's
IndeÂpeÂÂndent
would be his implacable enemy after 1922. Hence the
Irish Press
, and hence also the decision to have it out-Herod Hearst.
De Valera was Irish. His American origins, his American yearning, and â in 1919â20 â his American education made him wear his Irishness with a difference. It increased his sense of the effectiveness of public opinÂion and the marshalling of international sentiment. It showed him how to beware so-called friends of his country (the Devoy-Cohalan public fundÂraising body was the Friends of Irish Freedom) with their own agenda (its funds went to finance their Republican party choices for office). It gave him a civic code in some respects superior to that on offer from the UnitÂed Kingdom whence he hoped Ireland would escape. It supplied him with friends and funds, and sympathetic indignation from Americans as valuable as Collins' military victory. Although the greatest single factor in the Lloyd George government's discomfiture was the Sinn Féin newsÂpaper briefing in London, from the richly English voices of Desmond FitzÂÂGerald and Erskine Childers, probably the most insidious propaganda the UK ever faced in its own capital.
And it demands much further study.
1
Lewis, C. S.,
Prince Caspian
, Harper Collins, New York, 1951. Editions are so numerous that one can only indicate chapters: respectively 4 and 10. This book seems to me the one where Lewis most directly confronted problems of his Irish identity (pre-CathoÂlic, Synge-Yeats style), although the sequel,
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
, Harper Collins, New York, 1952, draws more on Celtic legend. The aged ape in
The Last Battle
, Harper Collins, New York, 1956, is evidently a relic of his Belfast Protestant youth, being an impression of Leo XIII. This is somewhat at variance with de Valera's ânothing disgusts me so much as an analogy': I can only plead that my epigraphs mix symbols rather than pretending to exact parallels.
2
Schlesinger, Arthur,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
, HoughÂton Mifflin, Boston, 1965, says that âthe State Department drafts' of speeches for the EuroÂpean trip in June 1963 âwere discarded' (London edition, p. 754). This is certainly not true of the speech to Dáil Ãireann since it included much historical detail taken down from me by the Irish desk in the State Department, including one mistake reproduced by Kennedy and later corrected (the date of the battle of Fredericksburg, whose accuÂrate citation was given by Basil Peterson in the
Irish Times
a few days after delivery). But Pierre Salinger in an interview the following day told me that âyou guys are going to be surprised by how much Irish history the President has read' and we were. Much of the humour in the Irish speeches was characteristic of Kennedy's off-the-cuff style at press conferences, rather than the rounded periods of Ted Sorenson's âbrilliant mind and pen' to which SchleÂsinger ascribes the speeches.
3
Earl of Longford,
Kennedy
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1976, p. 151. Kenny O'DonÂnell opposed the visit on the grounds that he already had the Irish vote. McÂGeorge Bundy opposed it on grounds unknown, but in view of Bundy's charÂacter, that was not a bad compliment for Ireland.
4
Aedan O'Beirne, then counsel at the Irish Embassy in Washington, DC, conÂveyed this opinion to me in late 1959. Joseph P. Kennedy was remembered in August 1960 by Ambassador John Belton at Stockholm as having flown to IreÂland in the autumn of 1939 to berate de Valera at a private but formal dinner in his honour, for his failure to enter the war in support of his friend Neville ChamÂberlain.
5
Brogan, Hugh,
Kennedy
, Longman, London, 1996, pp. 15â19 contains good perceptive comment on
Why England Slept
from a clever son of the shrewdest British commentaÂtor on mid-twentieth century USA. Joe Kennedy sent out many copies of the book long before he read it (if he ever did).
6
Reeves, Richard,
President Kennedy â Profile of Power
, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993, p. 537: âOn the flight from Germany, Kennedy told Powers and O'DonÂnell about his only other trip to the land of his ancestors.' Admittedly Reeves then refers to Kathleen as âLady Hartigan' which would have been appreciated by the UCD History DepartÂment in the early 1960s. McTaggart, Lynne,
Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times
, DoubleÂday, London, 1983, is interesting if gossipy on the family member who most sucÂcessÂfully bridged the Atlantic (and made KenÂnedy Harold Macmillan's nephew-in-law's brother-in-law). Hamilton, Nigel,
J. F. K.: Reckless Youth
, Century, London, 1992, is the most useful if not faultless on Kennedy's early years.
7
Mitchell, Arthur,
J. F. K. and his Irish Heritage
, Moytura Press, Dublin, 1993, is an admirÂable rescue operation on crucial documents by a distinguished AmeriÂcan historian of Irish politics, carrying the first Kennedy journalism (pp. 100â104) with the advertiseÂment â
Why Ireland Clings to Peace
' on p. 89. See also Hennessy, Maurice N.,
I'll Come Back in the Springtime â John F. Kennedy and the Irish
, Washburn, New York, 1966.
8
Fisk, Robert,
In Time of War
, Andre Deutsch, London, 1983.
9
Mitchell, Arthur,
J. F. K. and his Irish Heritage
, pp. 105â7. Kennedy ended his story with the magnificent tongue-in-cheek: âAt this weekend, the problem of partition seems very far from being solved'. The use of âmist' for symbolic purÂposes in celebrating Ireland stayed with Kennedy to 1963.
10
Bromage, Mary C.,
De Valera and the March of a Nation
, New English, London, 1956.
11
O'Connor, Edwin,
All in the Family
, Sphere edition, London, 1970, p. 83. A neglected classic.
12
Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, Hutchinson, London, 1970, p. 454. O'Neill insisted that Longford did not write a word of the book, his name being reÂquired on it by the London publishers, but the quotation from âa guest at the large reÂception who watched the two presidents' seems to mean Longford, whose own book on Kennedy tells the same story with himself as the informant and de Valera now âlike a benignant uncle'; Earl of Longford,
Kennedy
, p. 4. It was of course Kennedy's extra-marital reputation which had become a little liveÂlier in the interval, but LongÂford was tactful when he saw need of it. The Irish version of O'Neill's biography is fuller than the English but only goes up to 1937. O'Neill, Thomas P. & à Fiannachta, Pádraig,
De Valera
, 2 vols, Cló Morainn, Baile Ãtha Cliath, vol. 1, 1968, vol. 2, 1970.
13
I have gone into the implications of this in my
Eamon de Valera
, GPC, Cardiff, 1987. Subsequent to its appearance, Tim Pat Coogan, formerly as editor of the
Irish Press
, de Valera's hierophant-in-chief, now turned on his former employers to denigrate de VaÂlera in every remotely plausible way in his biography. Pauric Travers in his
Eamon de Valera
, Historical Association of Ireland, Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, 1994, pp. 6, 52 comments that Coogan's âintensive rootings' have not proven his allegation of de VaÂlera's illegitimacy. Certainly Coogan has tried to go the whole hog throughout.
14
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980, p. 93. In common with every other student, my debt to this work is endless, but in my case a personal debt of gratitude to a kind family friend from my childhood is even greater.
15
Travers, Pauric,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 3.
16
O'Connor, T. P. & McWade, Robert M.,
Gladstone, Parnell and the Great Irish Struggle
, HubÂbard, Boston, 1886, p. 506. For a good specimen of Sheehy's anti-clericalism in sermon see O'Brien, Conor Cruise,
States of Ireland
, Panther edition, London, 1974, pp. 22â3.
17
Farragher, Seán P.,
Dev and his Alma Mater â Eamon de Valera's Lifelong Association with Blackrock College, 1898â1975
, Paraclete Press, Dublin, 1984, pp. 32, 51â4.
18
ibid., p. 58.
19
Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, pp. 7, 50; Travers, Pauric,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 13. Both works rather uniquely insist there is no âevidence' or âsurviving records' supporÂting the thesis of American intervention. The US Consul was equally clear that there was, and his record survives. See Dudley Edwards, Owen,
De Valera
, GPC, Cardiff, 1987, p. 58 and âAmerican Aspects of the Rising' in Dudley Edwards, Owen & Pyle, Fergus (eds),
1916: The Easter Rising
, MacGibbon & Kee, London, 1968, p. 162.
20
Clarke was shot so quickly after the Rising that no diplomatic intervention was posÂsible, especially as the consulate could not be reached by its staff until well over a week beyond it.
21
Dinneen, Revd Patrick S., SJ,
Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla
, Irish Texts Society, Dublin, 1927, p. 145.
22
Yeats, W. B., âRemorse for Intemperate Speech' in
The Winding Stair and Other Poems
, Macmillan, London, 1933. Yeats dated this poem 28 August 1931. It is written as though self-reflective but in spite â or perhaps because â of its conÂfessional status it could be read in allusion to de Valera, whose advent to power was clearly imminent. Brown, Thomas N.,
Irish-American Nationalism 1870â90
, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1966, applied it to Devoy (and his colleagues and rivals) appositely but in our context ironiÂcally.
23
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, p. 93; FarÂragher, Seán P.,
Dev and his Alma Mater
, pp. 23â4, 26. D'Alton reminisced that de VaÂlera was âgood at mathematics but not outstanding otherwise' (ibid., p. 35). This might be modesty or judicious amnesia as to de Valera's defeating him successively in ChrisÂtian Doctrine and Religious Instruction. De Valera is unlikely to have sharÂed amnesia on the point: it was a useful recollection in Church-State debates of later years.
24
à Faoláin, Seán,
De Valera
, Penguin, London, 1939, p. 10.
25
Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 52.
26
Dwyer, T. Ryle,
De Valera's Darkest Hour 1919â1932
, Mercier, Cork, 1982, title of Chapter One. This most important book with many invaluable quotations well merits re-issue, as does its successor
De Valera's Finest Hour 1932â1959
, Mercier, Cork, 1982.
27
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73,
p. 6.
28
The Declaration of Independence was using the formula in part for the acÂquisition of a French alliance. De Valera's ambitions in that direction for IreÂland at this juncture were certainly centred on the USA. Much later he would prove the most effective resistance to an American alliance in Irish political life, but that was in recognition of the danÂgers such an alliance must pose to the fulfilment of Wilsonian neutrality for Ireland.
29
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, p. 6.
30
. Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 67.
31
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, p. 8.
32
ibid., p. 14.
33
. ibid., pp. 64, 74, 233â4, 465; Dwyer, Ryle T.,
De Valera's Finest Hour 1932â1959
, pp. 79â80, 139, 152; Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â 73
, pp. 64, 74, 233â4, 465.
34
See Clemenceau, Georges,
American Reconstruction 1865â1870
, Dial Press, New York, 1928. This point is almost invariably overlooked.
35
John Mitchel's devotion to slavery and to the Confederacy is the extreme case. But WilÂliam Smith O'Brien is another. A. M. Sullivan, editor of the
Nation
, no doubt acquired much such sentiment from his wife, late of New Orleans, and his popularisation of the term âHome Rule' was connected to its post-war AmeriÂcan use in 1870 and thereÂafter as an expression to cover ex-Confederate resumpÂtion of rule having ousted the republicans from political power.
36
Library of Congress,
The Impact of the American Revolution Abroad
, Library of Congress, Washington, 1976, my chapter on Ireland.
37
Moynihan, Maurice (ed.),
Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917â73
, pp. 14â5; Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 80.
38
Ishmael, as commentators on Herman Melville's
Moby Dick
need to rememÂber, surÂvived against all odds, even when his mother turned aside from him in the desert.
39
Professor Cormac à Gráda misinterprets this in his preface to the recent reissue of the work in question, Dudley Edwards, R. & Williams, T. Desmond (eds),
The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845â1852
, Browne and Nolan, Dublin, 1956; reprinted with new introduction and bibliography, Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1994.
40
De Valera's refusal to make the first move of reconciliation with Churchill for fear of a snub shows the same situation (Earl of Longford & O'Neill, T. P.,
Eamon de Valera
, pp. 435â6, 441â3). Churchill made the move with congratulations on de Valera's seventiÂeth birthday, to de Valera's delight.
41
. Keogh, Dermot,
Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State
, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1994, pp. 4â22. A textbook based on primary research is a beacon of freeÂdom for hisÂtorians.
42
Travers,
Eamon de Valera
, p. 31.
43
Keogh, Dermot & O'Driscoll, FinÃn, âIreland' in Buchanan, Tom & Conway, Martin (eds),
Political Catholicism in Europe 1918â1965
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996. It wants an article on Austria.
44
Lee, Joseph,
Ireland 1912â1985: Politics and Society
, Cambridge University Press, CamÂbridge, 1989, p. 203.