British deemed Bowen reports espionage

KATHLEEN FITZGIBBON says she has “one, if not two, advantages over Mr Lane.

I lived through the World War II years in Ireland, and attended the Trevor/Bowen school last August bank holiday weekend.” (Letters, August 29.)

However, on the actual point at issue — Bowen’s espionage reports to Churchill — Ms Fitzgibbon and I are in the same position because neither she nor I could have read any of Bowen’s 200-odd reports either during the war or subsequently, as they were secret reports and the vast majority were destroyed. The few that survived were never published by her admirers, until I did so a few years ago.

Yet Ms Fitzgibbon speculates that Bowen’s objective was to “foster some degree of understanding”. Ms Fitzgibbon should explain why a well known writer and a competent and capable person such as Bowen chose this peculiar and inefficient way to spread understanding.

People went to England for work during World War II, as they had been doing ever since the British government had deliberately wrecked the Irish economy. Irish people also joined the British Army and took part in Britain’s many wars over the centuries.

Bowen’s reports to Churchill about the state of public feeling in Ireland about a possible British invasion may have helped ward off that invasion.

In 1945, Churchill said he had the right to invade but chose not to. Bowen’s reports indicated that resistance would be united and strong.

It is not me who classified her reports as espionage. They were treated by the British authorities as such.

I also did not drag up the Bowen family history. Bowen flaunted it at us. It was Cromwellian in origin, and the Bowens of the ‘big house’ lived remote from the people to the bitter end.

Ms Fitzgibbon says, “After all, Miss Bowen and de Valera, whatever their differences, were both aware that the common enemy was fascism.”

I beg to differ. Britain went to war against Germany, not fascism. Churchill had welcomed fascism in Europe as the saviour of western civilisation and had hoped that, if necessary, a Hitler would have emerged in Britain. He went to war against Germany because, as he graphically put it in the ’30s, “the Hun is at your throat or at your feet” — just as he would have put it during WWI.

De Valera did not share such sentiments. He never welcomed fascism and countered it successfully in Ireland (without war) with no help from Britain or Churchill. He was neutral in Britain’s second war on Germany, just as the US and the USSR were until they were attacked, and he would no doubt have acted as they did if Ireland was attacked from any quarter.

Bowen’s published reports confirm that, for her, as for Churchill, fascism was not the issue. The single Irish politician she really cultivated (and deceived) was James Dillon, because he was the only significant politician who wanted Ireland to join the war Britain had declared on Germany.

Bowen describes her close study of him in an extant report and concluded he was a fascist but that mattered not a whit as he, too, supported war on Germany. Fascism was neither here nor there for her or Churchill when Britain was at war.

Bowen’s reports are most instructive and the great pity is that not more of them are available.

Jack Lane

Aubane

Millstreet

Co Cork