Writer did an excellent job in her ‘spy’ reports to London
What I seek to do is to make sense of her activities during World War II. That is why I published her extant reports, and while Mr Mansergh describes my comments on those as “lurid”, I would describe them as calling a spade a spade — just as her reports did.
Was she a traitor to Ireland or a spy for England? I believe the evidence clearly supports the latter. As doing one’s patriotic duty in time of war to the best of one’s ability is normally a laudable thing, I cannot see how I denigrate her, as Mr Mansergh claims.
She did an excellent job. My admiration for her increases every time I read her reports. If Mr Mansergh insists she was Irish, then he is automatically making her a traitor, which is not considered very laudable, and I would not dream of accusing her of that, and have never done so. Mr Mansergh invokes Brian Girvin’s book, The Emergency, in his case: “… the Irish high commissioner in London, John Dulanty, supported her visit (unpaid) to Ireland to provide independent reports on the state of opinion.”
However, Brian Girvin provides no actual evidence by Dulanty to support Mr Mansergh’s claims and the reference to an “unpaid” trip is actually by John Betjeman of the British embassy in Dublin.
This latter reference indicates that the secret reports could not be the matter in question here as they were paid for by the British government and the payments have been detailed by Heather Bryant Jordan in her biography, Will The Heart Endure? (page 210).
Mr Mansergh should keep up with the literature on this.
Of course, there is no doubt that Dulanty and everyone in the Irish government would have welcomed all kinds of reports to London (open or secret, written and oral) that helped ward off Churchill’s desire to invade. But Bowen’s reports were certainly not written for the benefit of the Irish government and it was not party to them.
Mr Mansergh is clutching at straws to try to prove otherwise. If the Irish government was in some way involved, we would surely have come across some copies somewhere in Irish archives over the past 60 years.
Mr Mansergh says Britain and Ireland “were not enemies”.
Was that why Ireland had to fight a war of independence against the British followed by a civil war at their insistence?
In 1940, Churchill denied Ireland the right to neutrality.
Irish independence was a standing affront to him and Bowen’s job was to advise him on the probable strength of Irish resistance if he invaded.
He adds: “de Valera’s policy during World War II was for Ireland to be vis-à-vis Britain a “friendly neutral”.
Of course it was — friendly to everybody. That is what neutrality means. Eamon de Valera was pragmatic and sensible enough not to provoke any of the major powers at war around him — just like all other neutrals. Mr Mansergh concludes: “It is generally accepted today that, within the limits of nationality defined by law, and she always qualified as Irish on that count, people should be free to decide their own identity.”
This is very true, and Bowen was constitutionally an Irish citizen by birth if she chose to exercise that right — but she did not. By the same token, I and millions of others are legally British subjects being born here before 1948, but most do not exercise that right either. Nationality is not defined by law.
Like home, it is where the heart is, and Bowen’s heart was in England (certainly not in Anglo-Ireland), and she cannot and should not be robbed of that. She simply adopted an Irish persona when necessary.
It is regrettable and ironic that Mr Mansergh actively helped to change the noble aspect of the Irish constitution which guaranteed the opportunity of citizenship to all people born here.
Jack Lane
Aubane
Millstreet
Co Cork
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