Dev didn’t win every conflict with Churchill

EAMON de Valera should not automatically be awarded first prize in every conflict he had with Winston Churchill.

It seems to me the current revival of interest in him is in grave danger of turning Dev into a superman responsible for every major historical action during the last century.

Brendan Cafferty (Letters, December 18) holds Dev responsible for the loss of pre-1901 census records because of what he refers to as “the inglorious destruction of the Custom House in the Civil War”.

This had been a military action during the War of Independence in 1921, not the Civil War. No census records were stored there, but there were indeed some census records destroyed when the Civil War commenced in 1922, with the Free State Army attack on the republican garrison in the Four Courts. I say some because the 1861 and 1871 census records had been long since destroyed by order of the British government, once statistics had been extracted, on grounds of “confidentiality”. The 1881 and 1891 census records were further destroyed by order of the British government during the First World War on grounds of wartime “paper shortages”.

It was the 1821 to 1851 census records that were lost as a result of the destruction of the Four Courts.

Michael Collins had launched his Free State army attack on threat from Churchill that if he didn’t, Britain would resume “immediate and terrible war” in Ireland. As for the resulting destruction of census records, Churchill wrote to Collins: “If I refrain from congratulation it is only because I do not wish to embarrass you. The archives of the Four Courts may be scattered but the title deeds of Ireland are safe”. Mr Cafferty should give Churchill his due.

Manus O’Riordan

13 Finglas Road

Dublin 11