Staying out of the Second World War was a real declaration of independence
When we decided to adopt the euro, we were surrendering a degree of independence. Whether that was good or bad is a different matter. The controversy is reminiscent of much of the posturing that distorted reality and marred our early years of independence.
Arthur Griffith’s idea of Sinn Féin – Ourselves Alone – had appeal in its day, but from an economic standpoint we have long since learned that it was an unrealistic dream. Since then we have had the introduction of air travel, radio, television, and the internet. Only an idiot would wish to cut us off behind some kind of Celtic Curtain.
This week the country has been remembering the Great Famine. At the time Ireland was incredibly backward, and people had little say on how the country was run. It was effectively run for the benefit of an elite with little or no regard for the vast majority of its 8.5 million people.
About a third of them were dependent on the potato crop, and when it failed, many starved. The greatest killers were the accompanying diseases – typhus, dysentery, and later cholera. Around 1 million died and another million fled the island, mainly to Britain, the United States and Canada.
The ironic thing was that nobody should have starved. Only half the potato crop failed in 1845 while three-quarters failed in 1846, but other crops grew normally and there was meat, foul, and fish, but the people did not have the money to buy those, and the authorities refused to ban their export.
As early as November 1845 Daniel O’Connell led a deputation to the Lord Lieutenant demanding that all exports of food be stopped immediately. Had this country had it own government, O’Connell declared at the height of the famine in January 1947, it would have banned the export of food. It would have been very different, he said, “if we had our own parliament, taking care of our people, from our own resources”.
The Great Famine became one the most potent arguments for Irish self-government. The controversy over the 1921 Treaty was really about the extent of our independence. Michael Collins admitted the treaty did not confer the full independence that people desired, but he said it contained the freedom to achieve it. Eamon de Valera disputed this, and helped to rouse the passions that led to the Civil War. That was the greatest blot on his political career.
Members of the government of the day accused him enormous treachery, real and imaginary, while they ignored real treachery on their own side. When de Valera managed to come to power in 1932 by wholly democratic means, his opponents secretly connived with the British to get them to wage the Economic War against this country.
That was as sinister as de Valera’s conduct in 1922. Ironically, de Valera went on to prove that Collins was right about the treaty – it did contain the freedom to achieve full political independence.
De Valera proved it by keeping Ireland out of the Second World War, which could have been as catastrophic as the Great Famine for the people of this country. The so-called Republicans had been inviting the Nazis in “to free Ireland.” Can you imagine anything more reckless?
Some years ago I wrote about the chance finding on the internet of the man who was with my father when he was shot and killed in Germany in January 1945. John Ingram was awarded the Bronze Star for staying with my father until he was beyond help. My brother Seán then traced Emory Ornelles, the officer who recommended Ingram for the Bronze Star.
Ornelles – who wrote the book, Both Wind and Tide, about his wartime exploits – asked Seán how my mother could have moved to Ireland in view of the role that Ireland played in the war. Of course, he was a victim of wartime American and British propaganda designed to discredit de Valera for political purposes.
In a victory broadcast in May 1945 Churchill emphasised the different syllables of de Valera’s name to conjure up a subliminal suggestion of him as the personification of the devil and evil in Éire by calling him “D’evil Éire.” Churchill said: “Owing to the action of Mr de Valera, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of southern Irishmen who hastened to the battlefront to prove their ancient valour, the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfield could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats. This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, His Majesty’s Government never laid a violent hand upon them, though at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the de Valera government to frolic with German and later with the Japanese representatives to their hearts’ content.”
De Valera’s reply, which was delivered 65 years ago tomorrow, was widely regarded as his greatest speech ever. For once, at least, he spoke for the whole nation. He began by thanking God for sparing Ireland from the war, which had left much of Europe in ruins.
He knew what many people were expecting him to say, but the occasion now demanded something else. With an exquisite touch of condescension, he explained that Churchill could be excused for being carried away in the excitement of victory. Speaking calmly de Valera proceeded: “Mr Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain’s necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean that Britain’s necessity would become a moral code and that, when this necessity was sufficiently great, other people’s rights were not to count. It is quite true that other great powers believe in this same code – in their own regard – and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous succession of wars - World War No. I and World War No. 2 – and shall it be World War No. 3?”
In the last analysis, it was not Churchill’s speech, but de Valera’s reply “which bore the stamp of the elder statesman,” wrote Sir John Maffey, the British representative.
Of course, Radio Éireann did not have anything like the audience of the BBC World Service, so de Valera’s reply had little impact outside Ireland. Churchill’s remarks – in the course of such an important address – bolstered the distorted perception that de Valera had been at best indifferent towards the plight of the democracies, even though in reality he could hardly have been more helpful.
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