The man Dev first called a fool and then a great Irishman who always put his country first
Indeed, in the Irish Examiner of April 17 last year, it was Ryle Dwyer who used the term ‘treacherous’ to describe the April 1932 conspiracy between the leaders of the Cumann na nGael opposition and the British government to try and bring down de Valera’s newly-elected government.
If he is objecting to its ‘no free speech’ component, he will also find that on the very day after it had been uttered, de Valera himself denounced Ryan on that account and, not for the first time, called him a fool.
But within a matter of years Ryan achieved political maturity, and Hoar’s biography proceeds to portray, in the authors own words, Ryan’s “conversion to democratic politics.” It is a pity, then, that Ryle Dwyer trivialises Ryan as “the communist agitator who died in a Nazi bed.”
For one thing, as Hoar also details, at no stage of his life was Ryan a communist, and he also remained a devout Catholic throughout.
More importantly, during his final years in Germany, Ryan unequivocally pledged his absolute support for de Valera’s policy of wartime neutrality, and he worked tirelessly on its behalf.
Small wonder, then, that towards the end of his own life, in a 1975 interview with the veteran journalist Michael McInerney, de Valera now described as “this great Irishman” the man who, with good reason, he had previously denounced as an “amadán” or “fool” during the 1931-32 period.
As Dev further stated: “Frank Ryan always put Ireland first, at home or abroad. He has earned his place in history.”
I have addressed this issue in greater detail, under the heading ‘Was Frank Ryan a collaborator?,’ in an appendix that appears in the recently-published second edition of my father Michael O’Riordan’s book, Connolly Column - The Story of the Irishmen who Fought for the Spanish Republic.
Manus O’Riordan
13 Finglas Road
Glasnevin
Dublin 11
