by Neil Hegarty
This elusive quality was further reflected in other passages. The constitution adhered to the ambitions and aspirations of an independent republic – but it did not actually declare the country to be a republic. It reestablished a bicameral legislature and founded the office of president – but neither this new Senate nor the head of state would have much to offer by way of powers or authority. It called on the loyalty of Irish nationalism by declaring Irish to be the principal national language and by laying claim overtly to the entire island of Ireland and its surrounding seas – but at the same time it acknowledged the reality of partition by conceding that Dublin’s legal writ ran, for the time being, only to the territory of the Free State. And while the document referred frequently to ‘the Nation’ – Article 9 stated that ‘fidelity to the Nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens’ – at no point did it offer a definition of this term. This was a crucial issue in a constitution so wholly shadowed by the fact and existence of partition and of a sizeable Northern population that had rejected rule from Dublin in the recent past – and that would do so again, given the opportunity.*
In July 1937, the constitution was passed by referendum: on a turn-out of a little over 50 per cent, there were some 685,000 votes in favour and 527,000 against. The people had accepted the constitution, thus lending it weight and authority – but such a vote did not indicate a resounding affirmation of the document; and in the general election held on the same day Fianna Fáil lost its absolute majority in parliament. Yet the state was now on a new footing and a republic in all but name. Soon too de Valera’s suppression of his former IRA allies, by means of the Offences against the State Act of 1939, would underscore his authority. Threats to the state could no longer be tolerated, and the deaths of nine IRA men – through execution and on hunger strike – in the years that followed underlined the government’s determination on this point.
War was declared in Europe in September 1939 – and Ireland, in common with many other European nations, at once announced its neutrality in the face of what the government termed the ‘Emergency’. That the country would choose this status had long been apparent: there was neither public nor political appetite to enter any conflict on the side of Britain, and the memories of the civil war were still too vivid. The country was, in any case, entirely unprepared. Defence spending had steadily declined in the 1930s, and did not begin to increase until after the war. The size of the army grew only after the German capture of Paris in June 1940, at which point the potential dangers for the country had become glaringly evident. Throughout the war, army training was hampered by faulty, obsolete or non-existent equipment; and the country had only the most slender naval and air defences.
Neutrality, then, was de Valera’s only possible option – but this did not prevent the British making several overtures to the Irish government. In June 1940 – with Germany in the ascendant across Europe – a firm offer was tabled: the British authorities would publicly announce a preference for Irish unity in return for an Irish declaration of war against Germany. De Valera rejected the offer: at this moment, Germany looked likely to win the war; and quite apart from the internal resistance he would certainly face, he could not contemplate Ireland joining the British side at such a very inauspicious moment. Eighteen months later another offer was made, and now the timing was rather less hopeless: the United States had entered the war, and its eventual outcome seemed rather clearer. From the British point of view, of course, an Allied Ireland was greatly to be wished for: it would secure the flow of foodstuffs across the Irish Sea; it would enable the placing of a military presence in Ireland to see off any possible German landings; and it would open Irish seaports – so useful in aiding the vital Atlantic convoys – to British ships. De Valera, however, again rejected the offer: he knew that internal opposition would be no less ferocious than it had been a year before, and that the government and Unionist population of Northern Ireland were unlikely to go along meekly with any such plan, regardless of how much British pressure was heaped upon them.
Irish neutrality, however, was another shadowy affair shot through with ambiguity. Ireland was both living and not living in a world of war. The Luftwaffe dropped bombs on the capital in January and May 1941, killing thirty Dubliners; a sea mine washed up on a Donegal beach in 1943 and exploded, killing nineteen men and boys who had gone to investigate; and dead bodies from torpedoed shipping – the exploding bombs themselves sometimes clearly audible from the shore – became a common sight along the coasts for the duration of the war.
Censorship – as was the case across Europe in these years – became more ubiquitous, with the daily newspapers presenting their copy to the censor in advance of publication and newsreels filleted of any disturbing content. Irish audiences saw and heard little from Stalingrad, for example; there were few details made available of the fall of France, or of the various bloody engagements that characterized the war in the Pacific; and the gradually accumulating knowledge of Nazi atrocities in Europe was also kept from Irish readers. Irish immigration policies were highly illiberal: the country was essentially closed to Jews and other refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. In May 1945, indeed, de Valera himself visited Dublin’s German legation to offer his government’s commiserations on the death of Hitler: it was a diplomatic move that caused consternation both among the staff at the legation and abroad – though de Valera claimed that not to have paid such a visit ‘would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation’.10
At the same time, while German prisoners of war were hastily herded into camps for the duration of the war, British and Allied equivalents were just as hastily bundled across the border into the North; the government permitted Allied planes to overfly its territory to land at Northern air and seaplane bases; precious Irish intelligence flowed towards the Allies throughout the war years; and troops based in the North caught trains south to Dublin and promenaded around the streets of the city, studiously ignored all the while by the authorities. ‘They are tolerated,’ noted the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who provided intelligence reports to the British government, ‘as having money to spend…they frequent the cheaper hotels, crowd the shopping streets and cafés and restaurants. Dublin is undoubtedly flattered to find herself in the role of a pleasure city.’11 Everyone from Winston Churchill to the US government to the Northern poet Louis MacNeice (‘to the west off your own shores the mackerel / are fat – on the flesh of your kin’) railed at the stance of ‘that neutral island’.* And yet it is indisputable that this ostensible neutrality was tilted decisively and in favour of Britain and the Allies – particularly following the entry into the war of the United States.
The war brought with it special challenges for Ireland. Although self-sufficiency had been hailed as the supreme national goal, successive governments had in fact done little to achieve this end: Ireland had, for example, few merchant ships, relying instead on foreign-registered vessels to conduct its trade; and by habitually importing raw materials in order to fuel its economy, the country had in fact become more and more dependent on the outside world. Now, at the onset of the Emergency, the merits and challenges of actual self-sufficiency would be put rather more to the test. The result was a more straitened society during the war years. Coal ran short, forcing the population to rely on turf; city parks were turned into allotments in order to supplement an increasingly monotonous diet; compulsory tillage measures led to the sowing of more wheat; and although the country was more or less self-sufficient in bread and potatoes, food shortages and their associated maladies, such as rickets, were certainly not unknown. Smuggling along the border was a popular pursuit: it was not difficult to slip from Donegal or Louth into Derry or Newry with packs of butter and sugar, and many took this opportunity to make some regular extra cash.
In addition, emigration continued unhindered throughout the war years, with some hundred thousand Irish citizens (representing a full one-sixth of the working population of the state) leaving the c
ountry for employment in Britain – in the fields and factories, and not least in the armed forces. While there was an understanding in the government that this exodus undermined Irish claims to strict neutrality, there was equally the tacit knowledge that it would have to continue, war or no war: the alternative would be the presence in Ireland of a large and ever-growing body of discontented and unemployed citizens who could cause no end of trouble for a state that did not want and could not cope with them. It was an indication of the importance of emigration to Irish social stability that the government did not merely permit the passage of these thousands of its citizens, but actively oiled the process administratively and bureaucratically.
The war in Northern Ireland, in stark contrast to the situation south of the border, was a visible part of life – down to the rigidly enforced blackout sustained for the duration of the conflict. In many ways the province was cushioned from the worst effects of the war, not least because conscription was never applied there. The Unionist government had pressed for the measure but the British government declined the offer, understanding that, as a result of certain nationalist unrest, it would not be worth the trouble. The British evacuation of the Treaty Ports in 1938, however, had rendered the harbours of Northern Ireland even more strategically vital: Derry was the United Kingdom’s westernmost port and as such played a pivotal role in the battle of the Atlantic; and the city in particular and province in general hosted tens of thousands of British, Commonwealth and – following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 – American troops. In the run-up to the Normandy landings, as many as three hundred thousand troops were stationed in Northern Ireland; chronic unemployment gave way to a jobs bonanza; and the dour Ulster air was charged with colour and a note of heady glamour.
There was a price to be paid for these prosperous times: in April and May 1941, massive German air raids resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people in Belfast, together with widespread destruction of property. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, British eyebrows were raised at the province’s sluggish contribution to the war effort. In military and economic terms, this was indeed negligible: numbers choosing to enlist in the forces remained notably low throughout the war, dwindling to a mere six hundred per month by Christmas 1940; and the factories and shipyards of Belfast were reluctant to move to a war footing, continuing to charge prices above the odds and to cling to outmoded and slow-footed working practices. Yet for all these awkward facts, the fundamental strategic importance of Northern Ireland for the duration of the war continued to guarantee much public praise: ‘If it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland,’ as Churchill commented on the airwaves just after VE Day, ‘we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera, or perish for ever from the earth.’12
It seemed as though Northern Ireland’s political and cultural deep freeze might conceivably come to an end as the excitement and relative prosperity of the war years gave way to the radical health and social welfare reforms of Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government – applied once again to the province as to Britain. The impact of such changes was felt immediately, but the potency of simultaneous education reforms – in particular the 1947 Education Act, which opened up access to free secondary and higher education – would be noticed only gradually.* Their result was the inevitable expansion of Northern Ireland’s Catholic middle class and the creation of a new generation of educated nationalists. These were potentially revolutionary reforms – but it remained to be seen how the Unionist establishment would respond.
Yet at first it appeared that this establishment had comparatively little to worry about. Unionist opinion was cheered when the Irish government’s declaration of the Irish Republic in 1949 prompted a swift response in London: the Government of Ireland Act cemented the position of Northern Ireland as a constituent part of the United Kingdom and caused much discomfiture in Dublin. Yet not everything emanating from London in the postwar years seemed so palatable. Unionist leaders may have broadly welcomed Attlee’s welfare reforms, but there were grumbles at what were felt to be its excesses. These opinions were genuine and deeply felt: in this conservative society, many could not appreciate measures that smacked of socialism or excessive state interference. But they were also politically motivated: some feared that too generous a welfare state might encourage Northern Ireland’s Catholics to have more and yet more children, a state of affairs that might eventually threaten Unionist political dominance. In 1956, for example, the Northern Ireland government prepared changes to a Family Allowances Bill that would see payments cease after the third child: this was a measure aimed at large (and therefore mainly Catholic) families; and only pressure from Unionist MPs at Westminster caused these proposals to be dropped.13
More significant still was the political unease generated by government measures designed to address the North’s chronic housing shortage. In a political culture founded on a demographic numbers game and the gerrymandering of political boundaries, seats could be won and lost – and political dominance threatened – by a mere handful of new arrivals, complete with voting rights, in this or that neighbourhood. The result was that in certain socially sensitive areas of Northern Ireland Catholic families could remain unhoused for long periods: in the course of twenty-four years in gerrymandered Dungannon in County Tyrone, for example, not a single Catholic family was housed by the local authority.
The social changes now being applied in Northern Ireland were not, in other words, about to be accompanied by similarly profound political changes. Instead, the maintenance of a Unionist hegemony remained the alpha and the omega of politics. Some Unionist figures did indeed perceive that the world was changing around them, but Northern Ireland’s profoundly abnormal political system appeared wholly impervious to reform. There were ample indications of what might happen should the Unionist establishment ever attempt such a thing: the early 1950s, for example, saw the arrival on the scene of a young Protestant firebrand preacher named Ian Paisley, who specialized in the delivery of politico-religious fire-and-brimstone sermons. Here was evidence enough that any attempt to move with the times would lead to a split within Unionism – and perhaps to a loss of power.
Northern Ireland was therefore at once both developing and not developing: in social, economic and cultural terms, the province was witnessing profound change; and the growth of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the course of the 1960s, for example, was evidence enough that the first generation of Catholics to benefit from the educational reforms was now both politically mature and politically dissatisfied. In 1963, the secretive and socially awkward Terence O’Neill became the province’s prime minister: he envisaged that a policy of economic prosperity would eventually reconcile the province’s Catholic minority to a British future. And a measure of economic growth was indeed attained: American firms such as DuPont established large plants in the province; the ‘new town’ of Craigavon was founded in County Armagh; a new university was established (albeit in predominantly Protestant Coleraine, rather than in Derry, where a university college already existed) and the motorway network was expanded.
But O’Neill was unwilling and unable to change the fundamental structures of Northern Ireland politics: for example, he could not or would not address the housing crisis; and even the modest reforms that he did enact led to a ferocious Unionist backlash. At the same time, Catholic political agitation rose throughout the 1960s: central welfare reform had certainly not eliminated poverty: social deprivation in parts of Belfast and Derry, for example, was acute.
The Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in April 1967: a diverse organization, including in its ranks both political radicals and moderates, it consciously took aspects of its aims and identity from the United States civil rights movement. NICRA captured the attention of the media when a march in October 1968 in Derry led to widespread rioting and confrontation with an RUC force that seemed rapidly to lose any sense of discipline – a violent scene played out in fro
nt of the world’s journalists. In Belfast, students and lecturers at Queen’s University established People’s Democracy (PD), a body affiliated to NICRA, though a good deal more radical in its outlook. Rapidly, PD settled on a way of making its mark: it organized a march between Belfast and Derry, modelled on the ‘Long March’ that Martin Luther King and his supporters had undertaken between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. The demonstration set off from Belfast’s City Hall on 1 January 1969; on 4 January it was passing Burntollet, east of Derry, when it was attacked by a loyalist crowd, including associates of Paisley and a number of off-duty B Specials who were occupying nearby high ground; RUC forces in the vicinity failed to intervene to end the violence. Terence O’Neill resigned as prime minister in April; as the summer approached, sectarian unrest spread across many parts of Northern Ireland – and now, in the face of violent and seemingly unstoppable disturbances in Belfast in July and Derry in August, the government made the decision, fateful and unavoidable, to put British troops on to the streets.
The postwar period would also slowly introduce change to the South. The end of the war in Europe had brought with it wider horizons: travel across Europe was now possible for some; and the proximity of a larger world contrasted sharply with Ireland’s more muted colours. ‘We emerge,’ wrote Seán O’Faoláin in the summer of 1945, ‘a little dulled, bewildered, deflated. There is a great leeway to make up, many lessons to be learned, problems to be solved which, in those six years of silence, we did not even allow ourselves to state.’14 The policy of neutrality had resulted in growing diplomatic isolation: relations with the United States, for example, remained cool long after the end of the war. Neutrality would nevertheless become a key component both of government policy and of national identity: it was understood to be good in itself, although its definition and form continued to morph and blur according to the political needs of the day.