Ireland

by Joseph Coohill

  An early Catholic civil rights group, the National League, was founded in 1928 to press for reforms for Catholics, to agitate for a united Ireland, and to reduce tensions between Catholics and Protestants. But it was largely ineffective because there were so many institutional structures that kept Northern Ireland divided. From the foundation of Northern Ireland, the IRA refused to accept its legitimacy, and fought a terrorist campaign to disrupt its operation. Over two hundred people were killed and nearly one thousand wounded in 1922 alone. The British government responded by bringing in troops and establishing an armed police force.

  Not only were there political difficulties. The Northern Irish economy had an uneasy start. Unemployment throughout the 1920s and 1930s ran at nearly twenty-five percent, and social services were hard hit. There were not enough hospitals, the old Victorian workhouses still served as relief for the destitute and the provision of public housing was generally inadequate. In Northern Ireland, one of the major problems during the 1920s and 1930s was the decline of the linen industry and shipbuilding. The linen market had more or less disappeared, and the shipbuilding industry did not adequately adjust to the fall in demand after the end of the First World War. Since over half of Northern Ireland’s workers were employed in industry (and less than a third in agriculture), these losses hit the economy hard.

  But the permanence of the Northern Irish state was symbolically secured by the building of Stormont, the massive neo-classical home for the Northern Irish parliament. Its foundation stone was laid in 1928, and it was opened by the Prince of Wales (1894–1972, who later became Edward VIII) on 17 November 1932. Nationalist members of parliament refused to take part in the ceremony, and the erection of a statue to the arch-unionist Sir Edward Carson outside the building provided another strong symbol of the political imbalance that was to plague Northern Ireland many decades later.

  THE FREE STATE AND ÉIRE, 1932–49

  The 1930s and 1940s saw the assertion of final independence of the Irish Free State from any British connection. This happened in three main ways – by an economic war with Britain in the early 1930s, the evolution of the Free State to Éire [air-uh] in 1937, and Éire’s neutrality during the Second World War.

  Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil won the 1932 Dáil election and came to power in March, a position they would maintain until 1948. Their main goal was to remove the Free State’s links with Britain, especially the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. First, though, de Valera withheld unpopular land annuities from the British Treasury. These annuities were payments made by farmers who had purchased their land under the various land reforms from 1870 to 1909. After the founding of the Free State, these were paid to the Dáil, which would then forward them to London. The Fianna Fáil government withheld these payments almost immediately. The British government retaliated by imposing duties on Irish imports, mainly livestock and dairy products. De Valera responded by placing prohibitive duties on British coal and heavy industrial goods. This ‘economic war’ hurt both sides considerably, and made the effects of the 1930s depression even worse in Ireland. A series of agreements were reached between 1935 and 1938, which at first alleviated some of the harsher aspects of the economic war. These agreements culminated in a meeting of the two governments in 1938. De Valera tried to revive the question of the partition of Ireland, but was unsuccessful. The meetings then focused on economics. The two governments agreed that the question of annuities would be settled by a one-time payment of £10 million to London. In return, the British government gave the Free State control of the ports that it had retained under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (this was to become very important during the Second World War).

  Meanwhile, the Free State government faced immense difficulty with militant republicans and proto-fascists in Ireland. The IRA had been largely excluded when de Valera formed his political party Fianna Fáil in 1926, and they re-activated shortly thereafter. They were committed to a united Irish republic. A more extreme movement also arose in the early 1930s when a militant group of soldiers nicknamed the ‘Blueshirts’ adopted some of Mussolini’s political ideas. They formed military groups and armed themselves. In the beginning, de Valera needed the IRA to counterbalance the Blueshirts. The Blueshirts even made an alliance with the new political party, Fine Gael [finna gale], which had grown out of a merger of Cumann na nGaedheal and smaller parties. Although there were negotiations in the early 1930s to stave off violence, there were sporadic outbreaks in various parts of the country. The Blueshirt movement gradually faded, however, when the Fine Gael party realized that they did not want to be allied with them. By 1936, they were a spent force. The IRA, however, were not. Since he no longer needed them as a counterbalance to the Blueshirts, and in reaction to their increase in violence in 1935, de Valera banned the IRA in 1936 and imprisoned many of its members. But other IRA members continued their campaign of violence against both the British and Irish governments. In January 1939, they demanded that all British forces leave Ireland. When this was ignored, the IRA brought its campaign to Britain. During early 1939, they bombed various targets in Britain, killing seven people and injuring 137. Special acts were passed in the north and south of Ireland to quell IRA violence during 1939, and many hundreds of IRA men were imprisoned. This continued throughout the Second World War in an attempt to prevent any IRA contact with Germany.

  During the mid-1930s, de Valera had also been working on a new constitution to replace the 1922 Free State one. His goal was to remove all references to the British government, eliminate the oath of allegiance to the crown and make the Free State a republic in all but name. De Valera stopped short of renaming the Free State a republic because he wanted to reserve that term for a future united Ireland. During the abdication crisis in 1936 (involving King Edward VIII in Britain), de Valera had passed the External Relations Act. He used the opportunity of the monarchy’s problems (and the fact that there would be a new king crowned in Britain soon) to push this act through the Dáil. It said that the Free State would remain part of the Commonwealth of Nations, but would reserve foreign policy to itself rather than to the British government (except in the case of some diplomatic and consular appointments). This was a major step towards a new constitution. De Valera consulted with Irish academics, legal scholars and leading churchmen while drafting the new constitution. It was published on 1 May 1937, and retained many elements of the Free State government, but changed others. Perhaps most importantly, it changed the name of the country to Éire (in English, ‘Ireland’) and laid claim to ‘the whole island of Ireland, its islands, and territorial seas’. This, of course, included Northern Ireland, and was a complete expression of de Valera’s idea of nationhood (although article three of the constitution allowed that ‘pending integration of the national territory’, the new constitution would apply to the Free State area only). The Irish language was made the official language of the country, with English being named the second official language. The president of the executive council was replaced with the office of taoiseach [tee-shook], which was somewhat more powerful and more like a prime minister. There was also to be an appointed President of Ireland, who would perform the ceremonial functions of head of state. The constitution also expressly recognized the Catholic Church as the church of the majority of the population, but also established freedom of religion. (Special recognition for the Catholic Church was rescinded in 1972.) It also attempted to support the family through the abolition of divorce. The church was heavily involved in the censorship of films and books. Bishops were consulted about legislation banning divorce and regulating alcohol. De Valera’s government also responded to church pressure and banned contraceptives in 1935, and attempted to regulate dance halls in the same year. Jazz and some other popular music was frowned upon.

  These ideas and restrictions, however, were not solely the product of the church. Public opinion in this period generally desired a strong sense of public moral rectitude. Further, economic and social customs (especiall
y late marriage and celibacy) were common enough not to need much help from the church to gain broader acceptance. The church also had a great influence in education, but here again, its ideas coincided with the thrust of public opinion. One of the strongest aspects was in the way Irish history and culture were taught, and the degree to which they were emphasized over the study of the rest of the world. This is not to say that world history and geography were ignored, but that the balance was tipped very far towards studying Ireland. This was not only a function of the young state’s nationalism, but also of the idea that Ireland and its history could be presented in such a way as to improve the nation’s morality. Irish history, language, music and traditions were seen as presenting moral values in the best possible light, and therefore educational emphasis was distinctly Irish. This was the general trend in state schools and Catholic schools, in which Irish history was presented as the noble struggle against the British oppressor. Protestant schools in the Republic resisted this tradition. The Catholic Bulletin wrote that

  the Irish nation is the Gaelic nation; its language and literature is the Gaelic language; its history is the history of the Gael. All other elements have no place in Irish national life, literature and tradition, save as far as they are assimilated into the very substance of Gaelic speech, life and thought.

  Catholic bishops also forbade Catholic attendance at the Protestant Trinity College Dublin. (This ban was lifted in 1970.)

  Both the External Relations Act and the new constitution faced a difficult passage through the Dáil. Opposition members argued that they violated the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, and that too much power was to be invested in the new office of taoiseach. De Valera’s constitution passed the Dáil on 14 June 1937, however, and was approved in a national referendum by roughly fifty-seven percent to forty-three percent. Rather than expel Éire from the Commonwealth (and risk other Commonwealth nations developing similar independence plans), the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) decided to let the matter pass and do nothing. Officially, in the British government’s eyes, Éire was still part of the Commonwealth, but unofficially they knew it had become a republic in all but name. One of the reasons that the British government did not become overly concerned with Irish affairs was that war loomed in Europe. De Valera had stated at the League of Nations (where he had been president of the Council and of the Assembly in the 1930s) that Ireland would remain neutral in any forthcoming European war. He repeated this emphatically to the Dáil in April 1939, when it was clear that Germany was preparing for war. He had general support from Dáil members of most parties, and when war broke out in September 1939, the government set up a special council to deal with what became known in Ireland as ‘the Emergency’. As in Britain, rationing of essential goods was enforced almost immediately. A plan of compulsory tillage put many extra acres of land into agricultural production, and food supplies increased by nearly seventeen percent. But being on the western edge of Europe, and on the vital shipping routes from the New World, Ireland could not avoid some of the ravages of the war. Wayward German bombs fell on Counties Wexford, Wicklow, Kildare, Louth and Monaghan in 1940–1. Dublin was bombed in May 1941, with the loss of thirty-four lives. The German government paid compensation for these bombings in 1943 and 1958.

  Except for refusing the use of Irish ports (which would have caused Germany to attack Irish targets), Éire’s neutrality was certainly friendly to the Allies. German pilots who crashed in Ireland were interned, while Allied pilots were rescued and returned to Britain. German spies were arrested, while British intelligence pilots were allowed to use a base in County Limerick to land their sea planes. Diplomatic relations were maintained with Germany, and amongst the most controversial of de Valera’s acts during the war was to go to the German embassy in Dublin and sign a book of condolence upon the death of Hitler in May 1945. He had done the same at the American embassy for Roosevelt a few months earlier, but since news reports of the Nazi death camps had appeared by this time, many people (including many in Éire) thought that this showed callous disregard for the victims of the Holocaust. In a radio address on 13 May 1945 at the end of the war, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, severely criticized de Valera’s government for not allowing Allied use of Irish ports. Further, Churchill said, Britain had showed great restraint in not taking the ports by force of arms. De Valera replied in a radio address on 17 May, saying that Churchill had placed British interests on some sort of moral plane that overlooked the rights of other nations. Further, he said, Churchill should have found sympathy with Ireland, a country which had withstood tyranny for hundreds of years, while Britain had withstood Germany for two years before the United States entered the war. De Valera’s reply was hailed in Éire, and certainly overcame the damage that his condolences to the German embassy had done to his political standing. But the war had done much to damage the Irish economy. The compulsory tillage programme had depleted much farming soil, and rationing had more or less halted industrial development.

  An election was held in 1948, and de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party could not form a government. A coalition of Fine Gael and other parties took over. This Inter-Party Government tried to deal with post-war problems, including industrial development, a housing shortage and uneven healthcare across the country. They also tried to deal finally with the question of ‘the republic’, which had vexed Irish politics since 1916. De Valera’s constitution had made Éire a republic in all but name, and the new taoiseach, John Costello (1891–1976), thought that finalizing the process would stamp out the ardour of militant republicans and, as he said, ‘take the gun out of Irish politics’. Costello’s inter-party government repealed the 1936 External Relations Act and passed the Republic of Ireland Act on 21 December 1948. This removed the final few diplomatic powers that the British monarch had over Éire, and changed the English name of the country to the Republic of Ireland. This became official on Easter Monday, 18 April 1949. The British government, under Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883–1967), then passed the Ireland Act on 2 June 1949. This recognized that the Republic of Ireland was no longer a part of the British dominions, but also said that Northern Ireland would stay a part of the United Kingdom as long as the Northern Ireland parliament desired.

  The economic policies of the Free State and Éire governments of this period were based on increased protectionism and tariffs, more welfare provision and benefits for small farmers and agricultural labourers. In government, de Valera broadened the base of unemployment payments to include more people, boosted pensions of all kinds (including widows’ and orphans’ as well as old-age pensions), and embarked on a dramatic public housing project. These, however, did not completely protect the south from the worldwide depression of the 1930s. Some social services, particularly health and education, remained under-funded. Protectionism and attempts at national self-sufficiency were the hallmarks of de Valera’s industrial and trade plans. During the 1930s, this seemed to provide a boost to native industries in the south, but they were, in many ways, too protected. Exports plummeted and the attending lack of revenue was sorely missed. These protected industries also struggled in the post-war period. While protectionism was the general European reaction to the depression and southern Ireland followed suit, self-sufficiency proved impossible to attain. In the 1930s, the south exported roughly the same percentage of its domestic cattle market to Britain as Northern Ireland did. So trade with Britain was still vital, despite ideas of self-sufficiency. What was certain was that the state grew in order to handle the admin-stration of these new economic policies.