De Valera's Irelands (19 page)

1
Quoted in Lee, Joseph and Ó Tuathaigh, Gearóid,
The Age of de Valera
, Ward River Press, Dublin, 1982, p. 206. I have taken the spelling of MacLennan's surname from his entry in
Who's Who
.

2
Coogan, Tim Pat,
De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
, Hutchinson, London, 1993, pp. 246–8; Macardle, Dorothy,
The Irish Republic
, with preface by de Valera, Corgi, London, 1968 edition, first published 1937.

3
Lord Garner, former British diplomat, quoted in Lee, Joseph and Ó Tuathaigh, Gearóid,
The Age of de Valera
, p. 203.

4
Article in the
Sunday Express
(London), 21 August 1921, quoted in Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, Cork University Press, Cork, 1996, p. 562.

5
MacDonald, Malcolm,
Titans and Others
, Collins, London, 1972, p. 55.

6
Lee, J. J.,
Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, p. 75.

7
Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, p. 563.

8
ibid., pp. 538, 563. In private letters, Healy usually wrote of ‘Valera'.

9
Quoted in Lyons, F. S. L.,
John Dillon: a Biography
, Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1968, p. 423.

10
Quoted in Wilson, Trevor (ed.),
The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–1918
, Collins, Lon­don, 1970, p. 349.

11
Quoted in Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, p. 538.

12
The veteran MP braced himself for a defeat first by a thousand votes, then by ‘about two thousand' and was finally swept away by a majority of well over four thousand, in a two-to-one landslide. Dillon attributed his defeat in large measure to organised intimi­dation, overlooking the inconvenient point that de Valera had been equally heavily defeated challenging Joseph Devlin in West Belfast. Wilson, Trevor (ed.),
The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott
, pp. 362–3; Lyons, F.S.L.,
John Dillon: a Biography
, pp. 451–3.

13
Lyons, F. S. L.,
John Dillon: a Biography
, p. 467.

14
Responsible for the welfare of British prisoners of war in 1917, Newton had found him­self in the odd position of indirectly negotiating with the Germans. His visit to Ireland in April 1919 did not persuade him to extend the same approach to Sinn Féin. He was also puzzled by the fact that ‘I do not remember seeing a single pig'. Lord Newton,
Retrospection
, John Murray, London, 1941, p. 269.

15
Quoted in Sommer, Dudley,
Haldane of Cloan: His Life and Times 1856–1928
, Allen & Unwin, London, 1960, p. 363.

16
Quoted in Lord Riddell's
Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After 1918–1923
, John Murray, London, 1933, p. 260.

17
ibid., p. 288.

18
Quoted in Churchill, Randolph S.,
Lord Derby ‘King of Lancashire'
, Heinemann, London, 1959, p. 405.

19
ibid., p. 420.

20
Quoted in Self, Robert (ed.),
The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, Camden Fifth series, p. 161.

21
Earl of Midleton,
Records and Reactions 1856–1939
, Oahspe, Herts., 1939, pp. 258–62.

22
Quoted in Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: II The Fields of Force 1919–1950
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 51. For his early career see Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: I The Sanguine Years 1870–1919
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1962.

23
Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: II The Fields of Force 1919–1950
, chap. 9.

24
One of the 1914 rebels, Jopie Fourie, had been shot by firing squad, refusing a blindfold as he met his death. Smuts was widely blamed for the sentence. Davenport, T. R. H.,
South Africa: a Modern History
, Pal­grave, London, 1977, pp. 184–6; Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: I The Sanguine Years 1870–1919
, pp. 392, 406.

25
Taylor, A. J. P.,
English History 1914–1945
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1965, p. 82.

26
For the mythic version see ibid., p. 156; Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: II The Fields of Force 1919– 1950
, pp. 51–5; Murphy, John A.,
Ireland in the Twentieth Century
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1975, p. 25–6. The government's control over the speech is made clear in Self, Robert (ed.),
The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters
, p. 161 and Rose, Kenneth,
King George V
, Phoenix, London, 1984, p. 238. According to Chamberlain, the positive response to the speech persuaded the king that the initiative had been his own idea.

27
Quoted in Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: II The Fields of Force 1919–1950
, pp. 55–6.

28
ibid., pp. 50–56.

29
For the letter of 4 August 1921, Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Papers: V September 1919–November 1934
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 100–105, and p. 106 for his unease at the use Lloyd George might make of it. De Valera protested at its publication, Macardle, Dorothy,
The Irish Republic
, pp. 446–7.

30
Hancock, W. K.,
Smuts: II The Fields of Force 1919–1950
, p. 56.

31
Gogarty, Oliver St John,
As I Was Going Down Sackville Street
, Rich & Cowan, London, 1937, chapter 21.

32
Quoted in Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Papers: V September 1919– Novem­ber 1934
, p. 96 (from a Buckingham palace memorandum of Smuts' report to the king, 7 July 1921).

33
ibid., p. 102 (letter of 4 August 1921).

34
ibid., p. 97.

35
ibid., p. 96. Griffith had organised perhaps the most unlikely event in the pantheon of Irish historical commemoration, the 1798 centenary celebrations in Johannesburg.

36
Dangerfield, George,
The Damnable Question: a Study in Anglo-Irish Relations
, Quartet, London, 1977, p. 209. The whole strategy was best summed up by Healy: ‘To enlist the great Boer statesman to string the government proposals into nursery rhymes set to African lullabies for Irish ears was crudely inartistic.' Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, p. 562.

37
Quoted in Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Papers: V September 1919– November 1934
, p. 94.

38
Macardle, Dorothy,
The Irish Republic
, p. 434. Afrikaners formed the majority of the white population of the Cape Colony, and so sympathised with the former Boer Republics. Natal settlers were intensely pro-British, but in 1910 they numbered fewer than 100,000, barely larger than the Protest­ant population of Tyrone and Fermanagh. Natal whites were outnumb­ered ten-to-one by an African majority over which they had come close to losing control in 1906. Durban, Natal's principal port, depended upon the Transvaal for much of its trade. Northern Ireland had been delineat­ed to ensure that there would never be a nationalist majority. Unionists needed nobody's support to maintain internal control, and Belfast looked outwards for its prosperity.

39
Quoted in Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Papers: V September 1919– November 1934
, p. 113 (letter of 23 February 1923).

40
Quoted in Wilson, Trevor (ed.),
The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott
, p. 391. In fairness, it should be added that Scott received precisely the same report from A. D. Lindsay, the Oxford don who also tried to contact the Sinn Féin leadership. ‘He shared Smuts' view of de Valera as a man without much sense of reality and obsessed by a sort of poetic vision of an ideal Ireland.' ibid., p. 392.

41
Taylor, A. J. P. (ed.),
Lloyd George: a Diary by Frances Stevenson
, Hutchinson, London, 1971, pp. 227–8 (17 July 1921). The Welsh word for ‘people' is ‘pobl'.

42
Wilson, Trevor (ed.),
The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott
, p. 395.

43
From Lloyd George's letter of 24 June 1921. In a speech on 14 July, he called de Valera ‘the Chieftain of the vast majority of the Irish race'. Macardle, Dorothy,
The Irish Re­public
, pp. 431, 439.

44
Meeting of 17 July 1921, reported in Taylor, A. J. P. (ed.),
Lloyd George: a Diary by Frances Stevenson
, p. 229.

45
Calton Younger describes this as ‘the error of an honest man who believes other men are as honest as he'. Younger, Calton,
Arthur Griffith
, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1981, p. 109.

46
Quoted in Wilson, Trevor (ed.),
The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott
, pp. 392, 394. De Valera had taken a similar line to Smuts, Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Pap­ers: V September 1919–November 1934
, pp. 97–8.

47
uoted in Nicolson, Harold,
King George V: His Life and Reign
, Constable, London, 1952, p. 358. Austen Chamberlain similarly dismiss­ed de Valera as ‘a dreamer', adding that Griffith was ‘a poet', Barton ‘a small solicitor' and Stack ‘a crooked-faced solicitor's clerk and gunman'. Self, Robert (ed.),
The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters
, p. 163.

48
Churchill, Winston S.,
The Aftermath: Being a Sequel to the World Crisis
, Macmillan, Lon­don, 1941, p. 309. Poyning's Law dated from 1494. Tales of de Valera's historical dis­quisitions soon passed into popular legend (e.g., Gunther, John,
Inside Europe
, Harper, New York, 1938, p. 310). Malcolm MacDonald thought it promising evidence of de Valera's ‘pres­ent practical mood' at a meeting during the 1936 British-Irish negotia­tions that ‘he never mentioned Oliver Cromwell' or any other episode prior to 1921. When a draft communiqué describing talks in 1938 referr­ed to an opening statement of the Irish position, de Valera ‘beamed a smile' and suggested that the press would report ‘that by the end of a long harangue I was still describing the wrongs done to Ireland by Oliver Cromwell'. The draft was amended. Quoted in Harkness, David, ‘Mr de Valera's Dominion: Irish relations with Britain and the Commonwealth 1932–38',
Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies
, vol. 8, 1970, p. 217; MacDonald, Malcolm,
Titans and Others
, pp. 75–6.

49
Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, pp. 558, 584–5.

50
ibid., pp. 586, 588.

51
ibid., pp. 607–10.

52
Healy was using the term ‘half-breed Spaniard' by February 1923, Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, p. 606, and see p. 625 for the 1928 newspaper interview and p. 736 for Devoy. De Valera denied Jewish ancestry: Dwyer, T. Ryle,
Eamon de Valera
, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1980, p. 90. Coogan, Tim Pat,
De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
, pp. 4–10 suggests that de Valera may have been illegitimate, but sees no reason to doubt his parentage. Lady Lavery spread the story that the decision not to renew Healy's ap­pointment as governor-general in 1928 was taken ‘with an idea to make things easier if de Valera should come in'. Barnes, J. and Nicholson, D. (eds),
The Leo Amery Diaries I: 1896–1921
, Hutchinson, London, 1980, p. 538. Callanan, Frank,
T. M. Healy
, pp. 622–4 does not mention the story but supplies practical reasons for getting Tim out of the Viceregal Lodge. Nor was there any cause for Cosgrave to make life easier for his opponents.

53
Ethnic abuse of de Valera is scattered through Gogarty, Oliver St John,
As I was Going Down Sackville Street
. These examples are taken from chapter 4, where Gogarty com­mented that de Valera ‘is more Irish perhaps than any of us, seeing that he looks like something uncoiled from the Book of Kells'.

54
MacDonald, Malcolm,
Titans and Others
, p. 55.

55
Gunther, John,
Inside Europe
, p. 302. Other European leaders born outside the countries they ruled were Pilsudski of Poland, Turkey's Kemal Ataturk and von Schuschnigg of Austria. Neville Chamberlain, who had dealt with both, also drew a parallel be­tween de Valera and Hitler. McMahon, Deirdre,
Republicans and Imperialists Anglo-Irish Relations in the 1930s
, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1984, p. 243.

56
O'Leary, Grattan,
Recollections of People, Press and Politics
, Macmillan, Toronto, 1977, p. 94.

57
Van Der Poel, J. (ed.),
Selections from the Smuts Papers: V September 1919–November 1934
, p. 520.

58
The prominence of Ireland in the world picture of the British elite can be over-esti­mated: Gladstone grew up in Liverpool and enjoyed a count­ry estate in north Wales, but managed only one visit despite devoting part of his career to the Irish Question. Gladstone visited great houses and their destruction destroyed a network of hospi­tality. On a visit to Dublin in 1948, Harold Nicolson lunched at the Kildare Street Club, ‘a strange Victorian relic' full of ‘broken-down peers'. Nor was cross-channel travel much easier than in Victorian times. On a previous visit, Nicolson had flown to Ire­land, noting that the aircraft ‘smelled of sick'. The Dublin universities, which invited Keynes in 1933 and figured in both of Nicolson's visits, were hardly able to finance extensive intellect­ual exchanges. Commonwealth links before 1932 were still tentative. The British Dominions Secretary, L. S. Amery, wrote generously of the impact that O'Higgins made in London, but privately seems to have been more concerned by the degree to which the organisation might influence him. McGilligan seems to have been respected in British government circles, and was the target of a charm offensive by the Prince of Wales at the Imperial Conference of 1930, but it is doubtful if he estab­lished close friendships. Nicolson seems to have been embarrassed by McGilligan's pro-British sentiments at a UCD debate in 1942. Morley, John,
The Life of William Ewart Gladstone
, Lloyd, London, 1903, vol. 2, p. 571; Nicolson, Nigel (ed.),
Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1945–1962
, Collins, London, 1971, p. 143; Nicolson, Nigel (ed),
Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1939–1945
, Collins, London, 1970, pp. 214–6; de Vere White, Terence,
Kevin O'Higgins
, Anvil, Dublin, 1986, p. 247; Barnes, J. and Nichol­son, D. (eds),
The Leo Amery Diaries I, 1896–1929
, pp. 483, 485, 512–3; Hark­ness, D. W.,
The Restless Dominion: the Irish Free State and the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1921–1931
, Mac­millan, London, 1969, pp. 225–8; Harkness, David, ‘Patrick McGilligan: Man of Com­mon­wealth',
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
, vol. 8, 1979, pp. 117–35.