Wars and Conflicts permalink
Did Churchill want a united Ireland?
This discussion has been closed.
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Message 1.Â
Posted by Rachel (U5769524) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
I was told as a child that if the war had never happened then we would be a united Ireland. That Churchill was in the middle of handing Northern Ireland over but then he decided he needed us to help during the war.
Does anyone know the facts? When I was in the RAF the SGT told me that I was a *:@~ paddy mick, I told him I have a british passport and I'm a protestant. He kept repeating the remark and I was standing there thinking, why am I here taking this abuse would he die to save my lands? So I left, along with a shetland man and a shaken up Welsh man. We agreed that we came to England to help our fellow British but to treat us different from the others every day was just too much. That was only a few years ago. -
Message 2
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Churchill may have wanted a united Ireland - but not an independent one. He would have wanted an Ireland re-united and within the UK.
In a Victory in Europe broadcast in May 1945 Churchill took a decidely unmagnanimous and churlish personal swipe at the Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera:
"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 battle-front to prove their ancient valour, the approaches and the Southern Irish ports and airfields 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 would have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera or perish forever from the earth."
This, however, left Churchill wide open to de Valera's devastating reply on RTE a few days later:
"Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.
Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliation's, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?"
Ouch! -
Message 3
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Dev's response is only 'devastating' within the ideological framework of modern Irish nationalistic mythology, which is hardly based upon a sound or honest examination of history.
If Winnie's own comment was made in a VE context, presumably it came after Dev's public expressions of regret at the death of Adolf Hitler...
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Message 4
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
I'm a protestantÂ
Why should this have been of interest to the RAF serjeant? -
Message 5
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
I'm a protestantÂ
Why should this have been of interest to the RAF serjeant?Â
Because the term 'Mick' is generally understood to apply specifically to Catholic Irishmen and women. -
Message 6
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Rachel,
It sounds like you just got an a-hole of a sergeant. No NCO would have got away with that attitude in my old TA unit, of which about 1/3 were Ulstermen/women (from both 'sides'). -
Message 7
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
I do not think Churchill wanted a United Ireland, (unless it was under the British Flag), but it was rumoured that he might have agreed to it if the South had allowed him the use of Lough Swilly, Galway, Cork, etc, as harbours for the ships fighting the U-boat war. It was only in the Battle of the Atlantic that Britain was in real danger of total defeat, after the Battle of Britain, and those harbours (which had been used in WWI to great effect) would have saved many hours steaming for hard-pressed escort ships, which were based instead in Lough Foyle.
I have heard that 'a deal' on the border was on the table, but De Valera turned it down, rather than let the Royal Navy back into the Irish ports. Ironically, the 'Irish Free State' Treaty of 1922 allowed Britain use of the ports in time of war, and it was only in 1937 that 'Irish Independence' removed this clause.
It must have been desperate times indeed, if Churchill contemplated such a deal with Dev! -
Message 8
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Rachel -
Why worry? I was called a stupid ** nig-nog many times by thicko NCOs. It's what they did. If you wore specs they'd call you 4-eyes. Being in any way distinctive, like maybe having an Irish accent, gave them something to needle you with.
In my first week's squarebashing, our corporal, who had a thick Scotch accent, introduced himself to us all, standing at attention by our beds: "Any of youse from Scoatland?" Three blokes put up their hands (I bet they thought they were home & dry.) "Right! Get this. I HATE ** Scotsmen!"
That was a long time ago, but I bet it's much the same today. You can't win, against the military system. -
Message 9
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
Strangely although Germany had promised that Ireland would be reunited after Britian surrendered, plans had been drawn up to invade southern Ireland by landing troops on the south coast, seizing the airfields and invading proper. The Irish Army had less than a handfull of armoured cars and no tanks. It had no airforce, and its army had less than a 100 Great War machine guns. The plans suggested that the Germans would be marching into Dublin within days. Would Churchill be forced to do a Norway and send troops to assist or invade, or would the remains of the Irish Army fall back to the border and join up with the British troops already stationed there. And what of the IRA? Would they carry out a hit and run war the way they did against the British? But the Germans were not the British. We saw how they dealt with resistance in Europe. Killing 10 for 1. Interesting thoughts. Again it was the British PM that with war looming decided to let the treaty ports return to Ireland. Ports that would have been invaulable for convoy protection. You wonder what he was on at the time.
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Message 10
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
Dev's response is only 'devastating' within the ideological framework of modern Irish nationalistic mythology, which is hardly based upon a sound or honest examination of history.Â
Not only for Irish nationalists. I’m not Irish and I find de Valera's reply cringeworthy (for Churchill's sake) but understandable.
The reason is that – yes - de Valera’s description was a caricature of Irish history but it was intended to be. It was, however, no more of a caricature then Churchill’s comments regarding de Valera’s policy of neutrality. Churchill seems to have forgotten that Southern Ireland was an independent and neutral country – not an opponent. He didn’t for example in his broadcast also see fit to criticize the government of Sweden and its policy of neutrality or include a personal attack on the Swedish Prime Minister Per Hansson.
Churchill seems to have lost perspective here and allowed tribal-like atavism to get the better of him and thus cloud his judgement. There was no magnanimity in victory from Churchill towards Ireland which – repeat – was a neutral country and not an opponent. As my grandmother always said – if you have nothing pleasant to say then say nothing at all. Basically with this bitching ouburst Churchill was asking for it and so de Valera gave as good as he got and returned the compliment.
If Winnie's own comment was made in a VE context, presumably it came after Dev's public expressions of regret at the death of Adolf Hitler.Â
If by ‘public expressions of regret at the death of Adolf Hitler’ this is a reference to de Valera’s visit to the Director of the German Diplomatic Mission in Dublin, Eduard Hempel, to offer his condolences then this was nothing more than standard diplomatic procedure at the time on the occasion of the death of the head of state of another country. This was simply de Valera being a stickler for protocol which is quite a common phenomenon in newly independent states. -
Message 11
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
No. Churchill never wanted an independent united Ireland. 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts'. It was a carrot, a political expedient. Had Dev bought into the bargain he would never have seen the British deliver on it. Dev's response is only 'devastating' within the ideological framework of modern Irish nationalistic mythology,... Â It did not need to be! It was devasting within the context of the exchange between Dev and Churchill at the time. It is even more devastating since because of the release of archive material which clearly demonstrates the true nature of the relationship between the two countries during the war. Churchill was a supreme hypocrite. ... modern Irish nationalistic mythology ... Â What is that then? I would argue that on the spectrum of veracity it is more fact than fiction. That it errs more in the telling than the tale.
which is hardly based upon a sound or honest examination of history. -
Message 12
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
I think, you're slightly askew, Rachel. It was because, not despite, being in the middle of a war, or rather at its most dangerous juncture that both Churchill and the War Cabinet were prepared to offer the prospect of a united Ireland in return for the entry of the (then) Irish Free State's entry into the war on the Allied side in the same way that only a short time earlier the War Cabinet had offered Anglo-French political union in a vain effort to maintain France in the war.
The decision by the War Cabinet to make an approach to De Valera was prompted by two factors, the collapse of France and the undoubted links between the IRA, then an illegal organisation, and he Nazis. These became magnified by Churchill because of De Valera's previous history and his undoubted antipathy to the British.
Whilst the Nazis themselves had promised Irish unity in the wake of the defeat and occupation of Britain it was known that as part of 'Operation Sea Lion' the Germans intended to occupy the whole of Ireland to safeguard the Western Approaches from possible US involvement.
What aggravated Churchill most was Chamberlain's surrender in 1938 of the British naval facilities in the so-called 'Treaty Ports' of Berehaven, Queenstown (now Cobh) and Lough Swilly which Churchill had helped to negotiate in 1921. As a backbencher Churchill made a typically trenchant attack on the agreement to give these up when the issue was debated in the House of Commons on 5 May 1938:
"These ports are, in fact, the sentinel towers of the Western approaches, by which the 45,000,000 in this Island so enormously depend on foreign food for their daily bread, and by which they can carry on their trade, which is equally important to their existence.
....we are to give them up, unconditionally, to an Irish Government led by men - I do not want to use hard words - whose rise to power has been proportionate to the animosity with which they have acted against this country, no doubt in pursuance of their own patriotic impulses, and whose position in power is based upon the violation of solemn Treaty engagements."
The latter was a clear reference to De Valera with whom he had earlier contrasted Michael Collins, with whom Churchill had negotiated the 1921, to whom he referred in his speech as "a man of his word".
Churchill went on to ask the pertinent question as to what guarantee there was that the Free State would not remain neutral in any future conflict in which Britain was involved (bearing in mind that Britain still attached Dominion status to the Free State along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa who all declared war on Germany along with Britain in 1939 - De Valera had used the Abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 to break the link with the British Crown although the Free State (then Eire) did not leave the Commonwealth until April 1949 - a move which De Valera, then in opposition, curiously opposed). Of course there was none and indeed the removal of the British from the Treaty Ports enabled De Valera to maintain the Free State's neutrality throughout WWII.
Chamberlain, who was still a member of the War Cabinet in June 1940 and was largely responsible for drafting Britain's offer to De Valera, maintained that he was 'disappointed' by De Valera's neutral stance when war broke out and that had not been his expectation when negotiating away the Treaty Ports the year before. It was not to be the only time that Chamberlain was to have his expectations dashed by a foreign leader with whom he had negotiated in 1938.
Churchill's main aim, therefore, was to recover the Treaty Ports, bearing in mind that Northern Ireland had no Atlantic seaboard. The War Cabinet chose as its emissary to De Valera the then Minister of Health, Malcolm Macdonald, the son of the former Prime Minister, who had had considerable experience of directly negotiating with De Valera before the war over both the Treaty Ports issue and the series of retaliatory tariffs between both countries after De Valera had refused to continue to reimburse Britain for the payment of land annuities agreed under the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.
Macdonald had certainly drawn the short straw, however. After two unproductive meetings on 17 & 20 June which he reported back to the War Cabinet when it was Chamberlain who argued that the Treaty Ports should be seized by force whilst, curiously, Churchill (probably mindful of the impact on American public opinion) argued for restraint.
At a final meeting on 26 June Macdonald gave the following memorandum (which had largely been drawn up by Chamberlain) (text taken from Tim Pat Coogan's "De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow" pbk.edn pp.551-2):
1) A declaration to be issued by the United Kingdom Government forthwith accepting the principle of a United Ireland.
2) A joint body including representatives of the Government of Eire and the Government of Northern Ireland to be set up at once to work out the constitutional and other practical details of the Union of Ireland. The United Kingdom Government to give such assistance towards the work of this body as might be required...
3) A joint Defence Council representative of Eire and Northern Ireland to be set up immediately.
4) Eire to enter the war on the side of the United Kingdom and her allies forthwith, and, for the purposes of the defence of Eire, the Government of Eire to invite British naval vessels to have the use of the ports in ire and British troops and aeroplanes to co-operate with Eire forces and to be stationed in such positions in Eire as may be agreed between the two Governments.
5) The Government of Eire to intern all Germans and Italian aliens in the country and to take any further steps necessary to suppress Fifth Column activities.
6) The United Kingdom Government to provide military equipment at once to the Government of Eire..."
The flaw in this proposal which De Valera swiftly spotted was that whilst the Free State's entry into the war was to be immediate unification was a post-dated cheque with no guarantee of what the British position would be if the by now semi-autonomous government of the North did not play ball.
As far as De Valera was concerned there was more than an element of deja vu when compared to the situation of 1914.Then the Liberal Government had got Â鶹ԼÅÄ Rule onto the Statute Book by means of the Parliament Act and were engaged in the discussion of the means of compelling recalcitrant Ulstermen into the Union when war broke out.
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Rule was put on hold for the duration but John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalists, became an enthusiastic recruiter for the British cause in the expectation that Â鶹ԼÅÄ Rule would be granted when hostilities ceased.
However peace saw the collapse of the Nationalist Party and its replacement by Sinn Fein, a further 3 years of renewed conflict before a new Treaty was agreed excluding the 6 Counties altogether. De Valera had no intention of becoming another John Redmond and consequently turned the offer down.
De Valera may also been motivated by the fact that it was he who had persuaded Fianna Fail to accept the Constitution in 1927, winning power in 1932 and after the bitter divisions of the Civil War political conflict had finally become largely
non-violent and institutionalised within the political system. A largely Catholic, peasant 26 counties suited De Valera's political outlook. Even if the objections of the Unionist leaders could have been overcome the admission of a large Protestant, partly industrialised minority would have destroyed the political balance that De Valera himself had helped to achieve within the Free State. This makes one wonder if the attachment of De Valera and his party to Irish unity was largely rhetorical and his response to the British offer of June 1940 seems to demonstrate this.
To be fair to De Valera the Free State, although it maintained diplomatic links with Germany and other Axis nations throughout, did not maintain a policy of strict neutrality and Tim Pat Coogan in his biography of De Valera reprints a letter dated 24 May 1941 outlining the assistance the Free State was then giving to the British in respect of intelligence, the use of air bases and trade.
German spies were rounded up and the IRA, then mostly funded and equipped by the Nazis, was ruthlessly and effectively destroyed as both a political and a paramilitary organisation by De Valera (although there was a good deal of self-interest to this - the old IRA made its last hurrah with a haphazard bombing campaign on the mainland in the 1950s which was also followed by a bout of repression from De Valera at the end of his career before a new generation, funded and equipped by maverick politicians from the South, launched a 'provisional' wing in 1971).
More Irishmen from the Free State voted with their feet (much to De Valera's chagrin although the Free State Government took no measures to prevent this) and crossed the border to join ther British forces (with several winning VCs) than supposedly loyal Ulstermen (where conscription did not apply, much to Churchill's irritation) did. WWII undoubtedly helped Eire to get out of the trough of the inter-war depression which had been greatly exacerbated by De Valera's 'pastoralisation' policy and his tariff wars with Britain (the main effect of which had been to encourage large-scale migration to the mainland). The Irish Labour Party, which was pro-war particularly after the entry of the US in December 1941, grew in strength and helped remove De Valera from office after the war.
However although Churchill was lavish with praise on the US for passing the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 when it was still a non-combatant nation and even on Portugal (then run by the fascist dictator Salazar) when it made the Azores available to the Allies in 1943 for naval and air bases which helped turn around the Battle of the Atlantic no credit was given by him to De Valera for the measures taken above or indeed to those from the Free State who had served in the British forces for the duration.
His animosity towards De Valera, evident in his victory speech, dated from the cession of the Treaty Ports. Often the most perilous part of the voyage for the wartime transatlantic convoys was rounding the North of Ireland in order to enter Belfast. This became known as 'U-boat Alley'. The lack of an Atlantic port between Glasgow and Bristol was a considerable disadvantage to British shipping.
Although Coogan argues the best case he can for De Valera one has the feeling that De Valera's antipathy towards the British blinded him to the broader issues of WWII. De Valera's personal visit to the German Legation to express his condolences on the death of Hitler (who had after all committed suicide) roused particular distatse in America, coming as it did on the heels of the revelations from the newly-liberated Auschwitz and Belsen camps. Hitler was not simply another foreign leader and I do not know of any other instance, barring the demise of a Pope, where De Valera paid a similar visit.
Although De Valera's response to Churchill's speech in 1945 may have won him cheap applause from die-hard Irish nationalists to compare even British rule in Ireland with the previous 6 years of Nazi brutality in Europe with its mass-extermination camps and torture chambers and medical experimentation is fatuous and il-considered in the extreme.
Whilst De Valera undoubtedly remains the most dominant political force the Irish Republic has yet produced the fact that Irish unity remains as distant as ever owes much to his influence and to the spurning of an opportunity thrown up by the particularly dire circumstances (as far as Britain was concerned) of 1940. -
Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
Allan D
I must thank you for another excellent post in which you covered so much ground..
You mention the problems thrown up during the economic "World Chaos" of the early Thirties. As a former Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill may also have had views on the National Debt issue, when De Valera claimed that Ireland should be reimbursed for all that the Irish people had contributed to servicing the British National Debt since the Act of Union.
Pesumably this issue would also arise should other parts of the United Kingdom achieve independence.
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
In fact the London Agreement of 1925 made with William Cosgrave and the Fine Gael government 7 years before De Valera took office excused the Free State from any responsibility for the British National Debt. The only obligation was an annual payment of £250,000 for loans made by the British government under the various Land Acts from 1870 to 1903 that enabled tenant farmers to buy the freehold of their properties.
Although De Valera jibbed at this payment he nevertheless continued to collect £4m every year in annuities from the farmers themselves thus transferring the whole of the receipts from the loans to the Irish Government. This combined with his disastrous tariff policy greatly aggravated the effect of the inter-war depression on the Irish economy which resulted in a large economic migration from the Free State:
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Message 15
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
Allan D
But I seem to recall that Stephen King Hall in "Our Own Times 1913-38" (1938) does mention De Valera raising up the question of Ireland being reimbursed for all its National Debt contributions since the Union possibly when campaigning around 1929.
I think that the concession of taking the loan repayments in lieu, that you mention, was the compromise that was achieved in that time of financial crisis.
Cass -
Message 16
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
I should imagine, given the small tax base that Ireland had that the British government spent more, certainly in its last 70 years there, on the Irish than it received from them.
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Message 17
Posted by ShaneONeal (U14303502) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
"Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.
Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliation's, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?"
Ouch!"
Great post. -
Message 18
Posted by ShaneONeal (U14303502) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
"The Irish Army had less than a handfull of armoured cars and no tanks. It had no airforce..."
This is factually inaccurate gf. They did have a number of tanks, Commets and Landsverks (you can see an example in the National museum in Dublin). They had the army air corps who flew a few hurricanes and some other planes.
Presumably post invasion by UK or Germany they would have reverted to guerrilla warfare which had been successful against UK in 1920.
Germany may indeed have been more vicious in such a scenario than the UK needed to be in 1920, but in none of the countries invaded by Germany did the Germans defeat the guerrilla armies who opposed them. -
Message 19
Posted by Charlie (U14548459) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
Just one point; conscription has always been a Reserved matter i.e. it was never devolved to the Northern Ireland administration but remained and remains under the control of Westminster. So the NI administration had no control of conscription whatsoever. The Northern Ireland Government tried hard to persuade London to extend conscription to the Province, but in vain. The reason that London gave for its refusal was the danger that IRA/Sinn Fein would try to exploit the fear of conscription, which it did to win so many seats in the 1918 Election, (which let to a complete split with the rest of the UK - something Sinn Fein's founder never envisaged).
Despite Westminster's attitude on this matter, the NI Government encouraged recruitment drives and the whole war effort, through industial and agricultural production, the use of air bases and ports etc. All historians agree that the Port of Londonderry, in particular, was crucial to winning the Battle of the Atlantic.
As for Churchill, his attitude was expressed in his famous letter to the NI Goverment (1943), in which he stated, 'Here by the grace of God, Ulster stood faithful sentinel.'
Charlie. -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
Charlie
That is an interesting point about conscription.. and the inference of a previous post that compared recruitment in Ulster and in the Free State. As I understand it too the North was more industrialised with perhaps more people in essential industries.
As in 1914 unemployment, underemployment and low pay were at times a factor too in recruitment.
Though there are those who regard the compulsory element of conscription as a negative, I have suggested before that the rights that are accorded to a conscript- like the right to get your job back, if you survive and still want it- may well have counted for many men with family responsibilities to wives and children that had the most immediate call of their loyalties.
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Harold Nicholson's War Dairies, quite apart from his own mission to see De Valera, show the tenor of some of the conversation in "high places".
In February 1941 he attended a dinner at the Dorchester given by Rebecca West for Wendell Wilkie, the defeated Republican candidate in the US Presidential elections, who had been sent over by Rooseveldt. He had flown to Dublin and said of his interview with De Valera , that De Valera had produced a map to show how the English still threatened their country by the monstrous occupation of Northern Ireland. Wilkie said that that did not matter now, but what about the bases. Secret discussions were underway about organising joint US/UK convoys, and the loss of the Irish bases reduced the range of the destroyer escorts.
Ireland, he said, was proving a disadvantage to the cause of freedom and American opinion would not be with her. De Valera, he said, was startled, and accused the British Government of stupidity. Wilkie said that was common knowledge, and asked "You want Britain to win?". De Valera agreed. So Wilkie pointed out that he was making that more difficult by refusing to lease the bases back to Britain. De Valera said that he was afraid that, if he leased the bases back to Britain, Dublin might get bombed. But Wilkie had visited Coventry and Birmingham, and said "American opinion will not be with you."
Just hearsay evidence of course, but those at the dinner were people of power.
Later that year in October he met Malcom Macdonald, who contended that he had been right to give up the Irish bases. "Had we kept them we might be at war with Eire today and American help would be more distant than it is. Besides, if we get through the war without breaking Irish neutrality, we shall have a grievance against Eire instead of Eire having her dull, unending grievance against us."
Same caveat applies.
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Why would the retention of the Treaty Ports been a cause for war? Gibraltar, which was of vital importance to the Allies in the Battle of the Mediterranean and Operation Torch (as well as being the final point in a long escape route for downed allied airmen) did not cause Spain to break her neutrality.
The ports themselves were always sovereign Irish territory. It was only the naval facilities that were in question. Portugal granted naval and air facilities in the Azores to the Allies in 1943 despite being neutral and Britain had extended naval bases to the US in its West Indian colonies in return for the 50 WWI destroyers in July 1940 so there would have been nothing exceptional in De Valera reopening the ports to the Allied navies considering the importance of the Atlantic as a supply route not only for Britain but also for Eire.
In reality the 1938 agreement resulted from De Valera's desire to unpick the 1921 Treaty which he had vehemently opposed and had more to do with the internal politics of the Free State than with any appreciation of Eire's national security.
The Americans found De Valera's position quite incomprehensible and he probably caused Roosevelt more anger and irritation than even his alphabetical neighbour, De Gaulle. Coogan devotes a whole chapter in his biography to the conflict between De Valera and FDR's wartime envoy to Dublin, David Gray.
Dublin was actually bombed three months after the interview between Willkie and De Valera, in response to the support the Eire Fire Service gave during the "Belfast Blitz" of April 1941 and De Valera's protest to the German government afterwards (the Northern Ireland Government had made even more inadequate provision against aerial attack than the British Government had with a consequence that the casualty rate was proportionately much higher - for an account of the Belfast raids and the cross-border support as well as Churchill's attempt to apply conscription to Northern Ireland which was overruled by the War Cabinet read Juliet Gardiner's excellent "The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Front 1939-45").
This was one of 8 raids on Irish territory by the Luftwaffe during 1940-1:
For any other state any or all of these attacks would have provided an ironcast casus belli to join the Aliied war effort. The fact that he chose not to seems to me ample proof that De Valera's Anglophobia blinded him to the much greater cause of the survival of human freedom. -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Allan D
That is a good question.. and one can only guess what MacDonald had in mind. He had of course an intimate knowledge of the Irish question having negotiated the deal in 1938.
I think, however, you yourself have pointed to a minority of Irish Nationalists being sympathetic to Germany, and Hitler's case of having been badly treated in the post-war settlements, as they may well have felt Ireland had been.
A "supposal" case (I have recently re-watched a programme about the Belfast born C.S. Lewis) could be made for the idea that British retention of the bases, followed by the outbreak of the war, followed by Britain's humiliation at Dunkirque and the bombing of British ports, which would have included those in Eire, might have allowed the pro-German Irish faction to persuade Eire to do the same as Mussolini- jump on the band-wagon of triumphant Nazism to further national ends. German aid might then have been forthcoming to help the "reconquest" of the basis along with Northern Ireland.
We can not know whether MacDonald genuinely believed this as a probability, but the disadvantages of his deal to hand them to Eire were so evident at the time that a certain element of self-justification was necessary... And if this was Ramset MacDonald's son he would have inherited a family burden of self-justification in the face of stern criticism.
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
The biggest pro-German faction in the Irish state was the IRA, which was almost exclusively Nazi-funded and equipped. De Valera pursued a ruthless campaign against the IRA during WWII using internment, special courts and aggressive interrogation techniques that most would characterise as torture today.
At one point he even halted the trial of an IRA suspect and changed the law to secure a conviction after the court had thrown out evidence on the grounds that it had been obtained by duress (which was true). I do not think that De Valera had any sympathy for the Nazi cause or that Nazi sympathisers had any chance of achieving political power in the Free State.
His main political rivals were more, not less, sympathetic to the Allied cause and had a Fine Gael government been in power Eire may well have become a combatant nation.
I think De Valera's position can be better explained by the devastating effect the Civil War had had on Irish politics and his desire to maintain the delicate constitutional settlement that had eventually been to put into place afterwards. His insistence on neutrality is then more akin to that of Franco (who was, of course, unlike De Valera, a dictator not a democratic head of government) since both were concerned that the uncertainties of war might have destroyed that settlement.
As far as Macdonald is concerned he was under no illusions about De Valera. At their first meeting on 17 June 1940 to discuss Eire's possible entry into the war when Macdonald met De Valera again for the first time in two years he noted:
"He was in one way the old de Valera...His mind is still set in the same hard, confined mould as of yore. But in another way he appeared to have changed. He made no long speeches; the whole procedure was more in the nature of a sustained conversation between two people than sometimes used to be the case. He seemed depressed and tired, and I felt he had neither the mental nor the physical vigour he possessed two years ago."
(Coogan, p.550).
By this stage De Valera's political career had lasted for over a quarter of a century and his eyesight was beginning to deteriorate. Remarkably it was to continue for a further two decades with him remaining in the honorific post of President (although almost deaf and blind) until 1973. -
Message 25
Posted by ShaneONeal (U14303502) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
"De Valera had produced a map to show how the English still threatened their country by the monstrous occupation of Northern Ireland. Wilkie said that that did not matter now...Ireland, he said, was proving a disadvantage to the cause of freedom"
Didn't matter to who? How can the Yank talk in terms of freedom and then dismiss the Irish right to that same freedom?
"if we get through the war without breaking Irish neutrality, we shall have a grievance against Eire instead of Eire having her dull, unending grievance against us."
Thats beautiful isn't it,the Brit grievance against Éire is that she won't give up her harbours for one of the beligerants; the Irish grievance is 800 years of foreign occupation and domination - yet it is the Irish who are made out to be the most negative - 800 years of persecution=dull, unending grievance - charming! -
Message 26
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
The British did not, and do not, have a "monstrous occupation" of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland came into existence, and continues in existence because of the wish of the people who live there and can only be changed with their consent and that is now the position of the Irish Government since 1998.
In 1941 the clear threat to Irish sovereignty, made evident by the bombing of Dublin and other sites, came from Berlin not London. There was no question of the Irish 'giving up' their harbours or anything else. Allowing the British and, presumably, the Americans naval facilities in WWII would have no more compromised Irish sovereignty than granting naval facilities in the Azores compromised that of Portugal or US ships in the Caribbean threatened British colonial rule in the West Indies.
To compare British rule with that of the Nazis is absurd and fatuous in the extreme. -
Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Shane ONeal
You presumably therefore persist in regarding those who James VI/I settled in the north - as a deliberate attempt establish a loyal presence in Ireland- as no part of your Irish nation, that you say has existed for so long.
My black pupils when we tackled Apartheid in South Africa saw the fact that the Dutch Boers who went their almost at the same time do have a right to consider themselves South African, and the ANC had never denied that. For those of them who were first generation British born Afro-Caribbeans this was easily equated with their own perception of their right to be considered English- without having to abandon all of their roots.
England has paid dearly for the mistakes of Scottish rule that have now led to three lots of revolution; but the legacies of the Stuarts in Ireland appears to an Englishman to have been particularly tragic.
Nevertheless I asked the Irish couple if they could point me to a time in the last 1,000 years when this Irish nation had a secure national government whose writ ran uncontested by any significant force at home or abroad, of long enough duration to offer the State of England credible and enduring conditions of peace and amity. My English history is full of Ireland being a dagger poised at the back of England whenever England was engaged in fighting to curb the ambitions of European superpowers- The Papacy, Spain, France and Germany.
Do you count as members of your Irish nation those Irish Nationalists who led the campaigns for Independence during the American Revolution, though many of them were scions of families linked to what you regard as a "monstrous occupation"? Like the American Revolution it seems that a successful outcome would have resulted in those with 'de facto' power gaining 'de jure' power.
As for English domination, I think that Alan D has quite correctly identified the tragedy of the persistant economic weakness of Ireland, and the way that so many Irish people over the years have voted with their feet. I have read of much bitterness over the lack of investment in Ireland during the "English" period of her history. But, as with the protests of the last government about the failure of the banks and such to lend money, lending money is always tied to proven potential and existing and enduring securities. As I think you have said the guerrilla tactics that were employed by the Irish resistance to "English occupation" made Ireland for a long time a "sub-prime" place.
And De Valera, having spent so much of his life in Canada, seemed to have something of a quaint colonial idea of a rural homesteading Ireland. It seems to me that there are interesting parallels with T.S. Eliot who returned from Puritan New England back to England hoping to reconnect with the world of Thomas Becket, Richard III etc. .. Only when the European Union decided to treat the Irish Republic as a desperate case like the South of Italy, and US attitudes responded to the Republics contribution to the peace process, did Ireland go through its recent economic miracle.
As this is the History Board it is perhaps inappropriate to consider Future History in which the weight of the PIGS brings down the whole European Community as it is, and Ireland like many other states will have to consider how it can find a new place in the new world that is emerging in these revolutionary times.
Cass -
Message 28
Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Regarding the following I can sight no real evidence. I met an American in the USA who belonged to a flying club, because of my accent he thought I was Irish. I corrected him on that matter then he told me that one of the flying club members was Irish and he learned to fly planes during the war as a young teenager taxing German air planes up and down the beach in the evenings in the Irish Republic. If it were not true what would be the need to spin a yarn, to impress his fellow American members? would go over as a lead brick to airmen in the club who were WW2 flyers.
The numbers of Republican Irish merchant seamen sailing on Allies ships who died because of Ireland's supposed neutrality. In the British Army during the war we had a number of soldiers from the Republic of Ireland, going home on leave they were given civilian clothes before crossing the border as they would have been interned if in uniform. Saw a supposed true documentary on TV of an American bomber who had to ditch, they got safely ashore in the Irish Republic and the villagers knowing the American crew would be interned if the authorities were aware of them hid them before repatriation. There may have been other similar events, documented and otherwise. -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
rhmnney
Thanks for an interesting message..
It really tends to confirm a conviction in an Englishman's breast that really Irish history has rarely been as simple as it is sometimes portrayed... And as you point out, whatever the official position about Irish neutrality there were many people from the Republic who did regard it as their struggle.
Not surprisingly I cancelled a number of putative responses to M O'Neal over the last few days, for Irish affairs seem to be full of complexities and contradictions and one enters into discussion of them at gross peril..though that really works to the disadvantage of Ireland more than anywhere else.
Henry Hobhouse in his section on Potatoes in his book "Seeds of Change" takes the line that the British presence in Ireland had created a situation by the early nineteenth century in which the Irish had learned to be "chancers" in order to respond to the negatives and positives presented by Britain in Ireland, in the British mainland and in the British and ex-British Empire.
Meanwhile the British were responding to negatives and positives of their own from a stronger position.. based upon their traditional concepts of democracy and human rights.
I agree with Allan D's remarks about any comparison between Britain and Nazi Germany.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by ShaneONeal (U14303502) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
"Northern Ireland came into existence, and continues in existence because of the wish of the people who live there and can only be changed with their consent"
I was purely refering to the Yanks comment, how easily he dismissed Devs concern over Irish freedom as if US or UK freedom was of a different variety.
On consent the Irish demanded democratically the right to independence and this was vetoed by armed force and partition was enforced. You can create 'majorities' within any country - i.e. you could create an Islamic 'majority' within England if you wish to design it so.
I am not comparing Nazi rule to British imperialist rule, they are different in degree and timescale but they are alike in imperialist intent. -
Message 31
Posted by ShaneONeal (U14303502) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
"You presumably therefore persist in regarding those who James VI/I settled in the north - as a deliberate attempt establish a loyal presence in Ireland- as no part of your Irish nation"
They don't wish to be consider so.
"Do you count as members of your Irish nation those Irish Nationalists who led the campaigns for Independence during the American Revolution"
If they considered themselves part of the Irish nation, then that is what they were.
"As for English domination, I think that Alan D has quite correctly identified the tragedy of the persistant economic weakness of Ireland,"
Are you saying economic weakness is an excuse for one country to dominate another - the US corporates will like that approach. Also economic weakness was designed as part of the system of domination, it took many centuries to perfect.
Finally I think the insult of describing countries - and their people - as PIGS is scandelous. It was no doubt instigated by the gutter press but that is no excuse for the so-called educated to pesist in employing this dehumanising terminology. -
Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Shane
Unlike Winston Churchill you obviously consider the pig to be an inferior species.. I on the other hand have a great English belief in equality of all living things in spite of difference.. I do not need to think myself superior. But that is in part because the English learned a long time ago how to become one community and internalise the externality of the successful invader. They could join our team.
The fact is that economically weakness and strength is likely to make one country subservient to and dependent on another..
So I have suggested that many individual Irish during the industrial revolution contributed to the strength of the British mainland and the weakness of Ireland by selling off their Labour to mainland Britain for wages that followed the Subsistence Theory. In fact the Irish often lived even more cheaply in order to have money to bring back to Ireland, but Ireland was deprived of their energy and creativity-- and with that the Capital development that would have made for a stronger Nation. The Irish then went and made economic successes of many other parts of the Empire, where, as Gandhi found in South Africa, it was easier to put differences aside and work together for the common good.
Cass -
Message 33
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
All countries act in their own self-interest. Ireland was no different in 1940 but was singled out as part of a propaganda war at that time. The United States would not enter the war for another year-and-a-half! I think over 20 countries in Europe chose neutrality at the outbreak of war, most of them small and inoffensive like Eire. De Valera was not responsible for our neutrality. It was adopted by all political parties in Ireland and was the country’s declared policy *before* the outbreak of war and the collapse of France and the BEF at Dunkirk.. We were militarily and economically weak and our democracy was only 20 years old. De Valera had spent the 30s stabilising our democracy. He had produced our constitution and dealt with Ireland’s fascists and the IRA. Dev introduced the Treason Act (1939) and the Offences Against the State Act (1939) to combat IRA activities. Throughout the war hundreds of IRA members were interned, half-a-dozen were executed including the murderer of an Irish policeman. Three IRA men died on hunger-strike in Dev’s jails.
However, we violated our neutrality repeatedly in favour of Britain. Irish government sympathies were generally pro Allied and the German ambassador to Eire, Hempel, reported this accordingly. If Eire was pro-Nazis as Churchill dishonestly claimed then why did the Germans have to draw up an invasion plan for the country. Were we not going to welcome them with tea and sandwiches on our shores? [‘Ah, ye will! Go on, go on, go on, go on’]. We interned Axis personnel but returned Allied ones across the border into Northern Ireland. Hundreds of thousands of our citizens went to Britain to join their armed forces or work as civilians in their war industries. At one point we assisted the Britsh Forces to recruit in Ireland – there were recruiting offices in Dublin and elsewhere. We cooperated with British intelligence on many levels, not least to allow them to operate reconnaissance flights from the mouth of the river Shannon in the west. British aircraft were allowed to overfly our airspace, the so-called ‘north-west corridor’. Churchill knew all of this when he made his ungracious and dishonest speech about Eire ‘frolicking with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart's content’.
The true nature of the relationship between Eire and the UK during the war has come to light with the release of official papers by the London and Dublin governments over the years. The propaganda war, of which Churchill’s speech was but a part, told downright lies about the De Valera government and its actions through the war. Of course, propaganda works best when it can highlight and magnify some element of truth. There were German sympathizers in Ireland but very few, if any, were Nazi sympathisers. Their pro-German posturing was more about being anti-British. Joseph Walshe, Secretary at External Affairs, who has been labeled as ‘pro-Nazi’, was unquestionably anti-British. The evidence is clear that in 1940 he was in favour of giving the United States military facilities in Eire in return for keeping the British out! Obviously, every country acted in its own self interest, as they always do. Eire was no different. If Germany had invaded Eire its forces would have been opposed just the same as if Britain’s had. Eire’s neutrality was more about its own inherent problems and was a statement of its independence on the world stage. It was the Europe’s war but our ‘Emergency’.
Also, the fact that Churchill did not invade Eire or forcibly recover the Treaty Ports shows two things. First, he did not have the necessary moral justification to do so despite the propaganda campaign laid down to provide just that, and secondly, and more tellingly, he did not have to because Eire cooperated sufficiently despite her neutrality.
It is a pity that posters here, or their teachers, are not professional enough despite their posturing to have kept abreast of modern historical research. They prefer the old untruths, half-truths and prejudices. As William Hazlitt said: ‘Prejudice is the child of ignorance’. -
Message 34
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
rhmnney
Thanks for an interesting message..
It really tends to confirm a conviction in an Englishman's breast that really Irish history has rarely been as simple as it is sometimes portrayed... whatever the official position about Irish neutrality there were many people from the Republic who did regard it as their struggle. Casseroleon, this is the *very same* as the following message he posted to this board under a different nickname on March 6, 2009. It is Message 30 at the following link (although the link enters the thread at Message 25):
Mick__mac, here in California I was told the following can't vouch for truth but was told by a air pilot, he belonged to a flight club, and claimed that one of the members in his club started his training in flying as a teenager, taxiing German planes up and down the Western sea shore in Eire during the War, said they were spotter planes for convoys. Many Americans are pilots and all I've found are very disciplined and trust worthy, goes with the occupation or pastime, won't last long otherwise. May have been a myth but some in the club were ex-RAF fighter pilots so it could be true as would be questioning it. Thinking of it, they may have been regular civilian small planes and not military so regardless who were flying it German or Irish the mission would be the same.
On an American TV program saw what claimed to be a true event where an American Bomber with full crew had to ditch near the Eire west coast during the War. On getting ashore the Irish villagers found they were American and would be interned if the authorities knew of them, so the villagers kept quiet about it and kept them hidden, unsure of the end, whether they managed to get them to N. Island, but were kept out of the hands of the authorities, many Irish have relatives in the USA so quite a bond between the Irish and Americans. This is rubbish, pure and simple. I hope as a professed teacher of history that the ‘conviction in your breast’ is supported by evidence and not messageboard posts like this. -
Message 35
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
On the point about Dev’s rejection of Churchill’s offer of a united Ireland, why focus on Dev’s response? Dev quite rightly rejected what could never be delivered by Britain. The offer is a perfect example of expediency over principal. The offer was made behind the back of the Northern Ireland people and demonstrates Churchill’s disregard of their rights and wishes. The Northern Ireland leader, William Craig, expressed disgust at what he called Britain’s treachery. Dev was being pragmatic when he refused the offer on the grounds that the north would not agree and the result would be civil war.
The Anglo-Irish Agreements of 1938 were threefold and were made during Neville Chamberlain’s period of government. Dev always respected Chamberlain who he saw as a man of integrity, justice and honour. In his reply to Churchill’s ungracious post-war speech Dev expressed the hope that Chamberlain would find ‘the honoured place in British history which is due to him, as certainly he will find it in any fair record of the relations between Britain and [Ireland]’. Under the agreements Britain handed back the Treaty Ports, the Land Annuities issue was amicably settled by a final payment of £10 million and Britain reopened her markets to Irish cattle and food products. During the war a lot of Irish food produce fed British people and the labour and expertise of Irish people kept British industry going while her menfolk were away fighting. Of course, after the war those same Irish people became pariahs [‘No Irish Need Apply’]. Much of Chamberlain’s government motivation in coming to agreement with De Valera in 1838 was to secure an ally of a neighbour at his backdoor who had been at loggerheads with Britain for too long. Both he and his Dominions Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, were of one mind in bringing the irish ‘Economic War’ to an equitable conclusion and such a policy was in keeping with their general desire for international justice. -
Message 36
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
rhmnney, you said
Regarding the following I can sight no real evidence. I met an American in the USA who belonged to a flying club, because of my accent he thought I was Irish. I corrected him on that matter then he told me that one of the flying club members was Irish and he learned to fly planes during the war as a young teenager taxing German air planes up and down the beach in the evenings in the Irish Republic. If it were not true what would be the need to spin a yarn, to impress his fellow American members? would go over as a lead brick to airmen in the club who were WW2 flyers.
The numbers of Republican Irish merchant seamen sailing on Allies ships who died because of Ireland's supposed neutrality. In the British Army during the war we had a number of soldiers from the Republic of Ireland, going home on leave they were given civilian clothes before crossing the border as they would have been interned if in uniform. Saw a supposed true documentary on TV of an American bomber who had to ditch, they got safely ashore in the Irish Republic and the villagers knowing the American crew would be interned if the authorities were aware of them hid them before repatriation. There may have been other similar events, documented and otherwise. Do you recall posting the same thing on here over a year ago under a different name. You've had a year to find the evidence! Here is the link. It takes you into the thread at Message 25 so you have to scroll down to Message 30.
. Your message then read as follows: Mick__mac, here in California I was told the following can't vouch for truth but was told by a air pilot, he belonged to a flight club, and claimed that one of the members in his club started his training in flying as a teenager, taxiing German planes up and down the Western sea shore in Eire during the War, said they were spotter planes for convoys. Many Americans are pilots and all I've found are very disciplined and trust worthy, goes with the occupation or pastime, won't last long otherwise. May have been a myth but some in the club were ex-RAF fighter pilots so it could be true as would be questioning it. Thinking of it, they may have been regular civilian small planes and not military so regardless who were flying it German or Irish the mission would be the same.
On an American TV program saw what claimed to be a true event where an American Bomber with full crew had to ditch near the Eire west coast during the War. On getting ashore the Irish villagers found they were American and would be interned if the authorities knew of them, so the villagers kept quiet about it and kept them hidden, unsure of the end, whether they managed to get them to N. Island, but were kept out of the hands of the authorities, many Irish have relatives in the USA so quite a bond between the Irish and Americans. -
Message 37
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 12th July 2010
Mic Mac
Thank you for your post..
(a) Was it pure self-interest that led Britain to make the German invasion of Poland a matter of war?
(b) My impression is that I presented the evidence as recorded by Harold Nicholson in his diaries, pointing out that it was only hearsay evidence-- I could also have pointed out that Nicholson was at the time of those encounters a Minister of Information, in the Churchill Government. I have no reason, however, to believe that such things were not being said in London.
(c) As for what you say about military and economic weakness that also could be said about Britain in 1939, as Churchill had spent many years trying to Highlight. But I think that the Anglo-Irish situation was fraught with pitfalls for all concerned; and after all the French, as my French father-in-law recalls, did not have much stomach for the fight in many regions. The French resistance only really became stern and strong when French Communists got new orders from Moscow.
(d) It would not be inconsistent with what you have written of Ireland's and De Valera's overall contribution to the war,however, to imagine that the talks with Wilkie might indeed have given him cause for thought.
After all no-one can question that by the end of the war the USA had made a huge contribution to the defeat of Germany, but there was a huge problem with US public opinion-- and it is not foolish to imagine that there might have been similar problems with public opinion in Eire.
(e) Regarding a British invasion of Eire, I do not think that Churchill's teachers at Harrow, or Sandhurst would have left him in any doubt about the wisdom of opening up a new war front at your back, when you are already facing overwhelming force "in your face".
Cass -
Message 38
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
(a) Was it pure self-interest that led Britain to make the German invasion of Poland a matter of war? World War II was Round 2 of the Great War. It was part of an even older war between European powers that had been fighting each other out of self-interest for centuries. Following a failed policy of appeasement and the decision not to protect Czechoslovakia Britain had threatened Germany with war if it invaded Poland. So when Hitler called Chamberlain’s bluff and German tanks rolled over the Polish border Britain had no choice. Are you arguing that Britain went to war for some other noble ideal? For democracy and freedom, perhaps? For the right of small nations to prosper unmolested by bullying neighbours? If you are, such ideals were decidedly absent on other occasions where self-interest was more in evidence. (b) My impression is that I presented the evidence as recorded by Harold Nicholson in his diaries, pointing out that it was only hearsay evidence-- I could also have pointed out that Nicholson was at the time of those encounters a Minister of Information, in the Churchill Government. I have no reason, however, to believe that such things were not being said in London. I’m sure they were, along with a lot of other stuff as well. (c) … But I think that the Anglo-Irish situation was fraught with pitfalls for all concerned; and after all the French, as my French father-in-law recalls, did not have much stomach for the fight in many regions. The French resistance only really became stern and strong when French Communists got new orders from Moscow.  What on earth is the relevance of this to Ireland in 1940? (d) It would not be inconsistent with what you have written of Ireland's and De Valera's overall contribution to the war, however, to imagine that the talks with Wilkie might indeed have given him cause for thought. De Valera was pursuing a policy of neutrality that he believed would preserve Ireland from being embroiled in yet another squalid European war whose genesis lay in the imperialism of the past. Britain had to follow through on promises it made to Poland out of its own self-interests in Europe: Ireland wished to preserve its hard won freedom from the perceived threat of an old imperial master. I think it is fair to say that Germany invaded neutrals in pursuit of its self-interest; Britain did likewise. Britain was quick to drop Poland when expediency dictated. After all no-one can question that by the end of the war the USA had made a huge contribution to the defeat of Germany, but there was a huge problem with US public opinion-- and it is not foolish to imagine that there might have been similar problems with public opinion in Eire. The United States’ contribution was extracted from it by virtue of it being forced into the war by Japanese aggression two years after hostilities in Europe began. It was Germany who declared war on the USA. Until then it was neutral, just like Eire. (e) Regarding a British invasion of Eire, I do not think that Churchill's teachers at Harrow, or Sandhurst would have left him in any doubt about the wisdom of opening up a new war front at your back, when you are already facing overwhelming force "in your face". Churchill’s failure to invade Eire had nothing to do with fears about opening a new front at his back. He could not justify such an action internationally and, in any case, he simply had no need to invade because we cooperated enough with Britain on various levels. We supplied Britain with food, manpower and intelligence as I already described previously in this thread. We interned Axis personnel but returned yours across the border. Your D-Day landings depended on meteorological data passed by us in contravention of our declared neutral status. Eire cooperated to the best of her limited ability with Britain short of admitting British forces back onto Irish sovereign territory.
-
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 12th July 2010
Mic Mak
Thanks for your post.. Too close to the witching hour, and too many points to address.
Regards
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
<quote> I asked the Irish couple if they could point me to a time in the last 1,000 years when this Irish nation had a secure national government whose writ ran uncontested by any significant force at home or abroad, of long enough duration to offer the State of England credible and enduring conditions of peace and amity.</quote> My English history is full of Ireland being a dagger poised at the back of England whenever England was engaged in fighting to curb the ambitions of European superpowers- The Papacy, Spain, France and Germany. </quote>Ireland and Britain had much in common up to Norman invasion of each of them. Ireland was developing a single kingship or High King prior to 1169AD. The Anglo-Saxons had done likewise previously. But when, in the last 800 years, could Ireland have had a secure national government in the face of English/British interference in Irish affairs and how could such an Ireland offer England ‘peace and amity’? Maybe you would like to open a thread on this subject? <quote> Alan D has quite correctly identified the tragedy of the persistant economic weakness of Ireland, and the way that so many Irish people over the years have voted with their feet. </quote>Do you know the history of Britain’s relationship with Ireland? Britain legislated against our economic development for centuries. The fact that Irishmen left Ireland to seek employment and to survive was not because they wished to do so. It was a necessity. <quote>And De Valera, having spent so much of his life in Canada, seemed to have something of a quaint colonial idea of a rural homesteading Ireland.</quote>As far as I know Dev never set foot in Canada. I fear you are the one with the ‘quaint idea’!<quote>Irish affairs seem to be full of complexities and contradictions and one enters into discussion of them at gross peril</quote>Indeed, so.<quote> … the British were responding to negatives and positives of their own from a stronger position.. based upon their traditional concepts of democracy and human rights.</quote>You’re havin’ a laugh?! If your serious please open a thread on Britain’s ‘traditional concepts of democracy and human rights’.
As to your other comments regarding Ireland, PIGS, and the EU, you would be better served to focus your energies closer to home in the coming years. People in class-houses should not throw stones. -
Message 41
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Monday, 12th July 2010
I hope I can feel that any further response of mine is worth the making of the effort. I am 9 years on this board. Nothing ever changes!
-
Message 42
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Mic Mac
If I take the last post first:
Given the nature of these boards your long-term presence shows much capacity for endurance.. for it is only a vaguely regulated chaos in which we stagger around in a virtual space and therefore deprived of our essential survival instincts. Though I have "My Space" on one site that has no borders to keep out friend of foe.
My first Head of Dept as a teacher was a New Zealander who had enjoyed his fighting time in the Asian Zone in the 2WW. He said that jungle warfare felt like playing chess for the highest stakes. But he at least could use his survival instincts and kill the would be killer.
Here we are lost in space darkness-- Perhaps you can tell me, since I was pondering on this overnight. Is our sunlight produced by the action of the Sun's energy on the Earth's atmosphere? Can light exist in a vacuum?
In this seeming infinity with no borders, fixed points of reference etc anything we do, however, much we write will just get lost and shrink as all must in the face of the infinite to that which is without meaningful substance, so I am not surprised that after nine years you can feel that nothing changes.
We are told that nothing changes in space which we are filling up with man's debris which thus escapes the Earthly reality of the forces of decay.
But there may be another reason why you feel that nothing ever changes-- though this may be a purely subjective impression. By and large I seem to encounter you on threads like this one which deal with Irish issues, and I thank you for all of the thoughtful and informative posts in particular that you have addressed to me. This, however, creates the impression that you feel a particular mission to defend Ireland and the Irish people from calumny, denigration, accusation etc.
Now by definition the aim of any defence is to retain the status quo, and so, to some extent, this inevitably means that nothing ever changes unless you can then use your stronghold as a base from which to advance and claim new territory.
But here the kind of arguments that you have used in your recent posts offer nothing greater than the mere self-interested struggle for survival by a whole species of "chancers" who are all much the same the mere "Naked Apes" of modern science devoid of that Humanity that is associated with the Tree of Knowledge in that old Jewish creation myth. We must all learn to throw off the gift of knowledge, learning and understanding, and learn to survive in the same way as animals in this new challenge for mere physical survival.
So what about self-interest?
Your comment took me back to a Sixth-Form lesson in which I made our teacher quite uncomfortable by using that kind of argument about people who are admired and given the credit for "good works". Such people, I asserted, only do it because it makes them happier than they would be if they did not. So to that extent they may be said to be acting out of self-interest.
What was is someones idea of themselves? Three people whom I greatly admire are Martin Luther King, Mahatman Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. in each case their family background gave them a view of "self" that involved obligations of leadership and/or government responsibility. So Mandela's famous "the struggle is my life" could be applied to all of them: and Gandhi in particular went to great extremes of asceticism to suppress and destroy all selfishness and personal desires so that people could understand during those fasts to the death that his life meant nothing in the face of prevalent hatred, violence and mutual incomprehension.
So, as I have written many times, I suffer from "The Blessing and the Curse of Oxford"- my home town, which was built around a University that sought to promote a vision first of the Unity of all Christendom,and beyond that of all of God's creation, and later to create an elevated view of the potential within all Humanity.
So I spend my time on these Boards trying to defend Humanity in general: and my self-interest is to be prepared to live and die for that Oxford vision that the common people have always been striving towards what the Oxfordshire region can understand as English Peace.. But as Queen Elizabeth said to the United Nations the waging of peace is more challenging than the waging of war.
And this is probably not any kind of place to try to turn into a field of battle.. It is at best a No Man's Land.
I will have to come back to your other points later.. Time to do a bit of putting our own house in order.
Regards
Cass -
Message 43
Posted by Thomas_B (U1667093) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Hi Mick,
After I´ve read some posts on this thread, I really like to tell you that I´m sorry for your troubles, but besides this, I think that the points you´ve made in your posts are by far the better.
It´s a pity that some times the old arguments about the "special relationship" between the English and the Irish are a subject on and on with no much alterations in the posters opinions.
As you said "I am 9 years on this board. Nothing ever changes!". I am convinced, that if Ireland had not been occupied by the British (meaning the English, Welsh and Scottish in that term), their history might had developed quite in different ways. So I don´t believe that what the Irish merely claim that they have been dragged, oppressed and "forced" to fight the wars for the British Empire in that period of ca 800 years, would be wrong. I can´t recall any other country in Europe whose population tried for various times to raise against the English and gain their independence than the Irish. This isn´t a pure Republican point of view, it is what I´ve also learned about Irish history.
To get back to the OP and its question, I like to say that for Churchill in all his life, the British Empire was always on the top of his priorities, so even the divertion of Ireland in the 1920s was just a compromise to end the Irish Independence War in the 1920s, but I can´t say whether he would´ve foresee the outbreak of the civil war that followed upon the Free State treaty in Ireland. Nor would I dare to say that he even might had calculated such an developing.
As far as I know, to keep the status of neutrality of the Irish State during WWII has spared the country the bombings by the Germans as there has been air raids in Northern Ireland. This was a status the Irish Government kept for themselves as an guarantee by the German Government. What I regard as an embarrassment for De Valera is, that he went to the German Embassy in Dublin to give the Embassador his condulation after Hitler comitted suicide in 1945. I don´t know very much about his own intentions by doing so, maybe it can be see as an expression of gratitude towards the Germans that they have spared the Irish State the destruction like the UK received from 1940 to 1945. Otherwise I wouldn´t be surprised if he had other sympathies for them like to following the motto "your enemy is mine enemy too" in the sense of his attitude towards the English, as well as by thinking about the German support for the Irish to get their independence from Britain.
I just wonder whether Nordmann might give his contribution to this thread.
Regards,
Thomas -
Message 44
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Mick Mac
Just a quickie- thank you for questioning that suggestion of a De Valera Canada connection. He was of course born in New York USA and lived there for much of his childhood.
I have had a quick look at Stephen King-Hall's "Our Own Times", which is where I thought I had picked that up, and the only Canada reference I found was to the fact that during the negotiations of the late twenties it was agreed that the Canadian Constitutional arrangements with White Dominion Status could be used as a reference model.
Cass
Hi Thomas -
Message 45
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Hi Thomas_B
I have really nothing to add to what mick_mac has so eruditely and patiently set down in his responses to Cass's waffle, and even worse, Cass's reference to the Irish as "pigs". That really took the biscuit, I thought, and convinced me never to participate in a thread which he contributes to again.
Churchill, if you go by his own account, seems to have had something of a schizophrenic political outlook with regard to Ireland over his political lifetime and one can find snippets and quotes which would seem to support both contentions - that he was willing to authorize invasion or that he was willing to offer unification with the north. Both, as Mick has pointed out, are at most immaterial and at worst pure humbug. The co-operation between MI5 and G-2 from before and during the war, none of which was possible without consent from political leaders on both sides, is testament to the real-politik. The rest is posturing and propaganda. -
Message 46
Posted by Thomas_B (U1667093) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Hi Cass,
I´ve got the impression that the point Mick has made and the point you are referring to are not the same, according to your post concerning Martin Luther King, Ghandi etc..
As I said it before, it sounds again like the old song "The bad English and the good Irish". Debates like that we´ve had here for several times since I´ve joined these boards six years ago. There hasn´t been any solution achieved in which both sides had been put in the right balance.
Just a short story to tell you. When I started my interest in Irish history, 13 years ago, I´ve read a book about the Irish history. As for I don´t have the book by hand, I can´t tell you the name of the author now. While I was reading that book I really have to admit that going through the centuries when Ireland was occupied by the English (so the author was referring to them as the ruling class in Ireland), I´ve got some anti-English sentiment and felt very sorry for the Irish, although to be honest, the author has not spared to tell about the attrocities the Irish did in reverse towards the English in Ireland.
As I know you for nearly one year on these boards, I think that you are as well capable to see the historical facts of that English rulement in Ireland through those 800 years (courious some people count 800 years while Micheal Collins was always referring them to be 700 years). I can understand your attempt in bringing some positive about Englishness into the debate, by all means. I just think that might has not that weight in compare to what happened in Ireland in the aforesaid period because the Governors, Landlords and the whole British administration in Ireland was feeding the Irish anti-English sentiments by their unfair treatment towards the Irish people. There was no equality, and I see it really in that way that the Irish were up to the middle of the 19th century treatened as second class citizens in their own land. This because Ireland as a whole has been treatened as a colony.
Some posters have made assessments between the British and the Germans under the Nazi rule. I think that such assessments are totally out of any reasonable arguments. I just like to say, that by any means, the Irish had been much better off unter British rulement than in a re-united country, but depending on the "good will" of Hitler if the Germans had defeated Britain and occupied Ireland as well.
I think that this "bucket of Irish history" will make its round for further times passing the English.
Regards,
Thomas -
Message 47
Posted by Mick Mac (U5651045) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Just a quickie from me too for now:
Your original statement concerning Dev and Canada was as follows: And De Valera, having spent so much of his life in Canada, seemed to have something of a quaint colonial idea of a rural homesteading Ireland. You are now modifying this as follows: Just a quickie- thank you for questioning that suggestion of a De Valera Canada connection. He was of course born in New York USA and lived there for much of his childhood. Dev was born in 1882 in New York. He lived there until he was 2 years old at which time he was brought to Ireland where he was reared to adulthood. He is on record as saying that he had only one memory of his infancy in America and that was of the interior of a room. Hardly a memory on which to base his supposed ‘quaint colonial idea of a rural homesteading Ireland’! -
Message 48
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Mick Mac
(a) Regarding your self-interest remark--
Your observation about WWII being round two could be extended backwards. Writing in 1938 G.G. Coulton divided "modern history" into the period of the Omnicompetence of the Church followed by that of the Omnicompetence of the State. In 1941 C.Delisle Burns also saw post Medieval Times as an age of the State: and as the business of States was to use force and violence, internally and externally, the evolution of States inevitably involved wars. And only the global expansion before 1914 had prevented those States from fighting an armageddon that would destroy them. By the time that he was writing that was happening.
What was particular about England, however, [as I have argued in "The Roots of the Modern World"] is that the English people never bought totally into either of those ideas of Omnicompetence, though they knew that they had to live within the power structures of the various ages and learn how to use them in order that they might be able to live and prosper knowing that thrill that there is in just being alive.
Hence from the time that the Black Death produced a much greater centralized and authoritarian tendency within the Roman Church it was resisted within England. And when that same centralising and authoritarian strand was taken up by developing States that tendency too was resisted by the English.
Of course in a world where people seek to progress by the use of power and force, it is necessary to counter like with like; and the English have a long tradition of recruiting and enlisting people who are quite prepared to do their dirty work when dirty business is the order of the day.
As I have posted the other day on the civil disobedience thread, the English had their ways and means of checking some of the worst abuses of the power that was entrusted in its governing classes. Before this England disappeared Gilbert White wrote his classic "Natural History of Selborne" which is now recognised as the first real work that developed the view that all living things are part of one ecosystem that has to function as a whole.
But just as the Black Death was the mid-life Crisis of the Age of the Church, the Age of Revolution was the mid-life crisis of the Age of the State: and, just as the post Black Death era led to a conflict between the construction of a great centralised and poweful Church mechanism- and that other concept that the Church is the community of all souls living and dead, so the age of the State led to the conflict between the English idea of the rights of the Common People and the alien idea of the right of the State to channel the power of the Nation.
As many saw at the time just as the late pre-Reformation Church could only function at full power by draining into itself the vitality, force and initiative of its "congregation", the State could only function at full power by doing likewise.
Hence British policy having defeated the Nationalist Revolutionary Imperialism of France, to leave a Europe that might have been dominated by the older imperialisms of the Three Emperors League did promote its agenda of the small state, liberal parliamentary democracy, and England's tradition of extra-parliamentary democracy. This influenced British foreign policy which it might be argued was self-interested since it was aimed at reducing the unstable and terrible power of Empires and bringing Government to a Human level. Hence the support for the new post-Imperial republics in Central and South America, and for the creation of modern Greece, shortly followed by Belgium.
This policy that H.A.L.Fisher treats in his volume of the History of Europe entitled "The Liberal Experiment" eventually meant that it was in keeping with the English vision of the kind of world that they wanted to live in that the people accepted the need for Britain to fight in defence of Belgium in 1914, and in defence of Poland in 1939.
Regards
Cass -
Message 49
Posted by Thomas_B (U1667093) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Thanks Nordmann.
Sometimes - concerning Churchill - a schizophrenic political outlook could be seen as an expression of political impulsiveness. -
Message 50
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Mic Mac
Thanks for the correcting my facts..
But what about the more significant idea that of the rural homesteading Eire, that was portrayed over here in the Fifties and Sixties as a quiet almost throw back to the Middle Ages with people living in rural quietness in villages where the Priest was a central.
I have probably mentioned before the very able Sixth Former I talked to c1999, whose family ran a business here in South London, but who just had to go- for the sake of her sanity- to a rugged and sparse rural tranquility on the West Coast where she could almost imagine herself living as the monks of that great age of Celtic Christianity. She intended to go to university in Dublin.
Cass
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