Free De Valera's Irelands by Dermot Keogh, Keogh Doherty Page A
Authors: Dermot Keogh, Keogh Doherty
peopleâ, I would for myself, say no. I do not know how many would agree with me. I would say no, and I would say it for this reason: that I beÂlieve that as long as the language remains, you have a distinguishing characÂteristic of nationality which will enable the nation to persist. If you lose the language, the danger is that there would be absorption.
On the issue of partition itself, as distinct from the priority that he acÂcorded to it, it is evident from the many oscillations in the position he took up in relation to Northern Ireland that de Valera himself shared to a high degree the ambivalence and confusion of thought about the naÂture of Irish nationhood which has been a feature of Irish nationalism throughout the present century.
Even in the brief period between 1917 and 1921 his ideas on this subject seem to have gone through several phases. As John Bowman has pointed out in de Valera and the Ulster Question , in 1917â1918 he advocatÂed the expulsion or coercion of northern unionists. In 1919â1920, when in the United States, he modified this position to one of proposing that such unionists should be assimilated into the new Irish-Ireland. And in 1921, when the issue had to be faced in a practical way in preparing for the Treaty negotiations, he shifted his position to one of accommodating the unionists within a federal Ireland, externally associated with the BritÂish Commonwealth. Indeed at that time he even went so far as to proÂpose that individual Ulster counties should have the right to opt out of the new Irish state.
There were further changes of approach later, through which it is not easy to detect any consistent pattern. However, it is possible that the view to which he ultimately came â and one which is in fact strikingly relevant to the problem as it is now seen by many people in both parts of Ireland after two decades of continuous violence â was expressed in a speech made towards the end of his first sixteen-year term of office as head of the Irish government. On 24 June 1947 he rejected as so often beÂfore the use of force as a solution:
I believe that it [partition] cannot be solved, in any circumstances that we can now see, by force, and that if it were solved by force, it would leave a situation behind it which would mean that this state would be in an unÂstable position.
And he went on to observe that the problem was one primarily between north and south, and that Britain was not the ultimate obstacle to a soluÂtion â something now very generally understood in Ireland, although still not grasped by some Irish-Americans in the United States:
In order to end this [partition] you will have to get concurrence of wills beÂtween three parties â we here who represent the people of this part of IreÂland, those who represent the majority in the separated part of Ireland, and the will of those who are the majority for the time being in the British parliaÂment. It is true, I think, that if there were agreement between the peoples of the two parts of Ireland, British consent to do the things that they would have to do could be secured.
At one period Britainâs emotional and strategic commitment to Northern Ireland was, of course, a major additional obstacle to a united Ireland, but with the diminution in importance of this factor, the result has been to reveal in all its stark reality that, as de Valera implicitly recognised in that 1947 speech, the fundamental obstacle to the political unity of IreÂland is the attitude of the unionist population. And this is a problem that the irredentist policies pursued by de Valera long after he made that speech in 1947 â policies that from 1949 until at least 1969 came to be pursued also by other parties in the Irish state in the period up to 1969 â served to intensify, rather than to moderate.
A pluralist or a mono-cultural state?
From the outset, the new state had a clear
On the issue of partition itself, as distinct from the priority that he acÂcorded to it, it is evident from the many oscillations in the position he took up in relation to Northern Ireland that de Valera himself shared to a high degree the ambivalence and confusion of thought about the naÂture of Irish nationhood which has been a feature of Irish nationalism throughout the present century.
Even in the brief period between 1917 and 1921 his ideas on this subject seem to have gone through several phases. As John Bowman has pointed out in de Valera and the Ulster Question , in 1917â1918 he advocatÂed the expulsion or coercion of northern unionists. In 1919â1920, when in the United States, he modified this position to one of proposing that such unionists should be assimilated into the new Irish-Ireland. And in 1921, when the issue had to be faced in a practical way in preparing for the Treaty negotiations, he shifted his position to one of accommodating the unionists within a federal Ireland, externally associated with the BritÂish Commonwealth. Indeed at that time he even went so far as to proÂpose that individual Ulster counties should have the right to opt out of the new Irish state.
There were further changes of approach later, through which it is not easy to detect any consistent pattern. However, it is possible that the view to which he ultimately came â and one which is in fact strikingly relevant to the problem as it is now seen by many people in both parts of Ireland after two decades of continuous violence â was expressed in a speech made towards the end of his first sixteen-year term of office as head of the Irish government. On 24 June 1947 he rejected as so often beÂfore the use of force as a solution:
I believe that it [partition] cannot be solved, in any circumstances that we can now see, by force, and that if it were solved by force, it would leave a situation behind it which would mean that this state would be in an unÂstable position.
And he went on to observe that the problem was one primarily between north and south, and that Britain was not the ultimate obstacle to a soluÂtion â something now very generally understood in Ireland, although still not grasped by some Irish-Americans in the United States:
In order to end this [partition] you will have to get concurrence of wills beÂtween three parties â we here who represent the people of this part of IreÂland, those who represent the majority in the separated part of Ireland, and the will of those who are the majority for the time being in the British parliaÂment. It is true, I think, that if there were agreement between the peoples of the two parts of Ireland, British consent to do the things that they would have to do could be secured.
At one period Britainâs emotional and strategic commitment to Northern Ireland was, of course, a major additional obstacle to a united Ireland, but with the diminution in importance of this factor, the result has been to reveal in all its stark reality that, as de Valera implicitly recognised in that 1947 speech, the fundamental obstacle to the political unity of IreÂland is the attitude of the unionist population. And this is a problem that the irredentist policies pursued by de Valera long after he made that speech in 1947 â policies that from 1949 until at least 1969 came to be pursued also by other parties in the Irish state in the period up to 1969 â served to intensify, rather than to moderate.
A pluralist or a mono-cultural state?
From the outset, the new state had a clear