Dr. Bill Kissane
Associate Professor of Politics
Department of Government
London School of Economics
b.kissane@lse.ac.uk
After the storm. "De Valera's Ireland”: between conflict and consolation
This paper will analyse Eamon de Valera's version of Irish history between the end of the Irish civil war in 1923 and his resignation of President of Ireland in the early 1970s. None of the attempts to establish an Irish Republic (1916, 1919 and 1922) resulted in military victory. At the same time, it is not easy to say whether a conflict, such as the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), or the resulting civil war ended in victory or defeat. This is because, for de Valera at least, an answer to such questions depends on the much longer time frame he used in his speeches. In this long-term history the survival of 'the nation' is an important theme, and the Irish ’nation’s’ capacity for survival depended, not on its military and political achievements between 1916 and 1923, but to its possession of certain spiritual qualities. In this respect, de Valera’s outlook is very similar to that of other Irish Republicans of the period who believed that the cause of the Irish Republic (in 1916, 1920 or 1923) required above all a spiritual commitment. This paper makes three points about these speeches. First, their content is influenced by the fact the main audience is often the irish diaspora. Secondly, the connection between war and national identity in these speeches is best understood through the idea of consolation as a function of political leadership and historical narrative. The purpose was not to focus on recent history and its traumas, but to find consolation in longer-term patterns in which the nation showed its capacity for endurance and spiritual achievement. Thirdly, because of the ongoing partition of the island, the speeches suggest that de Valera saw the cause of Irish nationalism as ’ unfinished business’ and that the Indepence Struggle had not been completed. Indeed still at issue in the history of British-Irish relations was, he suggested, an ongoing clash of civilisations. In this respect his speeches, however consoling they are meant to be to Irish people abroad, are part of an ’Irish-Ireland’ perspective on the Irish question which admitted of no middle ground between Britain and Ireland.