Latest news with #deValera
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Film director Neil Jordan and the Éamon de Valera connection
'I'll never be forgiven for that. I don't really care', film director Neil Jordan told the Guardian newspaper last summer, referring to his depiction of former president and taoiseach Éamon de Valera in his 1996 film 'Michael Collins'. Jordan's insouciance about his portrayal of Ireland's third president echoes his verdict in his memoir, Amnesiac, also published last year. 'Did de Valera have a hand in Collins's death?', he asks. 'Probably not, but he could have prevented it. Did he have a nervous breakdown in the aftermath? I believe so, absolutely. And we all had to live inside it', he added. Disparaging de Valera had been a feature of Jordan's work, predating the Michael Collins film by 20 years and going back half-a-century to his first book, published a few months after de Valera's death in summer 1975. Night in Tunisia, Jordan's debut short story collection, ends with a story set mostly in a cafe on Dublin's O'Connell Street on the day of de Valera's State funeral 50 years ago this year. The street has been cleared of all vehicular traffic to make way for the procession of the funeral cortege to Glasnevin Cemetery. Inside the cafe a man in his mid-twenties is talking to a former lover, an older woman. She says that she and everyone of her generation was 'taught to idolise' de Valera, but the young man, named Neil, views the passing cortege as that of 'an animal dying' – 'an animal that was huge, murderous, contradictory'. READ MORE Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, Night in Tunisia was followed by Jordan's first novel, The Past, which was critically acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and the United States. It is also peppered with unflattering references to de Valera. 'That man who would stamp his unlikely profile on the history of this place as surely as South American dictators stick theirs on coins and postage stamps', a central character recalls. The novel is set in the years after the War of Independence and its first mention of de Valera, on the fourth page, is about his destruction of Dublin's Custom House and its ancient records in a fire that burned for three days. Éamon de Valera, who died, aged 92, on August 29th, 1975, was the dominant Irish politician of Jordan's childhood, teens and student days. He was elected successively to every Dáil from the first (1919-1921) to the 16th (1957-1959), serving as taoiseach six times and as President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) three times. He then served two consecutive terms as president of Ireland from 1959 to 1973. He was president of Ireland when Jordan graduated from UCD with a history degree in 1972. 'This strange figure, from Bruree in Co Limerick by way of Spain and New York, with his predilection for mathematics, Gaelic games and Catholicism', was Jordan's description of de Valera in his memoir. The schoolboy Jordan attended a de Valera rally at the GPO and he walked along O'Connell Street in Dublin on the day of de Valera's State funeral, September 2, 1975. It was in de Valera's national daily newspaper, the Irish Press, that Jordan's first published short story, On Coming Home, appeared in September 1974, a few months before de Valera's death. Jordan had four further stories published on the newspaper's New Irish Writing Page over the next two years. He won an award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998 for his adaptation of Patrick McCabe's novel The Butcher Boy, in which the Irish Press is mentioned. Jordan was shooting the Michael Collins film on the streets of Dublin when the Irish Press and its Sunday and evening sister papers ceased publication in May 1995, 30 years ago this summer. He supported the journalists following the closure and he said that the Irish Press had been an important outlet for him and writers of his generation. The Collins film ends with a screenshot of de Valera's reported 1966 acknowledgment that 'history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense'. But the two main political parties that grew out of the Collins/de Valera split over the Anglo Irish Treaty, and the ensuing Civil War in which Collins was shot dead, now share power in the Dáil. And Jordan has hailed how 21st century Ireland differs from the previous century. Praising Sally Rooney's novels in The Irish Times last year, he said: 'There's not a hint of de Valera's nonsense to be seen there'.
RTÉ News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- RTÉ News
It's 1945 and Churchill and de Valera are taking to the airwaves...
Analysis: The prime minister and Taoiseach had a frank exchange of views on Irish neutrality 80 years ago as World War II came to a close By Bryce Evans, Liverpool Hope University It is 80 years since Winston Churchill used a victory address on the BBC World Service on May 13th 1945 to lambast Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and Ireland's neutrality policy during the Second World War. "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 battlefront to prove their ancient valour, the approaches which the Southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats." Listening to the speech, which was broadcast to a huge global audience, it is clear that Churchill deliberately emphasised the different syllables of de Valera's name to subliminally conflate the devil, evil, and Éire, mispronouncing Dev's name as "D'evil Éire", as historian Ryle Dwyer notes. "This was indeed a deadly moment in our life," the British prime minister continued "and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland, we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera or perish forever from the earth." British prime minister Winston Churchill criticises Éamon de Valera and Irish neutrality in 1945 This was perhaps the most disingenuous passage of the speech. Churchill had regularly secretly disregarded Northern Ireland as a separate entity by offering a united Ireland in return for the abandonment of neutrality. This is documented in his letter to US president Franklin D Roosevelt of December 1940 7th and, following Pearl Harbor, his now-famous letter to de Valera, memorably quoting Thomas Davis in promising "a nation once again". But the threat of military intervention was a consistent feature of Churchill's thinking on Ireland and he'd pursued brutish trade intervention, in the form of a debilitating supply squeeze. In 1945, Churchill went on to name three Irishmen who had won the Victoria Cross. "I do not forget Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde, VC, DSO, Lance-Corporal Kenneally, VC, Captain Fegen, VC, and other Irish heroes that I could easily recite, and all bitterness by Britain for the Irish race dies in my heart." These men were a small component of the considerable number who fought for Britain in the conflict. From RTÉ Radio 1's History Show, UCD historian Conor Mulvagh on Éamon de Valera's reaction to Winston Churchill's verbal attack Although Churchill's speech was delivered in the aftermath of de Valera's maladroit decision to visit the German legation to express formal condolences on the death of Hitler, as Conor Mulvagh puts it, Churchill was nonetheless guilty of 'overstepping his vitriol'. As the research of Michael Kennedy and others has established, Ireland's tacit assistance to the Allies was considerable and the ports issue overstated. In claiming, in particularly gratuitous language, to have left de Valera's government to "frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart's content", Churchill knowingly omitted the considerable Anglo-Irish intelligence sharing that had gone on during the war. De Valera's measured reply - considered by many his finest speech - was broadcast live on Radio Éireann late on Sunday evening, May 16, 1945. He began by thanking God for sparing Ireland from the ravages of war, before turning to Churchill's words. From RTÉ Archives, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera replies to British prime minister Winston Churchill's criticism of Ireland's policy of neutrality throughout the Second World War "Mr Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain's necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean that Britain's necessity would become a moral code and that, when this necessity was sufficiently great, other people's rights were not to count. "It is quite true that other great powers believe in this same code — in their own regard — and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous successions of wars — World War Number One and World War Number Two — and shall there be World War Number Three?" De Valera's next reflection was perhaps his most effective line. "It is, indeed, hard for the strong to be just to the weak. But acting justly always has its rewards," he said. This was a successful countering of the Anglo-American tendency to roll out a long list of allies as part of the 'winning team', thereby implying that for states to maintain neutral was (and is) always morally unjustifiable. From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Sarah McInerney in 2020, Prof Diarmaid Ferriter on the row between Churchill and de Valera In a neat example of damning with faint praise, de Valera went on "By resisting his temptation in this instance, Mr Churchill, instead of adding another horrid chapter to the already bloodstained record of relations between England and this country, has advanced the cause of international morality an important step." De Valera's speech, like neutrality policy as a whole, was resoundingly popular in Ireland. In a society marked by a pervasive mood and official culture of 'moral neutrality', the restrained and pious tone of the speech went down very well. For his part, Britain's top diplomat in Ireland, John Maffey, deemed that it was not Churchill's speech, but de Valera's retort which "bore the stamp of the elder statesman" and recorded how popular the Taoiseach's response had been with the Irish public. What is perhaps most extraordinary about Churchill's speech is how he went out of his way to mention Ireland, a bit player in the global conflagration which would define the twentieth century Assuming the moral high ground played out very well domestically for de Valera and his central point was, in large part, justified. Unlike other 'long haul' neutral states of World War II, Ireland did not gain materially or financially from its noncombatant status in the conflict. Nonetheless, there was no doubting which statesman's speech gained most international traction. Churchill's address was broadcast around the world, while de Valera's response was only broadcast on Radio Éireann. What is perhaps most extraordinary about Churchill's speech is the extent to which he went out of his way to mention Ireland, a bit player by any yardstick in the global conflagration which would define the twentieth century. Its poisonous effect would be felt for years afterwards, illustrated most vividly in the relative freezing out of Ireland from the immediate post-war order and in the mistaken charge – still popularly encountered to this day – that Ireland 'collaborated' with Nazi Germany.
Irish Times
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
The Frenchwoman who fell in love with Ireland and Irish republicans
Irish history and politics fascinated Frenchwoman Étiennette Beuque. She took such an interest in Irish affairs in the 1920s and 1930s that she wrote several books about Ireland. Published in Paris, these included books of non-fiction, novels of fiction, and a poetry collection. The Easter Rising and the War of Independence seemed to spark her interest in Ireland. Several key personalities of that time such as Terence MacSwiney and Éamon de Valera caught her imagination and prompted her to research Irish history (particularly the historical relationship to Britain) and write about contemporary Irish politics. One of her first books was published in Paris in 1924. Entitled Pour l'Irlande (For Ireland), it was relatively short at just 110 pages but it set out her political outlook as an Irish republican sympathiser. A photograph of de Valera appeared at the start of the book with the caption 'President of the Irish Republic'. It was prefaced by Leopold Kerney, who had been appointed by Arthur Griffith in 1919 as the Irish commercial representative in Paris. Kerney opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and left that office in 1923. However, he remained in Paris as the republican Dáil's representative. READ MORE Obviously delighted with Beuque's preference for his kind of politics, Kerney was full of praise for the French writer. He said that she 'has so well understood the Irish soul'. He hoped that the book would 'tear the dark veil of lies that has up to now hidden the truth to the French people about Ireland'. The book opened with an homage to Terence MacSwiney, the Sinn Féin lord mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in Brixton prison in October 1920. MacSwiney was never far from Beuque's thoughts. In a letter to de Valera, she described MacSwiney as 'my hero' and had even planned to write a biography of the late lord mayor. If she admitted that MacSwiney was her hero, it is also clear from what she has written about Ireland that de Valera was another one of her heroes. Several of her books were dedicated to him (complete with effusive praise) and he even wrote the preface to one of them. The Easter Rising was a central theme in her two fiction books. They were heavy on history, if a little light on style. In a review of one of her books on the Rising, a journalist in the Irish Press claimed that the French writer 'shows a knowledge of Irish personages and places so thoroughly informed that it would put many half-knowing Irishmen to shame'. Ultimately, however, they found that it was 'very interesting as history, but hardly as fiction'. One of the ways in which Beuque informed herself on the subjects of Irish history and politics was to write to those who had knowledge or experience of them. As we can see from some of the collections in the National Library of Ireland, she had a healthy correspondence with a number of Irish politicians and political activists. These included Mary MacSwiney (sister of Terence), the republican TD Austin Stack, Art O'Brien (who had been the First Dáil's London representative) and Florence O'Donoghue (who had been a member of the anti-Treaty IRA). She frequently addressed her correspondent with the Irish language salutation 'a chara' and sometimes signed off with 'mise le meas more [sic]'. Her letters also show that she called her home in Paris 'Vert Erin', yet another sign of her avowed Hibernophilia. While on a visit to France in April 1938, the writer and republican activist Dorothy Macardle visited Beuque in 'Vert Erin'. Instead of a chic Parisian dwelling, Macardle found a little piece of Ireland in the French capital. Photographs of Cathal Brugha, Erskine Childers and Terence MacSwiney adorned the wall of her office, prompting Macardle to say that 'Mademoiselle Beuque's study is a little Irish republic'. The writing desk was covered in an orange, white and green embroidered cloth and recent editions of the Irish Press, the newspaper founded by de Valera in 1931, sat alongside a range of books on Ireland. Beuque was not a journalist or a professional writer, yet she managed to produce a wealth of material to promote Irish independence and support Irish republicans at a time when they needed publicity. Her writing reached a wide international audience as her books were reviewed in French, Swiss and Irish newspapers, as well as in French literary and academic journals. However, when I spoke about Beuque's love affair with Ireland at a recent Irish Studies conference in Cork, very few had heard of her. The conference was organised by Hélène Lecossois of Sofeir, the French Society of Irish Studies, and Heather Laird of the Department of English in UCC under the theme of Ireland and Transnational Solidarities. Topics covered ranged from Palestine and India to herbal medicine and surfing.
Irish Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
De Valera's condolences on the death of Hitler continue to provoke 80 years on
There was no book of condolences and it was a legation not an embassy, but the finer details hardly matter at this remove. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera's visit to the German representative in Dublin (not the ambassador as commonly presumed), Dr Eduard Hempel, on May 2nd, 1945, brought worldwide infamy on him and on Ireland. De Valera addressed the Dáil in the morning and then travelled to No 58 Northumberland Road to express his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler , who had died by suicide in his Berlin bunker two days previously. De Valera knew this would be controversial. Both the secretary general of department of external affairs Joseph Walshe, who travelled with him to the fateful meeting, and his deputy Frederick Boland tried to deter de Valera and warned of the consequences to the country's reputation, already low because of Irish neutrality during the second World War . READ MORE De Valera never deigned to offer a public explanation, instead telling his representative in the United States , Robert Brennan, that he would observe diplomatic protocols to the last irrespective of the consequences. He justified it on the basis that it would be an 'unpardonable discourtesy' to the German nation and to Dr Hempel as his conduct during the war was 'irreproachable ... I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat'. Last December the National Archives of Ireland released files covering Ireland's legation in Washington during the war, much of it surrounding the reaction to de Valera's visit. There was already a great deal of hostility towards Ireland in the US because of Irish neutrality, and some of the greatest criticism of de Valera's actions came from Irish Americans. 'I respectfully ask you to close the Irish legation. It is a standing insult to all of us. You stink, you are swine,' James O'Callaghan cabled, adding that he was from Donegal. 'Please give us full facts concerning de Valera's actions on the death of Adolf Hitler. Local controversy makes immediate answer imperative,' cabled Jack O'Loan, the secretary of the Gaelic League in Detroit. 'Every man and woman of Irish blood regrets the stupid action of prime minister [sic] Éamon de Valera of Éire,' wrote Irish-American lawyer Frank Hogan. Walshe and Boland accurately predicted the backlash. What they could not have predicted is how enduring that criticism would be. Eighty years on from that episode, it is still regularly cited as Irish perfidy. The Irish Times report of taoiseach Éamon de Valera's visit to the German legation on May 2nd, 1945, following the death of Adolf Hitler. Twenty years ago, during a visit to Auschwitz, then president Mary McAleese was asked if she should apologise for de Valera's actions. She declined. Cork City Council this year passed a resolution calling on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to issue an apology. The sponsor of the resolution, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran, stated that the original insult has been compounded by the failure of the State to atone subsequently. Two years ago, Russian ambassador to Ireland Yuriy Filatov marked International Holocaust Memorial Day by telling Ireland that it was in no position to lecture other countries on morality given its neutrality during the second World War. He wrongly stated that de Valera had wished Hitler a happy birthday in 1945 when 'Soviet and Allied soldiers were still dying in the battle against Nazis'. Ireland had observed neutrality during a war in which 27 million Soviet Union citizens had died, the ambassador pointed out, though he failed to acknowledge that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, which dismembered Poland and made the Soviet Union the biggest Nazi collaborators of them all until Hitler invaded in June 1941. The biggest backlash has come from the Israeli government and supporters of Israel , especially after October 7th where the de Valera incident is cited as an example of Irish anti-Semitism. 'Decades after Éamon de Valera offered Germany his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, the country he helped found seemed permanently stuck in time,' one commentator among many noted as Ireland agreed to join the South African case against Israel at the International Court of Justice . In December last year, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin. At the time minister for foreign affairs Gideon Sa'ar cited Winston Churchill's famous speech at the end of the second World War which was critical of de Valera and was seen as a direct rebuke of de Valera's visit to Dr Hempel. ' Winston Churchill , during the war, in his speech on V Day in Europe, noted how Ireland had carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany,' Sa'ar stated in his justification for the closure of the embassy. It is one thing to criticise de Valera's visit to the legation; it is quite another to claim that Ireland carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany. Churchill never said as much and there is overwhelming evidence now that Ireland was neutral on the side of the Allies. Last December the National Archives released a 1944 letter from the Jewish Representative Council of Éire which, at the time, described allegations that Ireland was an anti-Semitic country as 'false, irresponsible and mischievous'. 'The Jewish community live and have always lived on terms of closest friendship with their fellow Irish citizens. Freedom to practice their religion is specifically guaranteed in the Irish Constitution. No Irish government has ever discriminated between Jew and non-Jew,' the letter said. Letter signed in 1944 by the Jewish community in Ireland refuting suggestions that Ireland was an antisemitic country It has often been forgotten that de Valera was the subject of multiple anti-Semitic slurs throughout his career because of persistent allegations that his father was Jewish. It was first used when de Valera stood in the Clare byelection of 1917 and repeated while he was in the US fundraising during the War of Independence. The Gaelic American newspaper described him as a 'half-breed Spanish-American Jew' and a 'half-breed Jew from Bruree'. The slur was picked up by the Nazis themselves in July 1933 after they came to power. One Nazi newspaper described de Valera as a 'half-caste Jew'. De Valera's Constitution in 1937 explicitly recognised the Jewish religion. In 1966, a delegation of Irish Jews dedicated a forest near Nazareth to de Valera in recognition of his support for their community. The woodland remains today even while relations between Ireland and Israel remain at a historic low.
