How Peaceful Are the Irish?
by HUGH O’NEILL HENCKEN
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DISCUSSION of Ireland and its problems notoriously produces more heat than light, but I shall try to limit myself to shedding light. Since Irish matters arouse such conflicting emotions in so many people, I can only presume that my objective and intermediate position will satisfy no one.
You may well wonder how I am going to take such a position when I say that my forebears were rockribbed Orangemen who hated everything Irish and who never spoke the word Catholic above a whisper. I was reared on the famous six-word history of Ireland, “pagan era, Christian era, De Valera.” But my experience in working in Ireland for Harvard under the auspices of the Free State Government and the Government of Northern Ireland brought me to a very different point of view.
Americans who are as fond of England as I am are likely to think of the Irish as just a bad kind of British. But when you cross the Irish Sea to Ireland, you arrive in just as foreign a country as when you cross the English Channel to France. If the Irish language were spoken everywhere, the visitor would find himself up against a tongue as remote as Russian— a circumstance that would bring home to him that Ireland is indeed a very foreign country to the Anglo-Saxon.
Present-day problems in Ireland, which I shall reach in a moment, in Section 2, cannot be fully understood without brief indulgence in one of that country’s favorite diversions, digging up the past. In early times there came into Ireland many powerful settlers from Britain, the last of whom were the Scotch Protestants who settled in Ulster in 1609. These newcomers never succeeded in making the Irish into British, and there developed two separate and independent cultures in Ireland: the one an indigenous culture Catholic in faith; and the other a foreign culture, British in origin and Protestant in religion.
In 1912 the Asquith Government satisfied the Irish Nationalists by laying before Parliament a modest Home Rule bill giving Ireland about as much self-government as an American state possesses. But the Ulster Unionists, descendants of the Scotch Protestant settlers, were so disturbed that under their leader, Sir Edward Carson, they raised an irregular armed force and illegally imported arms from Germany to rebel against an act of the British Parliament in which they were represented. But the outbreak of the last war shelved the matter.
The withholding of Home Rule was a bitter disappointment in Ireland, and on Easter Monday, 1916, the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin. This was an essentially tragic affair: tragic because the Irish leaders believed that a German victory over England would ensure an independent Ireland; and tragic because, after the brave resistance of the 1500 poorly armed troops of the Republic was overcome, their leaders were shot and, as George Bernard Shaw remarked, canonized. Mr. De Valera’s death sentence was commuted because he was then an American citizen. At that time some 50,000 Irishmen were killed fighting for England against Germany, and it is notable that, since there was no conscription in Ireland in the last war, they were all volunteers.
In December, 1918, a general election was held in the United Kingdom, and in this Irishmen then voted like all other British subjects. But nearly all the Irish scats were won by candidates pledged to an independent Irish Republic. These members, instead of going to Westminster, re-established the Irish Republic in Dublin, complete with law courts, a parliament, a cabinet, and a president (Mr. De Valera), and backed by a formidable guerrilla force, the Irish Republican Army.
In 1920 the British tried to come to terms with Mr. De Valera’s government by passing the Government of Ireland Act which revived the Home Rule idea, but to prevent further trouble from Carson and the Ulster Unionists, it divided Ireland into two subordinate states, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. The Unionists took this means of escaping from their southern neighbors and straightway set up their provincial government in Belfast, but the rest of Ireland, inspired by the memory of the leaders of Easter Monday, clung to the Sinn Fein idea of complete independence.
The next year Lloyd George retreated to a more far-reaching compromise. Instead of independence, Southern Ireland should accept the status of a dominion of the British Commonwealth. This was agreed to by the majority in Ireland, and the Irish Free State came into being. But a large minority preferred civil war to abandoning complete independence. In this the Free State Army split off from the old Irish Republican Army. Eventually the breach was sufficiently healed to allow Mr. De Valera and his followers to take their seats in the parliament of the Free State. But the Irish Republican Army — or I.R.A. — continued as an underground organization that believed in achieving Irish independence by force, and opposed Mr. De Valera, who was now completely converted to peaceful means.
When, in 1932, an election made Mr. De Valera prime minister of the Free State, he embarked on a program of economic and political independence. His efforts at economic self-sufficiency and social improvement greatly increased employment and raised the standard of living from the really appalling level at which I found it when I first began employing Irish labor, in the year in which Mr. De Valera took office.
Also Mr. De Valera persuaded the Chamberlain Government — against the advice of Churchill — to hand back to Ireland the ports of Berehaven, Cobh, and Lough Swilly, which had been retained by England because they had been so useful in combating German submarines. This example of Chamberlain appeasement worked to the extent that it greatly reduced the hostility of the Irish to England at a very critical time. In the same year, 1937, the Free State adopted a new constitution and a new name, Eire.
Eire technically includes the North, which is considered as temporarily occupied by a foreign power. Also the governor-general of the Free State, who represented the King like the governors-gcneral of the other states of the British Commonwealth, was replaced by an elected president, who represents the Irish people and not the Crown. The relationship of Eire to the British Commonwealth is described as one of external association — a phrase not too easily comprehended. In London, Eire is regarded as a dominion, but it is better not to refer to this in Dublin. At any rate, London did not oppose the Irish government in making these constitutional changes. One of the few connecting links between the two countries is that Irish diplomats bear letters of credence signed by the King. Also British diplomats and consuls transact the business of Eire in places where there is no Irish representative.
This is as far as Mr. De Valera cares to go at present in the direction of an Irish Republic. He recognizes as clearly as anybody that political and economic independence are relative things, especially for small states with slender resources. After all, England takes 90 per cent of Ireland’s exports. The bulk of Irish savings is invested in England, and the Irish pound is tied to the pound sterling. In recent years Mr. De Valera’s policy has been to develop good relations with England.
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SO MUCH for Ireland itself. Of its problems, I shall touch on three: the North, the ports, and neutrality.
As for the North, the Irish refer to this situation as partition, comparable to the historic partition of Poland. The trouble is the same that dogged all boundary-making twenty years ago. Wherever you put a boundary, some people always come out on the wrong side. There is also the economic difficulty of separating a large city from its hinterland. This resulted in Ireland, as elsewhere, in increasing the number of people on the wrong side of the line. What was more, it separated agricultural Eire from its only industrial district.
The present situation in Northern Ireland, which is much smaller than the old province of Ulster, is something like this. The population falls into two groups. One consists of the descendants of the Scotch Protestant settlers whose culture is British in origin and whose politics are Unionist. That is, they wish to remain a part of the United Kingdom. The other consists of the indigenous Catholic inhabitants, whose culture is Irish and whose politics are Nationalist. That is, they wish to be a part of Eire. Many make the mistake of thinking that the difference in religion is the basic one. But the fundamental difference is not religious but cultural, and of course religion is only one element in a people’s cultural heritage. The political difference between the Unionists and the Nationalists springs directly from divergent cultural heritages in general and not from religion in particular.
The province of Northern Ireland can be considered in two parts. One part, lying nearer to Belfast, is predominantly Unionist. Another part, of about equal size but with a smaller population, lies farther from Belfast and is predominantly Nationalist. This latter area was included as necessary hinterland for Belfast, which is a large port. In the whole province, the Nationalist minority is estimated at between 33 and 40 per cent.
To safeguard the rights of this minority, the British government included a provision for proportional representation in the provincial parliament of Northern Ireland. But this the Unionist majority soon repealed. For it they substituted a system of electoral districts so arranged that the very maximum of Unionist members would be elected. A relative of mine, who was a Unionist member of Parliament, once boasted to me about the skill with which this gerrymander had been carried out.
The Nationalists also complain that they are the victims of severe political and religious discrimination. It is not easy at this distance to verify all these charges. But a single reference to a speech by the Northern Prime Minister will serve as a sample of other public utterances by members of his government. The Northern Prime Minister said that it had been charged that a majority of the porters at the Northern Parliament House were Roman Catholics. He had investigated the religion of the porters, and could say that they were all Protestants except one, who, he added, was only temporarily employed. This is an example of how the Northern Government uses cultural and religious differences for political haymaking.
The reasoning of the Northern Unionists is something like this. The Unionists, who are Protestant, are loyal to Great Britain and to the Government of Northern Ireland. The Nationalists, who are Catholic, wish for union with Eire. Therefore, to be a Catholic is to be disloyal. The unsoundness of this position is revealed by asking whether anyone thinks that English Catholics are disloyal. But since a third or more of the population, including the Catholic Primate of Ireland, are looked upon as a subversive element, a serious political situation has developed. In view of all this it is surprising how well the two groups get on together except when provoked for political purposes.
Most unhappily, the Nationalists have been championed in the North by the Irish Republican Army, now degenerated into a very small, secret, terrorist organization. Both Irish governments and all religious bodies, including the Catholic Church, have outlawed the I.R.A., and Mr. De Valera has dealt extremely harshly with its members when they have been caught in Eire. The Northern Government has done the same; and this in the eyes of some has cast a heroic glamour over the I.R.A.
At the same time, the I.R.A. considers itself at war with England. The American press last September carried accounts of how it harbored German agents and showed hostility to American forces in Northern Ireland. The affairs of Hugh McAteer, Chief of Staff of the I.R.A., have been more recently reported. After a series of bombings in Belfast, the Under Secretary of the British Home Office asserted in the House of Commons that the I.R.A. was receiving arms and ammunition from the Axis. Shortly afterward, McAteer was arrested near the American base at Londonderry in a house full of explosives. Previously the I.R.A. had declared that the presence of American troops in Northern Ireland was an act of aggression, and announced that it would use any means to drive them out. McAteer got a long prison sentence but almost immediately escaped again. At the same time it must be remembered that the I.R.A. is a very small group indeed.
Such events incline Northern Unionists, very wrongly of course, to associate Roman Catholics in general with actions of this type despite the fact that most of the Nationalists are law-abiding. But the real reason for the hard feelings of the Unionists toward the Nationalists is that the Unionists are terribly afraid. In a united Ireland they would be a very small minority indeed, and they imagine that they would be entirely at the mercy of a majority of hostile Catholics.
My experience of Eire does little to bear out this fear. There seems to be no real religious discrimination among the Catholics of the South. The most striking example of this was the election of Dr. Douglas Hyde, a Protestant of the old landlord class, to be the first president of Eire. Indeed Dr. Hyde, though a Protestant, was elected unanimously by his Catholic fellow citizens, because his nomination was so popular that no one troubled to oppose him. Consequently it may be guessed that should the Northern Unionists some day be absorbed into Eire, their fate would not be so terrible as they imagine.
It may also be asked what attitude is taken in England toward the Northern Government and its alleged deviations from the Four Freedoms. English people who follow Irish affairs look with suspicion on Belfast. This suspicion is publicly voiced by such a responsible paper as the Manchester Guardian and by the English writer, Captain Henry Harrison.
There is indeed good reason to think that De Valera and Chamberlain were coming to an arrangement about the North in 1938, when public opinion was upset by a series of bombings in England by the I.R.A. This action shows clearly what harm that organization can do to its own cause. Another thing should be remembered about the Northern Unionists — especially the politicians. The Nationalists complain that these people are neither English nor Irish, but just a special local kind of reactionary. Certainly this sort of extreme conservatism no longer has political importance in England.
The attitude of the British government to Northern Ireland has been one of non-intervention. Some have complained bitterly about this, but the government has adhered to the view, which may in the end prove wise, of allowing Northern Ireland to find its own salvation. This is also Mr. De Valera’s view.
At the same time a solution in Ireland is greatly to be hoped for. The Northern question is the last thing that prevents really friendly relations between Ireland and Britain. Some would remind me at this point of the annual subsidy of £3,000,000 regularly paid by London to Belfast and ask whether it is not intervention on the side of the North. In one sense it is, but since it is an established thing, it would be intervention against the North to withdraw it.
Before leaving Northern Ireland, I should like to comment on its part in the war. The Northern Irish live under exactly the same severe wartime regime as the people of England. A recent letter from a cousin in a strongly Unionist district said that two people out of three were either in uniform or in war work. This did not count the farmers, who naturally are war workers as much as anyone else. Since the district is an agricultural one, practically every person is engaged actively in the war effort.
Ireland — and especially Northern Ireland — has also made one outstanding contribution to the war: generalship. A Dublin paper, irked by the Irish censors’ restrictions on references to Irishmen who are fighting in the war, published two lists of generals in the British Army, — and this was before Pearl Harbor, — headed respectively “Japanese” and “Northern Japanese.” Among the “Northern Japanese” generals were such familiar names as Alexander and Montgomery,
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ANOTHER Irish question has been that of the three ports retained by the British for naval purposes until 1938. I should say at once that no one wishes more than I that the United Nations might have been able to use these ports. But it may be worth while to give the reasons for the Irish refusal. In the first place, the Irish thought that the English overemphasized the value of the ports. They also said that Eire was undefended against air attack, and turning the ports over to a belligerent would certainly mean attack by the Luftwaffe.
The complaint that Irish towns were undefended was connected with the refusal of the American and British governments to supply Eire with arms. In the dark days after Dunkirk, it looked as though Ireland as well as England might be invaded, and the Irish were frantically anxious to obtain weapons. They claimed, and with good reason, that if the Germans occupied Ireland, England’s chance of survival would be greatly reduced, and the democratic cause in Europe would be in even worse peril. Hence they were annoyed, especially with the American government, for refusing to sell them arms even for cash, when we were lend-leasing quantities of the same material to England, for the Irish felt that their safety was equally important. This gave some substance to the claim that they could not defend the ports in the interval before the British could install adequate equipment. It also gave the false impression in some Irish quarters that Roosevelt and Churchill wanted to keep Ireland helpless so that the ports might be seized.
A further reason for refusing the ports was that to have them alone would not prove adequate to the British purpose. Overland transportation to them would be necessary, and this would mean that the British would have to control a large part of the Irish transportation system. If this happened, would it not mean another British occupation? And if that occurred, would the British ever go away?
This last question may not sound too serious to us, but it should be remembered that the Irish struggled very hard and very recently for their independence. We won our independence so long ago that we take it for granted. But for people who have newly achieved it, there is always a dreadful urgency about preserving it. What, for instance, would the Yankees of Boston have thought of the same proposition in 1800?
I think it is this very circumstance that has much to do with Irish neutrality — which would certainly disappear even if the ports were now handed over to the United States. For the ability of the Irish to preserve their country as a little neutral island in a world conflict is for many of them a most important visible sign of that independence which they have wished for so long.
Since submarine sinkings are perhaps the principal bottleneck between us and victory, we realize the importance of Irish ports and airfields facing the Atlantic. But let us also admit that each of the United Nations is fighting primarily for its own protection. Eire believes for good reasons that her best means of protection is neutrality.
Mr. De Valera in his original statement on neutrality said that the Irish should look to their own country first. This may not sound very heroic in 1943, but it does sound very much like ourselves in 1939. Mr. De Valera has also publicly promised that the Irish would never allow their country to be used as a base against England. He sees perfectly clearly that the future of the two islands is closely linked, and has many times in recent years expressed his desire to let bygones be bygones and his interest in friendly relations with England. Hence it would be a great mistake to imagine that nothing but dislike of the British lay at the root of Irish neutrality. Also it should not be forgotten that Irish homes were opened to thousands of English mothers and children during the blitz on England, and that at the same time there were many Irish doctors and nurses in London caring for victims of the German raids.
Hence other reasons than simple dislike of the British must be found. One is that Eire, being a country of only three million people and very slender resources, feels that she could do little to influence the course of the war. If she went in, she would invite the destruction of her few towns from the air and also invite possible invasion. This is perhaps less likely now, but it is only very recently that the danger has seemed less. We must not forget that Ireland is far nearer to Hitler than we are. She has already had some air raids and shipping losses.
Since the United States has not given her arms, and since England has been able to spare her only a few, she has lacked the means of self-defense against possible German attack. At the same time Dr. Goebbels has had very little success in Ireland, and the majority of the Irish hope for victory by the United Nations. But because of their situation, the majority also believe implicitly in neutrality, and it is plank No. 1 in every political platform.
Another reason for not entering the war on the same side as England is that there does remain a limited group of extremists typified by the I.R.A., who cling to the idea of an independent republic. A hatred of England is still prevalent among these people, and being reckless by nature they might instigate serious trouble for the government.
But Irish neutrality has, as might be expected, a special twist. An Irish friend wrote me after the Lend-Lease Act was passed: “We’re neutral the same way that you are.”
Ireland is too lacking in resources to do what we did by way of Lend-Lease, but the Irish people have spontaneously done something much more remarkable, About 150,000 Irishmen from Eire have left their neutral country to join the British forces. The equivalent proportion from our own population would be 4,500,000 Americans. Can we imagine any circumstance that would have prompted 4,500,000 Americans to enlist voluntarily in a foreign army — or in our own army, for that matter?
These Irish volunteers have not consciously gone out in an anti-Nazi crusade. Most of them are too young and adventure-loving to think like that. But they like the Germans so little that they will join the British forces in order to fight Nazis. At the same time, many of them, at least, continue to believe in Irish neutrality. They want to have a crack at the Germans without letting the Germans have a crack at Ireland.
Many of these Irishmen have distinguished themselves. Not long ago we heard about Paddy Finucane, the Irish hero of the RAF. Earlier in the war we learned of two of those epics of the sea that Britain always provides in time of crisis — the sinkings of the armed merchantmen Jervis Bay and Rawalpindi. Each of these merchant ships, armed only with small guns, was lost in a singlehanded attack on a German warship of vastly superior strength — the Jervis Bay against the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, and the Rawalpindi against the pocket battleship Deutschland. The captains of both these British ships were Irishmen, and the commander of the Jervis Bay, Fogarty Fegen, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Another servant of the British Crown is Mr. Brendan Bracken, Minister for Information in Churchill’s Cabinet. He is an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and it is rather amusing to think of him as the chief exponent of what some have labeled “British propaganda.”
So if we are impatient sometimes with Irish neutrality, let us try to understand the Irish point of view. And let us not forget Paddy Finucane and Fogarty Fegen and their 150,000 compatriots. Let us also remember that England and France were the only two countries to declare war on the Axis before they were attacked, and that Ireland has never had a Pearl Harbor.