Éamon de Valera

Éamon de Valera^[1][2] (born with the name Edward George de Valera, English pronunciation: /ˈeɪmən dɛ vəˈlɛɹə/) (14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975(1975-08-29) (aged 92)) was one of the dominant political figures in 20th century Ireland. A co-owner of one of the Irish Press Newspapers, he served in public office from 1917 to 1973. Several times, he was head of state or head of government in Ireland.

De Valera was a leader of Ireland's struggle for independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He also led opposition to the anti-Treaty in the Irish Civil War. He was the author of the Constitution of Ireland.

De Valera was born in the New York Nursery and Child's Hospital in New York City in 1882 to an Irish mother; he said that his parents were Catherine Coll Wheelwright, an immigrant from Bruree, County Limerick, and Juan Vivion de Valera, a Spanish-Cuban settler and sculptor, and that they were married in 1881 in New York.

In 1885, after his father's death, de Valera was taken to Ireland by his Uncle Ned. He was brought up by his grandmother Elizabeth Coll, her son Patrick and her daughter Hannie, in County Limerick. At the age of sixteen, he won a scholarship to Blackrock College, County Dublin. In his first year in Blackrock College, he was Student of the Year. In 1903, he became mathematics teacher at Rockwell College, County Tipperary. When he graduated in mathematics from the Royal University of Ireland he went back to Blackrock College He taught in many other colleges, including Belvedere College, where he taught Kevin Barry, the young Irish republican hanged by the British during the Irish War of Independence.

De Valera was an active gaeilgeoir (enthusiast of the Irish language). In 1908 he joined the Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League), where he met Douglas Hyde, who later became the first President of Ireland, and also Sinéad Flanagan, another teacher whom he married on 8 January 1910 at St Paul's Church, Arran Quay, Dublin.

On 25 November 1913. he joined the Irish Volunteers. He was soon elected captain of the Donnybrook Company and then commandant of the Third Battalion and adjutant of the Dublin Brigade. He also joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which secretly controlled the central executive of the Volunteers.

On 24 April 1916, the Easter Rising began. De Valera occupied Boland's Mills, Grand Canal Street in Dublin. After the fighting, de Valera was court-martialled, convicted and sentenced to death, but the sentence was changed to for life imprisonment.because he was not kept in Kilmainham Jail with the first prisoners executed. The delay meant that British authorities started to check if he really was an American citizen and wonder how the United States would react to the execution of one of its citizens.

De Valera's supporters say he showed leadership skills and a great ability for planning. His enemies claim he suffered a nervous breakdown during the rising.

After imprisonment in Dartmoor, Maidstone and Lewes Prisons in England, de Valera and other prisoners were released under an amnesty in June 1917. On 10 July 1917 he was elected member of the British House of Commons for East Clare (the constituency which he represented in Dail Eireann until 1959) in a by-election after Willie Redmond MP died fighting in World War.

British newspapers and picture postcards often called the Easter Rising the "Sinn Féin Rebellion". From 1917, de Valera was president of Sinn Féin. He and the other survivors of the Rising took over Sinn Féin and then turned into a republican party. Arthur Griffith, had wanted an Anglo-Irish "dual monarchy", with an independent Ireland governed separately from Britain, linked only by a shared monarch, like Canada and Britain today.

That had been the way Ireland was governed with the so-called Constitution of 1782 under Henry Grattan, until Ireland joined with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.

Sinn Féin won 73 of 104 Irish seats in the 1918 general election.Many more people wanted an independent Ireland after the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed, and conscription was threatedned. In January 1919, these Sinn Féin MPs, or TDs, met in the Mansion House (City Hall), Dublin and formed the First Dáil Éireann (English: Assembly of Ireland).

De Valera was not at the meeting because he had been arrested. He escaped from Lincoln Prison in February 1919, and when he got back to Dublin, he replaced Cathal Brugha as Príomh Aire (Prime Minister). The Dáil Constitution passed by the Dáil said that the Príomh Aire was not head of state.

In September 1919, the British authorities called the Dáil illegal. The fighting against Britain escalated into the Irish War of Independence, also called the Anglo-Irish War.

In January 1921, he got back from the United States with a loan of $5,500,000, which made him very popular.

In August 1921, de Valera had Dáil Éireann change the 1919 Dáil Constitution to upgrade his title from prime minister to President of the Republic. He said that as Irish head of state, he would not go to the treaty negotiations of October–December 1921 because the British head of state, King George V, would not be there either.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty replaced the Republic by a dominion of the British Commonwealth with the King represented by a Governor-General of the Irish Free State, similar to how Canada is governed. The treaty was finally signed on 6 December 1921.

De Valera's opponents said that he did not join the negotiations because he knew that the British would allow only an Irish dominion, not a republic, and so he did not want to be blamed for giving up the idea of a republic. De Valera said he was angry because the delegates working out the treaty had not asked him before signing it. However, at a secret session of the Dáil during the Treaty Debates and published in January 1922, his ideas for a treaty included dominion status, the 'Treaty Ports',^[3] a veto by the parliament in Belfast, and the king as head of the Commonwealth. Ireland would pay a share of the imperial debt.^[4]

When the Treaty was accepted by 64 votes to 57, de Valera and a large minority of Sinn Féin TDs left Dáil Éireann. He resigned, and Arthur Griffith was elected President of Dáil Éireann in his place.^[5]

In March 1922, de Valera made an angry speech saying that if the treaty was accepted, it might be necessary to "wade through Irish blood" to achieve Irish freedom. Later. he said:

the IRA would have to wade through, perhaps, the blood of some of the members of the Government, in order to get Irish freedom

— De Valera, speaking in Thurles

De Valera's enemies said that he was encouraging civil war, which broke out in late June 1922.

Fighting in the Irish Civil War started on 28 June 1922 and ended in May 1923, when the pro-treaty Free State forces beat the anti-Treaty IRA.

De Valera was supposed to be the head of the anti-Treatyites, but he had little power. Usually, he had little influence with the IRA Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch. De Valera formed a republican government on 25 October 1922, but it had no real authority and was never like the Dáil governments of 1919–21, which was an alternative government to the British and even ran its own courts.

When the IRA's new Chief of Staff , Frank Aiken, called a ceasefire on 30 May 1923, the government had won. Many republicans were arrested when they came out of hiding and returned home. De Valera was arrested in County Clare and interned until 1924.

De Valera resigned from the presidency of Sinn Féin after losing a vote to accept the Free State Constitution if the oath of allegiance was dropped. In March 1926, he formed a new party, Fianna Fáil (Soldiers of Destiny). It was successful in elections but for over a year did not take its seats in the Dáil. When a new law made candidates promise to take the oath of allegiance if elected, de Valera and his TDs took the it in 1927. They said the oath was "an empty formula" and was just words they had to say but did not have to believe them.

Six years after it was founded, Fianna Fáil won 72 seats in the 1932 general election. It had a plurality in the Dáil and was the largest party, but since it had less than half of the seats, it did not have a majority. On 9 March, Governor-General James McNeill appointed de Valera President of the Executive Council .De Valeraabolished the oath and stopped paying money owed to Britain.

De Valera called a general election in January 1933 and won 77 seats, which gave him an overall majority. Under his leadership, Fianna Fáil won further general elections in 1937, 1938, 1943 and 1944.

De Valera was his own Minister for External Affairs. He attended meetings of the League of Nations and was president of the Council of the League on his first appearance at Geneva in 1932. In 1934, he supported the admission of the Soviet Union io the League. In September 1938, he was elected nineteenth president of the Assembly of the League, a tribute to the international recognition that he had won by his independent stance on world questions.

During the 1930s, de Valera changed much the Irish Free State Constitution.

The Governor-General of the Irish Free State could reserve or deny royal assent to any changes after being advised by His Majesty's Government in London. After a legal argument with the British Government, that power was changed to His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State

De Valera was now the only person who could stop a bill becoming law.

De Valera abolished the oath of allegiance; appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition parties.

When King Edward VIII abdicted as King of Ireland, de Valera passed two bills: one took out all mention of the King and Governor-General in the constitution and another that said the King's only job was formally sending and receiving ambassadors.

In July 1936, de Valera wrote to Edward VIII in London that he planned to introduce a new constitution. It was only slightly different from the Bunreacht na hÉireann (meaning literally the "Constitution of Ireland").

The new constitution was not an act of the Dáil but was voted for in a referendum because de Valera wanted a new start for the new country that he was setting up.

Ireland stayed neutral in World War II, which was called The Emergency in the country. The possibilities of both a German invasion and of a British invasion were discussed in the Dáil.

Even though de Valera hated Britain, Irish neutrality often favoured the allies:

• The Irish government's weather reports helped to decide the day of the Normandy Landings.
• British planes from Lough Erne, in County Fermanagh, flew a shortcut across County Donegal to patrol the Atlantic.
• German Ambassador Eduard Hempel's radio transmitter was shut down in 1943.
• Crashed airmen "operational" flights were interned until the end of the war. If the flight was "non-operational", the crew were allowed home. Nearly all Allied airmen were said to be on "non-operational" flights, and German airmen were judged to be on "operational"
• Roughly 45,000 Irish men voluntarily joined the Allied forces (including Patrick and Tom Clancy, who had also been IRA volunteers).

In May 1945, de Valera visited the German minister in Dublin to express sympathy over the death of Adolf Hitler.^[6] Along with President Douglas Hyde, de Valera was the only head of government to do so. De Valera did not visit the American embassy following the death of Franklin Roosevelt, as David Gray, the American Ambassador said he would not receive de Valera. All flags were flown at half-mast on Roosevelt's death on de Valera's instructions

After 16 years in power, Fianna Fáil lost the 1948 election. John A. Costello was Taoiseach of a coalition government and declared Ireland a republic, making de Valera's friend Séan T. O'Kelly Ireland's head of state. In 1951, de Valera was returned to power but without an overall majority. Many people thought that was his worst government. He spent several months in the Netherlands, where he had six operations on his eyes.

Fianna Fáil was defeated again in the 1954 general election, but in 1957, de Valera won a majority of nine seats. Thay was the beginning of another 16-year period in office for Fianna Fáil. However, de Valera was Taoiseach for only two years.

In 1959, he was elected President of Ireland, as which he served until 1973. At his retirement at the age of 90, he was the oldest head of state in the world.

Éamon de Valera died in Linden Convalescent Home, Blackrock, County Dublin, on 29 August 1975 aged 92. His wife, Sinéad de Valera, four years his senior, had died the previous January, on the eve of their 65th wedding anniversary. He is buried in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.

The recent controversial biography by Tim Pat Coogan states that de Valera had more failures than achievements and that his popularity fell as Michael Collins's rose.

Garret Fitzgerald summarised^[7] de Valera's last term as Taoiseach:

Total economic stagnation marked de Valera's last seven years as leader of his party - because all of the chickens of his disastrous commitment to an inward-looking policy of self sufficiency were coming home to roost.

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