Ireland: From Nationalism to Nationhood, 1921-1948
A Year-by-Year Analysis
1936
Ireland, 1936
Irish Government, January 1936:
Governor-General: Donal Buckley (or Domhnall Ua Buachalla) [Fianna Fail]
President of the Executive Council: Eamon de Valera [FF]
Vice-President of the Executive Council: Sean T. O’Kelly [FF]
Minister for Agriculture: James Ryan [FF]
Minister for Defence: Frank Aiken [FF]
Minister for Education: Tomas O Deirg [FF]
Minister for Finance: Sean MacEntee [FF]
Minister for Foreign Affairs: Eamon de Valera [FF]
Minister for Industry and Commerce: Sean Lemass [FF]
Minister for Justice: Patrick J. Ruttledge [FF]
Minister for Lands and Fisheries: Joseph Connolly [FF]
Minister for Local Government and Public Health: Sean T. O’Kelly [FF]
Minister for Posts and Telegraphs: Gerald Boland [FF]
Irish Armed Forces
British Military Attache: General Hubert de la Poer Gough [British Military Attache]
Chiefs of the Army: General Sean MacEoin [Fine Gael], General Richard Mulcahy [FG]
Chief of the Navy: Admiral A.T. Lawlor [Labour Party]
Chief of the Airforce: Air Marshal P.A. Mulcahy [FF]
1936 is often cited as the most important year in the history of a modern independent Ireland aside from 1922. Those who take this stance cite three chief events, and their ramifications: the Directed Economic Policy (DEP), the related end of the Economic War, and the passing of Amendment 27.
Fianna Fail’s centre-left politics generally favoured a relatively free internal market (coupled with protectionist policies and relatively high business tax) but with Irish agriculture, industry and military languishing in the 19th century, it had long been mooted that some form of government interventionism - perhaps in the social liberal vein of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, President of the USA - might help speed up progress.
To this end, just before the New Year turned, in a special session of Dail Eireann, Minister for Industry and Commerce Sean Lemass announced that the administration would be pursuing a Directed Economic Policy. This policy had three main provisions: governmental grants to limited companies and worthy individuals, support for ending the energy crisis, and subsidised construction of mines, government farms and factories.
It was hoped that, via these measures (greatly inspired by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who visited Eamon de Valera in May 1936), Ireland might begin to prove itself a truly independent nation, with no need for the overweening presence of the British Empire in Ireland.
The Dail, policed carefully by de Valera’s whips, voted through the DEP, and the measures began to be put in place in the New Year of 1936. The first, that of governmental grants for leading companies and individuals, for public works, met with immediate success. The immediate aims were for Ireland to be able to field tanks and seagoing combat ships, to provide every factory in Ireland with mechanized equipment, and to examine and complete the national census. These projects were to be completed within two years, leading W.T Cosgrave, former Head of Government and leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party, to quip that “Mr Lemass seems fond of his Two Year Plan”.
However, Lemass’ immediate execution of this policy cannot be faulted. By the end of 1936, the grants to Leyland, Goulding Chemicals and Dublin Shipbuilding Yards provided Ireland with a theoretical (if not practical) tank capability, 78% of factories in Ireland with at least some government-provided machinery, and the immediate prospect of a combat fleet.
Eamon de Valera, President of the Executive Council, 1932-1937
Whilst the stunning success of this element of the DEP led de Valera, in June, to publicly laud Lemass’ performance , privately he admitted the nation were better served by a concentration on industrial and social development. However, national pride, and fear for national security, dictated military advances. World stability continued its collapse in 1936, with Hitler remilitarizing the Rhineland, the brutal civil war in China continuing, Italy annexing brave Abyssinia, and the breakout of civil war in Spain, the democratically elected socialists challenged violently by fascists.
These events, especially the last, constituting as it did a direct attack on European social democracy, led de Valera, reluctantly but determinedly, to side with those who called for the security of Ireland to be looked to.
He was aided in convincing his Fianna Fail comrades to support him by an unusual alliance. General Hubert de la Poer Gough, the British military attache, and Generals Sean MacEoin and Richard Mulcahy, Fine Gael men and Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Army, were an unusual enough alliance; Gough was widely disliked by the Irish, whose troops he’d led erratically in the Great War. However, the backing of volatile anti-Treaty man Sean MacEntee, a Fianna Fail luminary and Minister for Finance, covered all the bases; all but the most isolationist TD’s backed the shift in industrial focus and foreign policy to that of cautious friend making.
Meanwhile, the third element of the DEP was going well, despite initial problems with acquiring the right materials. A large-scale expansion of primary resource use in Sligo, coupled with an expansion of the manufacturing base there, occupied Lemass’ personal attention for much of 1936, the project being announced complete on the 2nd of January 1937. It was a key understanding amongst the Executive Council that if Ireland were to achieve a meaningful nationhood, it must increase its industrial capacity, and to that aim, Lemass was given wide fiat to utilize governmental resources.
It was the final aim of the DEP that would prove most momentous, however. After initial investigations as to the viability of a peat-based energy economy by Minister for Agriculture James Ryan, de Valera began to seek commerce arrangements for coal imports. The Economic War with England, sparked at his behest in 1932 by MacEntee, whereby imports from the Empire were heavily taxed (Britain responding in kind), had long had the effect of slowing Ireland’s economy, previously so dependant on imports.
But the Fianna Fail policy of self-sufficiency had proven flawed, and de Valera, never a man to dwell on defeat, began discussions with France and the United States. However, neither Sarraut’s Radicals or Roosevelt were able to give firm commitments to Ireland. And so, on February 13th 1936, MacEntee and de Valera travelled to London, the home of the old enemy, to negotiate with Stanley Baldwin’s Third National Ministry - “my own little crucifixion” was MacEntee’s later judgement of the event.
Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37)
The two Irish plenipotentiaries spent a week in protracted negotiations with their British counterparts - Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden - seeking a strictly commercial deal. This they, in most respects, managed to achieve, avoiding the initial British suggestion of returning the power of appointment of the Governor General to the British Prime Minister.
Indeed, de Valera was forced to profess amazement at the relative reasonability of the British in the proceedings - the grain and cereals Ireland offered to provide in return for coal were well received and marked at a very reasonable exchange. One may see in this an attempt by Chamberlain to bypass any risk of inflation by trading goods directly; however, Lemass later adjudged it to be a policy of Baldwin’s and Eden’s, bribing Ireland into docility.
The only major concession Britain demanded was an end to import taxes between the Empire and Ireland; but this much, de Valera and MacEntee had expected, and it would seem, from the minutes released, that this was taken as given even at the outset of negotiations. All that came from the discussions was that Ireland would retain the power to set import sales prices; all shipments would pass through government agents, rather than being immediately given over to the Irish market.
Whatever MacEntee might have thought of the experience, Ireland now had the power to drive its industry to prosperity. A short-term deal with the Devil could be stomached if it aided the progress to true independence.
The DEP encountered its only true opposition in the May of 1936, as two separate coalitions of interests assaulted it frontally. Fine Gael, several major Irish corporations and the Irish Fascist Party (the successors of the “Blueshirts”) had increasingly criticized the DEP for its “soft Stalinism”; now, the Labour Party, the Communist Party of Ireland and certain members of de Valera’s own Fianna Fail criticized it for being TOO soft!
After a concerned delegation of factory workers from Kilkenny personally addressed de Valera in Dublin, worried that government assistance was too slight to make a difference, he realized something had to be done. To ignore the outcry, or to seek a compromise with one of the two critical blocs, would lead to industrial action and political cloak-and-dagger. His government, and Ireland’s prosperity, would be martyred at either the throne of pride or of expediency.
To de Valera, a man genuinely sincere in his democratic conviction, neither was acceptable. Instead, he publicly undertook to bring to the Dail revisions to all areas of the DEP, bringing them under closer government supervision. Whilst the Fascists promised marches, little response actually materialized; the few, unpleasant incidents that did come out of that promise simply moved Fine Gael closer to consensus with the government.
De la Poer Gough and his cabal immediately brought de Valera to task, however, arguing that such closer government control could only hamper dynamic military improvement; de Valera granted them this point, and assured them that when time came, a freer market would again be sought, but for now this was what was needed. With no public or serious political support, the Irish military had to accept this loose promise.
So much for the course of the Directed Economic Policy in 1936; its success was undeniable, and its role in demonstrating de Valera and his cohorts MacEntee and Lemass the leading statesmen in Ireland stark. However, though the end of the Economic War runs a close second, the most momentous political moment of the year must be counted as those events surrounding the Abdication Crisis in the United Kingdom, leading to Amendment 27 to the Constitution of the Irish Free State.
On the 20th of January, George V, King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, Emperor of India, and the first modern King of Ireland, died of problems relating to his lungs. George had been a rare friend of Ireland in England; he had protested the brutal reprisals of the Black and Tans in the Irish War for Independence, he had supported the strikers in 1926, and he had shown great support for Ireland as it began to stand upon its own two feet. His death brought to the throne Edward VIII, a feckless charmer more interested in women than in ruling.
He had become enamoured sometime before with a twice-married American socialite, Wallis Simpson, who he had made his mistress. As 1936 progressed, his public dalliance with this lady attracted widespread public opprobrium, and whilst the British press remained silent for now, the issue was sure to come to a head soon.
Edward VIII and Mrs Wallis Simpson
On November the 16th, the King announced to Baldwin that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson once her second divorce had been completed. On a wide variety of grounds, covering religious, legal and political issues (as well as problems with the character of the lady herself), this was an unpalatable situation for the Prime Minister; he advised the King that Mrs Simpson could not become Queen, signalling that the government would resign en masse if the King married her, but Edward was determined. The King said he would abdicate the throne if need be; but he would marry Mrs Simpson.
Baldwin consulted his allies in government, before turning to the Prime Ministers of the Dominions to discuss the small number of options available to them. De Valera, the equivalent in Ireland, spoke with the others in saying that the only permissible course was for the King to abdicate if he wished to marry Mrs Simpson.
On the 10th of December, Edward signed a note of abdication, witnessed by his three younger brothers. The next day, with assistance from his close friend, the Conservative politician and former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Edward spoke poignantly to his public. He said he would have been unable to fulfil his role as “as I would have wished” without the support of “the woman I love”.
But as the Abdication Crisis had been deepening, de Valera had been acting. On the same day Edward gave his great speech before heading into an informal exile, de Valera presented to Dail Eireann Amendment 27 to the Constitution of the Irish Free State: abolishing the post of Governor General (this without the consultation of de Valera’s friend Buckley, who had dutifully played the part of the anonymous functionary given to him) and removing all references to the King in Irish legal and political forms.
The Amendment was passed overwhelmingly. In the aftermath, Frank Fahy, Ceann Comhairle (Parliamentary Speaker) of the Dail, temporarily acted as Head of State; and whilst there were still some legal loopholes to be tidied up, de Valera felt confident enough in the action to suggest a new Irish Constitution must be drafted. Ireland would, at last, be ruled by the Irish.
This is my first AAR, so be gentle! Thanks =)
A Year-by-Year Analysis
1936
Ireland, 1936
Irish Government, January 1936:
Governor-General: Donal Buckley (or Domhnall Ua Buachalla) [Fianna Fail]
President of the Executive Council: Eamon de Valera [FF]
Vice-President of the Executive Council: Sean T. O’Kelly [FF]
Minister for Agriculture: James Ryan [FF]
Minister for Defence: Frank Aiken [FF]
Minister for Education: Tomas O Deirg [FF]
Minister for Finance: Sean MacEntee [FF]
Minister for Foreign Affairs: Eamon de Valera [FF]
Minister for Industry and Commerce: Sean Lemass [FF]
Minister for Justice: Patrick J. Ruttledge [FF]
Minister for Lands and Fisheries: Joseph Connolly [FF]
Minister for Local Government and Public Health: Sean T. O’Kelly [FF]
Minister for Posts and Telegraphs: Gerald Boland [FF]
Irish Armed Forces
British Military Attache: General Hubert de la Poer Gough [British Military Attache]
Chiefs of the Army: General Sean MacEoin [Fine Gael], General Richard Mulcahy [FG]
Chief of the Navy: Admiral A.T. Lawlor [Labour Party]
Chief of the Airforce: Air Marshal P.A. Mulcahy [FF]
1936 is often cited as the most important year in the history of a modern independent Ireland aside from 1922. Those who take this stance cite three chief events, and their ramifications: the Directed Economic Policy (DEP), the related end of the Economic War, and the passing of Amendment 27.
Fianna Fail’s centre-left politics generally favoured a relatively free internal market (coupled with protectionist policies and relatively high business tax) but with Irish agriculture, industry and military languishing in the 19th century, it had long been mooted that some form of government interventionism - perhaps in the social liberal vein of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, President of the USA - might help speed up progress.
To this end, just before the New Year turned, in a special session of Dail Eireann, Minister for Industry and Commerce Sean Lemass announced that the administration would be pursuing a Directed Economic Policy. This policy had three main provisions: governmental grants to limited companies and worthy individuals, support for ending the energy crisis, and subsidised construction of mines, government farms and factories.
It was hoped that, via these measures (greatly inspired by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who visited Eamon de Valera in May 1936), Ireland might begin to prove itself a truly independent nation, with no need for the overweening presence of the British Empire in Ireland.
The Dail, policed carefully by de Valera’s whips, voted through the DEP, and the measures began to be put in place in the New Year of 1936. The first, that of governmental grants for leading companies and individuals, for public works, met with immediate success. The immediate aims were for Ireland to be able to field tanks and seagoing combat ships, to provide every factory in Ireland with mechanized equipment, and to examine and complete the national census. These projects were to be completed within two years, leading W.T Cosgrave, former Head of Government and leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party, to quip that “Mr Lemass seems fond of his Two Year Plan”.
However, Lemass’ immediate execution of this policy cannot be faulted. By the end of 1936, the grants to Leyland, Goulding Chemicals and Dublin Shipbuilding Yards provided Ireland with a theoretical (if not practical) tank capability, 78% of factories in Ireland with at least some government-provided machinery, and the immediate prospect of a combat fleet.
Eamon de Valera, President of the Executive Council, 1932-1937
Whilst the stunning success of this element of the DEP led de Valera, in June, to publicly laud Lemass’ performance , privately he admitted the nation were better served by a concentration on industrial and social development. However, national pride, and fear for national security, dictated military advances. World stability continued its collapse in 1936, with Hitler remilitarizing the Rhineland, the brutal civil war in China continuing, Italy annexing brave Abyssinia, and the breakout of civil war in Spain, the democratically elected socialists challenged violently by fascists.
These events, especially the last, constituting as it did a direct attack on European social democracy, led de Valera, reluctantly but determinedly, to side with those who called for the security of Ireland to be looked to.
He was aided in convincing his Fianna Fail comrades to support him by an unusual alliance. General Hubert de la Poer Gough, the British military attache, and Generals Sean MacEoin and Richard Mulcahy, Fine Gael men and Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Army, were an unusual enough alliance; Gough was widely disliked by the Irish, whose troops he’d led erratically in the Great War. However, the backing of volatile anti-Treaty man Sean MacEntee, a Fianna Fail luminary and Minister for Finance, covered all the bases; all but the most isolationist TD’s backed the shift in industrial focus and foreign policy to that of cautious friend making.
Meanwhile, the third element of the DEP was going well, despite initial problems with acquiring the right materials. A large-scale expansion of primary resource use in Sligo, coupled with an expansion of the manufacturing base there, occupied Lemass’ personal attention for much of 1936, the project being announced complete on the 2nd of January 1937. It was a key understanding amongst the Executive Council that if Ireland were to achieve a meaningful nationhood, it must increase its industrial capacity, and to that aim, Lemass was given wide fiat to utilize governmental resources.
It was the final aim of the DEP that would prove most momentous, however. After initial investigations as to the viability of a peat-based energy economy by Minister for Agriculture James Ryan, de Valera began to seek commerce arrangements for coal imports. The Economic War with England, sparked at his behest in 1932 by MacEntee, whereby imports from the Empire were heavily taxed (Britain responding in kind), had long had the effect of slowing Ireland’s economy, previously so dependant on imports.
But the Fianna Fail policy of self-sufficiency had proven flawed, and de Valera, never a man to dwell on defeat, began discussions with France and the United States. However, neither Sarraut’s Radicals or Roosevelt were able to give firm commitments to Ireland. And so, on February 13th 1936, MacEntee and de Valera travelled to London, the home of the old enemy, to negotiate with Stanley Baldwin’s Third National Ministry - “my own little crucifixion” was MacEntee’s later judgement of the event.
Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37)
The two Irish plenipotentiaries spent a week in protracted negotiations with their British counterparts - Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden - seeking a strictly commercial deal. This they, in most respects, managed to achieve, avoiding the initial British suggestion of returning the power of appointment of the Governor General to the British Prime Minister.
Indeed, de Valera was forced to profess amazement at the relative reasonability of the British in the proceedings - the grain and cereals Ireland offered to provide in return for coal were well received and marked at a very reasonable exchange. One may see in this an attempt by Chamberlain to bypass any risk of inflation by trading goods directly; however, Lemass later adjudged it to be a policy of Baldwin’s and Eden’s, bribing Ireland into docility.
The only major concession Britain demanded was an end to import taxes between the Empire and Ireland; but this much, de Valera and MacEntee had expected, and it would seem, from the minutes released, that this was taken as given even at the outset of negotiations. All that came from the discussions was that Ireland would retain the power to set import sales prices; all shipments would pass through government agents, rather than being immediately given over to the Irish market.
Whatever MacEntee might have thought of the experience, Ireland now had the power to drive its industry to prosperity. A short-term deal with the Devil could be stomached if it aided the progress to true independence.
The DEP encountered its only true opposition in the May of 1936, as two separate coalitions of interests assaulted it frontally. Fine Gael, several major Irish corporations and the Irish Fascist Party (the successors of the “Blueshirts”) had increasingly criticized the DEP for its “soft Stalinism”; now, the Labour Party, the Communist Party of Ireland and certain members of de Valera’s own Fianna Fail criticized it for being TOO soft!
After a concerned delegation of factory workers from Kilkenny personally addressed de Valera in Dublin, worried that government assistance was too slight to make a difference, he realized something had to be done. To ignore the outcry, or to seek a compromise with one of the two critical blocs, would lead to industrial action and political cloak-and-dagger. His government, and Ireland’s prosperity, would be martyred at either the throne of pride or of expediency.
To de Valera, a man genuinely sincere in his democratic conviction, neither was acceptable. Instead, he publicly undertook to bring to the Dail revisions to all areas of the DEP, bringing them under closer government supervision. Whilst the Fascists promised marches, little response actually materialized; the few, unpleasant incidents that did come out of that promise simply moved Fine Gael closer to consensus with the government.
De la Poer Gough and his cabal immediately brought de Valera to task, however, arguing that such closer government control could only hamper dynamic military improvement; de Valera granted them this point, and assured them that when time came, a freer market would again be sought, but for now this was what was needed. With no public or serious political support, the Irish military had to accept this loose promise.
So much for the course of the Directed Economic Policy in 1936; its success was undeniable, and its role in demonstrating de Valera and his cohorts MacEntee and Lemass the leading statesmen in Ireland stark. However, though the end of the Economic War runs a close second, the most momentous political moment of the year must be counted as those events surrounding the Abdication Crisis in the United Kingdom, leading to Amendment 27 to the Constitution of the Irish Free State.
On the 20th of January, George V, King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, Emperor of India, and the first modern King of Ireland, died of problems relating to his lungs. George had been a rare friend of Ireland in England; he had protested the brutal reprisals of the Black and Tans in the Irish War for Independence, he had supported the strikers in 1926, and he had shown great support for Ireland as it began to stand upon its own two feet. His death brought to the throne Edward VIII, a feckless charmer more interested in women than in ruling.
He had become enamoured sometime before with a twice-married American socialite, Wallis Simpson, who he had made his mistress. As 1936 progressed, his public dalliance with this lady attracted widespread public opprobrium, and whilst the British press remained silent for now, the issue was sure to come to a head soon.
Edward VIII and Mrs Wallis Simpson
On November the 16th, the King announced to Baldwin that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson once her second divorce had been completed. On a wide variety of grounds, covering religious, legal and political issues (as well as problems with the character of the lady herself), this was an unpalatable situation for the Prime Minister; he advised the King that Mrs Simpson could not become Queen, signalling that the government would resign en masse if the King married her, but Edward was determined. The King said he would abdicate the throne if need be; but he would marry Mrs Simpson.
Baldwin consulted his allies in government, before turning to the Prime Ministers of the Dominions to discuss the small number of options available to them. De Valera, the equivalent in Ireland, spoke with the others in saying that the only permissible course was for the King to abdicate if he wished to marry Mrs Simpson.
On the 10th of December, Edward signed a note of abdication, witnessed by his three younger brothers. The next day, with assistance from his close friend, the Conservative politician and former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Edward spoke poignantly to his public. He said he would have been unable to fulfil his role as “as I would have wished” without the support of “the woman I love”.
But as the Abdication Crisis had been deepening, de Valera had been acting. On the same day Edward gave his great speech before heading into an informal exile, de Valera presented to Dail Eireann Amendment 27 to the Constitution of the Irish Free State: abolishing the post of Governor General (this without the consultation of de Valera’s friend Buckley, who had dutifully played the part of the anonymous functionary given to him) and removing all references to the King in Irish legal and political forms.
The Amendment was passed overwhelmingly. In the aftermath, Frank Fahy, Ceann Comhairle (Parliamentary Speaker) of the Dail, temporarily acted as Head of State; and whilst there were still some legal loopholes to be tidied up, de Valera felt confident enough in the action to suggest a new Irish Constitution must be drafted. Ireland would, at last, be ruled by the Irish.
This is my first AAR, so be gentle! Thanks =)
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