Ireland Since 1939 Read online

  On 2 September, the day after Germany invaded Poland, de Valera summoned the Dáil in order to introduce two bills: one was to amend the Constitution and the other an Emergency Powers Bill. The amendment to the Constitution extended the definition of the term ‘time of war’ to allow emergency legislation during an armed conflict in which the Irish state was not directly involved but that had created a national emergency affecting the vital interests of the state. This was the origin of the anodyne description of the Second World War as ‘the Emergency’ in Irish public discourse. De Valera made reference in the Dáil to those who mistakenly thought that it would be sufficient for neutrality to be declared for it to become a reality: in fact, it would need national determination to protect it ‘at every stage’.10 Yet, during the ‘phoney war’, the conservative priorities of the Department of Finance ensured that even the meagre forces available in September 1939 were reduced, and it took the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 to force the government to approve plans for an expansion of the army to 40,000 and the launch of a national recruiting drive in June.11 After an initial surge of recruitment, spurred by a widespread but temporary fear of invasion, the Irish Army experienced great difficulty in reaching its target wartime strength. This reflected its low levels of pay, which compared unfavourably with those of the British armed forces and also with wages available for Irish labour in the factories, shipyards and building sites of Northern Ireland and Great Britain. As a result desertion was common.12 It was not until the spring of 1943 that the Chief of Staff could report that his troops had passed from the stage of barrack-square training to being an ‘effective and mobile field force’.13 Even then the army lacked the most basic forms of equipment to support its role: it had almost no anti-aircraft defences, no armour worth the name, and was desperately short of artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, transport and munitions. Given this situation, the British intelligence estimate, made during the period of maximum German threat between the fall of France in May 1940 and the German attack on Russia in June 1941, that the Irish Army could have offered some form of organized resistance for between a week and ten days, was perhaps over-optimistic.14

  The real defenders of Irish neutrality against a threat from Germany were the Royal Navy and the British forces in Northern Ireland, who would have been expected to cross the border to expel any invaders from the Third Reich. The officials of the Department of Finance had cited this reality in resisting demands for increased defence spending in the late 1930s. What J. J. Lee refers to as the state's ‘astonishing achievement’ in reducing public expenditure as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product between 1939 and 1945 indicates that the real burden of defending neutrality fell on the shoulders of the British.15

  De Valera, the Nazis and the IRA

  De Valera displayed considerable political skill in responding to the conflicting pressures from London and Berlin and in presenting what was a British-biased neutrality as an even-handed assertion of Irish independence and self-respect. Part of his success in this was due to the covert nature of the arrangements on intelligence and military cooperation with the UK. The Irish government was acutely aware of the danger of German exploitation of IRA activity against Northern Ireland or of a possible campaign in Britain. It was also under pressure from London because of British fears that ‘fifth column’ activities would be unchecked by the Irish security services.16 The activities of a small group of German expatriates who were active Nazis had begun to concern Irish military intelligence in the late 1930. The new state's desire to develop its indigenous resources, economic and cultural, had created openings for a small but significant influx of Germans. In 1926 a contract for the construction of the hydroelectric scheme on the River Shannon was given to the German firm of Siemens-Schuckert, which brought in a number of engineers and technicians, some of whom married and settled in Ireland. In 1938 the director of Siemens-Schuckert was one of the main Nazis in Dublin. German prominence in the fields of the archaeology and language of Celtic Ireland had also provided a bridgehead between the two countries, and the leading Nazi in Dublin, Dr Adolf Mahr, was the Director of the National Museum.17 A German who acted as an adviser to the Turf Development Board also functioned as a Nazi intelligence agent, travelling the country and photographing railway stations, river bridges and reservoirs.18 The most bizarre case was that of the German who headed the Irish Army's School of Music and who had sought permission from the Chief of Staff to set up a branch of the Nazi Party in Dublin.19

  Shortly after the 1938 Agreement, and to give practical effect to his promises that Eire would not be a base for hostile activity against Britain, de Valera sent officers from the Irish Army and Joe Walshe, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, to London to discuss defence and intelligence cooperation with the British. One result was that MI5 was asked to assist in the formation of a new counter-espionage service within the Irish Army. By the outbreak of war the two intelligence services were in regular correspondence on the activities of German agents, Irish Nazi sympathizers and IRA–German collaboration. Walshe was an admirer of Mussolini, and when the war began he favoured an Axis victory.20 For him, cooperation with the British intelligence services served to quieten concern in London about the security threat of German intelligence operations in Ireland and lessen the possibility of a British invasion. However, the British, who had reservations about the capacity of the Irish counter-espionage service, were ultimately more impressed by the ruthlessness of de Valera's response to the IRA threat.

  Although many IRA men had been won over to Fianna Fáil since 1932, through a mixture of patronage and de Valera's success in convincing them that he could achieve the destruction of the Treaty settlement nonviolently, a sizeable rump remained. Under the leadership of the resolute militarist Seán Russell, the IRA declared war on Britain in January 1939 and launched a bombing campaign in British cities that was to claim seven dead and almost 200 wounded by the end of the year. The leadership of the IRA was eager to enlist German assistance, deluding themselves that a victorious Nazism would respect Ireland's independence. Using the novelist Francis Stuart as an emissary, the IRA had opened up contacts with the Abwehr, the military-controlled German foreign intelligence service.21 Although the dominant German policy towards Ireland was to ensure that its neutrality was preserved, twelve Abwehr agents did land in Éire between 1939 and 1943, aiming to make contact with the IRA and develop plans for joint action in the North.22

  De Valera responded swiftly to this direct threat to his pledge that the territory of his state would not be used as a base for attacks against Britain. The Offences against the State Act, introduced in June 1939, allowed for the creation of special courts and increasing police powers to search, arrest and detain.23 But when a number of imprisoned IRA men went on hunger strike, de Valera was reluctant to allow them to die, especially as one was a veteran of the 1916 Rising. Six were released, despite the misgivings of his Minister for Justice, Gerry Boland, who de Valera had appointed on the outbreak of war precisely because he was both tough and loyal.24

  The IRA's response to this concession was an audacious raid on the Irish Army's ammunition stores in the Magazine Fort in Dublin's Phoenix Park, which removed explosives and over one million rounds of ammunition. Although the bulk of the material was recovered, the raid marked the end of any tendency to concession. An amendment to the Emergency Powers Act in January 1940 allowed the introduction of internment without trial. Over 500 were interned and another 600 committed under the Offences against the State Act during the war years.25 With the IRA writing to newspapers, claiming grandiloquently that the ‘Government of the Republic’ would no longer tolerate censorship of its activities by de Valera's government, the public position of the government was expressed by Seán MacEntee, who warned the IRA that ‘in a continental state such criminals would have a speedy court-martial and an equally expeditious execution.’26 Service on the republican side during the revolutionary period would no longer be an
insurance, as the government displayed the same ruthlessness that it had denounced when the British and Northern Ireland authorities executed IRA men.

  One particularly stark example was the case of George Plant, executed in March 1942 for the killing of an alleged IRA informer. He had fought during the War of Independence, then on the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War, and while on the run had emigrated to the United States. He did not return to Ireland until 1940 and, as his defence put it, ‘His prolonged absence from the country did not enable him to appraise the change of circumstances.’ Many in Fianna Fáil, remembering their own recent past, were profoundly uneasy about the action taken against men like Plant.27 Seán Lemass, who was close to breaking with the government on the issue, was reminded by his mother that Plant and others were doing precisely what he and others had done a quarter of a century earlier.28

  Nevertheless, despite such conscience-wrestling and criticism from the grass-roots of the party, the government maintained unity. When the Special Criminal Court discharged Plant because the only evidence against him was that of retracted statements by the two other IRA men accused of the murder, he was re-arrested and tried by a military court, which sentenced him to death. Five other IRA men were executed during the war and another three were allowed to die on hunger strike. Despite the overt political conflict between the two Irish states, there was also covert cooperation against the IRA threat. A link between the RUC and the Garda was established soon after the outbreak of the war to exchange intelligence on IRA activities.29 Little wonder that when the IRA took over a broadcasting station in Cork in April 1940, the core of its address to the populace was a denunciation of de Valera as ‘Judas’.30

  The good relations between the British and Irish intelligence services were an important element in a range of Irish activities that gave the operation of neutrality a degree of bias towards the Allies. These included the exchange of meteorological information; the relaying to the British of information gathered by the Irish coast-watching service on German planes, ships and submarines in or near Irish territory and waters; permission for the overflying of Irish airspace in northern Donegal by Allied aircraft for easier access to the Atlantic; and close cooperation between the military authorities North and South.31

  These forms of covert cooperation led Maurice Moynihan, Secretary to de Valera's cabinet, to exclaim in May 1941, ‘We could not do more if we were in the war.’32 A British intelligence analysis of the impact of neutrality on the war effort tended to support Moynihan's view. Acknowledging the shipping losses incurred because of the lack of access to southern Irish ports, it argued that neutral Ireland was still of more value than a belligerent Ireland would have been. If Ireland had entered the war on the Allied side, the resultant conscription would have denied the British war effort the Irish servicemen and workers who did in fact cross the border or the Irish Sea. At the same time, given that a belligerent Ireland was judged not to be in a position to defend itself against a German attack, Britain would have had to supply its new ally with arms and men, both of which were scarce.33

  Over 45,000 southern Irish men and women volunteered for the British forces during the war, compared to about 44,000 from the North. Even more important, however, were the 120,000 who went to work in Britain and Northern Ireland: ‘So great was the need for this Irish labour before and during the Battle of Britain in 1940 that without it the airdromes, so desperately needed, could not have been built, and great as the need for Irish labour was then, it increased throughout the war as the calls on our manpower became great.’34

  This relatively benign assessment of neutrality, written with the benefit of hindsight, should not be allowed to obscure the fact that in the period of maximum German threat, after the fall of Norway and Denmark and the attack on the Low Countries, there was deep concern in British government circles about Dublin's stance. It was reflected in Churchill's assertion in November 1940 that the denial of the ports was ‘a most heavy and grievous burden… which should never have been placed on our shoulders’.35 Denial of the ports to the Royal Navy, which reduced its capacity to provide convoy protection, was reckoned by the Admiralty to have cost 368 ships and 5,070 lives during the war.36

  Such calculations challenge what the Cork-based historian Geoffrey Roberts has called ‘the pragmatic pro-neutrality narrative’, which still dominates academic and popular approaches to the issue in the Republic. According to this narrative, neutrality was a necessary policy, which benefited Ireland and the Allies alike.37 But, as Roberts points out, during the early phase of the war, when it looked as if Germany might win, Irish cooperation with Britain was limited. RAF planes were prohibited from overflying Irish headlands, a ban that was later abolished; and in 1940 the Irish refused a British request for an agreement on transshipment facilities for British merchant shipping.38 Moreover, the secret contributions of the Irish state were far outweighed by the tens of thousands of Irish men and women who on their own initiative volunteered for service in the British forces or became war workers in Britain. The Irish state's role here was one of turning a blind eye to Irish military volunteers and actively facilitating the mass migration of Irish labour, which, if it had remained at home, might have presented major social and political problems.39

  Neutrality and Partition

  It has been argued that the continuing strength of anti-British feeling in the political culture of the South made the neutrality policy the only conceivable one.40 At the time, even liberal unionists in the North tended to see de Valera's options as strongly constrained by the effect of his party's strident anglophobia and irredentism in the period since 1932.41 Sir John Maffey, the UK Representative in Dublin, observed: ‘It is remarkable how even the “pro-British” group, men who have fought for the Crown and are anxious to be called up again… agree generally in supporting the policy of neutrality for Eire.’42 The main opposition parties found it difficult to avoid tail-ending Fianna Fáil views of neutrality and security issues. De Valera created a consultative Conference on Defence in May 1940 in which Fine Gael and Labour had representatives. Although consultation was minimal, it very effectively neutered the opposition for the duration of the Emergency.43

  On 16 June, for the first time since the Civil War, before an enormous crowd in the centre of Dublin, the leaders of all three parties stood together on a joint platform to launch a national recruiting campaign for the army and a new part-time Local Security Force. By 1941 this had 100,000 members, and the Irish correspondent of the pro-Commonwealth Round Table noted the unifying effects of the campaign to defend neutrality: ‘Men who fought on opposite sides in the Civil War are now drilling and working together. British veterans of 1914 are serving in the local security force side by side with men who fought against the British.’44 That James Dillon, the deputy leader of Fine Gael, was forced to resign from the party in February 1942, for arguing in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that Ireland should, on moral grounds, ally itself with America,45 has encouraged the view that there was no alternative.

  Yet, in the summer of 1940 when the German threat to both Ireland and Britain was at its height and there was a real sense of fear and panic in official circles in Dublin, the leaders of Fine Gael urged de Valera to abandon neutrality in return for British action on partition. On 16 May, less than a week after Germany invaded the Low Countries, de Valera had a meeting with Sir John Maffey, at which he asked for Britain's assistance in the event of a German invasion.46 The arrest in Dublin of an Irishman of German extraction, who had been one of the IRA's go-betweens with Germany and who had been concealing in his house a large amount of money, maps and other equipment belonging to a recently arrived German agent, increased Irish apprehension about Hitler's intentions. It encouraged an intensification of the process of constructing a covert set of intelligence and security arrangements with the British. Although de Valera's emissaries to London found that their offers of covert cooperation with the British war effort were positively receive
d, they none the less had major problems persuading the British that arms and equipment should be provided to the Irish Army but that there could be no question of British troops being invited into Ireland until the Irish themselves had begun to resist the invaders.47

  London's doubts about the military capacity of the Irish state, which were probably not assuaged by de Valera's boast that they were ‘very good hedge fighters’,48 were shared by leading members of the main opposition party. Soon after the withdrawal of Allied forces from Dunkirk, de Valera received a Fine Gael memorandum arguing that the only way of preventing a German invasion was to provide a unified defence command for the whole island and invite in French and British troops. Aware of the danger of a nationalist backlash against such a decision, it suggested that the ‘logical consequence’ of the cross-border defence arrangements would be the ‘subsequent impossibility of survival for the anachronism of Northern Ireland’.49

  The Fine Gael approach was to be echoed in the British proposals that Neville Chamberlain's emissary, Malcolm MacDonald, discussed with de Valera in Dublin in the third week of June. The offer envisaged the South immediately joining the Allies and the setting up of an All-Ireland Defence Council in return for an immediate British declaration of acceptance of the principle of a united Ireland and the creation of a North–South body to work out the practical details of such a union.50 De Valera's rejection of the proposal, which was rooted in his scepticism about the ability of any British government to deliver unionist acquiescence, has tended to be accepted as the only feasible response in the circumstances.51 Certainly the vehemence of Craigavon's reaction when he was provided with the details of the British offer indicated a central difficulty with the British proposal.