MR. DE VALERA'S EVOLUTION
Commonwealth and Foreign
By PROFESSOR W. K. HANCOCK
To understand the present position and possibilities of Anglo- Irish relations it is necessary first of all to understand the state of mind of the Irish people. It sounds very elementary to ask, " Who are the Irish people ? " But usually Irishmen when asked this question give very different answers to it. Not *' the anti-Irish element," say the stout Republicans. Not " the slave element." Not, in short, any element, even if it be the vast majority, which recognises the Irish Free State. " Recognition of the Free State—with or without an Oath—is treason to the Republic." Griffith was a traitor when he brought back the Treaty of Surrender. Collins was a traitor when he headed the Provisional Government. Cosgrave was a traitor when he set up a pretended constitu- tion for the so-called Free State. De Valera was a traitor (so logic insisted against sympathy) when nine years ago he entered the Parliament of the Free State. The logic of 1927 sees itself justified in 1936, when De Valera is using secret pressure and open force against " the Republic and the
• People of Ireland."
In this phrase, the question is answered. The Irish people are the Republic which was proclaimed at Easter, 1916, and re-affirmed in January, 1919. People and Republic exist by indefeasible right in a mystical oneness. But who speaks for the Republic ? A dwindling sect still maintains that the second Dail—theattenuated Republican rump of the assembly elected in 1921—is the de jure authority of the Republic. But even to Republicans the play-acting of the second Dail long since became a farce. Most of them look to the Irish Re- publican Army to uphold " the sovereignty and unity of the Irish Republic." The I.R.A. professes itself ready, if oppor- tunity should offer, to " delegate " its authority to a de facto government : in the meantime, it remains the Republic's lawful trustee. Its method of action is, primarily, " force of arms." Stripped of all the high-sounding phraseology, the people of Ireland, according to this theory, is a small band of revolutionaries ready to shoot. They shot Kevin O'Higgins. They might with equal justification shoot President De Valera. By their theory they have the right to shoot anybody exercising legal authority either in the Free State or in the Six Counties. Their theory makes the revolution perpetual. Rut their theory is at variance with the facts. In practice, the tempo of the revolution has been progressively slackening ever since the truce of August, 1921.
There is another answer to the question, " Who are the Irish people ? " Griffith and Collins answered in 1922 that the Irish people were the actual individuals, families, interests and sections of the population, expressing their will by democratic suffrage. On this answer the Free State is founded. The civil war, considered from an abstract and theoretical point of view, was a clash between the two defini- tions of the people. One side asserted that the people was nothing less than the undying Republic. The other side asserted that it was nothing more than the will of ordinary Irishmen. Mr. De Valera, if one looks at his career as a whole, seems to have sought national unity by trying to bridge the gulf. The general movement has been undoubtedly away from the abstract Republican conception of the Irish people and towards the realistic democratic view. Mr. De Valera's own record illustrates this. If one compares his position in August 1921 and August 1922, it is plain that he has in the interval become much more doctrinaire ; he has I;een unable to t. ridge the gulf, and has been • dragged into 1 he territory of the undying Republic. But by 1926 he is definitely preparing to cross into the territory of parliamentary democracy. Between 1922 and 1926 Irishmen have estab- lished a native Irish State. which, however imperfect, is a new fact in Irish history. Mr. De Valera then has to choose between recognising this new fact and nullity. In 1927 he tn.cepts the constitutional processes of the Irish Free State. In 1932 he accepts responsibility for those processes. Today he holds power, just as Mr. Cosgrave held it, by the title of democratic suffrage and the constitution.
All the same, his poSition. so far as one can infer it from his actions and his utterances, still contains elements of con-
fusion and doubt. It is easy—our generation knows it well enough by experience—to work through a constitutional system towards the destruction of that system. Has Mr. De Valera accepted the new Irish State in order to break it ? . Events of the past four years would give some support to this interpretation. The Treaty is no longer anchored in the constitution as fundamental law of the State. The titular head of the State is an obscure nonentity. The Senate is almost finished. The judges have in effect pronounced that the whole constitutional order (including the independence of the judiciary itself) is at the mercy of a majority vote in a single chamber. The Irish Free State has travelled half the road which leads from democracy to the party-state. From .the beginning, it might be argued, Mr. De Valera acted as if there had been no Treaty, no Constituent • Assembly, no Cosgrave regime. He broke the continuity. In appearance he may seem to be the responsible head of the Irish Free State : in reality he is a chieftain of the undying Republic, fighting " another round with England," re-opening the revolution under cover of a tactical legalism.
If this interpretation should prove correct, there is small hope of peace in Ireland or of reconciliation between England and Ireland. But it is the thesis of this article that a contrary interpretation must be adopted: It is indeed true that Mr. De Valera sometimes speaks the language of natural right and the undying Republic. And he speaks it sincerely : it is the past in his present. But the fourteen years' history of a modern Irish State are also in his present, and this history has an intrinsic weight which heavily outbalanees personal memories and habits. Besides, the personality is a compli- cated one, familiar enough, with conflicts of loyalty and confusions of theory. One feels today that Mr. De Valera is speaking for himself, and not merely for his office, when he maintains against the I.R.A. that only a representative government responsible to the people has the right to inflict death. Today Mr. De Valera is seeking unity by persuading the doctrinaire Republicans to follow him across the gulf which he crossed in 1927. His modifications of the consti- tution, as he has repeatedly asserted, are in large measure designed to make it easier for them to follow him.
The Irish Free State is an objective fact which is deflecting the intentions even of the Irish Republican Army. It was easy for the militant doctrinaires to keep the faith while their enemy the pro-Treaty party ruled the State ; but Mr. De Valera's judicious policy of persuasion, pensions, and punishments acts not only on individuals, but on the whole body. The prestige of the established order has spread so widely that the I.R.A. itself, like Fianna Fail ten years ago, is faced with the choice between political action and futility. It has now decided to create a political organisation which will fight at the next elections. It is true that its members talk of a demonstration of political strength which will drag Mr. De Valera and his followers back into the territory of the undying Republic. Nevertheless, they will be appealing, with a programme of radical economic content, to the real people of Ireland—the people to whom Griffith and Collins appealed in 1921, and De Valera in 1927.
Every organised State comes to stand for certain underlying interests, and these interests inevitably impress themselves upon the consciousness and the action of those who become involved in the processes of the State. Irishmen are no more immune from this necessity than other people. Mr. De Valera has announced with increasing frequency of late years that Ireland and England, divided by issues of sentiment and right, may begin to find a satisfactory understanding with each other. on the ground of interest. This may not be so easy as it sounds, for it may be interwoven with a bid from Mr. De Valera to secure English acquiescence in his view of right. Nevertheless, it is to the advantage both of Ireland and England that the outstanding revolutionary figure of modern Ireland should now be thinking in terms of the interest of an Irish State. Is it not England'S interest to keep him there and, if possible, meet him there ?
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