A WORD. FROM DUBLIN
By RAWLE KNOX
THE English are here again, and will soon be going home to report their amazement at the butter and eggs and at people who cross themselves every time they pass a church. This will once again annoy the Irish, who take their butter, their eggs and their religion as integral parts of their lives. Of course it is posssible that if the tourists were to stay longer and look deeper their reports would please the Irish even less. The present-day Irishman is not so much anti-British as convinced that every Briton is anti-Irish. He is too full of himself to realise that Britain, warily eyeing the Scylla and Charybdis clashings of the U.SA. and U.S.S.R., can spare no time to be annoyed at a small green island to the west. If you tell the Irishman this he is first indignant; then asks, victoriously, " What about the Six Counties? " The belief in Eire that Britain is -" holding on to " the six counties is as strong as the belief in England that Ulster loyally voted to remain in the United Kingdom. Neither is very near the truth, which is that the Ulster Unionists, faced by the horrid prospect of being a permanent minority in an Irish Republic, arranged things for themselves as well as they could, an arrangement they have repeated at every election since.
All political parties in Eire—Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Talmann (Farmers), Clann na Poblachta (I.R.A. writ legal) and the I.RA. itself—are pledged to work for the return of the Six Counties. None has announced how this is to be managed (except perhaps the I.R.A.). The routine method of a country that wishes to complain about British conduct is to prepare a brief for the use of the Russians in U.N.O. This is denied to Eire, who has never opened diplomatic relations with Russia, by whom her application to enter U.N.O. was opposed. Meanwhile the problem is an evergreen subject of debate in the Dail. The hope most likely of fulfilment is that in time Sir Basil Brooke will find even the Catholics of the South, who are, after all, entrepreneurs, more congenial bedfellows than Labour in London ; that the progressive welding of commercial undertakings of North and South will eventually melt the Border.
Naturally last month's debate in the Commons on special powers for Stormont was eagerly followed here. Mr. Geoffrey Bing's speech was quoted by all the papers in full. Only the Irish Times mildly pointed out that, if the assumption of special powers were the sole subject of criticism, then Eire was in no position to throw stones. For 'though Mr. de Valera's Government repealed the hated Special Powers Act as soon as it was elected in 193r, it was less than two years before it had to introduce a similar Act of its own. Ironically enough Stormont and Dail, each of whom accuses the other of dictatorship, have both taken special powers to protect themselves from the same body—the extremist I.RA.
Mr. de Valera's Special Powers Act is one straw in an evil wind. It is not difficult to see others. After all, apart from Germany and Italy, Eire was the only country to send a semi-official force to help Franco. (But General Duffy's men behaved like true Irishmen when they arrived. They never went into action, because the Kerrymen would only serve under their own leader.) Last April, when the-
Dean of Canterbury came to lecture to the " Friends of the Soviet Union" on "What' I saw in Russia," University College students went along to wave Nazi flags and howl him down. (They were themselves roughly dealt with by a strong-arm squad of Friends of the Soviet Union.) Undergraduate stunts don't make history, but the intolerance of students who will not even try to understand what they dislike is significant. Then there is the stress on Irish nationalism. In a country that is rediscovering itself this is understandable, but when the Gaelic Athletic Association forbids its officials even to watch " foreign " games, one is reminded of a racialism one hoped was bygone. More extraordinary were the scenes at the recent funeral of Goertz, the Nazi spy who committed suicide on being told, almost two years after the end of the war, that he must return to Germany. Men stood to attention, women wept and threw flowers, as a huge crowd watched the burial of this man who self-confessedly1 arrived to overthrow the elected Government of the country.
Eire has as yet been almost untouched by the struggle between Left and Centre which rocks Europe. Her Labour pains are only just beginning ; it is certain that they will grow rapidly. Wages here are still far below those in England, out of sight of those in the States. Yet the Government strongly discourages emigration. The cost of living is 76 per cent. up since 1939; the index figure has risen ten points in the last three months. It is not surprising that there are strikes. The Government has not shown any marked sympathy for strikers, but more important is the fact that the official voice of the Church has twice recently called on men to go back to work. There is not the least likelihood of a real fight between Left and Right at the moment, but if one should come the Church would stand where she stood in Spain. One cannot overstate what that would mean in holy Ireland.
The Irish like to pride themselves on their lawlessness. In fact, they accept restrictions and inequalities under Mr. de Valera which the British would not have dared to impose. Doubtless they would make just as good Fascists as the Italians. Fianna Fail have ruled for sixteen years, say their enemies, on the sop-to-Cerberus principle. In this there is a grain of truth. Shortly before each election one can bet on some item of social legislation that will appeal to the lower-income groups. The opposition parties criticise, but none of them can say definitely where they are going. Fianna Fail is secure in having nowhere to go.
There is a rumour running round Dublin that shows which way the wishful thinkers are looking. It starts from the fact that the Gaelic Athletic Association (after more argument than any political problem has raised for years) has decided to play the All-Ireland football final in New York this year. The rumour is that Mr. de Valera will go to watch the match and, while in America, will raise a large dollar loan. Then he will return and win a 1948 election with the sop that he can make Eire financially independent of Britain. With dollars, say the wishful thinkers, all things are possible; peace, prosperity— perhaps even the repeal of the Special Powers Act. The ostrich is a wishful thinker too. •
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