Irish tragedy

Denis Donoghue

Ireland in the War Years 1939-1945 Joseph T. Carroll (David and Charles £4.50).

Hell or Connaught: The Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652-1660. Peter Berresford Ellis (Hamish Hamilton £5.00).

In April, 1933 W. B. Yeats wrote `Parnell's Funeral,' a daring, garish poem which interprets the history of Ireland in the twentieth century as a shameless retreat from the lonely, visionary power of Parnell. O'Connell, not Parnell, was Catholic Ireland's hero; the 'Great Comedian' offered Ireland a meagre destiny, not tragic splendour. Now we had De Valera:

Had de Valera eaten Parnell's heart No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day, No civil rancour torn the land apart.

I have been thinking of Yeats's poem recently, and placing it beside these two studies of Irish history. De Valera emerges as the hero of Mr Carroll's book, a major statesman and not merely a politician. It was no loose-lipped demagogue but an extraordinarily gifted and courageous man who maintained Ireland's neutrality during the years of the second world war. The neutrality was benevolent toward Britain and America, and strictly decorous toward Germahy and Japan: in each respect De Valera defined it with remarkable finesse.

Mr Carroll's narrative begins in 1938 with the restoration of the Atlantic ports to Ireland, an important extension of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Thereafter his chapters discuss the declaration of Ireland's neutrality, the IRA bombing campaign which started early in 1939, the Offences against the State Act, the pressure exerted upon Ireland to join the Allies and give Britain the use of the ports, Britain's essay in economic punishment in 1941 and 1942, the famous American Note of 1944, Churchill's sneering reference to Ireland in his victoryspeech of May 13, 1945, and De Valera's reply. Much of the detail arises from the diplomatic encounters between Britain, America, Canada, and Ireland on the issue of neutrality: the participants include Chamberlain, Eden, Churchill; Cranborne, and Kearney. Among such players De Valera was a master; the professional diplomats pale into insignificance by comparison with him, the big politicians found that he could not be fooled or intimidated. When the British Government held out to De Valera the vision of a United Ireland in return for Ireland's joining the Allies, he knew that the offer was meaningless if not spurious. Britain could never force Craigavon and the Unionists to accept Dublin's embrace.

It is not clear from Mr Carroll's account whether the British Government was naive or cynical on the question of the Six Counties and a United Ireland. When Craigavon told Chamberlain that he was shocked to hear that Britain was negotiating with De Valera behind Northern Ireland's back, Chamberlain appears to have been surprised by the violence of his attitude, but he must have known that Churchill would oppose any attempt to push Loyalists toward Dublin, and that the whole notion was wild. In any case De Valera was not impressed or charmed, he knew that Partition would have to remain until time healed the wound: "no solution [in Northern Ireland] can come by force; there we must now wait and let the solution come with time and patience," De Valera told Maffey in 1944. It is a vain question to speculate on the form Ireland would have

taken in the present century if its leaders had held fast to Parnell rather than O'Connell as their chosen archetype, but Yeats was premature in thinking that the man who had torn the land apart and caused a Civil War had no further service to offer his country. In the same poem, 'Parnell's Funeral,' Yeats, thirsting for accusation, writes of the Irish people: All that was sung,

All that was said in Ireland is a lie

Bred out of the Contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.

In Ireland during the past few years we have been quarrelling about (inter alio) our interpretation of history, particularly our own history. Some people maintain that our schools Prepare young boys and girls to join the IRA by Presenting the true history of Ireland as a narrative of the revolutionary spirit, embodied for each generation in a glorious revolt against British oppression. Teachers are now encouraged to concentrate their minds upon social rather than political history, and upon Europe and America rather than merely Britain as a source of historical relations. I have entertained this revised version of our history, and do in part believe it. But some facts are recalcitrant. The story recited in Mr Ellis's book, for instance, demonstrates not that all our old history-books tell lies but that many of them tell truths. His official theme is the Political history of Ireland from September 11, 1652, when Charles Fleetwood arrived in Ireland to confiscate the lands and property of those Irishmen who had, since October 1641, taken up arms against England, to the restoration of Charles Stuart on May 14, 1660. There is no venom in the narrator, only in the events narrated. On June 22, 1653 the Commissioners for the Administration of the Affairs of the Commonwealth of England in Ireland were instructed to take the ten counties, "and to divide all the forfeited lands, meadow, arable and profitable pastures with the woods and bogs and, barren mountains thereunto respectively belonging, into two equal moieties," one moiety for the financiers who supplied money in 1642 to put down the O'Neill revolt, the other for the soldiers in lieu of arrears of pay. Those Whose land was due for confiscation were to remove themselves west of the Shannon not later than May 1, 1654.1t is hard to see how this episode, or indeed the whole sequence of events from 1641 to 1660, would be sweetened by recourse to a wider context. Mr Ellis tells the storY mainly by reference to the activities of the several Commanders, Fleetwood, Henry Cromwell and the remarkable Edmund Ludlow. The fact that the Cromwellian colonisation was not particularly successful was due not to any ineptitude in these men but to problems of Communication and exchange, in the first instance, and thereafter to the resilience of those whose lands were confiscated. Not that the story is simple. If like Yeats in this respect we thirst for accusation, we may !Ind some incitement in Mr Ellis's book, where he reports a speech made in Parliament on June 10, 1657 by Major Anthony Morgan, member for VVicklow: We have three beasts to destroy that lay heavy burdens on us. The first is the wolf, on whom we lay !lye pounds a head if a dog, and ten pounds if a bitch. The second beast is a priest, on whose head We lay ten pounds if he be eminent, more. The 1,1:iird beast is a Tory on whose head, if he be a public

Tory, we lay twenty pounds, and forty shillings on a Private Tory. Your army cannot catch them. The Irish bring them in: brothers and cousins cut one another's throats.

That has the ring of truth. (Tory by the way, is derived ,T in some fashion from the Irish

anoraidhe meaning in the seventeenth century outlaw, bog-trotter, rapparee.)

Dents Donoghue is Professor of English and tlrnerican Literature at University College, Dublin