The Irish army has never fought in a war. Throughout history they have sought to remain neutral from the larger conflicts which engulfed Europe with distressing regularity.
And so it was with the war to end all wars in 1939. Ireland announced her neutrality when World War II began.
This was not the news the Allies wanted to hear. Churchill had hoped that Ireland might join the United Kingdom in her attempts to grapple with the Third Reich. Privately, Roosevelt did too.
Ireland’s decision to seek to stand apart from World War II may be seen in three distinct ways. The initial was Irish integrity, which the Taoiseach (prime minister) Eamon de Valera strongly announced, restricting Britain from launching anti-submarine missions from the Treaty Ports on Ireland’s southern, northwestern, and western shorelines.
The next two were more accommodating. The second was David Gray’s campaign, who served as the United States military agent in Dublin, to sway sentiment. Third was a “non-agreement” on air transport negotiated late in the war, in Chicago in 1944. Direct negotiations between Americans and Irish allowed US passenger airliners to stop in Ireland on their way to Europe.
President Éamon de Valera praised Winston Churchill as a brilliant Englishman but could not avoid calling him “a terrible enemy of the Irish country” after he passed away. Clearly he recognized an opponent as well as an ally.
But what is less well known is what Churchill had proposed to de Valera in the darkest hours of the war. It seemed that, in return for Irish support, Churchill saw the possibility for a unified Ireland where Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom, then and now) would be reunited with Southern Ireland.
A Bold Plan
The British strategy, which was drafted in June 1940, called for a quick announcement acknowledging “the concept” of a united Ireland, the creation of a joint legal counsel and a body to handle the constitutional details of unity, as well as the potential partnership of the North and South governments. In exchange, Prime Minister Eamon de Valera was requested to give up his neutral position.
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So far, Churchill hoped de Valera’s Ireland might continue to be a “non-belligerent” nation. But he also hoped the government would authorize British ships to dock in Irish docks and British troops and aviation to fly over Irish land to defend the nation from a Nazi invasion and safeguard Britain’s western border.
The State Department secretary for the British Ambassador, Malcolm MacDonald, informed the Prime minister over lunch that if the strategy was approved, “a united Ireland will indeed arise into actuality within a relatively brief time,” according to a Dominions Department folder from June 27th, 1940, which was made public as a core component of the transparent government program.
The visit represented the conclusion of 10 days of conversations between the two leaders in Dublin, during which de Valera restated his demands that Britain provide Ireland with weapons to protect itself from German attack.
De Valera ultimately rejected the Churchill de Valera Ireland concept on the arguments that Dublin wasn’t certain that London would keep its promise of a united Ireland, his view that Britain could lose the battle, and his concern about divisions inside the Fianna Fail party.
Why did de Valera refuse?
Throughout World War II, Eamon de Valera rejected proposals of Churchill de Valera Ireland unification twice, but by doing so, he dismissed the potential of a 32-county Ireland.
Sean Lemass, the minister of supplies, and Frank Aiken, the minister of external affairs, were present at the Dublin meeting. Lemass stated there was no assurance in the proposal that a united Ireland would come into existence immediately. De Valera had made the same argument when he referred to the proposal as a “payment delay” for going to war throughout a discussion with MacDonald on June 26th, 1940.
McDonald warned de Valera and his coworkers that they had to make a difficult decision. While the citizens of Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom were unified in the greatest battle against the Nazis, “none of us in Britain will be worried to construct a united Ireland later,” the authorities of Ireland might have served German power by staying out of the war.
Nevertheless, de Valera believed that if British forces were placed on Irish territory, national unity would be destroyed, and Ireland’s neutrality would be compromised, putting the nation in a higher danger of German assault. Churchill suggested eliminating the separation of Ireland in exchange for British soldiers utilizing Irish naval bases in June 1940.
De Valera ultimately declined Churchill’s unification offer due to his doubts about the British’s ability to uphold the judgment after World War II. He doubted the possibility of pressuring the unionists into a united Ireland, he believed that the commitment would be useless if Britain lost the war, and he also didn’t want British soldiers returning to Ireland, which would have risked Ireland’s new independence.
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Following the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, de Valera was given another opportunity to become “A Nation once again,” but he denied it. As a result, by 1945, there was a severe rivalry between unionists in the north and nationalists in the south.
Irish neutrality ensured they remained at peace, but Unionists were unaware of it. Nonetheless, de Valera’s rapid action in 1941 during the Blitz was greatly appreciated by providing firefighters support in Belfast.
Once the Second world War was won, the offer was no longer on the table and there was a feeling of “lost opportunity” around this historical incident. If the offer by Churchill de Valera Ireland had been accepted by De Valera, Ireland’s history would have been very different.
The Irish citizen, however, would not tolerate joining the war in the same way the American citizens would have before Pearl Harbor. Some argue that de Valera could not have accepted even had he wanted it.
Top Image: Churchill and de Valera after the war. Was an historic opportunity missed? Source: Royal Irish Academy / Public Domain.
By Bipin Dimri
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