by Dermot Keogh
MERCIER PRESS
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Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.
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© Dermot Keogh & Gabriel Doherty, 2003
Ebook edition, 2011
ISBN: 978 1 85635 414 1
Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 895 8
Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 917 7
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For my Mother, Helena Doherty
Introduction
While working on a biography of Tom Barry I realised that he did not always see eye to eye with Liam Lynch. Both men were strong-minded Republicans, and though initially Barry’s attitude was more radical than Lynch’s, he was, during the closing stages of the Civil War, much more flexible. At various periods during the Civil War both men belonged to separate divisions of the same ‘divide’ often voting in opposition to one another.
Through working on a biography of Barry, I considered that I had come to understand the man, and, because of Barry’s close links with Lynch, I felt compelled to get an insight into Lynch – the man. It was the clash of personalities, which first attracted me towards investigating the life of Liam Lynch. When I discussed the matter with Seán Feehan of Mercier Press, this compulsion crystallised and led to this biography.
Fortunately my research was aided by original material, especially the personal letters which Liam Lynch had written to his mother, his family and others. The personal correspondence (now held by Liam’s niece, Biddy O’Callaghan) was invaluable, as, in his letters, he often expressed his very private thoughts. It was only possible to use a fraction of the material in these letters, but I hope that in doing so his strength of character, together with the vision, which Lynch possessed, emerges. From his letters, as well as his responses to misrepresentation of him in newspapers, it is obvious that he wanted his ideas and his intentions to be honestly interpreted. ‘I do hope I shall live through this,’ he wrote in a letter to his brother Tom during the Civil War, ‘that future generations will have written for them the full details of all the traitorous acts.’ But such was not to be; he was killed at the age of twenty-nine.
His dislike of hypocrisy is evident in both his words and actions. He always followed his beliefs and never acted through a desire for notoriety. ‘Through the war I have got to understand so much of the human being,’ he wrote to his mother during the truce, ‘that when peace comes, I would wish for nothing more than hide myself away from all the people that know me, or even follow my dead comrades.’
During my early research I wrote to Jim Kearney, an IRA veteran, in connection with a point which I wanted clarified. In doing so I used the word ‘Irregulars’. I quote from his reply: ‘Irregulars! Where did you get that dirty word?’ Later, I discovered Liam Lynch also detested the term, saying it was coined by pro-treatyites as a derogatory label. I have not therefore used ‘Irregulars’ or ‘Staters’ except as part of a quotation. Liam Lynch was known as ‘The Chief’ among Republicans, particularly in the First Southern Division. Siobhán Creedon tells a story of how Margaret Mackin came with dispatches by boat from Dublin to Cork and on to the Creedon hotel near Mallow during the Civil War. ‘I have messages for the Chief,’ she said. Siobhán’s brother, Michael, drove the two women to headquarters where they knew an important meeting was being held. Upon arrival, Margaret had to first go into a side room to undo the dispatches, which she had stitched to her dress. Liam Deasy came out of the meeting saying that the Chief was very busy but would speak to them as soon as possible. Shortly afterwards Liam Lynch emerged, and according to Siobhán, ‘Margaret stared at him in complete surprise.’ Seeing that they did not appear to know each other she introduced them. ‘But,’ stammered Margaret, ‘it was Mr de Valera I wanted!’ Liam Lynch explained that De Valera was in West Cork but would be along in a few days, and that, meanwhile, he would see that the dispatches were delivered. Later, when Margaret explained her dilemma upon seeing Lynch, Siobhán responded, ‘We call Liam Lynch “the Chief” – he is the real Chief! Chief of the IRA.’
In most historical books, references to Liam Lynch’s death merely state that he was fatally wounded in the Knockmealdown mountains; while I accepted the straight-forward view that he died from a Free State force bullet, it was not until I began my research that I discovered a question mark hung over his death.
On 7 April 1935, Maurice Twomey (who was with Liam on the morning he was shot in the Knockmealdowns) unveiled a watch-tower memorial to him close to the spot where he fell. Since 1935 a ceremony, organised by Sinn Féin, is held there each year. And in Kilcrumper graveyard where he is buried, since 1956 another ceremony takes place on an annual basis in which some Fianna Fáil members participate. On the Sunday nearest 7 September (to commemorate the Fermoy raid in 1919) at all venues ‘old IRA’ veterans, together with interested members of the public, attend the organised ceremonies each year. So it has been said, ‘There are two different Lynchs buried!’ – ostensibly two different interpretations of the Republican vision portrayed by the one man.
It is ironic that the grand-daughter of Éamon de Valera, Síle de Valera TD in 1979, at a Liam Lynch commemorative ceremony, hastened the early resignation of the then leader of the Fianna Fáil party, Jack Lynch, when she called on him ‘to demonstrate his Republicanism’: but as John Bowman pointed out in his book De Valera and the Ulster Question 1917–1973, that, while De Valera, during the last meeting with Liam tried ‘to persuade him to abandon military resistance to the Free State, Liam Lynch was concerned lest the decision reached fell short of fundamental Republicanism.’
In a letter to his brother dated 26 October 1917, Liam had expressed his opinion that it was through armed resistance that Ireland ‘would achieve its Nationhood.’ It was his belief that the ‘army has to hew the way for politics to follow.’
Many of his comrades have wondered why Liam Lynch did not get the recognition which they felt he deserved, even though he had been offered the position as commander-in-chief of the army in December 1921; the consensus amongst his compatriots was that, in the documentation of history, De Valera overshadowed him. There is no doubt that Liam’s insistence in holding out to the end, for nothing less than ‘an Irish Republic’ when victory for that cause was becoming increasingly remote, meant that he was alienating himself from other members of the Republican Executive. However, Liam reiterated his viewpoint in a letter to his brother, dated 12 December 1921, ‘As you stated, De Valera was the first to rebel.’ But rebelling as a mere protest was not sufficient: ‘Speeches and fine talk do not go far these days ... what we want is a definite line of action, and in going along that, to use the most effective means at our disposal.’ Because of the firm stand which he took in holding out for a Republic, his deeds of bravery, especially previous to the Civil War, appear to have been downgraded, so much so that he is often mentioned as if in passing.
Yet, historically, Liam Lynch is an extremely important figure because of the part he played in gaining Irish independence – first as commander of Cork No. 2 brigade and later as commander of the First Southern Division. The part he played with Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Liam Deasy, Tom Barr
y and others, in endeavouring to avoid Civil War, and his efforts to achieve a thirty-two county Republic for Ireland rather than a partitioned state, should not be underestimated. During the Civil War period, as chief-of-staff of the Republican forces, he was the major driving power and spokesman for that section. I believe therefore, that this is a necessary biography.
Meda Ryan
The American identity of de Valera
Owen Dudley Edwards
‘But, Doctor,’ said Caspian, ‘why do you say my race? After all, I suppose you’re a Telmarine too.’
‘Am I?’ said the Doctor.
‘Well, you’re a man anyway,’ said Caspian.
‘Am I?’ repeated the Doctor in a deeper voice …
‘So you’ve guessed it in the end,’ said Doctor Cornelius. ‘Or guessed it nearly right. I’m not a pure Dwarf. I have human blood in me too. Many Dwarfs escaped in the great battles and lived on; shaving their beards, and wearing high-heeled shoes and pretending to be men … But never in all these years have we forgotten our own people and all the other happy creatures of Narnia, and the long-lost days of freedom.’
‘I’m – I’m sorry, Doctor,’ said Caspian. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know.’
Aslan said nothing.
‘You mean,’ said Lucy rather faintly, ‘that it would have turned out all right – somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?’
‘To know what would have happened, child?’ said Aslan. ‘No. Nobody is ever told that.’1
‘I am deeply honoured,’ said President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the Teachtaí Dála and (Irish) Senators in Leinster House on 28 June 1963, ‘to be your guest in the free parliament of a free Ireland. If this nation had achieved its present political and economic stature a century or so ago, my great-grandfather might never have left New Ross, and I might, if fortunate, be sitting down there with you. Of course, if your own President had never left Brooklyn, he might be standing up here instead of me.’
Kennedy was being light-hearted: it was one of his greatest gifts. The speech contained much that was his own work, this passage almost certainly.2 It needed a touch of nerve, thus to speculate half-irreverently, half-admiringly, as to the alternative life of Eamon de Valera, and we may doubt whether his speechwriters would have known enough to risk it. His Irish visit was in any case unpopular with his court.3 Everyone, including the Irish Department of External Affairs, had assumed before his election that he would be a little colder to Ireland than his predecessors, to show his credentials were American, not Irish-American. They thought it from their knowledge of his father.4 But John Kennedy’s Irish identity sat easily within himself, and he had been at variance with his father’s social and political attitudes from his earliest published historical writing: Why England Slept, with its formidable critique of the diplomatic unfitness of Joseph P. Kennedy’s patron and idol, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.5 And he knew Ireland, and even Irish history, rather better than any of his servants seem to have done: he certainly knew de Valera better.
Both de Valera and Kennedy knew the wisdom of allowing myths to accumulate about them without gratifying their pedantry (of which each had his share) by correcting every record. For instance, Kennedy’s entourage assumed that his only previous visit to Ireland had been in 1947 as the guest of his sister Kathleen, Marchioness of Hartington and her Cavendish in-laws of the Devonshire Dukedom.6 But he had witnessed his father’s honorary NUI degree conferred by de Valera in 1938. He had flown out of Foynes to resume his studies at Harvard in September 1939. He had visited Ireland and interviewed de Valera on the eve of the Potsdam Conference (where his father wangled his attendance) in July 1945. His chosen profession was not politician but journalist: he reluctantly accepted the political career because of the death of his eldest brother Joe (who would have been a predictable echo of his father as far as we can judge). His first newspaper story appeared in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal-American for 2 February 1941.7 It was an exceptionally fair-minded statement of the UK case against Irish neutrality, and of the Irish case for its maintenance, stressing that US evaluations were the more urgent if its own security depended (as Franklin Roosevelt said) on British survival and ‘if Ireland’s present policy weakens Britain’s chances’. He stressed British fears of German seizure of Ireland with ‘the Norway experience ever before them’. The story’s headline declared that the Treaty ports were ‘IRISH BASES VITAL TO BRITAIN’ but Kennedy affirmed that the Irish ‘presented an equally impressive case … to give the British these bases would mean the involvement of Ireland in a war for which they are completely unprepared. The Irish government feels that its first and fundamental duty is to its own people. Except for extremists, of course, the Irish are completely sympathetic to the British cause.’ This last depended on one’s interpretation of ‘extremist’ but the article made a very friendly case both for Britain and for Ireland, in a journal whose proprietor’s bitter Anglophobia had hitherto abominated sympathy for ‘England’ either from Ireland or from the US. And it concluded with a shrewd estimate of realities of anti-partitionism as a motive of the de Valera government:
Of course it must be pointed out that de Valera reportedly has stated that Neutrality for Ireland is now more important than Union. That he should reject an opportunity to fulfil his life-long ambition is, his supporters say, conclusive evidence of his deep sincerity.
When Robert Fisk reached the same conclusion in his In Time of War,8 reviewers expressed a surprise which involuntarily paid tribute to Kennedy’s hard youthful head (not that they knew of it).
War service took Kennedy away from both Ireland and journalism, but four years later he reported in the same paper on the anti-partition cause in July 1945. He singled out Dillon as the heart of ideological dissent from de Valera, but while seeing in him an advocate of ‘co-operating and the building of mutual trust’ with Britain, Kennedy diagnosed hope of pickings across the Irish spectrum if de Valera could be forced into a corner: ‘Dillon is attempting to pin de Valera to being completely in or completely out of the British Commonwealth and thus make political capital, no matter what decision he makes.’9 Evidently, Kennedy foresaw the possibility of unity across the board among de Valera’s opponents, hopes of revenge and sweets of office outweighing ideological hostilities. He also noted that de Valera saw it too:
De Valera’s elaboration of his remarks left the situation to many observers as misty as this island on an early winter’s morning. ‘Ireland,’ said de Valera, ‘was an independent Republic associated as a matter of external policy with the states of the British Commonwealth’ … De Valera, realising how subtle his position is and not wishing to alienate those who advocate a complete break with Britain, yet conscious of the fact that only with Britain’s support can partition be ended, is skating along thin ice successfully with his enigmatic reply.
Apart from interviews with Dillon, de Valera, and what pot-luck he could make of Dublin and other journalists, Kennedy’s sources for the second story may well have been his obvious ones for the first: the Irish diplomatic corps. He had first encountered these islands as an appendage of US diplomacy or, as the Irish External Affairs officials termed embassy progeny in those days, ‘a diplomatic brat’.
However we may evaluate Kennedy as President, he seems to have been a good journalist. His presidential zest for the press conference with its hazards of unexpected tripwires from old colleagues arose from that. And he evidently saw in de Valera a pragmatist operating amid ethnic totems and taboos. The obvious question he would have put to fellow-journalists at the time – a particularly natural question from an officer recently in war service – was why de Valera had expressed condolences to the German Embassy on the death of its head of state, Adolf Hitler. The most authoritative answer he would have received would have been that in this gesture, widely unpopular outside Ireland, he strengthened his political flank inside it against attack from Anglophobe repub
licans such as Seán MacBride. And in that cool, half-mocking, half-celebrating exchange of destinies with de Valera in 1963, President Kennedy was paying an informed tribute to the skills of the first head of government he had had a chance to assess at close quarters since the fall of his father’s friend, Chamberlain. (Kennedy admired Churchill from afar, but had no chance for close encounter). This Irish eye of the young journalist might be forgotten by everyone else, but he might be expected to remember, with advantages, what deeds he had done in assessment of de Valera. And as a young aspirant for presidential office who read books and attended seminars on political power, he had more means of judging the success of de Valera’s performance than that of any other comparable figure. He continued to read in Irish history, presumably some of it covering the twentieth century, such as the American writer Mary Bromage’s life of de Valera.10 What de Valera’s influence on Kennedy may have been we cannot say: at all events it was more than that Edwin O’Connor allowed for the Irish in Ireland as far as Jimmy Kinsella, based on Joseph P. Kennedy, was concerned: ‘I’m about fed up with these home-grown Micks: there’s not a quarter in the crowd.’11Lord Longford briefly cast de Valera for Kennedy’s alternative father.12
There was little more than a quarter (by Kennedy standards) in the crowd of de Valera’s immediate relatives when he was born on 14 October 1882, in Manhattan rather than Brooklyn (still a city in its own right). The confusion may have arisen from Kennedy’s own birth in Brookline, Massachusetts: the slip may perhaps be called Freudian. The birthplace qualified de Valera as eligible for the Presidency of the United States. Curiously enough the incumbent at his birth, Chester A. Arthur, was saluted by the Dublin Nation as ‘America’s Irish President’, but is assumed by some historians to have been born in Canada (and hence ineligible) although he always assigned himself a birthplace in Vermont.
