On this day 80 years ago, Winston Churchill broadcast to the world in the wake of Nazi Germany’s surrender ending the second World War in Europe. Having recounted proudly the heroic tale of Britain’s triumph after near defeat, he turned to Ireland, kept neutral by the De Valera government, which had denied Britain use of Irish ports as a base to protect from U-boats the convoys carrying essential supplies from America.
“This,” Churchill intoned, “was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland, we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr de Valera or perish forever from the Earth. However, with a restraint to which history will find few parallels, Her Majesty’s Government never laid a violent hand upon them and left the de Valera government to frolic with the German, and later with the Japanese representatives, to their heart’s content.”
Churchill then drew back, praising the “thousands of southern Irishmen who hastened to the battlefront to prove their ancient valour” and named some, including Eugene Esmonde, the second member of his family to win the Victoria Cross for gallantry.
“When I think of Irish heroes,” Churchill reflected, “I must confess bitterness by Britain against the Irish race dies in my heart. I can only pray that in years I shall not see, the shame will be forgotten and the glories will endure, and the people of the British Isles will walk together in mutual comprehension and forgiveness.”
Despite these eloquent conciliatory words, the speech struck a raw nerve here. Even the then pro-British Irish Times admitted to an uneasy feeling that Churchill had gone a little too far.
At the time, de Valera was on the back foot, having made a foolhardy, if diplomatically correct, call on the German minister to sympathise on the death of Adolf Hitler, who died as head of state of a country with whom Ireland had maintained diplomatic relations.
Now, Dev seized the chance to restore his popularity. On neutrality, he knew the vast majority of Irish people were with him. His reply defending it was a brilliant piece of rhetoric, long remembered in Ireland as his finest hour, the time he spoke for the whole nation.
Less remembered is that Dev’s reply made little impact outside Ireland, even in the United States, or that Churchill seems to have regretted his outburst becoming, ever after, conciliatory in what he said about independent Ireland.
In 1948, he paid tribute in parliament “to the orderly Christian society with a grace and culture of its own, and a flash of sport thrown in, built up in southern Ireland in spite of many gloomy predictions.”
He added: “I shall always hope that some day there will be a united Ireland.”
He expressed regret when the Republic left the Commonwealth in 1949 because it “dug a gulf between southern and Northern Ireland deeper than before.”
Although Churchill still insisted that the consent of Northern Ireland must be obtained for unity, this sentiment cannot have been music to the ears of unionists there.
Not a man to bear grudges, Churchill was oblivious to the widespread, albeit not universal, hostility still felt towards him in Ireland, for his criticism of the country’s wartime neutrality and other past actions. He was blamed by republicans for precipitating the civil war they lost by insisting Michael Collins fire on those occupying the Four Courts. The misconduct of the Black and Tans during the War of Independence was also held against him.
In 1954, Churchill was threatened with a libel action in Ireland arising out of his war memoirs. It was to be brought by Eric Dorman O’Gowan, an Irish-born general whom Churchill had dismissed during the Desert War. Combative whenever challenged, Churchill was up for a fight: “I do not think,” he wrote to his legal adviser Sir Hartley Shawcross, “an Irish jury would necessarily be unfair or that they would be prejudiced against me.”
Shawcross was not so sure. He negotiated a settlement before proceedings were launched. A footnote exculpating Dorman O’Gowan from any blame was inserted in future editions of the memoirs.
