Original subtitles

You can't understand modern Ireland without first

understanding our history.

Fifty years ago, the nation said its final farewell

to Éamon de Valera.

From his emergence in the run-up to the Easter Rising,

until his death in 1975, he had come to personify

Ireland's difficult journey to independence.

The State Funeral was an opportunity to pay respects

to a leader who left an indelible mark on our national story.

A leader whose legacy to this day still divides the jury.

His capacity to bend expectation to his will and bring the public

with him was absolutely superb.

His actions caused a lot of Irish deaths,

a lot of needless brutality.

He was a great statesman.

A man who embedded a very reactive, conservative state.

His willingness to serve Ireland, making a society where

there is religious liberties.

It's hard to know whether he was a force for good or evil.

♪ (music builds)

He had a meteoric rise through

the ranks of Irish nationalism... (gunshots)

and then ruled as the dominant figure

in our 20th century history.

But are we still living in De Valera's Ireland?

♪ (dramatic music)

♪ (rippling piano music)

Decoding Dev is no easy task.

Plenty of people have had a go, myself included.

I spent a few years of my life in this library,

researching and writing a two-volume biography about

the man they called The Chief.

As part of my research, I asked people to tell me the first word

that sprang to mind when they heard the name Éamon de Valera,

and the results were a bit surprising.

At the time of his death, De Valera's reputation seemed

unassailable, but 50 years later, a much more critical

view has taken root.

But between hagiography and hatchet job,

where lies the history?

♪ (calm piano music, film reel clicking)

To tell this tale, we need to go

back to the very beginning.

Éamon de Valera's story begins when his mother, Kate Coll,

left rural Limerick for a fresh start in Manhattan in 1878.

She was one of millions of people who sailed into New York

looking for a better life.

She found work as a domestic servant,

and in late 1882,

while living in the shadow of Grand Central Station,

she gave birth to a child who would reshape Irish history.

Six weeks later, he was baptised in the local church.

So we have to find the years.

Okay. This should be it.

These are all the records from '82.

It should be here somewhere. Yeah, see?

There it is! Okay, there he is, yeah!

As you can see, the name is Edward,

which is obviously English.

It was changed to Eamon.

In the actual book? Yeah.

And his surname is down as De Valeros... Yeah. "o s".

Yes. And that's been corrected as well, to De Valera. Yes.

Is it usual for records to be corrected like that,

or just if you... When they have some kind of

information that is not correct

in a record, if it's a direct relative

of somebody, then they usually would change it.

They will correct it, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So... Well, thank you very much.

Oh, you're very welcome. Yes. (laughs)

A misspelt surname is certainly a little odd.

Maybe the official records in the New York City Archives

could shed more light.

They contain millions of documents dating back to the early 1600s.

Given the scale of the material

you have here, you must have something

on Éamon de Valera.

I think, yes, we do,

and I was able to locate the certificate...

Wow! 352241, and here it is.

Wow. So we have a State of New York birth return.

This is the actual original... Sorry, I...

(laughs) That's so cool.

Name of child: George De Valero.

Hmm. Okay.

Vivian De Valero, Kate De Valero, but "maiden name Kate Coll."

So that is exactly as we would expect it.

Birthplace: Ireland, birthplace of father: Spain,

father is an artist.

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion

that Kate and Vivian are

anything other than a married couple.

I don't think they even asked the question.

They just said "Who's the name of the mother?

Who's the name of the father?"

They write it down on the form, and that was that.

The fact that the first name is incorrect.

She said subsequently that she originally wanted

to call the child George.

She changed her mind and gave him the name Edward.

So it's a little bit odd?

A little bit odd, yes.

A lot of mysteries, shall we say.

There is a correction. Oh.

This is a very unusual situation.

There's a second birth certificate. Okay.

Same number.

And as you can see, it says there, "corrected certificate".

Okay. So "Edward de Valera" with a lowercase d

and finishing with an a.

This second version is signed by Catherine Wheelwright,

as she was by this stage.

So this is De Valera's mother. Oh! Has remarried a man

called Charles Wheelwright.

The details are the same, October 14, 1882.

The date of the corrected certificate

is June the 30th, 1916.

In 1916, De Valera was involved in the Easter Rising.

He was sentenced to death.

So we know that his mother campaigned on his behalf

in the United States. Okay. That explains

why she's looking for the corrected version at this time.

It doesn't explain why the original version is incorrect.

Dr. Murray, you can see his signature there.

He is not the man who filled out this part of the certificate.

Handwriting is different.

Quite like that, though, isn't it?

Now that you say that... Huh.

So it looks

very similar to Catherine Wheelwright...

Yeah! Or Kate Coll or Kate De Valera's handwriting,

doesn't it? It does, doesn't it?

She filled out

the original birth return,

and then it was signed by Dr. Murray.

It's all a bit unusual, isn't it?

I agree. I've seen

many, many birth certificates, and this

is an exceptional situation. It truly is.

Kate Coll always said that the father of her child was

Vivian De Valera, an artist who fell into ill health

and died when his son was just 2.

The search for the Spanish side of De Valera's story brings me

across the Hudson River to New Jersey.

This is where Kate Coll says she married Vivian De Valera

on the 19th of September, 1881.

The only problem is there's no record of that marriage here

in this church, or in any Catholic church in New Jersey,

or in any Catholic church across the river in New York City.

And the absent marriage certificate

isn't the only bit of missing paperwork.

There is no record of Vivian de Valera entering the United States.

He's not mentioned in any US census,

and there's no record of his death.

As far as the official record goes,

it's almost as if he didn't exist.

You might ask, does it matter if his parents were really married?

Does it matter who his father really was?

But the point is, it mattered to him.

It shaped his character.

And so did his mother's decision to send him,

aged just two and a half, back to Ireland to be

raised by his grandmother.

The doubts about his paternity and his rejection by his mother

left him with questions about his identity,

which would preoccupy him throughout his long life.

His uncertain start meant that Bruree in County Limerick

was where he he'd call home.

I was born on the 29th of April, 1927.

I'm 98 years, but I feel young, and I would advise everyone,

go dancing! (both laugh)

So Mary, this is where Éamon de Valera, grew up,

and it was a fairly tough upbringing, wasn't it?

It was very, very hard.

I don't know how he survived it.

Unfortunately, the grandmother died when she was only aged 50.

So he was left then with his uncle Pat,

who was a very, very strict man.

They were very poor.

Actually, my father gave them some land.

That was what they were depending on.

They had two or three cows.

De Valera, then, as he grew up,

he did every kind of a job in the farm,

raking the hay, cutting the hay, cleaning out the hen house,

and look after the cows.

And when they would be milking the cows,

he would be reading books.

He was always reading books.

He always enjoyed coming back to Bruree.

Loved it. He was happy when he came back.

He said to me one time, "Oh," he said, "Mary,

I would love to go back to that little home."

And he said "Sit at the fire and read a book."

He said "Mary, that's what I would love."

Whatever it was about this place, it made his character

because he's unique.

Where did he get it?

He got it from here.

De Valera loved to romanticise his childhood here in Bruree

once he'd left the place far behind him.

But when he lived here, he wanted to get out.

His mother escaped through the emigrant ship.

His exit was through education.

♪ (electronic music)

(gulls crying)

An obvious flair for the books caught the eye

of the local parish priest who arranged a scholarship

to Blackrock College.

(rugby crowd chanting) About to turn 16, De Valera moved

from Limerick to Dublin, a short distance,

but a million miles away

from the world he knew.

(crowd chanting)

So Paul, you have the advantage over me

'cause you actually had a face-to-face encounter with Dev.

Well, I saw him lying in state, David, it was

the year I turned five, queued for what seemed like hours.

And I whinged the whole way through,

but having seen the body,

I wanted to go back and queue again.

It was... it's one of my earliest memories.

(crowd cheering, feet stamping)

Blackrock College, a very elite sort of an establishment.

Really not what you'd expect for de Valera.

Blackrock is a launching pad

which defined the rest of his life.

He wanted to rise up out of poverty into the middle classes,

and he used education as the conduit to do that.

(crowd cheering and clapping)

And this is a guy who has lacked emotional support

in both places he'd lived previously.

He spoke always of a loneliness in Bruree, and all the while,

there's New York, where his mother is,

like, thousands of miles away, that he's separated from.

(crowd roars)

But even in Blackrock College, he was conscious that he needed

to earn the scholarships that would keep him there.

He was always conscious of where he came from,

and it marked him apart.

It takes time, but there's a gathering momentum

around his life, and you can feel it moving on.

I know you have to be very careful here not to

look at that in hindsight and say it was obvious

that he was going to come through it

in the manner in which he did, and that

he would gather momentum. That wasn't clear.

He drove himself on.

(crowd cheering)

It goes a bit against the grain that this great Nationalist

has a real enthusiasm for rugby.

Oh, he loved rugby and was always interested in the game.

Throughout his life, he retained that interest.

(crowd cheering, feet stamping)

(crowd roars)

He loved playing the game.

He was good enough to get a trial for the Munster rugby team

in a North v South match, and his opposite number

outperformed him slightly and

became an Irish international.

So that road was almost taken by de Valera.

(whistle blows, crowd cheers)

De Valera strove for excellence in everything that he did.

Blackrock is that place where he revealed once more his ambition,

his capacity for work.

People came through those gates and walked out

into the professions, and that's what de Valera wished to do.

There's this lovely photograph that really sums up

Eddie de Valera as he then was.

It's a group shot, a couple of lads standing around,

they're holding rugby balls, they're about to go off

and have a game, it looks like.

And de Valera is the only one holding a book.

He has a finger marking his place in the book.

A bit of a swot.

He stayed in Blackrock for his final years of school,

and then he stayed here to study for his university exams,

but he ended up with a pass degree,

which was a huge disappointment to him.

The problem was with a pass degree, he ended up doing

different bits of part-time teaching jobs,

kind of scraping an existence.

It was for career advancement that he signed up for classes in

the Gaelic League to learn Irish.

They gave him a cause which he pursued for the rest of his life,

the restoration of the Irish language.

It gave him a new name.

Eddie de Valera became Éamon de Valera,

and most important of all, it gave him a wife.

Sinéad Ní Fhlannagáin was his teacher in the Gaelic League,

and they got married very soon after they met.

Conradh na Gaeilge, where love stories begin.

(slide projector clicking)

By the time he turned 30 in October 1912,

he had a permanent teaching job in Carysfort College.

He was married with a growing family, and he seemed destined

for middle class obscurity.

But then, everything changed on the island of Ireland.

Ulster loyalists pledged to protect the Union with Britain

through violence, if necessary.

Nationalists responded by forming the Irish Volunteers in 1913,

determined to see the promise of independence become a reality.

Éamon de Valera signed up,

and his drive and single-mindedness

saw him quickly rise through the ranks.

♪ (dramatic music)

(marching feet)

♪ (gentle music)

By the time the Rising came along

in 1916, De Valera was Commandant of the Third Battalion,

a key position for what was about to unfold.

(gull crying)

Dev did his homework. He always did his homework,

and he did his study, as he always did his study.

To avoid suspicion, he used to take his son Vivian

with him, he was only 3 or 4 at the time.

They'd take what looked like a Sunday stroll, but actually,

he was assessing the lie of the land.

He knew where they'd be able to find water if they needed it.

He knew where they'd be able to find tools.

He was completely on top of every single detail.

The rising began on Easter Monday, 1916, when Irish volunteers

and the Irish Citizen Army seized key buildings in Dublin.

British reinforcements were expected to arrive

into Dun Laoghaire.

De Valera's mission was to stop them getting into the city

to attack the main rebel positions.

Despite popular legend, his base wasn't in Boland's Mills.

It was actually in Boland's bakery, half a kilometre away

The site was later occupied by the headquarters of NAMA,

ground zero for the Irish economic crash.

♪ (sinister music, building collapsing)

Some people said in later years

that de Valera had some kind of a breakdown in 1916,

that his nerve went.

He felt that with his grasp of detail, he was the only one

that could look after everything.

But obviously, if you don't have any sleep for three or four days,

that isn't good for your decision-making.

While de Valera's position was shelled, it didn't come under

direct assault by the British.

The garrison felt they could fight on, but reluctantly obeyed

Pearse's order to surrender.

They went out, they laid down their arms,

they marched out onto Mount Street.

And this is one of the sliding door moments

in Éamon de Valera's life, and in Irish history.

Instead of turning right and going to Richmond Barracks,

where the court-martials were going on,

they were taken to the left,

down to Ballsbridge, to the RDS.

And the point is, by the time de Valera got

to Richmond Barracks, there was a big queue ahead of him

for court-martials, and that delay probably saved his life.

♪ (poignant string music)

So Liz, what happened here in 1916 changed Irish history.

For Éamon de Valera, he's sentenced to death.

Yeah. And he expects to die. Yeah, he does.

He's court-martialled on the 8th of May.

And that day is quite significant because that's the day

that Michael Mallin, Éamonn Ceannt,

Con Colbert and Seán Heuston are executed.

So, you know, there was over 90 going to be executed.

Those who are sentenced or were awaiting sentence

are brought to Kilmainham.

But by this stage, you have pressure being put

on the British government.

The Prime Minister is starting to ask the questions

of the military "Do we need to actually start executing?"

But de Valera's sitting in a cell,

like so many of them at that time,

thinking tomorrow is the day. They're gonna come,

you know, first thing in the morning, that's gonna be me.

And he fully expected to die the following day.

But because you have such a radical shift in public opinion,

from one of anger into one of sympathy, initially, not support,

but sympathy for the way the volunteers are being treated,

Prime Minister Asquith is starting to ask the questions.

And it's not that as an American citizenship,

is the thing that saves him.

It's the fact that he is not seen as an important figure.

It must have been a really traumatic time for him.

He's sitting in his cell writing his last letter to his wife

and his children, and never seeing them again.

The feeling of anxiety... the fear... the sounds.

You're standing even here now.

Every sound is magnified.

The waiting game.

What's gonna happen?

The most important thing de Valera did in 1916 was simply to survive.

As one of the few leaders of the Rising still alive,

he was now a credible candidate to lead Irish Nationalism.

In the aftermath of 1916, public opinion in Ireland

shifted dramatically.

Republican prisoners sentenced after the Rising were released,

and Éamon de Valera rode a wave of enthusiasm to win

the East Clare by-election.

Seen as a unifying figure, he was chosen to lead Sinn Féin,

and the party won a landslide

in the December 1918 general election.

The following month, a breakaway Dáil met in Dublin.

De Valera was absent, in prison again.

A few days later, he escaped and made his way home,

but he didn't stay for long.

As political violence erupted around the country,

he decided that the best way to help the battle

was to bring the fight to the country of his birth.

He crossed the Atlantic for the second time as a stowaway,

hidden in the hold of the ship,

where a rat ate a sandwich out of his pocket.

He was so seasick, it was thought that he might die

until he was revived with a drop of brandy.

And when he arrived into the city of his birth,

he had to be smuggled ashore.

He was a fugitive.

But all of that was about to change.

We're here in a lovely, peaceful park

in the middle of New York City.

But if you were here in 1919, it would have been a different story.

You're right. This was the site of de Valera's

first rock and roll moment

in the United States. At a packed Madison Square Garden,

some 15,000 people

were here to hear Éamon de Valera speak.

♪ (upbeat jazz drums, crowd noise)

♪ (lively jazz music)

This was De Valera's moment

as the uncrowned king of Irish America.

It really was Dev-mania because it wasn't just here.

It was Fenway Park in Boston,

it was Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Absolutely massive crowds.

He was a celebrity, as you would think of

in the 21st-century term.

He lived at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel,

which was the home for many queens and kings

when they visited New York City.

And his suite was known as the Irish White House.

Women were fainting in his presence,

so he had almost like a sex symbol status.

Some people accused him of shirking the War of Independence.

Is that fair?

Well, de Valera, perhaps more than any other politician

in modern history, recognised that the Irish question

was also an American question.

He sought to incorporate the United States politically,

in terms of publicity, and in terms of the Irish diaspora,

into raging that war against the British state.

De Valera toured the United States for about 18 months.

He raised about $65 million in today's money

for the nascent Irish Republic.

And in some respects, De Valera's financial tour

of America was his success story.

But it wasn't all sweetness and light with some members

of the Irish-American community.

De Valera really met his match here.

Irish-Americans of long-standing, most notably John Devoy

and Judge Daniel Cohalan, who had led Irish America for decades.

America wasn't big enough for all of their egos.

It's an an Irish-American Civil War before an Irish Civil War.

So what about the effect that America had on de Valera?

'Cause I'm always conscious of the Arthur Griffith quote

that he was a good man spoiled by America.

De Valera met great adulation here on the streets

of the United States, especially here in New York.

But he also met great tension and great push-back.

And in some respects, his lesson learned from America

was to control the narrative.

The American education of Éamon de Valera will influence

his political career for decades to come.

By December 1920, De Valera had raised a ton of money.

He'd set up his own organisation to control Irish America,

and he'd put Ireland at the top of the news agenda,

added to which he'd heard that there were peace moves

afoot in Ireland.

It was time to go home.

By June 1921, the War of Independence

was an effective stalemate.

Both sides were ready for a truce.

So de Valera travelled to a face-to-face meeting

with the British Prime Minister,

harbouring Irish hopes for liberty.

De Valera came to London, the heart of the greatest empire

the world had ever known, to seek recognition

of the Irish Republic, which it quickly became clear

he wasn't going to get.

David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister,

famously unscrupulous, famously wily, not to be trusted,

and De Valera certainly didn't trust him.

As far as the British were concerned, the Irish

were part of the empire.

They owed allegiance to the Crown, to the King,

and they simply couldn't imagine a situation where Ireland could

become an independent Republic.

It wasn't just about principle.

It wasn't just about the position of the Crown in Irish life.

There was also practical reasons for Britain to be concerned

about Irish independence.

If you look at a map of the British Isles or

the Celtic Archipelago, as it's more properly known,

you can see that Ireland is crucial to British security.

If Ireland was in hostile hands,

Britain, militarily, was indefensible.

♪ (ominous music)

Negotiations to reach a deal opened in London in October,

but controversially, de Valera decided not to travel.

Instead, five plenipotentiaries led by Arthur Griffith

and Michael Collins would negotiate Ireland's future.

WT Cosgrave said it was a team they were sending over,

and they were leaving their best player in reserve.

♪ (tense music, gull crying)

By definition, plenipotentiaries have the power

to sign an agreement with a foreign government,

but they were also given instructions by de Valera,

secretly, that they had to refer back to Dublin

before they signed anything.

The British had some of the most seasoned

political negotiators on the scene.

They'd just negotiated and signed the Versailles Treaty.

The Irish, by comparison, were completely inexperienced.

The plenipotentiaries were under incredible pressure.

Lloyd George turned the screws

right at the end of the negotiation.

He said "If you don't sign, there will be war in Ireland

and war within three days."

So they felt they had no time to refer back to de Valera.

They had to sign.

One of the British delegates said

"I am signing my political death warrant."

Michael Collins said "I am signing my actual death warrant."

And he was right.

♪ (sombre orchestral music)

The plenipotentiaries came back from London

with the treaty signed, but it still had to be ratified.

So after the Easter Rising, the War of Independence,

the battle in London over the terms of a deal with Britain.

It all came down to a war of words as the Dáil debated the Treaty.

That debate took place at UCD's premises in Earlsfort Terrace...

♪ (violins playing) ..now the National Concert Hall.

De Valera saw his role as keeping everyone in harmony,

but the Treaty that came back from London

introduced a discordant note.

So Gretchen, we're here in the very room

where the Treaty debates took place.

And right from the start, they were emotional,

they were divisive, they were really, really intense.

Yes. I mean, from the get-go,

it was an extremely emotional situation.

♪ (orchestra plays dramatic opening phrase)

The Treaty negotiations were about

how far are you gonna go to

fight for independence. Are you gonna go for

a republic at all costs?

And certainly, Collins and Griffith

weren't willing to do that.

♪ (orchestra plays dramatic music)

Collins argued that the Treaty gave the freedom

to achieve freedom.

But Republican purists couldn't swallow

the oath of allegiance to the King.

De Valera, previously seen as a moderate, agreed.

He wanted the Dáil to reject the Treaty

and negotiate a better deal.

But his once unassailable leadership

was beginning to crumble.

For so long, he had been able to rely on

this deferential treatment.

He'd been treated in America as

the President of the Irish Republic.

He didn't quite understand that by sending

plenipotentiaries to thrash out the most

difficult negotiations in the most terrifying circumstances,

with war being threatened at every turn,

his own authority was gonna be undermined.

His gamble was that he could impose his own solution,

impose his own compromise, and still have everybody behind him.

It was a terrible, terrible mistake.

♪ (orchestra plays dramatic music)

Neither side paid much attention to partition because both

wrongly assumed that a Boundary Commission

would make Northern Ireland unviable.

The debate was dominated by division over

the Crown and the oath.

Partition was the dog that didn't bark.

♪ (orchestra plays dramatic music)

After a month of acrimonious debate, it was time for the Dáil

to decide, and the result went against de Valera.

His side lost by just seven votes.

In the emotion of the moment, De Valera broke down in tears.

He had expected to be able to control the plenipotentiaries.

He had expected to win the vote in the cabinet.

He had expected to win the vote in the Dáil, and he lost all of that.

It must have been a shattering blow for him personally.

It was, for the first time in a long, long time,

an utterly humiliating experience.

This was the issue that dogged de Valera throughout his life.

♪ (dramatic finish)

(audience applauds)

♪ (sombre music)

With the Dáil divided, the two sides

took their case to the country.

(wings flapping)

As tempers rose and positions hardened,

de Valera ramped up the rhetoric in his public speeches.

Here in Thurles, on St. Patrick's Day, 1922,

de Valera made the most infamous of his speeches

during those tense months.

He said that if the volunteers of the future

wanted to complete the independence struggle,

they'd have to do so over the dead bodies of their own countrymen.

They would have to wade through Irish blood, he said,

through the blood of the soldiers of the Irish government,

and through perhaps the blood of some of the members

of the government in order to get Irish freedom.

He said it was a warning.

His opponents, then and now, said it was incitement.

Either way, it added fuel to the flames

that were about to consume the country.

As tensions rose, the people had their say

in the June general election.

Michael Collins's energetic campaign won a majority

to his side of the argument.

De Valera's anti-Treaty Sinn Féin salvaged just 36 of the 128 seats.

Just days later, Republicans in London assassinated

leading Unionist Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.

The British government demanded action

against anti-Treaty Republicans

who were occupying the Four Courts in Dublin.

(cannon fires)

Troops loyal to the provisional government shelled the rebels

and a civil war that would claim almost 1,500 lives began.

♪ (sombre music)

In the opening weeks,

anti-Treaty forces were quickly pushed out of urban areas

and reverted to guerrilla fighting

in the south-western corner of the country.

The Civil War claimed many victims on both sides,

many of them personally close to Éamon de Valera,

and here on a remote roadway in West Cork, Michael Collins.

In a coincidence that would give rise to many conspiracy theories,

de Valera himself was in this area just hours before.

So we're sitting in the house that de Valera was in

on the day Michael Collins was shot just 100 yards away.

Not only are we sitting at the house,

we're sitting at the table that Dev sat at

here in Béal na Bláth

on the day that Michael Collins was shot.

♪ (quiet, sombre music)

When you come here and you look at the terrain, like...

Yeah. It's so close. But how close did they actually come?

Within 30 minutes of each other, the two men

passed by the same crossroads.

Collins is going further west, and Éamon de Valera comes

from a safe house three or four miles away, neither man knowing

that they had come to the exact same location on the same day.

And what was he doing here?

Well, I think it's fair to say that he was here looking to see

could the war be brought to a conclusion?

This was a room where there was a big meeting planned between

brigade and divisional officers.

That's what Dev was doing here.

So de Valera is fairly peripheral then in the Civil War, is he?

Control of the military operations are Liam Lynch's.

Even in a local setting, even at Béal na Bláth

and at this ambush,

Éamon de Valera has no real say as to whether

an ambush occurs here.

That's not his role at this juncture.

From what we can gather, de Valera is not in favour of the ambush?

No.

♪ (sombre music, bird squawks)

His general opinion seems to have been

that if something would happen to Collins,

that he might just be replaced by a weaker man.

So despite what you might be led to believe

by some cinematic representations,

Dev actually had nothing to do with it.

Dev had nothing to do with Michael Collins being shot.

There's no Alan Rickman crying behind a haystack here.

And yet a lot of people are still determined to put

the responsibility for the Civil War

on Éamon de Valera's shoulders. Is that fair?

I think it's fair to say that Éamon de Valera

helped strike the match of the Civil War.

But then the actual activities that occur in the Civil War,

I think it's very questionable to the degree to which he has

a lasting amount of control over that, a major amount of control.

So after Collins's death, you get this series of events,

a spiral of events that just add to the bitterness that

lasts for generations.

It's in the aftermath, a place like Béal na Bláth ,

that we're seeing these tit-for-tat executions.

These really are one of the major reasons that it's left such

a lasting legacy of kind of sourness, if you like,

in relation to what occurred.

It was an ugly time, as all civil wars are.

Because of the scars left by the Civil War,

de Valera could never again be the undisputed leader

of Irish Nationalism.

Yet, he went on to dominate Irish politics for 50 years.

After the Civil War, Éamon de Valera spent a year in jail,

much of it in solitary confinement,

giving him plenty of time to think.

Meanwhile, outside these prison walls, Sinn Féin was becoming

more attached to abstentionism,

the refusal to enter the Dáil under any circumstances,

which meant that even when de Valera was finally released

from prison, his room to manoeuvre, politically,

was still restricted.

♪ (urgent orchestral music, crowd noise)

As far as De Valera was concerned, it was a question of tactics

rather than principle.

But the Republican purists in the party refused to consider

entering Leinster House under any circumstances, whatever.

As far as they were concerned, it was a partitionist parliament,

and the problem for de Valera was, that means, in effect,

that there's no political path forward.

The issue came to a crunch at a special Sinn Féin Ard Fheis,

de Valera lost in his attempt to get the party

to change policy, and he walked out.

In May 1926, he established a new party, Fianna Fáil,

a more pragmatic political entity.

They completely supplant Sinn Féin,

and de Valera engages in a bit of street theatre.

He marches at the head of all the Fianna Fáil TDs

up to the gates of Leinster House,

demands to be admitted,

de Valera says "We will not take the oath,"

and they're kicked out.

So they march all the way back across to their offices

over on the northside,

and it looks like he's digging his heels in.

And then Kevin O'Higgins is assassinated.

The murder of the Minister for Justice

in broad daylight shocked the country,

and gave the Free State government

the opportunity to crack down

on its most strident critics.

(church bell rings)

New laws required election candidates

to commit to taking the oath.

The policy of abstentionism had run out of road.

And really, in the end, there was only one choice to make.

De Valera had fought a civil war against the Treaty settlement

and the oath which symbolised it, but now he came face to face

with the bitter truth - in order to get rid of the oath,

he was going to have to take it.

♪ (poignant orchestral music)

So, Peter, every TD has to sign the book.

Correct.

And we have books for each Dáil going back to 1919.

This is the roll book for the fifth Dáil,

and if we open the book, we come to the page where

Éamon de Valera signed the roll.

Wow. And that's his signature just there.

Yeah. You can see it's in quite large handwriting.

It's hugely interesting, hugely historical, because

it was of huge significance.

Above the signature, you will more importantly see

the oath that he was swearing at that time,

and that's what caused all the problems.

This is what caused the Civil War, right?

Essentially. In effect, yeah. Yeah.

It's really interesting what he did.

He took a Bible that was on the table.

He picks it up... Yeah. Leaves it over by the door...

He covers up the text of the oath and said "I am signing no oath.

I am merely signing the roll to gain admittance to the Dáil"

and he signed his name.

It's bigger than the normal, because we can actually see

in the subsequent Dáil, after the following election,

he signs in his usual very neat handwriting.

I think it probably shows that he's under a fair amount

of emotional stress. I do.

I think it does highlight the stress of the moment, and also

the significance of the moment for him.

The other interesting thing, Peter, is that in 1922,

when the oath was first taken,

it's taken in the Dáil chamber, and they have to actually

stand up and read out the text. Yeah.

Whereas here, you're just signing your name in a book.

Yeah, so I suppose you can see the progression away

from the oath at that stage.

They were doing it in the privacy of the clerk's office.

Okay, so if you said it was an empty formula,

you might have a point. I think you would.

And the other interesting thing is that de Valera,

when he signed his name, he told the clerk

"One day I will have this book burnt."

Thankfully, he didn't.

♪ (calm music)

Now that de Valera and Fianna Fáil were inside the system,

it was only a matter of time before they took power

in the Free State.

The new movement took root all over the country,

helped in no small part by de Valera's new project,

The Irish Press,

the newspaper he regarded as crucial to his political success.

In the 1932 general election, Fianna Fáil overtook

Cumann na nGaedheal for the first time.

It would remain the biggest party for the next eight decades.

(de Valera) The programme of Fianna Fáil

has now been definitely adopted

as the national policy of the Irish people.

Ireland united, Ireland free, Ireland self-supporting

and self-reliant,

Ireland speaking her own tongue,

and through it giving to the world her ancient treasures

of Christian Gaelic culture.

These are the ideals to which enthusiastic young Ireland

is now devoting its energy.

♪ (emotional orchestral music, slide projector clicking)

It had taken him 50 years, but the boy from Manhattan

had finally made it big in Ireland.

♪ (dramatic orchestral music)

(gulls crying)

Our history has shaped every inch

of the nation in which we live, and shaped the lives and values

of every one of us who call ourselves citizens.

So what do the people of Ireland today think of the man

whose fingerprints are all over our revolutionary period,

and our first half century of independence?

(applause)

Good evening, and you're very welcome to St. Patrick's Hall

here in historic Dublin Castle.

And you may be wondering, why are we here?

Well, we're here to consider the life and the legacy

of the most consequential figure in 20th century Ireland.

Big claim to make, but I think there's no doubt

that Éamon de Valera made a massive impact on Ireland

during his extraordinarily long career.

It was in St. Patrick's Hall that Éamon de Valera

was inaugurated as President of Ireland,

and it was also here, in 1975,

that he lay in state before his funeral.

It was in this room...

(boom)

..that tens of thousands of people filed past the coffin

of the man who was viewed either as a demigod,

or as the devil incarnate.

I was 22 when he died, and

I would have walked around

the coffin like I saw this evening,

de Valera and his people at the time.

So it was a generosity, trying to help the whole nation.

The energy was always just to try and find employment for people.

That's part of the de Valera legacy

and part of the Fianna Fáil party,

which I am proud to be a member.

So if my da wants to wind me up and watch me go on a rant,

all he had to say to me

was that de Valera was a lovely man, and I'd be off.

I remember we were attending a funeral in Whitefriar Street,

and as we were walking through the main entrance,

my dad told me to bless myself.

I did so without looking, without hesitation.

My dad burst out laughing, which I thought was strange

until I looked up at the picture.

To my horror, it was in fact, de Valera.

(laughter)

De Valera, who my nanny refers to as a god,

(laughs) or her family did.

To hold him up to such a high regard means that he is devoid

of criticism, and so to criticise is to create controversy.

To me, and as a young person in Ireland today,

who's looking at the poverty we're still in and looking at all

the issues we're still in, and there's still the leftover

legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland,

I have to think of that, and I have to use that to frame

how I think of de Valera.

Until we take that radical position that goes against Dev,

heaven forbid, then I think we'll still be having

this same conversation in 50 years' time.

♪ (quiet orchestral music)

Acutely conscious, though we all are,

of the misery and desolation in which the greater part

of the world is plunged, let us turn aside for a moment

to that ideal Ireland that we would have.

As an immigrant, the fact that he was born outside Ireland

from an immigrant father, this man was born half Irish,

but he became full Irish in his actions and his beliefs.

Saint Patrick came to our ancestors

1,500 years ago, promising happiness here,

as well as happiness hereafter.

Having children who are Irish, born and raised here,

of immigrant background, it was for me a testimony

that a national identity can be forged not only because of

your place of birth, but also because of your actions.

It was the idea of such an Ireland -

happy, vigorous, spiritual -

that fired the imagination of our poets;

and that made successive generations of patriotic men

give their lives that they may win

religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own

and future generations to die, if need be.

It was a civil war.

His actions caused a lot of

Irish deaths, a lot of needless war,

and needless brutality, and it fractured,

it splintered our culture.

He was a man defined by hyper-traditionalism.

He was a man who did not have enough empathy for certain groups

in Ireland, and a man whose actions

led a lot of people into despair, and levels of desolation.

..our contribution to humanity.

In my memory, it was always there.

Even when I was a teeny child, about five or six,

like, there was God,

there was the Church, there was school,

there was Dev.

My father Tom was a Fianna Fáil County councillor.

His devotion to De Valera was, well, embarrassing.

He was a great statesman.

When we were gaining our independence and becoming a free,

self-respecting country, that he,

if you just take it even as a symbol,

was a very, very good person to represent.

He was very, very clever and politically very pragmatic,

though very, very flawed.

Dev, as the only surviving leader of the 1916 Rising,

then went on to reject a Dáil vote

accepting the Treaty and rejecting the results

of the June 1922 general election,

hardly the stance of a democrat.

He had a now kind of unacknowledged charisma.

He had an ability to manipulate and manoeuvre the media

and his public image that is Machiavellian,

that is modern, really.

His capacity to bend expectation to his will and bring the public

with him was absolutely superb, but he kind of used

that skillset to, more often than not,

bring the Irish people on the wrong road.

(applause)

It wasn't all his fault, but he was the leader,

and if you're the leader, you get the blame.

Between 1932 and 1959, when he was elected President,

Éamon de Valera, dominated Dáil Éireann.

And the Fianna Fáil party he founded remained

the most popular political force of the 20th century.

De Valera himself spent 21 years of his career

as head of government, a record that will surely never broken.

But after a rise punctuated by demoralising defeats

and compelling comebacks, how does his rule stand the test of time?

It's a time still of embedded patriarchy.

He was absolutely defining Irishness as something that was

not beholden to the Crown.

We were desperately, desperately poor.

The economic war had a devastating impact.

There isn't really anything you can say to defend

going to pay condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler.

The Magdalen laundries,

if you said that there was slavery in de Valera's Ireland,

most people would go "No, look, that's a terrible thing to say,"

but it's just true.

♪ (dramatic orchestral music)

Subtitles: RTÉ 2025