Original subtitles

(Archive reporter) We deeply regret to announce the death

of the former President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera.

Mr. de Valera was 92.

He was one of the best men we ever knew.

Great man for Ireland altogether.

The best statesman in the world.

That's what I have to say about him.

He was the daddy of all of us.

He'll definitely be missed in Clare.

Without a shadow of a doubt.

At the time, the passing of Éamon de Valera

was met with widespread public sorrow.

But 50 years on, how is this giant of Irish politics

remembered in the country he did so much to shape?

A little experiment.

Who has a negative image of Éamon de Valera?

He was a man defined by hyper-traditionalism.

He was a man who did not have enough empathy

for certain groups in Ireland.

A man who rode a wave of revolution

and then embedded a very reactive,

conservative state.

He represents Catholic Ireland.

His legacy is felt every day.

He represents the pain and suffering that I grew up with.

We have seen the rise of the radical revolutionary,

and now we look at the rule of one of Ireland's most influential

political figures.

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.

It's a time, still, of embedded patriarchy.

Churchill offers de Valera an end to partition.

It's do or die time.

The Magdalene Laundries...

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

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

but it's just true!

♪ (rousing military music)

In 1932, the British Commonwealth still claimed

the Free State as a member,

despite Ireland's aspirations to become a Republic.

Ten years before, Éamon de Valera had opposed

the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence

because it kept the Crown in Irish political life.

It meant that Britain still had a role.

It meant that Ireland wasn't completely free

from imperialist trappings.

Now he was back in the saddle, determined to dismantle the Treaty

and remove all of this from Irish life.

So, Niamh, throughout de Valera's career, his main aim is

to establish, to deepen, to strengthen Irish sovereignty.

And 1932, he's back in power.

This is where the rubber hits the road.

This is where he gets to put that into practice.

Yeah, absolutely.

And this is what he does right from entering power on day one.

He has one objective, and that's to dismantle the Treaty.

♪ (quiet electronic music)

In a sense, is he defining Irishness

as the opposite of Britishness, really?

He was absolutely defining Irishness as

something that was not beholden to the Crown of Great Britain

and its empire.

So quite different from, let's say, the Canadians,

or the Australians, whose identity was much more malleable

and much more in line with the Crown.

De Valera was always quite coherent in his views.

From the very beginning, he was against the Treaty,

and he spent most of his political career,

from the '30s onwards,

trying to dismantle that Treaty, whether it was the Office

of the Governor General, the Privy Council,

establishing the Irish Constitution,

and really putting the framework forward for Ireland

to leave the Commonwealth.

And they seem to regard him as a bit of an oddball as well,

I mean, one British politician described him as

"the Spanish onion in the Irish stew,"

so they had a view of him as being a bit odd.

Yeah, and I think this partly comes from

his American connection.

That meant he was an unknown character.

Since his days in the radical revolutionary movement

from 1916 onwards,

he's been treated with suspicion by many British politicians.

They regarded him as being an extremist.

Mm-hmm! They regarded him as being impractical.

Mm-hmm! They regarded him as being a dreamer.

None of that was actually true, was it?

No, I think he was quite a pragmatist.

Right from the beginning, he knew what he wanted,

and he spent his entire political career trying to achieve that.

He wanted an Ireland that was free from the Empire,

free from the Crown.

♪ (laid-back music)

The dispute between de Valera and the British government was

about big issues: sovereignty, the Treaty,

the sanctity of international agreements.

It was high politics, but its effects were felt

immediately right at the heart of rural Ireland.

(cow moos)

So Micheál, the first thing de Valera does,

practically, when he gets into office is he picks a fight.

Yeah, he withholds these land annuities.

He thought that it was morally, ethically unjustifiable to be

paying money to compensate

a landlord class who never should have had the land.

It was the spoils of colonisation.

And when he withholds the annuities, the British hit back.

The British hit back immediately.

They put tariffs on Irish imports.

This was massively injurious to us.

We were a cattle economy.

The British were buying our beef on the hoof.

So when the British effectively closed off their market to us,

this was the biggest of clouds

descending over the Irish economy.

It disproportionately impacted, though, the big farmers,

and to a lesser extent, the smaller farmers.

But it's very critical to be categorical

about the fact that no farmer profited from the economic war.

♪ (soft electronic music, sheep bleating)

De Valera grew up on a smallholding,

raised by agricultural labourers.

He was used to a certain standard of living in rural life.

Did that shape his policies?

Oh, he understood how difficult it was

to make a sustainable life

in rural Ireland for most farmers.

And I think that certainly contributed to his zeal,

his determination to do something

for the elevation of smaller farmers.

A lot of members of that Nationalist generation

talked about redistributing the land of Ireland,

and trying to make all farms of an equitable size.

So de Valera saw, through the economic war, an opportunity

to reorientate the agricultural economy so that it was balanced

more in favour of smaller farmers.

He had this sense that people would be content

if they had a degree of well-being, a degree of security.

Now, we know with the benefit of hindsight that that

simply wasn't practical.

(engine putters)

Lots of criticism of de Valera nowadays,

and we look back at that time and the economic war

as a bad stain on his reputation.

And yet, he won a re-election in 1933, and he stayed in power

for 16 years, so he must have been doing something right.

De Valera won consecutive elections from 1932.

He was endorsed again and again.

He might not have been pleasing

all of the people all of the time,

but he was pleasing a big proportion of them

most of the time.

If Nobber Agricultural Show in County Meath is a reminder

of the agrarian aspirations of de Valera's era,

just over 100 kilometres away in another Midlands field,

a very different face of modern Ireland is letting its hair down.

The organisers have been charitable enough

to allow some historical biographers

to join the bill, alongside Fatboy Slim

and Viagra Boys.

♪ (upbeat dance music)

Electric Picnic is one of Ireland's largest annual events

as flocks of mostly young people come to worship at the altar

of Chappell Roan and other major performers.

It's hard to know what Dev would have made of these scenes,

but in his day, he was partial to the odd mass gathering himself.

(church bell rings)

♪ (choral music)

The Eucharistic Congress in 1932.

De Valera was a) very devout,

and b) astute enough to know that it was politically valuable

to be seen in alliance with the Church.

It was an incredible display of piety.

Half a million people crowded into O'Connell Street.

About a quarter of the state's population attended Mass

in the Phoenix Park.

De Valera, as head of government, was at the centre of it,

hand in glove with the Church.

♪ (choral music, church bell ringing)

♪ (upbeat electronic music)

Time and again, polls indicate

that the Electric Picnic generation

is most exercised by a single political issue:

housing.

In office after 1932, Fianna Fáil implemented

some socially progressive policies.

Tens of thousands of social houses were built.

Places to live were given to many members of the working class.

They also had an industrialisation policy.

They wanted to see a factory in every town.

The government also introduced social welfare payments

for many people, particularly in rural areas.

Definitely at that stage, Fianna Fáil was left of centre,

was socially progressive, and that paid off because

Fianna Fáil's support amongst the working class was boosted.

De Valera's number one political aim was the restoration

of the Irish language.

It was the Irish language which had brought him into

the national movement in the first place,

and he tried to encourage its use in government departments.

But in the long run, it would have to be said

that the effort didn't succeed.

When we started this, Kneecap, and what we do,

rapping in Irish, and we didn't think it would be possible

to have this many people interested in what we're doing.

So thank you, go raibh maith agaibh! (crowd cheers)

De Valera might be pleasantly surprised to discover

that the new generation is embracing the language,

inspired less by Mise E?ire,

more by Kneecap and An Cailín Ciúin.

♪ (electronic beats, cheering) Are you ready?!

♪ (stately orchestral music)

De Valera's yearning for learning

extended far beyond his love of the Irish language.

He was always interested in academia and education.

And his scholarly instincts and attention to detail

served him well during three long years

of drafting a new constitution, a foundational document that would

assert Ireland's sovereignty while stopping short

of declaring a full republic.

Why doesn't the Constitution

claim Ireland as a republic?

That's a reflection of the fact that there was a lot more work

to be done if you wanted to have an all-island republic.

And so there's a tentativeness.

You had to navigate that idea, and the ideal of a republic

with the simple fact that we didn't have full independence.

(crowd cheering and clapping) I mean, at the end of the day,

we were a very small country

with our old dominant imperial neighbours

still holding a lot of cards.

(Archive reporter) Fifteen years ago, Britain yielded

to the 26 Catholic counties,

set them up as the Irish Free State with dominion status.

This year, in its new constitution,

the free state proclaims all Ireland

a sovereign and independent nation.

De Valera's constitution walked a tightrope on sovereignty.

Article 2 claimed the territory of the whole island of Ireland,

while Article 3 recognised that for now, there was no way of

making that aspiration a reality.

Article 2, he lays claim

to the entire territory of the island. Yes.

How important is the territorial claim to Northern Nationalists

at that period? Very.

Absolutely very.

And it's a perfectly legitimate claim.

Still is a perfectly legitimate claim.

Northern Nationalists wanted to believe that this would

not last in perpetuity.

Bear in mind, they were now a tiny minority

in a state that was adamantly

a Protestant state for a Protestant people,

a Protestant police force, Protestant laws.

It was a cold house for Catholics.

(Archive reporter) Far outnumbered by the 2 million

Free State voters, Ulstermen bristle at the thought

of becoming a helpless political minority in the new Republic.

What about the argument that by making the claim,

and by asserting sovereignty in the 26 counties,

you make unity less attractive to Unionists.

It's very hard to know what would be attractive to Unionists

except the union! (laughs)

Speaking as somebody who grew up in Northern Ireland.

♪ (woman singing in Irish)

1937, a time still of embedded patriarchy.

We're only literally one generation away

from the achievement of suffrage for women.

There was a Papal encyclical which said that

"woman is by nature fitted for home work",

and that would have been the general view

of society of the time, and of women at the time.

Men are the protectors of women.

Men are the providers for women and families.

Women are the nurturers.

And there's a certain patronising thing in that.

You have these women looking at the Constitution,

and they see Article 41.2

saying a woman's place is in the home.

They see Article 45 talking about the inadequate strength of women.

You can imagine their fear that the few rights that women

had gained were about to be completely destroyed.

But it is important to note that these types of provisions

are seen in many constitutions across the world at the time.

People sometimes view the constitution as originally

written as misogynistic.

Is there any truth in that?

It did generate significant debate.

Gertrude Gaffney, for example, who was a very popular

journalist in the 1930s, and the way she put it was that

"de Valera distrusts and dislikes us as a sex."

De Valera's own childhood...

Many historians have written about the fact that

his single mother in New York

sent him home to be raised by his grandmother.

How keenly he felt the loss of his mother in his life...

He cherished this idea of the family,

so he wanted to enshrine that the mother would be at home

looking after the children in the Constitution itself.

(Archive reporter) History is made in Dublin.

To mark the inauguration of the new Constitution

throughout Éire, formerly the Irish Free State,

Dr. Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin, enters the Pro-Cathedral

for the Votive Mass.

And escorted by cavalry, the new Taoiseach, Mr. de Valera,

arrives by car.

93.4% of Southern Ireland was Catholic in 1936.

But at the same time, de Valera wanted to build

a constitution that could command common allegiance,

and that included those members of religious minorities.

Even though we think of the constitution as...

you know, a very Catholic constitution,

when it was published, it was praised by the other religions.

It was praised by the Protestant groups.

It was praised by the Jewish groups.

It was the conservative Catholic side who criticised it

for being too liberal.

(Mary McAleese) There was no state religion.

The English still today have a state religion,

the Church of England.

He did not create a confessional state.

And certainly, the Vatican would have expected it,

but didn't get it.

And I think that shows

a breadth of thought in de Valera as a leader.

At that time, it was a remarkable thing, actually.

♪ (sinister music, crowd cheering)

You can see the rise of the Nazis actually had an effect

on our own Constitution. (Laura Cahillane) Definitely!

We do have to give quite a lot of credit to de Valera.

When you think about it, in 1936,

de Valera was in the position of a dictator.

He could do almost anything he wanted.

And what he did do was to create a liberal democratic constitution

where the people were placed at the centre.

There's no such thing as a perfect constitution.

But I think the focus on fundamental rights,

on personal rights, means that the constitution can be seen

as a very significant human rights document.

And given what was happening internationally in the 1930s,

this is clearly a constitution for a democracy.

There's never going to be an Adolf Hitler

in Áras an Uachtaráin.

There's never going to be a Donald Trump

in Áras an Uachtaráin.

Sorry, God, but there's not.

Why? Because they will never, ever

have that highway of freedom

that you associate with dictatorial powers.

Because the Constitution made darn sure they wouldn't have it.

(photographer) One, two, three!

(cheering)

In 1938 de Valera headed to London

hoping to bridge the divide between

the neighbouring Islands.

(Announcement) Please mind the gap

between the train and the platform.

Stepping into an arena where generations

of Irish and British leaders

cemented their legacy, for better or for worse.

You won't find a statue of

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain here.

His policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler

to try to avoid war is seen as a failure.

But his openness to compromise meant that he was the man

who kept Ireland out of World War II.

De Valera wanted to change a key provision of

the 1921 Treaty, which had left Britain

in control of three key naval bases in Ireland:

Lough Swilly, Berehaven, and Cobh.

If sovereignty was to be made real,

if neutrality was to be made possible,

he had to get control of the Treaty ports.

So 1938, Dev goes across to London.

He's looking for the ports back.

How does that all work out for him?

Chamberlain was hoping that there would be

an Anglo-Irish defence co-operation agreement

negotiated, but de Valera is having none of it.

And then it turns out that the British are willing to

give the ports back unilaterally.

♪ (quiet electronic music)

(wings flapping)

British defence planners estimated that in the 1930s,

it would cost something like a million pounds sterling

at the time, and that's the equivalent now

of half a billion pounds, to get the ports back in running order.

Chamberlain then says "Okay, if we're going to give you

the ports back, we're going to have to get something

from you in return."

And so there's changes to the financial agreement,

changes to the payments made on land annuities,

and the deal is done that way.

But that's what happens.

The ports are simply given back, and I think then the Irish

get a shock, and that they realise

it's gonna cost us a million pounds a year

to keep these in running order.

But okay, at least we get them back.

So this, diplomatically, this is a triumph.

How much of that is down to de Valera, and how much of it

is down to luck? I think it's timing.

De Valera is always good on timing.

I think it's also down to personal chemistry,

that de Valera and Chamberlain got on.

And there was a dynamic there.

They trusted each other.

De Valera would say "Well,

you know, I see what you're getting at,

but I've got to deal with, you know, the backwoods men at home."

So there's a very interesting power play goes on there between

Dublin and London at all levels.

De Valera's primary objective

is hoping to get an end to partition.

Revising the Treaty out of existence is always a part plan

towards the one end goal, and that's a united Ireland.

A substantial element of the Treaty,

which the British had insisted on at pain of war in 1921

had now been removed.

And as the clouds of war gathered once again over Europe,

de Valera had made neutrality possible.

(explosion)

♪ (dramatic music)

World War II erupted as Nazi forces rampaged across Europe.

Britain now came under the command of Winston Churchill,

a man who spent his early childhood in Ireland,

but who later recruited the Black and Tans

and then signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Stopping Hitler now depended on him.

(crowd cheering)

♪ (quiet electronic music)

While Britain bunkered down against the Luftwaffe assaults,

Churchill's bulldog spirit rallied the people.

From underground command centres, he plotted a route to victory,

one he felt would require his closest neighbour's help.

De Valera was determined to keep Ireland neutral.

The question was whether Britain would let him get away with it.

So June 1940, Churchill makes a really big offer.

What does he offer and why?

Churchill offers de Valera an end to partition in exchange

for all of Ireland entering the Second World War.

Essentially, that's what's on the table.

And he offers this because Britain is in a really

difficult position in 1940.

Much of Western Europe has been overrun.

It's do or die time.

So why does de Valera say no?

First of all, he doesn't trust the British.

He's also very much aware that Germany is on the verge

of winning this war.

If there is Unionist resistance to this,

the island could descend into civil war.

So he doesn't really feel Britain's going to deliver,

or can deliver. But it's actually a misreading of the situation.

Britain at this point is in dire straits.

For de Valera, this is really a a key part

of being an independent country.

He really believes this is essential for sovereignty.

He now feels that Ireland can have

its own independent foreign policy,

and by being neutral, that is what it is doing.

It's also key to making a point about partition.

As far as he's concerned, while Ireland is partitioned,

it can't possibly support the country that is partitioning,

as he sees it, the island.

(Archive reporter) Among the small nations of Western Europe,

there are very few which have so far avoided

being drawn into the maelstrom of war.

Ireland, the romantic green isle of the West, is still at peace,

but she has no illusions as to the security of her position.

(gunfire)

Since last September,

she has kept her small but efficient army

in a state of constant readiness.

(planes zooming)

If Hitler tries to strike that way, he'll find Éire ready.

No Nobody is more annoyed about Irish neutrality

than Winston Churchill.

Churchill's also angered by de Valera's sort of

very purist view of neutrality.

In 1939, many countries are neutral.

By 1940, Germany has conquered an awful lot of them.

Churchill also sees, in some ways,

Ireland as part of the British world.

And that's a huge issue for de Valera,

who does not see things in the same way,

and obviously views Ireland as

an independent actor on the global stage.

♪ (dramatic music)

(Archive reporter) Overhead, Jap raiders are on the loose.

Hawaii's bright Sunday becomes a black Sunday.

Without warning, they circle Pearl Harbour

in the city of Honolulu.

A surprise attack, born of infamy.

We will gain the inevitable triumph,

so help us God.

The American ambassador in Dublin, David Gray,

believed that with America in the war, it was Ireland's duty

to really support the United States,

which has supported it in many ways in the War of Independence.

De Valera refuses, which is very popular in Ireland,

not very popular in Washington or London.

De Valera wins two wartime elections,

and that is a clear democratic mandate

for his position of keeping Ireland out of the war.

But it is not a realpolitik stance,

and it brings him a lot of odium in the United States.

And then he puts the tin hat on it after Hitler dies!

De Valera pays a visit of condolences

to the German representative in Dublin,

Edward Hempel.

And basically, de Valera's position on this

was that Herr Hempel had always been well-mannered,

polite, been an excellent diplomat,

in contrast to the American ambassador, David Gray.

And for that reason, de Valera felt he was honour-bound

to pay condolences on the death of Hitler.

This is a colossal mistake.

This is to go and honour a man

who has committed global atrocities

and has brought the world to rack and ruin.

(flames crackling)

He went to express the condolences of the Irish people

at the death of Adolf Hitler.

It sounds mad when you say it out loud.

His officials pleaded with him not to do it.

Once he'd set his mind on something,

nobody was going to persuade him not to do it.

He really wanted to show that his neutrality was principled.

It may have been the correct thing to do in strict diplomatic usage,

but it wasn't a very wise thing to do.

And it was only after he'd done it that he had the idea,

"Well, maybe we should check what other neutrals have done."

The truth about what had happened

in the concentration camps was being revealed.

Even in the Irish papers.

It can't really be excused.

(crowd cheering)

(Archive reporter) This was the British people's finest day,

VE Day, the end of the German war.

(chanting) We want the King! We want the King!

The unbridled joy of victory in Europe was a marked contrast

to the barrage of criticism shipped by de Valera

just a few days earlier,

But a chance of redemption was about to arrive

from the most unlikely source.

Flushed with victory, Churchill took to the balcony

of Buckingham Palace and then took to the airwaves

to settle a few scores.

De Valera took a while. He took a couple of days.

He thought long and hard about how he should reply to this,

and he delivered a very dignified, a very restrained reply.

De Valera made the point that while Britain was rightly proud

of the fact that it had stood alone for a year and a half,

Ireland had stood alone for 800 years.

♪ (quiet electronic music)

(Archive reporter) The Free State is becoming

more and more air-minded.

Latest city to build a great airport is Dublin.

And at Collinstown, just 6 miles north of the city centre,

700 acres are being developed as one of the world's

most modern termini.

There were some hopeful signs of modernity

in de Valera's Ireland, and having avoided war damage,

the Irish economy should have been ready to soar.

Instead, progress stalled.

In the 14 post-war years, de Valera was either Taoiseach

or leader of the opposition.

A commanding political presence, while economic failure seemed

to threaten the very future of the state.

It was a time of economic stagnation,

a time when two out of every five people

born in the state were destined to leave it.

(plane engine)

The overwhelming reality

of the Ireland I was born into in the late 1950s was

that people were leaving it in droves,

young people in particular.

Between 1931 and 1941, 40% of everybody born in Ireland

during those 10 years was gone by 1961.

♪ (quiet electronic music, plane engine)

In de Valera's mind,

you could sort of seal Ireland off

and people would be contented with their frugal comforts.

But of course, this was irony, the place was one of the least

sealed off places in the world.

It was intensely globalised because of mass emigration.

(plane engine)

The person who was living on 30 acres in the West of Ireland also

had a cousin who who had a nice house in Queens,

who had a fridge, (laughing) you know?

Who had a basement! Who had a car!

People actually did want to have those kinds of opportunities.

We didn't want to be, you know,

knitting socks in the Aran Islands.

(bird squawks)

All during the period when de Valera was in power,

there was no suggestion

that Irish kids would have a right

to a second level education.

So there was this kind of double shame of not just emigration,

but emigration without opportunity, without skill.

And de Valera is really culpable for that.

It just never seemed to occur to him that this is not

what freedom and independence and dignity should look like.

(radio static)

♪ (smooth jazz music)

As the 1960s began, de Valera recognised that

Ireland was in a state of flux.

As the birth of Teilifís Éireann was celebrated

in the Gresham Hotel, he voiced his fears for the future.

(applause)

Sometimes when I think of television and radio

and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid.

Like atomic energy,

it can be used for incalculable good,

but it can also do irreparable harm.

It could be like an atomic bomb,

that could destroy everything, or it could be used for good.

But you really felt that his heart was in the idea that...

that this could destroy everything.

There was this kind of veto on what was acceptable.

And this fed into emigration. You know, I mean,

people left for economic reasons and social reasons, of course,

but a lot of people were just kind of fed up

with the fact that the place was

inward-looking, controlling, dull...

And de Valera had come to embody that for very many people,

rightly or wrongly.

♪ (electronic music)

Nothing symbolised the new Ireland more than Aer Lingus.

And yet at the same time, it was still connected

with the traditional Ireland, de Valera's Ireland,

still very much connected with Catholicism, with the Church.

Aer Lingus' planes were all named after saints.

They were blessed every year.

In fact, one of the main money-spinners

of the new airline was organising pilgrimages to Lourdes.

(Archive announcer) At Dublin's airport,

Irish pilgrims board a Skymaster airliner.

(crowd cheering)

They go, the quick and the lame, with a single thought.

From the Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland,

the most Reverend Dr. McQuaid, to children in arms,

all seek spiritual refreshment at the sacred place.

In the late 1950s, Ireland started to open up,

started to make the economic progress that had been

delayed for so long.

And yet the traditional society, traditional deference

to the Church, remained.

The Church really had this dominant position over

pretty much everything that happens

in relation to anything to do with women,

anything to do with children,

anything to do with education, anything to do with sexuality.

All of those kinds of things were completely controlled

in de Valera's Ireland.

On occasion, de Valera could have arguments with the hierarchy.

He had plenty of arguments with John Charles McQuaid,

which people probably don't give him credit for, but... overall,

he saw the relationship as a very close one.

I think he was very comfortable with this kind fusion

of Catholicism and Nationalism

as the identity which he wanted to hold on to.

Every aspect of people's lives was absolutely bound up

with Catholicism, but it had this very, very dark side.

It was this totalising kind of system.

And in order to maintain that totality of Irish goodness

and Irish Catholicism, you know, you needed to punish

and eliminate the people who didn't fit in.

And of course, that created this huge archipelago of repression.

♪ (sombre music)

We had the industrial schools, which were horrific institutions.

We had the mother and baby homes, which we know left

very, very, very deep scars on so many people.

The Magdalene Laundries, which were effectively

institutions of slavery.

And these things were not secret.

No doubt that de Valera knew all about it.

There's no doubt that, even when the system was challenged,

he did absolutely nothing.

It was sort of understood to be the price that was to be paid

to maintain our reputation as being holy Catholic Ireland.

Keeping Ireland as this spiritual beacon,

that mattered to him a lot more

than the actual economic life of the vast majority of citizens.

You have to understand de Valera against

the backdrop of centuries of abuse of the Irish,

as being wild.

(applause)

He did to have this sort of priestly feel to him.

He wasn't charismatic in our terms,

but actually the austerity and the dignity,

they were all working against

the stereotypes of what an Irish person was supposed to be like.

And I think that meant an awful lot to those Irish people

who did admire him.

They saw him as kinda standing up for them.

De Valera had created this aura around himself,

where he sort of embodied,

for an awful lot of people, the idea of the country.

In 1959, de Valera finally accepted

that it was time to let go of the levers of power.

Luckily, there was a suitably attractive alternative

to the Taoiseach's office.

In those days, the role of President was very different.

It was much less active, which suited Éamon de Valera just fine.

He served with considerable distinction

as the symbolic representation

of the nation, a figurehead with a purely ceremonial role.

Most people who have a memory of Éamon de Valera, nowadays,

will remember him as a President sitting in splendid isolation

in Áras an Uachtaráin.

He was, in effect, blind when he came to the Áras.

From the mid 1950s on, he had to memorise all his speeches,

and certainly that would have been the case

when he was President, but

his family say he never expressed any self-pity about it.

He just got on with it. It was one of the burdens

with which he had to live.

De Valera had been physically quite active as a younger man,

but obviously in his 80s, he was slowing up a bit.

So his doctors wanted him to take a walk every day in the grounds

of Áras an Uachtaráin, but he used to refuse to go out

for a stroll until his secretary gave him a maths problem

that he could think about and solve as he was wandering around

the paths in the gardens.

De Valera faced re-election in 1966.

His opponent was Tom O'Higgins, nephew of Kevin O'Higgins, who,

of course, had been assassinated by Republicans in 1927.

And he actually gave de Valera a really good run for his money.

Now, the election took place in the autumn of 1966.

♪ (stirring orchestral music, plane engines zooming)

(Archive reporter) WB Yeats immortalised

the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.

Fifty years later, many hundreds of veterans recall

the bitter struggle to bring Ireland out of her dark centuries

of poverty and deprivation.

Among them, President de Valera, the sole surviving

commandant of the rebellion.

♪ (electronic music)

50th anniversary of the Rising,

there were events all over the country.

De Valera was invited to all of them.

So what you in effect had was a pretty one-sided media portrayal

of President de Valera, the embodiment of the nation,

and the veteran of 1916, and in comparison,

very little coverage given to Tom O'Higgins.

The thing is, when it came down to the election,

O'Higgins came within 10,000 votes.

There was a change in society, which I think is reflected

in the fact that de Valera came so close to being defeated.

(voice through megaphone) We are demanding homes,

employment, freedom of speech,

and freedom of assembly.

We do not wish bloodshed or violence.

♪ (dramatic music, crowd shouting)

(woman screaming)

In the late 1960s, the struggle for civil rights

on the part of Northern Catholics was literally

beaten off the streets by the RUC, by the B-Specials,

and by various loyalists thugs.

And the pressure for reform within the Northern state seemed

to meeting an immovable obstacle.

And then the situation deteriorated.

(click) The rise of the Provisional IRA,

which was pursuing a militant, violent strategy

to secure reunification.

(explosion)

De Valera didn't shy away from the use of force.

Obviously enough, he fought in the rising,

he supported the use of force in the War of Independence

and in the Civil War.

But as he got older, I suppose his attitude changed a bit.

And in government, he had no problem in crushing the IRA.

He used Cosgrave's public order legislation

against the IRA in the 1930s.

He executed IRA men during the Second World War,

and his government crushed the IRA's border campaign

in the 1950s.

So he had absolutely no sympathy with the use of armed force

by Republicans.

We deplore sectarianism

and intolerance in all their forms, wherever they occur.

The government have been very patient and have acted with

great restraint over several months past.

One of his primary aims was the reunification of Ireland,

and that was embedded in the DNA of Fianna Fáil.

So when the Troubles broke out,

it caused a real crisis of conscience

between those who wanted to intervene,

wanted to help arm Northern Nationalists

to defend themselves, and those led by Jack Lynch,

the Taoiseach, who felt that any kind of intervention

in Northern Ireland

would make the situation there worse,

and could lead to the spillover of violence across the border.

As President, de Valera couldn't go on the public record,

but Des O'Malley, the Minister of Justice,

used to come up to brief him in Áras an Uachtaráin,

and de Valera made it quite clear to Fianna Fáil members

in no uncertain terms,

"I am your founding father and I support your Taoiseach."

De Valera intervened in politics during the arms crisis,

not because it was about the North,

or about Northern Nationalists, or about the Troubles,

but because it was about the unity of Fianna Fáil.

♪ (tense music)

When he was in the presidency, he had a lot more time

to spend with family.

Éamon and Sinéad's love affair, sparked in Conradh na Gaeilge

still burned brightly 60 years later

as they entered old age together.

All of de Valera's grandchildren have very fond memories

of his time in Áras an Uachtaráin.

He had time to spend with them.

He liked to hear them chatting and playing games.

He used to help them with their maths homework.

He was a very doting grandfather, and some would say not just

to his family, but to the nation.

(Archive reporter) After 14 years as President

of the Irish Republic,

and 27 years as Prime Minister,

President Éamon de Valera retires.

♪ (sweeping orchestral music)

His final departure from the political stage was

the end of an era,

and arguably the birth moment of modern Ireland.

(crowd cheering)

(Archive reporter) ..the President to recall some of

the happiest moments of your years.

Would you be able to answer it? The happiest moments?

Yes.

I've had very many happy moments in my life.

I've had some sad ones.

♪ (organ music)

He started life as an outsider, but in the end,

Éamon de Valera did more than anyone else to set the terms

of Irishness in the 20th century.

Over his long life,

he made a truly memorable mark on Irish history.

But back in his birthplace,

time hasn't been so kind to his reputation.

Here in New York, he was once so famous

there was a plaque marking the spot he was born

on the corner behind me.

That plaque was taken down during renovations a few years ago

and never replaced.

He is forgotten in the city of his birth.

But how is he remembered now

in the nation he did so much to shape?

(applause)

A little experiment.

Who has a positive image of Éamon de Valera?

De Valera certainly gets

a bad press. There's no doubt about that, but

perhaps anniversaries like this

will give the opportunity to balance the books.

Who has a negative image of Éamon de Valera?

I would have a profoundly negative view

(laughing) of Éamon de Valera, I think.

A man who rode a wave of revolution,

and then embedded a very reactive,

conservative state.

If the defence is he was a misogynist,

I'm sure they were all misogynists.

I don't really accept that,

because women were given suffrage in 1922.

So there was obviously an idea and a hope,

and that was torn away very quickly, but it was there.

At one point in my research, I invited people on social media

to share the first word that sprang to their mind

at the mention of de Valera's Ireland.

The most mentioned word was "Catholic",

followed by "repression",

"conservative", "misogynistic", "patriarchy", and "backward".

Also getting... People say "Did you feel very repressed?"

Well, actually, I personally didn't.

And I think it's a great, great irony that today

so many women are forced,

they would rather be at home, maybe with their new babies,

but they're forced to go out to work

to pay a mortgage or the rent.

A lot of people would be in dire poverty

if only one person worked.

So I think in that sense, Dev was actually right.

You can't blame him for the price of houses,

(laughs) no matter what we say about him.

Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone,

after France had fallen and before America entered the war.

Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge

that there is a small nation who stood alone not for one year,

or two, but for several hundred years

against aggression, who endured spoliations,

famines, massacres, in endless succession,

who was clubbed into insensibility

time and time again,

but that each time upon returning consciousness,

took up the fight anew.

A small nation that could never be got to accept defeat

and who never surrendered her soul.

His willingness to serve Ireland,

to serve the Irish nation,

and wanting Ireland to be a society where there is

religious liberties, civil liberties for everybody.

I think those are the positive things that I look at.

Leadership is not about making people happy.

It's about making tough decisions

for the betterment of the society.

If you want to make people happy, sell ice cream.

Whenever anything awful is exposed in this country,

it will be described as an example of de Valera's Ireland.

He presided over a fairly cold society.

It's hard to look past things like the Magdalene Laundries

and mother and baby homes.

But even in the educational institutions,

the Catholic Church's dogma was

so powerful in society at the time.

I think my generation would see him

in an overwhelmingly negative light.

And of course, assessments of de Valera

do tend to go to one extreme or another,

to either treat him as a demi-god or as the devil incarnate.

The roots of the problems we are coping with now,

in terms of the history of tribunals

and all the various controversies around the Church.

What happened in the era of de Valera,

we're still living in the shadow of it.

Between hagiography and hatchet job, where lies the history?

I hope that we've helped to provide a more balanced picture.

Thank you and good night.

(applause)

♪ (calm piano music)

Nobody would claim that de Valera was solely responsible

for Irish independence, but he did make a huge contribution

to ensuring that Irish people were able to choose their own path,

able to make their own decisions, able to shape their state

as they wished.

I hereby solemnly declare....

(Crowd) I hereby solemnly declare...

..my fidelity to the Irish nation...

..my fidelity to the Irish nation...

..and to respect its democratic values.

..and to respect its democratic values.

Congratulations, you are now all Irish citizens.

(applause and cheering)

It's 140 years since Éamon de Valera

came to Ireland as a child .

Yay!

Today, the country would be unrecognisable to him.

It's rich, largely secular,

far more diverse than it was in his time.

But he would appreciate the value which is placed on citizenship...

The importance of the sovereignty which was won by his generation.

Perhaps that is his lasting legacy.

We are Irish! Yay!

Subtitles: RTÉ 2025