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Friday 5 December 2008

Spying on Ireland

Too close for comfort

Mary Kenny on the new book from Eunan O'Halpin

O’Halpin’s main point of hostility is Winston Churchill, whom he sees at every turn as an enemy of Ireland. This really is unfair. Churchill championed Home Rule for Ireland from 1906 — he was pelted with rotten fish in Belfast for his pains. He defended the Free State valiantly on the floor of the House of Commons in May 1922, as described in Mary Bromage’s meticulous study of Churchill and Ireland (not cited here). And later in the 1940s, as Roy Foster has shown, Winston spoke affectionately about the Irish state and praised its ‘Roman Catholic civilisation’. The National Archives of Ireland also refer to Churchill’s continued diplomatic support for Irish unity in 1948.

All this should be factored into an overall picture of Churchill and Ireland. What worried Winston, obsessively, was the defence of the realm, and that was a justifiably sore point in 1940-41. The big picture is that Churchill was entitled to do what he could to defend the United Kingdom: and the Irish Free State was entitled to choose its own terms for neutrality. Actually, 150,000 Irishmen volunteered to serve the Crown. An Irishman will usually respond to the call of arms, but he’s damned if he’s going to be coerced.

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