Irish History: Bill Kissane's book is an important contribution to the literature of the Irish Civil War. It seeks the causes of the Irish Civil War in antecedent historical forces rather than - as has mostly been the case - in personality factors, and he seeks to place this event in a wider context of international literature on civil wars,writes Garret FitzGerald
This is a valuable exercise - even if the author is ultimately constrained to recognise the specificity of the Irish case, partly because there have been so few post-secession civil wars with which to compare it.
The political success of Fianna Fáil in 1932, and its subsequent key role in Irish politics, enabled its view of recent Irish history to dominate popular opinion for some decades thereafter. By contrast, the prevailing view of professional historians in more recent decades has tended to favour the pro-Treaty case. Bill Kissane, however, draws a more complex picture, giving credit to elements of constitutionalist theory among some of those who opposed the Treaty as well as among those who supported it.
The attempt to see these tragic events in a wider historical context necessarily involves a playing-down of personal factors. While accepting that the position de Valera took up intensified the underlying divisions that precipitated the outbreak of the Civil War, the author challenges - with good reason, it seems to me - the thesis that de Valera was personally responsible for it. But the historical approach of seeking to identify pre-Treaty divisions that contributed to the genesis of the Civil War means that questions such as de Valera's motivation in opposing the Treaty are not addressed. This has, of course, been the subject of much debate by earlier historians, as well as by countless partisan commentators.
While the author's emphasis on the way in which antecedent historical forces contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War is both novel and valuable, the accompanying demotion of personal factors in these events to some degree clouds understanding of the intensity of the bitterness that came to divide many of those involved - above all the persistence of deep hostility to de Valera himself among many of those who supported the Treaty.
This bitterness seems to me to have derived from the fact that up to the moment the Treaty was signed, de Valera, although much criticised for having failed to participate in the negotiations at least in their later stages, had nevertheless been seen as a moderate - someone seeking to rein in the unrealistic republicanism of many activists. He had, his colleagues who signed the Treaty believed, asked Griffith to "get him out of the straitjacket of the Republic".
At the final cabinet meeting before the signature of the Treaty he does not seem to have given the negotiators a clear negative "steer" on the emerging terms, contenting himself with continuing to press what by then was evident to them - and they believed must also have been evident to him - was a non-starter, namely, external association with the Commonwealth.
When on the evening of December 7th my father and Eamon Duggan handed de Valera the text of the Treaty just as he, as newly-elected chancellor of the NUI, was about to attend a Dante Commemoration in the Mansion House, they recognised from his expression that he had already made up his mind to oppose it. It seemed to them, and to their pro-Treaty colleagues, to have been an irrational turnabout by a moderate - a turnabout they attributed to weaknesses in de Valera's character, played upon by more extreme colleagues - and it led to their subsequent bitterness towards him. To the extent that he spent so much of his life thereafter seeking to justify his actions at that time, he seems himself to have been uneasy about his own motivation.
(When I introduced myself to him after the first meeting of the NUI Senate that I attended in January 1973, he immediately referred to his friendship with "Desmond and Mabel (my parents) before that terrible Civil War happened. Let me tell you why it happened . . . " And as I stood beside his chair, he delivered his case there and then - at some length!)
Matters of this kind do not feature in this book, which seeks to transcend issues of personality. To that extent, like all historical interpretations, it is incomplete, but this does not detract from its value, which lies in a quite persuasive attempt to identify historical forces in Irish nationalism that contributed to the Treaty split.
Bill Kissane makes the point that "the anti-Treaty interpretation of the Civil War has been neglected in most historical accounts of the conflict", adding that "it is impossible to understand the nature of Irish political development after 1923 without taking it into consideration. After all, if their ideals in 1922 were so incoherent and indefensible, it is difficult to explain why Fianna Fáil was so successful after 1926."
He goes on to say that to a Fianna Fáil party anxious to establish its democratic credentials after 1926, it was the constitutionalist rather than the militarist means of defending the Republic that mattered. He points out that in none of three key speeches de Valera made in 1936 setting out that case did he mention the Rising, the declaration of the Republic in 1919, or the legitimacy of the Second Dáil - three traditional elements of the republican argument.
Moreover, the author draws attention to the fact that only the issue of the oath had figured in the four election campaigns between 1927 and 1933 - "The oath," he adds, "enabled the party to stress the constitutional nature of their resistance."
(Incidentally, I was surprised to find a historian such as Bill Kissane referring to the "oath of allegiance". The oath was one of "faithfulness" to the king - not as king of Ireland but only as head of the Commonwealth).
I have some difficulty with the author's several rather dismissive references (such as on page 151), to the Free State government's concern with re- establishing order, "vindicating the legal rights of fellow citizens" and "making life and property safe", which he describes as reflecting "fidelity to the values of Victorian Britain", "the British protective model of democracy", and "the ethos of a fundamentally conservative society". Order and security of life and property had, after all, been functions and values of all civilised states for centuries past.
But I would echo his comment that, "whereas the postponement of any attention to the border question was understandable in 1922" (inevitable indeed, given that partition had been a fact since 1920), "the long-term failure of the southern state to defend the interests of northern Catholics would carry a heavy price for all parties" - including, I believe, Northern unionists. That abandonment, together with the irresponsible, provocative, and domestically self-serving irredentist claim on the territory of Northern Ireland, have meant that we have to share with Britain responsibility for the Northern Ireland tragedy.
Garret FitzGerald is an author and a former taoiseach. His next book, Ireland in the World: Further Reflections, will be published by Liberties Press in November
The Politics Of The Irish Civil War. By Bill Kissane, Oxford University Press, 240pp. €58