The emigrant’s tale
Mentally re-running the conversation to put together the pieces and test it against an admittedly scant knowledge of the period, his words seem to have veracity but also asked questions.
Around eighty years of age, he sat with his collie dog in a cool shade on a very warm summer’s day. He had lived in the village as long as I could remember and the thought had never occurred that he might have come from anywhere else.
“My father was an old IRA man, but he said they became gangsters. Do you know what he did? He joined the British Army. He was in North Africa during the war. He used to tell us stories of lying under his lorry to try to find shade. De Valera was useless, only did what suited him. I left in 1957.”
Perhaps an opportunity will arise to talk to him again about his memories of his father and his family in rural Ireland. His father’s shift in loyalties intrigues.
Following the Treaty with Britain, signed in 1921, the conflict between supporters and opponents of the treaty was bitter. Michael Collins was to be the most famous victim of a civil war that was fought between 1922 and 1923. Whilst there are relatively detailed records of most of the losses among the pro-Treaty National Army, the casualties among the anti-Treaty forces and among the wider civilian population are still a matter of debate. In the years that followed, a small rump of republican dissidents continued with IRA activities, including the murder of justice minister Kevin O’Higgins in 1927.
When the anti-Treaty Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932, he was surrounded by former IRA men. Whilst not wishing to antagonise his colleagues, he was determined to suppress what remained of the old IRA and it was banned in 1935. Some of its men were to go to Spain to fight for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, others continued as an underground movement launching a bombing campaign against Britain in January 1939.
At what point might the man’s father have decided that the moment had come to part company with the movement? Disillusioned with de Valera, had the 1935 ban prompted him to leave the IRA. Or was it the bombing campaign against a Britain facing Nazi threats that persuaded him? What questions might he have been asked when he went to enlist with the British army? Was it a case of a medical examination and then sign on the dotted line?
More than sixty years in the village, in a Somerset accent, the man expressed pride in the place his country had become. Might his father have thought the same?
A lot of thoughtful republicans, those that didn’t travel to Spain, and some that did joined the British forces. Realising that a far worse devil was coming down the pike and if it wasn’t halted things would become real ugly.
They saw the instincts of FG for what they were, seeing them closer to what the Boers developed in SA and the Southern States of the US and fellow travellers with Italy Spain and Portugal.
There must have been a profound sense of disillusionment. I suppose joining the British army allowed an engagement in an anti-fascist struggle, not that it brought benefit to Ireland.
FG was the old Irish Party who in 1918 saw the voter register go from 100,000 to 800,000+. But prior to WW1 they had locked in the church and with it business using the tools developed by O’Connell, more of less catholic’s went to catholic businesses. Of course the way things went from 1850 on allowed a duality to develop a bit like lately when some were profoundly protected while others were left exposed on a mountain.
In the 20s FF could never have developed the State for those that had the financial wherewithal, but with the ’29 collapse Fg’s former moneymen were all but obliterated. This allowed FF to have an economic war with the UK which was in fact a rerun of the Civil War for the targets this time were the big farmers, FG’s source, and the source of the investment moneys.
Or to put it another way. Huge moneys were made during the WW1. With none of it being invested in Ireland. If you want to see it today, travel along the southern coast of England from Dover to Cornwall and much of the Jerry build homes had investors from here.