Ronan Fanning (1941–2017)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/fatal-path-british-government-and-irish-revoluti...

Although this book came late in his life, published in 2013, four years before he died, big chunks are apparently taken from his PhD thesis of 1968. I guess history doesn’t necessarily change that much.

The subject is Westminster attitudes to Ireland at the time of independence, focussing especially on the two Prime Ministers, Asquith and Lloyd George, and also on the leading Conservative politicians and the other Liberals, Winston Churchill in particular. My own PhD thesis concentrated on almost exactly the same period, and I thought I had done a pretty exhaustive dive into the last two decades of British administration in Ireland. So I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I learned from this book. Fanning concentrates on policy rather than administration, and on the debate in London rather than what was happening on the ground in Ireland – the Easter Rising, for instance, gets barely a page, but the British response gets most of a chapter. This is not a criticism – Fanning was entitled to write the book he wanted to write, and he was entirely correct to see a huge gap in the historiography of the period.

Things that I learned, roughly in order:

The Liberals from 1905 until the House of Lords crisis in 1909-10 were not just apathetic to Irish Home Rule, the leadership were actively hostile to the concept, and would not have ever legislated for it if they had not been backed into a corner by John Redmond and the Irish Nationalists (one of the latter’s few strategic successes).

At the same time, the Liberal government in 1912-14 knew that Home Rule could not be implemented in large parts of Ulster. Lloyd George and Churchill proposed excluding Ulster from home rule as early as February 1912. This was copper-fastened by the disloyal and treacherous actions of senior army officers, in particular Sir Henry Wilson and the brothers Hubert and Johnnie Gough, who undermined the elected government by conspiring with the opposition and with the military garrison in Ireland to provoke the Curragh mutiny in March 1914.

Therefore the counterfactual idea that, if there had been no 1916 Rising or War of Independence, a Home Rule Ireland would have eventually evolved into a Dominion-like status, is wrong. The only decisive factor affecting British policy, apart from the personal prejudices of political leaders, was violence or the threat of violence. The British folded on Ulster in 1914, and on independence for the rest of the island in 1921, purely because of the balance of coercive force. The British government’s own use of coercive force was poorly planned and disastrously implemented.

When it came to the Treaty negotiations on 1921, the British got entirely what they expected (apart from a late concession on tariffs). The Irish delegation were thoroughly unprepared, particularly on the issue of partition. Michael Collins then planned to destabilise and attempt to take control of Northern Ireland, but was distracted by the Civil War, and after that he was dead. London did nothing to protect Catholics in the North in the 1922-25 period (or for that matter Protestants in the South, though they were in less danger). The Boundary Commission, to which Fanning devotes an interesting epilogue, was designed to achieve nothing, and did so.

In general, both Asquith and Lloyd George were motivated (on Ireland at least) not by ideology but by the need to stay in power by satisfying their coalition partners, successively the Irish Nationalists and then the Conservatives. (Also Asquith was fundamentally a procrastinator who did not want to actually do anything.) The Conservatives were more ideologically Unionist than the Liberals; so too was the fledgling Labour party. Andrew Bonar Law, who actually became Prime Minister briefly in 1922-3, was Canadian by birth but an Ulster Presbyterian by background; however, once he came to power his first decision was to get the last stages of the Treaty enacted, just to get it over with.

There’s not a lot about women here, but a key figure is Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George’s secretary and lover. The smartest officials, notably General Macready who was the person who advised the British in 1921 that the military campaign in Ireland was lost, knew that Lloyd George never read his own paperwork and wrote to Stevenson instead. Not everyone knew this trick. Lloyd George and his key male adviser, Tom Jones, often had crucial conversations in Welsh, which nobody else in Downing Street understood.

The whole thing is eloquently written. It’s not short (361 pages) and it’s not for beginners (knowledge of the broad thrust of events is assumed) but it’s really interesting.

I found the account of the bitterly divided 1912-14 government, publicly committed to a policy goal that had been wished on it from outside, and that few of its leaders really believed in, very reminiscent of the Brexit period. But the wider lesson, that most British prime ministers spend most of their political energy on simple day-to-day survival, has much broader relevance, and not just in the UK.

Anyway, this was a tremendously good read.… (más)

Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power – A Very Long Shadow

Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College, Dublin, a man who is required reading for anyone who wants to know and understand many aspects of Modern Irish History. He is the expert on the Irish Revolution, and the Irish State and its creation. Fanning in his latest book; Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power takes his excellent forensic skills to the longest shadow in Irish History of the Twentieth Century.

What Ronan Fanning does is bring back to life the limitless confidence of de Valera back to life and also shows why he was one of the most unpleasant men, but that did not stop him leading Ireland on three occasions. He is often remembered in Britain for keeping Ireland neutral in the Second World War but at the same time as him being Taoiseach of Ireland drove to the German Embassy on May 2nd 1945 to sign a book of condolence opened by the Nazi Ambassador. He believed and stated he did nothing wrong.

What Fanning does show in this majestic biography that it was de Valera’s single mindedness that was able to translate a vision of Irish sovereignty from ideal to political reality. He is quite rightly considered the architect of the free Irish state, even though he was not too concerned with economic growth which he left to others.

Fanning like previous biographers before him all examine the reputation of de Valera during which he attempts to be positive about him. What does come across is that de Valera cannot really compete with other European leaders that emerged during the century he makes him look like a very lucky second rate leader. He was totally disinterested in the well being of the Irish people and preferred to talk about an Irish ideal that never existed.

What does come screaming through the biography is that it does not matter how positive that Fanning is about him, his subject comes across as a rather humourless, very arrogant, single minded and driven. Not the sort of person you would want to sit down with and have a pleasant evening over a glass or two.

Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power, is an excellent biography written by a brilliant historian who knows his subject well and not afraid to tackle the various elephants in the room that are presented. The subject may not be the nicest of men but the way his biography is written makes it an engaging read.… (más)

This book remains a classic work to this day and is an excellent historical account of the Irish Department of Finance and how its policy shifted under different Government administrations from 1922 to 1958. Key personalities are also analysed together with the significant changes they brought to bear as Minister for Finance. The external and internal climates that the Ministers and Governments battled against are also developed. The book is extremely well written and argued and is justifiably the length that it is. Anyone interested in a history of the Irish economy or history of Irish governmental policy in the early years of the state will want to acquire/read this book.… (más)