Eamon de Valera

Eamon de Valera (born Oct. 14, 1882, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 29, 1975, Dublin, Ire.) was an Irish politician and patriot, who served as taoiseach (prime minister; 1932–48, 1951–54, 1957–59) and president (1959–73) of Ireland. An active revolutionary from 1913, he became president of Sinn Féin in 1917 and founded the Fianna Fáil party in 1926. In 1937 he made his country a “sovereign” state, renamed Ireland, or Éire. His academic attainments also inspired wide respect; he became chancellor of the National University of Ireland in 1921.

Early life

De Valera’s father, who was Spanish, died when the boy was two. De Valera was then sent to his mother’s family in County Limerick, Ire., and studied at the local national school and at Blackrock College, Dublin; he graduated from the Royal University, Dublin, and became a teacher of mathematics and an ardent supporter of the Irish-language revival. In 1913 he joined the Irish Volunteers, which had been organized to resist opposition to Home Rule for Ireland.

In the anti-British Easter Rising in Dublin (1916), de Valera commanded an occupied building and was the last commander to surrender. Because of his American birth, he escaped execution by the British but was sentenced to penal servitude. Released in 1917 but arrested again and deported in May 1918 to England, where he was imprisoned, de Valera was acclaimed by the Irish as the chief survivor of the uprising and in October 1917 was elected president of the revolutionist Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves” or “Ourselves Alone”) party, which won three-fourths of all the Irish constituencies in December 1918.

After a dramatic escape from Lincoln Jail in February 1919, de Valera went in disguise to the United States, where he collected funds. He returned to Ireland before the Irish War of Independence (Anglo-Irish War) ended with the truce that took effect on July 11, 1921, and appointed plenipotentiaries to negotiate in London. He repudiated the treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, that they signed to form the Irish Free State, however, primarily because it imposed an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

Rise to power

After Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly) ratified the treaty by a small majority (1922), de Valera supported the republican resistance in the ensuing civil war. William Thomas Cosgrave’s Irish Free State ministry imprisoned him, but he was released in 1924 and then organized a republican opposition party that would not sit in Dáil Éireann (now the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament). In 1927, however, he persuaded his followers to sign the oath of allegiance as “an empty political formula,” and his new Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Destiny”) party then entered the Dáil, demanding abolition of the oath of allegiance, of the governor-general, of the Seanad (senate) as then constituted, and of land-purchase annuities payable to Great Britain. The Cosgrave ministry was defeated by Fianna Fáil in 1932, and de Valera, as head of the new ministry, embarked quickly on severing connections with Great Britain. He withheld payment of the land annuities, and an “economic war” resulted. Increasing retaliation by both sides enabled de Valera to develop his program of austere national self-sufficiency in an Irish-speaking Ireland while building up industries behind protective tariffs. In a new constitution ratified by referendum in 1937, the Irish Free State became Ireland (in Irish, Éire), a sovereign, independent democracy tenuously linked with the British Commonwealth (under the External Relations Act of 1936) only for purposes of diplomatic representation.

De Valera’s prestige was enhanced by his success as president of the council of the League of Nations in 1932 and of its assembly in 1938. He also entered negotiations with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in which he guaranteed that he would never allow Ireland to be used as a base for attacking Britain in the event of war. This culminated in the Anglo-Irish defense agreement of April 1938, whereby Britain relinquished the naval bases of Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly (retained in a defense annex to the 1921 treaty), and in complementary finance and trade treaties that ended the economic war. This made possible de Valera’s proclamation in September 1939, upon the outbreak of World War II, that Ireland would remain neutral and would resist attack from any quarter. In secret, however, de Valera also authorized significant military and intelligence assistance to both the British and the Americans throughout the war; he realized that a German victory would imperil Ireland’s independence, of which neutrality was the ultimate expression. By avoiding the burdens and destruction of the war, de Valera achieved a relative prosperity for Ireland in comparison with the war-torn countries of Europe, and he retained office in subsequent elections.

In 1948 a reaction against the long monopoly of power and patronage held by de Valera’s party enabled the opposition, with the help of smaller parties, to form an interparty government under John A. Costello. Ironically, this precarious coalition collapsed within three years after Ireland became a republic by means of the repeal of the External Relations Act of 1936 and the severance of all ties with the British Commonwealth, an act de Valera had avoided. De Valera resumed office until 1954, when he appealed unsuccessfully for a fresh mandate, and Costello formed his second interparty ministry. No clearly defined difference now existed between the opposing parties in face of rising prices, continued emigration, and a backward agriculture. De Valera claimed, however, that a strong single-party government was indispensable and that all coalitions must be weak and insecure. On this plea he obtained, in March 1957, the overall majority that he demanded.

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In 1959 de Valera agreed to stand as a candidate for the presidency. He resigned his position as taoiseach and leader of the Fianna Fáil party. In June he was elected president, and he was reelected in 1966. He retired to a nursing home near Dublin in 1973 and died there in 1975.