Memorandum by Joseph P. Walshe for Seán T. O'Ceallaigh (Dublin)
(Copy)

To the

Vice-President and Acting Minister for External Affairs¹

THE PRESENT PHASE OF OUR RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN

The reopening of negotiations with Great Britain on our financial relations with that country will inevitably at some moment during the discussions bring the major political issues between us to the forefront. It is therefore of the utmost importance for us to review these issues objectively here and now so that we may not find ourselves unprepared.

The desire of the British, not unaccompanied by a quiet determination, that we should ultimately remain in the Commonwealth, is not incompatible with their indifference to our becoming a Republic now. Indeed, in their view, and I gathered this very definitely from Sir Harry Batterbee in my last conversation with him, a good dose of a republican regime seems almost a necessary method of convincing us of the advantages of maintaining the traditional form of government within the group with which we are at present associated.

They are quite definitely convinced that a republican regime here would be a colossal failure resulting in civil war and misery and eventually in a reversion to the Commonwealth on British terms. And it would be foolish on our part not to admit to ourselves that British confidence in this issue is based on the certainty of their power in our time and on their deliberate intention to make an Irish Republic a failure from the beginning.

The great State, especially the great world State, always dominates its small neighbours, and these latter can only maintain their separate identity by a policy of constant compromise between principle and expediency. Our position in this respect is worse, infinitely worse, than that of the great majority of the small States of the world. Our neighbour is still the greatest power in the world, and she is bound to remain so for a great number of years until America learns the importance of establishing a system of world diplomacy based on a personnel of patriotic men free from the corrupting influence of United States politics. Nobody will venture to say that American politicians will become patriots in our time, and it is idle to hope that America could become, in any real sense, in our generation a countervailing force to British world influence even if they wished it, and British diplomacy is much too intelligent to allow any such desire to exceed the limits of moderation. We must therefore frankly regard ourselves as definitely isolated from any support from America, except in circumstances similar to those of the immediately post-war period which are never likely to return. And, outside such circumstances, no publicity that we can do in America will secure us the sympathy of more than a very small and impotent section of the population. It is even very probable that a deliberate publicity campaign in the United States - without the visible forces of British might and tyranny in actual operation in this country - would lose us some of the moral support which is now ours.

What then are the possibilities? The external side of the problem we have now to face is this. An artificial political entity called the Irish Free State is in existence. It makes no real heart appeal to any Irishman, and it has caused the development of a new kind of patriotism which is either entirely economic, following several different lines, or partly economic, partly anti-British. We hear nothing nowadays about the preservation of our ancient monuments, a new language and Irish culture movement, post-school age education, the development of Irish Art and Literature, the creation of specialized art industries in which Irish artistic talent could find an outlet, nor of the total ignorance of our history and the illiteracy which characterize nine-tenths of the people and which are so painfully demonstrated in the average Dáil back benches.

If the artificial character of our State is not eliminated within a short period our nationals will have developed the economic outlook to such an extent that they could just as easily live in Manchester or New York as in Dublin - and if the standard of living happens to be better in the two former cities they will most certainly go there.

There is a strong temptation to maintain the Free State in existence until we have created our own economic system within the Twenty-six Counties, but by yielding to it we are inviting the certain destruction of the spirit of nationalism which is still in the people at least in the form of a vague desire to be national.

Our immediate policy with Great Britain must be the restoration of the unity of Ireland, and we must be ready to make the sacrifices incidental to that policy. The Kingdom of Ireland offers the only feasible solution. The vast majority of the people of the whole country will be glad to have passed out of the Treaty stage and the memories of the Civil War. Only a new Agreement with Great Britain can achieve that end. The British want security. We want a stable and ordered state of the whole of Ireland. Both of us want an end to strife between us. The Kingdom of Ireland involves the acceptance of the King as the head of our Constitution, but only in the most abstract form deprived of all power whatsoever to interfere. Our independence of England on the political side will be far greater than Hungary's independence of Austria, and no doubt, since the new tendency of contiguous States is to sacrifice portion of their sovereignty for the purpose of forming a union for mutual protection, we shall be more independent of England than most European States are or are soon about to be of each other.

I believe that the acceptance of the Kingdom of Ireland for our time without prejudice to what the Irish people as a whole may ultimately decide would weld together all our people with the exception of a very small minority. It would give us the opportunity of diverting anti-Britishism into constructive patriotism. The economic adjustments and the defence alliance required would be a very small price for us to pay for unity. In such a settlement annuities and other payments to Great Britain could be quickly brushed aside.

A Republic or any non-monarchic form of State for the whole of Ireland is an impossibility until some new regime is set up in Great Britain. A Republic for the Twenty-six Counties would be a still more artificial entity than the Free State. Its establishment would prolong partition indefinitely, for the whole economic power of Britain would support the Six Counties in their resistance to any attempts at unification on our part. The existence in Great Britain and in the other States of the Commonwealth of so many millions of our people makes the problem of establishing a Republic here a very different one from what it was in Wolfe Tone's² day, and whatever passivity the British Government as such might display towards our new State public opinion in the whole Commonwealth would develop towards us a rooted hostility which could gravely imperil our existence.

I think the critical moment has come in our relations with Great Britain to arrive at a realist decision as to our policy for the unity of Ireland - to declare it fearlessly and to endeavour to carry it out.