‘Judging Dev’ is a recently produced book written by Irish historian Diarmuid Ferriter on the life and political career of Eamon De Valera. While there have been many books and biographies written on De Valera, Ferriter’s is the first to be written with the advantage of using previously unattainable personal correspondences, documents and pictures of De Valera. Could it be described as a complete work on De Valera’s life? The short answer is no. While beautifully produced with an abundance of never before seen personal photographs and documents released from the National Archives, these make up roughly around two thirds of a three hundred and seventy page book. To put it in simple terms, the volume written on De Valera in this book could never suffice to do justice to the life of this Irish political Behemoth. To be fair to Ferriter, he does not claim this book to be a definitive account of the life of De Valera. The aim of Ferriter in this book was to revise the life of De Valera, and to give a more balanced account on his legacy then he has been receiving in more recent times.
This is not a historical book aimed at the academic world, but is written and produced in a way which makes it accessible to all. De Valera has always been a character which has divided opinion, from families and neighbours from every parish in the country, right up to distinguished Irish historians who would be considered experts in their fields. There has been a swing over the last two decades in how De Valera’s legacy has been perceived and written about. In the late sixties, early seventies a biography of De Valera entitled ‘Eamon De Valera’, was written by the Earl of Longford and Thomas P. O’ Neill, which was rather favourable towards De Valera. This view on De Valera was countered by Tim Pat Coogan’s biography ‘De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow’, which was produced in 1993. This book was extremely critical on the life and career of De Valera. What Ferriter is trying to do in this book is to rebalance the more recent negative views on De Valera. He is not trying to swing the pendulum back to an overly positive view on De Valera, like the account given by Longford and O’ Neill, but rather find an honest middle ground on the subject. This can be a tricky objective because when trying to readdress an already held opinion, the possibility of going too far the other direction is a real one. This exact point was levelled at Ferriter by Joost Augusteijn, a Dutch historian specialising in Irish history, in his review of the book.
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“The desire to look for opinion and evidence that contradicts an existing negative view inevitably creates a tendency to concentrate solely on the positive side of De Valera. As a result, arguments are not always convincing, certain elements of De Valera’s thinking are underexposed, and Ferriter is sometimes somewhat too combative in his attempt to contradict negative assessments”.
In my opinion, Ferriter does not fall into this trap and indeed does manage to find the appropriate balance throughout. What Augusteijn fails to realise is that when a reviewer comprehends the fact that the book is written with an objective to counter argue, then the reviewer can himself overly analyse whether the author has overdone this or not. Ironically in this case Augusteijn may have fallen into a similar trap to the one he accuses Ferriter of falling into.
However one cannot escape the realisation that one of the reasons this book was written was to be a counter argument to Tim Pat Coogan’s ‘De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow’. If Ferriter had viewed Coogan’s book to have been a fair assessment of De Valera, then he probably would have felt there to be no reason to write this book. Tim Pat Coogan has also written a biography on De Valera’s civil war foe, Michael Collin’s. It comes as no surprise that the author of a Michael Collin’s biography, who painted De Valera as the villain of the piece in the post treaty Irish civil war, would not take too kindly to ‘Judging Dev’. Coogan has been labelled the main initiator of the recent negative views on De Valera and Ferriter’s ‘Judging Dev’, contradicts many of the views on De Valera in Coogan’s book. It could be levelled at Coogan that he wrote his biography on De Valera, three years after his book on Collins, to simply elevate Collin’s image even more by creating a villainous opinion on De Valera. One must surely question his objectivity in writing a De Valera biography, when he has clearly expressed negative views on the man in a prior publication. Even the titles of these two contrasting biographies can show the reader, the writer’s opinions on the man. Coogan’s title ‘Long Fellow, Long Shadow’, seems to suggest that De Valera was a man who cast a dark shadow over Irish politics throughout his career, while Ferriter’s ‘Judging Dev’, refers to him in his commonly used nickname, which would suggest he has more of a affinity towards him. Coogan speaking on an Irish political talk show described Ferriter’s book as “more for the coffee table, then the shelf, that it added nothing to our knowledge of De Valera and avoided some of the most contentious aspects of De Valera’s career”.
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Was this a fair point by Coogan? One of the main contentious aspects of De Valera’s career was his role in the treaty negotiations and the civil war. This is one area that Ferriter deals with substantially in chapter three, ‘I would have gone and said “Go to the devil, I will not sign”’. This chapter offers a good reflection on how Ferriter tackles De Valera throughout the whole book. He is most definitely offering a counter argument on Coogan’s negative take on De Valera’s actions during this period, but manages to maintain his objectivity throughout the chapter. Like the rest of the book it is tackled in a balanced way, dealing with both the possible reasons why De Valera was possibly justified in staying out of the Treaty negotiations, but also explains how De Valera caused much confusion to the plenipotentiary’s whilst they were negotiating. The reasons given by Ferriter for De Valera’s unwillingness to travel are numerous.
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“He offered various explanations as to why he did not attend. He needed to avoid compromising the Republic and to be in a position uncontaminated by negotiations. This distance would allow him to reopen dialogue if the conference broke down, to rally the people in the event of resistance, or to act as a kind of ‘final court of appeal to avert whatever Britain might attempt to pull over’. Above all, he remained ‘anxious to convey the impression his decision not to go to London was not his alone but was somehow a collective one’.”
The negative view held in this case against De Valera was that he always knew that the Treaty negotiations would never reach a point where Ireland would attain full independence from Britain and he sent Collins and Griffith to be the ones to fail and also to get the blame for not achieving this republican goal. There is a lot of credence to this opinion on events and Ferriter does not shy away from questioning De Valera’s motives, also dismissing some of the reasons given by De Valera himself for his non appearance. He describes a letter De Valera wrote to Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford), which Ferriter states was a major flaw in De Valera’s reasoning for not travelling.
“Perhaps the real weakness in De Valera’s argument was revealed in a following-up letter to Pakenham sent in February 1963, to the effect that ‘there was to my mind, always the danger that those involved in the discussions would give up to words and phrases used in any document arising out of them, such special and limited meaning as might have occurred or been attached to those words and phrases in the discussions themselves’. Given De Valera’s insight in this regard, and his fastidious care with regard to words and phrases, it is quite clear that this was the kind of experience that was needed in London, rather than ‘Griffith’s political experience and his republican aims’.”
Ferriter also discusses in this chapter the problems which De Valera was causing the plenipotentiary’s from home. While De Valera stayed at home, he also wanted to be kept involved with the negotiations, while also sending mixed messages to Collins and Griffith. While Ferriter most definitely makes plenty of negative points on these events, he also makes the point of not going as far as others have in accusing De Valera of conspiracy. “Joe Lee is probably correct in asserting that De Valera’s choice in 1921 was less conspiracy than miscalculation”
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It is interesting that Ferriter uses Joe Lee’s assertions, that De Valera was not being devious, rather than stating it himself. This is a common theme throughout the entire book. It seems that Ferriter would rather use the words of people directly involved or other authors on the subject, than commit to giving his own assertions. In every chapter of the book he makes his arguments for or in some cases against De Valera, but just when one would think he is about to offer his conclusion to the events dealt with in the chapter, it abruptly ends. Ferriter purposely does this to give the appearance of impartiality. It is clear from reading the book that Ferriter could easily give opinionated personal conclusions to every chapter, however he seems to want to leave the reader reach their own conclusions. Having said that it would probably be a touch naive to suggest that Ferriter is merely just giving both sides to the argument and leaving it entirely up to the reader to make his own mind up. He clearly has a fondness for De Valera, so it would not be entirely accurate to suggest this book is totally impartial, though most of the time he does manage to strike that balance which this book was designed to give.
Above we have discussed a contentious issue involving De Valera’s career, however Ferriter is also keen in the book to highlight some of the achievements in De Valera’s career which might not have been fully recognised for their magnitude. One such achievement was De Valera’s role in keeping democracy alive in Ireland at a time when it was falling to Fascism in mainland Europe. He deals with this in chapter seven, ‘The policy of patience has failed and is over’. This is also linked to the drawing up of the constitution in 1937, which Ferriter discusses in chapter eight, ‘Too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship’. Ferriter references renowned political scientist Peter Mair to make this point.
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“Mair argues that the snap general election of 1933, seeking to consolidate his own and the country’s interest, and his decision not to opt for a non-democratic solution, were of the utmost significance, and De Valera’s great historic achievement, particularly when seen ‘within a context of a long international history of democratic consolidation and breakdown’. During a decade that witnessed the collapse of democracy in such countries as Italy, Portugal, Greece, Germany and Spain, Mair further argues that historians and political scientists have taken Irish Democracy for granted.”
While chapters like chapter seven might not seem to be as important as others in the book, they are precisely what Ferriter wants to highlight in the book. While he deals with the issues in the book which usually cause the most debate and arguments about De Valera very well, he also does a great job of reminding readers of some of the important achievements of De Valera, which sometimes get forgotten about. These two chapters show how De Valera’s legacy lives on today and how much De Valera shaped the founding of the modern Ireland we live in today. Of course the main way his legacy survives is through the constitution of 1937. It was the drawing up and introduction of this new constitution, which retained a parliamentary form of government, which consolidated Irish Democracy. The constitution stands as a monument for Eamon De Valera today. He wanted to give the power to the people and there are numerous examples of this in the constitution. One which affected Ireland recently, was the provision that the constitution could only be amended by referendum. This was felt in the recent Lisbon Treaty referendum. In all other European Union states this Treaty was ratified by the governments, however Ireland was the only country where the people, at least in theory, got to decide.
In dealing with Irish neutrality, Ferriter again has to consider the changes of opinion on the subject in recent years. Up to revisionist works such as Coogan’s and Brian Girvin’s, ‘The Emergency: neutral Ireland, 1939-1945′, it was widely accepted that De Valera’s policy on neutrality was justified, however these views were questioned.
“One of the arguments against Irish neutrality by the end of the twentieth century was that it was too vague, was morally indefensible and that, in any case, rather than seeking to act independently, Irish governments followed the prevailing international wind with the main concern not to offend the USA, coupled an insurance that military traffic through Ireland had no implications for Irish neutrality”.
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Ferriter takes particular issue with Girvin’s book and there is a strong sense that his view on Irish neutrality got under his skin. He accuses him of “riding roughshod over the traditional interpretation of neutrality as representing De Valera’s finest hour.” To be fair to Girvin the role of revisionist historians is to take generally accepted views and offer a new perspective. However because they are finding new and different interpretations, this does not make the classical view on something any less accurate. Ferriter portrays Girvin’s views as misguided throughout the chapter.
“Girvin suggests that De Valera in his dealings with Churchill evaded any discussions on the rights or wrongs of Britain’s war with Germany, and that this reflected the ‘worst aspects of nationalism’. This is a simplification, and underestimates just how important sovereignty was for De Valera; after all, he had devoted the previous decade of Anglo-Irish negotiations to this very cause. It is also a specious argument: why would Churchill have listened to De Valera’s views?”
Ferriter handles the issue of neutrality again in a very balanced way, while at the same time displaying a clear distain for Girvin’s point of view throughout the chapter. This show of contempt for Girvin’s opinion is a very rare occurrence in the book, and detractors would point to it as Ferriter’s cloak of impartiality falling away. However it is more of a case of Girvin making some outlandish claims, which Ferriter obviously felt needed to be tackled head on.
The main question you have to ask yourself when reviewing ‘Judging Dev’, is has Ferriter managed to find that balance on the life and career of De Valera which the premise of this work was based? I would have to say that he has indeed managed to find it. This is a balanced take on De Valera, which was sorely needed in light past biography’s swinging way too much out to the sides of positivity and negativity. Even with that said there is a clear sense throughout the book that Ferriter has a strong affection for De Valera. It’s only natural for historians to want to write a biography on figures which they personally admire, especially if he feels that, that figure has been wrongly criticised. Ferriter manages to do an excellent job of redeeming the legacy of De Valera. This is especially important for a younger generation who have grown up watching films like ‘Michael Collins’, and believing the one sided, biased views on De Valera are fact. The fact that the book is so accessible and easy to read also helps in this regard, which was probably one of the main reasons Ferriter produced it like that. In the last paragraph of the book Ferriter gives his final summation on the man he so clearly admires and whose image he has done so much to resurrect.
“The caricature of him as stern, remote and technocratic is a myth, as revealed by his personal correspondence and the affection and loyalty that he inspired in so many. He also displayed exceptional physical and mental stamina and endurance; nobody would have predicted that the politically and physically isolated figure in Arbour Hill Prison in 1923, would, 50 years later, be near the end of his second term as President of Ireland, having served as Taoiseach for 20 years. That 50-year journey was made by a unique politician, and a noble one.”
Bibliography
Augusteijn, Joost, Review of ‘Judging Dev’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. XXXVI, No. 142, Nov. 2008, pp. 303-304.
Coogan, Tim Pat, De Valera: long fellow, long shadow, London: Hutchinson, 1993.
Coogan, Tim Pat, Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the Life and Legacy of Eamon de Valera by Diarmaid Ferriter: review by Tim Pat Coogan, History Ireland, Vol. 16, No. 3 (May – Jun., 2008), pp. 56-57.
Edwards, Owen Dudley, Eamon De Valera, Cardiff: GPC, 1987.
Ferriter, Diarmuid, Judging Dev: a reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon De Valera, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2007.
Girvin, Brian, The Emergency: neutral Ireland, 1939-45, London: Macmillan, 2006.
Longford, Frank Pakenham, Earl of, O’ Neill, Thomas P., Eamon De Valera, Boston Houghton Mifflin 1971.
