De Valera “asked UK to smear IRA chief”
NEWLY released documents suggest Irish Free State founder Eamon de Valera covertly co-operated with Britain to crush the IRA.
The papers – revealed by BBC Radio Four’s Document programme last night – claim De Valera, whose entire cabinet in the late 1930s were former IRA members, asked London to help smear the organisation’s chief of staff as a communist agent.
BBC presenter Mike Thomson said tensions came to a head when the IRA began bombing Britain in early 1939.
Under what was called the Sabotage or S-Plan, British cities including London, Manchester, Birmingham and Coventry were targeted by IRA explosive teams. In one attack on Coventry five people died and 70 more were injured.
Dublin reacted even more forcefully than London.
The BBC presenter said De Valera’s government regarded IRA attacks against Britain as a threat to the Irish state itself.
Mr Thomson said with war looking likely, De Valera was determined that Ireland should remain neutral.
According to Mr Thomson, De Valera knew that a hard rump of republicans would never countenance being allied to the “old enemy” Britain, and such an alliance could push Ireland into another bloody civil war.
But he also knew that, if his country was seen as a threat, London might decide to invade.
The programme’s presenter said: “It seems hard to believe that this was the same militant republican who had been at the forefront of the Easter Rising against British rule in 1916.
“After becoming prime minister of the Irish Free State, he outlawed the IRA in 1936, and his commitment to pursuing Irish unification by constitutional means led him to part company with many of his former comrades-in-arms.
“Yet few would have guessed that he would soon be accepting British help to crush them.
“In 1939, as the documents show, De Valera’s government asked for assistance from London in smearing IRA chief of staff Sean Russell as a communist agent.”
Dublin also called on London to consult them on sentences imposed on IRA members convicted of the bombings in Britain.
According to Mr Thomson, De Valera was worried that those executed at British hands might become martyrs at home. But he had no such qualms over those convicted of bombings in Ireland.
“In fact, De Valera’s government executed more IRA members than Britain and even borrowed the UK’s most famous executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, to hang one of them.”
Some in Ireland may well have suspected at that time that their government was secretly co-operating closely with Britain, a country many still considered their enemy. Yet only now can such suspicions be confirmed, said the programme’s presenter.
