Eamonn De Valera on the European Union

autonomy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD09AwrWWkI&feature=player_detailpage

''We did not strive to get out of the British domination of our affairs by outside force, nor we did not get out of that position to get into a worse one.''
Eamonn De Valera speaking on the European Union in 1955

Your thoughts on this video are welcome

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RMD

If it wasn't for the EU and the money they pumped into Ireland, we'd still be a relatively backward nation in comparison to where we are today. De Valera was a great leader for getting us independence and the likes, but he was an awful leader in many other areas. The damage he did to our economy during the 30's can be pretty much paralleled to that of Cowen / Ahern.

later12

autonomy wrote: »

Eamonn De Valera speaking on the European Union in 1955

The European Union did not exist in 1955. Your video, even more bizarrely, claims to represent Eamon deValera's view's on Lisbon.

I don't think your video shows it, but drawing on some logical deductions I do actually believe that DeValera would be opposed to greater European integration that presently exists.

Nevertheless, if nothing else I find it a little amusing that you choose the man who was, throughout his political career and in his legacy, consistently and continuously proven wrong to advance the opposition to European integration. It's quite a bad example.

autonomy

later10 wrote: »

The European Union did not exist in 1955. Your video, even more bizarrely, claims to represent Eamon deValera's view's on Lisbon.

I don't think your video shows it, but drawing on some logical deductions I do actually believe that DeValera would be opposed to greater European integration that presently exists.

Nevertheless, if nothing else I find it a little amusing that you choose the man who was, throughout his political career and in his legacy, consistently and continuously proven wrong to advance the opposition to European integration. It's quite a bad example.

I know the European Union did not exist in 1955. In 1955, De Valera had been to a Council of Europe meeting at a time when Ireland was being courted as a member of a new European alliance. De Valera warned Ireland could lose its independence, control of the economy and become subject to laws that were not in our interests. He also warned about the dangers of a European Constitution/Lisbon Treaty (same thing different name) and getting entangled in European-led military adventures, over which we would have no control. He was a man far ahead of his time.

Yes I also believe that De Valera would be opposed to greater European Integration. The EU try to attack democratic countries who want to protect their own border policies by calling them extremists and populists.

skelliser

Who cares what De Valera thought?


He let the church run rampant over Irish society and almost destroyed this country with his hair brained economic policies.

oh and he sent his condolences to the German ambassador on the death/suicide of Hitler.

Shea O'Meara

I believe everything DeValera did was ultimately for self interest.
He put self above the well being of the Irish and defrauded the Irish at home and abroad.
He would have ran Ireland like a dictatorship if he could, so I can see why he wanted Ireland to go it alone.
The man was a complete s***.

(although FFail have since cleaned up their act;) )

later12

autonomy wrote: »

He was a man far ahead of his time.

I wish you had put this at the beginning of the post, so that I would have known not to read on.

Nobody is actually arguing that logical deductions support the idea that DeValera would be opposed to further European integration. The amusing thing is that you seem to think this might matter. Most people would see DeValera's legacy as having been proved wrong again and again and again, and as being backwards and unhelpful to Ireland's maturity in terms of foreign policy.

The Scientician

DeValeran economic and social isolationism was a disaster, which was much in evidence already in the '50s. Nearly half a million Irish people emigrated in the '50s. So to echo what others have said, who gives a flying fcuk what he thought?

sensibleken

De Valera warned against the lisbon treaty? Damn zombies!

autonomy

sensibleken wrote: »

De Valera warned against the lisbon treaty? Damn zombies!

He was talking about a European Constitution, which is mainly the lisbon treaty!

sensibleken

autonomy wrote: »

He was talking about a European Constitution, which is mainly the lisbon treaty!

Ah, so he was psychic!

What was his thoughts on subsidiarity or granting dail oversight on eu legislation?

Also, in your research did you happen to see if he ever mused on tomorrows lotto numbers

beeftotheheels

sensibleken wrote: »

De Valera warned against the lisbon treaty? Damn zombies!

Good grief, I just started watching the link and am coming to the conclusion that the involvement of zombies would be less sinister than that trash (which believes that Tony Blair is the president of Europe by the way)....

charlemont

Shea O'Meara wrote: »

I believe everything DeValera did was ultimately for self interest.
He put self above the well being of the Irish and defrauded the Irish at home and abroad.
He would have ran Ireland like a dictatorship if he could, so I can see why he wanted Ireland to go it alone.
The man was a complete s***.

(although FFail have since cleaned up their act;) )

Exactly plus he had to keep a lid on the paedophile system he helped set up, If the Europeans realised what way women and children were been treated here by the church and government they would have been appalled, Plus a modernising Ireland would have put a spanner in his works regarding emigration.

sensibleken

beeftotheheels wrote: »

Good grief, I just started watching the link and am coming to the conclusion that the involvement of zombies would be less sinister than that trash (which believes that Tony Blair is the president of Europe by the way)....

im going to have to wait untill i get home. Does that mean blair and van rompuy are the same person?

autonomy

sensibleken wrote: »

im going to have to wait untill i get home. Does that mean blair and van rompuy are the same person?

Blair was been backed for EU presidency at the time of the video before van rompuy got it, I think it's ridiculous that there is an unelected president of 500 million people in europe!

beeftotheheels

sensibleken wrote: »

im going to have to wait untill i get home. Does that mean blair and van rompuy are the same person?

I can't even answer that because I'm puzzling over the line that "The Lisbon Treaty will import abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty to Ireland"... Because it is not like the Lisbon Treaty incorporates the Charter on Fundamental Rights which prohibits the death penalty or anything....

Bring back the zombies, all is forgiven!

jmayo

autonomy wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD09AwrWWkI&feature=player_detailpage

''We did not strive to get out of the British domination of our affairs by outside force, nor we did not get out of that position to get into a worse one.''
Eamonn De Valera speaking on the European Union in 1955

Your thoughts on this video are welcome

As others have said you should have at least said the Common Market or EEC rather than EU.

later10 wrote: »

The European Union did not exist in 1955. Your video, even more bizarrely, claims to represent Eamon deValera's view's on Lisbon.

Did dev ever visit Lisbon, after all they had a one man state for ages as well and were very good catholicks ?

later10 wrote: »

I don't think your video shows it, but drawing on some logical deductions I do actually believe that DeValera would be opposed to greater European integration that presently exists.

Not a hard deduction.

later10 wrote: »

Nevertheless, if nothing else I find it a little amusing that you choose the man who was, throughout his political career and in his legacy, consistently and continuously proven wrong to advance the opposition to European integration. It's quite a bad example.

Well he was quiet close to the Germans

BTW does anyone know what Collins said about Europe, Markets, Lisbon, etc ?

sensibleken wrote: »

Ah, so he was psychic!

What was his thoughts on subsidiarity or granting dail oversight on eu legislation?

Also, in your research did you happen to see if he ever mused on tomorrows lotto numbers

Glad you said tomorrows lotto as he would not contenance us playing a foreign lottery tonight.

walrusgumble

autonomy wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD09AwrWWkI&feature=player_detailpage

''We did not strive to get out of the British domination of our affairs by outside force, nor we did not get out of that position to get into a worse one.''
Eamonn De Valera speaking on the European Union in 1955

Your thoughts on this video are welcome

Considering De Valera believed in the League of Nations, well, for a while, I wonder would he have shared the same opinion if he was politically active in the 1990's?

He was hardly going to say anything else was he, as he would basically be saying, our policy of state protection has not really worked. DeV was not a man to admit he was wrong. Sure his comments when swear the oath of allegiance in the Dail in 1927 must have left an awful sting in the Pro Collins faction

sink

De Valera espoused a self sufficient economic policy, one that was isolationist and state managed. He wanted Ireland to produce all that it consumed and to only import the raw materials it could not otherwise obtain. Exports were very low on his agenda, he entered trade wars to promote Irish consumption of Irish goods at the expense of exports. The overall effect of these policies was disastrous, it stifled economic growth, caused shortages of many goods and completely cut off consumers to all products that could only be obtained trough imports.

If we were to implement De Valeras economic policies today you could wave goodbye to cheap hi-tech electronics, to cheap cars, to cheap clothes, to cheap imported foods such as bananas, oranges and wine, to virtually everything that we do not produce within the 26 counties. You could also wave goodbye to our export industries such as pharmaceuticals, software, financial services and tourism. The economy would recede back to one based on agriculture and light manufacturing, people would be back working in fields or in sweat shops or emigrating.

If De Valera was opposed to the European Union, frankly that's just another reason to support it.

walrusgumble

jmayo wrote: »

As others have said you should have at least said the Common Market or EEC rather than EU.



Did dev ever visit Lisbon, after all they had a one man state for ages as well and were very good catholicks ?



Not a hard deduction.



Well he was quiet close to the Germans

BTW does anyone know what Collins said about Europe, Markets, Lisbon, etc ?



Glad you said tomorrows lotto as he would not contenance us playing a foreign lottery tonight.

Funny, records show and will again show (further) that DeV was much more closer to the US and British than some Republicans dare to care, during World War 2.

I could be wrong here, but Lisbon was a port of call if travelling to the US back in the day, well, for certain people who wanted to avoid the British, he he .

Collins? Little is known, sure European nations were at each other's throats when he was alive. I would imagine Collins would be far more pro industry and forward thinking than Dev, but we really don't know whether they were opposite or cut from the same cloth attitude wise.

autonomy

The Scientician wrote: »

DeValeran economic and social isolationism was a disaster,

So for keeping Ireland's neutrality you are calling him a social isolationalist! De Valera is the only reason why the German's weren't bombing Ireland during WW2

beeftotheheels

jmayo wrote: »

BTW does anyone know what Collins said about Europe, Markets, Lisbon, etc ?

He was certainly pro Lisbon

This Treaty gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all Nations desire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve it

Or was that Amsterdam... or Nice?

autonomy

beeftotheheels wrote: »

He was certainly pro Lisbon

I think Collins and De Valera would of preferred Ireland to have an Irish constitution rather than a European Constitution

walrusgumble

RMD wrote: »

If it wasn't for the EU and the money they pumped into Ireland, we'd still be a relatively backward nation in comparison to where we are today. De Valera was a great leader for getting us independence and the likes, but he was an awful leader in many other areas. The damage he did to our economy during the 30's can be pretty much paralleled to that of Cowen / Ahern.

The problems of the 1930's was widespread all over the world, whether economic crash or counting the costs from a horrible war. Ireland was starting out, in a country that was still emotionally divided and still counting the costs of the Civil War. State Protection was kind of the norm in alot of countries. DeV believed it, however wrong, to be a political act of defiance and an act of separation. The whole Economic War intitially started out with DeV's refusal to hand over money to British Government from Irish Farmers who had previously availed of the Land Acts in order to own Irish Land, some might suggest that it was for money for property that the British never had a right to in the first place. The war resulted in a final lump sum of £10 millions (quite alot even today) and the return of our Treaty Ports (which the British over estimated their usefulness)

What Cown and Bertie did, is not really comparable. They had a chance that Ireland never had, to be Taoiseach of prosperpous and rich country, a country people could be jealous about. They failed to keep an eye on the loose way business was done and exposed the country far too much. It was completely self inflicted (yes, you will say the same about DeV) A large economy with feck all to show for it, bar a stupid spike in the middle of O'Connell Street, a Luas Line that is not joined up, and crappy voting machines rusting in some warehouse and a joke of a Health Service (that's unfair to the medics)

later12

autonomy wrote: »

So for keeping Ireland's neutrality you are calling him a social isolationalist!

I think you are the one who seems to have associated De Valera's isolationist politics with the war... nobody said anything about neutrality.

later12

beeftotheheels wrote: »

He was certainly pro Lisbon

And twitter. He was a divil for the twitter. The democratic voice of our age, he said to de Valera once, but de Valera was of course more into myspace.

autonomy

later10 wrote: »

I think you are the one who seems to have associated De Valera's isolationist politics with the war... nobody said anything about neutrality.

Then I would be very happy if you could explain in what he meant by social isolationism?

later12

autonomy wrote: »

Then I would be very happy if you could explain in what he meant by social isolationism?

Eh, no, because I am not that user.

However I would see DeValera as an isolationist and that view is borne from his ultra nationalist beliefs in social and economic self sufficiency. Self sufficiency is a term we associate with De Valera more than any other politician since the foundation of the state.
It's sort of... famous.

autonomy

later10 wrote: »

Eh, no, because I am not that user.

However I would see DeValera as an isolationist and that view is borne from his ultra nationalist beliefs in social and economic self sufficiency. Self sufficiency is a term we associate with De Valera more than any other politician since the foundation of the state.
It's sort of... famous.

Well I think that term ''isolationist'' is (famously - as you put it) associated with De Valera because of his view of Ireland remaining neutral and refusing to give it up despite constant pressure from America and Britain. He put it as Ireland had ''everything to lose, and nothing to gain.''

sink

autonomy wrote: »

Well I think that term ''isolationist'' is (famously - as you put it) associated with De Valera because of his view of Ireland remaining neutral and refusing to give it up despite constant pressure from America and Britain. He put it as Ireland had ''everything to lose, and nothing to gain.''

Isolationist and self-sufficient are in essence the same thing. The truth is that in order to be self-sufficient/isolationist we had to make do with less, and bear a greater burden fulfilling our own basic needs. The threat of being ravaged by war is non-existent today, so really the only arguments that were in favour of DeV's policies at the time no longer apply to us today.

beeftotheheels

sink wrote: »

The threat of being ravaged by war is non-existent today

...while peace in Europe is itself one of the aims and lasting legacies of the European Union...

sensibleken

autonomy wrote: »

Blair was been backed for EU presidency at the time of the video before van rompuy got it, I think it's ridiculous that there is an unelected president of 500 million people in europe!

there isnt a president of 500 million people. theres a president on the european council. its a different thing

later12

autonomy wrote: »

Well I think that term ''isolationist'' is (famously - as you put it) associated with De Valera because of his view of Ireland remaining neutral and refusing to give it up despite constant pressure from America and Britain. He put it as Ireland had ''everything to lose, and nothing to gain.''

Why do you keep bringing up the war? Nobody has suggested that Ireland was wrong to pursue neutrality and your insistence on returning to this issue is as strange as your suggestion that DeValera was...

autonomy wrote: »

a man far ahead of his time.

Which by the way gets funnier every time I see it.

De Valera's isolationist politics are quite a seperate thing to WWII, an event in which nobody here has said we should have been involved. He was a champion of self sufficiency in economic and cultural terms, and most people would regard that as a backward, or inward looking philosophy for today.

With its socially liberal outlook, and the expansionary trade benefits that it can establish both with the outside world and on an internal basis, it is the exact opposite of DeValerean worldview. Hurrah for that.

beeftotheheels

Remind me, exactly what would be the consequences if we proved beyond reasonable doubt that de Valera, who has been deceased for a little while now, either would have approved or disapproved of the EU?

Would we then extrapolate his views out to other deceased revolutionaries and conclude that membership of the EU was or was not what the men and women of 1916 died for?

Would we use his views to take a more purposive interpretation of the Bunreacht and conclude that we were constitutionally obliged to leave the EU?

What is the purpose of this debate? What enlightenment is it seeking?

The Scientician

autonomy wrote: »

So for keeping Ireland's neutrality you are calling him a social isolationalist! De Valera is the only reason why the German's weren't bombing Ireland during WW2

They did bomb us during WWII. If you want to start a debate about our neutrality start a new thread, but FWIW it could be argued that the morally right thing to do would have been to join the Allies in WWII. The Free State would have suffered more bombings but you're arguing for cowardice as a good reason to keep our neutrality.

Anyway the social isolationism I was referring to was stuff like allowing the ban of tampons, the censorship of books, prohibiting birth control and various other church-inspired bull.

Stark

autonomy wrote: »

I think Collins and De Valera would of preferred Ireland to have an Irish constitution rather than a European Constitution

De Valera would prefer that we still had a paedophile ring in charge of the country's moral affairs.

BlitzKrieg

Lets break this down.

Firstly and blatantly which people have alluded to but no one has firmly put in its place.

This was over the 'Council of Europe' an organisation that still exists today and is noway related to the European Union. THey are seperate indepedent bodies.

They also share completely independent histories

most notable being that the council of europe did in fact at one point push for becoming a federal united states of europe which Churchill was the driving force behind...


So you have DeValera going against a notion that certain politicians (one of whom he hated) wanted a federal europe and he (with many other politicians) opposed.

So we are taking a quote completely out of context and applying to an institution that does enforce the ideals DeValera desired


so here's the quote:

“We have always realised that we are one nation and that, as far as physical resources were concerned, our resources were not great.

We also realise that, small as were our physical resources, there were spiritual ones which were of great value; and we never doubted that our nation, though a small one, in the material sense, could play a very important part in international affairs."

"In a Council of Europe it would have been most unwise for our people to enter into a political federation which would mean that you had a European parliament deciding the economic circumstances, for example, of our life here.

Which is not the case of the EU. The current European Parliment does not have these powers and will continue not to have these powers. The balance of the four different establishments of the EU is firmly weighed in favour of national governments in the European Council and Council of Ministers having much greater control of European affairs. Consider that the fourth body, the commission, the representatives are chosen by the national governments, that means of 4 institutions, 3 of them firmly keep power in the hands of national governments and not in a european parliament.

For economic and other reasons we had refused to be satisfied with a representative of, say, one in six, as was our representative in the British parliament.

Our representative in the European Assembly was, I think, something like four out of 120 or some number of that magnitute.

That is, instead of being out-voted on matters that we would have regarded as important interests to us by five or six to one, we would have been out-voted by 30 or 40 to one.

We did not strive to get out of that domination [British] of our affairs by outside force, or we did not get out of that position to get into a worse one.

One of the things that made me unhappy at Strasbourg was that I saw that at the first meeting of the Assembly, instead of trying to provide organs for co-operation, there was an attempt to provide a full-blooded political constitution, there were members who were actually dividing themselves into socialists parties, and so on.”

DeValera insists on organs of co-operation, which also coincidently is a basis of the design of the EU institutions, it's designed on the notion of providing member states the institutions to co-operate with bodies for the national government and representatives of the people to develope policies on a pan-european and international level.

While I wouldnt dare say that DeValera would have been a europhile supporter. It must be made clear that a quotation over an issue of its time has been taken seriously out of context and has been errorisly applied to modern affairs and institutions. Elements of De Valera's speech has been outright ignored or misunderstood.


For people who feel we must give great respect to those who founded our nation, they have no shame in disrespecting them and putting words in their mouths for the sake of some tripe political statement.

RandomName2

autonomy wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD09AwrWWkI&feature=player_detailpage

''We did not strive to get out of the British domination of our affairs by outside force, nor we did not get out of that position to get into a worse one.''
Eamonn De Valera speaking on the European Union in 1955

Your thoughts on this video are welcome

DeV was an isolationist autocrat who had little interest in economic development. As such he would have held little brief for the ECSC/EC.