Collins vs De Valera

Dev is always seen as conservative and hand in glove with the Catholic Church. Mick was a good Catholic boy as well, hardly one to bring about any sort of change in dynamic in terms of the influence of the RCC had he lived.
Collins will always be the dashing young man in uniform, Dev remembered as the dour schoolmaster type or worse, the caricature from the Michael Collins movie.

Edgware wrote: »

If there had not been a split I wonder would Collins and DeValera be the great democrats they are stated to be. Would they have followed the lead of Mussolini and the lads rather than allow the Labour Party etc to develop?

It’s a what-if that can’t be answered except with pure speculation - especially in Collins’ case. But it’s worth pointing out that, before the split, people were giving thought to the problem of how Ireland would function as a democracy with a parliament overwhelmingly dominated - and, they assumed, likely to remain so - by one party. Thinking in all-Ireland terms, they expected not one but two “permanent minority” parties, the other being a unionist party. They also notrd that the only thing that bound SF together was the national question and, once that was resolved, the expected diverse opinions to emerge within the party on social, economic, etc questions.

Not everybody thought that this would cause the party to split. But there were proposals to, e.g, establish a system of departmental committees in Dáil Éireann to which ministers would be accountable, to ensure consideration of a diversity of opinions and perspectives in the administration of government. PR as an electoral system was adopted partly to facilitate this.

How all this would have panned out it anybody’s guess. Perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps SF would have split into separate parties on social or economic questions rather than on the national question. Or perhaps we would have veered into Mussolini-style fascism, if not immediately then under the stress of the Great Depression.

Peregrinus wrote: »

It’s a what-if that can’t be answered except with pure speculation - especially in Collins’ case. But it’s worth pointing out that, before the split, people were giving thought to the problem of how Ireland would function as a democracy with a parliament overwhelmingly dominated - and, they assumed, likely to remain so - by one party. Thinking in all-Ireland terms, they expected not one but two “permanent minority” parties, the other being a unionist party. They also notrd that the only thing that bound SF together was the national question and, once that was resolved, the expected diverse opinions to emerge within the party on social, economic, etc questions.

Not everybody thought that this would cause the party to split. But there were proposals to, e.g, establish a system of departmental committees in Dáil Éireann to which ministers would be accountable, to ensure consideration of a diversity of opinions and perspectives in the administration of government. PR as an electoral system was adopted partly to facilitate this.

How all this would have panned out it anybody’s guess. Perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps SF would have split into separate parties on social or economic questions rather than on the national question. Or perhaps we would have veered into Mussolini-style fascism, if not immediately then under the stress of the Great Depression.

I suspect Ireland would have been like South Africa today under the ANC or Putin's Russia - technically a democracy, but so dominated by one group that it's effectively a one-party state.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

I wouldn't have supported Dev but I would have supported the anti-Treaty IRA.

Surely you'd have to have given up on one of these positions? How, in practice, would you hold both simultaneously?

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

A basket case? We too had our oligarchs, an unstable currency, offshore accounts, political corruption, etc.:o

We, at least, have the option of voting them...to make way for the new lot.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

I can't stand Dev but that's mainly for executing sveral IRA POW's in the 40's.

I'm not a Dev fan either, but he was spot on about our role, or lack of it, in WWII. His finest hour.

So he hanged a few Nazi collaborators (which is what the IRA were at the time, objectively speaking). Capital punishment was what was meted out at that time for that sort of thing.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Oh & it's no surprise that all the members of the fascist Blueshirts were made up of members who fought on the Free State side under Collins. Ireland's only really sizable fascist organization. If they had been in power during WW2 they would have ended up allying with the fascists & would have been handing over the Jewish population in Ireland over to them.

I'm sorry. That's absolute bollocks!!

For a start, you're throwing the word "Fascist" around with gay abandon without being clear on what you mean by it.

The Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism, both of which were radical, anticlerical, modernist movements, bitterly hostile to church intrusion in the affairs of the state, slavishly trusting of modern science and both with deep roots in Marxism and Socialism.

Mussolini in particular was an avowed leftist prior to the first World War, an editor of Avanti, the main Italian socialist newspaper for much of the 20th century. His manifesto called for nationalisation of important industries, heavy taxes on capital, a generous welfare state etc etc How left wing can you get?

Nazism too was a movement that grew out of anti-capitalist ideology and favoured the little guy over the hierarchical land owners and big business moguls. The clue's in the name National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party.

The Blueshirts were conservative, catholic, nationalist, land-owning patriarchs bitterly hostile to any sort of "Social interference" in family life by the state. They were much closer to Franco, for whom many of them went to fight, than Hitler or Mussolini. You can call Franco a Fascist if you like but it's a misnomer. He was a conservative, ultrareligious, nationalist, marxism-hating, authoritarian militarist thug but none of that, per se, qualifies somebody as a Fascist.

Franco could have made things very difficult for Britain in WWII had he been of similar mind to the two regimes that were indeed his military paymasters throughout the Spanish Civil War, but he chose not to. What would have happened in North Africa if he had taken Gibraltar in 1940, when Britain was on her knees and before the Soviets or Americans entered the war? How soon would the war in North Africa have been finished? How much earlier could Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union have started if he didn't get bogged down bailing out his Italian allies in Greece and the Balkans? So why didn't he?

And how many Jews were handed over by Franco's Spain in WWII? Er, none. Ironic perhaps when you consider Spain's hysterical anti-Jewish persecutions of the late middle ages.

Bear in mind that the leader of the newly formed Fine Gael (which included the former Blueshirts) during the war actually wanted Ireland to join in on the side of THE ALLIES!! and your allegation that the Blueshirts were in cahoots with the Nazis crumble into dust.

There WERE people in Ireland who wanted to collaborate with the Nazis in WWII and some who did. Ironically, or perhaps not, these were people who had fought AGAINST Franco (Frank Ryan, Francis Stuart et al) and were still by and large supporters of the IRA. And that organisation was keen to solicit German co-operation for its goals.
Isn't history full of ironies?

There is a basic point that Eamon deValera lived to old age and had a long political career, something that proverbially ends in failure. Michael Collins had masterminded the destruction of English authority in Ireland, but the bulk his career likely lay in the future. Protectionism had a heritage with proponents like Arthur Griffiths, so that Dev opted for that direction was hardly weird. Michael Collins could have gone in that direction. Even if FF hadn't replaced Cumann na Gaedheal in power, the ancestor of FG was showing a leaning towards protectionism. I'm not sure the two can be fairly compared.

Snickers Man wrote: »

I'm sorry. That's absolute bollocks!!

For a start, you're throwing the word "Fascist" around with gay abandon without being clear on what you mean by it.

The Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism, both of which were radical, anticlerical, modernist movements, bitterly hostile to church intrusion in the affairs of the state, slavishly trusting of modern science and both with deep roots in Marxism and Socialism.

Mussolini in particular was an avowed leftist prior to the first World War, an editor of Avanti, the main Italian socialist newspaper for much of the 20th century. His manifesto called for nationalisation of important industries, heavy taxes on capital, a generous welfare state etc etc How left wing can you get?

Nazism too was a movement that grew out of anti-capitalist ideology and favoured the little guy over the hierarchical land owners and big business moguls. The clue's in the name National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party.

The Blueshirts were conservative, catholic, nationalist, land-owning patriarchs bitterly hostile to any sort of "Social interference" in family life by the state. They were much closer to Franco, for whom many of them went to fight, than Hitler or Mussolini. You can call Franco a Fascist if you like but it's a misnomer. He was a conservative, ultrareligious, nationalist, marxism-hating, authoritarian militarist thug but none of that, per se, qualifies somebody as a Fascist.

Franco could have made things very difficult for Britain in WWII had he been of similar mind to the two regimes that were indeed his military paymasters throughout the Spanish Civil War, but he chose not to. What would have happened in North Africa if he had taken Gibraltar in 1940, when Britain was on her knees and before the Soviets or Americans entered the war? How soon would the war in North Africa have been finished? How much earlier could Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union have started if he didn't get bogged down bailing out his Italian allies in Greece and the Balkans? So why didn't he?

And how many Jews were handed over by Franco's Spain in WWII? Er, none. Ironic perhaps when you consider Spain's hysterical anti-Jewish persecutions of the late middle ages.

Bear in mind that the leader of the newly formed Fine Gael (which included the former Blueshirts) during the war actually wanted Ireland to join in on the side of THE ALLIES!! and your allegation that the Blueshirts were in cahoots with the Nazis crumble into dust.

There WERE people in Ireland who wanted to collaborate with the Nazis in WWII and some who did. Ironically, or perhaps not, these were people who had fought AGAINST Franco (Frank Ryan, Francis Stuart et al) and were still by and large supporters of the IRA. And that organisation was keen to solicit German co-operation for its goals.
Isn't history full of ironies?

Eoin O’Duffy offered to send a battalion of Blueshirts to fight for Nazi Germany in operation Barbarossa.
Many Blueshirts and subsequent Fine Gael TDs were rabid anti semites even after the horrors of the holocaust became known.
O Duffy was inspired to found the Blueshirts after visiting Mussolini’s Italy.
He advocated a military coup after the 1932 election.

Former Blueshirts subsequently went on to become involved with extreme far right groups such as the Architects of the Resurrection and Greenshirts.

To say the Blueshirts had nothing to do with German Nazism or Italian Fascism is far from reality.