Eamon de Valera

Eamon de Valera{{ref|Name}} (born Edward George de Valera, sometimes Gaelicised Éamonn de Bhailéara; October 14, 1882 – August 29, 1975), was an Irish politician, best known as a leader of Ireland's struggle for independence from the United Kingdom in the early 20th Century, and the Republican anti-Treaty opposition in the ensuing Irish Civil War.

De Valera's new Constitution - Bunreacht na hÉireann

During the 1930s, de Valera had systematically stripped down the Irish Free State constitution that had been drafted by a committee under the nominal chairmanship of his great rival, Michael Collins. In reality, de Valera had only been able to do this due to three reasons. First, though the 1922 constitution was supposed to require amendment through public plebiscite eight years after its passage, the Free State government under W.T. Cosgrave had amended that period to 16 years, meaning that until 1938 the Free State constitution could be amended by the simple passage of a Constitutional Amendment Act through the Oireachtas. Secondly, while in theory the Governor-General of the Irish Free State could reserve or deny the Royal Assent to any legislation, in practice the power to advise the Governor-General so to do as and from 1927 no longer rested with the British Government in London but with His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State, which meant that in practice, the Royal Assent was automatically granted to legislation; the government was hardly likely to advise the Governor-General to block the enactment of one of its own bills. Thirdly, in theory the Constitution had to be in keeping with the provisions of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the fundamental law of the state. However that requirement had been removed only a short time before de Valera gained power. Thus, with all the checks and balances that had been provided to preserve the Treaty settlement neutralised, de Valera had a free hand to change the 1922 constitution at will.

Related Topics:
1930s - Amendment - Plebiscite - Royal Assent - 1927 - Anglo-Irish Treaty

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This he did with a vengeance. The Oath of Allegiance was abolished, as were appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The opposition-controlled Senate, when it protested and slowed down these measures was also abolished. And finally in December 1936, de Valera used the sudden abdication of King Edward VIII as king of his various realms including King of Ireland to pass two Bills; one amended the constitution to remove all mention of the King and Governor-General while the second brought the King back, this time through statute law, for use in representing the Irish Free State at diplomatic level.

Related Topics:
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - Senate - Edward VIII

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In 1931, the UK parliament had passed the Statute of Westminster, which established the legislative equal status of the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, including the Irish Free State, and the United Kingdom. Though many constitutional links between the Dominions and the UK remained, this is often seen as the moment at which the Dominions became sovereign states. In July 1936, de Valera as constitutionally the King's Irish Prime Minister, wrote to King Edward in London indicating that he planned to introduce a new constitution, the central part of which was to be the creation of an office de Valera provisionally intended to call President of Saorstát Éireann, which would replace the governor-generalship. The title ultimately changed from President of Saorstát Éireann (Uachtarán Shaorstát Éireann) to President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann), but it still remained the central feature of his new constitution, to which he gave the new Irish language name Bunreacht na hÉireann (meaning literally the Constitution of Ireland).

Related Topics:
Statute of Westminster - Irish language

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De Valera's new constitution embodied a process called Constitutional Autochthony, that is, the assertion of legal nationalism. At various levels it contained key symbols to mark Irish republican independence from Britain. These included:

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• a new name for the state, Éire
• a claim that the island of Ireland was a natural national territorial unit (Article 2) and so challenged Britain's partition settlement of 1920;
• a new popularly elected 'President of Ireland' to replace the British King and Crown and the appointed Irish Governor-General;
• recognition of the "special position" of Roman Catholicism, which had for most of Britain's rule in Ireland been suppressed and discriminated against;
• a recognition of a Catholic concept of marriage which excluded divorce, something that was culturally associated with English Protestantism (e.g., Henry VIII) but which had no history of acceptance within Catholicism.
• the declaration that the Irish language was an official language of the nation, along with English.
• the use of Irish language terms to stress Irish cultural and historical identity (eg, Uachtarán, Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Rialtas, Dáil, Seanad, etc.)

In reality, as with much of de Valera's policies, most of the above were more apparent than real.

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• For all the anti-partition rhetoric, partition remained a legal reality, accepted by Article 3;
• for most of its existence, the popularly elected president was never popularly elected, but chosen by the political parties for their own reasons. In addition, the key powers that defined who a head of state was (ie, being the representative of a state at international diplomatic level) were possessed by the 'King of Ireland' (as George VI was proclaimed and continued to be called until the declaration of the republic in April 1949;
• the "special position" of the Roman Catholic Church was a constitutionally meaningless phrase. In some areas (De Valera's refusal to make Catholicism the established church, his refusal to side with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, the constitutional recognition given to the existence of the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists and in particular in Irish Jewish community) de Valera's constitution was actually quite radical and distinctly non-Catholic in its day. For that reason, Pope Pius XI refused to support its adoption, an endorsement constitutions in predominantly Catholic countries routinely sought and often got.
• the features of the "Catholic" family focused on in the constitution (family based on marriage, with no divorce and the belief that the family was central to society) accurately mirrored most of the beliefs (divorce excepted) of the mainstream Protestant faiths on the island, namely the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church.
• Though given symbolic superiority, Irish in reality remained a language of a small and rapidly dwindling number of people. In contrast, the state's second official language, English, was the language of the vast majority of people.

Thus for all the constitutional autochthony symbols, the Irish state was neither as nationalist nor as Catholic, neither as Gaelic nor as free from the Crown as de Valera, through his use of symbols, tried to suggest.

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