THE IRELAND OF EAMONN DE VALERA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 10

THE IRELAND OF EAMONN DE VALERA

Impressions After 35 Years’ Absence {Specially Written for “The Press" by WALTER BROOKES] I WAS in London two years ago when Mr de Valera * (now elected President of the Irish Republic) and the Fianna Fail party were brought back to power after a period out of office. I had been watching the English papers for the results of the elections, and, seeing nothing about them for a couple of days, I went round to .ask at the office of the “Irish Times” in Fleet Street. There I was told that the delay was caused by having to deal with the voting under the proportional representation system. The results would probably be through the next day. And so they were.

Far from not being interested, as I had at first thought, the London papers gave the matter considerable attention, and expressed hopes that Mr de Valera, as he had promised, would seriously tackle the big problem of unemployment in Ireland and leave the question of partition of the six northern counties alone for the time being—as well as take strong measures against lawless attempts to deal with it by force. There was a feeling of optimism and enthusiasm. It was evident that old Dev, the old rebel against British rule and against the first Irish Government, was now the man for the English, to bring political and economic stability to Ireland, to be their ally in the suppression of hooliganism. In the “Manchester Guardian” a Low cartoon showed Dev, stem and serious, beckoning to an Irishman with caubeen and clay pipe, carrying a rifle and a banner inscribed “Down Wit Queen Victoria,” and drawing his attention to a more immediate, woebegone figure—unemployment. Even the Irish seemed enthusiastic. More people had voted in this election than usual in a country noted for its political apathy since it gained its independence—apathy towards the ballot box, at any rate. It seemed that at last they were realising that something needed to be done about Ireland —and how pleased the English were to see it

“Felt Cheered Up”

I felt cheered up myself. I needed to be. Only a few months before I had gone with my wife to revisit my native city of Dublin, which (as a boy of 12) I had left for New Zealand in 1921, just before the treaty giving Ireland self-government was signed. I had been away a little more than 35 years. - • I was greatly disheartened by what I saw on this visit Signs of depression and poverty struck both of us immediately. We came by way of Rosslare, in the south, and, arriving there at five in the morning, saw a big crowd of men waiting at the wharf and station in the hope of getting jobs as porters. Or rather, I should say, from the look of their faces, in the lack of hope of getting jobs It was the same at Westland Row station in Dublin, ( where the eargerness of the man to whom I felt moved to entrust our humble rucksacks gave us sure sign that we were among very different conditions from those we had known in New Zealand or seen, more recently, in London.

Old Horse Cabs

We said “No, thanks’* to the driver of one of the old horse cabs outside the station, and booked in at a little hotel across the road. What a shabby, oldfashioned place Dublin looked! Its famous eighteenth-century buildings had the character of antiques which had been allowed to become worn and dingy. How hard it was to find an attractive restaurant How evasive people were in replying to questions or laughing them off. What a general air of aimlessness.

I could not find the animation and vivacity which, as a boy, I had missed in the New Zealand towns—about which I had boasted to my wife. Now I thought of the smartness, style, and glamour of Christchurch and Wellington and Auckland, by comparison. Ah, but there was something to admire and feel pleased about. Everywhere, on waste land, along what were once country lanes, on the estate of Lord Charlemont, as it was when I lived in Charle moht road, Clontark were new houses. Two-storeyed, with gables, like some New Zealand styles, but of brick, and in terraces or semi-detached. The plain old terrace where I was born at No. 9 seemed rather out-of-date now.

Thirty-five shillings a week, the new houses, built by the Dublin Corporation, a man in the bus

told me. He had one himself. They were not hard to get But jobs were.

“Yes, it’s very hard to get a job in Dublin,” the conductor said. He asked about conditions in New Zealand. He already knew exactly what he could get —without any trouble—in London. It was the old story: accommodation easy—jobs hard. But the houses were there.

Where The Dail Sits

Of course I wanted to see the building where the Dail was held. Believe it. or not, I had to ask several people before I could get directions. They seemed to know little about it and care less. “I pity you,” said a man when I observed that I had come 12,000 miles to see it. In the end we did not get to it till the evening, and the iron gates were shut. “You understand it’s like the Parliament you have in England,” the sentry at the gate said (yes, he did—this was Ireland). When I asked him what the building was formerly, he told me it was owned by “the people who run the horse show.” There was a really important Irish institution. We returned to London. I heard all about Ireland from an Irishman in the train across England from Holyhead. He was going back, after a holiday in Ireland with his English wife and children, to his job in London. London. “Ireland’s independence is an independence only in name when so many Irish are dependent on England for work,” he said. “If the Irish couldn’t go over to England to work, the unemployment figures, which are bad enough now, would be staggering.” “Shocking” was how he described the Irish balance of trade. I wanted to learn a little more, and went to the Irish Embassy in London, a magnificent house in Grosvenor Place. No, not the horse show, it was Guinness’s Brewery that owned this one, they told me. I went into the library and asked for the year book or some similar publication. I found the population figures—just under 3,000.000 for the republic and just over 1.000.000 for the six northern counties—a total of about 4,000.000. But I was now reminded of the most singular and perhaps most significant thing about Ireland. The population has been_ dropping for 100 years, and is still dropping. It surely must be the only country in the world—a world which is beginning to fear overcrowding— where this is happening. “We thought the decline was going to be stopped when there was a slight upward turn in the figures for the 1951 census—the first increase for 100 years,” the librarian told me. “But in the 1956 census the figures were down again.” Two hundred years ago, in the eighteenth century, Ireland supported a population of approximately 8,000.000. The nineteenth century saw the great famine and the beginning of mass emigration. It is emigration that causes the present slow but continuous fall in population: the birth rate is higher than that of England and Wales, even if the marriage rate is one of the lowest in the world. A country that is losing its people cannot feel hopeful and confident.

70,000 Unemployed

I found that there were about 70.000 unemployed on the register in the republic, and it appeared that there was about the same number in proportion in the north. The country was not in a good way—that was obvious. Ireland had done well by exporting foodstuffs to England during the war and supplying food to occupation troops in Europe just afterwards. But these days were gone. There was a time when she apparently had over-exported her own butter and had imported some from New Zealand. But now she was looking anxiously at her markets, too. • -

I read the Irish papers occasionally in London. Once I read an obituary of somebody, who, it was stated, fought in the Anglo-Irish war and on the republican side in the civil war. a when the treaty with Engseparating the six northern counties, was signed, it was de Valera’s faction that fought on, now against their own countrymen, opposing this settlement. It was at this time that a bomb exploded in the Four Courts in Dublin and destroyed the national archives of Ireland. A strange start for a new nation. But. the country struggled on. Order was restored, and de Valera himself showed an ability to face up to realities, grim and depressing as they often were. The first decades of independence were not easy. What of the relations betweffli England and Ireland now? The first thing that strikes a visitor is that the people in both countries behave as though there were not and never had been the slightest differences of any kind. The Irish go over to England to work—and draw the unemployment benefit if they cannot find a job. The English think there is no place like Ireland for holidays. Business, of course, goes on es usual. For travel, currency allowances, the countries are as one. Irish hooliganism on the border, or anywhere else, is deplored, just as English teddyboy hooliganism is deplored. No blame is placed on the rest of the Irish. The war and Ireland’s refusal to grant bases to England are forgotten, and ’of course it seems extremely unlikely that the possession of Irish bases will ever be of any importance to England again.

“Benefit To England”

The odd thing is that England has probably benefited more from self-government in Ireland than Ireland herself. At any rate her Parliament is no longer encumbered with 70 recalcitrant Irish members, always ready to obstruct and sometimes overthrow a government Now England has only to cope with the Irish unemployed who come to England. But for the revolution she would have to extend her national insurance to cover all those in Ireland.

Mr Gladstone saw the advantages of giving Ireland Home Rule in the last century, and fought for it with all his ability, though unsuccessfully. English conservatism opposed him then. Now English conservatism is quite incapable of depriving the Irish of many of the benefits they would enjoy as English citizens. The Irish, I was told, are popular in London.

My wife and I decided that we must have another look at Ireland before we returned to New Zealand. At this time Ireland was much in the news. There was an international drama festival in Dublin. The English high-brow papers were full of it. The “Observer” had a big photograph of O’Connell street, with the O’Conhell Monument, stating that this was near the place where “patriots held out in 1916.” The English intellectuals trooped over to Dublin.

Dramatic Action

There, if’the papers were to be believed, they must have had an interesting time, observing. Some of the plays advertised were not put *on at all, and those who turned up just had to go away, wondering. One play was banned, the producer arrested, and the actors threatened with goal if they appeared on the stage. The civic authorities ignored Margot Fonteyn and Ninette de Valois—the latter a Dublin woman herself. At any rate, the Lord Mayor was away in the United States, and the President of the Republic was away in the country. The Irish papers gave the Royal Ballet a real towelling up. We read about all this, but decided to go to Cork instead. I shall not dwell—l wish I could—on the incredibly beautiful countryside, besprinkled with ruined castles, through which we went getting there—the countryside which Spenser took for the landscape of “The Faerie Queene.” I shall hurry on to Cork, and tell of the surprise we got when we saw it. We found a smart, cheerful town, up with the fashions, good restaurants and food, the best old-style coffee outside Vienna. TLere was every sign of confidence; everyone looked as happy, one might say, as Larry. “No, things are no good at all,” we wefe told. “Cork is going through very lean times indeed.” But they seemed very cheerful about it. The Irish are extravagant in their language, we thought, as we looked at a notice on a fine, modem church: “This church is heavily in debt.” Actually the numerous churches, both Catholic and Protestant, told of good times with their well-kept appear-

ance ana pleasing surroundings. We refused to believe that Cork was not doing well, and soon, in a restaurant, we found a businessman who told us: “Of course it is. Cork is the most prosperous city in Ireland.” He mentioned the big Ford motor factory there at that time sending cars over to America itself.

And that day the paper was full of good news. A big oil refinery •for Cork, at a cost of £10,000,000; a picture of the Irish Minister of Industries and Commerce shaking Irnds with an English chocolate manufacturing executive, with a priest looking on, at the opening of a branch factory near Dublin. A statement from somebody in America that the investment of more American capital in Ireland could be expected. It' never rains but it pours in Ireland. Perhaps there are better times ahead. Manufacturers may decide to bring the factories to where the labour is. But has political independence done anything to bring prosperity? One can only wait and see. The generation that follows a revolution is never happy—as in America, France, Russia, the England of Cromwell’s time. Revolutionary leaders may not have the talents needed in reconstruction.

The Young Irish

Mr de Valera, however, has the wisdom of an old man now. Will a new generation arise that is really interested in Ireland’s welfare? Or will it decide that it doesn’t matter —that the only

answer is to get out? “But they say it is the fatal destiny of that land that no purposes, whatsoever are meant for her good, will prosper or take good effect.” This observation of the poet Spenser has been tragically true for 400 years." But now is the time for the young Irish to challenge and disprove it. And there are murmurings of voices being raised. But what about the border, the six northern c ;unties. While the northerners, businesslike and efficient, temperamentally different, will never tolerate government from Dublin with only minority representation (never, never, never); and while the southerners think the northerners a lot of stubborn, bigoted . “Leave it alone—it works,” a commercial traveller told me. ‘Tve been doing business between North and South for 10 years—and the present arrangement works.”

Perhaps it had better be left at that for the present—until more urgent problems are solved, at any rate. Old Dev thinks so.

Chinchilla Farming In South Africa

CAPE TOWN. A new industry is being pioneered by two brothers, Mr John Hobson and Mr Nigel Hobson, of the farms Westerndale and Wildebeeskuil in the Eastern Cape. The industry is chinchilla fur farming. The pelts of chinchillas (grasseating rodents) sell at £8 each on world markets. Mr Willis D. Parker, an international expert on chinchilla breeding and fur production, believes parts of South Africa are the finest in the world for chinchilla farming. By April the consignment of chinchillas—--110 female and 40 males—will be at Pearston, where the Hobson brothers live.