Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986 INDEPENDENCE PARTITION NEUTRALITY Sean Cronin \, John Devoy, the Fenian leader, described Woodrow Wilson as ‘by descent an Orangeman’ and ‘the meanest and most malignant man ever to occupy the White House. De Valera was seen by the Americans as ‘a master panderer to Irish national longings, the motive force behind the drive towards a Republic, towards economic self-sufficiency, and towards a united Ireland.’ These two quotations from Washington ’s Irish Policy 1916-1986 illustrate the mistrust that clouded American and Irish relationships at official level. Washington took its bearings from Britain. It was unsympathetic to an independent Ireland, to a united Ireland, and to its stand on neutrality. In fact, as detailed in this book, the greatest threat to Irish neutrality in World War II came not from Germany but from Britain and the United States. SEAN CRONIN is the author of The McGarrity Papers', Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology, and Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic, among other works. He is co-editor, with Richard Roche, of an anthology of Wolfe Tone’s writings, Freedom the Wolfe Tone Way. He is US correspondent of the Irish Times, and lives in Washington DC. He holds a doctorate in international relations. SEAN CRONIN Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986 INDEPENDENCE PARTITION NEUTRALITY ANVIL BOOKS First published in 1987 by Anvil Books, 90 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2 North America: Irish Books and Media, 2115 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, Minn. 55105 © 1987 by Sean Cronin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Anvil Books Limited. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cronin, Sean Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality. 1. United States — Foreign relations — Ireland 2. Ireland — Foreign relations — United States 1. Title 327.730417 E183.8.16 ISBN 0-947962-14-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-080865 ISBN 0-937702-08-0 Origination by Computertype Ltd., Dublin Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay, Bungay, Suffolk This book is dedicated to PAUL O’DWYER who for more than sixty years manned the barricades for Ireland and the Irish in the United States of America CONTENTS Acknowledgements 9 Preface 11 1 America and the Struggle for Irish Independence 13 2 The Irish Free State and Partition 44 3 De Valera and the IRA in the War Years 71 4 The Defence of Ireland from Invasion 106 5 The American Note to De Valera 131 6 De Valera’s ‘continuous neutrality’ and the Cold War 162 7 Sean MacBride and the Republic of Ireland Act 189 8 NATO and the Partition of Ireland 221 9 A CIA’s-eye View of Ireland and a Padlock on Partition 250 10 The North Explodes 282 11 Epilogue: The American Dimension 303 References 329 Abbreviations 347 Index 349