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Courageous and idealistic, Dev also fomented Civil War and left a legacy of unrest, writes Con Houlihan
SOMETIMES we hear this question: how will history deal with George Bush or Tony Blair or Fidel Castro or some such famous figure?
In this context there is no such thing as history; they are historians and they rarely reach consensus.
A historian can only assemble all the known material and form his judgement on that. In Diarmaid Ferriter's book Judging Dev, a very ambitious study, he refers to me as a journalist. That's fair enough -- but in my BA package I have a first-class honours in history. I have taught the subject and I have written a fair amount about it. And so I feel competent to answer Diarmaid Ferriter's question.
When Eamon de Valera went into Boland's Mills on Easter Monday 1916, he had little to gain and a great deal to lose. He was approaching 30; he had a wife and small children; he taught mathematics -- a skill with which you need never beg for bread.
A solid middle-class future beckoned. He showed courage and idealism in taking his stance: he knew that in wartime the Army are the real government and traditionally the British Army gave no mercy to those suspected of "treason". He knew that the Rising would almost certainly fail and that he would face a firing squad.
He escaped execution because, when his turn came, the British public -- informed by good journalists -- were sick of the killings.
Because de Valera was one of the few leading Volunteers to survive, he gained great prestige. He gained even more when he escaped from Lincoln Prison. And so by 1918 he was effectively the leader of Sinn Fein.
What some people deem the downturn in his career came after the Truce in 1921.
He sent Michael Collins with a little party to London to negotiate with Lloyd George, and gave them full powers. When they returned with what was called the Treaty, he seemed to argue that they hadn't full powers. This was the first example we have of de Valera twisting language to his own ends.
He became famous for saying that the people have no right to...