association with those more nearly placed to the head of government in the labour and achievement of the past ten years’. He continued: ‘Nor can I express to our beloved President my gratitude for his graciousness and goodness on so many occasions during that time, for his patience with so many shortcomings, and the kindly appreciation and encouragement which lightened many a burden.’255
Whatever his personal feelings, Hearne had to accept that a new government was taking office; he had to accommodate himself to this reality. What he can never have anticipated was that he was to play a central and pivotal role in some of the most significant events in the early years of de Valera’s rule.
CHAPTER 3
Serving de Valera, 1932–1936
On 9 March 1936, Éamon de Valera, with the support of the Labour Party, was elected President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State and appointed his first Fianna Fáil government. Notwithstanding rumours of a planned coup by the outgoing administration, there was a smooth transfer of power. The change of government caused apprehension in the civil service as no one knew what to expect from the new ministers. In particular, there were fears that de Valera would introduce a spoils system and install his supporters in key positions.1 John Hearne expected to face dismissal.2 There were at least three reasons for him to be concerned. He had been an open supporter of John Redmond and a bitter opponent of Sinn Féin in the two elections in Waterford in 1918. During the March by-election, de Valera had been in the city and would likely have heard of Hearne and his speeches. Exacerbating his concerns was the fact that his Redmondite associations had already militated against his appointment as a district justice by the Cosgrave government. Secondly, he had served in the Free State army, regarded by republicans as the ruthless instrument of their defeat and oppression. Finally, he was legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs, to which de Valera had appointed himself minister. It was not unreasonable to speculate that Hearne was apprehensive that the new minister might appoint another in his place, one who shared de Valera’s outlook and would be his preferred choice to help implement his controversial Anglo-Irish policy.
Fortunately for Hearne, there was no purge of civil servants. The new President was happy to exploit the talents of many former opponents.3 What Fianna Fáil regarded as hostile in the shape of Cumann na nGaedheal, it embraced as neutral, disinterested, professional and expert in the shape of the civil service.4 De Valera was to defend the service in the face of criticism by republican hardliners, arguing that it was loyal to the state. Deirdre McMahon has commented that his success in establishing a firm working relationship and continuity with the civil service was perhaps one of the most notable achievements of his early administrations.5
Arguably, nowhere was this relationship more apparent and more important than in the Department of External Affairs. De Valera assumed this portfolio because, according to his biographers, ‘he always felt that this was a post which should, if possible, be held by the head of government, that there might be no doubt as to the authority with which the minister spoke’.6 This consideration was to be all the more relevant as Fianna Fáil’s Anglo-Irish policy was to prove contentious and ‘the dark legacy of the Treaty split forged his determination to retain the control of the day-to-day detail of this policy in his own hands’.7 The department de Valera headed was a small one; hence a good working relationship with its personnel was very desirable. In 1935, it employed fifteen to twenty people and was situated on the top floor of the Department of Agriculture in Government Buildings.8 In 1930, the senior staff consisted of the secretary, assistant secretary, two junior administrative officers, a legal adviser and an assistant legal adviser.9 The members of this small service had generally enjoyed a peculiarly personal and highly influential relationship with their minister10 and de Valera was to be no exception. His first meeting with Joseph Walshe, the department’s secretary, did much to assuage anxieties among the staff at the arrival of the new minister. According to former diplomat Con Cremin, ‘all five or six diplomats at headquarters [Hearne was probably one of them] sat around a table awaiting Walshe’s return. When he finally returned, he proclaimed de Valera as “charming, simply charming’’’.11
Walshe came to realise that de Valera’s election was an opportunity to increase the standing and influence of his department. The new President was also his minister and therefore the most influential member of the Executive Council. During the 1930s, External Affairs grew in respectability and stature within the civil service.12 Walshe’s biographer, Aengus Nolan, has observed that he and de Valera established ‘a healthy relationship’,13 as he provided his minister with ‘extensive and expert information’ on the constitutional issues relating to the government’s Anglo-Irish policy.14 During the 1933 general election, he seemed to pledge his support to the Fianna Fáil leader.15 According to Nolan, Walshe was ably assisted by John Hearne when it came to advising de Valera;16 and, in her magisterial study of Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s, Deirdre McMahon identified Hearne as an official who was to play an important role during this decade. She described him as de Valera’s ‘adviser during the period of his constitutional reforms’.17 Ronan Fanning has confirmed Hearne as one of a ‘troika of senior officials’ on whom de Valera came to rely for counsel, the others being John Dulanty, Irish High Commissioner in London, and Walshe.18 Unlike the latter, however, it appears that Hearne remained a supporter of the Cumann na nGaedheal–Fine Gael political tradition, his son, Maurice, commenting in his plan for a proposed biography of his father that ‘Dad was … not even a supporter of that party [Fianna Fáil].’19
Meetings between de Valera and Hearne
Hearne recorded details of one-to-one meetings he had with de Valera in 1933 and 1934.20 Between 27 June and 18 August 1933 he had nine meetings, during which a wide range of topics with implications for the Free State’s relations with foreign countries was discussed. On 27 June, Australia’s candidacy for a seat on the Council of the League of Nations was considered, with de Valera deciding to support a fellow Dominion. The following day, both men addressed the possible appointment of a new American Minister to Dublin. On 24 July, Hearne read for de Valera a report from the Irish legation in Berlin concerning a recent newspaper article printed in Germany alleging de Valera’s Jewish ancestry and his association with Jewish bankers. The minister directed the legation to make a strong protest.
The coverage of Blueshirt activities in the foreign press was the subject of a meeting on 18 August 1933. A draft statement, approved by de Valera, was to be sent to Irish legations describing such reports as ‘sensational’ and ‘inspired by enemies of Ireland and of the present government’. It is very likely that the minister and his legal adviser had more meetings than the nine recorded by Hearne. According to Dermot Keogh, perhaps he ‘was the person with whom de Valera had the closest contact during the early years of his coming to office’.21 These meetings facilitated the establishment and development of a good professional relationship between the two men, the minister coming to appreciate and value the advice and abilities of his department’s legal adviser. He came to realise that Hearne was a civil servant he both trusted and admired.
De Valera and the quest for sovereignty
A preoccupation with Irish sovereignty was the defining feature of Éamon de Valera’s long political career, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh writing:
Throughout the whole of de Valera’s public life … this central question – the status of Ireland, the extent of her independence, the exact measure of sovereignty (in all its manifold forms, economic, social and cultural, no less than political) – this central question was to be the governing passion of his political life, the source from which were to spring the bulk of his ideas, aspirations, policies and, indeed, prejudices.22
De Valera declared that his fundamental opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was rooted in his conviction that it represented a denial of the basic principle of the sovereignty of the Irish
