Éamon de Valera has a complicated reputation. A number of my Irish friends tell me that de Valera only stayed in power so long because he was one of the only power-brokers who survived both the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. The fact is that his reputation changed over time because of his actions during his political life. Walking through his career from the start of the Rising through his domination of Free State and Republic politics reveals a somewhat self-interested politician who could be quite slippery towards both his colleagues and his stated ideals.

In 1914, after John Redmond decided he wanted the volunteers to join the First World War in hopes of showing Ireland's loyalty to Britain, de Valera walked out with many members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The Volunteer split gave de Valera an opportunity to work his way even further into the organization's inner circle. The remains of the separatist Irish Volunteers was numerically small; for example, Dev often found himself drilling as few as seven men in the fields near Donnybrock. The smaller numbers overall combined with the fact that he was seen as dedicated and willing to do the drudge-work catapulted him into a leadership position. As Liam Tannam of the Volunteers noted in his witness statement years after the Rising, that "even with that small number, de Valera carried on as if he had a full company and solemnly issued orders to form fours with the seven men."

In 1916, the general public typically viewed the Irish revolutionaries with disdain. It is important to remember that the majority of Irish people were against the Easter Rising; in fact, Dubliners often threw things and spat at the revolutionaries as they were being carted away after their arrest. Dev commanded the Boland's Mill Garrison, which had the distinction of being the only garrison to refuse women's service. Other than that, it was pretty typical. De Valera was noted to go without sleep because he was afraid his men would desert or fail in some way. De Valera would not have been popular among the populace at large; however, within the Irish Volunteers/IRA, his reputation was better. Despite all of his flaws, his dedication to the cause inspired a lot of respect and some loyalty. He was never as charismatic as Conolly or Pearse, but at the end of the day, he was one of the only two leaders not to be executed because of his American citizenship. This meant that when he emerged from prison, he would be the almost defacto leader of the IRA.

Within prison, he had continued to gain prominence among IRA circles, most of which were imprisoned in the post-Rising crackdown. He gained so much popularity, in fact, that he became a TD (member of Irish Parliament) immediately upon his release from prison. By this point, popular opinion had shifted due to the executions of the 1916 revolutionaries, so the masses were no longer as hostile as they had been. Dev's Catholicism, which he continued to cultivate in prison, helped him to win over rank-and-file IRA men as well as the wider populace. The general public was better able to relate to his beliefs than the more esoteric ideas of the Celtic Revivalist leaders or the various socialists in the Irish Citizen Army. During the Irish War of Independence, Dev was the unquestioned political and military leader of the IRA. He was generally well-regarded by his peers up until the events leading to the Irish Civil War.

During the Civil War, Dev more clearly revealed his opportunism and his contemporaries recognized this. Prior to the opening of the Civil War, de Valera refused to meet with Lloyd George himself. The consensus by many of his contemporaries and historians is that he he knew he could not bring about his promised republic and did not want to be caught holding the bag. Collins noted Dev's refusal to give clear instructions to his delegates for the negotiation, "From Dublin, I don't know whether we're being instructed or confused, the latter I would say." It is true that he also snubbed Michael Collins before and after that fateful meeting with Lloyd George. There was tension between the two men, but the real divide came in January of 1922, when de Valera led a walkout during discussion on implementing the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A number of IRA men were loyal to Collins and saw Dev's move as purely opportunistic. Even W. T. Cosgrave who was one of Dev's servitors during the war of independence (one joke claimed that "he believed the sun shone out of Dev's arse") sided with Collins and Griffith in support of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Free State Pro-Treaty faction was composed of a number of men who had once been loyal to de Valera; the majority of the IRA backed Collins. Michael Collins had once been loyal to de Valera and considered him a close friend, but the split over the Treaty destroyed that relationship and others forged during the Rising and aftermath. Dev was deeply upset over Collins' death, which he probably didn't order, but he didn't weep for long. Instead he met with Richard Mulcahy, leader of the Free State military forces, and began to ensconce himself in the very system he had led a insurgency against.

De Valera continued to hold political offices, gaining power over the Dáil Éireann and eventually becoming the President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) of the Irish Free State in 1932. The Civil War was not discussed in Irish public life and in many ways, the bulk of the Irish public was just trying to move on from the tumultuous period of 1916-23, but some of the divisions remained well into the 1950s. De Valera still had a lot of political currency amongst the former anti-Treaty insurrectionists, but while in office, he lost that good will as well. Firstly, many of the anti-Treaty men and women were still committing espionage and other disruptive acts against the government. Dev's response was to put them many of them in prison. This helped develop a reputation for a draconian attitude to his former supporters. He also alienated a number of intellectuals and women with is 1937 Constitution, which gave Catholicism an extremely strong hold over Ireland (that wouldn't be broken until the early 1990s) and literally enshrined women in article 41:2 as "wives and mothers". Once in power, his rhetoric and his laws painted Ireland as pastoral and thoroughly pre-industrial, which further alienated later generations of Irish intellectuals who saw this as backwards. John Montague and other Irish poets often lamented Dev's policies and self-imposed cultural isolation, a theme that would be picked up by later Irish writers like Roddy Doyle or ironically subverted by sitcoms like Father Ted. The irony was that Dev never actually declared the republic he had been promising for decades; it was his successor for the office of Taioseach, John A. Costello, who made that declaration and forced the UK to recognize the Irish Republic in 1949. His departure from office as Taoiseach signaled his loss of popularity and the fact that the Irish people were tired of him never delivering the republic. He was out of public favor in 1948, though he maintained some political power afterwards due to the long shadow he had thrown over Irish politics.

De Valera did not provide much of a political or economic legacy to build on. His dogmatic position on Irish neutrality led to his faux pas of giving the German envoy Hempel condolences on Hitler's death, which further tarnished his reputation. De Valera also continued to periodically anger his former comrades until his death in the 1970s. For example, Maire Comerford (a former anti-Treaty proponent during the civil war, who had written for de Valera's paper the Irish Press in the 1930s) confronted de Valera at the 1966 Commemoration of the 1916 Rising. She angrily asked him if he was shocked that the republic had been betrayed, echoing Dev's words during the walkout, and he responded that it was a pity that "some people believed their own propaganda; and some people believe it still." This exchange sums up Dev's pragmatism that fused with his political self-interest. Irish Historians are mostly condemnatory of de Valera for this reason. See, for example, the shade thrown at the book Judging Dev, which attempts to rehabilitate his image, in this review by History Ireland. Ultimately, the general public was indifferent to de Valera by the time of his death, though he still had some veneration as one of the nation's founding fathers.

Sources

Bowman, John. De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.

Coogan, Tim Pat. Eamon De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Foster, R. F. W.B. Yeats: A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

McGarry, Fearghal. The Rising: Ireland : Easter 1916. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Wills, Clair. That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007