An Irishman’s Diary on four presidents in one place

Until the eventful election of Michael D Higgins in 2011, it could safely be said that our presidents, like our policemen, were getting younger. In 1966, however, the picture was anything but.

Seán T O’Kelly had held the post from 1945 to 1959 and, by August 1966, he was in his mid-seventies. Éamon de Valera, who had been born in the same year as Sean T, was just two months into his second term as president. But this was also a year, paradoxically, in which not just two, or three, but four Irish presidents were to meet, and could be seen, in the same place and at the same time.

The past and present presidents were in attendance at the commemoration, on August 7th, 1966, of the gun-running into the beach at Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, which had taken place on August 2nd, 1914. The Irish Times news editor, Donal Foley, had marked me to cover the occasion, and I was accompanied by a visiting Canadian journalist of distant Irish ancestry, who was on her first visit to Ireland. If she had been expecting pomp and circumstance, she was to be disappointed. But what actually took place was even better.

‘Rigorous secrecy’

The Kilcoole gun-running, as the historian FX Martin pointed out in a speech at that beach, was still largely shrouded in “rigorous secrecy”. More recent research, however, has provided substantial additional information, not least the fact that Irish Protestants had played a major role. Sir Thomas Myles, who was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and honorary surgeon in Ireland to the English monarch, had lent his yacht, the

Chotah

, to transport the guns from the foreign tugboat into the beach at Kilcoole. Another of these conspirators was James Creed Meredith, later a member of the Irish Supreme Court.

Ceremony

The occasion blended domesticity and ceremony in a way that fascinated my guest. The former and current presidents were ensconced on two wooden chairs planted firmly into the gravelly beach – a rug had been thrown over the chairs to make them look more like a sofa.

On the embankment behind the beach, the presidential train was standing by. A choir of schoolchildren from the Holy Faith convent in Kilcoole sang Irish songs and took part in a recitation of the words of the Proclamation. The Army band played. One of the three famous Irish corvettes, the Maebh, stood by off-shore in the company of a number of yachts that had sailed down from Dún Laoghaire.

Warmth of the sun

If the landing had taken place a week earlier, de Valera himself would have been in charge. When plans changed, Seán T, who lived not far away near Roundwood, was the man chosen for that role. And while it may have seemed to some onlookers that Seán T had sleepily succumbed to the warmth of the sun, one of those present, Seamus Kelly (Quidnunc of

The Irish Times

), later charitably observed in his column that “when nothing in particular seemed to be happening, he closed his eyes in a peaceful, relaxed sort of way.”

But what about the presence of two other two presidents? One of them was Erskine Childers, who made the major speech at Kilcoole that day, and who was to succeed de Valera in June 1973.

He waxed eloquent, as might be expected from a descendant of the man who had successfully landed guns from the Asgard in Howth.

He also gave us his own interpretation of 1916, which historians, even in 1966, might have considered oversimplified, but was nonetheless heartfelt. He then resumed his place on another wooden chair, oblivious – or careless – of the fact that this chair kept sinking, slowly but surely, into the sand until at one stage his stature behind the simple wooden table had been visibly diminished.

Microphone

And the fourth president? At one stage, during a hitch in the proceedings, my Canadian friend pointed towards a small group of people trying to fix the hiccupping public-address system, and asked: “Who is that little man in his shirt sleeves trying to fix the microphone?”

Blissfully unable to predict what was to happen in December 1974, when Erskine Childers was to suffer an untimely death, or in October 1976, when his successor as president was to resign in highly charged and controversial circumstances, I told her: “That’s Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, the chief justice. He lives just up the road.”