Thomas Davis, one of the principal intellectual influences on the independence movement, once expressed sympathy for the thinking of contemporary French historian Augustin Thierry, who preferred governments with the greatest number of independent guarantees of individual freedom, writes Martin Mansergh.
Davis wrote in the Nation in 1842: "This is the creed of a conservative republican, a creed having among its professors many of the greatest men of opposite parties all through Europe."
Davis was contrasting, not left and right in the parliamentary sense, but conservative or constitutional republicanism with the turbulent street politics and direct democracy of the French Revolution.
There is a tendency not justified by the facts to overstate the radical revolutionary nature of the 1916 Rising and Proclamation and the subsequent war for political independence. The social revolution in terms of land ownership, dismantling minority church privilege, and democratic local government, was already largely complete. Irish republicanism between 1916 and 1923 was in the main neither anti-clerical, nor with some notable exceptions markedly socialist.
Kevin O'Higgins, who became a dual-monarchist, famously claimed: "We were the most conservative revolutionaries ever."
De Valera in many ways fitted the description of a conservative republican in the best sense of the term.
A striking document highlighted in the 80th anniversary exhibition in the Mansion House last Sunday was the National Policy adopted at a conference in Dublin on April, 14th, 1926, to launch a new National Organisation, yet to be named Fianna Fáil.
A key sentence states that the primary aim is "to bring into one constitutional movement all citizens of good will who realise that national peace is necessary to national prosperity and who are ready to utilise the powers and machinery of Government already gained for national advancement". The aim was inclusion, capture of the centre ground, a certain pragmatism in circumventing ideological obstacles, but absolute clarity from bitter experience on the need for exclusively democratic means. The decade from civil war defeat in 1923 to assumption of power in 1932 repays close study.
Democracy requires the participation and contribution of many parties. Generosity to those of other persuasions and traditions need not detract from the signal role of Fianna Fáil in national life.
Older people are a rich repository of an oral history in danger of being lost. Outside the Mansion House, a former member of the national executive, Eamon Nolan, recalled as a young man pushing Margaret Pearse in a wheelchair, and also conversations with President de Valera towards the end of his second term in the Áras.
On one occasion in the early 1970s, Nolan asked de Valera what he thought of Gen Collins. He recalled the reply: "Michael Collins was the greatest Irishman who ever lived. He was used and abused by his own colleagues." Dev was more magnanimous than he is often credited with being.
Excerpts from his inaugural speech in the Mansion House were read out by actor Barry McGovern. It contained James Connolly's famous saying that Ireland without its people meant nothing to him. So, Connolly was not written out of history either.
There is little comprehension today of the problems that a newly independent Ireland faced in a world beset with economic depression and great political instability in Europe.
Building democracy, establishing institutions, including a sound financial system, developing the economy and a social safety net, fostering a distinctive cultural identity, were tasks in many cases begun by Cumann na nGaedhael in the 1920s, and carried forward with determination by Fianna Fáil in the 1930s.
Only much later did outstanding economic success become more central to citizens' self-esteem. If a moral and material austerity, unfortunately along with hidden abuses of authority, were the worst Ireland had to suffer, they scarcely compare with the awful experiences of most continental European countries, in some cases until 1989.
One economic and social priority was to reverse population decline, which proved far from easy. Writing in Ireland To-Day in November 1936, the distinguished statistician RC Geary defended a range of population projections in 2016 of between 3.3 million and 3.6 million (now projected by the CSO at five million in 2021). Neither Ireland's membership of the European Union nor subsequent rapid economic development could have been foreseen. Still less could it have been anticipated then that far more people would be attracted into Ireland today than attracted out of it.
The original political aim of securing Ireland's independence as a republic was achieved, though not its unity. Yet the Good Friday agreement has transformed North-South relations.
The Irish language, which still needs to be taught, is a vital element in a distinctive national identity, but being an English-speaking country also has major advantages.
It is in the economic sphere, where most success has been registered, that the original party thinking has been most completely superseded. Self-containment and self-sufficiency have been replaced by immersion in global markets; the primacy of agriculture as a source of livelihood is long gone; and the ruralisation of industry, as opposed to its concentration in cities and towns, is rarely feasible today. In the 1930s, however, the countryside was objectively a healthier place, with higher life expectancy than in the cities.
Fianna Fáil has had three sustained periods in government 1932-48, 1957-73, and, with a 2½-year intermission, from 1987 till now. All included periods of substantial advance, none more so than the present. Undoubted negative aspects of the record at different periods have not outweighed the positive.
A source of present strength is the unity re-established under the leadership of Bertie Ahern, which seeks to advance by partnership with others. The proliferation of parties and independents underlines the attraction of at least one strong, coherent party.
A unique tradition and in the main a proud past, although a definite asset going forward, is no guarantee of the future. There is no sign that the party will pale before new challenges, or that most people wish to replace the constitutionally conservative republican model, well-established in this State, with some revolutionary alternative.