Diarmaid Ferriter: Ireland’s neutrality did not equate to silence and inaction

The most memorable and evocative description of Irish neutrality during the second World War was provided by historian F S L Lyons in 1971: “It was as if an entire people had been condemned to live in Plato’s cave, backs to the fire of life and deriving their only knowledge of what went on from the flickering shadows thrown on the wall.”

There was, in truth, a lot more than that going on in the cave when it came to diplomacy, intelligence and covert support of the Allies.

What was said publicly and clearly by Eamon de Valera as chief caveman – “a small country like ours that had for centuries resisted imperial absorption and that still wished to preserve its national identity, was bound to choose the course of neutrality” – was far removed from what the historian Dermot Keogh described as a neutrality of “shadow language and shape shifting”.

Self-preservation and self-interest mixed with piety and pugilism. While some in Washington and London expressed cold fury, Viscount Cranborne, a British Dominions Secretary who hated the Irish, admitted privately in February 1945 that the Irish government “have been willing to accord us any facilities which would not be regarded as overtly prejudicing their attitude to neutrality”.

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The Pentagon at one point wanted to award the American Legion of Merit to three senior Irish army officers for “outstanding services” to the US, before it was pointed out how this would embarrassingly compromise professions of neutrality.

Collective security

After 1945, Irish neutrality required ongoing clarification and qualification. De Valera admitted in relation to Ireland joining the UN and the possibility of going to war as a UN member, that small nations could not delude themselves that “they can in the end dodge their obligations” in relation to “collective security”.

Membership followed in 1955 but Nato membership was rejected on the grounds that partition meant Ireland could not co-operate with Britain in a military alliance given that Britain “claims as an integral part of her territory six of Ireland’s counties”. De Valera added, however, that “a free Ireland would probably have the same inducements to join as other nations”.

In subsequent decades senior Irish politicians consistently accepted the EEC would evolve into a defence union and expressed no qualms about that. In 1962, with Ireland seeking EEC membership, taoiseach Seán Lemass was clear: “We recognise that a military commitment will be an inevitable consequence of our joining the Common Market and ultimately, we would be prepared to yield even the technical label of neutrality. We are prepared to go into this integrated Europe without any reservation as to how far this will take us in the field of foreign policy and defence”

A crucial question is whether the idea of the EU as a 'civilian power' must be completely buried

Sixty years later, many will see it as necessary to finally follow through on Lemass’s assertion. The war waged against Ukraine has inevitably prompted loud demands that we stop clinging to supposedly outdated pieties.

Other perspectives need to be considered, however. Neutrality did not equate to silence and inaction. When the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed in Moscow in 1968 Ireland’s minister for external affairs Frank Aiken was its first signatory, a recognition of his championing of that cause.

Related themes that decade included the Irish contribution to peacekeeping missions and support for decolonisation in Africa and Asia (the Irish, Aiken said, “know what imperialism is and what resistance to it involves”). In the 1970s, one of Aiken’s successors, Garret FitzGerald, speaking of efforts to thaw the Cold War, suggested Ireland could help “in bringing about an atmosphere of further détente” and “lessen tension in defence and military matters”.

Shadow language

The following decade, leading historian of Irish foreign policy, Patrick Keatinge wryly observed that “a permissive mode of [European] integration continues to accommodate a permissive stance of neutrality”.

There was more “shadow language and shape shifting” for Ireland subsequently in the form of “special status”, “opt outs” and “constructive abstention”. Currently, the Department of Foreign Affairs trumpets “Ireland’s commitment to peacebuilding, conflict prevention and post-conflict stabilisation”.

That should not be scoffed at as shameful. Complete abandonment of neutrality would be very divisive, and we should not forget that concerns about neutrality were paramount during the Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2008) referenda, both initially rejected. Given Ireland’s involvement in Nato’s Partnership for Peace and aspects of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) many will argue that Irish neutrality has already been compromised and both Ireland and neutral Austria have accepted EU decisions previously considered incompatible with neutrality, but making the move to full military alignment is another matter.

A crucial question – and it should not be contemptuously dismissed because of understandable anger generated by Russia’s abhorrent aggression – is whether the idea of the EU as a “civilian power” must be completely buried and if so, whether traditionally neutral EU countries will be heard at all. If neutrality within the EU becomes redundant can that be seen as a worrying admission of failure?