Lecture 13: Ireland: 1948-1957

Corpus Christi Procession, Cahir, Co. Tipperary

‘Austerity; shortages; snowdrifts; food and fuel rationing; low wages;

high prices; differences with the church and with the supreme court; the Ward affair; the teachers’ strike and other industrial disputes – it was hardly the most promising material for a Fianna Fáil party seeking to

fashion the platform for the seventh consecutive election victory.’

Fanning, R, Independent Ireland, p161

Fine Gael: the Commonwealth, conservative, strong farmer party

Clann na Poblachta: Radical, republican party

Clann na Talmhan: small farmer party

Labour: split into two squabbling factions

Clann na Poblachta• ‘Party of the republic’• Founded 6 July 1946• Many members were republican activists• Sean MacBride – party leader• Left-leaning nationalist policies• Quickly established a network of branches throughout

the country• Won 13.2% of the vote (10 seats) in the 1948 election• There was a split in the party in the wake of Noel

Browne’s Mother and Child scheme• Only won 2 seats in the 1951 election• Continued to contest elections until 1965

Séan MacBride• Leader of Clann na Poblachta• Son of Major John MacBride (executed in 1916) &

Maud Gonne, the inspiration for many of Yeats’ greatest love poems

• Chief of staff of the IRA in 1936 • Broke with the IRA and accepted the 1937

constitution • Opposed the IRA bombing campaign in Britain in

1938-39• Practised as a barrister - defended many of his

former IRA colleagues• Appeared at inquests for the next-of-kin of IRA

hunger-strikers who died in 1940 and in 1946.

Clann na Poblachta

• Wanted the External Relations Act of 1936 repealed

• A thirty-two county republic

• Advocated a more active campaign against partition

• Laid heavy emphasis on social issues

• Attacked the evils of emigration, unemployment and rising prices

Original caption: Madam Maud Gonne, 83, one known

as "The World's Most Beautiful Woman", casts her vote in the Eire General Elections. With

her is her son, Sean MacBride, Dublin lawyer who is leading

his new Republican party, Clann na Poblachta, in a campaign to oust Prime

Minister Eamon de Valera. Madam Gonne is one of the

great figures in Irish Republican history.

Incomplete returns indicated that de Valera's Fianna fail,

the government party, would

lose its majority.

1948 Election Results • Clann na Poblachta: Won 13.2% of the vote (10

seats) - the highest ever won by a minor party in its first election

Fianna Fáil: Won 41.9% of the vote (67 seats)

Fine Gael: 31 seats

Labour: 14 seats

Clann na Talmhan: 7 seats

Independents: 12 seats

‘The big message was: put Dev out anyway and give us – and yourselves – a

chance.’

Dr Noel Browne (1915-1997)

• Appointed Minister of Health on his first day in the Dáil

• Member of Clann na Poblachta

• Inspired by the establishment of the British National Health Service

• Created problems for his party leader, Sean MacBride

The inter-party government and economic policy

• Running the economy proved difficult with four parties in power

• Shift in financial policy• Financial orthodoxies challenged from

within the government• Economic committee established to

undertake survey of economic position of the state

• Ireland participated in the ERP• Ireland: founder member of the OEEC

‘Do we mean to house the people, provide hospital beds for the sick, or do we not? I think we do, and prophesising woe and dislocation…

cuts no ices at all, because whatever the economic consequences…(of) providing hospital beds and evacuating verminous

tenement rooms, they cannot be worse than letting TB patients cough their lungs out in the family kitchen, or letting the rats of Ringsend

eat the second ear off the child who has already lost one in a Ringsend rat-ridden

tenement room…’

John Dillon speaking during a Dáil debate

Taoiseach John A. Costello

External Relations Act repealed in 1949

Ireland left the Commonwealth

Costello: ‘It placed the question of Irish sovereignty and status beyond dispute or guesswork’

Announcement made at press conference in Ottawa in 7 September1948

Ended the era ushered in by the treaty split

John Costello and Sean MacBride during an interview with the Picture Post magazine, where they explained why

they believe that Éire should break all connections with the Commonwealth.

Noel Browne and TB

Brought a crusading zeal to the campaign against TB

By July 1950 his emergency bed programme almost doubled the provision for TB patients in 2 years

TB death rate down from 124 per 100,000 in 1947 to 73 per 100,000 in 1951

‘It is an over-simplification to present the Mother and Child scheme…as a

straight conflict between church and state’

Lee, J, Ireland 1912-1985, p318

‘The episode should be viewed as the culmination of the church’s growing disquiet about the growth of state power…’

Fanning, R, Independent Ireland, p181

‘If the hierarchy give me direction with regard to

catholic social teaching or catholic moral teaching, I

accept without qualification in all respects the teaching

of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.’

Taoiseach John A. Costello

‘The powers taken by the state in the proposed Mother and Child Health Service are in direct opposition to the rights of the family and of the individual and are liable to very great abuse. Their character is such that no assurance that they would be used in moderation could justify their enactment. If adopted in law they would constitute a ready-made instrument for future totalitarian aggression.

Irish Catholic hierarchy’s response to Mother and Child scheme

The right to provide for the health of children belongs to parents, not to the state. The state has the right to intervene only in a subsidiary

capacity, to supplement, not to supplant.

It may help indigent or neglected parents; it may not deprive 90 per cent of parents of their rights because 10 per cent are necessitous or

negligent parents.

It is not sound social policy to impose a state medical service on the whole community on the pretext of relieving the necessitous 10 per cent from the so-called indignity of the means test.

The right to provide for the physical education of children belongs to the family and not to the state. Experience has shown that physical or health education is closely interwoven with important moral questions on which the Catholic Church has definite teaching.

Education in regard to motherhood includes instruction in regard to sex relations, chastity and marriage. The state has no competence to give instruction in such matters.

We regard with the greatest apprehension the proposal to give local medical officers the right to tell Catholic girls and women how they should behave in regard to this sphere of conduct at once so delicate and sacred.

Gynaecological care may be, and in some other countries is, interpreted to include

provision for birth limitation and abortion. We have no guarantee that state officials will

respect Catholic principles in regard to these matters. Doctors trained in institutions in

which we have no confidence may be appointed as medical officers under the

proposed services, and may give gynaecological care not in accordance with

Catholic principles.’

Memorandum dated 12 April 1951.

It records the visit of Taoiseach John A.

Costello to President Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh,

advising the President that Dr. Noel Browne, Minister for Health,

wished to tender this resignation as a member of the

government and that it should be accepted.

(NAI, Office of the Secretary to the

President, PRES 1/P 4633) 

Ireland in the 1950s

• Collapse of the inter-party government in May 1951 was followed by a series of minority governments

• Fianna Fáil government of 1951-4: worst de Valera government

• Between 1951 and 1951 employment in industry fell by 14%

• The numbers employed in agricultural fell by 200,000

In 1948 80,000 Irish people still lived in one room dwellings.

In 1946 over 300,000 Irish homes had no sanitary facilities.

The average Irish family was still twice as large as the average British family.

Tens of thousands of Irish people left the country in the 1950s to seek work overseas.

The Inter party governments of 1948-51 and 1954-57 had not dramatically changed the social and economic landscape of post independent

Ireland.