Lecture 13: Ireland: 1948-1957

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Lecture 13 Ireland 1948-1957
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Corpus Christi Procession, Cahir, Co. Tipperary
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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
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Fine Gael the Commonwealth, conservative, strong
farmer partyClann na Poblachta Radical,
republican party Clann na Talmhan small farmer
party Labour split into two squabbling factions
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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 Brownes Mother and Child scheme
• Only won 2 seats in the 1951 election
• Continued to contest elections until 1965

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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.

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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  repealed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

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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.
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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
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The big message was put Dev out anyway and give
us and yourselves a chance.
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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

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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

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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 dislocationcuts 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 roomJohn Dillon speaking during a
Dáil debate
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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 September 1948 Ended
the era ushered in by the treaty split
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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.
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Noel Browne and TBBrought a crusading zeal to
the campaign against TB By July 1950 his
emergency bed programme almost doubled the
provision for TB patients in 2 yearsTB death
rate down from 124 per 100,000 in 1947 to 73 per
100,000 in 1951
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It is an over-simplification to present the
Mother and Child schemeas a straight conflict
between church and stateLee, J, Ireland
1912-1985, p318

• The episode should be viewed as the culmination
  of the churchs growing disquiet about the growth
  of state power
• Fanning, R, Independent Ireland, p181

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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
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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 hierarchys response to Mother
and Child scheme
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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.
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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.

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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.
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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) 
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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

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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.