Sir, – In “Clue to future as Varadkar looks at de Valera’s past” (Opinion & Analysis, October 27th), Noel Whelan says Éamon de Valera led Fianna Fáil into the Dáil “despite the oath of allegiance”.
This abbreviated phrase might suggest that the oath itself was the obstacle to entry. In fact, the obstacle lay in Dev’s interpretation of it as fatally undermining the 1919 republic adopted by the Dáil.
However, the oath does not pledge allegiance to the king as sovereign monarch from whom all law derived.
Its allegiance was to the constitution of the Free State, whose people would not be subjects of the king, but would be citizens and the source of the law. This concept of citizenship, which owes much to the French Revolution, was an innovation – Australians were still “British subjects” though their country had been an independent Commonwealth member since 1900.
Moreover, there was nothing in the oath to prevent the government from working towards a looser relationship with Britain, as it did at the Imperial Conferences 1926 and 1930.
True, the Free State used the king to appoint governors-general and heads of diplomatic missions. The latter function was retained under Dev’s Constitution. The Free State did not call itself a republic, but then neither did the post-1937 Éire.
I sometimes think that what Dev most disliked about the oath was that it was concocted by Griffith and Lloyd George and not by himself.
He was prepared to be flexible on how republicanism was to be applied in practice, as the terms of the Constitution show – his idealism tempered by the reality of office. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DRURY,
Brussels.