New book traces de Valera’s “Dangerous Ambition” to a troubled childhood

You could say that the seeds of Prof Colum Kenny’s new book on Éamon de Valera were planted in childhood.

Growing up on Dublin’s North Circular Road, he would often see the then President of Ireland being driven to and from Áras an Uachtaráin. “I remember seeing Dev go up and down in an old Rolls Royce, with a few outriders. Sometimes I'd wave to him as a child and you might get a wave back.”

It was the start of a lifelong fascination with one of Ireland’s best-known and most complex historical figures. For Kenny, his new book, Dangerous Ambition: The Making of Éamon de Valera, complements his other publications about Ireland’s revolutionary period including a biography of Arthur Griffith and studies of the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations and the Irish Civil War. 

Much has been written about the various stages of de Valera’s life as a revolutionary, rebel and statesman who shaped post-independence Ireland. He was the founder of Fianna Fáil, was elected taoiseach three times, and served two full terms as President of Ireland. 

In his new book, Kenny, a Professor Emeritus at DCU, has focused on de Valera’s upbringing and early development because he sees it as a period that has had relatively little attention when compared to his later career. 

“There is so much to be said about de Valera. He was the towering political figure of the 20th century and, indeed, in his own lifetime he said if he was to write an autobiography, it would have to be multi-volumed. So, people have tended to either not deal with the early period, or just to pass through it, to get to the real business, as it were.”

Born in the United States to an Irish mother, de Valera was sent back to Ireland, aged two and a half, to live with his grandmother and uncle who lived in a labourer’s cottage in rural Co Limerick. Meanwhile, the identity of his father, who was absent from his life, remained shrouded in mystery. 

Kenny, who is a former chair of the Masters in Journalism programme at DCU School of Communications, says that “the journalist in me” saw de Valera’s early years as “a story that people will relate to very much, as well as a fully referenced history.”

In terms of the likely impact of his unsettled childhood, Kenny thinks “the facts speak for themselves” and de Valera’s early years had a lasting impact on his character.

Kenny says the correspondence between mother and son highlights de Valera’s strong sense of abandonment. He tells her in one letter that he feels like “an orphan”. He wanted to rejoin her in America but “she did not want him back as far as one can see from the correspondence.”

The book also details his lifelong quest to confirm the identity of his father. The only evidence is a name on his birth record. However, in this document, his father, who is thought to have been Spanish, is identified with the surname de Valero rather than de Valera. 

Even in his time as taoiseach, de Valera continued the search, employing Irish diplomats and others to follow various leads, all of which ran cold.

“So it was a futile search. It went on for years, not only with the help of Irish ambassadors in Spain, but with prominent Catholic priests in the United States who searched records in New Jersey and New York and elsewhere, and never came up with any whit of evidence.”

Despite the difficulties of his early years and his modest farming background, de Valera refused to let these disadvantages get in his way. “He had formed a view that he was going to achieve certain things. And that steely determination, that almost isolated determination, was forged there on the hills around County Limerick.”

Thanks to a combination of intelligence and good luck de Valera got to Blackrock College as a scholarship student and went on to study for a degree at the Royal University of Ireland. “How many children from a labourer's background in those days got anywhere near there, I mean even finished secondary school, never mind University?” wonders Kenny.

A series of teaching jobs followed his graduation. However, Kenny points out that de Valera’s interest in politics and the struggle for independence did not fully emerge until he joined the Irish Volunteers in his thirties. 

De Valera was the most senior commandant of the 1916 Rising to escape the British firing squad. Elevated to the position of President of Dáil Éireann, he was seen as a symbol of the rebellion. According to Kenny, “that symbolism was very important to him and gets tied up with his reasons for being so angry about the proposed treaty in 1921 and the role of the King in it.”

One of the most controversial aspects of de Valera’s career is his actions in the lead-up to the Irish Civil War, which followed the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Kenny believes that De Valera’s “speechifying up and down the country” helped to provoke the conflict. 

Press reports in the archives quote him saying that opponents of the treaty would have “to wade through the blood” of fellow Irishmen including members of the Irish Government.

While the decade from 1916 was one of violence and political turmoil, Kenny points out that de Valera’s wife Sinead was a source of strength and stability. “She never seemed to object even when he went off in 1916, and when he disappeared to America for most of the War of Independence,” says Kenny. “I think somebody should take it upon themselves to look more closely at this remarkable woman because without her I don't think de Valera would have been who he was.”

Following his extensive research of the revolutionary period, spanning four publications, Kenny’s judgement on de Valera is mixed. “Having done the study, I do admire him but between this book and the other books I do find his position in relation to the Treaty negotiations, and what happened after the Dáil accepted them to have been very self-centred and damaging.”

Kenny suggests that de Valera’s career could be seen as “a game of two halves”. Whether his later career was more positive for Ireland he declines to make a judgment but he is unequivocal when it comes to his role in the lead-up to the Civil War. 

“I do think his behaviour was pretty reprehensible at that stage. It was not appropriate politically, what he did. There wasn't a solid justification for it, either in theory or in practice.”