Neutrality Policy
On the declaration of the emergency, Walshe asked for assurances from the German minister in Dublin, Eduard Hempel that Germany would not use its legation for espionage nor attack Irish trade with Britain. He then travelled to London on 6 September where he met the Dominions Secretary, Anthony Eden, who was conciliatory and defended Irish neutrality in subsequent Cabinet meetings. In addition, the appointment of Sir John Maffey as a British representative in Dublin was agreed.
For the Irish government, neutrality meant not showing partiality to either side. On one hand, that meant the open announcement of military activity such as the sighting of submarines or the arrival of parachutists, and the suppression of any foreign intelligence activity. Ireland's geographic position meant that this policy (which was, in the view of most historians, applied fully and consistently) tended to benefit the Allies more than Germany. For example, British servicemen who crashed over the State were allowed to go free if they could claim not to have been on a combat mission, otherwise they were released "on licence" (promise to remain). Many chose to escape to Great Britain via Northern Ireland. Also, Allied mechanics were allowed to retrieve crash landed Allied aircraft. There was extensive cooperation between British and Irish intelligence and the exchange of information such as detailed weather reports of the Atlantic Ocean; the decision to go ahead with the D-day landings was decided by a weather report from Blacksod Bay, County Mayo.
On the other hand, the government did not show any overt preference for either side, unlike the United States when it was neutral. This is partly because de Valera had to keep national unity, which meant accommodating the large swathe of Irish society that rejected anything to do with the British, some of whom admired Germany (which had failed in an attempt to supply a small cache of arms to the rebels of 1916) to some extent. These attitudes were shared by Aiken, and Walshe, and to a large extent by de Valera himself. The Fianna Fáil government ruled alone and did not accommodate any other party in decision-making, unlike the British National Government.
Read more about this topic: The Emergency (Ireland)
Famous quotes containing the words neutrality and/or policy:
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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