Nationalism, sentiment, and economics: relations between Ireland and Irish America in the postwar years

Ireland is a country whose sons and daughters hold her dearly above all, and it is evident in your great country as in others, that their love does not wither because the soil beneath their feet is foreign soil. St Patrick planted more than the shamrock when he came to Ireland--he planted in the hearts and minds of her people a spiritual fire that nothing can extinguish--a fire which still burns brightly in the hearts and minds of Irish men and women and those of Irish descent the world over.

St. Patrick's Day greetings from the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, to the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Hawaii, March 1957 (1)

DESPITE many assertions to the contrary, Mary Robinson was not the first Irish leader to reach out to the Irish diaspora. (2) W.T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1932, broadcast a St. Patrick's Day message to the United States in March 1926, several years before King George V began his annual Christmas broadcasts to the British Empire. (3) Cosgrave's first live broadcast in March 1931 seems to have attracted a large audience, judging by the many letters and postcards that he received from listeners throughout the United States and Canada. (4) de Valera continued the tradition of sending St. Patrick's Day greetings to the United States until 1938, when he relinquished the honor to Ireland's first President, Douglas Hyde. This is not the only evidence that independent Ireland kept in touch with the American Irish. During the late 1930s de Valera and Eoin MacNeill explored the possibility of establishing Irish cultural centers throughout the United States, so that Irish Americans and other Americans might learn "something about our past and present," but the plan was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II. (5) In February 1946 de Valera entertained four Irish-American prelates--Spellman of New York, Mooney of Detroit, Stritch of Chicago, and Glennon of St. Louis--in Killarney, when they visited Ireland en route to Rome, where they were consecrated as cardinals. The party included James Farley, who had served as Post-Master General in Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet, and Fr. Robert Gannon, the President of Fordham University. (6)

Visits to the United States by leading Irish politicians became more common in the 1950, with the introduction of regular trans-Atlantic flights; in 1956 John A. Costello became the first Irish head of government to spend St. Patrick's Day in the United States, inaugurating a pattern that many later Taoisigh have followed. In the morning he presented shamrocks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House, before flying to New York to preside at the St. Patrick's Day parade; that evening he was guest of honor at the annual dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia. (7) Yet, despite evidence of regular contact between the Dublin government and Irish America, there is some validity in the belief that independent Ireland failed to keep in contact with the wider Irish community. This distancing seems to have happened during the 1950s and the 1960s because of changes in the Irish community in the United States, and in political and economic policies in Ireland. This essay concentrates on the perspective of the Irish government. (8)

Mass emigration from Ireland to the United States came to a halt in 1929, following the Wall Street crash. By the late 1930 Britain had become the dominant destination for Irish emigrants, and by 1950 there were more people of Irish birth living in Britain than in the United States. Between 1951 and 1961 more than 400,000 men and women are believed to have emigrated from Ireland, but only 62,400 went to the United States. During this period, Irish immigrants filled less than 50 percent of the annual quota of 17,853 U.S. visas earmarked for Ireland in every year except 1957 and 1958, when a recession in Britain created greater interest in other destinations and the numbers emigrating to the United States increased to 9,124 and 10,383, respectively. (9)

Because of the small number of postwar emigrants to the United States, and the physical distance between the two countries, the Irish in America were seen in a very different light from the Irish in Britain. By the 1950s all the leading Irish newspapers had appointed London correspondents, and they carried regular reports about the social problems experienced by Irish emigrants in Britain. Irish politicians and churchmen relayed similar information on many occasions, in the hope that it would discourage young people from leaving Ireland. (10) Reports about the Irish in America were much more upbeat. While some local newspapers, such as the Western People, carried a regular column about Mayo emigrants in the greater New York area, most newspapers were more concerned with social and sporting events. The only reference to current emigration in the briefing notes prepared for visits by Irish ministers to the United States during the 1950s concerned the non-recognition of Irish medical degrees by the U.S. authorities, and the liability of Irish citizens for military service. (11) Most Irish politicians seem to have regarded emigration to the United States as a matter of history, and they tended to invoke Irish-America as evidence that there were some benefits from emigration: it gave Ireland an influence throughout the world that was disproportionate to its size. In 1948 during the debate on the Republic of Ireland Bill, the then-Taoiseach, John A. Costello, noted:

   We are a small country. Our material wealth is comparatively
   insignificant.... Though we are a small nation, we wield an influence in
   the world far in excess of what our mere physical size and the smallness of
   our population might warrant. We are sometimes accused of acting as if we
   were a big nation. But, in fact, we are a big nation. Our exiles have gone
   to practically every part of the world and have created for their
   motherland a spiritual dominion which more than compensates for her lack of
   size or material wealth. The Irish at home are only one section of a great
   race which has spread itself throughout the world, particularly in the
   great countries of North America and the Pacific area. (12)

Such consolatory images were particularly important during the 1950s, when the population of the Irish Republic fell to a postfamine low. When the 1956 Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act extended citizenship to the descendants of Irish emigrants on very liberal terms, the Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs, Captain Terence O'Neill (a future prime minister), claimed that this "attempt by a small pastoral republic to create a vast empire of citizens" was designed to compensate for the falling population in the Irish Republic. (13) If so, it was not very successful; until the late 1960s fewer than one hundred people a year claimed Irish citizenship by descent. (14)

Although Irish America had provided substantial funds for nationalist causes from the mid-nineteenth century onward, the new state made little effort to tap the economic and financial power of the Irish emigrant community until after World War II. (15) By the late 1940s, however, the dollar shortage was preoccupying most governments throughout Western Europe, and Ireland was forced to consider all possible means of increasing dollar earnings. Emigrant remittances and legacies provided substantially more dollars than merchandise exports to the United States, and this remained the case until the late 1950s. (16) The 1950 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation relieved bequests and the U.S. estates of returning emigrants of the threat of double-taxation, but the declining number of Irish-born residents of the United States meant that this was a dwindling source, so alternatives had to be explored. (17) Efforts to increase the value of Irish exports to the United States immediately after World War II did not prove very successful. In 1952 a team of U.S. consultants who were asked to select ten Irish products that could be marketed successfully in the United States failed to identify any suitable products. They also remarked on the smugness of Irish businesses and on "the illusion of appealing to Irish sentiment in the United States." (18)

Tourism appeared to offer better opportunities. When U.S. airlines were attempting to secure landing rights in Dublin in 1948-49, they held out the prospect that thousands of Irish-Americans might visit Ireland as part of a pilgrimage to Rome during the 1950 Holy Year. Although the Irish government refused to grant U.S. airlines landing rights in Dublin, because they had invested heavily in trans-Atlantic runways at Shannon, a committee of civil servants charged with identifying possible sources of dollar earnings decided to open an Irish tourist office near the Vatican to target some of the 15 million Irish Americans who were expected to visit Rome. Their report drew a distinction between visitors who had been born in Ireland or were first-generation Irish Americans, and others, who either had no Irish connections or were "but remotely of Irish origin' and whose tie to Ireland was "one only of vague sentiment." U.S. visitors with close family connections were expected to stay with relatives and to spend less money per diem, though they would remain in Ireland for a longer period than other tourists. As they would not require hotel accommodation, were not reliant on publicity to persuade them to visit Ireland, and would probably travel by the cheapest means of transport, by sea rather than by air, it was decided that any promotional campaign should be directed at the wealthier second- and third-generation Irish Americans. (19) It is not clear whether this proposal was implemented; government files in this period contain many promising ideas that were not put into effect for many years, and the frequent changes of government between 1948 and 1957 meant that decisions were often amended or reversed.

In 1951 tourist marketing in the United States took an entirely new direction when Pan American Airlines submitted proposals to Sean Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was responsible for tourism and transport, for a national festival that would serve as a device to extend the tourist season. The festival, to be known as An Tostal (pageant, muster, array, display), would be marketed using the slogan "Ireland at Home" and the shamrock symbol. John Leydon, secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce, remarked that the "English phrase `at home' will be used in connection with the event to convey the idea that the whole country will be at home to Irish exiles and friends from abroad." He advised against using Irish terms such as ceili or cuaird; the word craic was not commonly used until the 1980s. Leydon added that the scheme "is based largely on the sentimental attachment to this country of Irish Americans." (20)

Pan American Airlines planned to target the 20 million Irish Americans who were believed to "have a strong sentimental tie with the `Old Sod,' especially members of Irish fraternal organizations, church societies, and the marching groups that took part in St. Patrick's Day parades. They claimed that the "overseas Irish want and deserve recognition by the Irish Republic for their contribution to the advancement of their nation and the prestige of their people. Any recognition by the Irish Government will be returned ten-fold." The festival would serve the dual purposes of "drawing the Irish world more closely together with the mother country, and secondly, of developing visitor traffic to Ireland among these people who are most receptive to such an appeal." They recommended that the weeks immediately after St. Patrick's Day should be known as COME BACK TO ERIN MONTH, "in recognition of the exploits of Irish people overseas and as an expression of appreciation for their contribution to the creation of a free Ireland." This slogan would appeal to "an emotional desire on the part of people of Irish descent to visit Erin." The festival should offer a range of sporting and cultural events, including a world cup in hurling and Gaelic football, a special program at the Abbey Theatre featuring performances by actors and actresses of Irish descent, and an exhibition at the National Museum dedicated to the spread of the Irish people and their influence throughout the world from the earliest times. Visitors would be encouraged to travel to the county or counties of their ancestors. (21)

One of the most interesting suggestions was the compilation of a register of all the Irish overseas. Names would be inscribed on a scroll to be kept in the National Museum. Persons of Irish ancestry would be encouraged to register their children's names at birth. While the register would constitute an emotional record, it would also provide useful mailing lists for promoting tourism and exports. (22) Irish residents would be encouraged to write to relatives overseas "about the old sod," inviting them to visit Ireland. Another proposal was for a beauty contest, in Ireland and the United States, to choose "a typical Irish coleen," with Irish-born Hollywood stars Maureen O'Hara and Maureen O'Sullivan among the adjudicators. Shannon Airport would be promoted using the shamrock, "the most significant symbol of Ireland in the minds of people throughout the world." A large map at the airport should indicate where different family names originated. Pan America was also keen to construct a special national park beside the airport, called "The Valley of the Fairies or the home of the Leprachauns," complete with a slab showing the print of a tiny foot, but Sean Lemass regarded this as one marketing gimmick too far. (23)

The most remarkable feature of this proposal is the extent to which it defined the marketing strategy for Irish tourism in the United States for many years to come, with the mixture of sentiment, leprechauns, sport, references to "the old sod," and encouragement to visit the ancestral birthplace. (24) Although Lemass also vetoed the Irish-American beauty contest, the concept re-emerged some years later as the "Rose of Tralee." The origins of the Dublin Theatre Festival can also be traced to this document.

The first An Tostal opened on Easter Sunday 1953 with a three-week program of events. The official brochure promised "magnificent parades, colorful displays, bright attractions, spectacular exhibitions and a gay and joyous mustering of the Irish Clans from near and far." The decision to move the opening date from St. Patrick's Day to Easter meant that the festival became associated with the commemoration of the 1916 Rising. In 1953, as part of the opening ceremonies, de Valera laid a wreath at the 1916 memorial at Arbour Hill, before attending a memorial mass for the Old IRA. Religion and nationalism featured prominently in the 1953 program, though the only reference to these in the original proposal was the suggestion that the festival should recognize the part that Irish Americans had played in "the creation of a free Ireland." The centerpiece of the 1954 Tostal was a historical pageant at Tara. This was such a logistical nightmare that the 1955 pageant was held at the GAA stadium at Croke Park in Dublin. The 1953 souvenir handbook emphasized the festival's aim of "keeping `open door' to men and women of Irish birth and origin from all parts of the world, who have come back to renew their contact with our country." And the 1954 program included a special section listing local Tostal Centres, which was preceded by a note: "Visitors if you are Irish Born or if your kinsfolk were exiles you may wish to visit the places in Ireland most dear to you." But the large numbers of U.S. tourists failed to materialize, and by 1955 there was less emphasis on attractions for overseas visitors, and more on local participation. (25)

II

An Tostal combined Catholicism, nationalism, nostalgia, and sporting events in a representative cocktail of Irish culture. Politics lurked in the wings in the form of the anti-partition campaign, which raised some troubling issues for the tourist drive. Should Bord Failte, the state tourist board, encourage visitors to travel to Northern Ireland? Would anti-partition campaigners be permitted to participate in An Tostal? Sean Lemass was unenthusiastic on both fronts, and one official in his department urged that the anti-partition league should be kept "ten thousand miles away from all the events," though he would not object to "an authoritative lecture" on partition being included in the program. However, Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken recommended that the anti-partition league avail itself of "the excellent opportunity" that An Tostal presented to distribute its leaflets. He also believed that the festival would provide an opportunity for cross-border cooperation in promoting tourism, but he had few supporters. (26)

The Irish Anti-Partition League was founded in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, in November 1945. By 1949 all the main Irish political parties had joined the anti-partition campaign through the all-party Mansion House Committee. (27) There was a concerted effort to persuade foreign governments and the wider public of the moral case for a united Ireland. (28) Irish exiles in Britain, Australia, and the United States were especially targeted; when de Valera lost office in 1948 he toured all three countries to drum up support for the cause. After he addressed a large crowd at New York City Hall, the Irish Press noted that his first reference to partition brought deafening cheers from the crowd. They claimed that "the United Irish Societies are delighted, as they have made the Partition problem Number One in the scheduled publicity program." (29) John Bowman, however, has claimed that the audiences for de Valera's anti-partition speeches "were largely composed of the converted." (30) The anti-partition campaign attracted considerable support from Irish-American organizations in its early years. In November 1947, three thousand delegates representing organizations from thirty-eight states met in New York at an Irish Race Convention to form the American League for an Undivided Ireland (ALUI)--a loose confederation that would coordinate a U.S. campaign against partition. (31) Within a short time they had collected 200,000 signatures on a petition asking President Truman to use his efforts to end partition. (32) The U.S. government took the predictable line that partition was a matter for Britain and Ireland to resolve, and Irish efforts to link the ending of partition and NATO membership--by promising to join NATO if Ireland were united--proved an utter failure. (33) However, the American League for a United Ireland had some success in raising the anti-partition cause in Congress. In 1949 four congressmen and one senator moved unsuccessful resolutions on Capitol Hill against partition and in March 1950 Congress voted to withhold ERP (Marshall Plan aid) funds from Britain as long as partition continued, though the vote was later reversed. (34) Resolutions in favor of a united Ireland were tabled in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and several state legislatures in 1951. (35) Although the international campaign against partition had waned by 1953, the ALUI was distributing literature outlining the evils of partition to Catholic schools throughout the United States. (36)

References to partition seem to have been mandatory in all speeches by visiting Irish ministers during the 1950. (37) In October 1953 Sean Lemass, Tanaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce, gave a speech to the National Press Club in Washington about the Irish economy, in which he mentioned that the U.S. consultants who had advised the Irish government on tourism, trade development, forestry, mineral exploitation, and industrial development "were often very frank and outspoken in their comments on Irish conditions ... which is the way we wanted them." Lemass went on to argue that Ireland's progress, both in economic terms and in international relations, was "seriously impeded by the persistence of Partition.... Ireland's economic and social problems cannot be completely solved until the re-unification of the national territory has been brought about." (38)

In 1954, Joseph Brennan, counselor in the Irish Embassy in Washington, asked the Irish consuls in New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco to report on the level of commitment to the anti-partition campaign among recent emigrants. Brennan claimed that priests and others who were in regular contact with new Irish emigrants had reported that "these native-born Irish are rather less zealous and less interested in the anti-partition movement than one might expect or even hope." (39) John Conway and Paul Keating, the Irish Consuls-General in Chicago and New York, respectively, confirmed that this was correct. Keating acknowledged that there was "a certain amount of conflict" between new emigrants and established members of the Irish and Irish-American community:

   One reason for this I think is that the attitude of people who grew up in
   an Independent Ireland is different to that of people who knew Ireland
   before 1922, or perhaps only by hearsay. I think a great deal of the
   sentimentalism and romanticism of so many Irish-Americans grates on the
   younger people coming to this country. I think they are also at times
   irritated by the assumption which prevails in some quarters that they know
   nothing and I certainly know of some who resent very much being told that
   it was the Irish Americans who won the war for Independence in Ireland. On
   this account there is a clash. (40)

Conway claimed that recent emigrants had little difficulty in adjusting to life in America, because they had "come from a modernized Ireland in which even the rural areas have felt the impact of urban culture." The majority were not interested in joining Irish societies. (41)

"Operation Harvest," the IRA border campaign that began in December 1956, ended any residual support by the Irish government for the anti-partition campaign. (42) Internment was introduced in 1957. The Irish Embassy in Washington was expressing concern about the extremist tendencies of the ALUI some years before violence erupted. In 1953 the ALUI issued a press release that "congratulates the Irish patriotic men and women in the British-occupied six counties who protested by deeds and words against the official visit of the British Queen to their homeland ... and are willing to substitute deeds for words in speeding up the day of liberation." (43) In 1958 John Conway, the Irish Consul General in New York, reported that relations between the New York county clubs and the Irish government were cool because the Irish Institute, which acted as an effective headquarters for the county clubs, disagreed with the Irish government's stance toward the IRA's border campaign, and the director of the Irish Institute--Mayo-born lawyer Paul O'Dwyer, the brother of former New York mayor William O'Dwyer--had adopted an attitude toward the Dublin government that was "unfriendly and at times even offensive." Conway claimed that most of the membership of the county clubs shared O'Dwyer's attitude. (44)

When Sean Lemass, now Taoiseach, accepted an invitation in 1963 to speak at a dinner organized by the Irish Fellowship Club in Chicago (the most exclusive Irish Society in that city, which was controlled by Mayor Richard Daley), the Consul-General Sean (O'hEideain, advised that:

   Partition and the need for territorial re-unification should be mentioned,
   at least briefly. Such a mention is important because as Taoiseach Mr.
   Lemass will represent the integral Irish tradition. Moreover, any old IRA
   men and Old Clan na Gael men present, on reading the speech afterwards will
   expect it and others will be interested to hear it as the Time Magazine
   article, which so many read was a bit out of focus on the non-economic
   side, and on pre-1959 history. (45) Moreover there is a numerically small
   so-called Clan na Gael group in Chicago who if the government policy on a
   peaceful solution of Partition is not publicized appropriately may fill the
   vacuum with violent and non-violent words with possible grave results in
   deeds in perhaps a year or two. The other formerly intransigent group in
   Chicago, the Ulster Irish Liberty Legion has this year given up any
   pro-violent aims and has switched its energies to cultural activities. (46)

Lemass's speech concentrated on economic matters. His government was firmly committed to developing the Irish economy, and attracting U.S. industrial investment was an essential element in the overall development plan. The Time magazine coverage concentrated on these matters. Lemass was also keen to promote closer cooperation between the Dublin and Belfast governments. Economic development and policy toward Northern Ireland were closely linked, because Lemass believed that economic success in the Irish Republic would be a major factor in reducing the opposition of Ulster unionists toward a united Ireland. (47)

III

What role did the Dublin government envisage for Irish America in this new political and economic strategy? In June 1958, some months before the publication of the decisive 1958 Programme for Economic Expansion, Irish Consul-General John Conway, and his third secretary, Eamonn Kennedy, compiled a report on the political and economic influence of the Irish and Irish Americans in the New York area. (48) References to a "long-range program" suggest that this report formed part of the background material drawn up by government departments for the Programme for Economic Expansion. Conway claimed that the Irish carried little political or economic influence in the New York area. With the number of residents of Irish birth falling rapidly, Conway concluded that "influence solely through them is a diminishing possibility. Any long range program based only, or even largely, on their goodwill would probably have poor prospects of success." Although recent emigrants from Ireland had a somewhat higher economic status than earlier generations, it was probably below the general average, "although by no means poor by Irish or, for that matter, British standards." The county clubs, the main organizations for Irish immigrants, had only "a few thousand" members, and the numbers attending their social events, such as annual dances, were falling. Membership was overwhelmingly drawn from blue-collar workers; the clubs made no real effort to attract professional and white-collar immigrants. For this reason Conway believed that the leadership and membership of the county clubs carried "little economic or social weight," and, as already noted, they disagreed with the Irish government's attitude toward the IRA border campaign. (49)

Conway lamented the absence of a non-political organization "of a middle-class social or cultural nature" that would attract professional and white-collar emigrants. Because no such organization existed, the influence of middle-class Irish immigrants was "scattered and virtually valueless." He ended

this section of the report, concerning Irish-born residents of the New York area, by noting that they had "little political power, little social status, little financial or economic worth, and such cultural importance in the educational and theatrical field as individuals may exert. The leadership of the principal Irish organizations seem neither skilful enough nor dedicated enough to arrest the decline of our influence here if directed solely through our own Irish-born people." (50)

Conway was also skeptical about the possible influence that the estimated 29 million Irish Americans might exercise in favor of Ireland, because he believed that for the majority of Irish Americans Catholicism was more important than Irishness. He described the New York St. Patrick's Day parade as "a demonstration of Catholic presence with some Irish overtones." Although many Irish Americans worked in radio and television, he doubted that they exercised much influence, because radio and television were dominated by liberals, and "the `liberal' point of view is not essentially an Irish-American characteristic." While Irish Americans prominent in New York financial circles were active in Catholic church organizations, Conway found that "with one or two exceptions ... their interest in Ireland is limited to a sentimental regard for their ancestry, which does not involve financial expenditure." (51) As to politics, he claimed that Irish-Americans "have not quite reached the top political rung," and he predicted that John E Kennedy was unlikely to become president of the United States. The enhanced economic and social status of Irish Americans meant that they were no longer voting en masse for the Democratic party; and their political influence was fading as a consequence. Conway summarized the position as follows:

   Our influence in the United States is a function of the amount of interest
   Irish-Americans have in Ireland, rather than in being Irish. Being "Irish"
   means merely having Irish ancestry, feeling a sentimental regard for it and
   displaying the "green" on St. Patrick's Day. It is remarkable the extent to
   which being Irish does not involve any particular enthusiasm for, or even
   interest in, Ireland. Ireland's problems have small place in the
   consciousness of Irish-Americans. 1916 is a dim memory. (52)

Intermarriage and assimilation, Conway continued, inevitably brought a lessening of interest in Ireland. Although there was "a natural race relationship" between Ireland and Irish America, he suggested that "our contact with Irish-Americans is so limited that we are in danger of losing any real connection with them." While some Congressmen and other politicians would give "us [presumably Irish diplomats] a casual hearing," he warned that "it would be a mistake to expect too much of them." Irish Americans were not interested in Irish domestic affairs, and Ireland's international position was not sufficiently important to attract their interest. The best approach would be to nurture their "friendly interest" through some type of cultural organization. Affluent Irish Americans might display a greater interest in Ireland "if social cachet were provided." As for influencing U.S. policy, Conway believed that "our one vote" at the United Nations "exercised the United States State Department considerably more than any resolution passed by an Irish-American organization." (53)

As to the economic potential of the Irish-American market, tourism was the only sector in which ethnicity seemed to be a promising selling point, although Bord Failte believed that the ethnic market was limited and declining. Coras Trachtala--the state-owned Irish trade board--described the level of interest shown by Irish emigrants and Irish Americans in Irish produce as "disappointing." The Industrial Development Authority--the state organization that promoted foreign industrial investment in Ireland--reported that Irish-American industrialists were disinclined to show any particular enthusiasm for Ireland "merely because of their racial background." With the possible exception of tourism, "Irish Americans undoubtedly represent tremendous economic power but such power is neither concentrated enough nor `Irish' enough to risk very much for Ireland's benefit." (54)

When Secretary of the Department of Finance T.K. Whitaker convened a group of senior Irish civil servants in 1960 to consider the merits of establishing an Irish Chamber of Commerce in the United States, they decided that "the Irish Chamber of Commerce in the United States should not be an Irish-American organization"; instead, "the members should be the heads of important American business, commercial and banking organizations; they need have no Irish connections, but it is desirable that some at least are well disposed towards Ireland." (55) Instrumentalism had triumphed over sentiment; Irish America was being redefined on the basis of economic interest, rather than ethnicity. When the establishment of the Irish-American Council for Industry and Commerce was announced in January 1963, it was determined that membership would be strictly limited both in terms of numbers and status. (56) While it would be too extreme to suggest that "No Irish need apply," applicants would be carefully vetted before being admitted. In 1962 the Irish Embassy in Washington reopened dusty files dating from the 1930s concerning a proposed Irish-American cultural foundation. Officials determined that the first step should be to form a fundraising committee consisting of "influential and wealthy persons" in the United States. They expressed hopes that the foundation would provide "a welcome outlet for the vague--and even at times misguided--desires of so many existing Irish bodies in the US to promote the well-being of "`the old country.'" Once again the emphasis was on wealth and status, with Irish ancestry an optional qualification. (57)

Official efforts to project an image of Ireland as a modern, economically successful nation took full advantage of the election of John E Kennedy as President of the United States. Sean Lemass's visit to the United States in October 1963 was a deliberate attempt to capitalize on Kennedy's triumphant visit to Ireland some months earlier. The Kennedy family history and the targeting of affluent Americans, whose links with Ireland were often rather tenuous, led to an emphasis on famine-era emigrants and their descendants who had achieved fame and fortune. In May 1963, Aedan O'Beirne of the Irish Embassy in Washington reported that Cecil Woodham-Smith's best-selling book, The Great Famine, had a very beneficial impact on American attitudes toward Ireland, because it had succeeded "in putting into focus Irish emigration into the United States and generally of winning a sympathy and respect for the Irish emigrant who was the victim of the Famine and its consequences in the ensuing Century." (58) The Irish consulate in San Francisco began to compile profiles of successful citizens of California with Irish ancestry, in the hope of targeting them for membership of business or cultural organizations. (59)

The success achieved by the descendants of nineteenth-century emigrants, who left a poverty-stricken Ireland, was consistent with the image of a modern successful Ireland, whereas the reality of continuing emigration was not. This may explain why Irish officials adopted such a sanguine attitude toward proposals to reform U.S. immigration laws, including an end to national quotas. In 1963 an official in the Irish embassy in Washington noted the widely held belief that the existing immigration quotas were "outmoded, unjust and should be revised." (60) In 1965 Irish officials concluded that proposed legislation did not appear to be contrary to Irish interests. Although national quotas would end, they believed that Irish applicants would be in a favorable position, because of their comparatively high level of education, their fluency in English, and the large number of Irish people with relatives who were U.S. citizens.

When the new immigration law came into effect in 1968, however, the number of immigrant visas awarded to Irish immigrants fell sharply. Only two hundred twenty-seven emigrant visas were awarded to Irish citizens during the first six months. The overwhelming majority of successful applicants were close relatives of American citizens, who did not require a labor clearance; or they fell into special categories such as ministers of religion, and emigrants who had formerly resided in the United States for some years, but had not taken out U.S. citizenship. The Irish Embassy in Washington acknowledged that if the new immigration act were not in force, Irish immigration in 1969 would have been in the region of four thousand, more than twice the actual figure. Contrary to the belief expressed in 1963 that Irish emigrants had a high standard of education, most applicants were the sons and daughters of small farmers, who had few job skills and only elementary education; they ranked very low in U.S. immigrant preferences. (61)

In 1954 Paul Keating, the Irish Consul-General in New York, had noted that the Irish consulate made no effort to keep in contact with the emigrant community: "Generally speaking we are embarrassed by callers who have nothing to recommend them except their Irish citizenship." Keating added that "We cannot afford to entertain them ... we do not have even a St. Patrick's Day reception for Irish citizens and are forced by our financial circumstances to avoid them rather than to associate with them." (62) By the 1960s Irish government finances were less straitened, but Ireland's official hospitality was increasingly directed at wealthy and influential men and women, who did not necessarily have strong ethnic connections to Ireland. Those who had "nothing to recommend them" were left to their own devices. The longer term consequences of this official indifference can be seen in the widening gulf between the Irish government and Irish-American organizations over the Northern Ireland crisis that erupted in 1969, foreshadowed by the differing views over "Operation Harvest." It would be evident also in the belated response by the Irish authorities to the problem of illegal or "undocumented" Irish immigrants in the 1980s.

(1) National Archives of Ireland (hereafter NAI), Department of the Taoiseach files, S5683.

(2) Helen Burke and Olivia O'Leary, Mary Robinson: The Authorised Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998), 189-205. On 2 February 1995, President Robinson addressed both Houses of the Oireachtas, delivering a speech entitled "Cherishing the Diaspora."

(3) NAI, Department of the Taoiseach files, S5111/1, Broadcast Messages by President. King George V made his first broadcast at Christmas 1932. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9.

(4) NAI, S5111/7, S5111/8. This broadcast was on the CBS network. Cosgrave recorded a separate St. Patrick's Day message that was broadcast on 15 March by NBC in Chicago; the text was published in the Chicago Triibune (S5111/6). Earlier addresses were either pre-recorded, or read on Cosgrave's behalf by a U.S. broadcaster.

(5) NAI, S9215A, Irish-American Cultural Foundation.

(6) Sean Cronin, Washington's Irish Policy 1916-1986: Independence, Partition, Neutrality (Dublin: Anvil Press, 1987), 166.

(7) NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs (hereafter DFA), Washington Files, D22-1, Visit of Taoiseach John A. Costello to the United States, 1956.

(8) For Irish America see Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (New York: Longman, 2000), ch. 6, and David M. Reimers, "Overview. An End and a Beginning," in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 419-38.

(9) Patrick J. Blessing, The Irish in America: A Guide to the Literature and Manuscript Collections (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), Table 13, 308; Thomas J. Archdeacon, Becoming American: An Ethnic History (London: Collier Macmillan, 1983), 175. Estimates of net emigration derived from the Census of Population suggest that emigration reached 197,000 during the period 1951-56, and 212,000 in the years 1956-61. Robert E. Kennedy, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1973), 212-13.

(10) Eamon de Valera gave a speech in Galway on 29 August 1951, in which he claimed that the living conditions of many Irish emigrants to Britain were far inferior to what they would have enjoyed in Ireland. de Valera drew on reports that he had received from an English social worker. His speech was widely reported in British and Irish newspapers, provoking hostile comments from the local authorities in many English cities. See NAI, S11582B, Irish labor emigration to Britain and Northern Ireland.

(11) The United States recognized medical degrees awarded by British medical schools and by Queen's University Belfast, but Irish medical graduates had to undergo an internship year and sit the examinations of state medical boards. Although the 1950 Irish-American Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation exempted Irish nationals from military service, this exemption was not observed by local draft boards. By the 1960s, and perhaps earlier, successful applicants for immigrant visas to the United States were required to waive their right to exemption. NAI, DFA, Washington Files, D23, Visit to the USA by Sean Lemass, 1953.

(12) John A. Costello, Taoiseach, during the second stage of the Republic of Ireland Bill, Published Debates of Dail Eireann, 24 November 1948, cols. 392-93.

(13) Northern Ireland Parliamentary Debates, 10 October 1956, col. 2.

(14) Mary E. Daly, "`Cherishing all the Children': Irish Citizenship and Nationality Laws," Irish Historical Studies (forthcoming).

(15) In 1927 $15 million of the $25 million Second Irish National Loan was raised in the United States, but the cost of interest and loan repayments rose by 20 percent following the 1931 devaluation of sterling, and this deterred the Irish government from repeating the exercise; the depressed state of the U.S. economy was a further consideration. NAI, S563, Second National Loan.

(16) Statistics on dollar exports and remittances and bequests from the dollar area can be found in the various Statistical Abstracts, an official publication that has been issued annually since 1931; 1958 was the first occasion that the value of merchandise exports, 7.48 million [pounds sterling], exceeded the value of remittances and bequests, 6.5 million [pounds sterling].

(17) Irish Trade Journal and Statistical Bulletin, March 1950, 8.

(18) NAI, S14818 B/2.

(19) NAI, S10325 C/1, Report of interdepartmental committee on dollar earnings. Report on tourism.

(20) Irish Press, 7 April 1952. The harp was the national symbol of the Irish state, but was even more widely identified with Ireland in the United States. Leydon quotes, NAI, S15297A, An Tostal.

(21) NAI, S15297A, An Tostal.

(22) The Irish export board also attempted to promote exports of altar vestments and religious objects in the United States around this time.

(23) NAI, S15297A, An Tostal.

(24) Ibid.

(25) An Tostal Program and Souvenir Handbook, 1953; Bord Failte Calendar of Events, 1954-58. Dollar revenue from tourism was 4.6 million [pounds sterling] in 1952 but fell to 1.7 million [pounds sterling] in 1953. Many Americans who traveled to Ireland for An Tostal complained about the unsettled weather.

(26) NAI, S15297B.

(27) An Taoiseach John A. Costello invited the leaders of all parties in Dail Eireann to a meeting at Dublin's Mansion House in January 1949 in response to the militant language of the Ulster Unionist party during an election campaign in Northern Ireland. See David McCullough, A Makeshift Majority: The First Inter-Party Government, 1948-51 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1998), 114-16.

(28) John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 258-60.

(29) N.a., With de Valera in America and Australia (Dublin: Irish Press, 1948).

(30) Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 274.

(31) NAI, DFA, D23, Washington Embassy, Official American Attitudes to Partition, briefing paper prepared for visit by Sean Lemass in 1953.

(32) Cronin, Washington's Irish Policy, 194.

(33) Ronan Fanning, "The United States and Irish Participation in NATO: The Debate of 1950," Irish Studies in International Affairs (1979), 38-48.

(34) Cronin, Washington's Irish Policy, 274-75. The resolutions were moved by Congressmen John Fogarty (Rhode Island), Thomas Lane (Massachusetts), Enda Kelly (New York), Mike Mansfield (Montana), and Senator Everett Dirksen (Illinois). Fogarty moved the successful resolution linking partition and ERP funding for Britain.

(35) NAI, DFA, [D.sub.23].

(36) Ibid.

(37) This was not necessarily the case before World War II, though in 1932, within days of taking office, de Valera broadcast a speech to mark the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, which he devoted to the theme of a united Ireland.

(38) NAI, DFA, D23, Speech by Sean Lemass to National Press Club, Washington, 1 October 1953.

(39) NAI, DFA, Washington Embassy, P115/1, Brennan to Pat Hughes, Consul of Ireland, San Francisco; copies to Irish Consuls General in Boston, Chicago, and New York, 15 July 1954.

(40) NAI, DFA, Washington Embassy, P115/1, Keating to Brennan, 22 July 1954.

(41) NAI, DFA, P115/1.

(42) Thomas Hennessy, A History of Northern Ireland 1920-1996 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1997), 105-7.

(43) NAI, DFA, [D.sub.23], Official American attitudes to partition, briefing paper prepared for visit by Sean Lemass in 1953.

(44) NAI, DFA, P115/1.

(45) The article appeared as a cover story on 12 July 1963, with a picture of Lemass on the cover. The article, which concentrated on Irish economic development, did not refer to partition, and said little about political developments after 1922, though it mentioned Irish neutrality during World War II.

(46) NAI, DFA 22/I, Washington Embassy.

(47) See Lemass's speech to Dublin Chamber of Commerce, May 1961

(48) The "Programme for Economic Expansion" outlined a strategy for regenerating the Irish economy that involved switching government capital spending from social investments such as housing and hospitals to programs that would generate an economic return. It also proposed to move the Irish economy from protection toward free trade, in anticipation of Ireland joining the proposed European Economic Community at some future date. A drive to encourage overseas investment, particularly investment by U.S. industrial firms, formed part of this strategy. The program, which was launched in November 1958, is generally seen as a key factor in transforming the Irish economy.

(49) NAI, DFA, P115/1, 27 June 1958.

(50) Ibid.

(51) Ibid.

(52) Ibid.

(53) Ibid. It is also possible that Ireland's independent stance at the United Nations may have damaged relations with some sections of Irish America.

(54) Ibid.

(55) NAI, S15245A, Irish Chamber of Commerce in USA.

(56) NAI, S15245/B/63.

(57) NAI, S9215/B/62.

(58) NAI, DFA, P115/1, 25 May 1963.

(59) Ibid., June 1963.

(60) NAI, DFA, C32, Campbell to Rush, 10 April 1963.

(61) NAI, DFA, Washington Files, C60, Irish Immigration.

(62) NAI, DFA, P115/1.

MARY E. DALY is Professor of Irish History at University College, Dublin, and the author of numerous books and articles on Irish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Dublin: The Deposed Capital, 1860-1914 (1984), The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment (1997), Women and Work in Ireland (1997), and The First Department: The Department of Agriculture 1900-2000 (2001).

COPYRIGHT 2002 Irish American Cultural Institute
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group