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New Book - De Valera was a spy.
 national |
history and heritage |
opinion/analysis
 Wednesday November 18, 2009 19:04 by An Puca - Me Fein
Book Review - England's Greatest Spy. Eamon De Valera
Book Review - England's Greatest Spy. Eamon De Valera by John J. Turi Book Review:- “England’s Greatest Spy – Eamonn De Valera.” By John J. Turi. Published by Stacey International, London 2009. ISBN 978 – 1 – 906768-09-6
Last week I stumbled across the above book, in O Mahony’s Bookshop, Limerick. I was completely unaware of the radio debate that had taken place on RTE a few hours earlier between the author and the veteran Irish historian and journalist Tim Pat Coogan. I found the title of the book both shocking and intriguing as this weighty tome seemed to rally against the perceived orthodoxy, and whole fabric of accepted modern Irish politics and twentieth century Irish history. After reading the sleeve notes which stated: “Turi presents startling new evidence to prove the man who led Ireland throughout most of the 20th century [De Valera] … was an agent for England” I decided, although immediately sceptical of such a controversial claim, to read the book eager as a historian examine this “new evidence” and determined to try and keep an open mind about the book’s central thesis.
Unfortunately the new evidence promised in the sleeve notes does not appear in the main body of the book. Instead the reader is treated (mistreated?) to a whopping 462 page political rant which re-hashes worn out conspiracy theories and pub talk about ‘Who killed Michael Collins?’. Added to these are the author’s even more fantastic deductions about the War of Independence and Civil War which he arrives at without providing any conclusive documentary evidence. Infact Turi’s whole thesis that De Valera was a British Agent seems based completely on supposition, propaganda stories, wild interpretation of accepted facts, hear say and illogical conjecture. Throughout the book any setbacks that are encountered by those fighting for Irish independence are immediately ascribed to conspiracy by Mr. Turi, who never considers the more realistic possibility that these events were due to bad luck, chance, incompetence or poor decision making. What little he does offer as evidence to prove his claims is regularly liberally interpreted to suit his theories – rather than adjusting his theories to suit the facts.
Turi’s central argument is that the British authorities in Ireland were fully aware of the I.R.B’s plans for the 1916 Rising but allowed the rebellion to take place so that they could organise a “machine gun massacre” of the rebel Irish. According to Turi the British had already ensured the rebellion would failure through the actions of their spy Austin Stack was responsible for the capture of the German arms shipment on the Aud. This and not Eoin Mc Neill’s countermanding order was responsible for the failure of the rebellion. Turi then claims that after his surrender to the British and imprisonment in Kilmainham Jail, De Valera was given a stark choice become a British Agent or else be executed along with Pearse, Connolly and co…
De Valera readily agrees and through the secret machinations of Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, he is appointed leader of Sinn Fein in 1917. This of course was part of a secret British plot to split the Sinn Fein party, code named: “Assignment Sinn Fein” Unfortunately for the British this plot is then foiled by one of the heroes of Mr. Turi’s tale Arthur Griffith. De Valera is arrested by the British and imprisoned in Lincoln Jail, England and then his escape is staged so that De Valera can go to America to sabotage the Irish American groups lobbying the American President to support Irish Independence. This secret operation is dubbed “Assignment America”
Eventually De Valera takes part in “Assignment Ireland” whereby he returns home to destroy Sinn Fein and The I.R.A. From within – he succeeds and the I.R.A. are forced to negotiate with the British. In two further British assignments - ‘Chaos’ and ‘Civil War’ De Valera first ensures that the Irish delegation in the Treaty negotiations will not secure a Republic and then he argues against the Treaty so that he can plunge the south of Ireland into Civil War. This of course is orchestrated by the British because Michael Collins is about to cause trouble for them in the north, and the Civil War will keep him distracted long enough for De Valera’s next assignment - the assassination of both Griffith and Collins.
Turi’s heroes Collins and Griffith of course by how are about to discover De Valera’s role as a British agent. Griffith is murdered after being served arsenic laden chocolates, and Collins’s assassination / murder is organised personally by De Valera and Emmett Dalton in Cork. Collins wasn’t hidden by the I.R.A. ambushers at Bealnablath on 22nd of August 1922 he was actually shot in the back and then in the head by a British agent who was posing as a Free State soldier. The story doesn’t end there – Sean Hales T.D. starts investigating the plot and is also murdered by De Valera’s henchmen.
De Valera remains working as a British agent long after he is elected President and under their guidance manages to sabotage the Irish economy and keep Ireland neutral during World War Two in order to create anti-Irish feeling in the U.S. By the end of the book the only thing surprising to the reader is that Mr. Turi’s does not claim that De Valera’s masters in the British Government were not themselves being controlled by the Free Masons and the Elders of Zion who secretly control the world!
Does Mr. Turi’s book present any real proof to support these claims? Of course not, but he claims the proof exists – on page 302 Turi actually calls for the exhumation of Collin’s remains to prove he was murdered! On page 298 he quotes a Dr. Singh calling for Griffiths remains to be exhumed to prove he was also murdered. What would be the purpose of these exhumations? On page 462 the need for these exhumations is made clear when Turi calls for De Valera to be given a posthumous trial on charges of “treason, fraud and conspiracy to murder.”
Not content with merely vilifying De Valera, the author also derides a whole host of Republican figures who opposed Collins and the Treaty. Turi often uses rumour innuendo and Pro-Treaty and British propaganda tales of the period to do so. According to Turi: Countess Marcivictz was a coward. De Valera may have had an extra marital affair. Liam Lynch was ‘quite possibly insane’. Oscar Tranor the leader of the I.R.A.’s Dublin brigade was more interested in killing Irishmen than British soldiers. Austin Stack was a British spy since at least 1916. Erskine Childers ‘spent his whole life in the service of England and English Imperialism.’
One of the only leading anti-Treaty republicans who does not suffer character assassination at the pen of Mr. Turi is Cathal Brugha. It would have been incredibly difficult for Mr. Turis to question the integrity and motives of Brugha who had been severely wounded by a hand grenade, as well as by multiple gunshot wounds during the 1916 rising. After suffering these wounds Brugha initially was not expected to survive by his comrades. However since Brugha did survive and became one of Collins’s main rivals for power after 1916 it is surprising that Turi does not implicate him in the conspiracy.
Infact the name Cathal Brugha does not occur once in the whole book!!! Instead, rather confusingly, Brugha is only referred to by the English language translation of his name Charles Burgess.
Turi who boasts that he has read over two hundred books on the subject must have known that Irish and British historians uniformly refer to the man as Cathal Brugha. Intriguingly when Turi quotes passages from other books which mention Cathal Brugha he seems to have deliberately translated the name in the quote from ‘Brugha’ to ‘Burgess’. Is it possible that when Mr. Turi was unable to discredit one of Michael Collins’s main rivals for power that he decided instead to try and airbrush him from the history books using literary slight of hand? Or have I too begun to suffer the effect of Mr. Turi’s love of illogical and absurd conspiracy theories?
As well as having a very thin, convoluted, unrealistic and often contradictory plot, Mr. Turi’s book suffers further from a disorganised chronology which has several large gaps in the first half of the book. The narrative constantly jumping back and forward in time to so often that it reminded me of the television series “Quantum Leap” Amazingly there is no account of the East Clare by-election of 1917 – I cannot think of too many biographies of politicians that do not give an account of the first time they stand successfully for public office! The whole narrative of the book is badly written, confusing and in some places incomprehensible, In the chapter about the Treaty negotiations and the causes and beginning of the Irish Civil War Turi’s thesis that De Valera was a spy gets lost completely, only to re-emerge in the narrative like a nmany headed hydra at a later point.
The language, grammar, terms and descriptive phrases used in the book are very, very poor, and couched in ‘twee’ Irish-American stereotypes of Ireland. This occurs so often as to be annoying and distracting. Ireland is referred to as ‘the Emerald Isle” or the “oulde sod”, books about Irish history are ‘Gaelic history books’, De Valera’s friends and comrades are his ‘buddies’ etc. The author also seems to suffer from difficulties with the geography of Britain and Ireland. The phrases England and Britain are constantly interchanged and confused in the text, on page 258 Turi paradoxically defines Scottish Planters as being “English settlers.” The British Prime Minister of the period Lloyd George is described on page 192 as “Lloyd George, a Welsh [sic] and Celt himself” – surely this should have read: ‘Lloyd George, a Welshman and fellow Celt (like De Valera). In many cases the language appears, to me, to be low brow and crass ie. page 259 “The decision was a slam-dunk, a no brainer”, on page 292 events are “shifted into fast forward”
On page 294 “Modest and frugal, Griffith literally sold the shirt off his back to keep his newspapers alive.” Whilst I can appreciate and agree with the point Turi is apparently(?) trying to make here that Griffith often deprived himself of money which he diverted to ensure the survival of his political newspapers – the sentence quoted suggests that Arthur Griffith went bare-chested to a used shirt traders in Dublin to finance his newspapers!
While I can appreciate that these seemingly grammatical mistakes may be the result of the many cultural and linguistic-dialectic differences between America and Ireland , it should be noted that other American / Irish American historians writing about the same period such as T. Ryle Dwyer and John Borgovono do not use similar phraseology in their work and take some care to tailor it to their Irish readership. I do not mean to ‘nit pick’ or become pedantic in highlighting these grammatical / descriptive errors which seem trivial when taken individually, occur so often through out the text that they become infuriating.
There are no attempts at impartiality of language or tone throughout the book
British soldiers are described as ‘screaming deamons’ Cromwell is the ‘plague of all plagues’. Orangemen and Irish Unionists are ‘Unionist goon’s’ Members of the Anti- Treaty I.R.A. during the Civil War are described as ‘IRA dissidents’ a heavily politicised, and ‘loaded’ modern political term connected with the post 1998 peace process.
De Valera is described by Turoi using imagery which is suggest to my mind the forces of the occult – the implication being as far as I could see that De Valera was a tool of evil. “Eamonn De Valera cast his long black shadow on events…” De Valera’s supposed British allies are “screaming demons”. Page 66 “Eamonn De Valera, forsaking martyrdom, made his Faustian pact with the Devil…” Or if the Prince of Darkness isn’t harsh enough how about Hitler! Page 450 “De Valera’s extremists in the Irish Republican Army were the Irish version of Hitler’s Brown Shirt enforcers.”
The only redeeming features in the whole book are Mr. Turi’s critical examination of the many myth’s surrounding of De Valera’s parentage in Chapter 2, and the examination of De Valera’s poor performance as a military commander during the 1916 Rising in Chapter 4. These deservingly challenge propaganda myths later created around De Valera’s early life and career, by sympathetic historians. Perhaps if Mr. Turi had not indulged in fantastic conspiracy theories, and firmly grounded himself in factual evidence, he might have produced a poor to fair critical biography of De Valera worth reading.
Finally to make matters worse Turi continually makes scathing and insulting references to a whole host of Irish historians and previous De Valera biographers including Longford and O Neill, Desmond Ryan, Joe Whelan, Dorothy Mc Ardle, T.Ryle Dwyer and Tim Pat Coogan. He seemingly regards them all as incompetents for not discovering De Valera’s alleged role as a British spy. These attacks are counter productive to Mr. Turi’s argument, and give the impression that not only is he a ‘conspicary nut’, he is also a bitter ‘crank’.
This book is not a work to be tossed aside lightly – it should hurled away from the reader with great force! It has often been said with regard to publishing that “Paper never refused ink.” I would suggest that if Mr. Turi publishes any other similar works in the future that he uses softer and more absorbent paper! The great tragedy here is that Mr Turi’s unfounded conspiracy ramblings will receive far more media attention and airtime, because of their controversial nature, than more deserving, thought provoking and well researched books on the period that have been recently published such as Terrence O Reilly’s “Rebel Heart - George Lennon Flying Column Commander”, William Sheehan’s “Hearts And Mines” or T.Ryle Dwyers “Michael Collins The Man Who Won The War”
In Turi’s interview with Fiona Audley for the Irish Post newspaper, the author commented about De Valera: “I don’t have enough bad words to say about him.” Having taken the time to read and suffer through all 462 pages of it, it is my humble opinion that the same could be said about Mr. Turi’s book! So I think I’ll end it here…
If the above arguments have failed to convince you that the book is a “feeble effort” ( The authors own modest description. Preface Page xi) then you might be interested in listening to Tim Pat Coogan in debate with Mr. Turi on the Pat Kenny Radio show, available by podcast at the below link.
http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2009/pc/pod-v-101109-21m42s-...y.mp3
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Comments (13 of 13)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13Thank you very much for taking the bullet for the rest of us, so that we won't be tempted to waste money out of curiousity.
Sadly this book features on Waterstones best seller list.
Mr Turi has done no original research of his own, instead cannibalising the work of reliable biographers. He actually cites the "Public Record Office" (which has been named the "National Archives" for several years now) but gives no details of documents accessed.
As TPC points out, Dev was despised by Michael Collins who as IRA Director of Intelligence would have had the motive and the means to bring him down.
By your description of it, seems like a big pile of shi*e. I wont buy the book ever but if it ever crosses my path I'll give it a read. I love Tim Pat Coogan and am currently reading his book 'The Troubles'... I'll give the radio interview a listen later and just want to say thanks for the post as Im not living at home any more and am a bit out of the loop...
Unfortunately it is mandatory to read any particular book before one may legitimately critiscise and , as a pensioner, I do not have not the means to purchase but I will be on the waiting list at my local Library.
I will comment briefly ,however, on the previous submissions concerning Mr Turi's book.
I was listening to that Tim Pat Coogan "debate" with him on the Pat Kenny morning radio show on RTE and I have to say that Tim Pat's' "rebuttal" of Turi's claims about De Valera were far from convincing. There certainly was no Coup de Grace from Mr Coogan but I will allow that it was on an early morning programme.
Another , by far the more satisfactory, critiscism came from Mr Ryle Dwyer, the highly acclaimed author of many histories of the period in question, (his latest published work is "Behind the Green Curtain" Re: Ireland's neutrality in WW2) in the IRISH EXAMINER last week (16/11/'09). His summation of Turi's work ? "banshee nonsense" !!
It seems now that after the revisionism and use of spurious sources by the Canadian Peter Hart it is "open season" on Irish History by people like John Turi.
There's a bit in the interview where Turi refers to the Sinn Fein "Ard Fay" in 1917....
Knowing what we now know and what we have yet to discover about the republican leadership in our recent defeat to the Brits on this island - I pose this question, Is Adams the Devalera or the Collins of our time ???
Hello Redundant Republican,
Fair enough they all abandoned armed struggle to take up constitutional politics to greater and lesser degrees, and in doing so many would argue that they betrayed their principles to get into power. However if you are going to argue that any of them are paid Britis spies I wont dismiss you because of my political beliefs or opinions about their characters but I will ask that you furnish some proof...
Mr. Turi provides no proof to back up his politically motivated wild claims and conspiracies - that is my main objection to his work!
I would not wish to suggest that Adams, Dev or Collins were British agents, my question was simply how will history judge Adams as history cast shadows over Dev and Collins. Dev did not go to London to sign the treaty, he sent the military man. Adams sent Mc Guinness. Is Adams a British spy? I would be of the opinion that the republican movements main difficulties in terms of infiltration was in Belfast. I would be of the opinion that a committed and genuine leader of the republican movement would have been assasinated by British agents. Dev lived to an old age while Collins died young with perhaps knowledge of British agents. Proof, what is proof? When it is impossible to make sense of what has occured then opinion is important.Why was Adams friend and close associate Donaldson assasinated? The war was lost in Belfast, the question is why and who? A book about Dev being a spy over 80 years after the event and when no one cares, will we have to wait until 2100 for questions about Adams or will we use common sense. Sorry I have no proof but I do know that the republican movement was compromised at the highest level and Adams is still alive.
There are parallels to the end of the Civil War in the 'Peace Process'; after years of fighting, people just wanted to get on with their lives, even if it meant a fudged compromise. It's questionable how much active popular support, rather than reluctance to denounce, the IRA had in the years approaching the beginning of the 'Peace Process', given its tactic of bombing civilians in Britain.
So, yet another book that has more sensation than scholarship? File with all the others...
Getting back to the thread's topic: here's TPC's review of the book
I have recently been apprised of Mr. O Ruairc’s comments regarding my book, England’s Greatest Spy, Eamon deValera.
He charges that my book “rallies against the perceived orthodoxy and whole fabric of accepted Irish politics and twentieth century Irish history.” In that regard he is correct, but is Mr. O Ruairc suggesting that an historian should never challenge prevailing public opinion, or only when it applies to Eamon deValera? He fails to comprehend the fact that his “perceived orthodoxy” script was written by deValera and it was the counterfeit republicans of Fianna Fail who acted out the farce of “accepted modern Irish politics and twentieth century Irish history.”
It is understandable, however, that after more than a half-century of deValera propaganda and Fianna Fail lies, Mr. O Ruairc has come to believe deValera to be some sort of Irish folk hero. In fact, the Irish are in national denial as to the dark deeds of deValera.
Throughout his commentary, not once does Mr. Ruairc refute, disprove or contradict a single premise as set forth in my book. His critique is a polemic of name-calling, insults, sarcasm and ridicule in lieu of legitimate historical analysis. In fact, no reviewer of my book to date has disproved, refuted or contradicted my position.
Regarding the misconceptions and misleading statements of Mr. O Ruairc, he dismisses the undeniable results of deValera’s actions in which every major decision of the Great Pretender resulted in enormous benefit to England and monumental disasters to Ireland. He attempts to deflect deValera’s treachery by attributing it to merely “bad luck, chance, incompetence or poor decision-making.”
He scoffs at my contention that the British were fully aware of the 1916 Rising and allowed it to take place in order for the English not to be perceived in American eyes as having initiated another repression of the Irish. His misplaced reference to a “machine gun massacre” was actually the words of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, a Dublin pacifist, who recognized the obvious British plot to instigate a rebellion. John MacNeill also noted the British scheme to provoke the Irish into insurgency.
I set forth in great detail the fact that the British had access to German secret codes and were privy to the communications between John Devoy and Berlin regarding the plans for the Rising.
Mr. O Ruairc casts aspersions on my assertion that deValera initiated the civil war, not because the Free State Treaty failed to include an Irish Republic or the Irish President’s false claim that it contained an oath of allegiance to the King of England but to prevent Michael Collins from coming to the aid of the Catholics and Nationalists of Northern Ireland who were being terrorized by the Unionists. Though he failed to recognize the conspirator, author Tim Pat Coogan actually set forth the real reason for the civil war. He noted Collins’ fateful words to the IRA men of the North, “With this civil war on my hands, I cannot give you men the help I wish to give and mean to give. I now propose to call off hostilities in the North.” The civil war was a boon for England as deValera created chaos in Southern Ireland before Collins could create chaos in Northern Ireland and it didn’t cost the English a penny or a single soldier. The Irish people paid deValera’s price.
Mr. O Ruairc disregards the incontrovertible fact that deValera and the Dail members abandoned their demand for recognition of an Irish republic on at least four occasions prior to sending the Irish delegation to the London Peace Conference. The Irish delegation presented the final Free State Treaty draft to deValera, the Cabinet and other leaders on December 3, 1920. For more than seven hours of discussion, not once did deValera inform the delegation that he was opposed to the Treaty because it failed to include recognition of an Irish Republic. His only instruction to the delegation was that the oath be amended to the satisfaction of the delegation. DeValera, himself, had proposed two oaths. There was no oath of allegiance to the King in the Free State Treaty, only a promise to be faithful to the King as head of an association (Commonwealth) of which Ireland was but one member.
Three days later, on December 6, deValera flip-flopped and was a ‘born again’ republican fanatic charging that the delegation, Collins and Griffith, in particular were traitors for signing a treaty that did not include recognition of an Irish Republic.
Mr. O Ruairc cannot be serious in denying the economic catastrophe deValera wrought upon the Irish people. It is irrefutable. He also inexplicably does not want the truth of the murders of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith to see the light of day and growls, “What would be the purpose for these exhumations?”
The greatest hoax deValera and Winston Churchill played on the Irish is the conception that the Irish were neutral during WWII. Mr. O Ruairc fails to acknowledge the disaster that deValera’s phony ‘neutrality’ was to Ireland and its enormous benefit to England. As many as 200,000 Irish flocked to England’s colors to fight against one of the most evil regimes in history. The Irish suffered proportionately more casualties than the English or Americans. Surely, no rational person can believe that if the Nazis won the war, Ireland would not suffer a similar fate as the other conquered small countries. WWII was not only England’s finest hour but also Ireland’s as the Irish set aside centuries of repression and shipped every morsel of surplus food to feed the starving British. Hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women labored in English and Northern Ireland factories producing the sinews of war to sustain England until America could organize her industrial might to relieve the hard-pressed English. DeValera mobilized the entire country to provide England with every necessity Ireland could provide, turning over Ireland’s entire fleet of oil tankers, cooperating militarily, economically and much, much more.
After the war, deValera refused to admit Ireland’s magnificent contribution to the Allied victory over Germany. Mr. O Ruairc also ignores the fact that the Irish President destroyed all records of Ireland’s involvement in WWII thereby depriving Irish historians of valuable insight into deValera’s neutrality scam on the Irish people. The result of his ‘neutrality’ was that partition was etched in stone, Ireland was ostracized as being pro-Nazi and the doors to Irish immigration to America were slammed shut. One million Irish, one fourth the entire population of Ireland, preferred to live in England, the land of the ‘oppressor’ rather than deValera’s dystopia. Ireland was denied membership in the UN, Marshall Plan aid was a pittance and America considered partition to be an internal matter of England and refused to intervene on Ireland’s behalf. Of greater import to the English, however, was that deValera’s ‘neutrality’ and ‘pro-Nazi’ stance destroyed Irish-American political influence and eliminated opposition to Anglo-American cooperation, a repeat of his Irish disaster in America in 1919-20.
Mr. O Ruairc has a fixation on Charles Burgess and objects to my refusal to address him by his adopted Gaelic name of Cathal Brugha. Burgess had been seriously wounded during the 1916 Rising. However, he was temperamentally and intellectually incompetent as Minister of Defense. He was appointed by deValera solely because he could be manipulated by the Irish President and followed deValera in making war on the Irish people. Burgess was insanely jealous of Michael Collins. During the Treaty debates, when war or peace with England was in the balance, Burgess, as Minister of Defense, was expected to report on the capability of the IRA to continue the fight against the English, instead, he unleashed a torrent of abuse on Collins in a public display of jealousy and invective rarely seen in any house of parliament. On other occasions he placed self-interest above Ireland’s welfare. He was hypocritical, petty and vindictive and was a disgrace to Gaelic tradition and that is why I address him by his English roots. Mr. O Ruairc has only to refer to the official records of the Dail Free State Treaty debates to confirm my charges.
Mr. O Ruairc refers to Author T. Ryle Dwyer but fails to note that Mr. Dwyer, in commenting on my book stated, “It is hard to refute what Turi says.” Mr. O Ruairc prefers to quote, Tim Pat Coogan who is in a snit over my taking issue with his conclusions in his book, Eamon deValera, The Man Who Was Ireland. Rather than address the facts as set forth in my book, Mr. Coogan, like Mr. O Ruairc, prefers insults, sarcasm and ridicule instead of historical objectivity.
Furthermore, Mr. Ruairc was critical of my categorizing the counterfeit republicans who followed deValera in making war on their own people as poor imitations of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. After abandoning their demands for recognition of an Irish Republic on at least four occasions, they pontificated their republican credentials and their contempt for the rights of the majority of the Irish people who voted three to one in favor of the Free State Treaty. Under his absurd banner, “The majority has no right to do wrong,” deValera unleashed his counterfeit republicans upon their own countrymen rampaging throughout Ireland murdering, beating, robbing and looting. They burned down the houses of their fellow countrymen solely because they supported the Free State Government and majority rule. They torched Sean McGarry’s home with his children inside. Mrs. McGarry pleaded with the counterfeit republicans to no avail and rushed into the blazing home to rescue her children. One little child died of horrible burns the following morning and Mrs. McGarry suffered serious burns as well. They wrecked newspaper offices because they dared to print news contrary to their liking, destroying printing presses, beating pressmen and setting fire to the buildings. The Hierarchy excommunicated these counterfeit republicans, rightly characterizing them as murderers and assassins. Mr. O Ruairc cannot grasp the significance that deValera, who initiated a civil war over the lack of recognition of an Irish Republic in the Free State Treaty, refused to declare an Irish Republic in all the years he was in office.
It is understandable that Mr. O Ruairc remains silent as to these terrible deeds, for after so many years of Fianna Fail disinformation, he has come to view the traitors as heroes and the real heroes, the true fathers of the Irish nation, Collins and Griffith, as traitors.
He also finds fault with my calling for a posthumous trial of deValera ignoring the fact that deValera himself requested such a trial. John Devoy, the great Irish-American leader, described deValera as “the most malignant man in Irish history.”
I liken myself to the boy who cried, “Look the Emperor has no clothes,” while everyone else is pretending what a fine specimen King deValera makes in all his invisible finery.
John J. Turi, author, England’s Greatest Spy, Eamon deValera
A most intriguing book written by a man with access to intelligence and naval experience with a great imagination.
To those who may want to further investigate this subject matter, I would strongly suggest reading the book and then looking to the recent publication if the Dictionary of Irish Biography (in association with the Royal Irish Academy). This may be deemed revisionist history but on the other hand it may relate to archives of a more hidden nature that families of a later generation feel more at ease about sharing with the people of Ireland.
Either way, it is worth accessing.
There are 9 volumes, 9,000 entries and it concerns 9,700 lives of some of the Island of Irelands' silent, hidden and well known personae.
This is now online also. I presume you access the RIA and then gain access.
Quinn
After all it's standard practice for empire to install it's own men as leaders of countries, or corrupt / bribe / blackmail the reigning leader to do their bidding. Why should Ireland be any different? Especially since we gave them so much trouble. I reckon Collins was the real hero. Dev was the dev-il !!
Is there proof that Dev was a "spy", perhaps the wrong word. He was no James Bond more of a Harry Potter. There will never be proof of British spies at the top level of Irish republicanism because the Brits have been too clever for us and because they are so good at the James Bond stuff. Clap hands for the Brits, they have conned another generation of republicans. Fool me once, shame on you but fool me twice ..........