THE POLITICS OF SUPPRESSION: EAMON DE VALERA’S GOVERNMENT AND THE IRA, 1938-1941

THE POLITICS OF SUPPRESSION: EAMON DE VALERA’S GOVERNMENT AND THE IRA, 1938-1941

By Grant Alexander Lombard

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Stephen Miller

An Abstract of the Thesis Presented

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Masters of Arts

(in History)

May 2011

           This thesis is a work of political history that examines Eamon de Valera’s Fianna Fáil Party between 1938-1941 and investigates how de Valera responded to challenges in the Dáil Eireann and military challenges at home and abroad. The Irish Republican Army of this period, led by Seán Russell, engaged in a series of operations that directly questioned the legitimacy of the Fianna Fáil Party’s central ideology of diplomatic republicanism and the Houses of the Oireachtas. These included imprisoned organization members engaging in hunger strikes, a raid on the Phoenix Magazine Fort, and the Sabotage Plan against Great Britain.To re-establish his party’s political authority, de Valera sought to suppress all parties of opposition in the Irish Government and the Irish Republican Army. This was accomplished through the passage of five authoritarian legislative acts and the utilization of wide powers by the Garda Síochána, which together rendered political debate in the Irish Government impotent and destroyed the operational capability of the Irish Republican Army.