For the purposes of this study we will be making comparisons between developments in Ireland since 1920 and the experiences of the three Baltic Republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The question we will ask is this: how is it that these three small states, similar to Ireland in area, population and resources, could by the time of the Soviet invasion in 1940 be approaching Scandinavian levels of prosperity while the two post-partition Irish statelets had made almost no progress at all?
In the six-county case, of course, the area is a direct colonial possession and has the typical features of a colonial economy and society. The twenty-six county entity also has many typical features of a colony but it is in theory not a colony but a completely independent sovereign state.
This peculiar situation is termed neo-colonialism, and comprises a situation where colonial exploitation is carried out by indirect rather than direct means.
Here are spacious rooms, elegant clothes, sparkling glassware and porcelain, the latest motor cars and all the trappings of an idle and frivolous lifestyle. Here we see plenty of evidence that the gap between rich and poor in Ireland is nothing new: it has been here ‘since the state was founded’ and indeed for a long time before.
In the early Middle Ages Ireland was invaded from England by bands of landless knights who attempted to conquer the country and impose feudalism on it. In this they finally succeeded, though it took many centuries. An English-derived ruling class emerged, whose first loyalty was always to England: for the most part despising the Irish and ruthlessly exploiting them. These became known collectively as the Ascendancy.
In the Baltic area too armed bands of knights, mostly from Germany, invaded and gradually conquered the native people, killed off their rulers and imposed a feudal structure with themselves in control. The entire East Baltic area passed under the control of Denmark for a period, then of Sweden and finally of the Russian Tsars. However the German-speaking feudal rulers, the ‘Baltic Barons’ remained in control throughout all these changes. Landlord-and-tenant relationships were roughly the same as in Ireland.
During the First World War the entire area of the Baltic States was conquered by Germany. The Germans hoped to used the area as a place to settle war veterans after a German victory. However in fact Germany lost the war and had to withdraw. For a number of years the area was a battleground fought over by various factions: Russian Bolsheviks, Russian ‘Whites’, German freebooters, and Poles, until each of the three small nations was able to create a national army, expel all foreign forces and establish independence.
What did those states then do about the Baltic Barons? The simple answer is: they ran them out!
In Estonia the landlords were dispossessed of all their estates but allowed to keep their mansions. They were paid compensation for arable land at 3 per cent of the value but nothing for forests or other types of holding. A law of 1926 fixed the maximum size of a holding at 50 hectares, with a preferred minimum of 20 hectares; the national average settled at 34 hectares.
In Latvia there was a similar reform but no compensation at all was paid, and here also the maximum holding was fixed at 50 hectares.
In Lithuania the maximum holding was fixed at 75 hectares, with compensation paid on a sliding scale up to 150 hectares, above which no compensation was payable. The land reform in Lithuania will be the subject of a separate article later in the series.
In all three countries, volunteers of the War of Liberation were given first option on land taken into the Land Bank. Because a farmer starting out needed tools, seed and stock; all three states set up government-sponsored credit unions to assist them.
Country Area Population
(Square Km) (in 1938)
Estonia 47,500 1,125,000
Latvia 55,700 1,950,000
Lithuania 65,800 2,400,000
Saorstat 70,000 2,960,000
Eireann (26 Counties)
Saorstát Éireann had the most land and the largest population, and also had many other advantages: a better climate, fine coasts teeming with fish, adequate energy resources, some mineral deposits. Only in reserves of natural forest did the Baltic states have an advantage. They had no energy resources apart from peat bogs and in Estonia some shale-oil deposits. Yet they had twenty years of steady progress while Ireland north and south experienced little but poverty, backwardness and decay.
The reason was that the Baltic States made far better use of the resources they had, and understood that their people were their best resource. Unlike Saorstát Éireann, no other country was allowed to meddle in their affairs. Their resources were not expended in the payment of feudal rents and spurious debts, their cultures were prized and cherished, their leaders were men of ability and decency.
The Democratic Programme of the First (32-County) Dáil could have been the blueprint for each of these countries, while here in Ireland it was scorned and repudiated by those in power.
The London government was not going to give in that easily: when they realised they would not be able to maintain the total control they once had they devised a fall-back position hoping to give away as little as possible. In 1920 they brought in a ‘Government of Ireland Act’ under which Ireland would be divided into two states, both under British control.
The six north-eastern counties would comprise one state to be called Northern Ireland and would have a Protestant majority and would continue to be run the way the whole of Ireland previously had been.
The remaining twenty-six counties would be lumped into a state called Southern Ireland and would have a measure of self-government a bit like Canada and Australia then had but would be tightly bound to Britain and ruled ultimately by the British monarch.
Republicans were unable to prevent the British setting up a puppet parliament in the north-east, where they were weakest, but the attempt to establish one in Dublin was a flop and the war went on.
The British offered a treaty, but it contained merely a rehash of their previous ‘Dominion Status’ proposals. ‘Southern Ireland’ would be governed the same way as Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand: the king of England would be head of state and would be represented by a ‘Governor General’, usually an English aristocrat, who would be the supreme authority in the land and could nominate and dismiss ministers, call elections, pardon convicts and veto legislation and overturn the decisions of courts.
All public representatives would have to swear allegiance to the monarch, as would soldiers, police and civil servants. The British government could conclude treaties and declare war on behalf of a dominion without consultation.
The Irish situation differed from that of the existing ‘dominions’ in two very important respects.
Firstly Ireland is small and very close to Britain while the others are large and far away.
Secondly the overwhelming majority of the Irish people did not want to be ruled by England at all. In the then existing dominions the majority of the population had strong ethnic and emotional ties to England: it is true that they had minorities who did not want to be ruled from London (Quebecois, Boers, Maoris) but these had been cowed by defeats and remained docile.
The proposed treaty was rejected by the Second Dáil on 16th August 1921 without a single dissenting vote.
A delegation was then sent to London to negotiate terms for a complete British withdrawal. In London the discussions dragged on and on without any solution being reached. Then the British pulled a master stroke: on the 5th December they engaged the delegates in a lengthy and acrimonious negotiating session that dragged on into the early hours of the following morning, then they suddenly produced the original rejected treaty and told the delegates that orders had been passed to the Home Fleet to put to sea from Scapa Flow and sail for Irish waters and that if the delegates did not sign at once there would be ‘immediate and terrible war’. It was a bluff, but it worked: the dog-tired delegation panicked and signed.
In Ireland nobody wanted the treaty, but the country divided on what to do about it. Some Republicans urged De Valera to arrest the delegates and arraign them for treason, but Dev was basically too timid a man to take such a radical step. Those who had been active in the previous war rejected the treaty almost to a man and woman, but powerful elements came out in support of it.
The Catholic Church threw its considerable weight behind the treaty, and so did the newspapers and various commercial interests. There was a large number of former British soldiers discharged after the European war and organised into a well-funded pro-monarchist society called the British Legion and there were the survivors of the old Irish Parliamentary Party, who had kept their heads well down during the previous struggle but who now emerged to back the treaty.
In the Dáil debates about the treaty went on and on, while the country divided into two camps. Then in the summer of 1922 the pro-treaty elements, under pressure from London, launched an armed coup against their opponents. A year-long civil war followed, one in which the Republican side was defeated.
The debates on the treaty in the Second Dáil had centred mainly on the oath of allegiance to the English monarch, this being something that would impact the TDs immediately, but there was a lot more to the treaty than the oath. Under the treaty the British government would have the right to maintain naval bases in various places, notably Cobh and Lough Swilly.
The Saorstát would have to either continue the employment of all British State employees in the 26 counties, from judges to janitors, or else pension them off. However the actual pensions would be assessed and paid by the British, who would annually bill the Dublin government for the amount paid out.
Full compensation would be paid to Britain for all losses incurred during the recent hostilities and for certain expenses allegedly incurred over the later years of British administration. On top of that, Unionists living in the Saorstát would be paid compensation for losses they incurred due to Republican activities while Britain would pay for damage done by the Black and Tans: the assessments would be made by a judge sent over from Britain.
Finally, the Saorstát would accept partition, but a joint ‘Boundary Commission’ under a British chairman would fix the actual border.
The original founders of the Saorstát, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, were dead within a year. The men replacing them were persons of limited ability, and also persons whose contribution to the preceding struggle had been at best very minor. Before long Kevin O’Higgins, a former Redmondite politician who had converted to Republicanism once it became obvious that the old Irish Parliamentary Party was a spent force, emerged as the brains behind the new government.
It was pressure from him that led to the baneful policy of executing captured Republican prisoners during the Civil War, a policy that made him widely hated and which brought disgrace upon the infant Saorstát. A devious and secretive snob with very few friends, he was like most snobs by inclination a monarchist. He was the ‘Gray Eminence’ of the early years of the Saorstát.
Otherwise, the early rulers of the Saorstát were a pretty sorry lot. The leader of the government, William T. Cosgrave, was a Dublin saloon-keeper of mediocre talents. The first ‘governor-general’ was Timothy Healy, an old survivor from the Irish Parliamentary Party, despised for his betrayal of Parnell, and an uncle of O’Higgins.
The British Government came up with massive claims against the Saorstát. Apart from the Land Annuities, a tax on land allegedly to compensate England for the cost of trifling 19th century land reforms, there was a demand for repayment of government moneys invested in the railways, payment for damage to government property in both Ireland and Britain, and a curious claim for the cost of resettling ‘refugees’: this turned out to be the expenses incurred in relocating informers who had been unmasked - the British declined to supply any names.
Apart from this, members of the gentry put in heavy claims: Cosgrave himself complained about ‘Lord A and Lord B and Lord C and Lord D’ queuing up with their largely fanciful lists of grievances.
Where Lord Shaw’s tribunal was concerned, when a claim was made against the Irish side the attitude was "Well, prove you didn’t do it" while claims relating to the actions of the Black and Tans were greeted with "Well, prove they did do it" and there was a lot of evidence offered of the sort: "I give you my word as a British Officer that . . ."
In the end the Saorstát had to raise a loan in order to meet the payments awarded. By 1932 the Compensation Fund was still taking up about 7 per cent of the revenue of the Saorstát.
Originally the treaty had required the Saorstát to assume a portion of England’s National Debt, but this particular claim was not proceeded with. Not of course out of any feeling of sympathy towards the Irish but rather because the British realised that even the best of cows can only deliver so much milk.
The only similar previous treaty was the so-called Treaty of Vereeninging, by which the Boer War came to an end in 1902. This was not a treaty at all, it was a set of terms of capitulation made with the British by certain Boer leaders, notably General Smuts. But the old President Kruger was not a party to it, he fled to Germany and never resigned his office. The recent agreement between Yasser Arafat and the State of Israel is similar in nature.
Looking at the Baltic States, none of them signed any sort of treaty like the Irish one, nor were they under pressure to do so from any quarter.
However a quite similar situation to the Irish one of 1921 did arise 80 years later when those States began to break away from the dissolving Soviet Union. Their economies had been integrated with the rest of the USSR during the long period of Soviet occupation, they depended on other parts of the USSR for both supplies and markets.
When a Lithuanian told Mikhail Gorbachev that his country would be better off as an independent State, Gorbachev’s sneering reply was: "Yes, and who will buy your exploding television sets?"
When the Lithuanians did break away, Gorbachev cut off their fuel supplies and in negotiations with President Landsbergis he demanded that Lithuania pay Russia 60 billion US dollars as compensation for Soviet property in Lithuania.
As it happened, Gorbachev fell from power soon afterwards and his successor Boris Yeltsin readily agreed to withdraw from the Baltic States.
A constitution was cobbled together, a compromise document that attempted to be democratic enough to satisfy the Irish and at the same time containing enough references to the king to keep London happy. The constitution was passed at Westminster as the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922.
One feature was the introduction of proportional representation in elections. This was done because the British insisted on it, not because it was fair but because they hoped the rump Unionist community would thus be able to obtain a few seats, and indeed there was for many years a few Unionists in Leinster House.
When compared with the three Baltic States the general structure was about the same: all four had a figurehead head-of-State and a parliament elected by proportional representation, but in the Baltic States the head-of-State was elected too. Saorstát Éireann also had a ‘Senate’, a talking shop into which the government invited members of the Ascendancy in the hope that this would buy their support.
All four derived ultimately from the French Third Republic. In each of the three Baltic States great difficulty was experienced due to the large number of political parties coupled with the lack of political experience, ultimately leading to the adoption of a more authoritarian form of government with an executive president rather on the American model. (The French themselves eventually adopted this model too). In the Saorstát when de Valera came to power the ‘single strong leader’ model also evolved de facto, but was never formalised.
The problem was that the Saorstát had only a very small middle class: too thinly spread to be able to develop as a ruling political entity. Whenever an attempt is made to create a bourgeois democracy without a bourgeoisie, clientism appears.
Under a clientist system people vote for a politician not out of enthusiasm for his or her political programme but to do the person the favour of helping them to get a very well-paid job. In return the politician is expected to do favours for the voter. Thence emerged that unique Irish institution: the politician’s clinic.
Some bizarre situations have resulted. For many years a Mr Byrne sat in Leinster House as an independent deputy for County Clare. He rarely took part in debates and was in politics purely to get the large salary and eventual pension all deputies received.
Byrne was a ‘bone-setter’, a kind of unlicensed chiropractor, who provided his services free: his only requirement being that the patient vote for him in the next election.
The favours-for-votes system has led to the evolution of political dynasties (‘Da looked afther yez, so will I!’) and also has enabled politicians to shift party allegiance while carrying their vote with them (the Progressive Democrat party could not have emerged otherwise).
Clientist political systems have evolved in Greece and in the south of Italy. In Naples for many years the politically insignificant Monarchist Party controlled the city, because a week before each election they would distribute thousands of left-foot children’s shoes free. If they won, then the right shoes would be distributed a week later.
Clientism, which the PR electoral system greatly assists, is inseparable from corruption. This has led many Irish people to despise politicians and to assume they are basically crooks. Thus the situation already observed in ancient times by Aristotle and Cicero arose: decent people decline to get involved in public affairs and the scoundrels get a clear run.
As soon as the Saorstát was up and running, all sorts of left-overs from the old Irish Party at Westminster began to crawl out of their holes and become politically active. These brought with them another baneful tradition.
The old Irish Party had been a small minority at Westminster, with little influence, and had developed a tradition of making long bombastic speeches full of exaggerated statements expressed in convoluted language. The speeches of Irish politicians were a standard butt of England’s humorists, and it didn’t really matter what they said because they were insignificant players in the Westminster political game.
But they carried this tradition of parliamentary windbaggery into Leinster House, with an excessive faith in the power of words and a dedication to speeches for the sake of speeches and an assumption that rhetoric is an end in itself. James Dillon, an old survivor from the Parliamentary Party who was for many years leader of Fine Gael was perhaps the most notable example.
Unfortunately quite a few decent but misguided Irish patriots were taken in by one or other of these arguments.
Also, some military people were deceived into believing that as soon as the Civil War was over preparations would be made to make a complete break with England and also to recover the Six Counties.
However, when the Civil War ended a large scale demobilisation of troops began: England’s work was now done and they were not needed. Some senior officers, realising they had been hoodwinked, began a conspiracy to overthrow the Leinster House cabal. Before they could make a move they were dismissed on the orders of Kevin O’Higgins and the whole plot, rather grandly called the Army Mutiny by historians, collapsed in a ridiculous fashion.
The regime was so short of support that it was obliged to take on nearly any careerist, place-hunter or chancer that came along. From this there built up an element enormously enamoured of the treaty (‘The Treaty’) which had enabled them to get positions and careers in no way merited by their abilities.
The treaty became something sacred: Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were Great Men because they had Signed the Treaty, and so on.
On the other side of the coin, the persecution of Republicans continued unabated after the end of the Civil War and great numbers of them emigrated, mostly to the United States. Because the Republican Movement had drawn to it the best elements in Irish society the country lot a great deal of talent in this way.
Ireland’s loss was America’s gain. Many of them prospered, and did not forget their native land or their Republican principles. Paradoxically, the economy of the Saorstát later became heavily dependant on money sent back to Ireland by these political exiles to assist impoverished relatives at home.