Irish neutrality
has a longstanding policy of military neutrality, which has meant not joining military alliances or defence pacts, or taking part in international conflicts. The nature of Irish neutrality has varied over time.
The Irish Free State declared itself a neutral country in 1922, and Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War; although it allowed Allied military aircraft to fly through part of its airspace, and shared intelligence with the Allies. During the Cold War, it did not join NATO nor the Non-Aligned Movement. Since the 1970s, some have defined Irish neutrality more broadly to include a commitment to "United Nations peacekeeping, human rights and disarmament". Recent Irish governments have defined it narrowly as non-membership of military alliances. Although the Republic is not in any military alliance, it relies on a NATO member, the United Kingdom, to protect Irish airspace. In recent years, the UK has intercepted armed Russian bombers flying into Irish airspace. The Republic also allows stopovers by some foreign military aircraft, provided they are not armed.
Ireland is one of four European Union countries that are not members of NATO; the others are Austria, Cyprus and Malta. The compatibility of neutrality with Ireland's EU membership has been a point of debate in EU treaty referendum campaigns since the 1990s. The Seville Declarations on the Treaty of Nice acknowledge Ireland's "traditional policy of military neutrality". The Irish Defence Forces have been involved in many UN peacekeeping missions.
Concept
There are notable differences between Irish neutrality and “traditional” types of neutral states:- Traditionally, neutral states maintain strong defence forces; Ireland has a relatively small defence force of approximately 10,500 personnel.
- Traditionally, neutral states do not allow any foreign military within their territory; Ireland has a long history of allowing military aircraft of various nations to refuel at Shannon Airport. Under the Air Navigation Order, 1952, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, exceptionally, could grant permission to foreign military aircraft to overfly or land in the state. Confirmation was required that the aircraft in question be unarmed, carry no arms, ammunition or explosives and that the flights in question would not form part of military exercises or operations.
A neutral state may also allow its citizens to serve in the armed forces of other, possibly belligerent, nations. Ireland does not restrict its citizens from serving in foreign armies, and significant numbers of Irish citizens serve or have served in the British, and to a lesser extent United States armies and the French Foreign Legion.
Legal status
Ireland's neutrality is in general a matter of government policy rather than a requirement of statute law. One exception is Article 29.4.9° of the Irish constitution:This was originally inserted by the 2002 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Nice, and updated by the 2009 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon. An earlier bill intended to ratify the Treaty of Nice did not include a common defence opt-out, and was rejected in the first Nice referendum, in 2001.
The Defence Act 1954, the principal statute governing the Irish Defence Forces, did not oblige members of the Irish Army to serve outside the state. A 1960 amendment was intended to allow deployment in United Nations peacekeeping missions, and requires three forms of authorisation, which since the 1990s have come to be called the "triple lock":
- A UN Security Council resolution or UN General Assembly resolution;
- A formal decision by the Irish government;
- Approval by a resolution of Dáil Éireann.
History
Before independence
Irish leaders in the Nine Years' War allied with Habsburg Spain, who sent military aid to the Irish. Following their defeat, all of Ireland was a dependency of England and then of Great Britain. During this period, Catholic soldiers from Ireland fought in the armies of several European Catholic countries, in what is known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. In 1644–1645, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Irish Confederacy sent a military expedition to Scotland to help the Scottish Royalists. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the United Irishmen sought and received military assistance from the French First Republic.Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1922. While Irish unionists supported political integration with Britain, Irish nationalists were divided between those who envisaged some continuing link with Britain and the "advanced nationalists", mainly republicans, who wanted full independence. Separatists generally envisaged an independent Ireland being neutral, but were prepared to ally with Britain's enemies in order to secure that independence, reflected in the maxim "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity". At the outbreak of the First World War, James Connolly was president of the Irish Neutrality League and was prosecuted for a banner reading "We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland". During the 1916 Easter Rising, Connolly and the other leaders of the uprising sought military aid from Germany.
In the 1921 negotiations leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Erskine Childers envisaged the Irish Republic having a neutral status guaranteed in international law on the model of Belgium and Switzerland.
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State established in 1922 by the Anglo-Irish Treaty was a Dominion of the British Commonwealth, with the UK retaining responsibility for Ireland's marine defence as well as three naval bases, the "Treaty Ports". Article 49 of the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State stated, "Save in the case of actual invasion, the Irish Free State... shall not be committed to active participation in any war without the assent of the Oireachtas ". In the Third Dáil debate on the draft constitution, the Provisional Government rejected a Labour Party amendment requiring assent of the electorate via referendum. Thomas Johnson argued "The war that is to be guarded against is a war overseas, is a war that this country may be drawn into by Parliament, by the will of Parliament perhaps, at the instigation of perhaps Canada, or perhaps Australia, or perhaps South Africa, or perhaps Great Britain, and the last is very much the more likely".In the Statute of Westminster 1931, the UK renounced the right to legislate for the Free State. The 1938 Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement saw the Treaty Ports handed over to the Free State.
The Free State joined the International Committee for Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War Act, 1937 made it an offence to travel from Ireland to Spain to fight for either side. This applied both to Irish citizens and nationals of other countries on the committee. Nevertheless, there was Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War on both sides by private individuals and groups. Another statute related to the committee was the Merchant Shipping Act 1937, which restricted Irish shipping's access to Spain until 27 April 1939.
World War II
Ireland remained neutral during World War II. The Fianna Fáil government's position was flagged years in advance by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and had broad support. James Dillon was the only member of Dáil Éireann to oppose it during the war, resigning from Fine Gael in 1942 and demanding that Ireland assist the Allies. However, tens of thousands of Irish citizens, who were by law British subjects, fought in the Allied armies against the Nazis, mostly in the British army. Senators John Keane and Frank MacDermot also favoured Allied support.De Valera said in his wartime speeches that small states should stay out of the conflicts of big powers; hence Ireland's policy was officially "neutral", and the country did not publicly declare its support for either side. In practice, while Luftwaffe pilots who crash-landed in Ireland and German sailors were interned, Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, and United States Army Air Forces pilots who crashed were released on personal assurances and usually allowed to cross the border into British territory. The internees were referred to as "guests of the nation". The German embassy had to pay for their keep. If they were on a non-combative mission they were repatriated. While it was easy for Allied pilots to make that claim, it was not realistic for Luftwaffe pilots to make a similar claim. Towards the end of the war, the German embassy was unable to pay, so the internees had to work on local farms. Strict wartime press censorship had the effect of controlling a moral reaction to the war's unfolding events and reiterated the public position that Irish neutrality was morally superior to the stance of any of the combatants.
Allied military aircraft were allowed to overfly County Donegal to bases in County Fermanagh. This was known as the Donegal Corridor. The bodies of any crashed Allied airmen were repatriated by the Irish Army at the border, where they would be met by an Allied officer. On at least one occasion, an Allied Air Force officer thanked his Irish counterpart for the honour they bestowed upon the repatriated airmen. The Irish captain was said to reply, "Ours may be the honour, but yours is the glory."
USAAF aircraft flying to North Africa refuelled at Shannon Airport and flying boats at nearby Foynes.
During the war, an estimated 70,000 citizens of neutral Ireland served as volunteers in the British Armed Forces. Those who deserted the Irish Army to serve in the British Army, on returning to Ireland were stripped of all pay and pension rights, and banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds.
Irish military intelligence shared information with the British military and even held secret meetings to decide what to do if Germany invaded Ireland to attack Britain, which resulted in Plan W, a plan for joint Irish and British military action should the Germans invade. However General Hugo McNeill, the commander of the Irish Second Division based on the Northern Ireland border, had private discussions with the German ambassador, Edouard Hempel, about German military assistance in the event of a British invasion from the north. De Valera declined Germany's offer of captured British weapons. The Germans did have a plan for an invasion of Ireland called Operation Green, similar to the Allies' Operation Bodyguard, but it was only to be put into operation with Operation Sea Lion, the plan to conquer Britain.
During the Belfast Blitz in April 1941, when the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast in Northern Ireland, De Valera responded immediately to a request for help from Basil Brooke, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Fire engines were sent from the south to help their Belfast colleagues. De Valera formally protested to the German government and made a speech declaring "they are our people".
Irish neutrality during the war was threatened from within by the Irish Republican Army, which sought to provoke a confrontation between Britain and Ireland. This plan collapsed, however, when IRA chief of staff Seán Russell died in a U-boat off the Irish coast as part of Operation Dove; the Germans also later came to realise they had overestimated the capabilities of the IRA. The American ambassador, David Gray, stated that he once asked de Valera, early in the war, what he would do if German paratroopers "liberated" Derry. According to Gray, de Valera was silent for a time and then replied "I don't know."
Many German spies were sent to Ireland, but all were captured quickly as a result of good intelligence and sometimes their ineptitude. The chief Abwehr spy was Hermann Görtz.
As the state was neutral, Irish cargo ships continued to sail with full navigation lights. They had large tricolours and the word "EIRE" painted large on their sides and decks. Irish ships rescued more than 500 seamen, and some airmen, from many countries during the war. However, many Irish ships were attacked by belligerents on both sides. Over 20% of Irish seamen died, on clearly marked neutral vessels, in the Irish Mercantile Marine during World War II.
Winston Churchill, the British wartime Prime Minister, made an attack on the Irish Government and in particular Éamon de Valera in his radio broadcast on VE Day. Churchill maintained that the British government displayed restraint on the Irish state while the de Valera government were allowed to "frolic with the Germans". Churchill maintained that the British could have invaded the Irish state, but displayed "considerable restraint" in not doing so. De Valera replied to Churchill in a radio broadcast:
Mr. Churchill makes it clear that in certain circumstances he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain's necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean that Britain's necessity would become a moral code and that when this necessity became sufficiently great, other people's rights were not to count....this same code is precisely why we have the disastrous succession of wars... shall it be world war number three?