In Defence of the Irish Free State

and how Éamon de Valera destroyed an ambitious young nation.

The Seal of the Irish Free State fusing Ancient Irish Styles with Modern Graphic Design

About 20 years ago, I attended an exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland, which featured displays of government and other examples of graphic design of the Irish Free State period (6 December 1922 – 29 December 1937), also known by its Irish name, Saorstát Éireann.

The exhibition was a revelation to me, as it was an Ireland I had never known existed when I was growing up. A forward-looking and ambitious young state, which despite having just emerged from a brutal War of Independence/Civil War, was by the end of 1920s, an already a more wealthy nation than Denmark and Norway. The imagery of the graphic designs on display demonstrated this. There were no limits to the desires of Saorstát Éireann, and within this a sense of ‘Irishness’ prevailed within the overall aesthetic of these posters and pamphlets. There was also a strong association of the emerging Irish Free State with the ancient mythological past constantly reflected in the artwork and publications.

The young nation was reflected not only within graphical aspirations of greatness for the new country, but also in the roll-out of massive infrastructure programs involving rebuilding the war-ravaged railways, mass electrification, mining and mineral extraction, and modernisation of agriculture. The leading urban planners from Holland were brought in to build public housing projects to replace the legacy of Victorian slums which greatly improved the living conditions of the poorest urban dwellers.

So forward-thinking and ambitious was the young state that they even envisioned an Irish Space Program by the 1970s. The new nation went as far as building the largest infrastructure project in Europe at the time; the Shannon Hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha, Co Limerick. This was a massive undertaking for the newly established Irish Free State. Built at a cost of £5.2 million (about one-fifth of the state’s total budget) and employing 5,200 construction workers at its peak, Ardnacrusha was the largest hydroelectric scheme in the world, until it was overtaken by the Hoover dam scheme in the 1930s. It had enough capacity to meet almost all of Ireland’s electricity needs for the early years of the Free State. The transmission lines that were established to bring power from Ardnacrusha to the major urban centres became the foundation for the national grid.

.This was also the age of Aer Lingus, Irish shipping, and many industrial forward-thinking plans and implimplementations and all eventually stopped by the ascendency of Éamon de Valera and the Fianna Fail party. Who threw Ireland back into the 1700s with his insane Economic War with the UK. Which had wrecked the momentum of the new nation up until that point.

Soon, industrialization and modernization were crushed under a defacto Papist Theocracy, and remarkable strides made in everything from standards of living to the resurgence of the Irish language, were obliterated with his ‘comely maidens dancing at the crossroads.’

We became less Irish and more Catholic, and much of the reactionary drivers of the Woke mass psychosis of Ireland today would have been avoided had the Irish Modernism of the Irish Free State not been derailed by Éamon de Valera and his psychosis surrounding his own personal failures and identity insecurities. Instead of high technology and a sense of national pride and accomplishment, we ended up with rosary beads and crushing poverty.