JFK in Ireland: Four Days that Changed a President. Ryan Tubridy

      The sorcerer and the apprentice: Éamon de Valera (seated) and Seán Lemass at the ‘Military Tattoo Dance’ in Dublin, August 1945. Mrs Kathleen Lemass, Seán’s wife, sits beside de Valera.

      There were as many Irish women as men in Britain, searching for a way to raise their family’s standard of living. Most of these emigrants ended up changing beds and preparing tea for middle–class English homeowners. The problem for the Irish government was that they didn’t have a lot to offer the next generation and something needed to be done to keep the nation alive.

      In order to make Ireland breathe again, some of the repressive elements in daily life would have to be relaxed. The Church–State anschluss throttled cultural awakening, and the country’s ludicrous censorship laws had worsened in the middle years of the 20th century. In the early days of the Irish State, nearly a hundred books a year were banned from curious eyes, but by the early 1950s, the number of books being kept from the shelves numbered six hundred annually. When Irish book–lovers went to a bookshop or library and sought certain books by John Steinbeck, Graham Greene or Ernest Hemingway, they would find an empty space on the shelf. Thankfully, by the late 1950s there was a small but important shift as the number of books being censored began to drop and the fog of cultural repression slowly started to dissipate.

      The proliferation of television aerials on chimneys from Dublin to Drogheda and the 1961 launch of State broadcaster RTÉ had a direct influence on Irish politics. Now people could see the faces of their politicians and make up their own minds about who they trusted and who made them suspicious. The days of the grey–suited older generation were coming to an end. Television would soon topple governments and lose wars and in Ireland, it would allow viewers to watch an Irish–American President address the Dáil, the first foreign head of state to visit since the attainment of independence.

      The 1959 handover of the reins of power, when Lemass became Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, and de Valera took the symbolic role of President, was easily the most significant and important of the guard–changing exercises of the time. It signalled a real transition from the Old Guard to the New, mirroring the feeling in Washington, DC, that Kennedy’s election to the White House would inspire at the end of the following year. Also in 1959, James Dillon ascended to the top of the Fine Gael party while a year later, William Norton handed over to Brendan Corish in the Labour Party.

      Within Lemass’s party, Fianna Fáil, there was major change too as a younger set assumed new positions that would lead to high office in the future. Young bucks like Patrick Hillery, Donogh O’Malley, Brian Lenihan and, of course, Charles Haughey jockeyed for attention, knowing full well that their time was coming.

      But Lemass was the key figure of the era and modern historians are quick to recognise the Dubliner as the architect of modern Ireland.³⁵ Lemass was perfectly placed to lead Ireland out of the rather gloomy period that marked the country’s nascent independence. Working alongside a visionary civil servant called T.K. Whitaker, a Secretary at the Department of Finance, Lemass drew up the Programme for Economic Expansion, a critical blueprint that dragged Ireland into the 1960s. Foreign investment became a keystone for the future. Agricultural pursuits shifted to massive exporting of beef and cattle. It became easier to access loans and invest in industry. Ireland was open for business. Having had the slowest rate of growth in Europe throughout the 1950s, Ireland surpassed itself by reaching annual growth of 4 per cent between 1958 and 1963 – higher than Britain and as good as most other countries in Europe. While Whitaker and his team should take much of the credit for this turnaround, his boss, Seán Lemass should share the plaudits as a gambler who wasn’t afraid to take risks.

      As Irish writer and broadcaster Tim Pat Coogan wrote of Lemass: “He helped to solder past and present together, and suddenly to make politics something which gave a future meaning to the present.”³⁶Eighteen years older than the American President, Lemass was by no means the Kennedy of his time but in a weary Ireland, it was probably enough that he wasn’t de Valera and at least his cabinet reflected the fact that there were people in Ireland under the age of sixty.

       Making the first moves

      The idea of any American president coming to Ireland was beyond the pale for people at the time. The very thought of an Irish–American Catholic becoming leader of the Free World had been unimaginable right up to election day in 1960. Here was Ireland,struggling to break free of the historical stranglehold that had gripped it for so long, an Ireland keen to move on from the de Valera years. It would bring glory by association for the country to welcome the man from the White House, a dynamic young politician from an Irish family who had reached the pinnacle of world power. For the Irish people, a visit from him would provide a shot of much–needed confidence on the world stage.

      For all these reasons, from the moment John Fitzgerald Kennedy stepped through the pillared portico of the White House in January 1961, Lemass was keen to entice him over to Ireland, and he entrusted the job of achieving this to Ireland’s man in Washington, Dr Thomas J. Kiernan.

      What began was effectively a dating game involving two interested parties who weren’t quite sure how to move things along despite a mutual attraction and a determination to make it work.

      The job of Irish Ambassador to Washington has always been perceived as a plum post and has usually been manned by the brightest and best that the Irish diplomatic service has to offer. Such was the case with Thomas Kiernan, whose dispatches from the American capital are smart, wry and always perceptive. Born in the Dublin suburb of Rathmines, Kiernan was a career civil servant who in 1935 had been seconded to be director of Radio Éireann. He was married to the singer Delia Murphy, and while Kiernan was posted to the Vatican (1941–46) their semi–bohemian lifestyle in wartime Rome made them something of a talking point. Although strongly rumoured to become Ambassador to Britain, Kiernan in fact ended up running the embassies in Australia and Canada before being given the top job in Washington, a post he held from 1961 until 1964.³⁷

      The first time Kiernan met Kennedy was on 8 February 1961 at a function the President was hosting for upper echeclons of the diplomatic corps. It was an early evening affair, starting at 5pm and attended by Mrs Kennedy. The First Couple formally met and shook hands with all the heads of mission, Kiernan included. As was the way on these occasions, the guests sipped wine and made small talk while keeping one eye on what was happening in every other part of the room. In the diplomatic corps, everything, no matter how mundane, is an incident, real or imagined. Kiernan was doing just this when the President approached him. The two men chatted briefly but it was enough for them to make a connection. After those few minutes, Kiernan commented: “I realised that we were on the same wavelength, the same communication between us which was very important … he had Irish reactions and the Irish reactions helped me in understanding.”³⁸

      And with that, the diplomatic manoeuvres in the dark began. The plan? Get Kennedy, “our” other president, an Irishman, a Catholic, to Ireland. Things are never straightforward in the world of diplomacy, though. You can’t just issue an invitation when there’s a possibility that the other party might not be able to accept. Everything has to be handled slowly, step by step.

      Despite Kennedy’s “Irish reactions”, the way he understood a wink and a nod without everything being stated openly, Kiernan felt let down by the quality of Ambassador the President decided to send to Ireland.