Seán T. O'Kelly | |
|---|---|
| Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh | |
 O'Kelly in 1949 | |
| President of Ireland | |
| In office 25 June 1945 – 24 June 1959 | |
| Taoiseach | |
| Preceded by | Douglas Hyde |
| Succeeded by | Éamon de Valera |
| Tánaiste | |
| In office 29 December 1937 – 14 June 1945 | |
| Taoiseach | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | Himself as Vice President of the Executive Council |
| Succeeded by | Seán Lemass |
| Minister for Finance | |
| In office 16 September 1939 – 14 June 1945 | |
| Taoiseach | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | Seán MacEntee |
| Succeeded by | Frank Aiken |
| Minister for Local Government and Public Health | |
| In office 9 March 1932 – 8 September 1939 | |
| Taoiseach | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | Richard Mulcahy |
| Succeeded by | P. J. Ruttledge |
| Vice-President of the Executive Council | |
| In office 9 March 1932 – 29 December 1937 | |
| President | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | Ernest Blythe |
| Succeeded by | Himself as Tánaiste |
| Ceann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann | |
| In office 22 January 1919 – 16 August 1921 | |
| Deputy | |
| Preceded by | Count Plunkett |
| Succeeded by | Eoin MacNeill |
| Teachta Dála | |
| In office July 1937 – 25 June 1945 | |
| Constituency | Dublin North-West |
| In office August 1923 – July 1937 | |
| Constituency | Dublin North |
| In office May 1921 – August 1923 | |
| Constituency | Dublin Mid |
| In office December 1918 – May 1921 | |
| Constituency | Dublin College Green |
| Personal details | |
| Born | John Thomas O'Kelly (1882-06-25)25 June 1882 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 23 November 1966(1966-11-23) (aged 84) Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland |
| Resting place | Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, Ireland |
| Political party | Fianna Fáil |
| Spouses | |
| Alma mater | University College Dublin |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Rank | Staff captain |
| Unit | Irish Volunteers |
| Battles/wars | Easter Rising |
Seán Thomas O'Kelly (Irish:Seán Tomás Ó Ceallaigh; 25 June 1882 – 23 November 1966), originallyJohn T. O'Kelly, was an IrishFianna Fáil politician who served as the secondpresident of Ireland from June 1945 to June 1959. He also served asdeputy prime minister of Ireland from 1932 to 1945 (titled asVice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State from 1932 to 1937 and asTánaiste from 1937 to 1945),Minister for Local Government and Public Health from 1932 to 1939,Minister for Finance from 1939 to 1945 andCeann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann from 1919 to 1921. He was aTeachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1945.[1]
O'Kelly was born on 25 June 1882 at 55 Wellington Street in inner-cityDublin.[2][3][4] Baptised as John Thomas Kelly, he was the eldest son of Samuel O'Kelly, a boot and shoemaker,[5] by his marriage to Catherine O'Dea.[6] He was a twin to a sister, Anna Maria. When John and Anna Maria's births were registered by their mother on 24 October 1882, she provided their dates of birth as 25 August 1882,[7] likely to avoid paying a fine for late registration.
O'Kelly had three sisters and five brothers, two of whom were educated byPatrick Pearse[8] atSt Enda's School.
O'Kelly's first school was theSisters of Charity, in Mountjoy Street (1886–1890), then the Christian Brothers School in St Mary's Place (1890–1894).[9] His senior school education was atO'Connell School, a Christian Brothers school in North Richmond Street (1894–1898). O'Kelly joined theNational Library of Ireland in 1898 as a junior assistant to T. W. Lyster, remaining there until 1902, and becoming a subscriber to the Celtic Literary Society.[9] The same year, he joined theGaelic League, becoming a member of the governing body in 1910 and general secretary in 1915. He was appointed manager ofAn Claidheamh Soluis, which included amongst its editors the revolutionary leaders ofSinn Féin.[10]
He went to work almost immediately forArthur Griffith, at the Gaelic League on the organization's administration papers. He came to Griffith's notice the previous years joining theIrish Republican Brotherhood as a member of the esoteric Bartholomew Teeling Circle from 1901. O'Kelly joinedSinn Féin, then a small dual-monarchist, capitalist party, immediately at its inception in 1905, as one of its founders. He became a joint-honorary secretary of the movement from 1908, remaining in the post until 1925. In 1906, he was elected toDublin Corporation, and retained the seat for the Inns Quay Ward until 1924. One acolyte campaigner wasThomas Kelly, who joined him in pressing the government for improved municipal drainage schemes forDublin's slums.
LikeFather Michael O'Flanagan, O'Kelly was chosen to make an Irish language address to thePope Pius X, in 1908. Both men were bilingual party members promoting Irish culture. O'Kelly was one of the establishing members of theIrish Volunteers in 1913. In August 1914, he agitated to suppress the landing of arms at Kilcoole,County Wicklow.
In March 1915, O'Kelly went toNew York City, to informClan Na Gael of the plans for a rising in Dublin by the IRB.
It was during the Easter Rising that O'Kelly met Mary Ryan. She was arrested on 18 May 1916, with her sister Nell for unspecified offences to be incarcerated inMountjoy Prison. Historians have argued that she may have been confused with her sister, Min Ryan. Kit, asMary Ryan was known, was Professor of French atUniversity College Dublin. She shared her house with her sisters at 19 Ranelagh Road, Dublin, which O'Kelly visited. They were married in 1918.[11]
O'Kelly was at the heart of the party operation. He was one of a handful of men who might have known of the "All-Ireland" Volunteer HQ atAthenry,County Galway, according toLiam Ó Briain involved in marshalling the rebellion in the western hills fromLimerick across theShannon.[12] He was also responsible for springingBulmer Hobson from the custody of the IRB.[13] Thereafter Hobson's mysterious "disappearance" became the moment when "a devoted son" of Ireland was excluded from the movement; but O'Kelly may have saved his life.[14] During the Rising he was gazetted Staff Captain by PH Pearse.[15] He was in and out of theGPO, and was requested to set up as "Civil Administrator of the Government of the Republic" with four others.[16] The project never proceeded, as perhaps no attempt was made to anticipate preparations for a political structure independent from Britain.[17]
After theEaster Rising in 1916, O'Kelly was gaoled, released, and re-arrested. He was sent to Reading Gaol, and then escaped from detention inHM Prison Eastwood Park inFalfield, England, and returned to Ireland. "Sinn Fein became a cloak for Volunteer meetings"[18] Sinn Féin won a landslide victory.
O'Kelly was elected a Sinn FéinMember of Parliament (MP) forDublin College Green, in the1918 general election.[19] In his role as Secretary, O'Kelly was tasked with preparing the Sinn Féin Executive Council for theDáil Éireann Constituent Assembly, which had been agreed at the partyArd Fheis in October 1918. Along with other Sinn Féin MPs, he refused to take his seat in theUK House of Commons inLondon. Instead, they set up an Irish Parliament, called Dáil Éireann, in Dublin. O'Kelly served asCeann Comhairle (chairperson) of theFirst Dáil.[20] O'Kelly published the Democratic Programme, which he himself had edited. It appealed to a wider mission statement for independence and separatism, which was not sanctioned by the electorate. In fact, it was a skeleton document borrowed on the back of Pearse's martyrdom, written in the late leader's style, from the Labour leaderThomas Johnson.[21]
O'Kelly's approach toUS PresidentWoodrow Wilson to visit Dublin in 1919 on his way toVersailles,France, was roundly rejected. Wilson was already withdrawing from the Self-Determination League, making his critics label O'Kelly as 'pompous.' Despite theUS Senate resolution in June, the President would not break his commitment to the Big Four for unanimity.[22] He also served as theIrish Republic's envoy, demanding recognition of the Republic and its admittance to the post-World War I peace treaty negotiations at theParis Peace Conference. While this request toClemenceau was sincere, it naively ignored the fact that France and Britain had been allied for the previous four years.[23][24] O'Kelly was followed toParis as envoy by the eminently better-qualifiedGeorge Gavan Duffy, who was from a titled family of barristers and diplomats.[25] In 1920, O'Kelly relocated toItaly, where he met withPope Benedict XV, briefing the pontiff on the political situation in Ireland.[26] At the same time, O'Kelly met with the future dictator of Italy,Benito Mussolini, who helped the Irishman and other Sinn Féin emissaries to source weapons for use by the IRA.[27]
O'Kelly was a close associate ofÉamon de Valera, who served variously asPresident of Dáil Éireann (Prime Minister from April 1919 to August 1921) andPresident of the Republic (from August 1921 to January 1922). As with de Valera, he opposed theAnglo-Irish Treaty, signed by representatives of the British and Irish governments in December 1921.
When de Valera resigned as President of the Republic on 6 January 1922, O'Kelly returned from Paris to Dublin, to try to negotiate a compromise, whereby de Valera could return to the presidency. A furious de Valera turned down the offer and ordered O'Kelly to return to Paris.
During the Irish Civil War, O'Kelly was in jail until December 1923. Afterwards, he spent the next two years as a Sinn Féin envoy to theUnited States. In the US he maintained a team of speakers who worked to raise funds to be used for the anti-treaty side in Ireland and for the thousands of prisoners being held by the newly formedIrish Free State government (see1923 Irish hunger strikes). Some of the fundraisers were:Maire Comerford,Linda Kearns,Muriel MacSwiney,Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington andFather Michael O'Flanagan.[28]
In 1926, when de Valera left Sinn Féin to establishFianna Fáil, O'Kelly returned to Ireland and was appointed a vice-president of the new republican party. In March 1927, he became editor ofThe Nation and played a significant role in building up support for the new party before theJune 1927 general election.[29]
In 1932, when de Valera, having wonthat year's general election, was appointedPresident of the Executive Council (Prime Minister of the Irish Free State), O'Kelly was appointed as vice-president of the Executive Council (deputy prime minister).[30] He was also named Minister for Local Government. O'Kelly earned a controversial reputation over his key role in attempts to publicly humiliate the thenGovernor-General of the Irish Free State,James McNeill. Stunts such as withdrawing the Irish Army's band from playing at diplomatic functions which the Governor-General attended, or in one notorious case the sight of O'Kelly andDefense MinisterFrank Aiken storming out of a diplomatic function at the French Legation when McNeill, the guest of honour, had arrived, damaged O'Kelly's reputation and image, particularly when the campaign backfired.
McNeill published his correspondence on the issue with de Valera, making de Valera appear foolish, before resigning and leaving de Valera with the task of choosing a new Governor-General, an embarrassing situation for a politician who had tried his best to avoid any association with the office. To the surprise of many, O'Kelly was not among the names considered for the office. It is not known for certain, but suspicion rests on O'Kelly's membership of a Catholic fraternal organisation, theKnights of Columbanus, which de Valera suspected had a source in the cabinet. O'Kelly matched the bill, perhaps through indiscretions rather than deliberate actions. However, O'Kelly was not made Governor-General, the post instead going to the former Fianna Fáil TD,Domhnall Ua Buachalla fromCounty Kildare, who would be the last Governor-General of the Irish Free State.
With the enactment ofa new constitution in 1937, O'Kelly remained de Valera's second-in-command, with the new title ofTánaiste.
In 1938, again O'Kelly's position in cabinet became a focus for speculation, as rumours sweptLeinster House (the seat of Parliament) that de Valera intended making O'Kelly the Fianna Fáil choice to becomePresident of Ireland, the office which had replaced the governor-generalship in the newConstitution of Ireland. Again, the justification for de Valera nominating one of his senior ministers for the presidency was rumours that someone in the cabinet was, either deliberately or accidentally, letting information slip to the Catholic Church through theKnights of Columbanus. It came as anger and surprise to de Valera to find out that O'Kelly was a member of the Catholic fraternal organisation.[31]
De Valera had on a number of occasions ordered O'Kelly to resign from the Knights, only to find that he would rejoin later. However, the apparent entry of the popularLord Mayor of Dublin,Alfie Byrne, into the presidential race (in fact he eventually failed to get nominated) and the belief that neither O'Kelly nor any other politician could beat Byrne (ironically a close friend of O'Kelly) led to all party agreement, on the oppositionFine Gael's suggestion, that the office go toDouglas Hyde, a Protestant, as an appreciation for his contribution to Irish society. An Irish language enthusiast, Hyde had founded theConradh na Gaeilge, known in English as the Gaelic League, a cultural organisation promoting the preservation of theIrish language, music, dancing and traditions.
O'Kelly was appointedMinister for Finance in 1941.[32] He secured the passing ofThe Central Bank Act in 1942.[33] On 17 July 1942, at the fifth and final stage of the Dáil debate on the "Central Banking Bill", he argued that the owner of the credit issued by theCentral Bank of Ireland, "will be under the control of the Oireachtas and will be governed by the authority given by the people to the Houses of the Oireachtas."[34] This debate was carried out when only five Deputies were present in the Dáil.[35]
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O'Kelly was the Fianna Fáil candidate forPresident of Ireland in1945. He defeated two other candidates.[32] However, he came up just short of a majority on the first count.
O'Kelly's most famous faux pas occurred during a state visit to theVatican City, when in a breach with the standardprotocol, he told the media ofPope Pius XII's personal opinions on communism. The resulting row strained the relationships between Pope Pius XII andJoseph Stalin.
During his term, he signed theRepublic of Ireland Act 1948, which established theRepublic of Ireland on 18 April 1949 as an independent republic outside theBritish Commonwealth. As a result, O'Kelly became the first President of Ireland to be internationally recognised as a full head of state. Prior to 18 April 1949, KingGeorge VI was Ireland's head of state as the lastKing of Ireland.
O'Kelly was reelected on 25 June 1952,[citation needed] this time unopposed. During his second term, he visited many nations inEurope and addressed theUnited States Congress in 1959.[36] He retired at the end of his second term in 1959, to be replaced by his old mentor and formerTaoiseach, Éamon de Valera.
O'Kelly did not refer any Bills to theSupreme Court, under Article 26 of theConstitution of Ireland while he was in office. He convened a meeting of theCouncil of State in 1947, to consider whether Part III of the Health Bill, 1947 – which provided the basis for theMother and Child Scheme – should be referred, but he decided against doing so.[37]
He dissolved the Dáil on four occasions (in 1948, 1951, 1954 and 1957). On each occasion, the Taoiseach who advised him to do so (de Valera in the first and third cases, andJohn A. Costello in the other two) had not been formally defeated in a Dáil vote in a manner showing a loss of support by a majority of TDs. Therefore, under Article 13.2.3° of the Constitution, O'Kelly had no discretion to refuse to act on their advice to dissolve. A more complex case occurred however in 1949, when the First Inter-Party Government was defeated in a snap Dáil vote on a financial measure due to the absence of a number of Government TDs. O'Kelly was advised by theSecretary to the President,Michael McDunphy, that had Costello requested a dissolution, he could have refused it–thus forcing Costello to resign. However, Costello considered that the vote failed by accident (due to a mistake by the party whips), and opted to reintroduce the measure the following morning, rather than seek a dissolution. With all TDs present this time, the vote carried. McDunphy later changed his mind and in the files on the event concluded that O'Kelly could not have refused a dissolution because the loss had merely been a technical loss, not an actual decision by the Dáil to vote against the government.[citation needed]
O'Kelly was the first President of Ireland to visit the United States of America, when from 16 to 31 March 1959, he was the guest ofPresidentDwight Eisenhower. He was invited to address both houses ofCongress.[36] This was important to Ireland as it showed that the republic and its head of state were recognised by the United States. HistorianJ. J. Lee has stated that the visit signified an end to a period of distrust between Ireland and the United States, followingWorld War II.[38] Both Ireland and America had been neutral countries when the war began, but the US joined the conflict in 1941. But Ireland continued to remain neutral, which annoyed American politicians during the war, and afterwards. The invitation to President O'Kelly to address Congress meant that Ireland had been forgiven by the larger power.[39]
O'Kelly was known to be a devout Catholic. He made a point of ensuring that his first state visit, following the declaration of theRepublic of Ireland in 1949, was to theVatican City to meetPope Pius XII. This visit created controversy when the famously talkative O'Kelly inadvertently revealed the Pope's private views on communism.[citation needed]
O'Kelly was a member of theKnights of Saint Columbanus.[40]
Éamon de Valera worried about O'Kelly's drinking habits, which were much commented on during his career. O'Kelly drank a lot, and often, yet his behaviour remained dignified and above reproach and he never caused any scandal.[41] The author,MonsignorPádraig Ó Fiannachta, reported that President O'Kelly kept barrels of draughtGuinness stout on tap inÁras an Uachtaráin.[42]
O'Kelly was a short man with a tall second wife.[43][44] When attending a football match once inCroke Park, he was on the field to throw in the ball. A member of the crowd shouted, "Cut the grass, we can't see the President!"[45]
On his retirement as President of Ireland in 1959, he was described as a "model President" by the normally hostile[clarification needed][citation needed]Irish Times newspaper. Though controversial, the diminutive O'Kelly was widely seen as genuine and honest, albeit tactless.
He died on 23 November 1966, at the age of 84, fifty years after the Easter Rising that first brought him to prominence. He is buried inGlasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
In 1918, O'Kelly married Mary Kate, known as Kit, the daughter of John Ryan, a farmer of Tomcoole, nearTaghmon,County Wexford.[5] Kit was an assistant professor of modern languages at the National University.[46] They remained married until her death in 1934, aged 55. They had no children. In 1936, O'Kelly married his late wife's younger sister,Phyllis Ryan, after gaining apapal dispensation to do so. A chemist and public analyst, she was forty-three when they married.[46] She lost her first child and was unable to have any more.[47]
One of Mary Kate and Phyllis's brothers was theFianna Fáil MinisterJames Ryan, while another sister,Josephine Ryan, was married to theFine Gael leader GeneralRichard Mulcahy.[46]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forDublin College Green 1918–1922 | Constituency abolished |
| Oireachtas | ||
| New constituency | Teachta Dála forDublin College Green 1918–1921 | Constituency abolished |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Ceann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann 1919–1921 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Vice-President of the Executive Council 1932–1937 | Succeeded by Himself as the first Tánaiste |
| Preceded by Himself as the last Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State | Tánaiste 1937–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Local Government and Public Health 1932–1939 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Finance 1939–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of Ireland 1945–1959 | Succeeded by |
Seán T. O'Kelly navigational boxes | |
|---|---|
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
