Cormac Moore: Fianna Fáil, the GAA, the ban on ‘foreign games’ and the Irish Presidency
Last week, Jim Gavin was elected by the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party to be its candidate for the Irish presidential election, due to take place in late October.Gavin is best known for his involvement with the GAA – as a player, as a hugely successful manager of the Dublin senior men’s football team, and more recently as chairman of the Football Review Committee, which has led to significant and generally well-received changes to how the game is played.Fianna Fáil’s relationship with senior GAA figures was a lot more strained in the late 1930s/early 1940s, particularly over the GAA’s treatment of the first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde.On November 13 1938, Hyde, the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Oscar Traynor (a former professional footballer, who previously played for Belfast Celtic), attended an international soccer match between Ireland and Poland at Dalymount Park.The following month, the GAA removed Hyde as patron of the association for breaching its rules on playing or attending “foreign games”.
The decision was widely condemned, particularly outside the GAA, and led directly to a difficult relationship between the association and the government over the ensuing years.In 1942, the GAA published a 130-page booklet entitled National Action, written by Joseph Hanly under the pseudonym Josephus Anelius. The GAA president, Pádraig McNamee, wrote the foreword.It advocated for an ‘Irish-Ireland’, something dearly cherished by people like McNamee and the director general of the GAA, Pádraig Ó Caoimh.Clearly in opposition to the Fianna Fáil administration, the book advocated for a single party regime as a form of government.The author looked to the António de Oliveira Salazar-led Portugal, which had removed political parties and created its own authoritarian Estado Novo (New State), as an ideal model to follow.The views expressed in National Action were very similar in many ways to a new right-wing, fascist political party founded by Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin in 1942, Ailtiri na hAiséirghe (Architects of the Resurrection).Ailtiri na hAiséirghe aspired to create a Gaelic Christian corporatist state along the lines of Salazar’s regime in Portugal.The party’s solution to partition was best summed up with one of its more well-known slogans: “Six Counties, Six Divisions, Six Minutes”.Open and public hostility between the GAA and the government broke out in 1943 after Traynor, Minister for Defence since 1939 following the outbreak of the Second World War, instructed the Irish Army to open itself to sports other than Gaelic games.The move was furiously denounced by the GAA. Since the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Gaelic games were the only sports approved to be played by soldiers in the Irish army.Considering Traynor’s background as a professional soccer player, it is not surprising that he took the decision.Deeply passionate about soccer as well as the national cause he had played such a prominent role in, Traynor was incensed at the allegation that people playing “foreign games” were in any way not 100 per cent Irishmen, claiming: “The attitude of the GAA, in my view... is a partition of this section of our people – it is an attempt to divide one section of the people against the other”.Both MacNamee and Ó Caoimh attacked the government, with Ó Caoimh stating: “It was not merely a sabotage of the GAA but a national betrayal and a nullification of the recognised ideals of Irish-Ireland.”Many GAA members believed that members of the government were trying to kill off Gaelic games by the action, with calls for the association to make the re-imposition of solely Gaelic games in the army an issue for the upcoming general election.At the 1943 Fianna Fáil Árd Fhéis, de Valera defended Traynor, agreeing with his decision wholeheartedly.In an attack on the ban on “foreign games”, he claimed the GAA had pride of place in the army, as it did throughout the country, and “the national sports, if they are fit to survive, will survive and will get the support they deserve, and we do not need the narrow methods which had to be used in the past”.He believed the ban was preventing the “great national game of hurling” being adopted throughout many schools and colleges.De Valera made no mention of Gaelic football, a game he had no real interest in, believing rugby and hurling the two games best suited to the Irish temperament.De Valera’s biggest disagreement with the GAA was directly linked to the removal of Hyde as patron.He intervened directly in 1945 to make sure such an incident would never happen again, after Sean T O’Kelly succeeded Hyde as President.Hauling the GAA leadership to Government Buildings, de Valera insisted that no future Irish President would be treated in the manner Hyde had been.Hauling the GAA leadership to Government Buildings, de Valera insisted that no future Irish President would be treated in the manner Hyde had beenThe GAA conceding that the President of Ireland should be allowed to attend events organised under the auspices of “foreign games” in the future was an acknowledgement that it was wrong in the action it took against Hyde in 1938.The GAA u-turn allowed for relations to improve between both Fianna Fáil and the GAA.One prominent GAA player, Jack Lynch, went on to serve as a Fianna Fáil taoiseach.Time will soon tell whether another prominent GAA figure supported by Fianna Fáil will become Irish President.If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article and would like to submit a Letter to the Editor to be considered for publication, please click hereLetters to the Editor are invited on any subject. They should be authenticated with a full name, address and a daytime telephone number. Pen names are not allowed.
