It was the late Lord Deedes who once succinctly explained to me what it was like to live through the second world war. I had said to him, ‘Those Battle of Britain boys were so brave’.And he had replied, almost impatiently, ‘No, it wasn’t bravery we felt. It was a strange, deep, primitive compulsion that we were up against it. We had our backs to the wall. It was us or them.’
To any defender of Irish neutrality during the second world war — among whom I would count myself — the Deedes doctrine explains everything. It particularly illuminates Winston Churchill’s leadership. He felt that compulsion — to defend the realm at all costs — in such a profound and magnified way that it enabled him to lead his imperilled nation with unique resolve.
Churchill deplored Eire’s neutrality: he remained enraged that Neville Chamberlain had restored the Atlantic ports to the Irish Free State in 1938, and convinced that these were a danger to the interests of the United Kingdom in time of war.
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