THE ULSTER CONFLICT The more "practica!" and "hard-headed" of the new class of Republican politicians who had risen to the surface during the "Troubles" recognised the impractical idealism of the I.R.A. and saw that since the Free State's power and repressive apparatus was too strong for them they would have to resort to parliamentary action to gain control of it. But the relationship of De Valera and subsequently Fianna Fail to the I.R.A. has always been and remains ambiguous. When De Valera gained power in 1932 he repressed the I.R.A. more effectively than the Fine Gael ("Sons of Ireland" - the new name of the pro-Treaty section of the old Sinn Fein) ever had done, whenever the I.R.A. threatened to disturb Southern interest, but he continued to allow that it had a function in the anti-Partition struggle, and prevented too much de facto acceptance of Partion from permeating Southern society. De Valera's equivocation over the issue of Republicanism, his encouragement of popular enthusiasm for an ideal 32-county Irish state at election times and in his 1937 constitution which claimed that "Eire", his new name for the Irish Free State, had sovereignty over the whole island, his adroit manipulation of anti-British feeling rooted in the atrocities of the "Troubles" period, all these factors enabled him to retain power from 1932 to 1948 and to regain it after that with only brief periods in opposition until his accession to the presidency. As Bakunin wrote in 1967: "Liberty, to the political republican, is an empty word, it is the liberty of a willing slave, a devoted victim of the state. Being always ready to sacrifice the liberty of others, political republicanism therefore, necessarily leads to despotism". ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS NORTH ANO SOUTH The military-political restoration of social "peace" in the South in 1923 was followed by an economic recovery in 1924 after the economic contraction of 1921-3. The leader of the new government (Cumann na nGael, which later became Fine Gael) was not Griffith who had died (of natural causes) during the civil war, nor was it Collins who had been assassinated, but a new figure, Cosgrave. His economic policies were heavily influenced by civil servants from a rural background whose outlook was that industrial protection Griffith's tariff policy) would harm exports of cattle by increasing the import price of maize and grain feed stuff s. Their general notion of the 57
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