Ernest Blythe, ​Ulster-Scots minister in post Civil War Dublin government was an Irish language enthusiast

An avid Irish language enthusiast, Blythe claimed in his autobiography that his interest dated from his childhood and stemmed from two sources: the Irish-speaking Roman Catholic servant girls from Newry and south Armagh (especially a girl called Mary O’Hanlon) who worked on his family’s farm, and his mother’s stories of her Irish-speaking Presbyterian relations who lived near Castlewellan.

In 1905, at the age of 15, he moved to Dublin to work as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

There he became friendly with Sean O’Casey who swore him into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He claimed that the only political activity in this era was an unsuccessful attempt to break up a meeting in the Mansion House at which John Redmond and John Dillon were the principal speakers.

He also became a member of the Gaelic League. His Irish teacher was Sinéad Flanagan, the future wife of Éamon de Valera. He believed that it was essential that the Irish language should be restored to widespread and general use if Irish independence was to have any meaning.

In 1909 he turned to journalism and took a job with the North Down Herald. He also contributed articles to Irish Freedom, the IRB monthly. In one article he described Sinn Fein as ‘valueless’ except as the complement to a military organisation. Thus, he also took on the role of IRB organiser in Ulster.

Curiously, during this period he combined membership of the Orange Order with membership of the IRB, joining the Order in Newtownards in September 1910 and leaving in February 1912.

In 1913 Ernest went to live in the Dingle peninsula to improve his fluency in Irish. He supported himself by working as a farm hand for Gregory Ashe, the father of Thomas Ashe, the republican hunger striker.

In 1914 he became a full-time Volunteer organiser in Munster. The authorities viewed Blythe as a very dangerous man because he made no secret of the fact that he was pro-German.

Dublin Castle regarded him as more dangerous than Tom Clarke, an outspoken proponent of armed revolution. Thus, he was jailed in 1914, 1915 and early 1916, missing participation in the Easter Rising.

He was released at Christmas 1916 and spent the holiday period with Kathleen Clarke, the widow of Tom Clarke, and her family in Limerick and resumed work as a Volunteer organiser. He was again arrested and imprisoned, first in Cork and then in Belfast.

In October 1917 he was one of 24 people elected to the executive of Sinn Fein, another measure of his status.

In An t-Óglách, dated October 14 1918, Blythe contributed an article entitled ‘Ruthless warfare’. He contended that in opposing the ‘atrocity’ of extending conscription to Ireland ‘we must decide that in our resistance we shall acknowledge no limit and no scruple … [man who] assists directly or by connivance in this crime against us should be killed without mercy or hesitation ... The man who serves on an exemption tribunal, the doctor who examines conscripts, the man who voluntarily surrenders when called for, the man who applies exemption, the man who drives a police car or assists in the transport of army supplies, must be shot or otherwise destroyed with the least possible delay’.

While conscription never was extended to Ireland, this article virtually constitutes the blueprint for the IRA’s modus operandi in the War of Independence. He had some reservations about killing RIC officers, probably because in November 1919 he married Annie McHugh, the daughter of a Roman Catholic RIC inspector.

In the general election of December 1918 he contested two constituencies: North Armagh and North Monaghan.

Although he was heavily defeated in North Armagh, he was successful in North Monaghan.

Blythe embarked upon an impressive ministerial career. He was Minster for Trade and Commerce in the First and Second Dáil and Minister for Finance from 1923 to 1932. Between 1927 and 1932 he was vice-president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (ie deputy prime minister).

On pragmatic grounds he supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6 1921.

On December 7 1922 anti-treaty IRA gunmen shot two pro-treaty TDs in Dublin, killing one and badly wounding the other, as they were on their way to the Dáil. After an emergency cabinet meeting, the Free State government decided on the retaliatory executions of four prominent republicans (one from each province). The tough measures to restore law and order are usually attributed to Kevin O’Higgins but anecdotal evidence suggests that Blythe was even more hardline. He was, after all, the author of ‘Ruthless warfare’. In all, the Irish Free State formally sanctioned the execution of between 77 and 81 anti-treaty IRA men during the Civil War.

As finance minister, Blythe was a stern fiscal conservative who believed in balanced budgets and keeping a tight rein on public expenditure, relaxed only very rarely for favoured projects like the Abbey Theatre, to which he made a small annual grant of £1,000.

He famously – or infamously – reduced old age pensions from 10 shillings a week to nine shillings a week in his budget of 1924. He regarded the cost of the British standard of pension provision as too great for the IFS to bear.

In 1932 Cumann na nGaedheal was defeated in the general election and in the following year’s election Blythe lost his Dáil seat. He was briefly a Senator (1933-6) and then he retired from politics. His activities and interests thereafter focused on the Irish language, the theatre and the question of partition.

As an Ulster Scot, his views on Ulster and Partition were markedly different to those of most nationalists. In August 1920 he opposed the ‘Belfast boycott’. Two years later he drafted a memorandum for his ministerial colleagues which was highly critical of Michael Collins’ covert operations to overthrow or destabilise the Northern Ireland state.

In 1955 he published Briseadh na Teorann (‘The smashing of Partition’). He accepted that Partition existed because of the wishes of the Ulster unionist population in Northern Ireland rather than as the result of the wishes of the Westminster government. He contended that the only way to end Partition was to persuade a few hundred thousand unionists to vote for its abolition. To this end, he advocated friendly contact and engagement with unionists, believing that strident anti-Partitionist rhetoric was simply counterproductive. He also favoured the deletion of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.

Blythe combined his love of the Irish language and his desire to end Partition in a novel way. To persuade unionists to ‘rejoin’ Ireland, it was essential to offer them a common Irish identity, demonstrated through the Irish language. He wished to establish that culture and not religion as the distinguishing feature of Irish identity.

Ernest Blythe died 50 years ago on February 23 1975.