British diplomats warned that former taoiseach and president Eamon de Valera's presence at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill would have meant no more than the condolences he sent on the death of Hitler, according to official British files made public today.
Papers released to the British Public Record Office show that almost 50 years after the 1916 Easter Rising, in which he took part, de Valera was still far from reconciled to the British.
A memorandum sent in 1962 from the British ambassador in Dublin, Sir Ian MacLennan, on the preparations for the ailing wartime leader's planned state funeral, warned that, even if invited, it was unlikely de Valera would attend.
He said de Valera did not bear any "personal animosity" towards Churchill for his role in the 1921 negotiations which led to the partition of Ireland.
However his views were coloured by Churchill's victory broadcast in 1945 when he had some "sharp things" to say about the effect of Ireland's wartime neutrality on the Allied cause.
"Were de Valera still Taoiseach and not President it is conceivable that he might have thought it fitting for him to attend Sir Winston Churchill's funeral," he wrote.
"But he might have done so on the grounds of abstract principle - the same principle that led him in pursuance of his policy of neutrality to tender in person his condolence to the German minister in Dublin after Hitler's death was announced in 1945.
"I doubt whether this is the kind of motive for attending at Sir Winston's funeral which Sir Winston himself would welcome, nor, I suppose, should we."
When Churchill finally died in January 1965, neither de Valera nor the then taoiseach Sean Lemass attended the funeral at St Paul's Cathedral, sending instead external affairs minister Frank Aiken.
In his official statement on the death, de Valera praised Churchill as "a great Englishman", while at the same time remembering that he had for a long period been a "dangerous adversary" of Ireland.
PA