Eamon de Valera may have used the same "abstract principle" to attend Sir Winston Churchill's funeral that led him to express condolences on the death of Hitler, official British documents have suggested.
Dominions Office documents from 1962-63, released at the Public Record Office in London yesterday, show British diplomats were concerned about the former president's motives for attending Churchill's funeral if he accepted an invitation.
Writing to officials in London three years before Churchill's death in 1965, however, the British ambassador to Dublin, Sir Ian Maclennan, said he thought de Valera was unlikely to attend the funeral even if he was invited because of Churchill's comments about Irish neutrality during the second World War.
If de Valera was taoiseach and not president, Sir Ian wrote in December 1962, he might have considered it was "fitting" that he should attend his funeral. "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," Sir Ian said.
"I think that in any circumstances, however, the Irish government would recommend its president to attend the burial ceremony," he said.
Sir Ian observed that de Valera's difficulties over the funeral arose from Churchill's role as one of Britain's negotiators in discussions that led to the Treaty of 1921. Sir Ian suggested he had no reason to believe the president felt any personal animosity towards British ministers involved in the negotiations, with the exception of the British prime minister, Lloyd George.
In the event, de Valera did not attend Churchill's state funeral at St Paul's Cathedral in London and the then minister for external affairs, Mr Frank Aiken, represented Ireland.