Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

In his history of Ireland, a modern historian, F.S.L. Lyons, has called Eamon de Valera "the constitutional Houdini of his generation"! Houdini was a famous nineteenth-century escapologist, who was particularly clever at getting out of handcuffs. Eamon de Valera is famous in the history of Irish republicanism for having worked out a plan for the Irish Free State to escape from its legal connections with Britain. Under his leadership the Dáil began to break the Anglo-Irish Treaty where it clashed with the sovereignty of the Irish Free State. By May 1933, the oath was removed, and the position of the Governor General had been made meaningless, by substituting a British Governor General with a Fianna Fill supporter, who rubber-stamped all decision's taken by the Dáil

De Valera challenged the need to maintain any British connection. In his view, his country's history was more than British. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand were colonies of white settlement, which had been given independence peaceably. The Irish Free State had achieved independence through revolution, fighting for Gaelic freedom. When India gained independence in 1947, its constitutional development took, the same pattern, and the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha, declared India a republic. Unlike Eire, India remained a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations.