Erskine Hamilton Childers

Erskine Hamilton Childers
4th President of Ireland
In office 25 June 1973 – 17 November 1974
Taoiseach	Liam Cosgrave
Preceded by	Éamon de Valera
Succeeded by	Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh
Tánaiste
In office 2 July 1969 – 14 March 1973
Taoiseach	Jack Lynch
Preceded by	Frank Aiken
Succeeded by	Brendan Corish
Minister for Health
In office 2 July 1969 – 14 March 1973
Taoiseach	Jack Lynch
Preceded by	Seán Flanagan
Succeeded by	Brendan Corish
Minister for Transport and Power
In office 27 June 1959 – 2 July 1969
Taoiseach	Seán Lemass Jack Lynch
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Brian Lenihan
Minister for Posts and Telegraphs
In office 13 June 1951 – 2 June 1954
Taoiseach	Éamon de Valera
Preceded by	James Everett
Succeeded by	Michael Keyes
In office 10 November 1966 – 2 July 1969
Taoiseach	Jack Lynch
Preceded by	Joseph Brennan
Succeeded by	Patrick Lalor
Minister for Lands
In office 27 March 1957 – 23 July 1959
Taoiseach	Éamon de Valera
Preceded by	Mícheál Ó Móráin
Succeeded by	Joseph Blowick
Minister without portfolio
In office 23 July 1959 – 28 July 1959
Taoiseach	Éamon de Valera
Preceded by	New office
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government
In office 19 July 1944 – 4 May 1948
Taoiseach	Éamon de Valera
Preceded by	New office
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Teachta Dála
In office October 1961 – 23 June 1973
Constituency	Monaghan
In office February 1948 – October 1961
Constituency	Longford–Westmeath
In office June 1938 – February 1948
Constituency	Athlone–Longford
Personal details
Born	Erskine Hamilton Childers (1905-12-11)11 December 1905 Westminster, London, England
Died	17 November 1974(1974-11-17) (aged 68) Mater Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
Cause of death	Heart failure
Resting place	Roundwood, Wicklow, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Fianna Fáil
Spouse(s)	Ruth Ellen Dow (m. 1925; d. 1950) Rita Dudley (m. 1952)
Children	7, including Erskine Barton and Nessa
Parents	Robert Erskine Childers Mary Alden
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Profession	Journalist Company director
Signature

Erskine Hamilton Childers (11 December 1905 – 17 November 1974) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as the 4th President of Ireland from June 1973 to November 1974. He also served as Tánaiste and Minister for Health from 1969 to 1973, Minister for Transport and Power from 1959 to 1969, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1951 to 1954 and 1966 to 1969, Minister without portfolio in July 1959, Minister for Lands from 1957 to 1959 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government from 1944 to 1948. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1938 to 1973.^[1]

His father Robert Erskine Childers, a leading Irish republican and author of the espionage thriller The Riddle of the Sands, was executed during the Irish Civil War.

Early life[edit]

Childers was born in the Embankment Gardens, London,^[2] to a Protestant family, originally from Glendalough, Ireland. Although also born in England, his father, Robert Erskine Childers, had had an Irish mother and had been raised by an uncle in County Wicklow, and after the First World War took his family to live there. His mother, Mary Alden Childers was a Bostonian whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. Robert Erskine Childers and his wife, Mary, later emerged as prominent and outspoken Irish Republican opponents of the political settlement with Britain, which resulted in the establishment of the Irish Free State.^[3] Childers was educated at Gresham's School, Holt,^[4][5] and the University of Cambridge, hence his striking British upper class accent. In 1922, when Childers was sixteen, his father was executed by the new Irish Free State on politically-inspired charges of gun-possession. The pistol he had been found with had been given to him by Michael Collins. Before his execution, in a spirit of reconciliation, the elder Childers obtained a promise from his son to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed the death warrant for his death.^[6] After attending his father's funeral, Childers returned to Gresham's,^[5] then two years later he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge.^[7]

Career[edit]

After finishing his education, Childers worked for a period for a tourism board in Paris. In 1931, Éamon de Valera invited him to work for de Valera's recently founded newspaper The Irish Press, where Childers became advertising manager.^[8] He became a naturalised Irish citizen in 1938. That same year, he was elected as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for Athlone–Longford.^[9] He would remain as a member of Dáil Éireann until 1973, when he resigned to become President of Ireland.

When former President of Ireland Douglas Hyde died in 1948, de Valera and his Fianna Fáil colleagues, then in opposition, stood, alongside most of the Cabinet (with the exception of Noël Browne who endeavoured to venture in), outside St Patrick's Cathedral while the funeral was going on. They sent Childers, a fellow Protestant, into the cathedral as their representative.^[10]

Childers joined the cabinet in 1951, as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the de Valera government. He then served as Minister for Lands in de Valera's 1957–59 cabinet; as Minister for Transport and Power under Seán Lemass; and, successively, as Transport Minister, Posts and Telegraphs Minister, and Health Minister under Jack Lynch. He became Tánaiste in 1969.

Erskine's period as a minister was controversial. One commentator described his ministerial career as "spectacularly unsuccessful." Others praised his willingness to make tough decisions. He was outspoken in his opposition to Charles Haughey, in the aftermath of the Arms Crisis, when Haughey and Neil Blaney, having been sacked from the government, were sent for trial amid allegations of a plot to import arms for the Provisional IRA. (Both were acquitted.)

President of Ireland[edit]

Campaign[edit]

Fine Gael TD Tom O'Higgins had come within 11,000 votes (1%) of defeating de Valera in the 1966 presidential election; he was widely expected to win the 1973 election, when he was again the Fine Gael nominee. Childers was nominated by Fianna Fáil at the behest of de Valera, who pressured Jack Lynch in the selection of the presidential candidate. He was a controversial nominee, owing not only to his British birth and upbringing but to his Protestantism. However, on the campaign trail his personal popularity proved enormous, and in a political upset, Childers was elected the fourth President of Ireland on 30 May 1973, defeating O'Higgins by 635,867 (52%) votes to 578,771 (48%).

Presidency[edit]

Childers, though 67, quickly gained a reputation as a vibrant, extremely hard-working President, and became highly popular and respected. However, he had a strained relationship with the incumbent government, led by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave of Fine Gael. Childers had campaigned on a platform of making the presidency more open and hands-on, which Cosgrave viewed as a threat to his own agenda as head of government. He refused to co-operate with Childers' first priority upon taking office, the establishment of a think tank within Áras an Uachtaráin, to plan the country's future. Childers considered resigning from the presidency, but was convinced to remain by Cosgrave's Foreign Minister, Garret FitzGerald.^[11] However, Childers remained detached from the government; whereas previously, Presidents had been briefed by the Taoiseach once a month, Cosgrave briefed President Childers and his successor, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, on average once every six months.

Though frustrated about the lack of power he had in the office,^[11] Childers' daughter Nessa believes that he played an important behind-the-scenes role in easing the Northern Ireland conflict, reporting that former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O'Neill met secretly with her father at Áras an Uachtaráin on at least one occasion.^[12]

Death[edit]

Prevented from transforming the presidency as he desired, Childers instead threw his energy into a busy schedule of official visits and speeches, which was physically taxing.

On 17 November 1974, during a conference to the psychiatrists of the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin, Childers suffered a congestional heart failure causing him to lie sideways and turn blue before suddenly collapsing. He was pronounced dead the same day at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.

Childers's state funeral in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, was attended by his presidential predecessor Éamon de Valera and world leaders including the Earl Mountbatten of Burma (representing Queen Elizabeth II), the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and British Opposition Leader Edward Heath, and Presidents and crowned heads of state from Europe and beyond. He was buried in the grounds of the Church of Ireland Derralossary Church, in Roundwood, County Wicklow.

Memorial to Erskine Childers in St Patrick's Cathedral

Erskine Childers' grave in Derralossary Church grounds, Roundwood, County Wicklow, Ireland

Close up view of Erskine Childers' grave in Derralossary Church grounds, Roundwood, County Wicklow, Ireland

Succession[edit]

Childers's widow, Rita Childers, shared her late husband's widespread personal popularity. Upon his death, when she issued a press statement pleading for the nation to keep the office above politics in choosing a successor, Cosgrave reacted by suggesting to the Opposition Leader, Jack Lynch, that they appoint Mrs. Childers to the presidency by acclamation. Lynch agreed four days after Childers' death to bring the suggestion to his party. However, when members of Cosgrave's Fine Gael disclosed the plan to the press on their own initiative, Lynch, believing his Fianna Fáil party was being denied a public voice in the decision, he withdrew his support for her.^[13]

All parties instead agreed to appoint the former Attorney General and Chief Justice, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, as Childers' successor.

Family[edit]

Childers married Ruth Ellen Dow in 1925. They had five children, Ruth Ellen Childers, born in July 1927, Erskine, born in March 1929, followed by Roderick Winthrop Childers in June 1931, and in November 1937 twin daughters, Carainn and Margaret Osgood Childers. After the death of Dow in 1950, Childers married again, in 1952, to Rita Dudley. Together they had a daughter, Nessa, a Member of the European Parliament, who currently sits as an Independent member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Childers was survived by children from both his marriages. His second wife Rita Dudley died on 9 May 2010.

See also[edit]

• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• John N. Young, Erskine H. Childers: President of Ireland

External links[edit]

• Headstone at Derralossary Church