Faughnan commented that ‘ultimately it was de Valera’s decision what should or should not be included. The drafting of the Irish Constitution of 1937 was a process which was controlled and, in all essentials, inspired by de Valera himself’.27 Hearne’s son, Maurice, acknowledged this fact in notes he prepared for a biography of his father: ‘The Constitution of 1937 sprang from the nationalist ideals of Eamon de Valera, it was his political brainchild and it was he and he alone, among the Irish political figures at the time, who had the courage to shepherd it to its successful conclusion between 1935–7.’ Of his father’s role, he added: ‘It is equally clear to me that it was my father whom Mr de Valera most trusted to bring his ideal to that successful conclusion.’28
Notwithstanding a greater knowledge and appreciation of John Hearne’s part in the process which led to Bunreacht na hÉireann, Professor J.J. Lee was correct when he observed that ‘much remains to be uncovered about the planning and drafting of the Constitution, including not least the role of John Hearne and Maurice Moynihan’.29 This book concentrates on Hearne and attempts to identify more precisely, describe more thoroughly and assess more critically his role. It is a task made difficult, however, by the absence of any personal papers belonging to him and of official sources at important times in the process of writing the document. Hearne confirmed this fact in a letter to Maurice Moynihan in 1963:
As regards the English version [of the Constitution], I kept no records at all of my conversations with the President or others in the course of the drafting, and made none afterwards. On one occasion during the drafting, the President asked me whether I was making notes of our conversations and I said I was not doing so. As to whether there is any summary account of the discussions, their general nature, and so on, I should say there is no such account. There is none prepared by me and none of which I am aware.30
Nevertheless, it is important to try and understand Hearne’s role more completely. It is also an opportunity to assess the document from the perspective and through the prism of Hearne’s contribution – a document regarded by de Valera as one of his [de Valera’s] two greatest achievements,31 and of which it has been commented that ‘little else in his career throws such a shadow over contemporary Ireland’.32
CHAPTER 1
Family, Education and Politics, 1893–1921
John Joseph Hearne was born on 4 December 1893 at 8 William Street in the city of Waterford. He was the fifth son and the seventh of eight children, five boys and three girls, born to Richard Hearne (1850–1929) and Alice Mary Hearne, née Power (1856–1934).1 The William Street home in which he lived was not much more than 250 metres from the Viking Triangle, a small area of approximately two hectares, where the Vikings first settled in 914 and which came to define the historic centre of the city, the oldest in Ireland. As he grew up, Hearne came to appreciate the rich heritage of his birthplace and the significant role his family played in it. He always retained affection for the city of his birth and regarded it as ‘home’, often visiting it at Christmas while his parents were alive.2 In December 1945, returning after the War from Canada, where he was Ireland’s High Commissioner, he again came to Waterford for Christmas. On 18 December, he and his son, Maurice, then aged about ten, were both granted the freedom of the city on the basis of hereditary application, his father Richard having been a freeman.3 The fact that he applied for this suggests Hearne’s sense and appreciation of family history and municipal tradition, expressed in claiming a privilege, albeit strictly honorary, defined by familial right and in accordance with the old and established practice of the city’s Corporation.
Waterford at the turn of the twentieth century
The city of Hearne’s birth recorded a population of 20,852 in the 1891 census.4 This was to increase to 27, 464 by 1911;5 indeed, between 1901 and 1911, Waterford’s population grew faster than that of any other southern Irish city, except Dublin. Prosperity depended on the provisions’ trade. In the 1890s, bacon curing was one of the few significant industries, employing 850 people in four factories and supporting 150 pig buyers.6 The number of jobs available in Waterford, however, failed to keep pace with the rising population. Unemployment continued to rise steadily though, by 1911, the number of males out of work had fallen. As a consequence of joblessness, poverty was pervasive. Appalling housing conditions, with attendant problems of poor drainage and lack of hygiene, meant that the city recorded the highest death rate of any town in Ireland in the 1880s. By the 1890s, the Corporation began tackling the housing problem but conditions were far from satisfactory and, in 1909, a particularly high number of deaths from tuberculosis was recorded.7
The most densely populated area in Waterford was the Centre Ward and it was here that some of its poorest inhabitants lived.8 Although William Street was not far from this part of the city, the life experience of John Hearne was very different to that of many of the people in that ward. Society was structured according to a graduated class system9 and the Hearne family was middle class. Their house was located in Tower Ward, where 70 per cent of residents were house owners; by contrast, the comparable figure for the Centre Ward was only 3 per cent.10 The Hearnes had a live-in domestic servant.11 In what has been described as ‘the endemically stratified social life of the city’,12 John Hearne very likely had no significant contact with those less socially advantaged than he. This is apparent from an account of a conversation his son Maurice remembered having with him, in which his father recounted an event while serving in the Free State army during the Civil War:
One experience when he was a junior officer remained with him and he related it to me as a small boy in Canada, probably, I think, to let me know how well off we were in comparison with so many others. He was passing by the NCOs’ mess one dinner time and he heard a soldier, when asked what was on offer for dinner, reply almost in disbelief: ‘Mate, again, begob’. It only dawned on him that the average Irish family could afford meat but once a week at the very outside.13
Richard Hearne: businessman
The Hearne family’s middle-class status was due to the business success enjoyed by Richard Hearne, John’s father. He was born in 1850, at Drumrusk, near Passage East, a village just over thirteen kilometres from Waterford.14 As a young man he began working in the city as an apprentice at Messrs Walsh, a leather store situated in Broad Street. On the death of Edward Walsh, Richard Hearne and James Cahill took over the business. Under the new name of Hearne and Cahill, it soon became one of the city’s best known industries, manufacturing boots. In a book published in 1894, Patrick Egan gave a detailed account of it:
Entering the cutting room we counted twelve hands cutting out … Passing on to the machine room we counted in one room twenty-two girls employed working sixteen machines … Those machines include all the newest designs which the art of invention has developed up to the present time, they having replaced within the present year older ones, now obsolete. We also witnessed the machine for sole sewing, ‘Keats Fortuna’, at work, which is the only one of its kind in Ireland, and the fifth made; and which is capable of sewing five hundred pairs daily. There are several finishing rooms, all filled by busy workmen, and the leather stores, in a factory where upwards of ninety hands are constantly going, with all the machines at their disposal, are of necessity well stocked by large quantities of the different leathers required.
Reflecting his admiration for the factory, Egan proclaimed: ‘Waterford may feel justly proud of having one of the very few boot factories in Ireland.’ Inspired by its example, he made a political point: ‘If Waterford had many industrial resources such as this, it might look forward to the day when it would be able to recover all the native industries which have been filched from the country during ages of misdealing, through inimical laws and other grooves, by which the lifeblood of the Irish nation has well-nigh been exhausted.’15
On the death of Richard Hearne in 1929, the business was inherited by his son, also called Richard. In 1933, the factory was extended and new machines acquired with the potential to increase production by almost 50 per cent. By this time, the company was also producing light and more fashionable footwear, including