Ernest William Blythe (; 13 April 1889 – 23 February 1975) was an Irish journalist, politician and managing director of the Abbey Theatre. He served as Minister for Local Government from 1922 to 1923, Minister for Finance from 1923 to 1932 and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and Vice-President of the Executive Council from 1927 to 1932. He was a Senator for the Labour Panel from 1934 to 1936. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Monaghan North from 1918 to 1922 and as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Monaghan constituency from 1921 to 1933.
Early life
Blythe was born to a Church of Ireland and unionist family in the townland of Magheraliskmisk (Machaire Lios an Uisce), Maghaberry, County Antrim, in 1889. He was the son of James Blythe, a farmer, and Agnes Thompson. He was educated locally, at Maghaberry Cross Roads primary school. At the age of fifteen he started working as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture in Dublin.
Seán O'Casey invited Blythe to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which Blythe accepted. He was 18 at the time. He was hesitant to join at first because he was an Ulster Protestant and was afraid he would be kicked out.
To improve his knowledge of the Irish language, he went to the County Kerry Gaeltacht where he worked as an agricultural labourer to earn his keep. His activity spread all over the south-west region to counties Kerry, Cork, Limerick and Clare. He became Captain of the Lipsole Company (of actors) and toured the region with a list of names of people to recruit. Blythe was one of the few organisers sent out into the country (others were Liam Mellows and Ernie O'Malley) and with little qualification was largely self-taught. Supplies were few and far between, as well as spasmodic. IRA GHQ were loth to commit scant resources. But Blythe was expected to drill, and train his men, as well avoid conscription.
Blythe was regularly arrested 1913-15 under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, when he was finally ordered to be deported from Ireland in July 1915: some of the others on the writ were Liam Mellows, Herbert Pim, and Denis McCullough. Blythe's place was taken by Desmond Fitzgerald. He refused to transport to Britain so was sent to spend three months in Crumlin Road prison, Belfast. On 30 March 1916, a large crowd assembled outside the Mansion House in Dublin to protest against Blythe's and Mellows's deportation. Two policemen were shot at.
Thus, the authorities sent him to a town in Berkshire. He then failed to report to police and was sent to Oxford Prison, Blythe was unable to participate in the Easter Rising due to his imprisonment there. He also served as the Minister for Trade and Commerce until 1922.
Blythe was implacably opposed to conscription. In an article entitled 'Ruthless Warfare' he described conscription as an "atrocity".
<blockquote> We must decide that in our resistance we shall acknowledge no limit and no scruple ... [man who] assists directly or by connivance in this crime against us should be killed without mercy or hesitation.... The man who serves on an exemption tribunal, the doctor who examines conscripts, the man who voluntarily surrenders when called for, the man who applies exemption, the man who drives a police car or assists in the transport of army supplies, must be shot or otherwise destroyed with the least possible delay.</blockquote>
The possibility of enforcing conscription alienated people across the island of Ireland from British policy in general. Instead a war of words emerged in which single issues, like conscription, would serve cohere to a general desire for Irish cultural identity and separation.
Awareness of religious differences was acute: for his part, Blythe noticed that there was a Catholic priest in the IRB. Being a moderate, Blythe was a strong supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
Minister for Finance
Consequently, he became Minister for Finance in W. T. Cosgrave's first government in 1923. Until 2014 when Heather Humphreys was appointed as a Minister, he was the "only specifically northern protestant to have served at cabinet level in the 26 County state". He was also Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1922 to 1932 and Vice-President of the Executive Council. It was not until 12 December 1928 that the new coins, designed by Percy Metcalfe, were put into circulation. The delay was due to controversy over the animal designs chosen by the government-appointed committee, chaired by W. B. Yeats, set up to advise on the design of the coins. In 1930 he wrote in the Star whether "the gods of democracy have not feet of clay ... the franchise in the hands of an ignorant and foolish populace is a menace to the country".
Cumann na nGaedheal had a very conservative economic policy at the start of the 1930s, seeing their role as running a tight financial ship, facilitating trade, and not intervening in the economy. Between 1929 and 1935, the last three years of his time as Finance Minister and the first three years of a Fianna Fáil government, Free State agricultural exports fell in value by almost 63% from 35 million pounds to 13.5 million pounds annually, and the state's total export value to Britain fell from 43.5 million to 18 million pounds, another drop of over 50%.
Into opposition, joining the Blueshirts
thumb|left|All dressed in Blueshirt attire, [[Ned Cronin (left) and Eoin O'Duffy (centre) flank Blythe on the right, in this photograph from early 1934]]
At the 1933 general election, Blythe lost his seat. Shortly afterwards he participated in the formation of the Blueshirts. At an Army Comrades Association executive meeting in February 1933, he proposed that the colour blue be the colour of the uniform of the new organization. In April 1933, the ACA began wearing the distinctive blue shirt uniform. Blythe prepared the speeches of Blueshirt leader Eoin O'Duffy and participated in Blueshirt (now officially called the National Guard) meetings all over the country. He also cultivated fascist ideology within the Blueshirts, and envisaged the movement as an all-powerful 'state within the state'. However, following an aborted attempt at a political parade in Dublin, the National Guard was banned. Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party merged to form a new party, Fine Gael, on 3 September 1933.
In January 1934, Blythe was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate created by the death of Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He served in the Senate until the institution was abolished in 1936. He then retired from active political life. In the 1940s, Blythe supported the fascist and anti-Semitic Ailtirí na hAiséirghe. He had been a member of the Craobh na Aiséirghe branch of the Gaelic league which was the predecessor of the party. He advised Ó Cuinneagáin on the drafting of the party's constitution, gave it backing in his journal The Leader, as well as making financial contributions. Blythe supported the idea of a one-party state stating it could fill the gap left in Irish society created by the destruction of the tanistry system.
During The Emergency in Ireland during World War II Blythe was of concern to the G2 whose intelligence files referred to him as a potential "Irish Quisling".
Abbey Theatre
While Minister of Finance, Ernest Blythe granted a small annual subsidy to the Abbey Theatre. This made the Abbey Theatre the first state subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world. In 1935, from an invitation from W. B. Yeats, he became a director of the Abbey Theatre. Between 1941 and 1967 he served as managing director of the Abbey Theatre. He remained a director until 1972.
Blythe was highly criticised during his time as managing director. It was said that he rejected many good plays in favour of those which were more financially rewarding and ran the theatre into the ground as a creative force.
Upon criticism of Blythe only performing comedies, he replied: "There is no reason, snobbery apart. Why, in their plays, dramatists should boycott ordinary dwellings. Most people in Ireland are the habituees of farmhouse kitchens, city tenements or middle-class sitting-rooms and their loves and hates, disappointments and triumphs, griefs and joys, are just as interesting and amusing, or as touching, as those of, shall we say alliteratively, denizens of ducal drawing-rooms, or boozers in denizened brothels".
Blythe brought to prominence several Irish dramatists. These included Brian Friel, Seamus Byrne, Micheal J. Mollow and Hugh Leonard.
It was through Blythe's efforts that the new Abbey Theatre was built. He was responsible for raising £750,000 to rebuild the theatre which had been destroyed by fire on 18 July 1951. In August 1967, Blythe resigned as managing director of the Abbey Theatre. He remained as a member of the theatre board until 1972. He was also an active member of the Television Authority.
Partition and later life
In January 1922, during the Treaty Debates, he said that nationalists had the right to coerce the six counties of Ulster to be a part of a united Ireland. He added, however, "as we pledged ourselves not to coerce them, it is as well that they should not have a threat of coercion above them all the time", while also believing there is "no prospect of bringing about the unification of Ireland within any reasonable period of time by attacking the North East".
Blythe wrote a book Briseadh na Teorann (The smashing of the border) which was published in 1955. It was a revised account of the partition question regarding the divide between the North and South of Ireland. Blythe opposed coercion as a method of achieving a united Ireland: "Partitionist practitioners of violence do more to keep Partition in being than the most extreme section of orangemen". He also challenged the republican belief regarding who was to blame for partition:;"There would be twenty times for truth in describing partition as Ireland's crime against herself than in describing it according to our propagandist formula as England's crime against Ireland". This book did not earn much recognition, selling only 300-350 copies in the first four months, in part possibly because it was in Irish. One author, however, considers Blythe's writings on the partition question both pioneering and influential. Blythe's subsidy to The Abbey Theatre influenced the performing arts in Irish society.