Politics & Power Quote by Eamon de Valera

De Valera’s “plain people” is doing political heavy lifting: a deliberately flattering label that turns class into identity and identity into mandate. By naming “labourers and small farmers,” he’s not just describing a demographic; he’s drawing a moral perimeter around the nation, implying the real Ireland lives in work-worn hands and modest acreage, not in the boardroom, the big estate, or the colonial office. It’s populism with a statesman’s diction, calibrated to feel inclusive while quietly sorting who counts.

The key move is “coming together and working out the National programme.” The phrase sounds democratic, almost town-hall friendly, but it also naturalizes a top-down project. “The programme” is singular, capital-N National, suggesting a unified blueprint rather than a messy contest of interests. He invites participation, but within a frame: unity is the virtue, dissent the threat. That matters in an Ireland emerging from revolution, civil conflict, and the long argument over what independence should actually mean. In that climate, calling for cohesion is both balm and discipline.

The intent is practical as well as poetic: forge a stable governing coalition out of the rural and working majority, the groups most reachable through parish networks and nationalist institutions. The subtext is a warning to elites and factional rivals: legitimacy will be claimed through “the plain people,” and anyone opposing the programme can be cast as opposing the nation itself. It’s a line that builds a country by narrowing its definition.