‘England owes something to these people’: the Anglo-Irish Unemployment Insurance agreement, 1946

Abstract

On 19 December 1946, the Irish President, Seán T. O'Kelly, signed the Unemployment Insurance Act into law. This innocuous-sounding piece of legislation has received very little attention from historians, but was of great importance to one section of post-war Irish society. Under its terms, Dublin and London entered into a special scheme whereby Irish men and women who had served with the British forces during the Second World War were allowed to claim British unemployment insurance payments, while still resident in the twenty-six counties of independent Ireland. Coming at a time of unemployment and economic slump in Ireland, this was of crucial importance to many exservicemen. This article will explore the background, negotiation and implementation of the unemployment insurance agreement, and will speculate on the reasons why the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, agreed to it. It will also examine the British side of the scheme and explore London's motives, both concrete and notional.