De Valera steered Ireland through the dangerous days of the Emergency, but he was not the one to cut Ireland's last ties to England. In 1948, after sixteen years of Fianna Fáil dominance, Fine Gael joined with the Labour Party and a radical Nationalist group called Clann na Poblachta (klan-na po-blah-ta) to create a coalition government.

It was a strange coalition: the moderates, leftists, and nationalists of the three parties could agree on little more than a common desire to unseat Fianna Fáil. The Taoiseach in charge of this new government was John Costello, a Dublin lawyer who had served with Fine Gael for years.

In a meeting with the prime minister of Canada in 1948, Costello revealed that Ireland intended to declare itself a republic. The following year, with a unanimous vote of the Cabinet, Ireland officially removed itself from the British Commonwealth. Ireland was now officially the Republic of Ireland. It has continued in this form to the present day.

The British Reaction

The United Kingdom was surprised and angry. Parliament responded with the Ireland Act of 1949, which stated that Northern Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom and would remain so until the people of Northern Ireland consented to leave. This act directly contradicted the constitution of Ireland, which claimed Northern Ireland as part of the nation. In addition, the United Kingdom guaranteed to the people of Northern Ireland that their social security benefits would not be allowed to fall behind Britain's.

The effect of the Ireland Act was to seal the partition between Northern Ireland and the Republic more solidly than ever before. Politicians on both sides recognized this fact, and many criticized Costello's government for making an essentially symbolic gesture that ruined any chances of undoing Partition. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee remarked, “The government of Éire considered the cutting of the last tie which united Éire to the British Commonwealth as a more important objective than ending Partition.”

But what was done was done. The island of Ireland was now home to a British state and an independent republic, both looking anxiously across the border and wondering how they ended up so far apart.