George Gavan Duffy (21 October 1882 – 10 June 1951) was an Irish politician, barrister and judge who served as President of the High Court from 1946 to 1951, a Judge of the High Court from 1936 to 1951 and Minister for Foreign Affairs from January 1922 to July 1922. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency from 1921 to 1923. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Dublin South constituency from 1918 to 1921.
Family
George Gavan Duffy was born at Rose Cottage, Rock Ferry, Cheshire, England, in 1882, the son of Charles Gavan Duffy and his third wife, Louise (née Hall). His half-brother Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (1852–1936) was the fourth Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, sitting on the bench of the High Court from 1913 to 1935.
His sister Louise Gavan Duffy came to Ireland in 1907, taught in Patrick Pearse's St Ita's school for girls (Scoil Íde), was along with Mary Colum first Secretary of Cumann na mBan, and was out in the Easter Rising of 1916 in the GPO and Jacob's garrisons. She founded and ran Scoil Bhríde, a bilingual school in Dublin, which is still in operation. Louise came originally to Dublin, as her mother died in 1889. George was raised by three half-sisters travelling from Austria and Germany, at Guilloy, Nice, France. He spoke fluent Italian and French received education from Petit Seminaire. From there he was sent to Stonyhurst College.
He qualified with a solicitor's firm in London in 1907. He married Margaret Sullivan, on 13 December 1908. They had two children, a son (Colum) and a daughter (Máire). Colum Duffy was a legal scholar and law librarian at the Law Society of Ireland.
Early career
Gavan Duffy qualified as a solicitor and practised in London. He defended Sir Roger Casement at his trial for high treason after the Easter Rising. Although the case was unsuccessful and Casement executed, the trial had an enormous effect on Gavan Duffy and in 1917, when he was called to the Irish Bar, he came to live in King's Inns, Dublin, where he became immersed in Irish political life.
Political life
Recognition efforts
During the 1918 Westminster election, he was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Dublin South.
He was sent to Paris to join Seán T. O'Kelly as an envoy of the newly declared Irish Republic. Gavan Duffy published articles and pamphlets urging recognition of Ireland as a sovereign nation at the Paris Peace Conference, which caused increasing embarrassment to the French establishment, who believed his publications were damaging Anglo-French relations.
Gavan Duffy and O'Kelly sought France's help against Britain when the treaties ending the First World War had not yet been signed; Britain had been France's main ally for most of the war, in which France had suffered enormous losses. In January 1919, the Irish Republican Army had also started the Irish War of Independence against Britain, and the new Dáil had declared independence from the United Kingdom.
Further, the British position was that it was preparing a revised system of Irish Home Rule which would be effected after the Peace Conference, and that it had tried to solve the Irish Question at the Irish Convention in 1917, which Sinn Féin had boycotted. Sinn Féin had joined in the campaign against conscription in 1918.
In consequence, all the Allies of World War I saw the Sinn Féin movement as more or less hostile. A final letter of June 1919 demanding recognition and addressed to the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, the chairman of the Peace Conference, was not replied to.
Finally, after publishing a letter he had sent to Clemenceau in protest against the former mistreatment of Terence MacSwiney in prison in 1917, Gavan Duffy was banished from Paris. He was declared persona non grata in December 1920. He then went to Rome and from there travelled through Europe on behalf of the Ministry of the Irish Republic, without securing its recognition.
Anglo-Irish Treaty
When Éamon de Valera chose his plenipotentiaries to negotiate the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, Gavan Duffy was chosen due mainly to his legal expertise. He protested against signing the Treaty but did so reluctantly, becoming the last person to sign. During the debates which followed in Dáil Éireann, Gavan Duffy stated that he would recommend the Treaty reluctantly but sincerely as he saw no alternative for the desired aim of independence.