WT Cosgrave: Reticent leader in the right place at the right time

Judging WT Cosgrave: the foundation of the Irish state

Author: Michael Laffan

ISBN-13: 978-1908996398

Publisher: Royal Irish Academy

Guideline Price: €25

William Thomas Cosgrave was an unlikely revolutionary and politician: mild, pious, conservative, public-spirited, righteous. He could also be harsh with hecklers, ruthless in suppressing terrorism, intermittently dogged in resisting episcopal interference, passionate about working-class housing, and fiercely partisan.

A resourceful tactician, he often wrong-footed more forceful colleagues and opponents who underestimated his intelligence and tenacity. Diffident and unassuming, he was also an old-fashioned dandy who cut a dapper figure on horseback and at garden parties. Éamon de Valera dismissed him as a "ninny", Seán Lemass praised his "generosity of spirit", Kevin O'Higgins deemed him "hopelessly reactionary" yet "most amenable" ('I love him – unofficially"). O'Higgins, Lemass and de Valera attracted many biographers, but Cosgrave evaded close scrutiny, apart from an incisive pen portrait by Stephen Collins in The Cosgrave Legacy (1996) and a sketch by Anthony Jordan (2006). Potential biographers were discouraged by Cosgrave's recalcitrance, the absence of personal diaries, the destruction of his home and its contents in 1923, and the inaccessibility of Cosgrave's papers since his death, in 1965. An even greater obstacle was his blandly "genial" personality, which left few sharp impressions even on his friends.

Undeterred, Michael Laffan has done ample justice to Cosgrave's achievements in the third instalment of an opulently illustrated series of biographical judgments (a counterweight to Diarmaid Ferriter's Judging Dev and Tom Garvin's Judging Lemass). Although historians love to judge public figures and to pronounce on past policies, most would be more usefully employed as advocates, detectives or court reporters than as judges.

Laffan, however, would have made a fine judge, clear and balanced when summarising evidence, cool and unexcited when touching on contentious episodes.

This is history for the connoisseur, based on meticulous research embracing the Cosgrave family archive, military pension files, and Bureau of Military History statements. Errors of detail in previous studies are corrected, fresh quotations and facts abound, slurs on Cosgrave’s performance are deftly deflected, touches of wit mitigate the Free State’s pervasive dullness, and hints of what is not spelled out tantalise the attentive reader.

Such is the mildness, fairness and nuance of Laffan’s account that it is difficult to suppress a quiet “hear, hear” on reading his conclusion that Cosgrave “occupies a prominent and honourable place in the Irish democratic tradition”. No wonder that his son Liam Cosgrave, speaking at the launch, found it a superb book about a man who “certainly never wanted his life written”. Self-effacing in death as in life, his father may be enjoying the last chuckle.

Uncannily well informed

Cosgrave’s 60 years in public life are familiar terrain for Laffan, author of

The

Resurrection of Ireland

(1999). Despite his declared refusal to join the inner circle of “advanced” nationalism, the Irish Republic Brotherhood, Cosgrave was uncannily well informed and never missed a potentially historic moment. He was present at the first convention of the National Council (Sinn Féin) in November 1905, at the foundation of the Irish Volunteers, eight years later, and in the South Dublin Union under Éamonn Ceannt and Cathal Brugha during Easter Week.

His 14 years as a Sinn Féin councillor representing Usher’s Quay qualified him to become the Dáil’s first minister for local government, in 1919. By comparison with most of the revolutionary elite he was a veteran (at 39), with the rare advantage of practical political experience before 1916.

His decision to support the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 tipped the balance within de Valera’s cabinet. Upon the death of Arthur Griffith and then Michael Collins, in August 1922, Cosgrave was “the right man in the right place, with the right experience” to assume command.

The outcome of his unpredictable promotion was a difficult decade as president of the Free State’s executive council, followed by 12 inglorious years as parliamentary leader of an ineffectual opposition to de Valera’s rampant Fianna Fáil. At each critical moment Cosgrave appeared to accept responsibility out of public duty rather than ambition, showing little inclination to use the opportunities afforded by power to organise his supporters more systematically or to improve his popularity.

He was perhaps unfairly criticised for hiding in a monastery at the height of the revolutionary conflict, and for missing key meetings of the executive council because of illness. He often left difficult decisions to colleagues, thus avoiding full responsibility for the brutal counter-reprisals of December 1922, the ham-fisted response to the “army mutiny” in 1924, and the temporary subordination of his party to O’Duffy’s Blueshirts in 1934-5 (for Laffan “the Blueshirt parenthesis”). The contrast between Cosgrave’s languid noblesse oblige and de Valera’s relentless pursuit of domination coloured Irish political history between the wars, lending pathos to Cosgrave’s inability to find an answer to de Valera’s clinical unravelling of the Treaty.

Not all readers will be convinced that Cosgrave’s self-effacement was purely altruistic. By allowing O’Higgins to shoulder the blame for executions and reprisals, he conserved his aura of moderation, a useful asset after the Civil War. By endorsing O’Duffy’s leadership of Fine Gael while retaining parliamentary control, he allowed the impetuous O’Duffy to impale himself, thus eliminating a dangerous rival. His studied ambivalence is nicely caught in a photo showing Cosgrave (white-shirted and hand meekly upraised), peering over O’Duffy’s shoulder as he exchanges the angled salute with devotees. Was it really “out of character” for Cosgrave to commandeer four Air Corps planes to take him from Ennis to Carlow during the 1923 election campaign? Was he truly indifferent to popularity when launching a slickly professional advertising campaign in 1927?

Democratic credentials?

And how sound were the democratic credentials of a man who initially opposed sanctions against Italy over its invasion of Abyssinia, to have supported Spanish “patriots” against the “Red Government”, discerned a Masonic conspiracy in Czechoslovakia, and suspected in September 1938 that “this persecution of ‘Jews’ is mere propaganda”? For Laffan these views show merely that Cosgrave was “relatively uninformed about European affairs” and “viewed the world from a Catholic standpoint”. When Cosgrave appointed his alcoholic brother as titular governor of Mountjoy Jail was he really showing “remarkable restraint” in the exercise of patronage?

Biographers are inclined to fall under the spell of their subjects, and Laffan is not impervious to Cosgrave’s reticence. This is a strictly political biography, paying scant attention to personalities. Little is revealed about Cosgrave’s family circle, his personal vices (if any) or the funding of his lifestyle as the squire of Beechpark, Templeogue. Was the inveterate huntsman and race-goer a gambler? We are assured that he “seldom put money on a horse”.

Was the former spirit grocer and publican a drinker? Laffan alludes to drink only through the medium of a brilliant cartoon by Grace Plunkett showing Cosgrave in white tie and devilish tails, raising a champagne glass as he dances with George V. Was Cosgrave’s ability to devote himself exclusively to politics after 1919 made possible by marriage to the good-natured daughter of a prosperous market gardener? Laffan offers few hints beyond stating that Alderman Michael Flanagan gave Beechpark to his daughter as a wedding present and that the Cosgraves “enjoyed a happy marriage for the next 40 years”.

Useful clues may be found in testamentary papers not cited by Laffan, such as Louisa Cosgrave’s will and the inventory of Beechpark conducted after her death in 1959. Whereas her husband left no real estate and only £1,673 in personal effects, Louisa’s gross personal estate amounted to £31,650 in addition to Beechpark (conservatively valued at £5,000).

Beechpark’s 10 acres of garden, orchard, tennis court, stables and farmland were Louisa’s. Her wealth mainly consisted of shares in Guinness’s, and the inventory included 60 wine glasses as well as a pool table, tankard and tumblers. At “his express request” Louisa left nothing to her husband, to whom she owed £4,000 lent at the time of their marriage. Equivalent to €250,000 today, this loan suggests Cosgrave had been no mean publican.

Both Louisa and William lived beyond their means, leaving substantial overdrafts. Without Louisa, however, Cosgrave would never have been able to emulate John Redmond by living in the manner of a gentleman. David Fitzpatrick is professor of modern History at Trinity College Dublin. His book Descendancy: Irish Protestant Histories Since 1795 is published this month by Cambridge University Press