Building a state in the shadow of civil war (Part 1)

The Irish Free State was born, in the eyes of Eamon de Valera and his followers, out of a process of revolution and counter-revolution - where the signatories of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on December 6th, 1921, had not the courage to press on to found an independent 32-county Republic. For William T. Cosgrave and the new government, the Irish Free State was secured through the revolution of the Anglo-Irish war, 1919-1921, and the defeat of dissident militant elements, the anti-Treatyites, during the civil war - a fratricidal conflict which cost many lives, most notably the death of Michael Collins, the bedrock of the revolution, in an ambush in August 1922, at a time when it was unclear which side would triumph.

A crushing and decisive victory was ultimately secured by the government in 1923 in a war which was as dirty as it was lacking in chivalry. Throughout the latter part of the 1920s, each side celebrated its own martyrology and developed its own mythology. Despite the re-organisation of the IRA in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that organisation had ceased to enjoy the political support of Eamon de Valera and many of his close followers since the end of the civil war.

De Valera, who probably owed his life to the government decision to place him in "protective custody" during an election rally in Ennis on August 15th, 1923, languished in Arbour Hill and Kilmainham jails until his release on July 16th, 1924. He broke with Sinn Fein on March 11th, 1926, founded Fianna Fail on May 16th and entered Dail Eireann with his followers a year later on August 11th. That was a decisive step on the road to securing and strengthening the fledgling Irish democratic system.

The dissident and defeated Irish Republican Army remained an active enemy of the state, intimidating and murdering witnesses and plotting quixotically to bring down the government. The government felt the deadly echoes of civil war more directly on July 10th, 1927, when the Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O'Higgins, was assassinated on his way to Mass in Booterstown Church, Dublin. De Valera immediately called his death "murder and is inexcusable from any standpoint . . . It is a crime that cuts at the root of representative government . . . [and] it is the duty of every citizen to set his face against anything of the kind". Those words were uttered only a month before Fianna Fail entered Dail Eireann.

Both de Valera and William T. Cosgrave never again enjoyed the personal friendship of pre-civil war years. Yet, when Cosgrave died in 1965, President de Valera said: "Before the division of the Treaty we had been very close friends, and it has always been a regret of mine that political differences should have marred our personal friendship."

But that loss of friendship did not, even in the 1920s, mean a loss of mutual respect. Both Cosgrave and de Valera had individually worked out a common approach on the need to build a liberal democracy based upon the Treaty settlement. The Labour Party, led by Tom Johnson, supported that position and provided the main opposition for Cumann na nGaedheal between 1922 and 1927. At times, Johnson was a one-man opposition.

The Treaty was, as Michael Collins had once fruitlessly pointed out to de Valera, a "stepping stone" providing "the freedom to achieve freedom" - a view immediately accepted by Cosgrave and by Johnson.

When Fianna Fail came to power in March, 1932, de Valera continued to build upon the constitutional revolution set in motion by Cosgrave and the Cumann na nGaedheal government.

Ever in the shadow of Michael Collins, Cosgrave appeared to be a most unlikely successor to that soldier politician and to Arthur Griffith, who died on August 12th, 1922. (Collins died 10 days later.) There has yet to be full recognition in the history texts of the role played by Cosgrave and the Cumann na nGaedheal generation in the development of a democratic state. In the 1920s, the apparently rudimentary and mundane task of state-building appeared far less exciting to many contemporaries than the revolutionary struggle, and the "inglorious" 10 years (1922-32) of striving to secure long-term democratic, administrative, political and economic goals did not register by republican reckoning.

Cosgrave and his colleagues had the necessary qualities to build a new state. Although many Cumann na nGaedheal ministers had been revolutionaries of the first wave, their collective style in government during the 1920s was to eschew flamboyance for a sober patriotism and a self-effacing zeal designed to return the country to "normality". Yet Cosgrave and his ministerial colleagues were not without revolutionary pedigree. The family involvement in politics obliged his grandfather to move from Wexford to Kildare. At 18, young Cosgrave was involved in nationalist politics; he attended the inaugural meeting of Arthur Griffith's Sinn Fein movement in 1905.

He served as a radical nationalist member of Dublin Corporation from 1908, joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, fought in the garrison of the South Dublin Union in 1916 and was twice deported and imprisoned in England for his revolutionary nationalist activities. He served as a minister in the Dail Eireann government, 1919-1921, and succeeded Arthur Griffith in August, 1922, becoming President of the Executive Council on December 6th, 1923.

The above is hardly the profile of a conventional politician. Cosgrave neither lacked nerve nor courage. He was called upon many times during the 1920s to display firmness and qualities of strong and decisive leadership. That strength was most in evidence on the numerous occasions the government found it necessary to pilot emergency anti-subversion legislation through Dail Eireann. Illness - the nature of which has not been satisfactory explained - prevented him from taking a dominant leadership position in 1924 during the "army mutiny", or more accurately named "army crisis". Dissident elements in the army gave the government an ultimatum on March 6th to halt the process of demobilisation. (The army was to be reduced from over 50,000 to half that number.)