Liam Cosgrave: Longest-living taoiseach was never afraid to speak his mind

The longest-living taoiseach so far and one of the last of the country’s dynastic politicians to hold that office, Liam Cosgrave, was born 100 years ago on April 13th. His father, WT, had been head of the Irish government from 1922 to 1932 and leader of Fine Gael from 1935 to 1944.

Born in Dublin at the height of the War of Independence, he attended Synge Street CBS and Castleknock College and afterwards studied at the King’s Inns, being called to the Bar in 1943 and to the Inner Bar in 1958. He served in the Army from 1940 to 1943, firstly with the rank of private and then as a commissioned officer.

He was returned to the Dáil for Dublin County in 1944; from 1948 until his retirement in 1981 he represented Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. “Unlike some of his colleagues, he was a full-time and very dedicated politician,” according to political scientist Michael Gallagher. It is generally accepted that he was an outstanding constituency representative throughout his political career.

When the country’s first inter-party government was formed in 1948, he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the taoiseach and to the minister for industry and commerce and was also government chief whip.

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Never afraid

A profile of 1954 described him as a man of independent disposition who was never afraid to speak his mind, although he never publicly disagreed with his Cabinet or party colleagues. Given such responsible roles in government after only five years in the Dáil, he must have made a strong impression because in the second inter-party government (1951-1954), he was given the portfolio of external (now foreign) affairs. He was only 34.

In this capacity, he oversaw Ireland’s formal admission to the United Nations in 1955 and guided his delegation through the stormy session in 1956 when the Suez and Hungarian crises threatened world peace.

When Richard Mulcahy retired as leader of Fine Gael in 1959, Cosgrave contested the leadership with James Dillon, the latter emerging victorious. He was chairman of his party’s policy committee which in 1964 produced the Just Society paper, the brainchild of Declan Costello. His intervention on behalf of the proposals it contained at the party’s ard-fheis is regarded as having been crucial in getting them accepted.

He became leader of the party in which his father had been such a key figure in the year of his father’s death, 1965. At 45, he was the youngest to become leader until Alan Dukes was elected to that position in 1987. His input into the 1966 presidential election was substantial where the Fine Gael candidate, Tom O’Higgins, ran the incumbent, Éamon de Valera, very close. This must have been a boost for Cosgrave, but the result of the 1969 general election must have been a disappointment; although his party gained three seats, Fianna Fáil was returned to power.

Arms Crisis

He played a significant role in the 1970 Arms Crisis when he went in early May to tell taoiseach Jack Lynch that he’d received information that implicated ministers in arms dealing. He got widespread praise for approaching Lynch privately and there seems little doubt that Lynch was forced to act by Cosgrave’s threat to make public his information.

The government’s Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill of 1972 deeply divided Fine Gael and caused a crisis for his leadership. He favoured giving the Garda greater powers; law and order and the protection of the State’s chief institutions (army, courts, police) were something of an obsession with him. Explosions in Dublin that killed two and injured over 80 changed Fine Gael’s position on the Bill and three months later Cosgrave was head of a coalition government with Labour.

A high-point of Cosgrave’s coalition was the power-sharing Sunningdale agreement in Northern Ireland, which unfortunately collapsed after six months due to loyalist opposition. One major difficulty for his government was the Northern Troubles, especially the Dublin and the Monaghan bombings in 1974; another was the quadrupling of oil prices which led to an economic recession. “His courage under fire stood the country in good stead,” historian Joe Lee has written of Cosgrave and Brian Harvey credited him with displaying “endless patience in difficulty”.

He was criticised for voting against his own government’s family-planning Bill without telling his colleagues in advance and for his handling of the controversy that led to the resignation of President Ó Dálaigh, but it’s probably the case that he presided over one of the most harmonious coalition governments ever in the history of the State.

Following the failure of the coalition to secure re-election in 1977, he resigned as leader and retired from the Dáil in 1981 having spent nearly 40 year and virtually all his adult life in active politics. During his long retirement he indulged his love for horses, hunting and racing. He died at 97 and was buried alongside his father in Goldenbridge Cemetery in Inchicore.