Cosgrave, William Thomas

by Eunan O'Halpin

Cosgrave, William Thomas (1880–1965), revolutionary and politician, was born 5

June 1880 at 174 James's St., Dublin, second son among three surviving children
of Thomas Cosgrave and his wife Bridget (née Nixon). He had a stepbrother and
sister from his mother's second marriage to Thomas Burke of Seskin, Co. Tipperary.
The son of a publican whose small premises lay in one of the poorer parts of the
city, Cosgrave observed at first hand the realities of the poverty and deprivation
endured by the people of Dublin. This, together with a profound religious faith, and
an attachment to the ideal of Irish independence, was to drive him in politics, firstly
at municipal level as a reforming Sinn Féin member of Dublin corporation, as a
member of the underground dáil government of 1919–21, and from August 1922 to
March 1932 as head of the first governments of independent Ireland.

Upbringing It would be as unwise to ignore Cosgrave's modest background as

to harp on it. Although the Cumann na nGaedheal party which he founded and
the Fine Gael party which he led came to be associated with the more prosperous
and more conservative elements of Irish society – strong farmers, the professions,
the worlds of finance and commerce – Cosgrave was of humbler stock and was
proud of it. Educated by the Christian Brothers, he left school at 16 to work in the
family business. Given his background, the Irish parliamentary party would have
seemed an obvious political home: through it publicans and other vested interests
already had a stranglehold on municipal politics in Dublin, and were notorious for
wielding their influence to obstruct efforts at civic reform. But Cosgrave was cast in
a different mould. In 1900 he wrote to a national newspaper to protest in fiery terms
at the city corporation's decision to present a loyal address to Queen Victoria: ‘it
should be remembered that within three years of her majesty's accession . . . the
population of Ireland was 9 millions. Now it is only 4 million’. He listed industries that
had been crushed by English intervention, particularly deploring the ruinous taxation
of whiskey, pointed to the ‘havoc wrought’ by the famine of 1847, and complained of
the constant recourse to ‘coercion’ when faced with popular discontent. The queen's
ministers, he concluded, were still bent on ‘the extermination of the Irish race’ (Irish
Daily Independent, 12 Mar. 1900). This letter shows a side of Cosgrave which his
later career as a sober and steady statesman tended to obscure, his early radicalism
and his antagonism towards Britain as the source of Ireland's woes.

Sinn Féin councillor In 1905 Cosgrave attended the first meeting of Sinn Féin in
Dublin's Rotunda with his younger brother Philip (qv). He joined the new party, and
in 1908 he and twelve other Sinn Féin members were elected to the city corporation.
In City Hall he made his name not as a firebrand but as an adroit reformer who
mastered the art of steering committees towards desired conclusions. He gained a
reputation across the political spectrum not only for integrity but for efficiency. By
1911 he was a member, and from 1915 he was chairman, of the influential finance
committee – this despite the fact that by then his party's corporation representation
had fallen to just three. He was also an effective if not a flamboyant public speaker,
able to make his case concisely and on occasion with sharp wit. These were
attributes which, along with his instantly recognisable shock of fair hair, also served
him well during his years in national politics after independence. Almost alone of the
revolutionary elite of 1919–22, he had already been successful in electoral politics
and had experience of managing public affairs at the municipal level.

In 1910 Cosgrave declined an invitation to become a member of the oathbound IRB,

refusing a further invitation in the week preceding the 1916 rising. He recalled that
after the rising he was told that he ‘had been given two opportunities of joining, and
that there would not be a third’. He did, however, join the Irish Volunteers in 1913,
becoming a lieutenant in the 4th Battalion. He was an active and diligent officer,
and displayed initiative during the Howth gun-running in July 1914. In the spring of
1916 Thomas MacDonagh (qv) told him that there would soon be a rising and asked
him for his views: ‘I told him it would be little short of madness – as we lacked men
and munitions . . . I was not impressed with gaining a moral victory’, although he
accepted that significant external developments such as ‘neutralisation of the British
fleet by submarines, importation of arms on a large scale’, or the landing in Ireland of
troops to assist a rebellion would alter the picture. He picked up further hints that a
rising was planned, but like most of the Volunteers had no direct knowledge of what
was envisaged for Easter 1916.

Easter rising Cosgrave took part in the rising as a member of the force that
occupied the South Dublin Union, adjacent to his home. The intention was to block
the movement of British troops from barracks to the west of the city towards the
city centre. Using his detailed knowledge of the locality he advised his commander
Éamonn Ceannt (qv) on the best disposition of his small force around the complex.
Among his comrades was Cathal Brugha (qv), later to become the bitterest of
all the anti-treaty leaders, who was wounded beside Cosgrave in the fighting.
Cosgrave's young stepbrother, Frank ‘Gobban’ Burke, was killed by a sniper while
on guard duty, something for which Cosgrave always felt partly responsible as he
had encouraged him to join the Irish Volunteers.

W. E. Wylie (qv), who prosecuted Cosgrave for his part in the rebellion, and who
had previously known of him as a reforming municipal politician, noted his dignified
demeanour in the face of likely execution. Cosgrave was at pains to emphasise
his view that the rising was an autonomous and legitimate act by the Irish people,
not an outbreak conceived and carried out under German sponsorship. While in
prison in Dublin he conferred closely with Ceannt and with Maj. John MacBride (qv)
about the conduct of the courts martial and their probable outcome. MacBride was
taken from an adjacent cell for execution: ‘Through a chink in the door I could barely
discern the receding figures; silence for a time; then the sharp crack of rifle fire and
silence again. I thought my turn would come next and waited for a rap on the door’.
Cosgrave's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, at least in part
because of his exemplary reputation in the affairs of Dublin corporation, as testified
to by the lord mayor of Dublin. By 1919 he was a partner in an insurance brokerage
with fellow Sinn Féin TD Joseph MacDonagh (qv); after Cosgrave's departure, the
firm traded from 1920 as MacDonagh & Boland.

Dáil Éireann Elected in a by-election as Sinn Féin MP for Kilkenny city in May
1917, not long after his release from prison in England, after a turbulent campaign
which led to a police ban on the carrying of hurleys, Cosgrave was henceforth
involved with the political rather than with the armed-force side of the independence
movement. Elected in December 1918 for Kilkenny North (which he represented until
1922), he was also elected for Carlow–Kilkenny in 1921 and represented the latter
constituency until September 1927, when he was also returned for Cork borough,
which he represented until 1944.

He was appointed minister for local government in the government of Dáil Éireann
in April 1919, a post to which he brought his extensive experience of municipal
administration. With the help of his able assistant minister, Kevin O'Higgins (qv),
he achieved a good deal. They succeeded in destroying the authority of the local
government board and in enforcing the will of the dáil government on most of the
county councils outside Ulster. This was achieved despite the need for secrecy
and the constant likelihood of police raids. Cosgrave particularly prided himself
on arranging for the seizure by the IRA of Dublin corporation financial records,
thereby freeing the corporation from their legal duty to produce these for audit and
consequently from ferocious financial penalties. He encountered some difficulties
with the dáil minister for finance, Michael Collins (qv), who sometimes complained
about Cosgrave – as he did about his other colleagues – to Éamon de Valera (qv),
and he was criticised for slipping out of Dublin to lie low for a time in the aftermath
of Bloody Sunday in November 1920. That surely indicated common sense rather
than any lack of moral fibre: he had demonstrated his physical courage and resolve
in 1916, and he was to continue to do so throughout his long career, travelling
with only minimal protection once the civil war had ended despite the real risk of
assassination: his car was fired on in 1928, and many threats were made against
him and his family.

Civil war Cosgrave was regarded as a de Valera loyalist in the dáil cabinet, but he
disagreed with him on the composition of the Irish delegation to travel to London
in late 1921 to negotiate an Anglo–Irish settlement, believing that the group should
be led by de Valera rather than by Arthur Griffith (qv). The dáil cabinet was split
on the issue of whether to dismiss the plenipotentiaries who eventually signed the
treaty in December 1921, and then whether to accept the document itself. In each
case Cosgrave's was the deciding vote. He supported the treaty, despite earlier
reservations about the oath of allegiance, as the best settlement that could be
achieved. Thereafter he publicly defended the cabinet's decision and the treaty
itself with resolution and without reservation. He maintained that the surest way to
end partition was to operate the treaty faithfully and fully, although as a member
of the provisional government he shared responsibility for its confused Northern
Ireland policy in the spring of 1922; this envisaged preparations for sustained military
action in conjunction with anti-treaty forces in order to relieve pressure on northern
nationalists.

Cosgrave and Collins grew closer during the first few months of civil war, and were
at one in agreeing that anti-treaty violence had to be confronted ruthlessly and
relentlessly until it was completely eliminated. The sudden deaths in August first
of Griffith and then of Collins saw Cosgrave unexpectedly become chairman of
the provisional government and president of the dáil government. Under threat of
assassination, he wrote a note forgiving whoever might kill him. On 6 December
1922, on the formal establishment of the Irish Free State, Cosgrave became
president of the executive council. He and his colleagues pursued military and
political victory with resolution and ruthlessness, particularly after the assassination
of a pro-treaty TD, Seán Hales (qv), and the wounding of the deputy ceann
comhairle of Dáil Éireann, Pádraig Ó Máille (qv). What was the alternative to drastic
measures in response? The government's approach ensured a decisive victory by
May 1923. When republican prisoners went on mass hunger strike that autumn,
the government held firm and the strike broke. Within a year all 11,000 prisoners
had been released, and their political leader de Valera had embarked on a tortuous
journey towards acceptance of the new state and its constitution.

Cumann na nGaedheal governments However enduring the bitterness left by the

civil war, the transition from widespread lawlessness to almost bucolic calm was
extraordinarily rapid. There were, however, obstacles on the road to normalisation.
In March 1924 a faction of army officers with grievances about demobilisation and
promotions threatened mutiny; in the midst of this challenge Cosgrave fell ill, and
it was left to his cabinet colleagues to deal with the crisis. Led by Kevin O'Higgins,
they defused it through a combination of appeasement and firmness. The defence
minister, Richard Mulcahy (qv), was sacrificed, the loyal general staff was purged,
a judicial inquiry into army administration was announced, and although finally
arrested the ringleaders were never punished. O'Higgins emerged from the crisis
with his personal authority enhanced, but there is no evidence that Cosgrave was
seriously weakened.

The extent to which Cosgrave should take credit for the achievements and the
failings of his ministers is one that all heads of government face. He was certainly
not one to dictate policy or to interfere in details, but it does not follow that he failed
to lead. Much has been made of the intellectual abilities and energies of other
members of the executive council, in particular the three lawyers Kevin O'Higgins,
Patrick McGilligan (qv) and Patrick Hogan (qv), a coterie with a perhaps exalted
idea of their own talents; on his death a former colleague, like that troika a UCD
lawyer, spoke of the ‘strong personalities’ whom Cosgrave had around him: ‘You
can imagine what it is to have a driver driving a team of high-spirited horses’. Yet
Cosgrave had little difficulty in holding firmly on to the reins of power throughout
the triumphs and the setbacks of a decade in office, and of a further twelve years in
opposition.

In terms of legislation, his administration worked prodigiously hard. None of the

governments that succeeded them managed to pass remotely as many measures in
a single year – sixty-two in 1924. Laws to establish new institutions and to reshape
inherited ones flowed through the Oireachtas. The Garda Síochána was established,
an unarmed police force which proved remarkably successful. The 1923 land act
succeeded in taking the land issue out of national politics; the Courts of Justice Act,
1924, reformed the legal system; and the creation of the civil service commission
put an end – more or less – to the jobbery that had characterised Irish administration
under British rule, producing an impartial and competent if highly cautious public
service. Endemic inefficiency and corruption in local government were addressed
largely through taking control of personnel and financial matters out of the hands of
elected councillors and entrusting them to professional administrators, culminating in
the introduction of city and county management in 1929 (an innovation denounced
as undemocratic by de Valera, but one which his government strengthened in 1941).
Despite instinctive economic conservatism reinforced by the prevailing academic
wisdom, the government also made a somewhat apologetic start to the development
of state enterprise through the establishment of the Electricity Supply Board, the
Agricultural Credit Corporation, and the Industrial Credit Company, all of which
played vital roles in national economic life for the succeeding fifty years.

From the outset Cosgrave and his ministers were clear that Anglo–Irish relations
should be conducted on a basis not of subservience but of equality. The governor
general was treated with courtesy but otherwise was rendered a cipher. Despite
British pressure Ireland pursued her own course in the League of Nations, managed
her own diplomatic relations, and became the first dominion to establish a legation in
Washington. These developments were Cosgrave's direct ministerial responsibility,
as he dealt with external affairs until 1927.

Cosgrave made a very favourable impression internationally, earning a reputation

for modesty, for decency, and for economy with words. In January 1928 he visited
the US and Canada, making radio broadcasts extolling the achievements of the new
Ireland in both countries. The trip was not without its hazards – he survived a train
crash that killed an engineer while en route from New York to Ottawa – but politically
it was highly productive. Notwithstanding the strength of republican sentiment in Irish
émigré circles, in both countries he was greeted with considerable public as well as
official enthusiasm. The Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King described him in
his diary as ‘a fine character, simple, unassuming, [and] brave as a lion . . . I have
the greatest admiration for him’ (Mackenzie King diary, 30 Jan. 1928). While on this
trip his government lost a vote in the dáil, but once the whips did their job the crisis
was overcome.
The calamitous outcome in 1925 of the Irish boundary commission's deliberations
presented Cosgrave with enormous political difficulties. The government had
reposed considerable faith in the commission, believing that it would of necessity
produce favourable findings which would lead to a significant accretion of territory
and which might ultimately pave the way for negotiated unity with Northern Ireland.
The result was a shattering blow to all nationalists, leading to a hasty agreement
between Dublin, London, and Belfast to leave well enough alone. As a sop, Britain
made significant financial concessions to the Irish Free State, but this was little more
than an obscure technicality. Yet no great storm broke about Cosgrave's head in the
dáil, for the simple reason that his main opponent Eamon de Valera and his Sinn
Féin TDs were still committed to their policy of abstention from the Oireachtas.

The most dramatic single event of Cosgrave's decade in power was the murder (July
1927) of the vice-president, Kevin O'Higgins, who was Cosgrave's heir apparent and
widely recognised, not least by himself, as the ablest member of the government.
This proved to be an opportunistic crime, but might well have presaged a campaign
of assassination. Cosgrave met the challenge by forcing de Valera to choose once
and for all between opposing the state and accepting it: the law was changed to
invalidate the election of any TD who did not then take his seat. This forced de
Valera's hand, and in August he took the plunge by accepting the oath of allegiance
and bringing his new party Fianna Fáil into the Oireachtas.

Four days after Fianna Fáil deputies took their seats in August 1927, Cosgrave put
his government's position very plainly in dealing with a motion of no confidence
tabled by the Labour party: ‘We stand for a balanced budget, for easing the burden
of taxation on all the citizens, for developing the country's resources in every
possible way, for improving and increasing the efficiency of every service we have
got, for one army, one armed force in this country, under this parliament, no other,
no matter what sacrifices may be entailed by nailing that on our mast’ (Dáil debates,
16 Aug. 1927).

Parliamentary life was harder and far more rancorous with Fianna Fáil in opposition.
Nevertheless, Cosgrave remained in office and his government continued to function
effectively for another four years, despite acute economic difficulties as the impact
of world economic depression spread to Ireland. In 1931 his government, genuinely
alarmed at the growth of communist influence on the IRA and also anxious to boost
their electoral prospects, promoted a ‘red scare’ with the support of the catholic
hierarchy. The accusation that de Valera was the Irish Kerensky was frequently
levelled during the general election campaign of February 1932, but it did not have
the desired result. To Cosgrave's great disappointment, Fianna Fáil gained sufficient
seats to form a minority government with Labour support. Despite attempts by the
egregious Garda commissioner Eoin O'Duffy (qv) to organise a military coup, a plan
which Cosgrave knocked on the head, the handover of power was peaceful and
smooth. This is all the more remarkable because Cosgrave genuinely believed that
the democratic state and polity which his government had created was in mortal
peril.

Leader of the opposition 1932–44 Courteous as ever, in the aftermath of the

traumatic election defeat he wrote to the celebrated rugby player Eugene Davy (qv),
who had been persuaded to run as a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate in Dublin: ‘I
much regret that my anticipations were not realised – but I would like to assure you
that I was firmly convinced you would win. Even now it appears that with a little more
time better results would have been obtained’ (Cosgrave to Eugene Davy, 24 Feb.
1932, letter in possession of the Davy family).

Cumann na nGaedheal found itself in very difficult circumstances in 1932. For a time
the British government clung to the illusion that if they took a resolute line against
de Valera's demands for changes in the Anglo–Irish settlement, he would soon lose
office and Cumann na nGaedheal would be restored to power. It is scarcely to the
credit either of Cosgrave or of his party colleagues that they encouraged the British
in this shortsighted approach, although it reflected the despair that had set in after
their defeat left all that they had achieved, domestically and internationally, in the
hands of the enemy. The snap election of January 1933, so far from producing the
Cosgrave victory which the British had fondly anticipated, saw de Valera consolidate
his position. Cosgrave's party was left demoralised and virtually bankrupt; one of
its leading supporters privately appealed to the British for financial support lest it
collapse altogether. It was in these circumstances that Cumann na nGaedheal
amalgamated with Gen. Eoin O'Duffy's United Ireland party – previously styled the
Army Comrades Association, and colloquially termed the ‘Blueshirts’ – to form the
Fine Gael party in September 1933. Cosgrave became chairman while O'Duffy,
as president, took the lead in confronting both the Fianna Fáil government and the
republican movement. While a handful of Cosgrave's colleagues were intellectually
attracted by elements of fascist ideology, Cosgrave and most of his associates saw
O'Duffy and his organisation principally as a counterweight both to de Valera and to
the republican movement, which had supported Fianna Fáil's election campaign in
1932 and which had constantly disrupted Cumann na nGaedheal meetings. There
was also an element of excitement surrounding O'Duffy, who was as, Cosgrave well
knew from O'Duffy's time as Garda commissioner, a charismatic but impetuous,
bombastic, and unstable man who had little faith in parliamentary democracy and
revanchist views on partition. Paying homage to the growth of fascism in Europe,
and without a dáil seat, O'Duffy was an incongruous leader of a naturally cautious
and conservative party, and he was eventually eased out in 1935. Fine Gael
under Cosgrave then assumed an entirely democratic character. In the face of
further electoral setbacks, its leaders found consolation in the role of guardians
of public standards, referring to themselves in public and in private as speakers
of uncomfortable truths to a people all too often beguiled by the charlatans and
opportunists of Fianna Fáil.
During the second world war Cosgrave and other senior opposition figures
supported the policy of neutrality. When a German invasion seemed a real possibility
in June 1940, he and de Valera spoke from the same platform in Dublin to urge
Irishmen to join the defence forces. Cosgrave repeatedly made it clear to both British
and American diplomats that there was no alternative to neutrality, although he
was affronted by de Valera's unwillingness to confide in the opposition leadership
about any aspect of the crisis. He and party colleagues privately urged the British
government to offer a generous settlement of the partition question. His patriotic
defence of neutrality, despite his antagonism towards de Valera, was a significant
element in British assessment of Irish affairs. It contrasted with the behaviour of
his one-time party leader Gen. O'Duffy, who represented himself to the Axis as a
Quisling in waiting.

After politics Cosgrave was leader of the opposition for twelve years after losing
office. In retirement after 1944, he appeared a somewhat solitary figure. One former
party colleague wrote of Cosgrave's unwillingness to discuss any aspect of the old
days. He did contribute substantial entries on Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins to
the DNB, and helped at least one of Collins's biographers. But in general he chose
to say very little about the history of the Irish revolution and the founding decade
of independence. In his statement to the Bureau of Military History, Cosgrave
concentrated on providing an overview of the fighting and its aftermath in the
western part of the city, and on the work of the underground dáil department of
local government in 1919 and 1920. His stated reasons were that he ‘had not kept
a diary and had no papers of any sort’, and ‘was somewhat reluctant to rely on his
memory . . . there were many things which would be better left unsaid in case any
injustice might be done to the persons concerned’. The dearth of Cosgrave papers
probably explains the absence of a full-scale biographical study.

Cosgrave blamed de Valera personally for the treaty split, and avoided direct contact
with him for decades. There is evidence that while de Valera came to regret the
depth of that estrangement, Cosgrave did not. It was therefore ironic that almost the
last significant public duty which fell to the aged President de Valera was to appoint
Cosgrave's son Liam as taoiseach following the surprise defeat of Fianna Fáil in the
February 1973 general election. Cosgrave's relations with de Valera's successor as
taoiseach, Seán Lemass (qv), were rather warmer. When Lemass became taoiseach
he sought Cosgrave's advice on aspects of cabinet government.

Cosgrave's personal life was a conventional and happy one. He married (1919)
Louise Flanagan, the daughter of Alderman Flanagan of Portmahon House; she
predeceased him in June 1959. They had two sons, of whom the elder, Liam (b.
1920), became both leader of Fine Gael (1965–77) and taoiseach (1973–7). In the
1920s the family moved to Beechpark in Templeogue, then well outside the city.
Always devout, whenever possible he attended daily mass on his way into Dublin.
Cosgrave, a keen horseman, was chairman of the Racing Board from 1946 to his
resignation in 1956; he was reappointed as a member of the board by the minister
for finance, James Ryan (qv), in June 1957. Cosgrave received honorary degrees
from Cambridge University, TCD, NUI, Columbia University, New York, and from the
Catholic University, Washington.

Reputation As a pro-treaty political figure Cosgrave has sometimes been

unfavourably compared with others, particularly the stellar Michael Collins and the
ambitious and acerbic Kevin O'Higgins and his UCD-educated acolytes, as a man
whose administrative skills could not obscure his lack of political talent and the
poverty of his political imagination. He has also been criticised for his economic
conservatism (as though obvious alternatives to sound money and cautious
protectionism were freely to hand), for his deference to the catholic church, and
generally for a want of modernity in his outlook. In such interpretations, Cosgrave
held on to the leadership of pro-treaty opinion for over two decades largely by luck.
There were greater talents, more ardent spirits, sharper minds. Yet Cosgrave's
career both as a revolutionary and as the leader of pro-treaty Ireland is a safer guide
to his capacities and achievements. His most resonant epitaph was provided not
by his Irish friends or his foreign admirers – London was always inclined to think
rather better of him than was strictly merited by his record of resolute pursuit of
Irish interests at the expense of British imperial suzerainty up to 1932 – but by an
erstwhile opponent. After his sudden death on 16 November 1965, the taoiseach
Seán Lemass, like Cosgrave a Dubliner of modest background and limited formal
education, paid him a measured tribute in the dáil which acknowledged alike his
military record, his achievements in creating a stable democratic and solvent state
after 1922, and ‘the grace with which he relinquished power when the people so
willed’. We should all wish for such an epitaph from our foes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Military Archives of Ireland, Bureau of Military History, WS216 (W. T. Cosgrave);

Ir. Times, Times, 17 Nov. 1965; WWW; Walker; Mary E. Daly, The buffer state:
the historical roots of the Department of the Environment (1997); R. Fanning and
others (ed.), Documents on Irish foreign policy, ii (2000), iii (2002); Eunan O'Halpin,
Defending Ireland: the Irish state and its enemies since 1922 (2000); ODNB

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