A TD at just 23, Cosgrave stood out because of his energy, not his family name
He learned that in a coalition, each party needs to feel that it is winning, at least part of the time
FROM the moment he was elected to the Dáil in 1943, Liam Cosgrave was clearly a politician of huge potential.
Partly it was the name – his father, WT Cosgrave, the first head of an independent Irish government, was still Fine Gael leader at the time, retiring the following year.
But mainly he was marked out by his energy and youth – he was just 23 – in a party which was short of both.
He was a regular attender in the Dáil, a frequent speaker, and an effective debater, in stark contrast to his party colleagues. By 1947, he became so disillusioned by the lethargy of his fellow TDs that he wrote to party leader Richard Mulcahy to say that he could no longer ask voters to support Fine Gael as a party, and therefore would no longer speak at meetings outside his own constituency.
It looked like the party was going nowhere. But all that changed in 1948, when an unlikely coalition was formed to oust Fianna Fáil from power after 16 years.
Mulcahy, who was unacceptable to some of the other parties because of his record in the Civil War, stood aside in favour of John A Costello, who became Taoiseach of a government made up of the right-wing, pro-commonwealth Fine Gael; the Labour Party and its more nationalist, more right-wing offshoot National Labour; the radical republicans of Clann na Poblachta; the small farmer party Clann na Talmhan; and a group of Independents led by James Dillon.
Given the range of parties on board, it was inherently unstable and the job of keeping it together, as government chief whip, was given to Liam Cosgrave. Describing the TDs he was in charge of, he later quoted Wellington’s reported remark about his own troops: “I don’t know about the enemy, but they certainly frighten me.”
Keeping the inter-party government together required a balancing act, with Cosgrave attempting to manage wildly conflicting aims. As he described it later, one wanted a republic, while another wanted to stay in the Commonwealth; one wanted an increase in the price of milk, while another would withdraw his support if the price of butter went up; while yet another would bring down the government unless his constituents were allowed to start taking sand from the beaches in his constituency again.
Dealing with concerns large or small, he managed to keep everyone happy enough to keep voting for the government for three-and-ahalf years, and the experience informed his later role as Taoiseach – he learned the lesson that in a coalition, each party has to feel that it is winning, at least part of the time.
In fact, the only significant Dáil defeat suffered by the inter-party government could hardly be blamed on the chief whip – a vote on the estimates for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs was lost because one of the government TDs was trapped in the toilet by a stuck lock.
COSGRAVE was also given the job of taking minutes at government meetings, because the leader of Clann na Poblachta, Seán MacBride, didn’t trust the civil service. This arrangement added to the sometimes chaotic nature of this first coalition, and it was not repeated in the second inter-party government.
As well as serving as chief whip, Cosgrave was also the parliamentary secretary (junior minister) to the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Dan Morrissey. Because Morrissey suffered from ill-health, Cosgrave in effect took over the department for a period, helping to bring the legislation establishing the IDA through the Dáil, and also negotiating with his opposite number in Belfast about the nationalisation of the Great Northern Railway.
The government was fatally damaged by the Mother and Child Crisis in 1951, though the final blow was the withdrawal of support from a number of rural TDs over the price of milk. Fianna Fáil marginally improved its position in the ensuing general election and de Valera was returned to power with the support of a number of Independents.
That Fianna Fáil government never recovered public support after introducing a particularly harsh budget in 1952, and in 1954 Costello was re-elected Taoiseach at the head of the second inter-party government, this time made up of just Fine Gael, Labour and Clann na Talmhan, with external support from Clann na Poblachta.
After an impressive performance as chief whip, Liam Cosgrave was given a plum job in the new government, as external affairs minister. Though sometimes seen as a backwater, the department was on the verge of an exciting new era – after a decade of being blocked by
the Soviet Union, in 1955 Ireland was admitted to the United Nations.
Membership of the UN was particularly important to Ireland, because of its neutrality during World War II. The Allies had been resentful of Ireland’s failure to take their side, and ostracised the country in the immediate aftermath of their victory. But in the new conditions of the Cold War, Britain and America were keen to have Ireland in the UN, regarding it as a reliable ally against the Soviets.
So how would Cosgrave position Ireland at the United Nations?
He set out three principles which would guide Ireland’s approach: it would uphold the UN Charter; it would retain its independence of any power blocs; but it would do whatever it could to “preserve the Christian civilisation of which we are a part”, and therefore would “support wherever possible those powers principally responsible for the defence of the free world in their resistance to the spread of communist power and inf luence”.
As far as Cosgrave was concerned, Ireland would not be involved in the Cold War, but neither would it be neutral.
His successor, Frank Aiken of Fianna Fáil, would take a more independent line, but it fell to Cosgrave to make the first speech by an Irish minister at the UN General Assembly in 1956, and it was widely regarded as a success.
And it gave Cosgrave experience of international affairs which would stand him in good stead when he became Taoiseach two decades later.