politics

#1 W.T. Cosgrave

Name: William Thomas Cosgrave

Party: Cumann na nGaedheal (Later re-named Fine Gael)

Terms served: December ’22-March ‘32

Ask any American, regardless of their level of education or political engagement, who was the first President of the U.S. and they’ll be able to tell you it was George Washington. But ask an Irishman or woman who was the first Taoiseach and you’ll quite possibly leave them stumped. This is not because we’re all idiots (it’s a coincidence), but more reflective of the piecemeal, stop-start nature of Irish nationhood. In Shakespeare’s Henry V the Irishman MacMorris asks “What isht my nation?” and five hundred years later we still don’t knowsht. It’s not at all easy to say when “Ireland” first came into existence. I mean, there has been an island called “Ireland” and a people called “the Irish” since time immemorial. But when did the modern nation known as “Ireland” first spring into existence? Was it when Padraig Pearse stood outside the GPO and read the Proclamation to a tittering Dublin citizenry in 1916? Was it when Collins signed his own death warrant with the Anglo-Irish treaty? Or how about when DeValera brought in the new constitution of 1937 or when John A. Costello finally said “screw this noise” and declared a republic in 1948? Also complicating things is that if you said that the first Taoiseach was Eamon DeValera, you’d be technically correct.

“The best kind of correct!”

Eamon DeValera was indeed the first person to hold a title of that name. However, as I mentioned in the introduction, the current historical consensus is to retroactively count W.T. Cosgrave as the first Taoiseach.

“Gesundheit.”

He is also, in my uninformed opinion, the greatest. Why? And if he is, why is he, if not forgotten, so often overlooked? Firstly, let me explain who W.T. Cosgrave was. And, as I know most of my readers are American, I’ll use an American historical allegory. I want you to imagine that you’re one of the founding fathers. Not one of the big guys though. You’re one of the no-names who’s always in the background of the portraits.

To all the other Founding Fathers you’re considered dependable, but hardly exceptional. You don’t have a whole heap of legislative experience outside of a stint in local government. You run a tavern, that’s about it. You are, all things considered, a fairly normal Joe. The kind of guy who, when this is all over, will be lucky to get a footnote in some history book and maybe a school named after you in your home town.

So, the War of Independence kicks off and it doesn’t go as well it did in our reality. Oh, the Americans still win. But Britain manages to hold on to a few of the colonies. Washington, realising that the Revolutionary Army’s supplies of food and ammunition are running low, accepts a compromise with the British Crown that allows them to keep these colonies in exchange for independence for the rest. Jefferson, outraged, leads half of the constitutional conference in a rebellion against Washington and the newly freed colonies are suddenly plunged into Civil War.

So you’re thinking, wow, this got real bad real fast. But we’re still good. We’ve still got George Mo’Fuckin Washington and Benjamin “Lighting is my Bitch” Franklin on our side, how can we lose?

Then you wake up one day to be told that George Washington’s been fuckin’ SHOT, Benjamin Franklin has died in bed and, because half of the government went with that traitorous dog Jefferson, YOU, YOU anonymous tavern keeping, local government, back of the portrait guy, are now the President.

“Aw Crap.”

Have fun, pally.

Now, what if, ten years later, it turned out that you managed to hold everything together? You beat Jefferson, united the freed colonies and managed to establish a stable, functioning democracy? You’d have earned the right to feel a little smug, no?

W.T. Cosgrave was that guy.

He was just a minor member of the first Dáil who, following DeValera’s rejection of the treaty, the assassination of Michael Collins, and the death from illness of Arthur Griffith, found himself running a nation embroiled in a vicious Civil War. This explains why he looks so terrified in so many of his portraits.

“…help me..”

Alright, I may have sold him a little short in that analogy. Cosgrave was actually one of the more experienced politicians in De Valera’s revolutionary government, having spent many years serving on Dublin city council. He fought in the Easter Rising and, like DeValera, just narrowly escaped execution. Upon his release from prison, he ran for election as a Sinn Féin candidate and won thanks to possibly the greatest election poster in the history of everything.

This country deserves a better class of criminal.

Remember back in the De Valera post I mentioned howSinn Féin were essentially able to create a parallel government to compete with Britain’s institutions? Well most of the actual sweat-work was done by Cosgrave in his role as Sinn Féin’s Minister for Local Government. (Pro-tip for any aspiring revolutionaries out there: Make sure you have a government set up to take over before you win. Don’t put it on the long finger). But still, the guy would not be your first choice to lead a nation through a civil war. In fact, he may have gotten the job purely because, at 42, he was the oldest member of the government (yeah, this was a young revolution). He was a small, quiet, totally normal bloke.

He was also something that is vanishingly rare in politicians of every stripe and nationality: Competent. That, I think, is the word that sums him up better than any other. WT Cosgrave got shit done.

Under Cosgrave’s leadership the Free State triumphed over the anti-Treaty rebels and the Civil War drew to a close in 1923. Cosgrave then had to get down to the hard business of actually governing. This, incidentally, is where the story of former colonies who win independence usually goes sour. The occupying power is kicked out, the victorious side gets into power and starts enjoying the perks, divvying up choice positions and privileges to their supporters. Resentment builds, the government cracks down, freedoms are curtailed, military dictators rise and before you know it we have to do the whole dance all over again. One of Cosgrave’s most important gifts to the country was an apolitical Civil Service. Instead of a patronage system, new applicants had to pass an entrance examination, meaning that whether or not you got a job depended on what you knew rather than who you knew.

He also had to deal with the problem of an army that had to be significantly downsized now that the war was over. By the mid-twenties, Ireland had an army of 50,000, i.e. one soldier for every sixty people and, making it one of the most militarised nations on earth. Clearly, something had to be done. Unfortunately, the army were all “Point one. We like having jobs. Point 2. We have guns.” It was looking pretty hairy for a time but fortunately Cosgravestuck to his metaphorical guns and the army never used their not so metaphorical ones and the expected army mutiny never materialised.

Internationally, Cosgrave worked to set Ireland apart from Britain, claiming a seat at the League of Nations and becoming the first British Commonwealth nation to have its own representation in Washington DC. Economics was more of a mixed bag, Ireland at the time was an overwhelmingly agricultural nation so Cosgrave and his government focused most of their energies on that sector while neglecting industry. They did, however, set up the Electricity Supply Board, the first national electricity grid in Europe.

In the end though, nothing became WT Cosgrave’s time in power like the leaving of it. By 1932, a general election had been called and Cosgrave’s Cumann na nGaedheal party was facing Eamon De Valera’s new and energised Fianna Fáil.

Cumann na nGaedhael sensibly ran on the platform of “Hey, ten years ago no one thought this country would even still be here!” and on their record of honest and effective government. However, they made the mistake of trying to paint DeValera and Fianna Fáil as a crowd of rabid lefty communists. It was a mistake because, to this day, if you say the word “conservatism” three times in front of a mirror, the ghost of DeValera appears and slashes your welfare benefits. Fianna Fáil won the election, and Cosgrave now faced a very difficult question. Was he really going to hand over control of the nation to the man who had thrust it into a bloody Civil War? Was he going to let all his hard work, every painful sacrifice, every monumental achievement be put in jeopardy? Was he truly going to hand stewardship of the Irish Free State over to the man who had actively worked for its destruction?

And Cosgrave said: “Yes. Because that’s how democracy works.”

“Ya eejit.”

Despite fears of violence (some Fianna Fáil TDs went into their first day of work armed in case shit went down) Cosgrave stepped aside and DeValera assumed the position of President of the Executive Council, which he would later rename “Taoiseach.”

“Gesundheit.”

With this one action, WT Cosgrave set the nation’s future in stone. Whatever Ireland’s problems, whatever her failings, whatever disagreements arose between her children they would be dealt with in accordance with the rule of law and the will of the people. Ireland would no longer be a nation governed by the threat of violence but by the ballot box.

Ireland was now a democracy.

That is William Cosgrave’s legacy. There can scarcely be one finer.

Pros:

You want more? Okay, well, it bears remembering that WT Cosgrave was a democrat in a time when democracy in Europe was widely seen as being on its way out. He scrupulously defended the nation’s democratic institutions in a time when fascism and authoritarianism were far more intellectually respectable than they are now.
The Irish Free State also had full women’s suffrage six years before Britain, a fact that we are constitutionally required to remind them at every possible opportunity.

Cons:

Nobody comes through a Civil War with their hands clean, and Cosgrave was no exception. Despite being personally opposed to the death penalty (being on death row will do that to you), during the height of the conflict he ordered many executions, some almost certainly illegal as they were without trial. All in all, almost eighty republicans were executed before the war ended, far more than even the British had executed during the War of Independence.
Fathered Liam Cosgrave.

#2 Jack Lynch

Name: Jack Lynch

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms: November ’66-March ’73, July ’77-May ’79

So remember when Michael Jordan quit basketball and became a baseball player as depicted in the documentary Space Jam? Imagine if, instead of being awful, he had gone on to become one of the best players in that sport too. Then imagine he ran for election and became one of the most popular presidents in US history. That’s pretty much Jack Lynch.

Also, instead of Bugs Bunny, Jack Lynch was aided by Daithí Lacha, Ireland’s first cartoon character. He was terrible.

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#3: Seán Lemass

Name: Seán Lemass

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms in office: June ’59-November ‘66

Some professions just lend themselves to producing politicians. Liam Cosgrave, Charles Haughey, Jack Lynch and John A. Costello practiced law. Enda Kenny and DeValera were teachers. Brian Cowen and W.T. Cosgrave were barmen.

Long before he was Taoiseach, Seán Lemass was an assassin.

Yup.

How did he go from professional homicide specialist to leader of an entire nation? And why do I consider him such a great Taoiseach? Well, that last one should be obvious.

Because I’m afraid of him.

*CLICK*
“Gulp.”

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#05 John Bruton

Name: John Bruton

Party: Fine Gael

Terms of Office: December ’94-June’97

John Bruton first entered politics when he was elected to the Dáil in 1969, only 22 and barely out of nappies. He later served as Minister for Education under Liam Cosgrave but we won’t hold that against him. To understand how he became Taoiseach we have to re-join the story where we left off, with Labour’s Dick Spring walking out of Albert Reynolds’ government over the Harry Whelahan/Brendan Smyth clusterbollocks. Bruton convinced Spring to return to the batcave and enter a coalition with Fine Gael and the Democratic Left. This gave Bruton a majority in the Dáil and he became Taoiseach without even needing to be elected.

“Just like Gerald Ford.”

Despite some tensions with Spring, Fine Gael and Labour nonetheless managed to work together to form a government that was, in hindsight, pretty not bad at all. Despite being seen as part of Fine Gael’s more conservative wing, one of Bruton’s first initiatives was the legalisation of divorce. In 1995. Which makes us possibly the only country in the world to have internet before we had divorce.

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#06 Garret Fitzgerald

Name: Garret Fitzgerald

Party: Fine Gael

Terms served: June ’81-March’82, December ’82-March ’87,

We Irish tend to view our politicians with the mixture of pity, loathing and disgust normally reserved for the kind of people who have to go door to door whenever they move to a new neighbourhood. A big exception to that rule is Garret Fitzgerald. We Irish love us some Garret Fitzgerald. To this day he’s remembered fondly as a man of principle, integrity and humanity and also because in his later years he bore a passing resemblance to Tom Baker.

“Care for a jelly baby?”

Not just a politician, Fitzgerald was also one of our foremost men of letters, writing for The Economist and the Irish Times where he was a contributor for almost sixty years. And a great Taoiseach right? Riiiiiiight?

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# 07: Eamon de Valera

Name: Eamon de Valera

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms of Office: December ‘37-February ‘48, May ’51-May ’54, March ’57-June ‘59

Ah. The big one. Right so.

Great Man History, or the historical method of viewing past events as some great epic story whose course is controlled by a handful of heroes and villains, is largely bunk. World War 2 was not a personal duel between Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Tojo and Stalin but the result of a billion different political, military and economic factors all crashing into each other. Real history is incredibly complicated, massively messy and almost entirely too big for any human being to comfortably conceive. And yet, the thirties, forties and fifties of Irish history really feel as if they belonged solely to one man: Eamon de Valera. In Ireland Dev personifies that whole era of our history in the same way that Andrew Jackson did his in the States, and like Jackson the appraisal of his legacy is incredibly controversial and getting more negative with every passing year. I quite purposefully put de Valera right smack dab in the middle of the rankings. For me, Dev is like a ninja assassin. I disagree morally with what he did, but I have to admit he was, very, very good at it.

Ironically, despite being the towering figure of Irish history for much of the twentieth century, Dev wasn’t born here. He was born in New York in the 1880s to an Irish émigré named Catherine Coll and her husband, the Spaniard Juan DeValara. Maybe. The historical record on this is actually super sketchy and no marriage certificate for Dev’s parents has ever come to light. In fact, no evidence has ever come to light that Juan de Valera even existed, leaving questions of his parentage and legitimacy that would dog de Valera all his life.

Lost Targaryen Prince. Calling it now.

Anyway, after Juan’s death (uh-huh), the now widowed (riiiiiiiight) Catherine sent the infant Eamon to Ireland to be raised by his grandparents. He grew up an excellent student and devout Catholic, even considering joining the priesthood before deciding against it because of the issue of his possible bastardy. He became active in the Irish independence movement and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret society that had controlled or influenced virtually every Irish freedom organisation both political and military since the 1850’s. He was a commander during the Easter Rising of 1916 and just barely escaped being executed by the British because of American diplomatic pressure. As quite literally the last man standing of the rising’s leaders, de Valera was elected president of Sinn Féin, a political party formed to win total independence from Great Britain (as opposed to the wishy-washy “Home Rule” that the Irish Parliamentary Party had been trying and failing to get for decades). Sinn Féin had been founded by a man named Arthur Griffith who was an absolutely brilliant thinker (also a bit of an anti-Semite, but you can’t have everything). Griffith’s ground-breaking notion was this: instead of trying to win Irish independence within the British power structure, simply set up an Irish government with its own departments, police force, postal service, bureaucracy and ignore the British government until it goes away. Absolutely revolutionary. Might even have worked. As it turned out, Sinn Féin under de Valera did succeed in creating an entire alternate government capable of providing services that equalled (and in some cases even proved superior to) the British institutions they were competing against. This is especially incredibly when you consider that we’re talking about an illegal organisation running a government while being on the run from the government. But Griffith’s vision was for non-violent resistance to British rule and that did not happen. Because while Sinn Féin under de Valera was wresting political control from the British, the Irish Republican Army under Michael Collins was showing them this new thing he’d invented called “modern urban guerrilla combat” and why that was going to be something of a game changer for the rest of the twentieth century.

During this time de Valera toured America to raise publicity for the Irish cause and to try and get Woodrow Wilson to acknowledge the Irish Republic. He didn’t get recognition, but he did win significant support and donations for the Irish cause. He also visited the Chippewa reservation and spoke of the shared history of oppression and colonialism of Native Americans and the Irish people. He was then made an honorary chief of the tribe, and I get to use this picture.

This is a good day.

Back home, the war raged on until finally the British sued for peace. de Valera then made one of the most controversial and debated decisions of his entire career (which is saying a whole heap). With peace negotiations scheduled in London, the expectation was that Dev would lead the Irish delegation himself. Instead, he decided to sit this one out and sent Michael Collins in his place. Now, the deal that the Irish delegation ended up getting was, in retrospect, pretty darn good. Ireland would get dominion status, essentially the same relationship to Britain as Canada and Australia. Ireland would have its own flag, and its own freely elected government.

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#08: Albert Reynolds

Name: Albert Reynolds

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms: February ’92-December ‘94

“Interesting” would be the word to describe Albert Reynolds’ life even before he became the most powerful man in the country. He grew up in rural Sligo, the son of a coach maker, and left a secure civil service job to pursue a wide range of business activities like selling fish, running dancehalls and cinemas and owning what Wikipedia calls a “bacon factory” but I’m going to out on a limb and assume was either a pig farm or a slaughterhouse.

“But…then where did they build the pigs?”

He got into politics in his mid-forties and helped Charles Haughey get the support he needed for his successful leadership challenge and as a reward was given the position of Minister for Transport. This put Reynolds in the middle of one of the downright weirdest incidents in recent Irish history where a deranged Australian ex-Trappist monk named Laurence Downey hijacked an Irish plane to France (Iran was his first choice but he was told there wasn’t enough gas in the tank). Downey claimed that he had read the Third Secret of Fatima (a religious prophecy that supposedly revealed the End of Days) and wanted to force the Pope to reveal it to the world. Reynolds was in Paris as the Irish government’s man on the ground during the crisis.

He then spent the rest of his time in France with a sexy linguist fleeing an albino monk.

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#09: Bertie Ahern

Name: Bertie Ahern

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms: June 1997-May 2008

Bertie Ahern is quite possibly the most hated Taoiseach on this list. Haughey’s been dead long enough that the rage has had time to cool into dispassionate loathing, and DeValera now belongs so totally to the ancient past that hating him is like getting your dander up over the atrocities of Genghis Khan. There’s Kenny, of course, who by now has probably brought more people onto the streets than Public Enemy, but I think Bertie still has him beat in the sheer visceral loathing he incites in many people. For Bertie (and you will never, ever hear him referred to as “Ahern”) this is a hard fall for a man who was once the most popular politician in the country. Irish people tend to view their politicians with a mixture of pity, loathing and withering contempt but people genuinely liked Bertie. He had a cuddly, non-threatening demeanour and a thick, reassuring Northside Dublin accent (Northsiders are well known to be princes among men, and the very salt of the earth). The reality though, was that Bertie was a political animal of the first calibre. His mentor, Charles Haughey, was even quoted as saying “He is the most skilful, the most devious, the most ruthless of them all”.

“The Dark Side is strong with you, my young apprentice.”

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#10: John A. Costello

Name: John A.Costello

Party: Fine Gael

Terms: February 1948-June 1951, June 1954-March 1957

Hands in the air. When I began researching this series, I did not have a clue that this guy even existed. That’s unbelievable. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an expert on Irish politics. I do not claim to be an expert on Irish politics. And if you are labouring under the delusion that I am an expert in Irish politics I am sure that there will be plenty of people in the comments willing to set you straight. But still, the fact that there was a guy running my country who I’d never even heard of was kind of eye-opening. I had this notion that the early years of the Irish state went like this: War of Independence, Civil War and then Eamon DeValera latched onto the nation like a lamprey which caused the fifties to happen (not just here, but worldwide). I’d had an idea of DeValera’s tenure as Taoiseach being monolithic and unbroken, but in fact Mr Personality up there actually managed to wrest control from him for a total of six years. It was like finding a Taoiseach where you least expect it, Costello loose change down the back of the sofa that was Eamon DeValera. So, was his tenure as Taoiseach as memorable and exciting as the man himself? Was it ever!

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#11: Charles J. Haughey

Name: Charles J. Haughey

Party: Fianna Fáíl

Terms of Office: December ’79-June ’81, March ’82 –September ’82, March ’87-February ‘92

Little piece of advice. Say you’re a politician and they decide to make a TV series about your life. If the guy they cast to play you is Lord Petyr Baelish himself, consider that you may have been a shady motherfucker.

“I did warn you not to trust me.”

CJ was already fairly synonymous with shady motherfuckery before he even became Taoiseach. As Minister for Finance in the late sixties under Jack Lynch, Haughey became embroiled in the Arms Crisis. See, it was around this time that the Troubles were being particularly Troublesome, by which I mean things were threatening to blow up into a full on civil war and hundreds of Catholic refugees were fleeing south to escape the violence. Haughey and another minister named Neil Blaney were put in charge of a committee to distribute humanitarian aid to Catholic communities in Northern Ireland that were under siege and apparently at some point the group decided: “Know what this situation needs? Guns.”