Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State: Opposition, decolonisation, and majority rights 9781526166289

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Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State

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Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State Opposition, decolonisation, and majority rights Jason Knirck

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Jason Knirck 2022 The right of Jason Knirck to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manche​ster​univ​ersi​typr​ess.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 6627 2 hardback First published 2022 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

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To Jillian Opal Knirck

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Contents

Acknowledgements page viii List of abbreviations x 1 Democracy, historians, and the civil war 2 Opposition and revolution 3 Decolonising the state 4 Making politics normal 5 A slightly constitutional opposition 6 Cults of little personality Coda: multiparty democracy in the Irish Free State

1 20 55 103 159 193 239

Bibliography Index

243 250

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Acknowledgements

This one almost got the best of me. Writing this book was a much longer process than originally intended as it transformed from a biography of W.T. Cosgrave, to a piece on the Farmers’ Party, to its current form. As a result, I accrued a significant number of personal and professional debts along the way. First and foremost, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mari and Jillian, who tolerated odd working hours, obsessions with obscure Irish political figures, and extended absences from our home. I could not have finished this without their love and support. Mari listened to me expound on, fret about, and despair of this project far more than she needed to and for that I am grateful. She was an invaluable guide throughout the process. Jillian put up with my absences, receiving generally only some Star Wars Hot Wheels from Dublin toy stores in return. I am grateful for that too, and this book is dedicated to her, in the hopes that she will read it and take it to show-​and-​tell at school. I have benefited from the able assistance of a number of librarians and archivists as I put together this project. In particular, thanks go to the staff of University College Dublin, the National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, and the Burns Library at Boston College. The latter was a wonderful place to work during my sabbatical period as a Burns Visiting Research Fellow at Boston College. It was during my semester there that much of this book started coming together, and I am very thankful to the Burns Library and the Center for Irish Programs for their hospitality, support, and funding. Thanks specifically to James Murphy, Christian Dupont, Rachael Young, Michael Bailey, and Sadie Sunderland-​Rhoads for their friendship and support at Boston College. Thanks also to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Central Washington University (CWU) School of Graduate Studies and Research for additional funding for this project. A number of people provided research and editing support for this manuscript as it undertook its long journey to clarity, although the responsibility

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Acknowledgements

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for any remaining lack of clarity is of course mine. Mckayla (Sutton) Stehr read numerous drafts and helped tremendously in narrowing and focusing the work. Sean Farrell, Michael de Nie, and Katie Omans also read drafts and provided welcome feedback. I also am grateful for my friends and colleagues in Irish studies, who listened to various iterations of this at conferences and symposia and gave me valuable suggestions, in particular Marie Coleman, Paul Townend, Doug Kanter, Jill Bender, Mandy Link, Ken Shonk, Tim McMahon, Cian McMahon, Tim O’Neil, and Mel Farrell. McKayla (Sutton) Stehr and Katie Omans also worked alongside me in Dublin and listened to me jabber excitedly over lunches and dinners about what I had found that day. That rather unscientific process helped me immeasurably in getting my head around this project. Katie also provided considerable support as my research assistant for a year, and the material she found was critical to Chapter 4 in particular. Luke Prpich also helped find sources on the Farmers’ Party. I am also grateful for my colleagues in the history department at CWU, who allowed me to hide from my chair duties in order to finish this manuscript. Thanks in particular to Roxanne Easley, who is a friend and colleague, and advisor in much of what I do at CWU. I also appreciate the friendship over the years of Beth (Belgard) Carrol, Heidi (Gailey) Nettleton, Patrice Laurent, Rachael (Birks) Morgan, Glen Curtis, McKayla (Sutton) Stehr, and Katie Omans. Thanks also to my mother, my sister, and the extended Roe, DeVine, and Hillestad families for support over the past few years as well.

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Abbreviations

ACA Army Comrades’ Association BC Boston College CnG Cumann na nGaedheal CPA Cork Progressive Association DD Dáil Éireann debates FF Fianna Fáil FG Fine Gael IFU Irish Farmers’ Union IRA Irish Republican Army IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood IWCA Irish Women’s Citizens Association NAI National Archives of Ireland NLI National Library of Ireland RIC Royal Irish Constabulary TD Teachta Dála UCDA University College Dublin Archives

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1 Democracy, historians, and the civil war

When the Second Dáil approved the Anglo-​Irish Treaty of 1921 by a slim margin, the victorious Treatyites immediately created the Provisional Government mandated by the Treaty and also took over the government of the Dáil, the self-​proclaimed revolutionary parliament. The Treaty gave the twenty-​six counties of southern Ireland self-​government but kept the new Free State within the British Empire and forced its elected representatives to take an oath to the King. After several months of dual government, with Treatyites controlling separate Dáil and Provisional Government cabinets, former minister for defence and fervent anti-​Treatyite Cathal Brugha asked plaintively ‘When shall I get the opportunity of explaining my views on this matter with regard to this usurping government that has been brought into existence by the majority?’1 As the somewhat muddied concept of a usurping majority demonstrates, Irish revolutionaries, despite consistently expressing support for democratic forms, had not particularly worked out a practical approach to the construction of democracy. Disagreements about the powers of the majority and the minority in the Second Dáil pointed to larger uncertainties about the tenets of democracy in postrevolutionary Ireland. Although nearly all Irish revolutionaries envisioned parliamentary government, most contemporary discussion focused on the goals rather than the practices of a future Irish democracy. When politicians did talk about democracy, it was as a nonspecific and general espousal of Wilsonian self-​determination. Additionally, revolutionary-​era politicians never tired of complaining that the Irish electorate did not sufficiently understand democracy, and all parties spent a great amount of effort in the 1920s trying to explain it to them. Even a cursory glance at the politics of the postrevolutionary years shows that there was neither an actual consensus on the tenets of democracy nor a belief that there was any such consensus. Few emerged from the revolutionary years with a stable notion of what Irish democracy was or should be. This observation sits uneasily aside most of the literature on the coming of democracy in the Free State, in which there is often an assumption that

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some combination of the Treaty, the constitution, and the end of the civil war consolidated Irish democracy. The Free State is touted as one of the few states created in the First World War’s wake that successfully preserved democracy throughout the interwar period, and the close of the Irish civil war is often depicted as ending the major threat to the nascent democratic state. There were bumps along the road –​the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins in 1927, the draconian restrictions on civil liberties in 1931, and the semi-​ farcical expansion of the Blueshirts in the early 1930s –​but none of these usually seems to threaten the teleological march to stability. The impression is either that democratic values were already instilled in Ireland by the time of the revolution or that the right sort of people emerged as leaders of the new state and fended off challenges from antidemocratic elements. This book takes a different view. It argues that the consolidation of democracy was a more arduous, longer-​term process that spanned the life of the Free State. One of the most difficult aspects of this process was the normalising of parliamentary opposition, as elements of Irish political culture made opposition more difficult to express. First, Irish nationalist political culture since Daniel O’Connell had privileged a broad movement that claimed to speak for a united monolithic nation. Dissent from or opposition to this was seen as either materialistic –​opting for the fleshpots of empire –​Anglophilic, or an aid to the coloniser, which had long pursued a divide-​and-​conquer strategy. The late-​nineteenth-​century Irish Party also never functioned as a loyal opposition at Westminster, as they were generally trying to disrupt or secede from parliament. In addition, Ireland’s long colonial experience may have familiarised the Irish people with British democratic institutions, but it also engendered deep contempt for those same institutions. Government was often seen as something to be resisted, and the trappings of parliamentary democracy –​parties, whips, politicians, and the two-​party system –​were disdained. By the time of the revolution, this was conditioned partly by anticolonial or anti-​British sentiment and partly by growing scorn for what was seen as the corruption and cronyism of the Irish Party. Finally, revolutionaries wanted to create a Gaelic state that would be clearly distinguished from its colonial predecessor. While most revolutionaries certainly undertheorised the Gaelic state, and there has been little analysis of it from historians outside the issue of language revival, it was a powerful concept in shaping the postrevolutionary polity, however ill-​defined. Revolutionaries wanted, in modern parlance, to decolonise the state, to create a new state free of British influences and institutions. While we know that they ended up with a state that adopted a number of British parliamentary practices, too much emphasis on the teleology minimises the initial appeal of anticolonial plans to create a state specifically tailored to Irish interests that avoided mere copying of outmoded

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or unsuited British forms. In short, the development of a democratic culture was difficult in the Free State because of the combination of a desire to decolonise the institutions of state, a political culture that delegitimised opposition as dangerous or un-​Irish, and a widespread belief within the political class that democratic culture had been insufficiently internalised by the Irish people. The process by which opposition was normalised in the Free State shows the difficulties in establishing Irish democracy. Postcolonial and postrevolutionary political culture militated against multiparty democracy, despite frequent affirmations of its merits during the revolution. Sinn Féin leaders worked assiduously to keep dissent under wraps, fearing that open disputes would weaken the revolutionary movement in the eyes of the world and the British Government. There were constant calls for unity from Sinn Féiners, as they believed that this revolution would succeed because its broad nationalist coalition would not fragment or fall prey to British co-​option. Sinn Féin also worked to bring potential dissenters –​Labour, farmers, and feminists, to name a few –​within the revolutionary coalition by promising to address their concerns in a postrevolutionary state. This remained the model of politics for Sinn Féin even after the disastrous open dispute over the Treaty settlement. Throughout the fractious Dáil debates on the Treaty, there were constant calls to restore unity and unanimity. Most newspapers and public bodies that called for ratification also demanded a unanimous decision, in effect asking anti-​Treatyites to approve the Treaty and then oppose Treatyites within the new state. Even after the Treaty passed and Eamon de Valera was ousted as president –​the latter decision causing an acrimonious anti-​Treatyite withdrawal from the Dáil –​there were still pleas for a restoration of unity. Michael Collins in particular made several offers of a coalition to keep order while the details of the new state were being worked out. Once the new Free State Dáil met, the Farmers’ and Labour Parties, and eventually William Redmond’s National League, articulated a different version of politics, one in which the political spectrum returned to ‘normal’, with competing parties divided largely on economic lines. Both wings of Sinn Féin, though, continued to pine for a unified national movement, in the guises of Cumann na nGaedheal’s big-​tent national party of the 1920s, Fianna Fáil’s regenerative national movement, or Fine Gael’s incorporation of the fascist Blueshirts.2 Neither wing of Sinn Féin consistently accepted the necessity or legitimacy of opposition until the mid-​1930s at least. At first this was depicted as a desire to reconstitute the successful revolutionary coalition, but as hopes for that revival faded, unity was depicted, as it was in the rest of Europe, as a panacea for divisions formed around class or region. The tensions among the nationalist desire for unity, the smaller parties’

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hopes for a normal left–​ right spectrum, and nearly everyone’s nominal commitment to multiparty democracy form the analytical backbone of this book. In short, it traces the slow death of nineteenth-​century O’Connellite notions of politics and the eventual normalisation of multiparty democracy under the Fianna Fáil aegis, a process that was quite fraught. This is not the impression gleaned from much of the literature on early Irish democracy. Some scholars do stress the long-​term anti-​or nondemocratic tendencies within the Free State. Mel Farrell’s Party Politics in a New Democracy argues that Irish democracy had long-​ term antidemocratic forces on the left (the Irish Republican Army (IRA)) and the right (the Blueshirts) during its lifespan, but finally stabilised when the moderates in all parties defeated threats from their more radical elements. R.M. Douglas analysed the fascist and antidemocratic Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, the public’s curiosity about which demonstrated popular ambivalence about democracy through the 1940s.3 John M. Regan has argued that both sides in the civil war were equally antidemocratic. The Treatyite interpretation of the civil war as a vindication of democracy, according to Regan, was popularised in academia to serve the presentist goals of dissociating the southern state from its violent origins and delegitimising the violence of the northern IRA after the 1960s.4 Regan contends that the civil war was not about democracy or any other grand ideological principle but was instead about the rather less majestic goal of winning and preserving power. He sees the 1920s in terms of counter-​revolution rather than revolution, and maintains that civil war occurred because Treatyites turned counter-​revolutionary –​defined as a willingness to denounce violence undertaken in pursuit of revolutionary goals –​ before most anti-​Treatyites did. To place this in a democratic context is fallacious, according to Regan, because Sinn Féin itself was ‘pre-​democratic and personal allegiance matters as much as, and in some instances more than, notions of ideology’.5 Even by 1922, ‘the situation … was still revolutionary and therefore terms such as democrat and anti-​democrat have little validity’.6 In addition, democracy could incorporate more than simple majoritarianism, so assuming that the Treatyite definition of democracy was the only valid one is reductionist and wrongheaded to Regan.7 He attempts to remove ideological division over democracy from interpretations of the politics of the Free State.8 These works aside, though, most studies of the period emphasise the factors that enabled Ireland’s progression to multiparty democracy, and the relatively quick period after which politics settled down or normalised. Often, the implicit purpose is to demonstrate why and how democracy took root in Ireland when it failed to so do in many other post-​Versailles and postcolonial states. On this topic, there have been two major schools of thought.

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One emphasises structural factors that conditioned support for democracy, many of which were legacies of the colonial era. The other emphasises the attitudes, behaviours, and decisions of political elites.9 The structural approach accentuates longer-​ term factors from the late colonial era that prefigured Irish democracy, including British acts establishing peasant proprietorship and elective local government; Irish familiarity with the practice of Westminster parliamentary elections; a high literacy rate; an existing colonial bureaucracy; and the qualified support of the Catholic Church for democracy, a crucial variance from the Church’s stance in Italy and France. Older works of political science, including those by Basil Chubb, David Schmitt, and Brian Farrell, more openly espouse this position, although its echoes are felt in more recent studies.10 Chubb and Schmitt each argued that colonial elements, particularly British electoral practices, prepared the Irish body politic for democracy after the Treaty. Brian Farrell identified the creation of the Dáil and its initial mimicking of British parliamentary forms as the crucial colonial inheritance. Farrell wrote ‘a developed political culture was already established prior to ­independence … there was no revolution involved in the creation of the new state’. He proposed that ‘most of its [modern Ireland’s] political values –​as well as its political structures –​were not merely modern but were articulated in a distinctively British way’.11 To Farrell, this created a Sinn Féin political class who ‘already leaned towards an orderly process of legalised change, [and] exhibited a willingness to plan and work for the establishment of a new regime within existing structures whose underlying representative and political values they accepted. They were, in a word, democrats.’12 David Schmitt’s The Irony of Irish Democracy also claimed that the British legacy facilitated democratisation by familiarising the Irish people with democratic processes and institutions. The gradual extension of the franchise and the creation of mass politics meant that elite politicians and the electorate ‘became accustomed to democratic political procedure’ during the colonial period. As Schmitt wrote: institutionalization, that is the processes by which political structures and procedures acquire value and stability, was substantially completed prior to the establishment of the Irish Free State. Naturally, a fundamental institutional change was involved in the shift of authority from London to Dublin. But basic political procedures such as universal franchise, freedom of speech, and other civil rights and liberties, were already valued by most of the political leaders and the public. Moreover, Irish Free State institutions closely followed the model of the British parliamentary system … Thus the often critical problem in new nations of establishing and maintaining viable political institutions was for Ireland a manageable risk.13

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Many of these works focus on the prerevolutionary development of Irish civil society as an important harbinger of democracy. Bill Kissane, in particular, contended that civil society played a key role in consolidating the revolution. Kissane claimed: Irish democracy emerged out of a society that was relatively modernised by 1921, with high levels of education and urbanisation. Moreover, it emerged after a half-​century of land reform had thoroughly reformed the Irish agrarian class structure, and by independence had democratic civil society that reached into practically every area of Irish public life. The relative modernity of the Irish state is precisely what distinguishes the Irish case from the less fortunate states in Eastern Europe.14

Colonial Ireland also had a number of institutions that were independent from the state, including the press, universities, and business interests. These were the building blocks of later civil society.15 For Kissane, civil society was a necessary but not sufficient condition for democracy to flourish: it was strong enough to shorten and contain the civil war, but could not prevent it altogether, despite multiple attempts to mediate by Labour, the Church, or local government bodies.16 Tom Garvin makes a similar argument, claiming that Ireland was ready for democracy but that its elites, committed to futile squabbling over the Treaty, were not.17 Another common line of argument attributes the perseverance of Free State democracy to the democratic convictions of individual Sinn Féin leaders. Much of this has taken the form of praise of W.T. Cosgrave for leaving power peacefully in 1932, testaments to the strength of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government in squelching antidemocratic resistance in 1922–​23, or credit to de Valera for entering the Dáil in 1927. Biographies of Cosgrave, de Valera, Collins, Kevin O’Higgins, Richard Mulcahy, and Seán Lemass each emphasise their subject’s fundamental commitment to democracy.18 Others moved beyond biography to argue that the fluid and overlapping nature of revolutionary politics allowed individuals considerable freedom to chart their own courses. Michael Hopkinson wrote ‘the ill-​defined institutional relationships and the speed of the organisations’ growth made for an increased importance for individuals; much depended on personal initiative and character’.19 Garvin similarly contended that The extreme centralization of the movement on a narrow group of key leaders, a development made possible because of the revolutionary events which had produced a popular unanimity, meant that divisions in the movement would, initially at least, be likely to follow personality differences and clique lines rather than any underlying ideological or social cleavage.20

To be fair, both Garvin and Hopkinson also look at long-​ term structural factors, but still characterise the revolution as offering an unusual

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opportunity for individuals to influence events decisively. The commitment to democracy evinced by these elite individuals thus facilitated democracy. Some historians who focus on elite behaviour have argued that those on the pro-​Treaty side had a deeper commitment to democratic values and consequently that their victory in the civil war cemented Irish democracy. Joseph Curran’s 1980 monograph The Birth of the Irish Free State depicted anti-​Treatyites as thoroughly antidemocratic and characterised the civil war as necessary for the preservation of democracy, concluding that ‘costly as it was, the civil war safeguarded the solid gains embodied in the Treaty, and it firmly established democratic rule’.21 Joseph Lee’s influential twentieth-​ century history textbook followed this line as well. Lee saw the fundamental cause of the civil war as ‘the basic conflict in nationalist doctrine between majority right and divine right. The issue was whether the Irish people had the right to choose their own government at any time according to their judgment of the existing circumstances.’ Republicans argued for a version of divine right, according to Lee, thus reducing the civil war to a ‘choice … between democracy and dictatorship’.22 Lee’s book popularised an interpretation of the civil war as a conflict between democratic Treatyites and authoritarian anti-​Treatyites. A fair amount of scholarship identifies the civil war as the crucible of Irish democracy. Books such as Lee’s and Curran’s that equate the success of Treatyites with the success of democracy obviously follow this line, but Kissane and Garvin also place a lot of emphasis on 1922. Kissane saw it as the triumph of Irish civil society over chaos, whereas Garvin, particularly in 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy, described this year as the victory of majoritarian democrats over violent and unpopular republican vanguards. Even Regan, whose work spans a longer time frame, identifies the civil war period as crucial in forming many of the antidemocratic trends that he ­identifies.23 In many of these works, there is a frequent assumption, sometimes stated and sometimes implied, that Irish democracy faced its greatest test in the ten months of civil war, and then Irish politics settled into a more standard 1920s story of a fiscally conservative government flailing in the midst of a worldwide economic downturn and the inexorable rise of economic populism. Collectively, this scholarship has created a vigorous debate about the nature of Irish democracy, but difficulties remain with some of the arguments advanced. Some of the structuralist work, particularly the earlier political science scholarship, gives the impression, often unintended, that the British colonising mission benefited Ireland, smoothly paving the way for subsequent Irish democracy. Whether explicitly or not, such analyses tend to convey that Ireland’s democratic development was relatively easy, at least compared to other postcolonial countries. For Brian Farrell, the

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British legacy eased the transition because the wholesale adoption of British institutions and political values led to the rapid normalisation of British parliamentary forms. Farrell noted the ‘extraordinary degree of political stability which has been witnessed since the establishment of the state’, a development rooted in the fact that ‘Irish political culture was already developed into an established and sturdy parliamentary mould prior to political independence.’24 Other works that emphasise Sinn Féin’s Irish Party roots, such as those by Ciara Meehan and David Fitzpatrick, also imply, far less overtly, that British parliamentary forms and the Irish Party’s experience with them made Irish democracy less of a struggle to achieve.25 While it is true that previous experience with British rule has served as a predictor for subsequent democratic success, this does not mean that the Irish willingly or unthinkingly imbibed British democratic values and then reanimated them upon the creation of the Free State.26 The colonised did not experience British democracy in the same ways as the colonisers, and Irish politics inherited a healthy suspicion of state institutions and an awareness that political processes can be used to augment the power of a minority. Irish political culture and most Irish voters distinguished the political practices from the legitimacy of the colonial state sponsoring those practices, and so blending legitimacy with practice consequently took quite some time after the revolution. Regardless of the familiarity with electoral processes handed down from the British, Irish politics had not resembled the two-​party British system at any point since the rise of O’Connell. Beyond that, Irish politicians across the spectrum claimed to desire a postrevolutionary political system that did not replicate the British system. Insofar as they had absorbed that system, they preferred to reject it. Irish politicians also assumed for years after the Treaty that the public did not understand democracy and required that its basic tenets be explained to them, and at no point was the British system used as an explanatory model for this process. So, while the Irish public may have been familiar with parliamentary elections and rituals, by the late nineteenth century they experienced such campaigns primarily as a means of disrupting parliamentary processes or maximising the influence of an Irish minority. They did not experience them as something to be replicated, however much their system eventually mirrored the British model in crucial ways. And they certainly had no experience with the function of a responsible opposition in such a system. In fact, the organisation into a separate Irish party assumed an eventual secession from Westminster, as any Irish party would otherwise have a permanent minority status. Overall, the impression given by this literature is that Ireland was on a long democratic path –​this is often described as the ‘constitutionalist’ tradition, as against the ‘militarist’ or ‘republican’ tradition of armed insurrection –​that

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was interrupted by the unexpected and somewhat uncharacteristic explosion of sustained extraparliamentary violence.27 While I do not intend to fuel an Irish Sonderweg debate –​Ireland clearly had a constitutional tradition that was the major expression of political opposition to British colonialism for significant portions of the nineteenth century –​there remains a danger of normalising constitutionalism and the British developmental path to a degree that assumes that a functioning Westminster-​style parliament was always the desired end and that departures from that goal required explanation. This underlying assumption becomes clear when one observes that the volume of historical scholarship seeking to explain why people joined the IRA or Sinn Féin vastly exceeds the amount seeking to explain support for the Irish Party. The former works generally identify a conjunction of variables necessary to cause the pendulum to swing toward military resistance: the rejuvenation of Irish language instruction, the frustrations of the First World War and the threat of conscription, the hopes raised and dashed by the Wilsonian moment, the endless delays in Home Rule, and the wartime prevention of emigration.28 The factors explaining the popularity of the Home Rule movement, in contrast, are far less examined and often taken for granted. We assume that it was somehow normal that the Irish Party was on the ascent in 1912 while the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s (IRB) Irish Freedom remained a journal with a small readership. One danger in this kind of normalising assumption is that it exaggerates the importance of military resistance in the story of Irish democracy. If constitutionalism is the norm, and militarism the anomaly, then an analysis of the threats to democracy is necessarily going to focus on the period of armed civil war, and to assume that once arms were dumped the problem was solved. Problematically, a focus on elite behaviour often unnecessarily narrows the scope of analyses of Irish democracy. Nearly all existing work has been on a handful of Sinn Féin elites. Certainly, if Collins or de Valera or Cosgrave did not possess some loose affection for democracy, it seems less likely that the Free State would have remained democratic. But to argue that was all that was required is to confuse necessary with sufficient. It is hard to see the Dáil gaining legitimacy as a one-​party body like Stormont, and therefore any analysis of elite attitudes toward democracy must also include Labour and Farmers’ Party leaders, as well as the grab-​bag of former unionists and Irish Party members who joined the Dáil as independents. Without this opposition to Cumann na nGaedheal, however numerically impotent, the Third Dáil would have lacked credibility as a legitimate multiparty parliament. While Sinn Féin and Irish nationalism may have set the tone for much of the political culture, the party did not provide the only important actors in the story. In addition, significant recent focus on the civil war has clouded analysis of the early years of Irish democracy. First, it privileges advanced

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nationalist activists in the historical narrative. Archival deposits; witness statements; and, to an even greater degree, the pension records further the foregrounding of these groups. This is not to say that these groups are not worthy of analysis, but rather that there were other political actors –​ Labour, the Farmers’ Party, independents, Sinn Féin dissidents, former unionists –​that were a crucial and often-​underplayed part of the story. It also restricts the chronological scope of such studies. The normalising of loyal opposition –​in essence, the fixing of the rights of majorities and minorities –​took place over a time period that stretched well past 1923. This question was not even partially settled until the mid-​1930s, as the entry of Fianna Fáil into the Dáil in 1927, the change of government in 1932, and the rise of the Blueshirts in 1933 forced the roles of political minorities to be again contested and reformulated. Peter Hart argued that we needed to see the revolution as a ‘chronological, spatial, and thematic whole’.29 I would add that this whole extends well past 1923. Finally, too great a focus on the civil war ends up replicating the loudest issues in 1922: the existence of the republic, the legitimacy of particular elections, and the widespread use of extrajudicial procedures. Those issues are, of course, important, but there were many other aspects of the debates over democracy that deserve more emphasis. This book takes a different approach and reaches a different conclusion. Irish political culture certainly had democratic elements, and the Irish people were familiar with democratic forms via the myriad clubs, societies, and organisations that most of the revolutionary generation passed through with some frequency.30 However, there were also elements of Irish revolutionary political culture that made the transition to democracy more difficult at the national level. The Irish nationalist experience with democracy across most of the nineteenth century, as well as Sinn Féin’s hegemony during the revolution, elevated some ideals and practices that made the specific transition to multiparty democracy in the 1920s more difficult. Chief among these were tenets derived from Ireland’s colonial experience, in particular that governmental structures were there to be resisted and that politics was best manifested through a single united mass movement. This created a push and pull between Sinn Féin paeans to unity –​which took on more force in Ireland because of nineteenth-​century practices –​and the desire from non-​ Sinn Féin politicians for politics to assume a normal left–​right division. This entails a larger analysis of Irish political culture, which was, despite its origins in the British political system, hostile or antipathetic to the creation of a loyal opposition. Brian Farrell defined ‘political culture’ as the pattern of individual attitudes and orientations towards politics among the members of a political system … It refers not only to what is happening in the

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world of politics but what people believe about those events. Political culture is an interpretive filter through which actual political development is perceived and evaluated; it is an ordering of experience.31

Tom Garvin, quoting Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, defined political culture as ‘the psychological dimension of the political system’ consisting of the ‘attitudes, beliefs, values and skills which are current in a political community’.32 These values and attitudes, I argue, worked against the easy development and installation of a loyal opposition and made the process of establishing democracy in the Free State quite difficult. To analyse this political culture, I study political rhetoric, borrowing from the approaches of a number of historians, particularly historians of the French and Russian revolutions such as Lynn Hunt, François Furet, and Orlando Figes.33 Hunt argued that ‘all political authority requires a “cultural frame” or “master fiction” in which to define itself and put forward its claims’.34 Furet analysed the various French revolutions as contests for legitimacy, while Figes and Kolonitskii similarly argue that the Russian revolution was a struggle between competing symbolic systems.35 I use all of these concepts –​the cultural frame, legitimacy, and competing symbolic or value systems –​to study the conflict between the notion of multiparty democracy and that of a united nation. National unity was a master fiction for Irish nationalists, and conceding the legitimacy of difference risked weakening their right to speak for an imagined Irish nation. In such circumstances, it was difficult for opposition parties to establish legitimacy. I also analyse a longer time frame than many previous works, arguing that the difficulties in normalising democracy continued well past 1923 and thus altering what seems an overstated emphasis on the civil war as the trial of Irish democracy. The difficulty in establishing opposition was not entirely rooted in the short-​term causes of the civil war, nor did the end of the war eradicate them. In order to get at the long process by which majority and minority rights were accepted we need to extract the question of Irish democracy from the societal and academic morass of the civil war, long a troubled subject in Irish historiography and memory. It is an oft-​repeated assertion that Irish society and the historical profession were reticent to engage with the civil war for decades. These statements have some truth, as a number of oral histories and memoirs highlight the unwillingness of the revolutionary generation to discuss the subject, and those who provided statements to the Bureau of Military History in the 1940s were told to cease their recollections at 1921.36 Anne Dolan has also identified a general sense of shame surrounding the civil war that prevented the commemoration of its leading events and figures.37 As late as 1990, David Fitzpatrick wrote ‘the Anglo-​Irish struggle and constitutional transformation have been

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extensively studied, to the neglect of the accompanying social unrest and the subsequent civil war’.38 The first serious academic study of the war, Michael Hopkinson’s Green against Green, was not published until 1988. That said, there was no silence about the civil war in politics: Irish politicians were eternally happy to debate the events of 1922. The silence, such as it was, was historical, familial, and commemorative, not political. Scholars, though, have finally caught up to politicians in recent years. John Regan, Bill Kissane, and Donal Corcoran have written books that discuss in depth the high politics of the civil war. Michael Farry and Peter Hart put the conflict into local context, Ann Matthews and Cal McCarthy have studied women’s role in the struggle, and Gemma Clark sharply analysed ‘everyday violence’ during the period. Gavin Foster studied the intersection of the war with questions of social class, health, dress, and emigration.39 Many of these books were driven by the release of the Bureau of Military History Witness Statements collected in the late 1940s, and the recent digitisation of the pension records will undoubtedly spur future research on the period. These works have done much to elevate the civil war’s importance in the academic study of the Irish revolution and to negate decades of academic underemphasis. Nevertheless, I want to suggest that it is time for us to decentre or de-​emphasise the civil war in our analyses of Irish democracy and Irish political history. The conflict was undoubtedly important: it shattered lives, caused untold economic damage, and initiated the political divisions between the major political parties for decades after its purported end. However, the main question in the creation of Irish democracy –​the success of the process by which opposition to the Government at the national level was tolerated and normalised –​was not solved by the spring of 1923. Contrary to many works that portray the Irish Free State as teleologically heading toward stability after 1922, critical questions were still very much debated into the 1930s. A broader chronological scope demonstrates the lack of consensus on this issue and the consequences this entailed throughout the existence of the Free State. Having most political participants put away their weapons was certainly a necessary precursor to the creation of a functioning democracy, but it was not the end of the story. Looking at this conflict over a longer period –​the years between the founding of the Free State and the enshrinement of de Valera’s new constitution in 1937 –​shows the continued yearning for a single party movement throughout the state’s existence. Pro-​and anti-​Treaty Sinn Féiners tended to idealise the (often fictional or superficial) unity of the revolutionary period well after the Treaty had clearly and obviously fractured advanced nationalism beyond repair. Politics, to many of them, remained the working out of relatively small differences within a broad national consensus. While few of them directly denied the right of oppositional groups to function, Sinn Féin

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leaders did tend to see opposition as arising from apostasy, betrayal, and lingering pro-​British (or anti-​Irish) sentiment. This was very similar to how opposition to nationalism was framed in the prerevolutionary period: it was seen as either fundamentally anti-​Irish or motivated by material concerns. The default state of politics was one in which a broad nationalist party spoke for the nation; opposition was the tragic result of a fall from a previously harmonious state of unity and grace. In addition to providing a longer scope, a focus on the development of opposition brings in actors who had little role in the civil war. For example, Labour and the Farmers had different views of opposition than did Sinn Féin, and the voicing of those views was critical to the regularising of opposition in the Free State. Both parties saw opposition and sectional politics as normal, not as a corrupt product of a fractured movement. In fact, Labour and Farmers’ leaders believed that Ireland’s return to ‘normal’ left–​right sectional politics, where politics was defined by a clash of social and economic interests, would redound to their advantage. These parties also fulfilled the quotidian roles of an opposition party –​making parliamentary speeches, tabling amendments, taking part in divisions, filing private bills –​ that played a significant part in making opposition seem normal. It is hard to imagine that the Dáil would have gained much democratic legitimacy in 1922 had Labour not taken part and demonstrated that the Third Dáil, unlike the First and Second, was not a one-​party body. Labour fulfilled the role of a general opposition party in the absence of anti-​Treaty Sinn Féin before 1927, and while it may have suffered electorally for this, the state benefited significantly. The analytical inclusion of Labour and the Farmers also demonstrates the intersection of class and opposition. The Government clashed with the Farmers and Labour over whether class was a legitimate tool of political analysis, with Cumann na nGaedheal leaders frequently denying any class basis for their legislation, and both anti-​Treaty Sinn Féin and Cumann na nGaedheal openly appealing for the reconstitution of a cross-​class movement. Labour and the Farmers, on the other hand, accepted class as a basic marker of political division and sought to organise opposition parties based around class interests. Studying the development of opposition over a longer time frame also illuminates key questions of gender, race, and empire that were critical to the development of the Free State. There was only one female Teachta Dála (TD), Cumann na nGaedheal’s Margaret Collins O’Driscoll, for most of the 1920s. Not only were politicians themselves usually male, but the abstract voter to whom each party tried to appeal was also frequently assumed to be male, as there was relatively little voting material directed at women and little attempt by the political parties to marshal women as an independent oppositional force, despite the rash of sexist legislation in the 1920s.

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In addition, two factors that intersect with Irish notions of race loom large. First, Irish democratic performance and political acumen –​basically, a talent for self-​government –​were deemed by many politicians to elevate the Irish above non-​white colonised peoples. The conflation of opposition with violence or the creation of a state intolerant of political dissent was thought to jeopardise Ireland’s status as a ‘civilised’ nation in the eyes of the world. This brought to the fore Irish views of empire and how simultaneous sympathy with and superiority over non-​white colonised peoples influenced perceptions of civil war violence and political instability. In addition, as dissent was often assumed to be the result of an anti-​Irish or pro-​British outlook, the question of political opposition raised questions of Irish identity. Even those parties that were anti-​or non-​nationalist –​the Farmers and Labour –​had largely to function within a political system suffused with a nationalist ethos and consequently had to articulate policies in a way that nodded to Gaelicism and nationalism. At the very least, they had to avoid being branded as anti-​Irish. There are many advantages to an analysis of the role of opposition in the Free State in the 1920s and 1930s. It involves taking Irish political debates during those periods seriously, even if we know that the system that arose out of those debates ended up resembling the Westminster system in fundamental ways. Diarmaid Ferriter has written that ‘those looking for broad, sophisticated ideological debate during the decade may be disappointed, but perhaps in that search, they are misguided in projecting later preoccupations onto a generation that were not republican theorists and saw no reason to be’.40 I would argue exactly the opposite. While perhaps not theorists, the revolutionary generation thought deeply about the nature of politics and persistently debated crucial democratic issues, including questions about the rights of minorities and majorities, the role of opposition, the place of consensus in Irish politics, and the nature of representative government. True, these debates were generally conducted by people who were not republican theorists, but that does not diminish their content and importance. This, then, is a work that looks at how notions of democracy, particularly minority and majority rights, were debated and conceived of in the political culture of the postrevolutionary period. My contention is that the political culture of Ireland prior to and during the early years of independence was nonreceptive or hostile to formal political opposition, even when expressed in constitutional or parliamentary terms. The story of how the Irish political system learned –​slowly, haphazardly, and sometimes unthinkingly –​to normalise opposition reveals much about the aftermath of the Irish revolution and the creation of Irish democracy. Keith Michael Baker argued that ‘political authority is linguistic authority’, and that revolutions are at least partially dramatic changes in discursive practices.41

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Irish revolutionaries, both discursively and in actual political practice, struggled for over a decade to fit political opposition into accepted nationalist shibboleths about politics. The default condition in politics remained a broad nationalist consensus, with sectional parties and their disputes being seen as un-​Irish and divisive. The postindependence challenge necessitated an acceptance of difference that was difficult to achieve. Looking at the postrevolutionary period in this way includes players beyond simply the two wings of Sinn Féin and raises foundational questions about the nature of democracy. Garvin and Lee may have been right that the civil war was about democracy, but the questions asked and left unresolved by that conflict went beyond the adherence to democracy expressed by either side and instead queried the nature of democracy itself; the possibility of alternative, nonmajoritarian definitions of democracy; and the role of actors outside Sinn Féin in seeking the answers. The book follows a rough chronological format. Chapter 2 lays out the inheritance from the revolutionary period that affected the practice of Irish democracy, including the emphasis on unity, the disdain for sectional or class politics, the hatred of parties and politicians, and the sanctification of dissenting minorities. Chapter 3 discusses 1922, but without attention to its military aspects. Instead, I concentrate on the various ways in which Irish politicians wanted to decolonise the state by creating new institutions stripped of British influence. The creation of this Gaelic state meant different things to different groups of political actors: Sinn Féin wanted to reduce the importance of political parties and career politicians, Labour wanted to decouple state institutions from the reach and ethos of British capitalism, the Farmers desired to remove urban bureaucrats from power and create an agrarian state, and all wanted to move away from the British two-​party system. These conflicts over the practice and definitions of politics in the new state set the template for later debates. Chapter 4 looks at the period between 1923 and 1927, when politics seemed to be normalising. The increasing fracture of the Treatyite coalition and the apparent rise of Labour, the Farmers’ Party, and the National League showed that the political centrality of the Treaty was waning and smaller parties could threaten Cumann na nGaedheal’s hold on power. In response, Cumann na nGaedheal began arguing for a broad movement, disparaging those smaller parties that did not field enough candidates to win a majority. Cumann na nGaedheal also sought to narrow the field of politics, arguing that in an increasingly complex and technocratic society, some issues should be decided by experts, not politicians. Chapter 5 analyses Fianna Fáil as an opposition party after 1927. Once anti-​Treatyites finally decided to enter the Dáil, they mounted a significant electoral challenge to Cumann na nGaedheal and redefined the role

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of opposition. Fianna Fáil claimed opposition was a right that was being denied by the requirement that Dáil deputies take an oath in order to enter the parliament. They also appropriated a number of the issues articulated by other opposition parties, such as Labour’s criticism of Cumann na nGaedheal’s capitalist-​friendly policies and the Farmers’ disdain for excessive government spending. In addition, Fianna Fáil enforced rigid party discipline, something Sinn Féiners had formerly deplored as one of the worst qualities of the British parliamentary system. The final chapter looks at the Treatyites in opposition after 1932. Fearing a Fianna Fáil electoral juggernaut, the Treatyites turned to continental strategies in order to increase their electoral viability. The first was the short-​ lived creation of a cult of personality around W.T. Cosgrave as part of a desire to make the 1933 election into a referendum on de Valera’s character and ability. When that failed, elements of the party turned toward fascism, merging with the Blueshirts to form Fine Gael. This meant that the opposition was, like Fianna Fáil, trying to create a unified national movement that would transcend party, but Fine Gael did so in a way that was increasingly critical of the efficacy of parliamentary forms themselves. By this point, the desire for a single national party among former Sinn Féiners on both sides of the Treaty dispute was less about recreating the fondly remembered unity of the revolutionary period and more about addressing worldwide fears in the 1930s that class and regional fissures would lead to the fragmenting of nation-​states. For a country that, at least according to its own mythology, had spent 700 years attempting to recreate a sovereign nation-​state, such fragmentation was particularly worrisome. Historian Daniel B. Rowland, in a series of essays on the political culture of the early modern Muscovite state, wrote that we need to ‘try as best we can to establish the meaning of a text as it was understood by … contemporaries before proceeding … to ask the meaning of the text within our [historians’] present ideas of early seventeenth century Muscovy’.42 With obvious geographic modifications, that sums up my goal for this book. I want to do that which historians do best: to illuminate and communicate the cacophony and multiplicity of voices on Irish democracy in the 1920s and 1930s and to use those voices to dialogue with our current understanding of the period as historians. A focus on concepts of opposition is, I think, a new, useful, and revealing way of so doing. Once we separate the trajectory of a functioning opposition from moral questions of the civil war –​whose fault was it, should there have been executions, was the Treaty a stepping-​stone –​and once we stop worrying about whether certain structural precursors were present for democracy, we have a better chance of reconstituting the debates about democracy as they happened at the time, freer from teleology. When we stop getting systemic and structural, the messiness of the past re-​emerges. And the reality is that nearly

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every politician of the 1920s and 1930s thought the Free State was unready for democracy. They themselves had shifting understandings of what they meant by the term and they most certainly thought their political opponents and the Irish electorate understood it not at all. They were aware of the British colonial legacy, even as it pertained to governments, parliaments, and democracy, but generally did not believe that was something on which to build. Proposed changes were varied, inconsistent, unsystematic, and improvised. We know in hindsight that what emerged was a system that followed the British model in most ways, but to project that back onto prerevolutionary patterns is to give too much weight to the teleology. This book will try to show the confusion and inconsistency about democracy that emerged when the role of the opposition was discussed, the difficulties Irish politicians had in ‘solving’ this issue, and the very real problems it caused for state and society.

Notes 1 Dáil Éireann debates, 27 April 1922, www.oir​each​tas.ie/​en/​deba​tes (accessed 12 July 2022). These debates will be subsequently referenced as DD. 2 For Fianna Fáil’s national movement see Kenneth L. Shonk, Jr, Ireland’s 1938 New Traditionalists: Fianna Fáil Republicanism and Gender, 1926–​ (Cork: Cork University Press, 2021). 3 Mel P. Farrell, Party Politics in a New Democracy: The Irish Free State, 1922–​ 1937 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); R.M. Douglas, Architects of the Resurrection: Ailtirí na hAiséirghe and the Fascist ‘New Order’ in Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 4 John M. Regan, ‘Southern Irish Nationalism as a Historical Problem’, Historical Journal 50, no. 1 (2007): 197–​223 (217). 5 John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution 1921–​36: Treatyite Politics and Settlement in Independent Ireland (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), 13. 6 Ibid., 68. I should admit that I am not entirely certain what this means. 7 Ibid., 69. 8 I have spent many pages elsewhere analysing Regan’s argument and will refrain from rejoining that fray here. 9 Bill Kissane calls these the ‘functionalist’ and ‘voluntarist’, as they are described in the political science literature. I use ‘structuralist’ and ‘individualist/​elite’ because I think it better describes the historical literature. 10 Basil Chubb, The Government and Politics of Ireland (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970); David E. Schmitt, The Irony of Irish Democracy: The Impact of Political Culture on Administrative and Democratic Political Development in Ireland (Latham, MD: Lexington Books, 1973); Brian Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann: Parliament and Nation-​Building (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1971). 11 Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, vii, xv.

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12 Ibid., 23. 13 Schmitt, The Irony of Irish Democracy, 25, 40. Attentive readers will no doubt notice the panache and fearlessness with which I take on early-​1970s political science. 14 Bill Kissane, Explaining Irish Democracy (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002), 27. Most Treatyite leaders disagreed. 15 Bill Kissane, ‘The Not-​So-​Amazing Case of Irish Democracy’, Irish Political Studies 10, no. 1 (1995): 43–​68 (64). 16 Bill Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 126. 17 Tom Garvin, 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 26. 18 Terence de Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins, 2nd edn (Dublin: DuFour Editions, 1986); John P. McCarthy, Kevin O’Higgins: Builder of the Irish State (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Michael Laffan, Judging W.T. Cosgrave: The Foundation of the Irish State (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2014); Thomas P. O’Neill and Frank Pakenham Longford, Eamon de Valera: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971); Diarmaid Ferriter, Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the Life and Legacy of Eamon de Valera (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2007); Maryanne Gialanella Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992); Bryce Evans, Seán Lemass: Democratic Dictator (Wilton: Collins Press, 2011). 19 Michael Hopkinson, Green against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988), 4. 20 Tom Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005), 131. 21 Joseph Curran, The Birth of the Irish Free State, 1921–​23 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 230–​1, 240, 259, 280–​1. 22 J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–​1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 67. 23 He argues that Collins acted as a dictator in the summer of 1922 and that both sides flouted democratic principles. John M. Regan, ‘Michael Collins, General Commanding-​in-​Chief, as a Historiographical Problem’, History 92, no. 307 (2007): 318–​46. 24 Brian Farrell, ‘The Paradox of Irish Politics’, in The Irish Parliamentary Tradition, ed. Brian Farrell (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1973), 13–​25 (14); Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, 83. 25 Ciara Meehan, The Cosgrave Party: A History of Cumann na nGaedheal, 1923–​33 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2010); David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life 1913–​21: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998 [1977]). 26 Bill Kissane, citing Seymour Lipset, wrote ‘on a worldwide scale experience of British rule “overwhelms other variables” as a predictor of democratic stability’; Kissane, ‘The Not-​So-​Amazing Case’, 44.

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27 Alan Ward’s work remains one of the best summaries of constitutionalism in Ireland. Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1782–​1992 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000 1995). See also Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800–​ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 28 See the work of Peter Hart and Joost Augusteijn. 29 Peter Hart, The IRA at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 28. 30 The best account of this associational culture is R.F. Foster, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890–​ 1923 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015). 31 Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, xiii. 32 Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics, 7. 33 Lynn Hunt, ‘Hercules and the Radical Image in the French Revolution’, Representations 2 (Spring 1983): 95–​ 117; François Furet, Revolutionary France: 1770–​1880 (New York: Wiley-​Blackwell, 1995); Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 34 Hunt, ‘Hercules’, 95. 35 Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 4. 36 Gavin Foster is overseeing an oral history project that seeks to demonstrate the reluctance to discuss the civil war within Irish households. 37 Anne Dolan, Commemorating the Irish Civil War: History and Memory, 1923–​2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 38 David Fitzpatrick, ‘Preface’, in Revolution? Ireland 1917–​1923, ed. David Fitzpatrick (Dublin: Trinity History Workshop, 1990), 7. 39 Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution; Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War; Donal P. Corcoran, Freedom to Achieve Freedom: The Irish Free State 1922–​32 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2014); Michael Farry, The Aftermath of Revolution: Sligo 1921–​23 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2000); Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–​1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Ann Matthews, Renegades: Irish Republican Women 1900–​1922 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2010); Cal McCarthy, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution (Wilton: Collins Press, 2007); Gemma Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Gavin Foster, The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 40 Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–​ 1923 (London: Profile, 2015), 9. 41 Quoted in Jeffrey Prager, Building Democracy in Ireland: Political Order and Cultural Integration in a Newly Independent Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 24–​5. 42 Daniel B. Rowland, God, Tsar, and People: The Political Culture of Early Modern Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2020), 24. Alert readers will note that I take on historians of Muscovy with considerably less élan than that with which I challenge 1970s political science.

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2 Opposition and revolution

In May 1919, the Dáil hosted the three Irish-​American delegates chosen to represent Ireland at Versailles. Eamon de Valera, wanting to align the Irish case with the emerging focus on self-​determination during the ‘Wilsonian moment’, both invoked and then immediately dismissed Ireland’s Protestant minority. He rued the fact that the delegates would not have time to meet with ‘those whose political views are not those of the majority of the people’, because such a meeting would have demonstrated the inconsequentiality of Ireland’s internal divisions. De Valera blamed the English press for exaggerating the ‘almost insignificant differences’ between Catholic and Protestants, unionists and nationalists. He concluded that ‘the Irish people show a unanimity of feeling and desire which it would be hard to match in any other nation in the world’. Ireland’s internal dissent was dismissed as ‘our minority question under which a small fraction of our people occupying a small portion of the country wish to set up a veto on the desires and wishes of the whole Irish nation’.1 A few months later, while in America, de Valera wrote a speech that claimed that Ireland was ‘one nation, with a unity and continuity of national life proceeding unbroken from the past back further than any existing European nation except Greece’.2 These quotes are revealing about de Valera’s attitude toward Irish Protestants, whom he erroneously characterised as living only in northeast Ireland, resisting democracy, and existing outside ‘the whole Irish nation’. Although the choice of Greece as an example of unbroken national unity was strange, it is understandable why de Valera desired to emphasise Ireland’s nationhood and unity in the context of worldwide discussion of national self-​determination. Looked at in another way, though, the exchanges show the powerful desire to minimise political opposition in Irish political culture. After over thirty years of organised Ulster unionist opposition to Home Rule, and on the heels of armed Ulster resistance in the immediate prewar years, de Valera chose instead to gloss over that opposition with self-​evident falsehoods about Ireland’s political unity.

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These exchanges show how important it was for Sinn Féin politicians to demonstrate that Irish nationalism was a monolithic movement. De Valera’s comments went beyond vague invocations of the ‘Irish nation’, instead explicitly trivialising opposition to Irish nationalist hegemony. This same attitude was evident in the Sinn Féin elite’s treatment of internal dissenters and fellow-​travellers. The difficulties within Irish political culture in tolerating or expressing opposition were already manifest during the revolution, while Sinn Féin was nominally united and cooperating with Labour. These difficulties stemmed from nineteenth-​century nationalism, which featured a disdain for constructive opposition and a desire to speak for a united nation whose will was expressed through a broad national movement. This tendency was cemented by particular trends during the revolution, such as Sinn Féin’s unwillingness to air internal differences publicly, a desire to maximise the expansive appeal of nationalism so as to embody a united nation resisting a colonial power, a yearning to create a Gaelic state with different political practices than the United Kingdom, the Farmers’ unions’ ambivalence about forming a political party, and Labour’s decision to step aside from parliamentary elections in 1918. These factors each highlighted the tension between Irish nationalism’s simultaneous embrace of multiparty democracy and monolithic nationalism. In a recent work, Shannon Monaghan argues that Versailles-​ era constructions of democracy ‘rested on two awkwardly intersecting foundations: liberalism, which located rights in the individual, and national self-​determination, which located rights in the group’.3 The solution to this quandary was to draw postwar borders that reduced the presence of ethnic and religious minorities. Homogeneity was thought to be necessary to stabilise democracy, particularly a postimperial democracy based on ethnic self-​determination. Monaghan sees the basic conflict in postwar doctrine as one between collective rights, most often articulated as ‘the nation’, and individual rights, the protection of which ostensibly had been a pillar of European liberalism since the early nineteenth century. This tussle was important in Ireland, as Sinn Féin initially grounded its claims for independence in the Wilsonian rhetoric of self-​determination and the collective rights of a once-​submerged nation. Sinn Féin had to negotiate this conflict between individual and collective rights while managing the tension between a stated commitment to multiparty parliamentary democracy and a desire to speak for a single nation. In order to win approval in the international postwar arena, Sinn Féin needed to extol the virtues of the democracy for which the world was now safe, while still articulating that Ireland spoke with one voice and deflecting Ulster unionist claims that they too were a nation deserving of self-​determination. There was a fear that dissent within Sinn

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Féin or the broader political class would weaken Ireland’s chances for independence and allow the coloniser to pursue a divide-​and-​conquer strategy. In addition, Sinn Féin had to situate support for parliamentary democracy within their expressed desire for a ‘Gaelic state’, an ill-​defined but rhetorically and emotionally potent revolutionary goal. At minimum, a Gaelic state meant refusing to copy English forms, and institutionalising particularly Irish structures and ways of doing things. There were a few attempts to define this more systematically in terms of the precolonial Irish past, although it is difficult to tell how much of this took root in Irish political discourse. The most extensive definition came in Darrell Figgis’s 1917 book The Gaelic State in the Past & Future, which set out the elements of the old Gaelic polity that could form the basis for a modern Irish state.4 Figgis was a literary and nationalist figure, with a pedigree that would seem to indicate a prominent revolutionary career, as he was a gunrunner, prisoner, constitution committee chair, and publicist for Sinn Féin causes. However, he was treated as an eccentric, and frequently mocked by the Sinn Féin and revolutionary establishment –​republicans famously assaulted him and cut off his distinctive beard during the civil war –​and the esteem in which he was held after the revolution did not match his prominence before it. Figgis first set out the anticolonial imperative: a people cannot thrive when their state does not reflect their nation. His Gaelic state featured a relatively equal distribution of land overseen by the state; a vocational organisation of political power, with councils of poets, bards, and lawyers; equal treatment of women; an economy based on co-​operatives; and a government that devolved power to the localities. As Figgis wrote, ‘everything that has been introduced by England into Ireland is destined to rejection’.5 Most policy would be set by ministers presiding over vocational councils of practitioners with a national political assembly holding a veto power. This addressed Irish fears of the problems with British-​style parliamentary majoritarianism, as ‘the clumsiness and constant injustice of majority government would continually be refined by contact with living issues’. This bridged the ancient and the modern, as it ‘reflects the spirit of the old Irish State as translated into modern conditions’ that ‘gives no undue obeisance to the modern invention of parliaments’.6 The downplaying of British-​style parliaments would in turn animate economic co-​ operatives, vocational councils, and local government bodies. Michael Collins also mused on the Gaelic past and its transferability to a modern state. In an essay called ‘Distinctive Culture. Ancient Irish Civilisation: Glories of the Past’, he mourned colonialism’s destruction of Ireland’s more apt precolonial legal codes, social structures, and culture. Collins highlighted the egalitarianism and respect for the arts in the former Gaelic state, which he characterised as politically and economically

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decentralised but culturally and spiritually united. Like Figgis, he argued that colonialism had warped the Irish people and that ‘the extent to which we become free in fact and secure our freedom will be the extent to which we become Gaels again’. This, to Collins, would involve the restoration of the national language, the avoidance of an all-​powerful British-​style state, and the restoration of flourishing localised and rural-​centred economies.7 In political rhetoric, there were calls for an Irish or Gaelic fiscal system, which meant tariffs and taxes designed to promote Irish and not British industries. And there were near-​ constant demands to restore the language as a critical foundation for a Gaelic state. But the other potential parameters of that state remained ill-​defined and generally coded a desire to avoid the perceived evils of British centralisation, urbanisation, and party government. However loosely defined, though, this decolonisation of any postindependence Irish state was perceived as vital and it shaped, if at times inchoately, the type of politics that Sinn Féin wanted to practice. As a result, Sinn Féin had to foster a type of multiparty democracy that received international sanction and permitted dissent while differing significantly from the English two-​party system.8 The solution was to propose a version of politics that rejected a system dominated by political parties and instead presupposed broad agreement with the tenets of Irish nationalism among the politically active class. The single-​ party First Dáil was considered not dictatorial or undemocratic, but instead as a welcome departure from the corrupt party system as represented by the Irish Party and Westminster. The assumption was that future Dáils would feature disagreements on specific areas of policy but not on the general goals of Irish nationalism –​the Gaelic state, linguistic revival, separation from Britain, and economic independence –​that would command near-​universal acceptance. Dissent was thus expected to exist within a relatively narrow range and remain muzzled until Ireland was safely independent, however that was defined. Showing disagreement prior to independence risked bolstering the colonial power and sabotaging the Irish case. These assumptions created tremendous pressure on Labour to stand down from parliamentary elections, as well as resolute attempts to pretend that the unionist minority did not exist. The context of an apparent international embrace of ethnic self-​determination, as well as a legacy of British divide-​and-​rule strategies, meant that Sinn Féin had to preside over a Dáil that seemed united without being monolithic, pluralistic without being oppositional. The tension among the conflicting, yet sincerely held, goals of multiparty democracy, nationalist hegemony, and a Gaelic state predated the civil war, when, for a relatively short time, this tension was expressed in arms. The seeds of this conflict were planted earlier and sown during the revolution when Sinn Féin politicians attempted to combine nationalist

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tradition with liberal democracy in creating a revolutionary politics. They wanted to practise democracy while not disrupting nationalist hegemony or allowing Britain another foothold in Ireland. For the opposition, whether within or outside Sinn Féin, the goal was to oppose the ruling party while not totally abandoning some of those same nationalist shibboleths that were electorally popular. This was played out semi-​publicly in the First Dáil. Regardless of the oft-​stated desire to repudiate a Westminster model, Sinn Féin realised that for maximum propaganda value, an assembly with democratic forms and trappings worked best. This allowed them to characterise what followed the 1918 election as an orderly transfer of power to a party with a clear mandate. Democratic forms were quite familiar to the Sinn Féin elite, as they had passed through myriad local clubs and societies with democratic structures and practices. The problem for Irish political elites was not the lack of familiarity with democratic practice at the club level, but the conflict created by democratic practice on a national, more public, scale. The stakes were higher and failure more damaging than was the case in a local Sinn Féin branch. There were a number of historical precursors that conditioned or influenced the views of opposition in the First Dáil. The role of the Irish Party loomed large. The party was often in opposition at Westminster, with a clearly combative relationship with the Tories and an often uneasy Liberal alliance. Irish MPs had little interest in being productive and constructive members at Westminster. According to Conor Mulvagh’s study, ‘Home Rule MPs attended Westminster with the aim of leaving it.’9 Mulvagh’s analysis of parliamentary rhetoric shows that after 1916, the party ‘re-​radicalised’ and formed an active opposition, with John Dillon’s pugnacious style evoking Parnellite obstructionism more than Redmondite conciliation.10 The party at times attempted to work with the Liberals, particularly after the 1906 Liberal landslide, but still aimed to decamp from Westminster to Dublin and, according to Peter Hart, only ‘maintained a semi-​loyal position towards the British state and refused to accord it full legitimacy’.11 Even before the Sinn Féin victory in 1918, the style of politics that the Irish electorate witnessed in the Irish Party was not that of a loyal opposition, but instead that of a party that did not fully recognise the legitimacy of the body to which it belonged, and ultimately attempted to secede from it. The revolution also took place amidst a general suspicion of parliamentary democracy among advanced nationalists. This was fuelled by what Fearghal McGarry called ‘the ideological vagueness of modern Irish republicanism … rooted more in an incoherent blend of Fenianism, Catholic nationalism and Irish-​Ireland cultural nationalism than the republican principles of the American or French revolutions’.12 While there were some invocations of the

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democratic values upheld by French and American republicans, these were leavened with a fair amount of postwar suspicion of democracy as effete, ineffective, sedentary, and insufferably bourgeois. The Irish Volunteers were from the outset disdainful of politics, and their newspaper proclaimed in 1914 that ‘Irish Volunteers have no concern in election contests. They have their own work to attend to and it is more important than wrangling about whether this or that gentleman will have the privilege of sitting as a cypher at Westminster.’ Hart called them apolitical, not antidemocratic, as their internal constitution involved elected officers.13 This shows the distinction drawn by many in the revolution: they could be involved in many local groups that were democratic and still be scornful toward ‘politics’ at the national level, as those phenomena were not equated. Attitudes toward opposition were also shaped by the fact that the First Dáil was a single-​party body. Although other representatives were invited, only Sinn Féin members showed up for meetings of the First and Second Dáils. Despite frequent claims to speak for the nation publicly, in private de Valera reminded the Dáil members that ‘we were not representative of the country, but only a selection from its left wing’.14 Sinn Féiners’ views on and definitions of politics bore the hallmark of their origins in a single-​ party chamber, as they generally saw politics as conducted amidst a broad ideological consensus. These origins also made it more likely that divergence from Sinn Féin orthodoxy would be treated as traitorous, dishonourable, and basely motivated, rather than as expected and normal. The single-​ party origins of the state would continue to haunt Irish democracy into the 1920s and 1930s by making any disagreement seem like apostasy. Sinn Féin believed that the assembly could be democratic in form and single-​party in composition. The Dáil met infrequently and at times furtively, but there was a sort of parliamentary procedure laid out that marked it as democratic. There also was a constitution that created ministers, a cabinet, and rudimentary bureaucratic divisions amongst the mechanisms of the new ‘counter-​state’, as Arthur Mitchell called it.15 This counter-​state initially mimicked closely the forms and procedures of Westminster.16 The treatment and practice of opposition in the First Dáil set the tone for the post-​Treaty state, and while the civil war certainly complicated the matter, the First Dáil and the Treaty debates show that Irish politicians were unready for multiparty democracy and unwilling to abandon the idea of hegemonic monolithic nationalism well before arms were used to settle the question. This most immediately and frequently manifested as paeans to the need for revolutionary unity. It was a process that started in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, when Sinn Féin reorganised itself as a broader coalition that sought to absorb all elements of moderate and advanced nationalism. Countess Constance Markievicz distanced this renewed Sinn Féin

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from other political parties in 1919, calling it ‘not a solid, cast-​iron thing like English parties. It is just a jumble of people of all classes, creeds and opinions, who are all ready to suffer and die for Ireland.’17 Sinn Féin was explicitly set up in 1917 as an umbrella organisation that combined disparate interests, and members’ unwillingness to face the reality of a split during the Treaty debates shows that some Sinn Féiners took this seriously. The motives for this emphasis on unity were simultaneously obvious and complex. On the one hand, the desire to speak for as many Irish people as possible and appear to the outside world as a united nation is common among nationalist parties and requires little explanation. Unity gave Sinn Féin a stronger negotiating position in Paris and a stronger argument for their claim that the Irish Party had lost its mandate by retaining only six parliamentary seats in 1918. In addition, though, the desire for unity was also a way of heading off the class conflict that seemed endemic in Europe. Liam de Roiste, a frequent Sinn Féin dissenter, wrote in 1918 that ‘the pure national issue in fact should be the issue, not any sectional idea or interest however great.’18 This desire to sideline class-​based issues was frequently reiterated by Sinn Féin and augmented the pressure placed on the Labour Party to stand down from the 1918 election. The First Dáil became a key test for Sinn Féin’s competing commitments to parliamentary democracy and big-​tent nationalism. Here was a body that, although it met in secret, was supposed to be a parliament, the sole existence of which was to debate proposals and reach solutions that were not generally unanimous. Brian Farrell called the first Dáil ‘a safety valve for institutionalising at the outset legitimate opposition to, and criticism of, the newly established government’.19 While this was true in a limited sense, the cabinet and many of the deputies were not anxious to have the valve opened very wide, or had very narrow definitions of what constituted legitimate dissent. The issue was joined at the second meeting of the self-​proclaimed Dáil. At that meeting, Piaras Béaslaí formalised dissent by voting against Eoin MacNeill’s appointment as Minister for Finance. The records of the First Dáil are often summaries rather than transcriptions and so there was no mention of the reason behind Béaslaí’s vote. Presumably, his position was related to MacNeill’s attempt to halt the 1916 Rising. On the same day, the debate accounts laconically noted that ‘official whips were not considered necessary’.20 The Government expected general agreement on their policies, a position that makes the Dáil seem less like a sovereign parliament and more like a propaganda arm of Sinn Féin. It is not clear that backbenchers saw their role that much differently than did the Government, as there was a consistent assertion of the emotional, political, and propagandistic importance of presenting a united

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front. Thomas Kelly cited W.E.H. Lecky in saying that the most moving historical moments occur when a people speak with one voice.21 J.J. Walsh distinguished criticism of the Government from taking a motion to a division. The former was acceptable; the latter was not, at least not until the war was over.22 These calls from ordinary members gained volume during the Treaty debates. Government ministers themselves constantly trumpeted the unity of the cabinet and its ability to speak for the nation, an attitude that would make later dissent more problematic. While president, Arthur Griffith told the Dáil ‘the Ministry were working in perfect harmony, their decisions were always unanimous’.23 This comment came amidst a debate about the role of infrequent Dáil meetings in the governing of the newly declared Irish state. De Valera also spoke frequently along those lines. During a long discussion about the functioning of Sinn Féin courts during the truce, de Valera said that ‘he did not like to see Cabinet Ministers showing divided counsels before the Dáil’.24 As negotiations with David Lloyd George heated up in the late summer of 1921, de Valera attempted to curtail dissent in the newly elected Second Dáil. He asked for a unanimous statement of support for his initial response to the British Prime Minister. The next day, after Francis Ferran said ‘it would be better to have as frank and as free a discussion as they could upon the general situation’, de Valera responded by saying that ‘I am no longer to be looked on as a party leader. I am representing the nation and I shall represent the whole nation if I am elected to office and I shall not be bound by any section whatever of the nation.’ He also said that he did not have to accept suggestions from the Dáil –​‘I will not accept this office [president] if you fetter me in any way whatever’ –​and that if the deputies did not agree with his approach, they could replace the ministry.25 De Valera did not get much resistance to this. J.J. Walsh, who had been critical of the ministry in the past, said that ‘ordinary members like himself were entitled to form their own opinions’, but that ‘any division at present would be disastrous to the country’. George Gavan Duffy, later a vocal critic of the Free State Government, responded fulsomely to de Valera’s discussion of the negotiations, thanking the cabinet ‘for having brought down the discussion to the Dáil at all. No other government did so in such circumstances.’ Meanwhile, de Valera convinced himself that ‘there did not seem to be much desire on the part of the members to speak’.26 These exchanges show the boundaries placed on debate and opposition in the revolutionary Dáils. Nothing could be done that undermined the Government, and it was expected that the cabinet would be supported unanimously at critical points. These limits were feasible because Sinn Féin believed itself to be a broad party united in seeking Irish independence.

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The signing of the Treaty shattered this appearance of consensus, but some of the members were slow to realise this. De Valera’s repeated efforts to get his version of a treaty –​referred to sometimes derisively as Document No. 2 –​passed was an attempt to restore this unanimity against Britain, and he seemed shocked and tactically lost when his call for rallying around the Government no longer worked. At one point during the discussions of the cabinet’s negotiating tactics in August 1921, de Valera told the Dáil that when the British had (mistakenly) arrested him in June 1921, they had found in his home ‘a statement signed by every one of the Ministry of Dáil Éireann … saying that never at any time during the whole period of their office, had there been any difference of opinion between me and them as regards policy and method’.27 While this document, if it in fact existed, was clearly intended to undercut British attempts to exploit cabinet divisions, it seemed to fool de Valera more than it did the British. He had to have known that it was false, as after the Treaty was signed he depicted his role as bridging the gap between Collins and Brugha, among others. And he had been present when Collins challenged his desire to fight a more standard type of war. But to de Valera, the working conditions of the cabinet –​divisions may exist in private but they were to be denied in public –​mirrored what he thought was proper for the Dáil and the country. This was the type of politics that the revolution engendered. His failed strategy during the Treaty debates was to return to this situation through unanimous acceptance of his alternative treaty. When that did not work, and when it became clear that the Dáil would operate on the principle that the majority ruled, de Valera was wrong-​footed and it took him years to extract himself from the ‘straitjacket of the republic’ and the strange bedfellows with whom he found himself sidelined for most of 1922. Despite these paeans to unity and considerable pressure from the leadership to silence dissent, there still were disagreements in the First Dáil, and the ways in which these differences of opinion were aired and pursued demonstrate the limitations in Sinn Féin political culture. In general, the dissent expressed did not fall along lines that foreshadowed those after the Treaty. For example, one of de Valera’s sharpest critics during the First Dáil was later Fianna Fáil stalwart Seán MacEntee, who frequently railed against the lack of information flowing from the cabinet to the Dáil. Analysis of these debates tell us little about the development of pro-​and anti-​Treaty factions but much about the culture that categorised dissent as abnormal. The issue of land seizures and agrarian policy was typical of how the Dáil handled such things. In early 1919, Countess Markievicz and Alec MacCabe introduced a resolution to divide untenanted ranch land. Along with strife between farmers and labourers (particularly in Meath and Waterford) and foreign investment in agricultural production, division of

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untenanted land was one of many rural issues that threatened to disrupt Sinn Féin’s unity. The cabinet’s response to Markievicz’s and MacCabe’s proposal was emblematic: they had the proposal withdrawn and promised that a committee would study the issue, a tactic clearly designed to bury the matter.28 When the Dáil finally issued a statement on land-​grabbing in the summer of 1920, it chastised people for bringing up divisive issues, saying ‘the present time, when the Irish people are locked in a life and death struggle with their traditional enemy, is ill-​chosen for the stirring up of strife amongst our fellow-​countrymen, and … all our energies must be directed towards clearing out –​not this or that occupier of this or that piece of land –​ but the foreign invader of our country’. Joseph MacDonagh, in supporting the statement, said that if the Dáil failed to issue such a statement, ‘the energies of the people would be diverted to a struggle for land’.29 In this case, the Dáil was a ventilation chamber, but the Government attempted to damp down the criticism relatively rapidly. Dissent was eradicated in other ways too. After significant disagreement on the League of Nations and its potential relationship with Ireland, the official record was sanitised so as to minimise the conflict. The official stenographer noted that de Valera ‘spoke with vigour and clearness on his attitude toward the League of Nations, and, while varied views were expressed in later speeches, there was unanimous agreement on the principle of a World-​League which would include Ireland’. Eventually a motion was passed in favour of a League that treated small and large nations equally, and no opposing vote was recorded. This seems unlikely to have reflected the actual opinion of the Dáil, as MacEntee said the League had ‘no orifice for the entrance of the one breath of liberty’.30 Discussions of the Belfast Boycott also threatened to expose divisions within Sinn Féin in a particularly damaging way. When Seán MacEntee proposed a boycott of Belfast in retaliation for the expulsion of Catholic shipyard workers, a lively debate ensued that spilled into several sessions.31 It also was potentially damaging from a propaganda standpoint, as TDs weighed whether Belfast was part of Sinn Féin’s imagined postrevolutionary Ireland. Opponents of MacEntee’s proposal claimed that singling out Belfast like this was akin to accepting partition and would send the wrong message to Irish Protestants. Countess Markievicz demonstrated the common belief that open division favoured England, as she said ‘to declare a blockade would be playing into the hands of the enemy and giving them a good excuse for partition. It was even possible that this was a trap on the part of the English Government to cut off trade with Belfast and so make Ireland into two trading centres.’ Collins said that he ‘protested … the attempt which had been made by two deputies from the North of Ireland to inflame the passions of members. There was no Ulster question.’

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While the latter statement is puzzling at best, the notion that opposition merely inflamed emotions without contributing rational solutions to governmental problems was commonplace.32 As a result of the perceived danger in openly debating this proposal, there were immediate attempts to sideline it. Ernest Blythe, himself a northern Protestant, proposed an amendment that would place the decision in the hands of the cabinet and limit any boycott to individuals who had expelled Catholic workers. Terence MacSwiney attempted to route the discussion toward a more constructive topic: the establishment of co-​operative enterprises in Belfast to employ Catholic workers. And Alec MacCabe proposed that the issue be turned over to a commission that would look at both relief for expelled workers and the development of a federal system of government for Ireland so as to make union with the north more feasible. After someone (presumably Collins) objected to the phrase ‘Ulster question’ in MacCabe’s proposal, it was accepted, and the terms of reference of the commission were left for the cabinet to decide. This tactic of fobbing a decision off to a commission was used frequently when private members’ motions arose. Cumann na nGaedheal later deployed this same strategy, but its use in the First Dáil seemed to be a way to direct open opposition to the ministry, particularly on explosive issues such as partition, into less public channels so as to preserve the fiction of a unified Sinn Féin polity.33 Other than the boycott, one of the most contentious discussions in the Dáil was about the wisdom of the IRA’s military campaign and whether Dáil deputies had an obligation to support it publicly despite tactical or ethical misgivings. This arose when Roger Sweetman, a Sinn Féiner from Wexford, wrote a letter to the newspapers condemning IRA violence (specifically the killings of British intelligence agents on Bloody Sunday in November 1920) and calling for a negotiated peace.34 The debate over this letter in the Dáil in effect became a debate over the existence and parameters of opposition in revolutionary Ireland. In defending himself, Sweetman said that he thought actions such as Bloody Sunday played very badly in the United States and harmed the Irish cause. But he also referenced the lack of information available to Dáil deputies outside the Government: ‘If he … had committed an indiscretion, it was due to the fact that, as a member of the Dáil, he had not been put in possession of essential facts which must have weight with him as a responsible man in sizing up their strength and weakness.’35 Liam de Roiste agreed, saying that in the current structure of the Dáil with its infrequent meetings, writing a letter to the newspapers was the only way TDs could express themselves. Other deputies criticised Sweetman, with Seán Etchingham desiring ‘to show him how detrimental his action was to the cause’. Etchingham also demanded ‘a statement from him as to his future attitude’ and echoed

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rumours that Sweetman had publicised and criticised the Dáil’s murky process for approving defence expenditures. Collins basically told the deputies to trust the ministry, and said that ‘people who put responsibility on the Ministry should consult them before they swept them into a fix. He was making no attack on anyone, but he would say that no deputy should step into the net of the enemy at a critical time.’ He also blamed deputies for their lack of information on government policy: ‘every Member of the Dáil who made it his business to keep in touch with the Ministry had no complaint to make about his communications not being attended to. Ignorance on the part of Deputies of anything the Ministry was doing was very much the fault of the Deputies themselves.’ Cathal Brugha called out what he perceived as defects in the representative character of those who had questioned the war effort. He said Sweetman ‘did not express the opinion of his constituency but his own private views’, and Liam de Roiste ‘had taken it upon himself to express the view of the unarmed people’. Some deputies defended Sweetman’s right to express himself. Seán MacEntee objected that Etchingham’s attacks were excessively personal. Joseph MacDonagh noted that he ‘completely disagreed with Mr. Sweetman’s views, but he objected strongly to the tone of the attack in the last speaker’s remarks’. Kevin O’Higgins said that Sweetman and de Roiste ‘showed a great deal of moral courage in stating their views so clearly, and they deserved the thanks of the Dáil for expressing them’. Similar to MacDonagh, O’Higgins also thought ‘they were both greatly mistaken in the views they expressed, as they merely considered the results of the moment’. MacEntee sympathised with Sweetman’s view that the Dáil met too infrequently, and complained that the ministry refused to address this subject. There were often disclaimers that dissenters had the right to speak their position –​Collins said of Sweetman that ‘everyone was perfectly entitled to express his views’ –​and deputies were careful not to imply that dissent was formally prohibited, but there were clear practical limits to this toleration. Anything that showed division about military tactics was beyond the pale, particularly when those tactics had drawn criticism from the British Government and the American press. Etchingham’s request for assurances of Sweetman’s future plans indicated that there were boundaries that Dáil deputies were expected to respect. These boundaries were not those common to many parliaments –​requirements to use parliamentary language and protect privileged information –​but instead attempted to contain departures from an implied Sinn Féin consensus on policy and ideals. This was justified as necessary during the revolution, and perhaps it was, but that attitude became normalised and lingered long after the Treaty, in part because the British continued to be seen as an enemy in some circles and the belief remained that divided counsels should not be exposed to the enemy.

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Concerns about the lack of information given to deputies arose frequently, starting with de Valera’s trip to the United States in the spring of 1919. MacEntee said ‘no member of the Dáil had been consulted. It was neither right nor fair to them that they should be unable to say whether the President had gone away, and where he was.’36 J.J. Walsh said that a report from the Department of Foreign Affairs presented to the Dáil had ‘less information … than could be obtained from the press’.37 Roger Sweetman, before his letter-​writing escapade, complained that debate in the Dáil was rushed and that ‘it was also very undemocratic to have to dispose of important questions in the few minutes that could be devoted to them under present circumstances’.38 There were also periodic attempts to limit the power of the ministry structurally. Joseph MacDonagh, another frequent critic, proposed that all Executive power be given to committees of TDs.39 Alec MacCabe offered an amendment placing ministers on these committees, before the whole proposal was withdrawn when Arthur Griffith promised to create consultative committees. This exchange prompted Griffith to tell the Dáil that he ‘would be very glad if it were possible for the Dáil to meet in continuous Session so that all Members would bear their share of the responsibility for what is being done’, and to claim that the cabinet was always united. The hint of a more active role for the Dáil made the ministry attempt to put forward a show of solidarity. J.J. Walsh revived this idea in 1920, proposing that the Dáil enact laws through topical committees that could pass legislation subject only to the veto of the entire body. Walsh mistakenly believed that this was how the American Congress functioned. He said this would ‘put new life into the Dáil’.40 MacEntee seconded and voiced support for opposition in general: ‘under the present circumstances there could be no real opposition to the Ministry. Meetings of the Dáil were got through hurriedly and there could be very little discussion on many important subjects.’ This proposal was ultimately postponed for twelve months. Deputies also expressed concern about individual ministers without calling for the cabinet to be ousted. Béaslaí’s criticism of MacNeill’s appointment was the first example of this, and others, particularly Joseph MacDonagh, complained about the salaries offered to this or that official. This criticism obviously rankled with ministers. Griffith awkwardly trumpeted the unity of the cabinet, and Collins blamed TDs for their lack of input into the Government. In response to Walsh’s proposal, Collins said that members had so far been unwilling to serve on Dáil committees and so it seemed to him ironic that members were suggesting more of them. He also repeated his frequent assertion that members could vote out the cabinet if they did not like its policies. Collins criticised Walsh’s proposal as that of an

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uninformed amateur. He ‘was absolutely opposed to any person making a proposal the details of which were not carefully thought out. The Ministry were pursuing the right lines at present. He considered that to accept certain of the proposals outlined by Mr. Walsh would have as disastrous results as if they decided to return to the Westminster parliament.’41 This notion that opposition should be ignored because its members had no knowledge of or experience in government would be a common Cumann na nGaedheal trope in the 1920s. Cumann na nGaedheal ministers also complained frequently, like Collins, that uninformed carping by the opposition wasted the Government’s time. The relationship between the cabinet and the Dáil was also tense at times during the exchanges leading up to Treaty negotiations. De Valera wanted the Dáil to present a united front during the strained negotiations. In directing the Dáil to remain silent and abstain from press contact, de Valera cited the unity and silence that had characterised the time of war: he thought there should be very little speech making or interviews given to the Press. The attitude he thought they should take up was this –​[that] they had chosen a Cabinet to carry out negotiations and that they had every right when the time came as representatives and citizens to express their opinions whether they agreed with the Cabinet’s views or actions. But he thought they were going to do the best work and run fewer risks of those divisions which would arise where different people approached a very difficult question from very different points of view. He thought they would be far safer if the same restraint which was exercised up to this was continued. They had chosen an executive to do their work and when they wished to criticise their work they would do it in the proper place.42

De Valera cited how Sinn Féin Vice-​ President Fr Michael O’Flanagan’s calls for peace had been used against the rest of the leadership in late 1920 and into 1921. While it was fairly standard for diplomatic negotiations to include a smaller subset of the political elite, the lack of information given to Dáil members while the plenipotentiaries were in London led to a greater sense of confusion and betrayal when the Treaty was signed. De Valera wanted the Dáil unanimously to support his letter to Lloyd George and then maintain silence until they were asked to comment again. This top-​down model of parliamentary government was the norm during the revolution. These all were disagreements within a nationalist movement that agreed on broad goals. In other words, they were internal disagreements, not the activities that would be normally associated with opposition parties. Having internal disagreements about tactics or the flow of information was not the same thing as dealing with a system that involved parties with completely different goals and ideals than the ruling party. The Dáil did not make that transition from disagreement to opposition during the revolution;

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instead, the revolution reinforced cabinet secrecy, sensitivity to criticism, and concerns that opposition weakened the state. Unionism and Labour were the closest thing Ireland had during the revolution to organised movements that held goals different than that of Irish nationalism. Labour has often been judged harshly by historians because of its failure to thrive for most of the twentieth century, but the party was seen as an important partner and potential rival by Sinn Féin in 1921. The Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress represented nearly 225,000 workers by 1920, about 25 per cent of the workforce.43 Before the First World War, its Irish Worker had a circulation of over 20,000, while Sinn Féin sold 2,000 copies a week.44 Although the Dublin lockout certainly dented the movement’s momentum, it was not unreasonable for Sinn Féiners to see Labour as a serious rival in any postrevolutionary landscape. Labour had an ambivalent relationship with parliamentary democracy that already had manifested before the establishment of the Free State. The movement was deeply divided between those who wanted to enter politics and those who preferred an emphasis on industrial action. A wing of the party’s leadership had openly supported the Bolshevik revolution. The Watchword of Labour claimed that Labour papers had spoken up first ‘when the Red Wind of Revolution came out of the East, and it was the first to welcome that wind in Western Europe and waft it through this island outpost of revolution in the Atlantic’.45 While wafting is perhaps not the most vigorously revolutionary of images, even relative moderates such as Thomas Johnson, along with the more fiery Cathal O’Shannon and Constance Markievicz, spoke at an anniversary commemoration of the October Revolution in 1919.46 Shortly after Labour’s 1918 convention resolved to cede the electoral ground to Sinn Féin, Johnson defended the decision as one that would enhance unity without sacrificing Labour’s overall goals. Johnson noted that ‘the main purpose of the Irish Labour party [is] not the election of one or two dozen members of Parliament, but the building up of an organised political labour consciousness in this country’.47 Labour was willing to abide by the calls for unity for the most part during the revolution, although it reserved the right to criticise individual Dáil departments, particularly the Ministry of Labour. The party refused ‘to concede to a Department [the Labour ministry] in certain of its decisions the same immunity from public criticism which is of necessity conceded to the Cabinet of the Dáil and its Negotiation Delegation so long as the cessation of hostilities is not assured’. This stern desire to waft criticism at the Government still honoured the party’s pledge to stand behind the negotiating team in London. But the Labour paper also distanced itself from the parliamentary organs that the negotiating team represented: ‘it is not for such as we (who have no illusions either about formal democracy or Parliamentary institutions, but would have for other

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things) to teach Irish democratic parliamentarians their business. But it is obvious that somebody must, and it is obvious that within the Dáil there is no informed and competently led criticism and opposition on affairs of purely internal administration.’48 Here Labour was conceiving of opposition as expected on internal matters, while still preserving unity against the external enemy. Neither Labour’s pledge to let Sinn Féin have the national field clear during the revolution nor its hesitancy over parliamentary institutions prevented it from running candidates for rural and urban district councils in 1920. This was not a unanimous decision within the party, and the move to a political strategy was consistently opposed by Louie Bennett and the Irish Women Workers’ Union, which wanted to focus on co-​operative economic activity and ‘buy local’ campaigns.49 Elections were held in January (urban district councils) and June (rural) and Labour fielded a substantial slate of candidates, hoping that these elections would ‘show the lines of battle drawn on the lines of class, rather than those of party or even nationality’.50 The party put together what it considered a realistic platform that was true to Labour ideals without alienating potentially moderate voters. Labour’s national electoral programme was ‘not by any means the high-​water mark of Labour’s aspirations’, but it was ‘a working program which the Labour groups in the municipalities at this stage of the movement may reasonably be expected to enforce’.51 While this editorial revealed Labour’s Menshevik-​ like knack for reducing immediate expectations, the document did mention Labour’s ultimate goals of nationalising Irish resources, gaining for workers the fruits of their labour, and abolishing privilege based on property. To that was added more immediate goals: improved housing; lower rents; better nutrition for schoolchildren; and proletarian access to libraries, education, and quality health care. Based on this programme, Labour wanted to serve as an opposition organised largely around economic and social issues, with the understanding that councils would be hamstrung in wartime and would be ‘combatant rather than constructive bodies’.52 Labour hoped these elections would allow them to apprentice as a political opposition. Its leaders desired a ‘compact and disciplined Labour Party’, even though they recognised that stolid party pledges were part of the old kind of politics that they wanted to erase.53 Once its members were elected, this discipline would enable Labour to outperform its numbers: discipline could augment power. The relatively strong numbers on the Belfast and Dublin councils would lead to Labour’s forming a ‘Majority Group or Bolshevik Group’ in those councils, albeit with the same strained definition of majority employed by the Bolsheviks.54 Labour’s strength would teach a lesson to wily permanent officials, who were ready to take advantage of new and inexperienced councillors. They were there ‘to scrap the whole evil

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system of the past and replace it by a new and better system … not there to be browbeaten or bull-​dozed by permanent officials or Government boards’. They wanted to maintain their independence and freedom of opposition: In most cases they are in the minority, and while they remain such their job is that of criticism, but it must be constructive as well as destructive criticism. To be free to act so they must not saddle themselves with responsibilities which would prevent them either from criticising when criticism is wanted or from repudiating regulation when repudiation is wanted.55

Labour hoped to use discipline and separation to function as an opposition. The results were disappointing. These councils remained synonymous with corruption and cronyism, the very type of politics that Sinn Féin and Labour pledged to eliminate. A Labour editorial on ‘The Public Boards of Ireland’ in November 1921 asserted that the corruption-​ridden local boards ‘reflect the failure of what is grandiloquently called democracy’ and routinely contained those chosen for their connections, not their ideas or competence.56 But the opportunity was there for Labour to function as an opposition in a way that Sinn Féin could not, especially after the revolution. They seemed poised to offer a vision for Ireland different from that of the standard nationalist platform and to articulate that through a combination of protest and constructive criticism while participating in public bodies. Even Labour’s opposition, though, had to be somewhat cloaked in green, and their divergence from the mainstream of Irish nationalism often seemed more a matter of degree than type. Labour struggled constantly to embrace both Marxism and Bolshevism while also claiming that their ideas had Irish roots. There were some nationalist positions that naturally dovetailed with Labour’s interests, such as support for a united Ireland, as partition sliced off a large part of Labour’s obvious constituency. Labour also could endorse Sinn Féin’s anti-​imperialism. The party criticised the farmers of Ireland for helping the Empire during the First World War and worried that all of the forces of imperialism –​the farmers, unionists, Dominion Home Rulers, and some elements of Sinn Féin –​would unite against Labour and the working class.57 They also, like Sinn Féin, at times linked colonial violence in Ireland to that elsewhere in the empire, although generally Labour was more likely to refer to the working classes of Europe than to the other imperial subject races. In one issue, though, when the editor was in the midst of vilifying the Black and Tans, Labour’s paper used a subheading ‘Amritsar in the West of Ireland’, and then breathlessly described the case of Henry Burke, ‘an assistant employed by McTigue and Co.’ in Tuam, who was dragged out of his bed in his nightshirt and forced to crawl around the town square under the fixed bayonets of a group of British soldiers angry that one of their officers had been refused a drink by Burke.58 Without in any way

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minimising the indignity suffered by Mr Burke, the analogy to Amritsar seems a bit strong. At other times Labour invoked Irish roots for policies that differed in emphasis from those of Sinn Féin. The opening editorial for the 1919 launch of the Watchword of Labour proclaimed the party’s Gaelic roots: We will return to the old springs of Irish nationality. We know nothing in the programme of Tone, who rallied North and South, which need be abandoned by the Irish working class. We who have, so often, been accused of importing the odious, because continental, ideas of Marx and Engels, will certainly sacrifice nothing of value in their teaching if we draw the same inspiration and the same doctrines from James Fintan Lalor.59

A piece urging support for Labour’s candidates for the urban councils linked them to Tone; Emmet; Mitchel; and, somewhat strangely, the Manchester Martyrs.60 They also connected Bolshevism –​itself deeply critical of nationalism –​to Gaelicism and to Patrick Pearse. The Watchword wrote favourably of the ‘blend of Bolshevism, Gaelicism, and militarism in the young men and women of Cork’ during the 1920 party convention. Delegates to the convention were given a guide that urged it would be well for the future peace of Ireland if men and women who draw their inspiration from the teaching of Pearse are brought to see that he, no less than Connolly, desired a Republic which should be a real People’s State –​ in essence a true Workers’ Republic …Workers, too, must see that they are betraying Connolly and his cause if they refuse or omit from their Workers’ Republic a Gaelic State, a re-​creation of the ancient Irish-​speaking and Gaelic-​ thinking democracy.61

Terence MacSwiney addressed the same conference, telling delegates that ‘they [Sinn Féin, presumably] did not recognise that [Labour] Congress as a class assembly, but as a national conference, and recognised that in recent developments a distinct bond of unity had been created between all Irishmen who were labouring for the Republic’.62 This crystallised how Labour tried to set itself up as a semi-​independent opposition during the revolution: they hoped to draw the followers of Pearse a little closer to Connolly, and the followers of Connolly a little closer to Pearse. This stratagem allowed the party to act independently and oppose the British state from a slightly different perspective than that of Sinn Féin. But the party also refrained from consistently criticising nationalist shibboleths and emphasised the Irish origins of its ideals. For the most part, this fitted in with the hegemonic vision of politics that most Sinn Féiners envisioned. There were people within Sinn Féin who were more socialist-​leaning or worker-​friendly (Liam Mellows and Constance Markievicz are always cited) but they still fitted within the general canons of Irish nationalism. After

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standing aside in 1918, Labour re-​entered the fray in 1920, but still very much allied with Sinn Féin and operating within the form of nationalism articulated during the revolution. Other potential oppositional groups were marginalised by either subordinating their causes to that of Sinn Féin or being written out of the Irish nation by Sinn Féin politicians. The organised farmers, for example, mostly stayed on the sidelines during the revolution. The Farmers’ Union was founded as a national entity in 1919, with the strongest branches in rural Leinster and in Galway.63 The Union resisted entering politics during the revolution, as some members wanted to avoid politics altogether and others thought the current terrain was unfavuorable, with so much focus on the national question. Sinn Féin reinforced this outlook because it fortified their vision of co-​operative, nationalist-​centred politics. De Valera told the Farmers’ Union in 1921, in discussing a complaint they had made about the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, that he felt ‘confident that the common patriotism of all sections will prove superior to all special class interests and that a basis of accommodation will be found accordingly’.64 The appeal to ‘common patriotism’ allowed Sinn Féin to create its style of politics and, while not particularly surprising or distinctive during a war, it was unusual in how long that carried over into the postrevolutionary period. Appeals to common patriotism also kept the feminist movement largely on board with Sinn Féin during the revolution. While there were certainly feminists and female activists who continued fighting for goals that Sinn Féin did not even pretend to embrace –​Louie Bennett, for instance –​most took the words of the Easter Proclamation and the increasing presence of women in the revolutionary public sphere as evidence that an independent Ireland would continue toward greater gender equality. While there were plenty of women –​ Countess Markievicz for ­example –​who cautioned activists that the fight for women’s equality would be separate and ongoing even after the anticolonial struggle was won, the majority of female activists, whether feminists or not, worked within the parameters of Sinn Féin nationalism.65 There were also Protestants in the national movement, but they did not play a role that systematically distinguished them from Catholic colleagues. Thomas Johnson, well before the revolution, denied that his fellow Protestants had anything to fear from a Catholic majority, albeit because he thought Irish politics would encompass ‘a division of parties following economic lines rather than religious or racial’.66 Those Protestants who were unionists were deemed, at different times, to be either a cancer on the nationalist body politic or, more frequently, misguided Anglophiles who shared a racial and ethnic identity with the nationalist Irish Catholics. De Valera told President Wilson that ‘there is no district in Ulster where the inhabitants could, with any degree of accuracy, be termed a different race from the people of the rest of Ireland’.

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He also claimed, somewhat contradictorily, that ‘a free Ireland would have no difficulty solving its minority problem. It can solve it much more easily, in fact, than most countries have been able to solve similar problems.’67 Revolutionary Sinn Féin most definitely tried to project unity. There was opposition to the cabinet from within Sinn Féin, although generally that opposition was about tactics and short-​term policies rather than overall goals. Labour tried to stake out an independent position after its disastrous decision to forgo the 1918 election, but most Labour propaganda still nodded to nationalist rhetoric and ideas, and Labour’s steps toward becoming an opposition were tentative and muted. Other organised groups that had a different vision for a future Ireland than did most of the Sinn Féin leadership –​farmers, unionists, and feminists –​either operated under the Sinn Féin auspices during the war or were sidelined as representative of an alien colonial-​era politics. This desire for unity is, again, not terribly unusual in wartime or postcolonial situations. But it cast a particularly long shadow over Irish politics in the decades to come. The debates over the controversial Anglo-​Irish Treaty magnified the difficulty that Sinn Féin had in accepting opposition. The structures were in place to allow for a division of opinion on the Treaty: the cabinet and Dáil voted freely and rules of debate were followed, after a fashion. Although the Dáil was a one-​party body, most of its members were professed democrats and few wanted to ban outright differences of opinion on the Treaty. But when the Treaty was debated, those seemingly democratic structures and principles came up against decades of nationalist cultural practice and the deeply held understanding of politics as a mass movement that spoke for the nation. At heart, this was a disjuncture between democratic structure, on the one hand, and the lived experience of Irish political culture on the other. However frequently votes were taken and dissent expressed in the micro-​ democracies of associational culture before and during the revolution, there was not an acceptance of these things at the national level, and the transition from a politics of united protest to one inclusive of dissent was difficult. In short, it took Irish politicians at the national level years to learn how to disagree, and the Treaty debates were the first major example of the difficulties this would cause. In fact, it became clear during the debates –​even before the shooting started in 1922 –​that the Sinn Féin model of politics would not translate well into a functioning multiparty democracy and that the transition between the two would be more challenging than expected. The debates also showed that the adherence to the nationalist and hegemonic model of politics held firm even as its limitations in a postrevolutionary world became obvious, and that instead of trying to define a new system that would work, deputies tended to spend time either pining for or attempting to reconstruct the model of politics that had passed.

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When the plenipotentiaries brought a signed agreement back to Dublin, the cabinet split 4–​3 in favour of its acceptance. W.T. Cosgrave, long a de Valera ally, surprised him by voting for the Treaty. In the first subsequent public session of Dáil Éireann, de Valera called the split an ‘accidental division of opinion of the Cabinet’, unwilling even to admit the seriousness or normality of a policy dispute. De Valera then, charitably, overexplained the nature of the difference of opinion: ‘the plenipotentiaries … could differ from the Cabinet if they wanted to and that in anything of consequence they could take their decision against the decision of the Cabinet, but of course they would know the consequence. They would know what they were deciding against.’68 Again, the explanation rendered a difference of opinion on a critically important document as anything but ordinary or expected, but instead somehow both a vague and improper act of defiance (‘they would know the consequence’) and an accidental one-​off born of confusion and miscommunication. What it was not, to de Valera, was a completely normal difference of opinion that would be discussed, perhaps regrettably, in front of the full Dáil. Liam de Roiste quite understandably asked ‘if this conveys the idea of a Government and of an Opposition the difficulty some of us feel is, where is the Government and where is the Opposition? It is within the province of the Dáil to ask the Ministers to resign and have a new Cabinet.’69 The confusion about the situation in the Dáil very clearly mirrored that in the cabinet: no one knew what should happen when the cabinet divided. Responding to de Roiste’s question, de Valera made matters worse by suggesting that the cabinet majority ought to resign while he remained president. De Valera told de Roiste that he had the right to demand these resignations and would have done so ‘because you must have a united Cabinet’, but for the fact that it would have ‘given a wrong impression if the Dáil had not met so soon’. It is not clear what impression de Valera was worried about, but the idea of majority and minority rights were tangled from the beginning. As de Valera laboriously explained ‘how this team broke’, he was interrupted by a member shouting ‘and we want to get together again’. Rather unsurprisingly, given Sinn Féin’s own rhetoric and style of politics, as well as the politics it had inherited from predecessors, the overwhelming sentiment in the Dáil was to find some way to repair the differences and recreate a sense of unity. In fact, the impression in the early days of debate was that the cabinet were playing out their differences in an unseemly and undignified fashion, and ordinary deputies could not decide if they wanted more information or preferred the cabinet to keep its disputes behind closed doors. Patrick O’Keeffe blamed the cabinet for the split and chastised them for bringing this out into the open:

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I hope there are no two differences in this Dáil yet. Now there is evident heat on both sides of our Cabinet. They are our Cabinet still, but we are their masters and if they don’t conduct themselves I am telling you this, that if we don’t conduct ourselves the Irish people will make us … I would appeal now for coolness and drop this what I call in common language snarling and don’t be giving the common people of the Dáil a bad example. If you proceed in a regular way we will get on nicely and I hope with the good judgement of all the members of this Dáil that we will settle this little difference.70

While members of the Dáil complained about the lack of policy information given to ordinary TDs, O’Keeffe did not want the cabinet’s internal dissent displayed in front of the Dáil. The assumption in O’Keeffe’s statement is that this was not a genuine dispute over policy, which seems unlikely, but merely interpersonal snarling and a ‘little difference’ caused by exhaustion. Other deputies either refused to accept the cabinet’s difference of opinion or tried to wish it away. Countess Markievicz expressed sympathy with the plenipotentiaries for doing the best they could and expressed hope for a united position from which they could fight the British. As for the cabinet, she preferred that they ‘clean our dirty linen in private’. Patrick McCartan complained that the republic was betrayed in August ‘when the pistol of Unity was held at the head of every Member of the Dáil’. He said that the republic ‘depended on the unity of the Irish people. It depended on the unity of the Cabinet. It depended on the unity of this Dáil.’ He then questioned whether anyone could vouch for the unity of the people and the army after a decision on the Treaty. At this point, McCartan said he was ‘hitting from the shoulder’ because ‘I believe the rank and file have kept silent too long.’71 But a few days earlier he had said that he opposed the Treaty, though he would vote for it in public ‘in the interests of the nation’. He also hoped that Document No. 2, de Valera’s alternative to the Treaty, which would have made Ireland associated with instead of contained within the Empire, would command unanimous support in the Dáil.72 That, of course, was de Valera’s stated goal in introducing his alternative treaty. Even those who admitted the obvious –​that the cabinet was deeply divided –​at least pretended to think that such a breach could be rapidly healed. Cosgrave said as much, and paid tribute to the hard work of each minister and the hours that de Valera put into trying to reconcile opposing views during the war, a process that had been invisible to ordinary TDs.73 Some of this fear of a division stemmed from the shadow of the Parnell split. Donal O’Callaghan said ‘the people of the country, even those who desire the Treaty ratified, are still keener about avoiding the return of days of internal divisions and party turmoil’.74 MacCartan said that if the Treaty issue was taken to the people, ‘you want to have a repetition of what

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occurred in the Parnell split. You have seen it in the Dáil, and it will be intensified a hundred-​fold throughout the country.’75 As McCartan indicated, nationalists assumed that the leadership set the tone for the country. They feared the dispute over the Treaty itself, but they also feared the effects of a significant split on the structure and norms of nationalist politics. They wanted unity even as they disagreed on the desirability of the treaty, a position that probably seems more illogical to us than it did to Sinn Féiners. This unity was defined in nationalist terms, though. Arthur Griffith’s agreement, which guaranteed a governmental role to southern unionists, remained unpopular with some of the same people calling for unity. Art O’Connor said that he was fine with giving unionists fair play, in Griffith’s words, but not ‘place and power … These people have been here as our previous enemies. These people have stood in our way every time we tried to make a little advance and it would be a poor thing now for the Free State –​if it was established –​if these people are to be put upon the necks of the Irish people.’76 Markievicz also wanted the southern unionist class excluded as ‘the English garrison’ and ‘that class of capitalists who have been more crushing, cruel and grinding on the people of the nation than any class of capitalists of whom I ever read in any other country, while the people were dying on the roadsides’. She considered such people to be Irish –​they were ‘anti-​Irish Irishmen’ –​but still responsible for emigration and the ruin of the Irish small farmer.77 Unity was desirable but only under the nationalist umbrella. As Liam Mellows said, unity could only be had on the basis of the republic, as had been true during the revolution.78 Seán Moylan had perhaps the most unusual take on the fragmentation of the movement. Moylan said he was neither for the Treaty nor for Document No. 2, but was a Republican, a position that allowed him proudly to claim ‘I am the hypotenuse.’79 De Valera’s famous description of external association as a point of tangency was not the only clever use of nationalist geometry. The difficulty in navigating the emerging split enabled the TDs to engage in a fairly sophisticated discussion of the rights of majorities and minorities in politics. They queried the role of the deputy –​should he or she vote by conscience or by the will of the constituents –​and also the ways in which minority rights could be protected from the majority. These were discussions that arose in nearly every postwar European democracy, although in most continental cases the discussion usually centred on ethnic and/​or religious differences.80 In what became the Free State, the discussion generally did not touch on Protestantism, often a silent referent but less likely to be directly discussed, and instead focused on the creation of a majority and minority around the Treaty split.

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As it became clear that the Sinn Féin deputies were fragmenting into two (or perhaps three, giving the hypotenuse its due) factions during the Treaty debates, the deputies had little idea how to fit the catchwords of nationalist politics to this developing situation. There were calls for a return to a united front, continuing criticism of party politics more generally, and growing emphasis on the rights and sanctity of a political minority, regardless of any particular vote taken. The latter was a strategy of the more militarised wings of Irish nationalism –​the Fenians, the 1848 rebels –​who also invoked a monolithic nation, but they did so anticipatorily, claiming to speak for a nation that had not yet developed, one that would agree with their principles in some future age. These debates showed the breakdown of two aspects critical to Sinn Féin revolutionary politics: the monolithic, harmonious nation and the desire to create a new Gaelic state free from the old style of party politics. The splintering of Sinn Féin and the emergence of what were in all but name pro-​and anti-​Treaty parties brought all of this into question in terms of both theory (perhaps ‘approach’ is a less grandiose word) and practice. These fissures directed the practice of politics for years after the Treaty. One reaction to these complications was to invoke the honourable status of minorities as vanguards, true believers who kept the flame burning while others took the more comfortable route. This was a stratagem that militarised nationalists had used periodically in the nineteenth century and that had been given a tremendous boost from the Easter Rising, the plotters of which justified their actions in this way. Mary MacSwiney, speaking in August 1921 as the Second Dáil contemplated negotiations with Britain, told the TDs ‘It was the strong uncompromising minority who had made to-​ day possible. It would be the strong uncompromising minority that would stand out and refuse allegiance direct or indirect to the British Crown.’ She was most probably referencing her brother Terence, whose hunger strike to death in 1920 demonstrated his unwillingness to recognise the British legal system. Professor W.F.P. Stockley disagreed with those who said some compromise with the British Empire was inevitable. He said that ‘if Ireland was beaten now it may be helpless for this generation, but he did not believe for a moment that their cause was hopeless. The next generation would rise stronger than ever. All people were timid, the mass of people were timid, but all great changes were made by the few, the resolute, undaunted, courageous few.’81 This was a bizarre proposal for a multigenerational long game when the Sinn Féin movement was on the cusp of negotiations with England, but it elevated the status of the minority from losers to heroes. This attitude obviously transitioned to the anti-​Treatyites as they were on the verge of losing the Dáil vote on the Treaty. John O’Mahony said a few

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days before the vote ‘we may find ourselves in a minority as Pearse and his comrades were in a minority in Easter Week, but like them we will have the satisfaction of feeling that we have saved the soul and body of the nation from those who would wittingly or unwittingly kill it, for the purpose of bringing ease and comfort to the material body’.82 The use of Pearse as the embodiment of a ‘never surrender’ mentality was counterfactual on its face, but was invoked frequently by anti-​Treatyites. Their less factually problematic Easter lesson was that revolutionary action might be reviled contemporaneously but hailed subsequently. O’Mahony’s belief that the majority was motivated by a desire for material comfort formed another key plank in the sanctification of minority status. Mary MacSwiney developed this argument at length during her speeches against the Treaty, as she claimed that Treatyites were drawn by hopes for material gain from membership in the Empire. The well-​known centrality of the oath in the Treaty debates also played into this notion of the minority as more moral than their opponents, as those who contemplated taking an oath of faithfulness to the King of England were seen as apostates and oath-​breakers. Another response was to continue to decry division and attempt to reunite the movement. In the waning days of the Treaty debates, a group of backbenchers from each side, frustrated with the squabbling of their leaders, attempted to hammer out a compromise by which to ‘retain the services of the President for the nation and perhaps avoid a split in the country’.83 This failed, allegedly because de Valera would not accept the terms of the compromise. Cosgrave tried to bring the agreement to the attention of the full Dáil the next day, saying every member of the Dáil is interested in having a united front. The country wants that and the nation, I think, is entitled to it. If there be a possibility at all of united and agreed action whereby the nation will have the services of every representative in Dáil Éireann, it would be well worth seeing how far the Dáil does approve of what the eight or nine members agreed on.84

That this came from Cosgrave, generally a political realist and the man who cast the deciding vote for the Treaty in the cabinet, shows the hold that these nationalist political ideas had upon Sinn Féiners. All of this manoeuvring came to naught, and the Dáil approved the Treaty by a slim margin on 7 January 1922. This was the ultimate test of the nationalist style of politics, as now the deputies had the reality of a formal division in the Dáil, one that could not be papered over for public consumption and would require the creation of a new government and the resignation of a respected leader. The deputies, to put it bluntly, had absolutely no idea what to do after this momentous vote, and they behaved accordingly. Anti-​Treatyites tried to pretend as if the vote did not really mean anything

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and cloaked their refusal in a confused blend of assertions of minority rights and restored unity. On 6 January, a day before the Dáil was to vote on the Treaty, de Valera resigned as president (a title that had only been given to him formally in August), a move that may have been prompted by the proposal from the backbenchers for unity. He blamed the division on the unfair reception given to his Document No. 2: ‘for the first time in this Dáil [we] got parties’.85 He intended to renominate himself for office so the house could choose a chief executive that was in line with its overall policy. The effect was that de Valera had finally resolved the odd situation in which he was in a minority in his own cabinet, but attempted to have himself re-​ elected so he could throw out the Treaty and offer his alternative agreement to the British as the basis for a settlement. In essence, de Valera was using his own popularity in order to strengthen his minority status in the cabinet and (probably) in the Dáil. He would have rejected this analogy, but he wanted to be a majority in the Bolshevik sense: a self-​proclaimed vanguard that did not correspond to a counting of heads. After this manoeuvre was questioned, de Valera explained that Griffith’s leaking of Document No. 2 to the press compromised the continued existence of the current cabinet: again, he blamed something other than the fact that his policies were not supported by a majority of the cabinet. He framed this in terms of restoring lost unity: ‘I want … to safeguard the nation by having a definite head and Government for the nation.’ He predicted ‘we will have parties here if we continue’, although it was not clear how re-​electing de Valera would restore unity and prevent the development of parties, as Document No. 2 had already drawn criticism in the Dáil. This exchange is what prompted de Valera to utter his famous jeremiad that he was ‘sick and tired of politics –​so sick that no matter what happens, I would go back to private life. I have only seen politics within the last three weeks or a month. It is the first time I have seen them and I am sick to the heart of them.’86 The pronouncement has been much mocked, particularly as its originator remained in politics for the next fifty years. But the fact that this statement presumably made sense to an assembly of people who belonged to a political movement and who were elected to a parliament indicates how deeply consensus politics had seeped into political culture, as Sinn Féin defined what its members did as something other than party politics. De Valera was put up for president again on 9 January, two days after the Treaty vote, and this whole debate raged again. At this point, de Valera said that a republican government with him in charge would not be meeting as a political party but as the Government of the republic, again asserting that the representatives of what was clearly a minority position in the country had the ability to transcend politics and minority status. This did not play terribly well with Treatyites on either occasion. Peter Hughes, in response

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to de Valera’s first attempt to have himself elected president, demanded that they stop this ‘wrangling’, saying that ‘if we proceed any further we will be the laughing stock, not alone of Ireland but of the world’. Even worse, he said the Dáil was behaving less nobly than the Board of Guardians, that he chaired: fighting words indeed.87 Collins said the same thing when de Valera was again proposed as president: If you elect President de Valera President of the Irish Republic I have no objection whatever to it, but let me say this much: everybody will regard us as being simply a laughing stock … the people are already regarding us as a laughing stock and people are getting impatient at our talking here day after day. If we are going on this way much further the people will come in and turn us out, or they will ignore us and we can sit on here and talk as much as we like.

Here Collins invoked another common interwar concern that parliamentary democracy and political parties privileged talk over action in ways that signified weakness and futility. His suggestion was to have a few Treatyites meet with a few English representatives and start arranging for the transfer of governmental responsibilities, and ‘you go on here –​remain here talking and watching us doing the work’.88 This juxtaposition of Treatyite devotion to work and republican devotion to verbiage –​‘quibbling’, as Griffith famously called it –​would be consistently deployed by Collins until his death, as he associated excess discussion with the windy ineffectiveness of the British parliament and the Irish Party, and instead preferred to see himself as someone who ‘got on with the business’. For obvious reasons, opponents of the Treaty tried to turn their minority status into something more empowering, and eventually they began articulating notions of minority rights that would check the power of any majority. Sometimes these were pronounced more inchoately –​de Valera’s pithy summation that the majority have no right to do wrong –​and sometimes more specifically, as a notion that there were certain fundamental principles that could not be transgressed, such as the sanctity of oaths or the existence of the republic. Treatyites, unsurprisingly, pushed back at this and asserted their rights as a majority, as if Ireland was a purely majoritarian democracy with few safeguards for the minority. They had to decide at what point the desire for unity intersected with the rights of the majority and the need to have majority rule as a ‘principle of order’, as de Valera once said. Collins admitted right after the Treaty was passed that ‘we are a kind of a majority party and that the others are a minority party’.89 Despite this admission, there were still calls after the Treaty vote to bridge the gap and restore unity. Many of these emanated from Collins himself, who consistently tried to thread the needle between a desire for at least the appearance of unity (or, perhaps more accurately, a lack of conflict) with the desire to implement the

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Treaty through an appeal to majority rule. Even before the vote Collins was pushing an outcome that did not require a division in the Dáil. He said that the Irish people supported the Treaty, and that Ireland’s situation would not become worse by accepting it but could very well become worse if it were rejected. He proposed therefore that the anti-​Treatyites allow the Treaty to be ratified without a dissenting vote, allow the Provisional Government to form, and then fight it constitutionally over the republican question. He said ‘the opposition can redeem the country in that way and they can take all the kudos. They may have all the honour and glory, and we can have all the shame and disgrace.’ De Valera breezily answered ‘we will do that if you carry ratification, perhaps’.90 Two days after the Treaty vote, Collins proposed a joint committee for ‘public safety’ –​surely an ill-​considered name –​that would preserve some co-​operation between both sides, and then another committee composed of Treatyites that would ‘stop talking and get on with the work’.91 He had floated the same idea moments after the Treaty’s ratification: ‘if we could form some kind of joint committee to carry on –​for carrying through the arrangements one way or another –​I think that is what we ought to do’. He said there were good people on the other side and that the division ‘is not a question of politics, nor never has been’.92 Again, the latter statement is nonsensical except in the context of the revolutionaries’ association of ‘politics’ with base motives and personal gain. In both cases, Collins’s proposals were dismissed by Mary MacSwiney, who said she would ‘have neither hand, act, nor part in helping the Irish Free State to carry this nation of ours … into the British Empire’. Collins’s request ‘may sound very beautiful but it will not do’. That same day, Seán MacEntee said ‘I altogether fail to see how this House could assent to the suggestion of the Minister of Finance [Collins]. The formation of such a committee and the participation in it of those of us who opposed the Treaty would mean that we acknowledge and have become willing to join in the subversion of the Republic for which we stand.’93 This was the clearest statement that republicans did not think they could become a loyal opposition in a state that they considered illegitimate. Two days later, MacEntee responded to Collins’s second entreaty by proposing, in effect, dual government: that the Treatyites use the parliament of Southern Ireland set up by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act as a means of forming a government, and leave the Dáil as the Government of the still-​existent republic. He was ‘only asking that because it affords a way out’. MacSwiney again nipped this in the bud: ‘We must be very clear. The President [de Valera] has said that there can be no co-​operation between the Republican element in this Dáil and those who have surrendered the Republic, and there must be no suggestion or innuendos of nice meetings or things of that kind.’ David Ceannt followed by threatening to walk out if Arthur Griffith were elected

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president instead of de Valera, and that is precisely what happened, amidst much acrimony, a bit later.94 While dismissing Collins’s appeals for co-​ operation, anti-​ Treatyites continued to plead for unity, albeit in less specific ways. MacEntee’s proposal for dual government was at least an attempt to move forward, although it again sidestepped the role of an opposition by insulating it from having to function in a state whose origins it did not particularly like. MacSwiney said she wanted ‘no such terrible troubles in the country as faction fights; we can never descend to the faction fights of former days’, but followed that by saying there should be no ‘misunderstanding’ or ‘soft talk about union’, and declaring that ‘you cannot unite a spiritual Irish Republic and a betrayal worse than Castlereagh’s’.95 It is difficult to see in such a situation how faction fights could be avoided short of everyone agreeing with MacSwiney’s particular views: ‘no compromise’ and unity remained difficult to reconcile. But for MacSwiney, the Treaty vote had been both a titanic betrayal and a meaningless exercise. It was a ‘gross betrayal’ but only by a ‘small majority, and that majority is not united; half of them look for a gun and the other half are looking for the fleshpots of the Empire’. Cathal Brugha also pined for the days in which de Valera could keep disparate personalities like himself and Collins on the same team: ‘I only wish to God we could be brought together again under his leadership. I wish it was possible.’ Collins’s pithy reply was ‘it is not, though’. Earlier, Brugha too had said that he had never seen politics until recent days, and stated ‘we were one party before this occurred and, in God’s name, we shall be one party after it, in the Dáil anyway’.96 Confronted with the rejection of suggestions for cross-​ faction co-​ operation, and the assertion of the honourable and potent status of a minority, Treatyites responded with increasingly broad assertions of the rights of the majority in a parliamentary democracy. J.J. Walsh, before the discussion of de Valera’s nomination, invoked the views of the wider Irish political nation: ‘we hear a lot about unity. The majority of the Boards of this country have made it clear that, regardless of unity, this Treaty must be ratified.’97 Griffith, complaining about republican threats to walk out if he were to be elected president, asked ‘am I to take it that the majority in this assembly have no rights?’98 George Gavan Duffy, a Treaty signatory and somewhat reluctant advocate, explained why he voted against de Valera as president: ‘it is admitted you must have a government. Surely that government must be a government representative of the majority of this House? What alternative is suggested to us? I have heard none.’99 Piaras Béaslaí referenced de Valera’s assertion that, if elected, he would not preside over a cabinet representing the majority Treatyite position or even over a coalition cabinet. He complained ‘therefore, what we are asked to do is to place

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the control of the services of Dáil Éireann … at the disposal, not merely of Mr de Valera, but of a minority party which, on its own admission, is not only a minority in Dáil Éireann, but a small minority … of the people of Ireland. Was ever such a proposition put up before a body of sane, sensible people?’100 For his part, MacEntee admitted that the Treatyites had the right to elect Griffith but claimed that it was politically unwise to so do, a different argument than that made by some of his colleagues. Collins claimed after the defeat of de Valera’s proposed re-​election that anti-​ Treatyites were using ‘obstructionist’ tactics that were deliberately preventing Treatyites from undertaking constructive work. This courted disastrous consequences: ‘we have given the Northeast of Ireland every excuse for not coming in. They would say, “who would go into a body like that, with the methods they employ, and the uselessness of their discussions?” We are also giving the English an opportunity for remaining here.’ Republican obstruction was, in Collins’s estimation, magnifying the difficulties that would be involved for any new state, and risked Ireland’s becoming as unstable as other post-​Versailles democracies. It also imperilled Ireland’s international reputation by demonstrating the truth of the longstanding British claim that the Irish were unfit for self-​government: ‘If we show, as we have been showing as best we can that we are unable to carry on, England will say, and will say with a certain amount of truth: “I am afraid we will have to remain in Ireland to preserve law and order.” That is what the Americans say when they go to preserve law and order in Mexico.’101 He then appealed, again, for the anti-​Treatyites to let the Government be formed without dissent, and to allow it to take over the institutions of the state from the departing British. Collins not only identified a common colonialist trope –​that the colonial presence was necessary for law and order –​but did so in a way that invoked the European sense of racial superiority over states such as Mexico, which had, to Irish eyes, failed successfully to consolidate a revolution or create postrevolutionary order. He also pointed out that the Free State was asking northern Protestants to join the state and function as a loyal opposition while republicans refused this status themselves. After Griffith was elected and the republicans temporarily left the chamber, Erskine Childers asked Griffith about his policies as president, and denied that he was doing so ‘with any obstructive motives’.102 This exchange, as well as Collins’s constant demand to be allowed to do ‘constructive’ work instead of merely talking, demonstrated the collapse for some of one element of the nationalist style of politics that Sinn Féin had inherited from the nineteenth ­century. Obstructionism, a badge of pride for Parnellites, was now something to be avoided, a charge to be hurled at those who would not allow the Free State to be born. Irish politics was supposed to be evolving toward

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one of multiparty democracy with a functioning government that took constructive action. Politics, in this sense, was the practice of governance, but revolutionary politicians could not shake the notion that politics and parties were inherently bad. Disagreements over policy, which should have been seen as a quite normal feature of politics, were depicted as heart-​rending, unthinkable, surprising, and demoralising because they seemed outside the realm of previous nationalist politics. Instead of normalising dispute, deputies frequently pronounced, in the face of all evidence, that this was the first time they had ever witnessed politics, and that it had disillusioned them. De Valera was so traumatised by these exchanges that he threatened a return to private life, as the routine of a mathematics professor was manifestly less heart-​rending than that of a politician. On the other side, Patrick Hogan breathlessly accused de Valera of creating tyranny and dictatorship by offering himself as a candidate for president.103 Neither side knew how to normalise a difference of opinion, and most acted as if the creation of parties was a sign of an unhealthy democracy. The hyperbole of many of the statements during the Treaty debates, however tiresome at times (Cosgrave joked later that he heard a story about a priest who forced wrongdoers to read the Treaty debates multiple times as penance), should not lead to the conclusion that the Treaty debates were inchoate and unsophisticated. The form and format may have been chaotic, with lots of interruptions and, at times, little order, but the deputies debated fairly sophisticated concepts of governance. The attempts of de Valera to resign and then run again for the presidency, in particular, provoked considerable discussion of the rights of majorities and minorities in a new state. Some of these issues reflected general European postwar concerns with the perceived weakness of democracy and the tendency of its practitioners to prioritise talk over action, while other concerns dealt with the more specific contexts of the new Irish postcolonial state and its inheritances from previous styles of mass politics. While these discussions were, quite obviously, at some level about the Treaty, they were not entirely so. Beyond the specific issues raised by the Treaty and the later civil war, Irish politicians of this immediate postrevolutionary period were witnessing the death throes of nineteenth-​century nationalist politics as a model and the corresponding inability to create a new nonparty Gaelic politics that reacted to the perceived evils of the British two-​party system and the general postwar critiques of the effeteness of democracy. In facing the creation of an open breach in Sinn Féin, and the seeming refusal of one wing to accept the consequences of its minority status, Sinn Féiners struggled either to restore unity or to embrace difference. They stumbled over issues of majority rights and safeguards for the minority, and ended up staggering forward with a system of dual government that had manifestly failed in

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Petrograd. Notions of mass nationalism, unity, and sanctified vanguards intersected to produce chaos and instability, resulting in a situation where nearly all politicians accepted multiparty democracy in theory but deplored its practice. Opposition remained abnormal, resulting from apostasy, obstructionism, or careerism. Once it became clear in the succeeding few months that non-​Sinn Féin movements and parties shared many of these same assumptions, the chances of democracy taking root in Ireland seemed quite bleak indeed.

Notes 1 DD, 9 May 1919. 2 Eamon de Valera, draft of speech during American tour, c. 1919, Eamon de Valera papers, University College Dublin Archives (hereafter UCDA), P150/​ 679. 3 Shannon Monaghan, Protecting Democracy from Dissent: Population Engineering in Western Europe, 1918–​1926 (London: Routledge, 2018), 1. 4 Darrell Figgis, The Gaelic State in the Past & Future; or, ‘The Crown of a Nation’ (Dublin: Maunsel, 1917). 5 Ibid., 56. 6 Ibid., 69. 7 Michael Collins, The Path to Freedom (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1996), 103. 8 Sinn Féiners almost always referred to this as a ‘two-​party’ system, either ignoring the recent rise of Labour or confidently foreseeing the collapse of the Liberals. 9 Conor Mulvagh, The Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, 1900–​1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 1. 10 Ibid., 10, 39. 11 Peter Hart, ‘Paramilitary Politics and the Irish Revolution’, in Republicanism in Modern Ireland, ed. Fearghal McGarry (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2003), 23–​41 (24). 12 Fearghal McGarry, ‘Introduction’, in Republicanism in Modern Ireland, 1–​7 (4). 13 Hart, ‘Paramilitary Politics’, 28, 29. 14 DD, 17 January 1923. 15 Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919–​22 (London: Gill & Macmillan, 1995). 16 Brian Farrell made this argument most determinedly. See Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, 68. 17 Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, 188–​9. 18 Quoted in Micheál Martin, Freedom to Choose: Cork and Party Politics in Ireland 1918–​1932 (Wilton: Collins Press, 2009), 5.

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19 Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, 81. 20 DD, 22 January 1919. 21 Ibid., 10 April 1919. 22 Ibid., 22 August 1921. 23 Ibid., 19 June 1919. 24 Ibid., 18 August 1921. 25 Ibid., 22 August 1921, 23 August 1921. 26 Ibid., 23 August 1921, 22 August 1921. 27 Ibid., 26 August 1921. 28 Ibid., 4 April 1919. 29 Ibid., 29 June 1920. 30 Ibid., 11 April 1919. 31 Katie Omans, ‘The Belfast Boycott: Consumerism, Gender, and the Irish Border, 1920–​22’, M.A. thesis (Central Washington University, 2020). 32 All of these quotes are from DD, 6 August 1920. 33 Mary Daly argues that Cumann na nGaedheal’s use of commissions was a deliberate way to stall opposition in the Dáil. See Mary E. Daly, Industrial Development and Irish National Identity, 1922–​ 1939 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992). 34 This discussion is found in DD, 25 January 1921. 35 All quotes in this section are from DD, 25 January 1921. Some early Dáil debates were rendered in the third person. 36 DD, 17 June 1919. 37 Ibid., 29 June 1920. 38 Ibid., 17 September 1920. 39 Ibid., 19 June 1919. 40 Ibid., 17 September 1920. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 27 August 1921. 43 Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989), 14. 1930: The Irish Labour 44 Arthur Mitchell, Labour in Irish Politics 1890–​ Movement in an Age of Revolution (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974), 59. 45 Watchword of Labour, 4 October 1919. 46 Ibid., 15 November 1919. 47 Mitchell, Labour in Irish Politics, 99. 48 Watchword of Labour, 19 November 1919. 49 Ibid., 31 July 1920. 50 Ibid., 10 April 1920. 51 Ibid., 6 December 1919. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 1 November 1919. 54 Ibid., 31 January 1920. 55 Ibid., 7 February 1920. 56 Voice of Labour, 12 November 1921.

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57 Watchword of Labour, 6 March 1920; Voice of Labour, 24 December 1921. 58 Watchword of Labour, 2 October 1920. 59 Ibid., 27 September 1919. 60 Ibid., 17 January 1920. 61 Ibid., 14 August 1920. 62 Ibid., 14 August 1920. 63 Michael Gallagher, Political Parties in the Republic of Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 98. 64 Quoted in Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, 220. 65 For the importance placed on the Proclamation of the Republic by female activists see Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, The Making of Inequality in the Irish Free State 1922–​37: Women, Power, and Gender Ideology (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2019). For female revolutionaries and activists see Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London: Pluto Press, 1983); and McCarthy, Cumann na mBan. 66 J. Anthony Gaughan, Thomas Johnson 1872–​1963: First Leader of the Labour Party in Dáil Éireann (Naas: Kingdom Books, 1980), 32. 67 David Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands 1912–​1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 344–​5. 68 DD, 14 December 1921. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., 20 December 1921. 72 Ibid., 16 December 1921. 73 Ibid., 21 December 1921. 74 Ibid., 3 January 1922. 75 Ibid., 9 January 1922. McCartan was speaking of the attempt to renominate de Valera as president. 76 Ibid., 3 January 1922. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 4 January 1922. 79 Ibid., 22 December 1921. 80 See Monaghan, Protecting Democracy, for the best discussion of this subject. 81 DD, 14 September 1921. 82 Ibid., 4 January 1922. 83 Ibid., 5 January 1922. 84 Ibid., 6 January 1922. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 89 Ibid., 7 January 1922. 90 Ibid., 3 January 1922. 91 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 92 Ibid., 7 January 1922.

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93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 95 Ibid., 7 January 1922. 96 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 97 Ibid., 3 January 1922. 98 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 99 Ibid., 10 January 1922. 100 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 101 Ibid., 10 January 1922. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 9 January 1922.

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3 Decolonising the state

In September 1922, after over two months of civil war, the deaths of Collins and Griffith, and the creation of a Free State army to suppress former colleagues, Richard Mulcahy rose in the Dáil to propose W.T. Cosgrave as the first president of the Executive Council, in effect the prime minister of the new Free State. Despite the obvious fracture in Sinn Féin over the Treaty and the subsequent outbreak of civil war, Mulcahy still clung to a vision of politics dominated by a monolithic nationalist party. He said: the National Party that was the strength of the work of the past few years too has been broken, but a sufficiently large section of it still holds together … We have left to us a very great national responsibility, a national duty, to see that that National Party shall strengthen itself, shall solidify and recover its old national strength, to pull the Country through this crisis.1

Mulcahy’s vision for the future of Irish politics shows the tenacity with which Sinn Féin leaders held on to this idea of politics as a national movement. They worked assiduously during the revolution to present a united front against Britain and to minimise or conceal internal disputes. A unity that was undoubtedly fictional during the revolution was even more obviously so in September 1922. Yet Sinn Féin leaders continued to preach this doctrine, even while the Treatyite wing asserted the mandate they derived from their June 1922 electoral plurality. That year saw the constant push and pull within Sinn Féin –​and, at times, within other parties –​between the norms of multiparty democracy and the yearning for a broad national consensus capable of washing away class and regional differences. While this attempt to rebuild the Sinn Féin coalition seems farcical from our vantage point, the revolutionary generation witnessed the reunification of the Irish Party after a fairly venomous split, and so perhaps to them it was not so far-​ fetched. Discussions of majority and minority rights took on more immediacy with the civil war, but the arguments were fundamentally the same before and after the June 1922 shelling of the Four Courts that opened the actual war. Throughout the year, nascent Irish politicians –​although nearly

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all of them would have rejected the label ‘politician’ –​decided how best to create, work within, or resist a multiparty democratic system. Despite this system’s eventual resemblance to Westminster, the first year of the Free State saw politicians on all sides of the Treaty dispute determined to create norms of political practice that removed what most saw as the ills of the British establishment: political parties, whips, and the dominance of a professional elite lacking national virtue. In short, they wanted to decolonise the state’s institutions and its political culture thereby creating a Gaelic state that valued a particularly Irish way of doing, conceiving of, and structuring politics. In trying to craft a Gaelic state and an Irish political culture, politicians had to debate the composition of the political class, the nature of representation, the rights of majorities and minorities, and the best ways to replace unwanted British political influences with native practices. They conducted these debates not only amidst periodic shooting, but while trying to sort out the competing values of multiparty democracy and a united national front. Sinn Féin demonstrably split into a majority and minority wing over the Treaty, but rather than just accept this as a postrevolutionary norm, Sinn Féin politicians attempted to heal the breach or at least to define a politics that was not dependent solely on tallying divisions in the Dáil. In so doing, both consciously and accidentally they defined a politics that made it more difficult for opposition to function. Treatyites used the ratification vote and the June 1922 election to assert their rights as a majority, and consistently badgered anti-​ Treatyites for disregarding the will of the people. But they also attempted, as Mulcahy noted, to retain and rebuild a national party encompassing all patriotic Irish citizens, leaving no rhetorical room for opposition. Republicans fell back on the common Irish trope of an honourable vanguard and consistently argued that minorities had rights that were safe from majority rule. This was often derisively summarised by references to de Valera’s quote that the majority had no right to do wrong, but republican notions of minority rights had more depth than de Valera’s aphorism. Along with the smaller Labour and Farmers’ Parties, anti-​Treatyites also claimed to represent vast nongeographic constituencies that found themselves underrepresented by the vagaries of electoral fortune, such as women, the dead, and the revolutionary vanguard. Labour and the Farmers accepted their current minority status but believed that as the revolution receded they would become the majority. The Farmers tied this to the demographic dominance of agriculture, while Labour awaited the inevitable rise of the working class. Neither republicans nor Treatyites, on the other hand, were quite ready to turn over politics to those who did not take a leading role in the revolution. These arguments about majority and minority rights in 1922 demonstrate the broad range of disagreement about Irish democracy that existed

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across the political spectrum and would have made it hard for politics to normalise, even absent the Treaty dispute. The Treaty certainly altered how these issues were discussed, as the Dáil and the cabinet had to deal with an ugly split within Sinn Féin that made sweeping monolithic nationalism suddenly less practical. The ways in which discussions of democracy intersected with national constitutional structures –​the desirability of a republic, most obviously –​have been well discussed by scholars, but politicians also had to contemplate some elements foundational to any democracy, whether wracked by civil war or not. These questions include who should be TDs; should those TDs be organised into parties; and did these TDs represent geographic constituencies only, or did they speak for underrepresented groups such as women and workers? The Treaty vote brought these disputes into the foreground, as deputies unused to open deliberation debated voting with their consciences as against representing the wills of their constituencies, and repeatedly decried the party spirit that had engulfed a previously united nationalist movement. Throughout 1922, the tensions between a shared commitment (at least rhetorically) to multiparty democracy intersected with notions of nationalist hegemony, class politics, and a desire to repudiate the perceived British system. The result was a cacophony of debate about democratic forms and practices that magnified the difficulties that Sinn Féin politicians had in accepting the role of an opposition party and amplified their desire to recreate a nationalist front. The language of national unity proved insufficient to paper over disagreements, and Irish politicians struggled to create a definition of politics that reconstructed the notional acceptance of all classes and creeds yet grudgingly allowed space for opposition parties. The definitions of politics that emerged from the wreckage of the Treaty split made it more difficult for opposition parties and TDs to gain legitimacy. While there were few attempts to ban political opposition outright, the political culture that emerged offered little space for opposition to flourish. In many ways, nascent opposition was hamstrung by the basic definitions of political roles. Politicians who came from groups that at times opposed the Government –​women, unionists, farmers, and labour leaders –​were on the defensive from the outset as Sinn Féin continued to normalise male revolutionary participants as the ideal TDs. The disdain for parties and desire for a national movement made opposition seem only temporary, the result of earnest deputies opposing the Government on one policy or another, rather than arising from fundamental disagreements with nationalist policy. Any attempt to create more permanent opposition was dismissed as sectional, overly emotional, or otherwise non-​Irish. Discussions of minority rights were initially hard to extricate from the violence of the civil war, as republicans theorised about the inalienable rights of the minority but also

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took up arms to defend those rights. Farmers’ and Labour TDs continued to call for a normal left–​right politics that never arrived. And TDs were increasingly expected to represent the interests of their geographic constituencies in a political system that tended to underrepresent certain social groups (women, labour, farmers) despite the existence of proportional representation. While opposition –​or most manifestations of it –​was always legal, it was dismissed as illegitimate and un-​Irish by the state’s developing political norms. The process of reconciling multiparty democracy with the inheritance of monolithic nationalism made it challenging to establish a legitimate opposition in the Free State’s first year. It was and is often assumed that the Treaty brought democracy, and this was certainly a major part of the case made by its initial adherents. However, the Treaty itself said little about the subject. Several of the articles refer to the ‘Parliament of the Irish Free State’, and Article 16 prohibited that parliament from religious discrimination. Beyond assuming the existence of a parliament, the Treaty was nonspecific about the practice of Irish democracy. As Labour leader Thomas Johnson argued in 1922, the Treaty did not even mandate that the new Irish Government enact a written constitution, although the Provisional Government chose not to follow this particular British precedent. Once Irish delegates began negotiating with the British over draft constitutions, it became clear that the British had particular views on the intersection of Irish democracy with the symbols of the Crown –​any Irish political practice had to include the oath, the governor-​general, and other regal trappings –​but despite all the attention paid to these forms during the Treaty debates and civil war, they played a far greater role in shaping participation in Irish democracy by compelling the abstention of anti-​Treatyites, than they did in shaping its actual practice. Politicians were largely left to their own devices in defining the culture of Irish democracy through a mixture of copying British parliamentary forms and attempting to make the system more Irish.

Politics and politicians Amidst all the chaos of 1922, politicians debated numerous foundational questions central to any new state. One of the first concerned the composition of the political class: who should be able to represent the nation in its parliament? Despite the theoretical commitment to multiparty democracy under a broad franchise, there were clear assumptions by Sinn Féiners that advanced nationalists who had taken part in the revolution were necessary components of the new Dáil. This obviously left out those in the Labour and Farmers’ Parties, as well as others who had stood aside from or even

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been hostile to the revolution. After Cosgrave asked Collins why anti-​Treaty headquarters remained open during the civil war, Collins responded that ‘we are not out to suppress political opinion properly ventilated’.2 Collins also wanted to reach out to some opposition groups, but in a way that emphasised the centrality of the nationalist agenda. In musings from July 1922, Collins wrote about the need to rebuild a national movement and praised the effort to ‘draw into the National Service men and parties who were not formerly on the side of the Nation’, although he recognised that these alliances were less the result of a sudden awakening of unionist nationalism and more because unionists feared turmoil. He also saw Labour as clearly subordinate to the national movement. He wrote ‘We shall be friendly with the Labour people, and will accept their help if they will give it, but our National aim will be one which will embrace theirs and in which theirs must take its place as an element.’3 Collins tolerated opposition if it was ‘properly ventilated’, but still envisioned it as functioning within or responding to the hegemonic national agenda. Questions regarding the inclusion of non-​Sinn Féiners within the new postrevolutionary politics came to the forefront during the negotiations that ultimately resulted in the Collins–​de Valera electoral pact of May 1922. While this agreement was reviled by the British Government and many non-​ Sinn Féin politicians, there was tremendous pressure on Sinn Féin, particularly from the national and regional press, to minimise dissent and restore a united front.4 A January editorial in the Irish Independent summarised: ‘ratify and unite’ is the keynote of the great majority of the resolutions adopted by public bodies, Sinn Féin Comhairli Ceanntair, farmers’ organisations, and other bodies … The disastrous results that would follow from any split in the National ranks is emphasised, and the nation’s intense desire that unity be preserved is frequently and forcibly expressed.

The paper also excerpted a number of resolutions from various county councils and Sinn Féin clubs calling for unity in the Dáil. A resolution from the Cork County Council said that ‘in the present National crisis, it is unwise to give expression to divergent opinion which will tend to divide the country and ruin the Republican cause’.5 This kind of rhetoric continued as the two sides drifted toward civil war. This obviously shows the continued potency of the unity, however fictional or forced, that was proclaimed during the revolution. It also demonstrates that political opposition was still viewed largely through the histories of colonialism. The Dáil spoke for the ‘nation’ that had been suppressed by generations of colonial control, and it could not do so in the face of internal division. In fact, the republican cause had only succeeded because Sinn Féin had managed to maintain a unity that previous nationalist movements had

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not. Any public display of disunity would provide the coloniser an opportunity to exploit such divisions for its own ends. Dissent, viewed through this prism, was not a vital component of postcolonial democracy but instead a danger to the whole project of nation-​building. The pact that emerged from the meetings between Sinn Féin leaders in May tried to preserve Sinn Féin dominance without replicating the noncontested election of 1921. Sinn Féin would run a panel of candidates in proportion to pro-​and anti-​Treaty numbers in the Second Dáil. Non-​ Sinn Féin candidates would be allowed to stand freely, a provision usually attributed to Collins. Sinn Féin instructed voters to vote for its candidates in the order of their preference and to ignore candidates from other parties. The result would be a coalition government in which Treatyites would have a slight majority in the cabinet and the Dáil, with an agreed-​ upon minister for defence. While the pact was lauded by some as a way forward for non-​Sinn Féin candidates, anti-​Treatyites in particular attacked non-​Sinn Féin participation regularly in ways that demonstrated the difficulties inherent in establishing multiparty democracy and loyal opposition in the Free State. P.J. Little’s New Ireland newspaper frequently condemned such candidates for ruining the pact. Little threatened ‘it will not impress the country favourably if middle parties or Labour parties put up candidates; in fact, it will prejudice Labour interests if any of the candidates plunge into the controversy, no matter under what guise’. Politics was still clearly defined as something restricted to Sinn Féin: Those who carried on the fight for freedom hitherto … those candidates who have represented the Sinn Féin Organisation, should naturally be the people to complete the work, and there is really no scope yet in Irish public life for other interests to intervene, no matter how worthy or well-​intentioned they may be at the moment … if candidates representing minor interests as compared to the national interests insist on forcing contests in various constituencies, the people will regard them as the enemies of stability, good order, and the safety of property.6

There was ‘no scope’ in the Free State for opposition parties that were thought to represent something less than the national interest. Such ‘minor’ interests were inherently defined as less than national and thereby inferior and unnecessary. The paper called non-​Sinn Féin candidates ‘anti-​national’ on numerous occasions and said that their candidacies would ‘interfere with the completion of the struggle for national freedom’.7 The ‘Sovereignty and Unity of Ireland’ could not be protected ‘if there is in the new Dáil a strong element of people who took no part in the national struggle, some of which were hostile to the independence and others indifferent to the honour and

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interests of Irish nationality’.8 Later, the paper noted that ‘a man’s national character is tested by the sacrifices he has made for the cause’, a dictum that not only excluded women but devalued those not committed to physical-​ force nationalism.9 There was a strong class element to this criticism, as republicans lamented the intrusion of both elite professionals and socialist organisers into politics. The ‘University Professors and Labour leaders, knights and businessmen, who have been successful in their own professions … have chosen this very inopportune moment for offering themselves to the electors’. Their decision to ‘butt into this election and to oust the members put up by the two sides of the National movement’ would lead to dire consequences for postindependence Ireland.10 Many republicans defined themselves as between workers or rabble below them and socioeconomic elites above them, the same broad coalition that brought right-​wing governments to power in Germany and Italy. This is not to say that Irish republicanism was fascist, but rather that this class across Europe was prone in the 1920s to rhetoric that pledged a national movement as an antidote to both class warfare and an increasing disparity of wealth distribution. Elite participation in the election was questioned on both political and personal grounds. New Ireland saw the phenomenon as a rebirth of Irish Whiggery, which had been suppressed under Parnell and then reborn in the later days of the Irish Party. Such politicians ‘were always servile toward England and superior and autocratic toward plain Irish nationalists’. It was also associated with classical liberalism, an ideology increasingly seen as bourgeois and outdated by the lower-​middle class after the war.11 The ‘respectable’ classes were thought to have been lukewarm toward the revolution, in part because their careerism made them Anglophilic and they suffered from ‘that subtle atmosphere of shoneenism and self-​interest which pervades the professional classes in Dublin’. As a result, they had failed to do their historical duty in leading a nationalist revolution, as they ‘misled the people’ at key times in Irish history, including, presumably, John Redmond’s defence of empire and conscription.12 Republicans also attacked Labour for its decision to participate in the 1922 election. New Ireland wrote ‘whilst the national struggle is at a crisis … no individuals, however useful in sectional interests, have the right to force themselves into the struggle’.13 All other parties had policies that were either represented within Sinn Féin or inferior to the Sinn Féin programme. They also had ‘no moral and physical force behind them at all’, as they were composed of people who had not taken part in the revolution. Even worse, their entire political philosophy was to split the country politically. They were ‘parties who are publicly committed to pull against each other’, made

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up of politicians who assumed that labour and capital, or rural and urban dwellers, had inevitably competing political interests.14 Republicans, relying on both the pact and revolutionary precedent, still clung to the belief that Sinn Féin was a national party and that Irish politics was too new to permit divisions. Those who thought otherwise were committed class warriors or insufficiently nationally minded, neither of which Ireland needed. Those who saw one-​party politics as tyranny ‘simply lack the national view-​point’. After Labour leader Thomas Johnson called the pact election ‘machined representation from a single political party’, his statement was rebutted as ‘false’ and ‘ungrateful in view of their [Sinn Féin TDs’] courage in the face of British terrorism last year, and insulting not merely to the movement, but to the dignity of the nation’.15 Politics was still about revolutionary pedigree, dominated by Sinn Féin, and unable to withstand open criticism. New Ireland noted on several occasions that it would be fine to have sectional parties in the Dáil down the road, but not in 1922, when national freedom and sovereignty were still at risk. By declaring their candidacies now, such people were acting in an ‘anti-​national’ way, weakening the negotiating position of the Dáil, and ‘simply contributing to the chaos and weakness of the country generally’. The message was clear: candidates representing such ‘minor interests’ should not stand.16 In addition to fending off criticism from republicans, deputies from the Farmers’ and Labour parties had to justify their presence in the Dáil to their own constituencies. Labour had a vocal wing that believed participation in bourgeois institutions was worthless, while the Farmers’ Union was split on whether it should transition into a political party. The County Wexford branch of the Union, one of the most active branches, proposed in March 1922 that the word ‘non-​political’ be struck from its description. The proposer, a Captain Harvey, noted that ‘great changes have taken place in the country’, and warned that farmers had to form a political organisation if they wanted a voice in the Dáil. The seconder reminded the assemblage that farmers ‘were the predominating interests in Ireland’ and could not have their interests advanced without political representation at the local and national levels. Others said that the farmers would be laughed at if ‘they remained tied to someone else’s car’. Lieutenant-​Colonel Bryan asked ‘to what extent were politics in the future going to be different from politics in the past. His opinion was that as long as politics were not the politics of economics, the Farmers’ Union should keep clear of them … He would like to see the union kept out of politics as far as purely political questions were concerned, but believed that later it would be the duty of farmers to make their political power felt for the good of their economic interests.’17 A letter to the editor of the Freeman’s Journal from ‘A Farmer’ argued that the farmers should organise politically ‘when things settle down and become normal’, but that

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until then they should remain aloof, even if Labour contested the election and put ‘a selfish interest before the great national interest’.18 A subsequent letter from ‘Farmer’ criticised a Farmers’ Party candidate for running against three pro-​Treaty candidates in Cavan because the writer believed the Treaty was critical to farmers achieving their goals.19 Other farmers claimed that remaining apolitical would allow farmers unions to treat with any government that was in power. The original motion passed but stopped short of calling for a formal Farmers’ Party.20 Lieutenant-​Colonel Bryan got to the core of the issue: there was no agreement on whether or when Irish politics would return to ‘normal’. By normal, he meant a political spectrum largely defined by positions on economic issues: the left–​right continuum broadly familiar in Europe since the French revolution. The Farmers, as well as other non-​Sinn Féin parties, did not necessarily want to disrupt the working of the Treaty, as they recognised that further chaos could imperil their economic standing. They were ready to argue for a state with low taxes and limited government but were less interested in disputes about the nature of Anglo-​Irish political relations. Anglo-​Irish economic ties concerned them considerably, as the Farmers’ Party generally represented larger farmers who depended on access to the British market. But the Farmers were less able to participate while Sinn Féiners defined politics as primarily focused on the political connection to Britain, as they had largely done since 1918. Labour faced a similar decision. The party had an internal faction that would have continued to stand down until the national question was settled, using the same argument that Bryan voiced within the Farmers’ Party. Others worried that too much emphasis on politics would detract from what should be Labour’s chief weapon of industrial action. Louie Bennett was one of the strongest proponents of this line, stating bluntly in a letter to the Labour newspaper, Voice of Labour, that ‘while capitalism is dominant, the Parliamentary power of Labour can only be infinitesimal … Labour can be a stronger force outside than inside Parliament.’21 She also wrote that neither pro-​nor anti-​Treatyites would promote Labour’s platform, and thought a Labour party should ‘refuse to take any part in a Parliament which accepts imperialism under any guise’.22 Cathal O’Shannon, another sceptic, claimed after joining the Dáil that ‘the industrial weapon is far better and stronger than the Parliamentary weapon’.23 An earlier editorial in the Voice of Labour called parliamentary democracy ‘outworn and effete’.24 Nevertheless, a Labour Special Congress in February 1922 voted to contest the elections and enter the Dáil.25 Labour’s commitment to parliamentary electoral democracy, though, was less firm in 1922 than it would become as the Free State became established. Although Labour’s first party leader, Thomas Johnson, was supportive of parliamentary democracy, there

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were many more than just O’Shannon and Bennett who were unconvinced. Labour made it clear that it was entering parliament in the same spirit that the German Social Democratic Party had entered the Reichstag: to use an imperfect bourgeois institution in any way possible to assist the workers, without accepting its legitimacy or forgoing the ultimate demand for a workers’ republic. Labour disclaimed responsibility for the Treaty and the subsequent split, while foregrounding socioeconomic issues and maintaining that neither wing of Sinn Féin could be trusted with such issues.26 Labour also defended its decision to enter politics by citing the need to influence the constitution and improve the lives of the workers. As its National Executive wrote, Labour TDs would aim ‘to work in Labour’s interests, to frustrate reactionary measures, and to use every occasion to hasten the progress toward the Workers’ Republic’.27 Labour recognised the potency of revolutionary claims to unity, but a party editorial observed that such unity was often skewed toward benefiting the privileged: unity and solidarity and all that are very desirable things indeed. But they can sometimes be had at too great a price. They are too dear when they mean the gagging and muzzling and throttling of the poor and the oppressed, the lowly and the humble, the weary toilers of the city slums and the rural hovels, the working men and women who are the makers and the producers of the world’s wealth.28

The emphasis on revolutionary histories also failed to help Labour. Labour supporters certainly took up arms during the revolution, most notably with the Citizen Army in 1916, but this proved a difficult way for Labour candidates to gain legitimacy in postrevolutionary politics. Although Labour often invoked James Connolly and the Citizen Army, by the spring of 1922 Labour leaders had become wary of the split in the IRA and the seeming slide toward civil war. This led to Labour positioning themselves as opponents of ‘militarism’, a trend that they blamed on both sides in the Treaty split. While Labour did not want to distance themselves overtly from their militant Connollyite past, party leaders feared that their cause would not be treated well under a militarised dictatorship of either wing of Sinn Féin. Cathal O’Shannon tried to keep a foot in both camps during his address at a demonstration against militarism in April 1922: ‘The Labour Party and the workers all through Ireland had done their share in the great National fight since James Connolly marched into the Post Office … In that fight neither leaders nor workers would ever flinch until every trace of imperialism and foreign rule was driven out.’ After establishing the workers’ revolutionary anti-​imperialist credentials, O’Shannon then linked that history to the looming struggle in Ireland: ‘They fought British militarism and said if the time should come to raise their voices against Irish militarism

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they would do it in exactly the same way. Unfortunately for Ireland that moment had come.’ Assuming that militarism was in part a stand-​in for capitalism here, this was in line with Connolly’s belief that a nationalist revolution would have to be followed by an anticapitalist one. However, even O’Shannon, one of the Labour leaders most suspicious of solely political agitation, increasingly saw the Dáil as the means by which Labour should assert itself. He said ‘they [the TDs] were a People’s Parliament and should exercise the authority of a People’s Parliament’.29 As a result, Connolly was repackaged as a parliamentary warrior, whose deepest ambition was to create a socialist parliamentary party. Despite Connolly’s history with armed revolt, a Voice of Labour editorial in May 1922 said that ‘one of James Connolly’s dreams is coming to realisation’ in Labour’s decision to contest the 1922 election.30 Connolly was presented as a politician more than an armed insurrectionist, because Labour was protesting the rise of militarism, albeit from a militant perspective. Thomas Johnson said that they were not protesting ‘as pacifists. They were there to protest the spirit of military ascendancy.’31 A Labour speaker in Dundalk said ‘two men on that platform had fought in Easter Week, 1916, with James Connolly, and they were equally prepared to fight Irish militarism as British militarism’. Luke Larkin in Waterford hinted that Labour would meet violence with violence: ‘if the Dáil were unable [to] or failed to carry out its duty, then another and far more serious step ought to be taken by Irish Labour’.32 Despite the occasional invocation of Connolly as Easter rebel, Labour by 1922 was well on its way to defining its oppositional role as one of a protector of civil liberties, a free press, and civilian control over the military.33 From a theoretical Marxist point of view, this was presented as a fear that the two warring wings of Sinn Féin were the armed elements of the bourgeoisie and that the victory of either side could usher in political reaction and the strengthening of capitalism. Cathal O’Shannon told a crowd in Dublin that ‘we know that the military spirit will surely be exploited by the reactionary elements in defending the tyrannies of capitalism and the entrenchment of the old order’.34 This was in keeping with both Marxism and the egalitarian spirit of the revolution. However, Labour leaders also worried, more practically, that the focus on the infighting in Sinn Féin left Labour with little role and made it difficult to form a coherent approach to opposition, as Labour seemed ancillary to that particular narrative. To insert themselves into politics, Labour and the Farmers had to create an oppositional position –​neither party ran enough candidates to form a government –​that honoured the revolution while remaining separate from Sinn Féin and pointing toward a politics that would be more ‘normal’ and centred on economic issues. They had to do this in the face of physical intimidation during the election campaign, most of which came from

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republicans. Collins openly repudiated a republican advertisement that said that non-​Sinn Féin candidates were enemies of the nation, but intimidation continued with some regularity.35 Denis Gorey said that Farmers’ candidates were ‘attacked with revolvers and machine guns’, a claim that William Davin echoed on behalf of Labour.36 It was not at all clear that opposition to Sinn Féin would find a place in the new state. In response to this criticism, Labour and the Farmers at times amplified their revolutionary credentials. While Labour leaders tried to distance themselves from Sinn Féin and the Treaty when it suited their purposes, at other times those same Labour leaders emphasised organised labour’s role in refusing to carry British munitions and calling strikes during the revolution. The Farmers’ Party were sufficiently worried about this issue that their 1923 director of elections sent out materials so candidates could more easily and satisfactorily answer the question ‘What part did the farmers take in the national movement?’37 In answer, they quoted from a British officer, former Agriculture Minister Art O’Connor, and Clare IRA commandant Michael Brennan, each of whom emphasised the importance of farmers to the revolution. The actual Farmers’ Party representatives had played little role themselves, but the class that they spoke for had contributed sons, stores, and safe houses. Denis Gorey, the party’s leader, said during an early meeting of the Third Dáil that farmers also had suffered during the revolution, although the suffering he described was generally financial, as they were the major ratepayers in the counties.38 The eventual participation in the Dáil of those deemed by republicans to lack revolutionary pasts made it that much easier to dismiss the whole body as Anglophilic or neocolonialist. Anti-​Treatyites referred to the Government as ‘His Majesty’s Provisional Government’ and to the Dáil as the ‘parliament of traitors’.39 According to republican writers, the Treaty would bring ‘a bogus parliament and bogus Government’ to Ireland, which would continue to function as a British colony. Republicans had a variety of ways, clever and otherwise, of indicating that the state was fundamentally British: ‘Slave State’, ‘Freak State’, ‘His Majesty’s Provisional Government’, and the like. The Free State, according to republicans, used British ex-​soldiers and ex-​Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) to keep order, and slavishly copied the British in all things. Hanna Sheehy-​ Skeffington wrote ‘the Constitution gives Southern Ireland the status of a slave state … The parliament is called and dismissed by the King, who has a veto on all legislation.’40 In order to gain a sham independence, the Treaty forced Irish nationalists to accept ‘the submergence of her [Ireland’s] own individuality in the cess pool of British imperialism’.41 The Dáil was called ‘the Kildare Street debating club’, which was ‘now sitting in the very appropriate premises of the Royal Dublin Society’, invoking two prominent unionist-​leaning institutions.42

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In response to clear challenges to their revolutionary credentials, Treatyites began defining political participation differently. Facing criticism that they came to power with the support of antinational groups, they instead tried to define politics as meritocratic, with little special treatment given to those who had served the revolution. The civil service was set up on meritocratic lines, ex-​RIC and -​British Army were used in the founding of the new police force, and loads of ex-​IRA men were demobilised in the aftermath of the civil war. Some preference was given to ex-​National Army men, but little to ex-​IRA men or to Cumann na nGaedheal supporters more generally. In fact, Cumann na nGaedheal leaders, particularly Kevin O’Higgins, proudly claimed to be creating a neutral state, rather than one that would serve only Cumann na nGaedheal supporters or revolutionary activists. In a memo of 1923, he observed that the Government was resisting ‘an idea that anyone who helped, either militarily or politically in that conflict, is entitled to a parasitical millennium’.43 This was essentially the issue over which the Army Mutiny was fought in 1924 and led to the defection of the National Group from Cumann na nGaedheal. At that time, O’Higgins defended the meritocratic nature of the state in much the same way: in national affairs one has to accept it that it is not by the water that has passed that the mill is turned, and in this whole matter, as in other matters, the country must realise that it is impossible to carry on administration on the basis of swopping records: that there can be advertence to past service in public matters only to the extent to which that past service may be considered to give promise of useful public service in the future. In political affairs, in national affairs, from the very nature of the case there can be no such thing as gratitude, qua mere gratitude.44

A belief in meritocracy, however sincerely held, assisted Treatyites in building the state with something other than IRA veterans, many of whom opposed the Treaty. The debate about political representation also frequently raised issues connected to gender. The question of women’s fitness to serve as representatives had arisen during the Treaty debates, as Treatyites marginalised the female deputies in the Second Dáil and republicanism as a whole by equating them. In response to the female TDs’ pointed criticisms of the Treaty, Treatyites questioned their fitness for office and posited the ideal deputy in the postrevolutionary state as male, rational, and forward-​ looking, while tying female deputies to characteristics often stereotypically ascribed to women, children, and the colonised: emotionalism, irrationality, an inability to grasp political realism, and a tendency to view political events through a personal frame. Many female politicians, despite a history of revolutionary service that would have lent automatic credibility

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to men, were put on the defensive about their suitability as representatives. During the Treaty debates, the female TDs spoke eloquently and firmly against the Treaty, with several of them invoking the sacrifices made by their male relatives. This provoked what seemed a coordinated response from Treatyites that denigrated the female TDs and republicans as irrational or emotional. As women were often particularly visible advocates of the anti-​Treaty position –​republicans were often derisively called the ‘Women and Childers’ party –​gender stereotypes were used to deprecate many of the arguments of female TDs and republicans. These discussions continued in the post-​ Treaty period. The intersection of gender with political representation arose most directly during a post-​Treaty Dáil debate about extending the franchise to women on the same terms as men, a discussion that not only focused on erasing gender differences in voting rights, but also triggered a defence of women’s fitness as politicians. The voting issue was fairly straightforward. British and Irish women aged thirty and over who either individually or with their husbands met a property requirement had been enfranchised in 1918. Anti-​Treatyites proposed a redefinition of the franchise so as to give women the vote on equal terms with men, effectively enfranchising women aged twenty-​one to thirty. Treatyites used procedural chicanery, including claiming that the notice of motion was not received in time, to delay and try to prevent a discussion of this issue.45 Nevertheless, a motion to enfranchise women on the same terms as men was introduced in February 1922 by Kate O’Callaghan, one of the six female TDs in the Second Dáil. The arguments made both for and against an immediate change in the franchise wrestled with some of the issues that would plague the development of an accepted parliamentary opposition. Not only were deputies supposed to be former revolutionaries, but the right to vote was often also framed in terms of potential voters’ revolutionary histories. In proposing the decree, O’Callaghan cited the promise of equality in the Proclamation of the Republic, a key revolutionary milestone for many activist women.46 She also referenced specifically the actions of young women during the revolution: ‘during these last years of war and terror, these women in the [their] twenties took their share in the danger. They have purchased their right to the franchise.’47 Hanna Sheehy-​Skeffington wrote ‘Being under 30 did not exclude them from court martials and convict cells, but now excludes them from voting at the coming elections.’48 Constance Markievicz mentioned her own history with the suffrage movement, specifically how learning about women’s inequality was a springboard to fighting against national and economic oppression. She made a strong statement in favour of women’s equality more generally, citing ‘one of the crying wrongs of the world, that women, because of their sex, should be debarred from any

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position or any right that their brains entitle them a right to hold’, while still rooting the right to vote in the revolutionary history of many young women: I would ask would any man of the I.R.A. turn down the girls who stood by the men in the days of the fight for freedom and did what the women did in the gap of danger? It is for these girls that I speak to-​day and it is the experience that these girls had in the last year that has brought to birth in them a great desire for this small privilege –​the right of citizenship in Ireland.

This emphasis on action over speech echoed many such declarations across Europe after the First World War. Cathal Brugha, although acknowledging ‘several other reasons’ for enfranchising these younger women, also noted ‘the part taken by the Cumann na mBan and other women during Easter Week’. He listed a number of roles that women had played: female relatives of Easter Week soldiers giving them a ‘cheery word of encouragement’ as they marched out, those who ‘kept the spirit alive’ after Easter by organising masses and public meetings, and female supporters of compulsory Irish in the university. He did conclude that ‘from my knowledge of women in public affairs, I say that at least they have as true an insight in national matters as men’. Markievicz also appealed to ‘the men of the IRA more than to any of the other men to see that justice is done to these young women and young girls who took a man’s part in the terror’. Even those relatively few Cumann na mBan women who publicly supported the Treaty tended to emphasise their revolutionary credentials. Caitlin de Brun, writing to the Irish Independent after the Cumann na mBan convention, denied that the women of Ireland would vote for ‘the renewal of war and the sacrifice of the lives of the men of Ireland’. In making that argument, though, she emphasised her revolutionary roots, highlighting what she saw as both the limitations and the contributions of women. She admitted that she could not ‘claim to be able to march and drill like a soldier’, but said she had done ‘the drudgery work’ over the past decade, ‘organising Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers in my part of the country’. She also mentioned the ‘great regret’ she felt at being ‘on a different platform from some of the ladies who were my companions in various Dublin jails in 1916’.49 Michael Collins, after receiving a welcoming resolution from the pro-​Treaty Cork Cumann na mBan, noted that it was ‘not only Cumann na mBan, but the ordinary unorganised women of Ireland’ who helped during the revolution.50 This decoupling of organisational membership from revolutionary activity was rare, though, and more structured activity during the revolution was still a prerequisite for women seeking to find a place in political debates. While there were some statements of general equality, a number of speakers referred to younger women earning the right to vote by their

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actions during the revolution. This was certainly understandable in the context of 1922, as it emphasised the significant roles of people less heralded than many of the male revolutionary leaders, whose contributions and gains were in correspondingly greater danger of being marginalised. But it also reinforced a notion that revolutionary participation was a prerequisite for full citizenship or conferred a greater voice in postrevolutionary politics. While there were certainly calls for women to have the vote on equal terms with men, there were few political discussions about the activities of young female schoolteachers; or farm labourers; or the wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers of men who were not out in 1916. This notion that revolutionary activity justified the right to suffrage was common but it also contributed to a problem for the creation of democracy in the Free State: the state and democracy were seen as the special possession of those with a revolutionary pedigree, in particular men with a revolutionary pedigree. This is part of the reason why the Farmers’ and Labour Parties struggled to gain legitimacy and a foothold in the new state, and this also was a prime mover in the 1922 IRA split and eventual civil war, the 1924 Army Crisis, and the rise of the Blueshirts in the early 1930s. Those who did not have the proper pedigree had to go to greater lengths to establish their right to speak in this new democracy.

TDs and Constituencies In addition to debating who ought to represent the nation in the parliament, politicians also had to establish what was meant by representative democracy in the first place. The Treaty debates featured significant arguments over whether TDs represented the will of their electors, their own consciences, or broader constituencies such as the women of Ireland or the army. This issue particularly arose over the oath, as Second Dáil deputies debated the role of their own consciences in shaping their vote on the Treaty. Anti-​Treaty TD David Ceannt said early in the debates ‘I think every man has come here to give his opinion according to his own conscience and nothing will deter us from doing so.’51 New Ireland referred to deputies as ‘trustees’, who obtained a mandate from the constituency upon election and then accounted for their activities at the next election.52 Mary MacSwiney summed up this view best: Every argument against it [the Treaty] is consistent with the promises we gave to our constituents … if my constituents dared to suggest to me the unworthy course that, having taken an oath to be faithful to the Republic which they established, I am going to be false to it –​my answer would be: ‘You knew what

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I stood for when I came here. I have not changed, and, if you have, you can tell me so the next time I come to you.’53

Many other deputies mentioned that their consciences would not allow them to violate their oaths to the republic by taking the required oath to George V, and female deputies particularly argued that their scruples also would not let them betray their martyred relatives by voting to disestablish the republic for which those relatives had died. Treatyites, on the other hand, tended to argue that TDs should not merely consider their own opinions, but should instead represent the views of a majority of their constituents. Kevin O’Higgins told the deputies ‘The issue is this: are we here as representatives of the Irish people or are we not? And I do not think we speak here the voice of the Irish nation if we do not represent, each one of us, our constituents.’54 This was, of course, self-​serving, as the vast majority of public bodies and newspapers in the state had spoken up in favour of the Treaty over the Christmas recess. Even Eoin O’Duffy, not a noted parliamentarian, framed his support of the Treaty by asserting the supremacy of his electors: ‘As regards my right to voice the feelings of my constituents … in my own opinion, the will of a constituency should prevail against the will of any one individual who may happen to be their mouthpiece at this particular time.’55 There also was no agreement on which constituencies deputies should be representing. Opposition TDs commonly invoked constituencies broader than their electoral ones in order to amplify the views of those perceived to be underrepresented in the Dáil. Labour, for example, constantly raised issues relevant to the workers of Ireland, a group unevenly distributed and not always coterminous with the electoral constituencies of Labour TDs. Labour justified its entrance into the Dáil by claiming to be the only party capable of representing this wider constituency. Its 1922 election address declared ‘the Labour Party Candidates have entered this contest with the intention of winning for the Workers of Ireland a small, but direct and independent, representation in the new Irish National Assembly … Unless Labour is directly represented in the new Assembly the needs of Workers will continue to be neglected.’56 Similarly, William Davin told the Dáil that it needed to realise that Labour TDs were ‘representatives of the workers of the country’.57 Labour leaders also made it clear that their role as representatives of the working class mandated that they remain independent from both wings of Sinn Féin. After Seán Milroy argued that Labour was elected ‘to implement the Treaty and not for any sectional reason’ and accused the party of a lack of moral courage, Labour deputy William O’Brien defended the party’s independence. He said that Labour voluntarily subordinated itself to the national movement during the revolution but was unwilling to continue to do so after

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the Treaty: ‘we will not harness ourselves to the chariot wheels of their [Sinn Féin’s] Party’.58 Speaking to a Labour audience in August of 1922, Cathal O’Shannon emphasised ‘the independence and the separateness of Labour’, which was ‘part and parcel of the principles and the policy of Labour here as everywhere else’.59 Labour wanted to show that its subordination to the national movement during the revolution would not continue.60 That Labour would attempt to speak for the working class is hardly surprising. But the ways in which they defined this independence and this advocacy for a larger constituency proved important in defining the space for opposition in the new state. For one, Labour leaders disclaimed personal and party-​wide responsibility for the Treaty and the civil war. Rather than worry about representing their constituents’ views on the Treaty, as some Treatyites were wont to do, they instead claimed a mandate from the working class to push economic reforms to the forefront and to prevent politics from becoming merely a squabble among Sinn Féiners over the form of government. Labour was pro-​Treaty in the sense that its TDs were willing to take the oath, but it never rested that decision on a belief in the legitimacy of the Free State or the wisdom of the Treaty. Unlike Treatyites and independents, Labour rarely trumpeted its support for the Treaty and instead defended the new state on purely instrumental grounds. This put Labour in the position of emphasising its role in the revolution without assuming that it was in any way responsible for the products of that revolution. Thomas Johnson made this clear in his first speech to the newly assembled Third Dáil in 1922. He said: we on these Benches look upon ourselves rather as the inheritors of a s­ ituation –​ a constitutional position, if you like –​that has been handed down to us and the country … by the other people who had the confidence of the country in the past, and … we accept the verdict of the country … We feel ourselves not responsible for the present situation, but prepared to acknowledge that our predecessors did their best and, rightly or wrongly, they have handed to this Assembly –​to this political generation –​a heritage that we have to make the most of.61

This was a role for opposition –​within the Free State Dáil but not responsible for it –​disallowed by the republican definition of politics. In the view of republicans, participation in the Dáil and taking the oath meant complicity in the actions of the Provisional Government and a betrayal of the republic. Labour instead wanted to participate in institutions the legitimacy of which it did not fully accept, giving it the freedom to argue against government policies within the chamber without endorsing the structures. This was the position that Fianna Fáil took in 1927, but it was antithetical to republican principles in 1922. Unlike Treatyites, though, Labourites never cited the opinions of their electors in justifying their presence in the Dáil.

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That decision, instead, was conditioned by Labour’s reading of the situations elsewhere in Europe, where socialist parties had some success manipulating the instruments of the bourgeois state. To pursue an oppositional position defined by class interest, Labour vowed to use their independence from Treaty politics to put socioeconomic issues in front of the Dáil. As Johnson said, they did not assist Sinn Féin merely to replicate the Westminster system.62 So Labour put forward various proposals for full employment, increased government spending, and amelioration of slum conditions. If they were going to use the machinery of the Free State and serve as a parliamentary opposition, they were determined to use it to shift focus away from the stalled national struggle and onto the economic struggle. This was a potent space for opposition because, at least according to Labour, neither wing of Sinn Féin had any sort of economic policy. The inevitable conclusion was that Irish Labour ‘has now reached a point in its progress when it must stand apart from all other parties and trust none but members of its own organisation. It must be prepared to continue to work for the freedom which its one-​time allies refuse to gain –​ economic freedom for the workers.’ In return for speaking for the worker’s interests as an opposition party, Labour implored such a worker to cease supporting Sinn Féin parties, but instead to ‘put his brains and energies into his own party and his own class’.63 The use of the male pronoun accented the limits of Labour’s appeal. The other major opposition party, the Farmers’ Party, carved out different territory than did Labour. The Farmers often voted with the Government, but still saw themselves as separate because of the issues they expressed, their views of government in general, and the constituency that they claimed to represent. In the early months of the Dáil, their backing was often silent, except in the issue of the Treaty. Unlike Labour, the Farmers were explicit in their support for the Treaty. While debating the King’s role in the constitution, Gorey made it clear that the Farmers endorsed the Treaty. He said, ‘it is up to me and the Party to which I belong to make our attitude on this matter clear … There was not a platform we got on, there was not an utterance we made in which we did not say we stood for this Treaty. If nobody else made it an issue, we made it an issue. We asked for the support of the electorate on that issue, and we got it.’64 This did not mean that they saw themselves as appendages of Cumann na nGaedheal though. The party’s general secretary denied in 1923 that the Famers had been negotiating to join Cumann na nGaedheal, as ‘neither the Farmers’ Party nor its supporters are prepared to waive their present independent status’.65 They used their independent status to represent an underrepresented constituency: the farmers of Ireland. This seems counterintuitive, given that Ireland was an overwhelmingly agricultural country. Party members believed,

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though, that farmers were the natural majority in Ireland and that the Dáil would soon reflect that. A letter to the Freeman’s Journal from ‘A Farmer’ in 1922 noted that ‘the farmers of Ireland are, to all intents and purposes, Ireland. Without them who and what would the Dáil have to govern and make laws for?’ The writer’s prescription was to ‘suggest to the farmers to concentrate on consolidating the [Farmers’] Union and on perfecting the electoral machine, so that when things settle down and become normal they can have everything ready to contest, if necessary, every seat in Ireland at the election after this agreed one, in the agricultural interest’.66 The Farmers hoped fervently that politics would ‘settle down and become normal’. Their view of opposition was less about resisting the Government and more about waiting for normality, using their position to keep the economic concerns of farmers in the public eye until an election free from the Treaty’s shadow would return a majority for the farmers and eject those urban elites accidentally empowered by colonialism and the revolution. The farmers had demographics on their side, or thought they did, as they believed that Ireland was fundamentally an agricultural country and the farmers of Ireland would soon see the advantages in voting for the Farmers’ Party instead of the Treatyites. Women were another underrepresented constituency that female TDs in the Second Dáil invoked in order to increase their mandate and standing. This was common during the Treaty debates, as the female TDs claimed on several occasions that they spoke for the women of Ireland, who were overwhelmingly against the Treaty. Margaret Pearse maintained that her ability to speak the minds of Irishwomen was honed by interaction with a great number of them during the revolution: ‘I have been through Ireland for the past few years and I know the hearts and sorrows of the wives of Ireland. I have studied them; no one studied them more, and let no one here say that these women from their hearts could say they accept that Treaty.’67 Mary MacSwiney similarly asserted that the women of Ireland were against the Treaty, and said ‘shame’ to Seán Milroy when he suggested otherwise.68 Louie Bennett, from her position atop the Irish Women Workers’ Union, also spoke for and to the women of Ireland in urging them to reject militarism and to embrace industrial weapons available to female workers. She appeal[ed] strongly to your readers, and especially to women, to think solemnly of the tendencies in our national life to day and to protest against the spirit of murder and tyranny which is threatening to submerge all that is noble, generous and tolerant in Ireland. Will all who think as we do communicate with us and help us to make our ideas more potent amongst our people.69

Republicans expended the most effort trying to mobilise a female constituency, as they wanted to elevate opposition and amplify underrepresented

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voices. Hanna Sheehy-​Skeffington, analysing the failure of the Bill for Equal Enfranchisement, claimed that Treatyites did not want to enfranchise a particular electorate that would undoubtedly vote against them. She wrote ‘one of the hardest blows the Treatyites have had to face is the defection of the women … Many Free Staters in the Dáil have openly declared that they would wish to see Irishwomen all disenfranchised if possible.’ Sheehy-​ Skeffington saw this as evidence of a generational and class divide in Ireland and imagined a young, working-​class, and female electoral coalition for anti-​Treatyites: ‘the women, the workers and the youth are on one side, the press, pulpit (with few exceptions) and the older generation, the war-​ weary, the “big business” element, the AOH [Ancient Order of Hibernians] and YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] on the other’.70 Sheehy-​ Skeffington repeated the adage that politicised women were more uncompromising than the men –​a position with considerable apostolic succession from 1789 and 1871 –​and assumed that most Irish women would be anti-​ Treaty: ‘In the main, the women are opposed to the treaty, especially the young women. All the six women deputies in the Dáil voted against the Treaty and their action is typical of Irish womanhood generally –​I exclude, of course, loyalist women and others who were not Sinn Féiners.’71 Treatyite propaganda, when it invoked women at all, tended to do so in a negative light. A Cumann na nGaedheal ad for the 1923 election painted republicanism as ‘a small body of men intoxicated with unaccustomed authority and of women dominated by personal grievances [who] claimed that all the patriotism and wisdom of the Irish race was theirs alone’.72 Even the Treatyite women’s association Cumann na Saoirse made little effort to seek or support female candidates. In 1923, the organisation remained pledged toward ‘helping the Government and the National Army in their efforts to restore peace’. It would also aid wounded soldiers, set up army canteens, and ‘act as a distributing agent for Government propaganda’. Looking toward the future, it pledged to ‘have no purely political activities, but all members of Cumann na Saoirse are advised to join Cumann na nGael’.73 Even though many of its members, most prominently Jennie Wyse-​Power, had been involved in the nationalist movement for years, there was no public attempt to promote female Dáil candidates, and the organisation remained largely without an independent political or feminist agenda of its own. Labour and the Farmers made few attempts to appeal to or speak for women at all. Other than a few stray comments in stump speeches, the Farmers perceived the average voter as male and did not even bother to form a women’s organisation or encourage female membership in the Farmers’ Union, although a Limerick Farmers’ candidate advised his listeners to ‘Fight your cause on its merits. See that your wives and sons

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and daughters come to the Poll.’74 Labour made more of an effort. Bennett repeatedly appealed to women but remained less concerned with electoral ­politics. Advertisements for Labour candidates in 1922 promised ‘work at full pay for every Man and Woman able and willing to work’, and a 1923 article about agrarian disturbances in Waterford noted that ‘women folk are fighting shoulder to shoulder with the men, and not alone the women whose bread-​earners are locked out but those who have come out in affected jobs’. The ‘women and girls in the employment of farmers have come out in sympathy with the men’ as well.75 But the party often gendered work and workers as male, seemingly without a thought of appealing to a specifically female pool of voters. Cathal O’Shannon recognised in 1922 that those women who supported Labour tended to be ‘older’ (by which he meant over thirty), as ‘the young women of Ireland had followed another flag’.76 There was a widespread assumption that younger women, particularly younger female activists, were solidly in the republican camp, but there was strangely little effort to appeal to women as a specific demographic in the 1920s. The country’s most prominent minority, of course, was the Protestant community, and even in the staunchly Catholic atmosphere of the early Free State there were attempts to speak for and mobilise this community as well. The desire among most Free State politicians to avoid overtly sectarian language meant that appeals to and from this constituency were often cloaked in the language of vocation, political affiliation (‘unionists’), or former status. When the Dáil debated university representation, Gerald FitzGibbon, TD for Trinity and later a Free State Supreme Court justice, listed the advantages of having university members who could help with technical aspects of questions involving medicine, engineering, and housing. He also lamented the difficulty that professors would face in getting elected from geographic constituencies that would undoubtedly favour representatives of economic interests. He said ‘A professor, often of the highest branch of metaphysics, even though he sits next to a king, has small likelihood of finding a farmers’ constituency that will return him to this Assembly.’77 While FitzGibbon perhaps underestimated the general popularity of rural metaphysicians, he was concerned that learned elites would not otherwise be represented in the Dáil. Sir James Craig, medical doctor and Trinity TD (not the Ulster leader), spoke for his profession when the Government threatened to put a tariff on motor car parts: ‘I admit I am not speaking impartially in this matter. I am speaking at the moment for my profession as well as for the motor trade, because the medical profession is the one profession above all others in the country that cannot do without motors.’78 Those speaking on behalf of the professions were very careful to indicate that these were not coded appeals on behalf of Protestants. A Dublin paper criticised the passage of university representation ‘as a short-​cut for the

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provision of representation to the Protestant minority. For no other reason would it be tolerable.’79 Professor William Magennis, himself a Catholic but standing up for his fellow professors, denied that this was the reason: At no time when this amendment was before the Dáil was it recommended on any such grounds, and one of the chief recommendations of it was that it is one of those alterations which would make our Constitution more characteristically an Irish Constitution as bringing into the construction of the future Ireland elements and influences which belong to our past traditions.80

This showed how delicate it was to deal with the religious minority in the Free State: they were depicted as ‘Irish’ and also as elements of Ireland’s past traditions. Magennis’s denial of a connection between university representation and Protestantism itself referenced the Protestantism and/​or Englishness of its beneficiaries. Surely no one thought that chemists or physicists had to be defended as Irish because of their particular profession, separate from the types of people who usually filled those roles. And one would not defend medical doctors in and of themselves as ‘elements of Ireland’s past traditions’. The language itself had to be obtuse. Lord Midleton was asked his opinion on the proposed Free State constitution and used similar language in explaining his prescription for a Free State Senate. After explaining that, because of ‘recent conditions in Ireland and the great divisions which exist’, a Senate was needed that could put ‘effective checks on hasty action by the Democratic Chamber’, he went on to say that that Senate could not be filled ‘by the ordinary methods of popular election … It is desirable that at least half the Senate should consist of members occupying high posts ex officio and of members specially representative of commerce, education, the learned professions and the landed interest.’ He then proposed that special university representation would be one way to achieve this.81 Protestantism was blended here with class and profession to avoid charges of sectarianism. Another way this was accomplished was through the use of ‘unionist’, which was religiously neutral but certainly implied Protestantism to most Irish people. During the Treaty negotiations, Arthur Griffith promised a group of ‘southern Unionists’ that they would get some special representation in an independent Ireland. This met with criticism, particularly from anti-​Treatyites, who saw it as a needless concession to the colonial oppressor. A republican civil war broadsheet commented on the inclusion of university representation in the constitution in fairly sectarian terms: ‘the Orange Gang in Trinity College got another privileged plum –​four members in the Chamber of Deputies. This is even more than Griffith’s secret agreement with the Southern Unionists promised … Of course the special privileges of the Ascendency Gang … must be preserved at any price in this wonderful new GAELIC world of ours.’ The same issue also called the Senate

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‘a comfortable club from which all the Freemason gangs in Ireland can bring their concentrated class interests to bear on legislation, for the benefit of the moneyed interests’.82 Criticism of unionism was thus blended with criticism of capitalism in republican propaganda. A 1922 advertisement directed at workers said ‘Griffith has pledged himself to give the Southern Unionists –​ who are mostly landlords and employers –​special representation even in the elected Free State Parliament, and the Free State Party is bound hand and foot to all the capitalist interests which used to support the Union.’83 Treatyites danced around the religious issue when discussing this. In announcing his nominees for the first Senate to the Dáil, Cosgrave said his criteria in choosing these people included ‘if they represented an order that was not adequately represented in the Dáil’, with the relatively neutral word ‘order’ standing in for more distasteful words such as ‘class’ or ‘religion’.84 Earlier, Cosgrave defended Griffith’s agreement with similar language. Again calling them an ‘order’, Cosgrave described them as ‘those who thought they were being at least politically excluded from having any part or control or co-​operation in the Government of the country’. He said that such people assured him that they had a lot of expertise to contribute. Cosgrave thought that there was an imperative to honour Griffith’s agreement with southern unionists, but he also thought that this could be a positive: ‘if by including such an order in the Oireachtas, goodwill may be established between all sections of the community, and that we can bring home to these people the fact that we are prepared to work with them for the good of the country, I think that very much good may be accomplished’.85 Ernest Blythe made a similar argument about the inclusion of ‘people who will represent elements and parties that are not sufficiently represented in the Dáil’. He hoped that if the Senate performed well it could help integrate unionists into Free State politics: ‘some of them who would be excluded at the present moment from the Dáil may so establish the fact that they can be useful public servants, that in future Dáils they may have a chance of gaining the suffrage of the people. By that means the Senate may be very useful in eliminating old differences.’86 Publicly Cosgrave and Blythe again offered an integrative model –​rather than giving voice to a dissident minority, they hoped that such differences would be eroded. Inclusion of political unionism was a political risk for the Treatyites. They did not really want an opposition party that would disrupt their claim to speak for a unified Irish people. But respect for Protestant opinion also made the Free State look tolerant, particularly in comparison to its northern neighbour. A summer 1923 issue of the Government’s propaganda sheet emphasised that an Orange parade took place peacefully in Clones, County Monaghan, which contrasted with the ‘religious bigotry pouring forth from the various platforms’ on even a relatively quiet Twelfth across the border.

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The Protestants in Monaghan ‘declared that the Free State Government was anxious to preserve civil and religious liberty, and promised loyalty to the State –​a good lesson to the men of Belfast’.87 The Government hoped to build bridges to the Protestant community through a shared desire for law and order, which allowed the Government to appear tolerant while restraining what they depicted as a more overtly sectarian republican movement. When Free State soldiers threw a stone and shattered a picture of the King in the border hotspot of Pettigo, County Donegal, the local commanding officer convinced the victim not to flee across the border and had a local Protestant minister attempt to keep the whole incident out of the press.88 Overall, the language used in invoking the Protestant minority was complicated and multifaceted. There were attempts by some independent TDs, particularly from the universities, to speak for that constituency in the Dáil, although usually through language that avoided any mention of religious preference and instead invoked class, profession, or political stance. Republicans openly criticised attempts to preserve the power of the Protestant elite. While at times using the quasi-​religious term ‘Orangeman’, republicans more often referred to this population as unionists, Freemasons, or capitalists. Free Staters had no interest in seeing an independent unionist party develop, but hoped to reap the benefit of appearing more tolerant than the northern state. The presence of unionists in the Dáil, however marginalised, contrasted favourably with nationalist abstention from the northern parliament and the abolition of proportional representation by Craig’s government. Attacks on Protestants for their religious or political stances were hushed up, in part to reinforce the Government’s commitment to protecting life and property more generally.

The eradication of politics Faced with the inability to outvote the Government in the Dáil, underrepresented groups such as workers, farmers, women, and unionists attempted to bolster their authority by appealing to broad nongeographic constituencies that they hoped would get increased representation in the future. In response, the Government constantly invoked its majority status in the Dáil, which was really a plurality in the country. This was a more complicated task than perhaps it appeared, as the Treatyites had to base their mandate on majority rule while denigrating organised political parties, a key aspect of calculating majorities in most parliamentary systems. Sinn Féin took the lead in marginalising parties and politics, but all parties did this as a way of proving their bona fides and their desire to avoid replicating the structure of the Irish Party and the British system in which it had

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functioned. This was a crucial way in which Sinn Féin and Irish politicians hoped that postrevolutionary politics would differ from those of Britain. Even those who had obvious political experience denied that they were politicians or that they were practising politics. Both Collins and Cosgrave, the new state’s first leaders, expressed concerns about ‘normal’ party politics developing in the Free State. Regarding the proposed constitution, Cosgrave wrote that ‘the party system is a shocking imposition on the private member. It leads to corrupt practices, sharp electioneering, and the manufacture of mountains out of molehills.’89 Collins, who at times like to depict himself as a simple soldier, said that an emerging postcolonial state did not have the luxury of party politics: it is too soon for us to become Party Politicians in Ireland. Let us hope that we shall never become politicians in the modern sense. We must remain what we have been –​Nationalists –​just Irishmen who have the good of their country at heart. Party politics may pass in a strong flourishing country. To our country currently undergoing a re-​birth politics, in the modern sense, threaten death or at least disaster.90

Collins’s musings also reflected a common Sinn Féin belief that the Gaelic state had to expel ‘politics’ from Ireland in order to prevent divisions from being used by the coloniser or any of Ireland’s enemies. Collins, in the same set of midsummer notes, prescribed a cure for politics: we must avoid government of the kind that has eventuated in the great modern States. We want a Government based on distinctive Irish thought. We want a modern edition of our old Gaelic social polity –​a thing that grows up with ourselves and grows naturally out of our own Irish character and requirements.

Politics as practised elsewhere led to a government ‘fashioned for the benefit of the governors … largely directed toward bolstering up all their vested interests’.91 The solution proffered was to make politics about day-​to-​day achievements and not about the kind of deep ideological divides that create parties. This was crafted to allow discussion of specific policy initiatives –​ the emphasis on Irish in the schools, a revision of the tax code –​without having every vote require party whips and philosophical division. To some extent this position was forced upon Treatyites by the language of the Treaty, which offered practical benefits but abandoned symbolic goals. This led to Treatyites redefining politics as practical, not ideological, ‘getting on with the business’, as Collins said. The goal was to decouple politics from both party advantage and the futile ideological squabbling that led to division and inaction. A lengthy column in The Free State by ‘Ulsterman’ spelled this move out directly in February 1922. Entitled ‘A Plea for Politics’, the column noted that simply condemning politics, while

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understandable given the mess created by the Irish Party during the war, accomplished nothing for the country. What they needed to do was to separate politics from party advantage and to focus on practical achievements. ‘Ulsterman’ wrote that ‘leaders and followers alike’ needed to ‘address themselves to the problem [of politics] with the settled determination to subordinate the interest of a party to the welfare of the nation’. This focus on action over ideology was not a betrayal of the Irish nationalist tradition, but a continuation of it. ‘Ulsterman’ cited Parnell and Davis as models and noted that Tone’s oath on the Cave Hill was a superb gesture, but it would have been a gesture, and nothing more, had he devoted his nights and days to clothing abstract sentiments into eloquent rhetoric instead of the harder and more practical business of bridging over differences between suspicious and narrow-​ minded men by compromises [and] … patient subtle diplomacy.92

This is the path that Treatyites desired, as it devalued ideological disputes that Treatyites were unlikely to win and instead elevated practical achievements. Such an argument obviously favours a government in power over opposition parties that have little chance of putting their programmes into practice. The more politics was redefined as getting things done, the more irrelevant small parties such as Labour and the Farmers became. Labour also preached against politics, although they defined it differently than did Sinn Féin. Thomas Johnson called the Collins–​de Valera pact ‘machine politics’, which summed up what Labour wanted to avoid. To Labour, machine politics connoted less the notion of corrupt electioneering practices and more the idea that party whips were applied and ordinary members voted blindly to support their leaders. Labour newspapers criticised Sinn Féin backbenchers for failing to break with party elites during the slide to civil war. Before the Collins–​de Valera pact was signed, the Voice of Labour asked ‘what have the unofficial members of the Dáil to say? Are they so bound by party ties that they are going to keep their mouths shut? Or is there enough independence of spirit, thought, and action … among both sections of them to enable enough of them to come to agreement where their leaders have failed?’93 After the pact was signed, this criticism increased, as Labour disparaged the pact itself, the backbenchers’ blind endorsement, and the Sinn Féin desire for unity that led to it. Ordinary Sinn Féin TDs let the cabinet drift to civil war ‘in silence and without questioning’, and this resulted in a pact that was ‘a repetition of the old parties who went down before the whirlwind of young Ireland in 1918. Trust the leaders, the old party, the old flag, and the old machine! … It all smacks too much of the politician.’

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Unlike Sinn Féin, Labour did not equate a disdain for parties with the desire to replicate a broad nationalist coalition. Instead, they argued that opposition to Sinn Féin was necessary and that unity was a harmful chimera designed to disempower the poor and oppressed. Labour intended to fight this and justified its decision to do so on the need for opposition rooted in workers’ voices: When nobody else had the courage to propose new blood for the Dáil, Irish Labour dared. It will go on doing until it succeeds. If for no other reason but to start to check the machine-​made, if politely expressed, restriction upon the common people’s right to choose and select the rulers, the men and women who will hold powers of life and death over them. Labour’s insistence on going to the polls is commendable and the most promising expression of independence we have had in Ireland for some time. Win or lose, Labour is making the start. The workers are knocking at the gates. The politicians may refuse them entry now. They may refuse it again, and again. When they have made sufficient refusals the knocking may cease and give way to a louder hammering, and the gates that might have opened may fall to the noise of sledging.94

This again allowed Labour to enter politics without becoming politicians, and to position workers as virtuous opponents of politicians. Their entry into politics was circumscribed by Labour’s own wariness toward parliamentary institutions and the hostility of the perceived political class to Labour. While Labour’s TDs mostly embraced parliamentary politics, the party definitely wanted to resist being labelled as politicians and instead wanted, like nearly all other TDs, to be seen as interlopers in a parliamentary system that was essentially foreign to them. But Labour concluded that their distaste for parliamentary politics was outweighed by a desire to have the workers’ voices represented, even if as a small opposition party. This disdain for politics was widely shared, whether among the governing or opposition parties. It was clear in 1922 that most members did not want the Dáil to be organised along party lines, as that was both an emulation of Britain and an evocation of the perceived corruption and torpor of the old Irish Party. Should the regrettable necessity of parties raise its head, though, there was wide agreement within Sinn Féin that those parties ought not be organised around class or vocational lines. While this hostility to sectionalism had obvious electoral motives for Sinn Féiners, it also reflected a fear that class politics would undermine the nationalist project. Labour and the Farmers saw things differently, believing that the unity of the Sinn Féin period was artificial and would soon be replaced by ‘normal’ sectional or vocational politics. The election of 1922 was accompanied by a wave of rhetoric from Sinn Féin indicating that third-​party candidates were wrecking the country and

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that the Free State was insufficiently developed to weather class politics as in more established European nations. Some national papers recognised the need for a more diverse Dáil, arguing that ‘it would be a national calamity and against all the principles of democracy if the new Parliament were not thoroughly representative of the farming and commercial interests of Ireland, as well as the Labour interest’.95 When Cumann na nGaedheal was founded, Cosgrave defended the party as a necessary mediator between competing sectional interests: ‘it was very important that there would be a political party, as distinct from a Farmers’ or a Labour party. That only a political party could hope to get two other such parties to work in agreement and to overcome laziness and irresponsibilities, and a tendency from both employers and employees to grab too much for themselves’.96 The Church also condemned sectional parties as too risky, given that they could undermine the stability created by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government.97 Members of that government also hotly denied that they were a class-​based government, with O’Higgins saying ‘individually or collectively we have no brief for a section of the citizens of this country, and one would say, perhaps, sizing us up, that from our antecedents and traditions our sympathies would not lie with the upper rather than the under dog’.98 Labour, on the other hand, thought opposition parties rooted in sectionalism were the normal course of affairs. Capitalism produced capitalist governments and it was the duty of the working class to oppose such governments. Cumann na nGaedheal could present itself as a national party, but it was ‘only a class party’ dominated by the interests of shopkeepers and bankers.99 Labour expected class politics to become the norm in Ireland after the artificial unity of the revolutionary period ended. Thomas Johnson told Cork Labour party organisers ‘they were coming to the real cleavage that was to divide political parties in the future. The Labour party stood for humanity above property, for social service against private property interests.’100 The Farmers’ Party also believed the future would include a clear space for sectional parties, as had happened elsewhere in Europe. A Farmers’ organiser in Limerick told the audience that the current party was ‘the nucleus of a larger party which would be in the Dáil when it was re-​modelled, as it would be very soon’. Another told a Westmeath audience that they anticipated putting forward sufficient candidates at the next election to form a government and would elect many more of them if ‘the farmers were true to the men of their own class’.101 The situation the past few years had been abnormal, with ordinary political divisions forced into abeyance by the rise of Sinn Féin, but the ‘real cleavage’ of class difference would re-​emerge as it had elsewhere. Such a politics would normalise opposition by defining it along class lines, creating a political system that was more European.

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Both pro-​and anti-​Treaty Sinn Féin, in contrast, wanted to quash class politics precisely because it would normalise opposition and make cavalier assertions of speaking for the nation more difficult. An alternative that Treatyites in particular offered up was to make opposition impermanent, imagining a Dáil with a constantly shifting landscape of temporary factions brought about by proportional representation and the hostility to parties.102 The constitution facilitated this, in terms of mandating proportional representation with a single transferable vote –​a system that favoured representation of political minorities –​and a variety of proposals for extern ministers, who were responsible only to the Dáil and would not stand or fall with the Government. This was a system borrowed in part from Switzerland, and designed to accommodate both anti-​Treatyites and the numerous small parties and independents expected to populate the Dáil.103 O’Higgins said it was particularly important for a young state to have stable government and that protecting some ministries from falling with the Government was designed to enhance stability and free discussion of internal issues. The latter would develop because of the plethora of viewpoints that proportional representation brought into the Dáil, as well as the ministry not having to use whips because votes on internal issues would not threaten the existence of the Government and the Treaty. As O’Higgins said, ‘it is well worth trying whether we could not devise a better system of government than that system by which men constantly, as a matter of routine, vote against their own judgment, and almost against their own conscience, for fear of bringing down the particular Party Government to which they adhere’. Cosgrave echoed this, saying that having members exercise a free vote was ‘a very desirable thing … and the sooner we get away from political elements in this country the better’.104 Hugh Kennedy, the co-​author and chief defender of the extern minister proposals, made the same point: The fact that the Dáil will have to deliberate –​without the assistance of party whips –​on many issues should tend toward the election of competent and able deputies. A man of ordinary ability can vote for the party programme and support the Government or the opposition as the case may be, but when in addition each deputy will have to make up his own mind how he shall vote on important issues the need for strong and experienced men or women as deputies will soon be recognised all over the country.105

This notion of opposition was in essence what Treatyites initially wanted: a Dáil composed of small parties and independent members. These members would ideally all agree on nationalist tenets, and debate would thus be more about specific policies and less about general principles. This would be more desirable than opposition based on an assumption of permanent

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conflict such as that offered by the Labour Party and the Farmers. It also was a different approach than merely denigrating parliaments entirely, as was done by a variety of right-​or fascist-​leaning parties across Europe. Sinn Féiners generally feared that despite the constant paeans to unity, the history of the past seven years had been one of deep division. Cosgrave particularly worried that the onset of party politics could bring generational and political struggles out into the open. He told the Dáil: we need to get away from the line that a Sinn Féiner of twenty-​five years’ standing takes up when he sees a much younger member of that Order, or perhaps sees an ex-​member of the British Army going along, when people who have no war records come up against those who have very brilliant war records … We ought, if possible, exclude from our minds the acute differences that have arisen within the last twenty or thirty years.106

He assumed that the full play of party politics would exacerbate and call forth those differences. Members of the opposition were not necessarily in agreement with having their role conceived of in these ways. Labour anticipated a disciplined political party organised around economic issues and class divisions. The Farmers prophesied the eventual election of sufficient candidates to form a government, although the vagaries of civil war led them to become adjuncts to the governing party. Even some within Treatyite Sinn Féin, while sharing disdain for party politics, worried that creating nonparty ministers in the Dáil would empower bureaucrats and civil servants. A number of Treatyites criticised the extern minister proposal for this reason, with Seán Milroy saying ‘God knows permanent officials are the greatest stumbling blocks to democratic progress that any progressive movement has to fight against’, and Joseph MacBride worried that the elevation of these ‘super-​Chief Clerks’ would create a ‘Venetian Oligarchy’.107 The debate over whether the Dáil would devolve into small parties showed the difficulties of defining politics and opposition in a postrevolutionary and postcolonial context. Too much politics and opposition risked permanent division and weakness, while insufficient politics could lead to rule by unelected Anglophilic bureaucrats.

The rights of the minority Lurking behind all of this throughout 1922 was a fairly sophisticated and wide-​ranging debate about the role of majorities and minorities in the postrevolutionary settlement. While this was not an element of state-​formation that had been debated thoroughly during the revolution, Irish politicians, particularly those who had taken part in or supported the Easter Rising,

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were well versed in arguing the rights of an advanced minority to set the path of the nation. And deputies were certainly used to the spectacle of a minority –​the Irish Party –​holding up the parliamentary business of the majority, as much as Sinn Féin wanted to distance themselves from this general example. Treatyites generally asserted rights derived from their majority in the Dáil, while opponents inside and outside the Dáil claimed that a majority had no right to be tyrannical. Anti-​Treatyites, in particular, advanced arguments about the rights of minorities and the flaws of majority rule. The arguments and the struggle in 1922 were about democracy, but in a more comprehensive way than often depicted in analyses of the civil war and the politics of the Treaty. Among Treatyites, it was O’Higgins who most often framed the Treaty and civil war as being about the majority’s right to rule, a condition on which he admitted few limits. O’Higgins called majority rule ‘the basic principle of representative government’.108 In the early days, O’Higgins often referenced the civil war, telling the Dáil in the autumn of 1922: ‘if the day comes when the majority will cannot be asserted here, if the day comes when the majority must bow to an armed minority, then this country will have ceased to be a nation, and will have become instead a rabble dictated to by idealists with guns’.109 In fact, O’Higgins repeatedly linked the existence and sophistication of the Irish nation with the acceptance of the will of its majority. A people governed under other principles ceased to be a nation: ‘in every other country that claims to be Nation, that claims to be democratic, the majority rules and the minority drops back into a Constitutional position and endeavours to bring back the majority to their view’.110 He said ‘the Nation, in my judgment, will die if it becomes possible for an armed minority to defeat the majority will, democratically expressed. In such circumstances it ceases to be a Nation, and it becomes a mob dictated to by bullies.’111 Cosgrave defined the rights of the majority in the same way: what has got to be asserted in this country is not the mere term, the supremacy of Parliament. It is the supremacy of the people’s right to live their lives in peace, to possess whatever little they may have, to own a security that is the security of a free people, without interruption by any armed despot with a revolver in his pocket or a bomb in his hand.112

In the context of the early civil war, Treatyites spent a lot of time accusing republicans and Labour of not behaving as responsible opposition parties and therefore of undermining the will and power of the majority. The attacks on Labour were more nuanced, as Labour had decided to enter the Dáil. Treatyites in that case attempted to undermine the third way that Labour sought to stake out between both factions of Sinn Féin. Labour had success in the June 1922 election, with seventeen of eighteen Labour

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candidates elected, and Treatyites worried that this was a harbinger of the arrival of class politics in Ireland and of the death of Sinn Féin political hegemony. As the Provisional Government prepared for the assembly of the Third Dáil, Kevin O’Shiel, assistant legal advisor to the Government, wrote a memo to Cosgrave laying out the dangers that parliamentary opposition would pose. He wrote: When the new Parliament meets opposition to us is bound to become both formidable and coherent –​two things which it certainly is not now, nor which no amount of writing up in all the little leaflets which are at present scattered about the City, can make it. Parliament will provide a platform which will at once command the ear of the Nation; for, of course, it would be very difficult to censor speeches made in the National Assembly. Now, to my mind, from the standpoint of effective opposition, one day of Parliament may be more damaging to us than months of warfare … Labour, of course, will supply the main opposition.

O’Shiel then listed the main points about which Labour could be expected to criticise the Government and praised the ‘extremely able leadership’ of Tom Johnson. He seemed less concerned about other potential opposition figures, noting that ‘Indeed outside Labour there will be nothing more formidable that Mr. [Darrell] Figgis’, although O’Shiel feared that those who ignored Figgis’s ‘torrents of self-​praise’ might imbibe his ‘destructive criticism’ of the Government.113 The antidote was to depict Labour’s standing aside from Sinn Féin disputes as cowardly waffling rather than heroic equanimity, a dishonest attempt to appeal to republicans without openly endorsing their revolt. A Treatyite paper analysed Labour’s ‘unsuccessful attempt to appear impartial as between the Government and the mutineers’. The author wanted instead to ask Labour some hard questions such as ‘do they stand for order or rowdyism, Government or anarchy? Do the workers’ interests lie in the promotion of trade and industry, peace and security, and how can these be secured without majority rule? Can Labour organisations be run without majority rule?’114 Treatyites pounded on this issue once the Dáil met, with O’Higgins angrily telling Johnson that his questioning of O’Higgins’s mandate and notions of majority rule ‘seems almost an acquiescence in the armed challenge to democracy that is taking place’.115 After the Government executed four republicans as a reprisal for the shooting of Seán Hales the previous day, Labour again criticised what it perceived as the Government’s lawlessness, and Treatyites responded by accusing Labour of supporting republican violence.116 The attacks became so repetitive and heated that the Treatyite Ceann Comhairle asked for them to cease. Despite frequent paeans to multiparty democracy, Treatyites consistently tried to undermine

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the role of opposition itself, in this case linking opposition in the Dáil to republicanism and violence outside it. Another tactic was to paint governing as difficult, heroic even, and opposition as easy. Labour’s overwhelming minority status in terms of numbers and demographics was used against them frequently. Introducing the constitutional article that made the King a part of the Irish legislature, O’Higgins said ‘it is not a particularly pleasant position to be placed in to have to stand over an Article such as Article 12 of the Constitution. It is a very safe position for one who feels he has a comfortable minority to take up, and a very safe position for one who is not primarily responsible to the country for what may befall.’ Instead of opposition’s being a courageous minority battling against a powerful government with a built-​in majority, O’Higgins characterised it as safe and comfortable. Later in that speech, he followed up by telling deputies to eschew the safe protest vote: ‘it is not right to vote in the spirit –​“Oh, it is safe to vote this way because we are in a minority.” ’ Instead, according to O’Higgins, ‘every member should cast his vote on every subject as if it were going to be a tie in the Dáil and as if his vote should mean the difference one way or the other’.117 Here again is the notion that deputies should vote individually and not according to party whips, especially in those parties that did not have responsibility and thus were freer to criticise without consequences. He repeated that notion of a ‘comfortable minority’ the following day when urging deputies to vote for the resolution giving the army power to hold and try prisoners. Voting according to individual beliefs like this demonstrated ‘manliness’ to O’Higgins.118 Government ministers trotted out the same arguments in a debate the following spring over whether to release republican hunger-​strikers who were near death. In effect, they assailed the minority opposition for lacking what by definition they could not have: majority status and governmental responsibility. In a barb directed at Labour leaders and Patrick McCartan, O’Higgins said: It is an easy thing for the rank and file Deputy to come here and to indulge his tendency to be compassionate, to be humanitarian, to be a good fellow, and he will go home and enjoy his dinner all the better having cast a fine humanitarian vote in the afternoon. He has not to deal primarily with the consequences of that vote and he may not expect to deal with them for some time at any rate.119

Patrick McCartan was a professed opponent of the Treaty who nonetheless took the oath and entered the Dáil. He rarely showed up except for high-​ profile issues such as the hunger strikes, and thus contributed to O’Higgins’s notion of opposition as performative opportunism. O’Higgins said the same thing about Johnson’s opposition to the Enforcement of Law Act, which allowed bailiffs to seize goods for the redemption of debts, implying that

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Johnson would support the Bill if he had the responsibility of government. Patrick Hogan made the same point about Farmers’ and Labour opposition to the terms of the Land Act: ‘the thing that struck me was what a pleasant thing it must be to be in opposition and not to be under the necessity of making sure that one’s theories can be worked out in practice’. He concluded that this was just the way of politics: ‘of course the duty of an Opposition is to oppose’.120 Again, the opposition was not just criticised for the positions it took, but for the apparent insincerity with which it embraced them. Treatyites occasionally credited Labour for its responsible opposition –​Seán Milroy noted that Johnson used ‘rational argumentation’ whereas the republican view was ‘madness’ that had to be treated like a ‘mad dog’ –​but for the most part opposition was seen as counterproductive and not genuine.121 This contrasted with Labour’s view of itself as heroically opposing an autocratic government that it could never outvote. After Cosgrave said in essence that criticism of the Government in the Dáil emboldened republicans outside, Labour TD William Davin said ‘To me that appears to be a denial of the right –​the constitutional right –​to criticise fairly and constructively the policy of the Government carrying on the affairs of this country.’122 Labour perceived the minority as having a duty and a right to stand against government overreach and were aware that Treatyites sought to weaken them by tying them to republican violence. Cathal O’Shannon tried to undermine this tactic while condemning the Government’s proposal to give the army judicial powers during the civil war: If I have any understanding of the theory of this establishment it is that this Dáil is the Government … The Executive or the Government comes to a certain decision. It may consult with the army chiefs on that decision. It comes here, and all we have got to do is to register our votes in favour of it; and if we do not register our votes in favour of it, we are told –​and the people of Ireland are bluffed –​that we are trying to kill the Treaty. Everyone who is elected here, if he does not agree with the Ministry or any Minister, is told he is trying to torpedo the Treaty … let the Ministry put the big stick of the Treaty aside and leave their followers free to vote as they wish, as their consciences and souls dictate to them, and I guarantee that not more than a half-​dozen of them will vote honestly for this measure.123

O’Shannon argued that the situation created by the split in Sinn Féin and the slim acceptance of the Treaty should not dictate the roles of minority opposition groups, even by the self-​proclaimed rules of parliamentary institutions. Labour also attacked the artificial majority that empowered the Treatyites. Speaking of the Land Act, Johnson complained: we are now dealing with a very comprehensive measure, and it is proposed to carry through this very big legislative enactment in a Parliament which is

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Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State not at all representative of the people … At most we are about 60 members perhaps, attending here … It perhaps would not be too much to suggest that a measure of this kind ought to have some more representative body dealing with it before it is finally passed.124

Labour knew that it was in a permanent minority status but still thought it had a duty to function as an opposition in the absence of the rest of Sinn Féin. It also argued that the Treatyite majority, however numerically unassailable in the Third Dáil because of abstention, was not really representative of the country or the collective body of elected TDs, an argument that undermined Treatyite claims to a mandate. The combination of the government attempt to link them to republican violence and the artificially large Treatyite majority in the Dáil meant that Labour was being denied its rights as an opposition party. William O’Brien noted that every Labour TD faced harassment designed to get them to stand down in the 1922 election, the pact’s tolerance of such candidates notwithstanding. And, as Marxists in a fundamentally bourgeois parliamentary institution, Labour did not accept outright the strictures of majority rule in all circumstances but were willing to play along with it for the time being. As O’Brien said, Now I do not personally worship majority rule, but I accept it. It is not possible to get on with the business unless we do accept it. As far as this country has been given an opportunity of deciding for the Treaty, it has decided. Nobody who knows the country would doubt what the verdict would be if it were put to it. We accept the situation, and whether we like it or dislike it we should make the best of it.125

Oddly, for a party theoretically committed to the overthrow and replacement of bourgeois parliamentary institutions, Labour had to empower those institutions in order to wield any power as a minority, as Labour had even less influence over institutions to which the Treatyites devolved power, such as the civil service, the Church, and the army. In response to critics who said that Labour should withdraw from the Dáil over the reprisal executions of Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellows, Johnson explained Labour’s role as a minority opposition. He deplored extralegal executions but claimed his critics ‘failed to appreciate the position of the Labour Party or the functions of parliamentary institutions’. This was a common Labour assumption, that its electorate understood neither parliamentary institutions nor politics in general. Demanding that Labour withdraw when it disagreed with governmental policies ‘is equivalent to demanding that Labour should refuse to take part in the political activities of the country until we are in a position to take over the Government ourselves. It is practically saying that we should never take part in a Parliament until a majority thinks as we think.’ He then laid out the role of opposition

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in Labour’s view: ‘if Ireland is going to be governed by a Parliament, that Parliament must always contain a number of people in opposition to the Executive Government’. Johnson told the complainers ‘I am afraid that you and others who have suggested the withdrawal of the Labour Party from the Dáil are thinking of the Dáil as part of a single political organisation, as it was, in fact, during the period of the first and second Dáil. It is no longer so, and it is to be hoped will never again become so.’126 This, then, was the position Labour staked out: they had a duty to function as a minority opposition so the parliament would not again revert to a single-​party body. They would not withdraw, as republicans did, when decisions went against them, as they saw that as incompatible with the duties of an opposition. But they most definitely did not think that participation in the parliament implied support for the decisions of the majority. The demands that Labour withdraw show the hold that the politics and abstentionism still had on elements of the electorate, and Johnson’s response demonstrated his ongoing belief that the electorate did not understand democracy. He summed this up in a speech on the foundation of the Cork branch of the Labour Party in April 1923: A Labour Party, based upon protective trade union organisations had found, in every country in the world which had anything approaching democratic institutions, and in this country, too, that it must take part in the legislature –​both for the making of new conditions and for the preventing of evils arising out of present conditions. They were hoping that they would be able to use Parliamentary institutions in this country to make life bearable, to make life desirable, to make life happy for the common people. Some people had an idea that Labour going into a Parliament became part of the Executive Government, and every act of the Executive Government that displeased those critics was laid to the charge of every member of the Dáil. That was a conception of Parliamentary institutions which had no relation to the facts. The Labour Party was an Opposition, and they would act as critics of the Executive authority –​friendly when possible, constructive when possible, obstructive if necessary.127

In answer to O’Higgins’s question about whether Labour accepted majority rule, Labour’s answer was conditional: it did in this particular circumstance and on the question of the Treaty, but the party also asserted the rights of political minorities and the limitations on political majorities. Republicans made similar arguments, although from a much more theoretical perspective. From inside the Dáil, those few Sinn Féiners who took the oath but opposed the Government charged it with abusing its majority status. Patrick McCartan said ‘we have heard a lot about majority rule. Every time the Government is challenged they always fall back on the rule of the people. They did not give the people much time

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to judge on the execution of the four men [on 8 December 1922]. They had no mandate from the people for civil war in this country.’128 After Free State soldiers raided Deputy Gavan Duffy’s house and searched his papers –​supposedly looking for a wanted suspect –​he asked his fellow deputies to condemn this behaviour. Duffy, a signatory to the Treaty who opposed the Government and the constitution, called himself ‘a member of a minority in this Dáil, with no party to support him’. The search affected ‘the right of deputies to exercise constitutional opposition against the Ministry for the time being’, and he concluded that ‘if the privacy of one’s papers is gone you might as well abandon all pretence that constitutional opposition is a legitimate and proper thing in this country’.129 Gerald FitzGibbon, a barrister and Trinity TD, and the Labour Party supported Duffy in his protest.130 Outside the Dáil, republicans spent a lot of time undermining the notion of majority rule in ways other than with arms. As soon as the Treaty vote went against them, most anti-​Treatyites wanted and needed to blend their opposition to the Treaty with support for democracy. In general, republicans tended to colour their opponents as apostates or careerists: few conceded that support for the Treaty could be anything but venal and selfish. But they also attacked majoritarian democracy in numerous ways, with P.J. Little’s New Ireland laying out the arguments frequently and clearly, condemning both majority rights in the abstract and the nature of the Treatyite majority in particular. First, republicans expanded on de Valera’s assertion that majority rule was merely a principle of order and convenience, not an indisputable axiom. In May 1922, Little wrote: There is nothing sacred in majority rule. The Divine Right of Majorities is no better established than the Divine right of kings. A majority can be tyrannical, and its tyranny can be of a very oppressive kind … There is nothing sacred in the power of fifty-​one men over forty-​nine –​not even in the power of ninety-​ nine men over one. That the decision of a majority should hold good is merely a principle of order, not of liberty or justice.131

This allowed for significant rights to adhere to a minority, even though they were outvoted. Republicans argued that fundamental elements of a nation, like its republican status, could not be surrendered or eliminated by a single majority vote. In fact, ‘the uncritical application of any principle reduces it to the absurd’. Republicans redefined the majority by claiming that ‘the real will of the people means the will expressed which stands for the highest interests of the people. You know the majority is not always in favour of the thing which is in its highest interests.’132 Thus anti-​Treatyites claimed to be arbiters of the real will of the people, which was for a republic, as expressed in the 1918 and 1921 elections.133

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The disjuncture between the majority vote on the Treaty and the actual will of the Irish people, according to republicans, was partly explained by the greed and ambition of Treatyite deputies, which did not make them representative of their districts. As New Ireland wrote, ‘however small the Republican party should be in the third Dáil, it is well for us to remember that a minority with men of real character is worth a large majority bound together by self-​ interests and cowardice’.134 Some republicans, even de Valera, were willing to admit that a majority of Irish voters would support the Treaty, but claimed that this was due to voters’ being misinformed and stampeded by the Church and the press. Little wrote: the Press in Ireland has been, and is, one of the most powerful agencies of Anglicisation; that it has advertised English manufactured goods, English theatres, English races, English fashions, English customs, English ideas, and English morals … Politically the Press has always been against Ireland in vital matters, has always supported the compromisers and vilified those who stood for Ireland’s just rights. It has always been so in every great national crisis from 1798 to the present day.135

Hanna Sheehy-​Skeffington began her series of articles in the Irish-​American Irish World by explaining the corrosive nature of the Irish press: ‘The hostile press proves at times an almost impenetrable smokescreen between the Irish public and genuine “news”, so it is not surprising that those outside Ireland feel bewildered. I shall do my best to explain events faithfully for the readers of The Irish World and to provide an antidote, as far as may be, to the poison press, both of the USA and at home.’136 Republican suspicion of the Church was augmented by its seemingly sudden embrace of majority rule in 1922. Republicans argued that ‘Never at any time did Christian philosophy preach that the majority of a people was infallible. The tradition of the Church’s teachers was strongly in favour of government in the interest and by the consent of the governed, but the whole case of the Republican cause is the permanent foundation of such a Government.’137 Republicans observed that the Church had not respected the will of the people previously, so why should the bishops’ view be taken seriously now? A Sinn Féin handbill from 1922 argued ‘If there is a Divine Right in the Majority Why did not the Bishops Recognise Dáil Éireann in 1919 and 1920? The answer is because they were always on the side of England. They were on the side of England in ’48, in ’98, in ’67, in 1916. Is there any Bishop in Ireland who can deny this?’138 The Church’s position also risked driving away the younger generation: ‘We speak from experience when we say that the effect of the political pronouncements of the bishops will not lessen the national conviction, but will be a cause of stumbling to many in the matter of religion.’139 Their position was all the more odd to

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republicans because a majority vote said nothing about the morality of an issue, which was purportedly the Church’s purview.140 Republicans rarely overtly decried majority rule, although they both attacked the genuineness of the Treatyite majority and argued for limitations on majority rights. They claimed that majority support for the Treaty did not establish it as unassailable, at times arguing that the Treatyite majority was shallow and fragile, and at other times arguing that voting majorities did not always matter. New Ireland reminded readers: The main function of universal suffrage is not to dictate policy, nor even to be referred to at every dangerous moment in the history of a nation … The main function of universal suffrage is to prevent a single clique or class from ruling permanently in its own selfish interests against the interest of the whole people. No country is ruled by the whole people. Representatives are chosen as trustees, and they rule.141

This put forward another republican tenet: that deputies should vote with their consciences and judgement, not the will of the majority at any given time in their constituency. In short, republicans argued that minorities retained significant rights in an electoral democracy. They had to protect against the tyranny of the majority and guarded the soul of the nation from short-​term compromises, an Anglophilic press, and a compromising Church. Republicans also pointed to the heroic and prescient roles played by minorities in Irish history, from the Fenians to the Easter rebels. Mary MacSwiney, in a 1923 speech in Claremorris, summarised the main republican talking points about majority rule. She reminded her listeners that Church and lay authorities had called the Fenians and the Easter rebels murderers and looters, just as they were calling republicans now. She denied that she was against the will of the people and noted that ‘if the majority of the people set up an Irish King before a President she would obey him if he were the choice of the people, but she would do her best to prove to the people that a Republic was better than a kingdom’. Continuing, she somewhat contradictorily asserted that if 99 per cent of the Irish people voted for inclusion in the British Empire, ‘one per cent would be right and bound in honour to fight when and how they could against it. That was her opinion of the rights and limitations of majority rule.’ Ultimately, Ireland would never succeed until the ‘whole nation’ stood with republicans, as ‘it was Republicans, and Republicans alone, who represented the true soul of the people of Ireland’. Perhaps demonstrating the republican point about the press, the Western People’s coverage of this speech noted that there was ‘little or no enthusiasm’ for her speech and ‘wise men were seen to shake their heads at some of the points she stressed’.142 Needless to say, this right of a minority to resist

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did not extend to the Protestant minority in Ireland. Republicans criticised the ‘slave state constitution’ for its acceptance of partition: ‘the right of the Orange minority in Ireland to cut itself and the Irish soil it occupies, off from the rest of Ireland and to ally itself to our hereditary and only enemy is recognised. The right of that minority to wield power of life and death over the large Irish population in its area is recognised.’143 Labour also condemned ‘the resistance to the national will of the Orange population of the Six Counties’.144 This is one of the reasons why these discussions during 1922 mattered so deeply. In addition to arguing about oaths and governors-​general, Irish deputies were also trying to figure out the rights of political majorities and minorities in a developing democratic state. Long used to having political representation as a permanent minority at Westminster, and familiar with the obstructionist tactics wielded by the Irish Party, Sinn Féin, and the IRA, Irish politicians had to transform into a governing majority that protected majority rights without trampling entirely on those of the minority. The newness of the state and the currents of Irish history combined to make this a difficult task. As the Free State’s North Eastern Boundary Bureau’s Weekly Bulletin observed in late 1922: a small armed faction inspired by bitter memories of recent oppressions can work havoc even in a country of long-​established institutions. In a country going through a trying transition stage in which a new army, a new police force, and a new legal system have to be created, the opportunities for mischief on the part of such a minority are necessarily multiplied.145

Even before the first shots of the civil war, a republican paper noted the same thing: ‘Mr. Collins himself knows the enormous power of obstruction possessed by a small minority holding deep convictions.’146 The Irish revolution was driven by the at times contradictory goals of nationalism, anticolonialism, and democracy. Politicians across the spectrum wanted to create not just a democracy imbued by the ideals of Irish nationalism, but also a state that shook off its colonial legacies. They wanted, in modern parlance, to decolonise the state. This was true of Labour and the Farmers, as well as of Sinn Féiners. In many ways, 1922 was about the airing of different definitions of decolonising the state, a discussion that often gets lost in the focus on the military aspects of the civil war. Sinn Féin was, at heart, an anticolonial party, and the notion of creating an ‘Irish’ state was central to its revolutionary discourse, however short it eventually fell of that ideal. For Sinn Féin, decolonising the state meant making it Gaelic. While this was never particularly well defined, it generally included a rejection of the two-​party competitive parliamentary system of Westminster and its replacement by a politics based on both consensus and individual

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decision-​making. Parties and whips were to be avoided, as such things brought in ‘politics’ in the British sense, which meant voting for personal or political advantage instead of from individual judgement. The Gaelic state was to be a multiparty democracy, but one in which there was assumed to be broad consonance on the basic goals of the state, with disagreements being largely confined to questions of implementation. This made it more difficult for unionists to work within this system, as their opposition was seen not as ‘normal’ party competition, but instead as disloyalty to the foundational principles of the state. The division over the Treaty obviously made this definition of Irish politics unworkable fairly quickly, but it retained a persistent hold on the minds of Sinn Féin politicians for some time afterwards. For example, the Government’s constitutional proposal for extern ministers –​ministers responsible to the Dáil but who did not stand or fall if the Government lost a vote –​was an attempt to reconcile the politics of nationalist consensus with the evident Treaty split, as the idea was that Treatyites and anti-​Treatyites could have an open and free discussion on internal policy without jeopardising the Treaty. The constant calls for the return to unity were in part tactical and pro forma, but also represented a genuine disdain for the two-​party system as un-​Irish. Sinn Féiners also perceived that part of the colonial legacy was rule by unelected permanent officials, and it was hoped that a Gaelic state would eliminate these as well, or at least make them more clearly subservient to elected representatives. These ideas formed the main parameters of the political Gaelic state. Labour too wanted to decolonise the state but defined the colonial legacy differently. For Labour, the main damaging legacy of colonialism was the enshrinement of capitalism in Ireland, and decolonisation meant disentangling Ireland from both English political rule and the economic control of English capitalism. The main threats to Labour’s ideals ‘do not arise from the present English occupation or from England’s “rights” in Ireland under either the Treaty or the alternative proposals. They arise out of the capitalist conception of society prevailing in Ireland.’147 As Cathal O’Shannon noted, the party had agreed with Sinn Féin’s calls for nationalisation of Irish resources, a concept that was enshrined in the Proclamation of the Republic and the Democratic Programme, but it had become disillusioned by Sinn Féin hostility to nationalisation after the Treaty.148 The Farmers also wanted to decolonise the state, although they were less likely than the other two major parties to explicitly invoke anticolonialism. For them, the legacy of British colonialism was rule by permanent urban officials distant from the land. The voices of the farmers, a majority in Ireland, had been silenced by an Anglophile class in Dublin. For farmers, a decolonised state would be one dominated by an agrarian party, as the interests of agriculture were to them synonymous with the

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interests of Ireland. Other groups, too, wanted to eliminate aspects of the colonial legacy. Feminists hoped that the inheritance of patriarchy would be erased in the new state, and, while they did not identify England as the sole source of patriarchy, Markievicz and others certainly highlighted the intersection between colonial and gender oppression. All these groups hoped that national liberation from colonialism would also encompass freedom from British political, economic, and gender norms that haunted Ireland. Decolonising the state required a robust discussion about the political norms of the new state, and the role of opposition was a major flashpoint for such discussions. For Sinn Féin, the existence of opposition outside the nationalist consensus was deeply problematic and politicians from either side of the Treaty divide had difficulty normalising such opposition across 1922, with the general sentiment favouring an increasingly unlikely return to a unified nationalist party. The Treaty split introduced complicated notions of majority and minority rights, with Treatyites retreating to a rather absolutist notion of majority rights in emphasising their mandate and their ability to push their policies through a numerically reduced Dáil. They also denigrated the importance of minority political voices by continuing to invoke the political ideal of a single party speaking for the nation. Minority groups sought to augment their status by appealing to alternative nongeographical constituencies that would amplify their authority and emphasise the underrepresentation of certain groups in the new Dáil. In addition, Republicans in particular highlighted the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority. Labour also underscored the rights and role of the minority, but, as participants in the Third Dáil, they were more likely to emphasise the practical benefits of opposition instead of its theoretical rights. They hoped to bring issues relevant to the working class to a wider audience, demonstrate to their constituency the potential inherent in parliamentary politics, and fulfil the necessary roles of a Dáil opposition in the absence of anti-​ Treatyites. This role of Labour was critical in the early years of the state as it granted some legitimacy that the Dáil would not have possessed had it been effectively a one-​party body. Writing later in life, Ernest Blythe praised Thomas Johnson for this aspect of his career: Tom Johnson, leader of the Labour Party, assumed the responsibility of acting as Leader of the Opposition. At the time, he often irritated us a great deal by his insistence on debating a great variety of matters at considerable length. Looking back, however, I am sure that he actually helped us very considerably. If he had not taken the line he took, but had, because of the state of emergency, acquiesced in practically everything we did, the line between the Government and the leaders of the Irregulars would not have been so apparent … The fact

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Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State that we had frequently to defend ourselves and our actions in open debate only helped to rally opinion behind us.149

These benefits were probably not apparent to Blythe in 1922, which speaks to the larger problem of normalising opposition in a decolonising postrevolutionary state. This issue was most definitely not solved in 1922, but the lineaments of a new Irish politics were beginning to form, and such politics were a less sanguine and hospitable place for opposition than remembered by Blythe twenty-​five years later.

Notes DD, 9 September 1922. 1 2 Collins to Government, 30 July 1922: Richard Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​ B29. 3 Memo by Collins, c. July 1922: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​28. 4 Churchill called it ‘an outrage on democratic principles’. Charles Townshend, The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885–​1925 (London: Allen Lane, 2021), 231. 5 Irish Independent, 2 January 1922. 6 New Ireland, 27 May 1922: Boston College (BC) Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 7 Ibid., 10 June and 3 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 8 Ibid., 10 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 9 Ibid., 17 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 10 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 12 Ibid., 17 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 13 Ibid., 10 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 14 Ibid.: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 15 Ibid.: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 16 Ibid., 3 June and 10 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 17 Freeman’s Journal, 24 February 1922. 18 Ibid., 3 June 1922. 19 Ibid., 9 June 1922. The Farmers’ Party were justly known for the riotously clever pen names with which they signed letters to the editor. 20 Ibid., 24 February 1922. 21 Voice of Labour, 11 March 1922. 22 Ibid., 8 April 1922. 23 Ibid., 4 November 1922. 24 Ibid., 21 January 1922. 25 See extensive coverage of this decision in ibid., 25 February 1922.

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26 The clearest articulation of this is in a statement from Labour’s National Executive after the vote to contest the 1922 election; ibid. See also Jason Knirck, ‘A Slightly Revolutionary Party: Labour and Parliamentary Politics in the Early Free State’, New Hibernia Review 21, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 39–​61. 27 Voice of Labour, 25 February 1922. 28 Ibid., 10 June 1922. 29 Ibid., 29 April 1922. 30 Ibid., 27 May 1922. 31 Ibid., 29 April 1922. 32 These quotes come from a summary of Labour speeches against militarism in ibid., 6 May 1922. 33 See the speech by J. T. O’Farrell of the Irish Railway Clerks’ Association in ibid. 34 Ibid., 29 April 1922. 35 The Free State, 17 June 1922. 36 DD, 9 September and 11 September 1922. 37 ‘Farmers’ Party: Points which May Be of Use, c. Summer 1923’: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI 19021. The Farmers were also justly known for their laconic pamphlet titles. 38 DD, 12 September 1922. 39 Nationality, 10 July 1922: Ernest Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​54(A)/​2. War Issue no. 52, 11 September 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV002E 40 Dublin Doings, 2 August 1923: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​240. 41 War Issue no. 53, 12 September 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV. 42 War Issue no. 54, 13 September 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV. 43 Kevin O’Higgins, ‘Memo on Proposed Conference on the Maintenance of Order’, 20 January 1923: Department of the Taoiseach papers, NAI S 3306. 44 DD, 19 March 1924. 45 Ibid., 28 February 1922. 46 Valiulis, The Making of Inequality. 47 DD, 2 March 1922. All quotes in this section are from this debate unless marked. Skeffington papers, NLI MS 48 Irish World, 20 May 1922: Hanna Sheehy-​ 33617(2) 49 Irish Independent, 18 February 1922. 50 Sunday Independent, 12 March 1922. 51 DD, 14 December 1921. 52 New Ireland, 13 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 53 DD, 21 December 1921. 54 Ibid., 9 January 1922. 55 Ibid., 4 January 1922. 56 Voice of Labour, 17 June 1922. 57 DD, 17 January 1923.

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58 Ibid., 12 September 1922. 59 Voice of Labour, 12 August 1922. 60 O’Shannon made this point in a June 1922 speech; ibid., 1 July 1922. 61 DD, 9 September 1922. 62 Ibid., 3 January 1923. 63 Voice of Labour, 7 July 1923. 64 DD, 26 September 1922. 65 C. F. McLoughlin, Acting General Secretary of the Irish Farmers’ Union, to the Editor, 7 July 1923: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 19021. 66 Freeman’s Journal, 3 June 1922. 67 DD, 4 January 1922. 68 Ibid., 21 December and 20 December 1921. 69 Voice of Labour, 15 April 1922. 70 Irish World, 8 April 1922: Sheehy-​Skeffington papers, NLI MS 33617(2) 71 Ibid., 20 May 1922: Sheehy-​Skeffington papers, NLI MS 33617(2) 72 Handbill, ‘General Election: To the Electors of Kerry’, August 1923: NLI ILB 300p7 49. 73 Irish Independent, 12 February 1923. 74 Speech by Batt Laffan, 1923: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 19021. 75 Voice of Labour, 3 June 1922, 9 June 1923. 76 Ibid., 1 July 1922. 77 DD, 4 October 1922. 78 Ibid., 23 March 1923. 79 As quoted by William Magennis, ibid. 80 Ibid., 25 October 1922. 81 Lord Midleton, Memo on the Constitution, c. spring 1922: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​A/​65. 82 War Issue no. 75, 6 October 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV. 83 ‘Free State Promises: Are They True?’, c. summer 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV. 84 DD, 6 December 1922. 85 Ibid., 25 October 1922. 86 Ibid., 1 November 1922. 87 Dublin Doings, 19 July 1923: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​240. 88 J.V. Joyce to Chief of Staff, GHQ, 2 February 1923: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​254. 89 W.T. Cosgrave, memorandum on the constitution, spring 1922: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​A/​65. 90 Memo by Collins, ‘Change of Situation and Outlook’, summer 1922: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​28. 91 Ibid. 92 The Free State, 25 February 1922. 93 Voice of Labour, 6 May 1922. 94 All quotes are from the editorial ‘Shut Your Eyes and Open Your Mouth’, in ibid., 10 June 1922.

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95 New Ireland, 10 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 1965: Founder of Modern Ireland 96 Anthony Jordan, W.T. Cosgrave, 1880–​ (Dublin: Westport Books, 2009), 108. My thanks to Liam Cosgrave for providing this to me. 97 Patrick Murray, Oracles of God: The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922–​37 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2000), 100, 103. 98 DD, 4 January 1923. 99 Voice of Labour, 5 May and 12 May 1923. 100 Ibid., 21 April 1923. 101 Freeman’s Journal, 24 January and 7 February 1923. 102 O’Higgins said this; DD, 20 September and 5 October 1922. 103 For a discussion of the extern minister proposals see Laura Cahillane, Drafting the Irish Free State Constitution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); and Jason Knirck, Afterimage of the Revolution: Cumann na nGaedheal and Irish Politics, 1922–​1932 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). 104 DD, 5 October 1922. 105 Hugh Kennedy, ‘The New Irish Executive’, c. autumn 1922: Hugh Kennedy papers, UCDA P4/​528. 106 DD, 5 October 1922. 107 Ibid., 6 October 1922. 108 An Saorstát, 30 August 1922: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7a/​66. 109 DD, 27 September 1922. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 29 November 1922. 112 Ibid., 12 September 1922. 113 Kevin O’Shiel to Cosgrave, 4 September 1922: Department of the Taoiseach papers, NAI S 600. 114 The Free State, 5 August 1922. 115 DD, 29 November 1922. 116 Ibid., 8 December 1922. 117 Ibid., 26 September 1922. 118 Ibid., 27 September 1922. 119 Ibid., 20 April 1923. 120 Ibid., 19 June 1923. 121 Ibid., 8 February 1923. 122 Ibid., 31 January 1923. 123 Ibid., 27 September 1922. 124 Ibid., 28 May 1923. 125 Ibid., 12 September 1922. 126 Voice of Labour, 6 January 1923. 127 Ibid., 21 April 1923. 128 DD, 29 November 1922. 129 Ibid., 18 April 1923. 130 Voice of Labour, 12 May 1923. 131 New Ireland, 6 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 132 Ibid. This discussion was under the heading ‘Majority Rule Gone Mad’.

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133 This derived from republican notions of democracy as a more mystical will of all, rather than simply majoritarian. See Garvin, 1922. 134 New Ireland, 24 June 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 135 Ibid., 6 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 136 ‘Authentic News from Ireland’, 8 April 1922: Sheehy-​Skeffington papers, NLI 33617(2). 137 New Ireland, 6 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 138 Sinn Féin handbills against the Provisional Government, 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box V, Item 1. 139 New Ireland, 6 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 140 Ibid., 13 May 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 141 Ibid. 142 Western People, 25 August 1923. 143 War Issue no. 67, 28 September 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, Box IV. 144 Voice of Labour, 14 January 1922. 145 North Eastern Boundary Bureau, Weekly Bulletin, issue 5, c. December 1922–​ January 1923: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​B/​241. 146 New Ireland, 1 July 1922: BC Burns Library, Canon Rogers papers, B613487. 147 Voice of Labour, 14 January 1922. 148 Cathal O’Shannon said this in the Dáil; DD, 14 December 1922. 149 Quoted in John Dorney, The Civil War in Dublin: The Fight for the Irish Capital 1922–​1924 (Newbridge: Merrion Press, 2017), 138–​9.

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4 Making politics normal

The makers of Themax boot polish placed a front-​page advertisement in the Irish Independent on 2 January 1922. Declaring 1922 to be ‘Ireland’s Year of Brightness’, the manufacturers made the heretofore unarticulated connection between the hope created by the Treaty and the shininess of properly polished boots. The advertisement read, in part: ‘Emerging from the blackness and gloom of a long night of agony and despair, Ireland stands to-​day on the threshold of a bright and glorious future –​a future in which all her sons and daughters may share with pride and hope.’ Whether the ‘long night of agony and despair’ was the Treaty debates, the Tan war, or the 750-​year colonial experience was left for the reader to decide. What was less ambiguous, however, was the commercial claim that followed: ‘The makers of Themax polishes have pleasure in announcing, at this juncture, that at last after many experiments they have produced a boot polish which is absolutely perfect.’1 Dreams of footwear perfection may have been misguided, but the ad shows that there was optimism that the Treaty was going to pave the way for a better Irish future. The rest of that day’s issue contained an editorial in favour of the Treaty’s passage and a detailed accounting of the numerous public bodies in the country that had called for political unity behind the Treaty. By 1923, this political optimism had dwindled. Civil war violence, political divisiveness, and the beginnings of an economic slowdown had severely undercut aspirations of a postindependence Gaelic paradise. However, there remained an expectation of the rise of a ‘normal’ politics. This was defined variously but generally meant a politics organised around common European left–​right splits over economics, social policies, and the balancing of state and individual rights. Many politicians during this period assumed that opinion on the Treaty unnaturally divided politics, but expected that as the civil war faded, a kind of politics would surface dominated not by Sinn Féin squabbles but Gaelic in character and structure and shaped by the usual topics that animated European politics.

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This politics would also be decolonised, in that it would not be primarily focused on relations with the former colonial power. The period between 1923 and 1927 is often seen as one where not much happened politically, a lull between the end of the civil war and the entry of Fianna Fáil to the Dáil. In reality, though, a number of important shifts were going on in terms of the consolidation of democratic practice. This is where removing teleology and introducing contingency really change the way the period is viewed. We know now, of course, that Labour never took power and the Farmers merged with Cumann na nGaedheal. But most politicians at the time genuinely expected the Treaty issue to subside and nonnationalist parties such as Labour, the National League, and the Farmers to take power. The two wings of Sinn Féin feared this advent of normal politics and resisted it strenuously. Politicians of the mid-​1920s spent a lot of time positioning themselves for a postcolonial politics that never arrived, but attention to how they spoke either excitedly or nervously about the onset of normal politics shows the difficulties in constructing democracy and regularising opposition during these years. The period was in fact characterised by ongoing tension between the expected return to normal politics, championed by the smaller parties, and the continuing adherence to the vision of a big-​tent nationalist party by Cumann na nGaedheal and Sinn Féin. The smaller parties each had different reasons for expecting a boost. Labour rooted this expectation in the historically determined rise of the working class, as well as the example of growing socialist parties in France, Germany, and some of the smaller European countries. The Farmers recognised that the Free State was essentially an agrarian country, with agricultural interests representing at least two-​thirds of the voting population. Once the Treaty issue waned, the Farmers’ Party expected to obtain a majority of the agrarian vote and increase their parliamentary power. And the National League, formed by William Redmond in 1926, tried to create a retroactive normal that refashioned the politics of 1914. Unlike the Farmers and Labour, the National League desired a national party, but their model was the old Irish Party, not the Sinn Féin coalition. All these smaller parties supported the Treaty and raised issues –​ excessive expenditure, high taxes and rates, tariffs, social spending –​that were generally associated with political divisions in countries perceived as having a left–​right split. Not coincidentally, these parties also broached many of the issues that Fianna Fáil would co-​opt and use to win power in 1932. These parties also wanted a ‘normal’ left–​right spectrum while continuing to express disdain for the wiles and tricks of professional politicians. All of these parties sought a third way that consolidated revolutionary gains and structures while moving beyond Sinn Féin’s tiresome internal squabbles.

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The two wings of Sinn Féin pushed back against this creation of political normality in a variety of ways. Cumann na nGaedheal continued to advocate a national party that represented and reconciled all sectional interests. Increasingly, though, their national party was seen less as a reconstitution of the old Sinn Féin alliance and more as a Treatyite popular front against republicanism. They also dropped all of their support for impermanent political groupings, a key feature of the early vision of a Gaelic state. Faced with a growing anti-​Treaty Sinn Féin electoral footprint, Treatyites instead denigrated small parties that did not run sufficient candidates to get a majority, claiming this would lead to a situation akin to Weimar Germany or the French Third Republic. Cumann na nGaedheal leaders now extolled the virtues of stable majorities and large parties, with antirepublican unity seen as a way to make permanent the Treatyite restoration of order. In addition, they attempted to remove some issues from the realm of politics altogether, arguing for a technocratic approach in which apolitical boards made governmental decisions and the ability to run a government became the decisive criterion for electability. Republicans, for their part, continued to claim that the revolutionary-​era unity needed to be recreated, albeit without what was depicted as Treatyite apostates or place-​hunters. At the same time, they also began moving away from a politics focused solely on the Treaty and toward a greater focus on republican economic critiques, a process that is detailed in several works by Tim O’Neil.2 Many of these economic issues had been already articulated by the Labour and Farmers’ Parties. At some point during the decade, though, their calls for a national party or movement shifted from pining for lost revolutionary unity to a more common European frame, where unity was prescribed as an antidote to continental anxieties about political instability, class conflict, and national disintegration. Fianna Fáil reached that point somewhat later than did Cumann na nGaedheal, but both parties, while still calling for national unity, had modified their rationales by the middle of the decade. These calls were, as ever, more fiction than fact, as Cumann na nGaedheal had numerous defections during this period and republicanism split in 1926 with the foundation of Fianna Fáil. Finally, there were some groups that existed somewhat outside the organised world of political parties. The first was women, who had the vote on the same terms as men after the 1922 election but received little political attention. There was sparse political propaganda directed specifically at women, and most parties assumed that the ideal voter was male and campaigned with this supposition in mind. Republicans had by far the most prominent female activists, although Labour had some affiliated female unions, albeit ones that generally favoured industrial over political

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action. Cumann na nGaedheal had very few prominent female members, and Cumann na Saoirse faded away rather quickly. The Farmers made no attempts to organise or appeal to women at all. By the middle of the decade, there were some organised women’s groups that tried to promote female candidates for the Dáil, although on a fairly small scale. Protestants and ex-​unionists were other groups not fully integrated into the political life of the state. Most Free State politicians realised that overt sectarianism was frowned upon, and so there were a lot of coded references to Protestants as unionists, ex-​British officials, or Freemasons. In particular, Joseph McGrath’s National Group –​disciples of Collins and Griffith who left Cumann na nGaedheal in 1924 –​criticised the malign role of permanent civil servants, accusing them of being masonic and non-​Irish. For their part, Protestant politicians tended to extol the tolerance of the Free State and, while often raising issues that disproportionately affected Protestants, consistently denied a religious motive in so doing. Ian d’Alton refers to this as the ‘rather surprising cosying-​up to the state’ among elite Protestants.3 Catholic politicians seized on this to make overt or coded comparisons of the Free State with the Six Counties. Northern Ireland was perhaps not often directly discussed in southern politics, as many historians have pointed out, but it did serve as a silent referent, with Free State tolerance and integration implicitly juxtaposed with the northern Government’s intolerance and repression. There was, in fact, a lot going on in the politics of the middle years of the 1920s. Æ’s (i.e. George Russell’s) Irish Statesman observed in 1924 that ‘few races … have devoted as much eloquence and energy to the question of Government’.4 After independence, when government had to be translated from eloquence and energy into structures and practices, there was a lot of difficulty. The Strabane Chronicle wrote in 1925, before the Boundary Commission fiasco ensured that Strabane would remain in Northern Ireland: It is not paradox but the plain truth that by making a fetish of unity we have ensured the triumph of factionalism. For the unity upon which we insist is of the cast-​iron type against which mankind sooner or later revolts … At every new phase in our history the cry is raised and at last all differences have been eliminated and the nation can advance linked together as solidly as a Roman phalanx. But the differences have never been eliminated, nor is it desirable that they should be. Except in a desperate crisis there is no analogy between a nation and a phalanx.5

Now that the ‘desperate crisis’ had passed, politicians had to decide whether to retain the analogy to a phalanx or to gamble that a people divided politically could still be effective nationally and internationally. The tension between these two visions drove much of the political activity during these years.

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Historians have not analysed the 1923–​27 period to the extent they have the years that bookend it. Those who have paint it as a continuation of the larger political split over the Treaty. John Regan’s The Irish Counter-​Revolution characterises this period as one in which the Treatyites abandoned the revolution and cast their lot with unionists and non-​Sinn Féiners. This was, according to Regan, an era dominated by O’Higgins and his coterie of like-​minded antirevolutionary followers such as Desmond FitzGerald and Patrick Hogan.6 The non-​Sinn Féin parties barely figure in his analysis, which is centred on his thesis of a counter-​revolution being consolidated by O’Higgins. The only other sustained study of the high politics of the period is Mel Farrell’s, which does include the smaller parties. Its focus, though, is less on the practices and theories of politics and more on the issues that internally and externally divided the parties. There have been excellent studies of single parties, with Niamh Puirséil’s The Irish Labour Party 1922–​73 and Úna Newell’s The West Must Wait as two of the best examples.7 Ciara Meehan’s study of Labour in the Dáil emphasised Thomas Johnson’s tireless work during this period to ‘act as a check on the government’.8 Newell’s book and an article by Mel Farrell are really the only localised looks at Cumann na nGaedheal during the postrevolutionary years and, together with Farrell’s Party Politics in a New Democracy, closely study the electoral results of the period.9 Aside from its electoral analysis, though, Newell’s book focuses on economic underperformance and language policy, subjects that are not covered here. Martin O’Donaghue’s The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Independent Ireland, 1922–​49 devotes a chapter to the National League and uses prosopography to assess the imprint of the party on post-​1918 politics, ranging well beyond the standard focus on the two major parties. O’Donaghue characterises the League as a rebirth of the Irish Party and claims that it ‘accelerated the assimilation of former home rulers into representative politics’. He also notes that this rejection of Sinn Féin politics succeeded in the short term, as in the June 1927 election Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil received the lowest combined total of votes for ‘civil war parties’ in any election until the 1980s.10 There have also been significant analyses of groups that were marginalised from 1920s politics. Ann Matthews’s Dissidents studies Irish republican women after 1923, while Margaret Ward’s and Cal McCarthy’s discussions of Cumann na mBan also extend into this period.11 These works focus on republican activists who did much of the electioneering for Sinn Féin during the civil war and its immediate aftermath. And there has been a spate of new work on Protestantism in the Free State that has challenged Peter Hart’s notion of Protestant exclusion from a largely sectarian society.12 Caleb Richardson’s Smyllie’s Ireland uses the career of R.M. Smyllie at the Irish Times to argue for Protestant integration into the new state. Many of the

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essays in Ida Milne and Ian d’Alton’s Protestant and Irish do the same thing, particularly d’Alton’s essay focusing on how Protestants survived and even prospered in the Free State based on a strategy of ‘acceptance, obedience, and participation’.13 This chapter will, I hope, build on O’Donoghue’s wider frame and move away from an analysis of electoral results, success, and failure –​all of which have been admirably chronicled –​and instead look at how the norms of politics shifted and were contested across the period. Much of this give and take hinged on a belief that political normality was just around the corner and so it is necessary first to lay out briefly what had made politics abnormal in 1923. The first thing was the politicians themselves. There was a sense that many Irish people had been marginalised by the unnatural prominence of Sinn Féin and that subsequent squabbling among Sinn Féiners prevented non-​Sinn Féiners from expressing themselves politically. Cosgrave said that the Second Dáil ‘was exclusively a political body. Politics was the whole substance out of which it was composed. Now this [Third] Dáil is not so constituted. We have very respectable orders of the community –​Labour, Farmers, Doctors, and Universities.’14 There may have been a touch of sarcasm in Cosgrave’s comment but the distinction between politicians and representatives of economic and vocational interests was a real one. The latter was thought to be a more natural and inclusive order of things, even prior to serious discussion of formal vocational representation. Thomas O’Donnell, a founder of the National League, noted in 1926 that ‘a large section of the Irish people for the past four years had had little or no voice and had taken practically no part in the public life of the country, with results disastrous to the nation’. With the rearrival of what fellow National Leaguer William Redmond called normal political conditions, O’Donnell specifically emphasised that experienced former Irish party activists could return to national life. This Irish Party renaissance happened even though John Redmond was dead and John Dillon was, less dramatically, ‘silent and restful in his home’.15 The Free State’s system of proportional representation allowed for greater representation of minorities and small political groups.16 As such, it was hailed by most politicians as being a more fair and engaging system when it was enacted, but faced periodic criticism from the larger parties subsequently. It did, though, contribute to what Cosgrave hailed as greater vocational representation. An editorial in the Cork Examiner said that the 1925 Senate election, held under proportional representation with the entire country as one constituency, demonstrated that ‘those eventually declared elected must be accepted as representing collectively the greatest common measure of agreement amongst those who voted, and, individually, as the chosen spokesmen of particular groups’.17 Ideally, wider participation and the return to normal conditions would result in more engagement from the

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voters. In addition to feeling the need to explain the workings of democracy to the voters, politicians usually felt as if their voters were apathetic or, even worse, duped into voting for the wrong party. The Examiner observed that low turnout indicated ‘a large percentage of the people are tired of political wranglings’, with ‘political’ here most probably referring to questions of the Treaty and the oath.18 Leaving aside whether a complicated Seánad election was the best barometer for voter apathy, politicians felt as though they had to motivate a tired or disillusioned electorate. Finally, normal conditions required the restoration of law and order, one of the Government’s most lauded achievements. Many of the smaller parties, with the exception of Labour, repeatedly paid tribute to the Government for re-​establishing settled conditions, although they also generally thought that such an accomplishment did not guarantee that Cumann na nGaedheal should retain power. The implication was that the Government had done well during the civil war but, as normal times returned, a different government should succeed it. The return of ordered society was also important because it distinguished Ireland from other recently independent or reorganised countries that had fallen into chaos. Andrew O’Shaughnessy, a Cork TD and businessman, said in 1924 that ‘the Irish were the most difficult people in the world to govern. We have been Balkanised. We are on a level with Greece, Portugal, and Mexico.’19 This was a big concern, that Irish postrevolutionary chaos would lead to the country being seen as a second-​rate European backwater, or, even worse, as akin to non-​European countries. This was why a return to normal political conditions and a general postrevolutionary tranquillity would help Ireland internally and externally.

Labour and normal politics Generally, it was the smaller or sectional parties that expected Sinn Féin’s stranglehold on representation, government, and the subjects of political debate soon to cease. After the Treaty was signed, the Voice of Labour remarked that ‘the hour has now struck for the workers to emerge from the shade’.20 The longer Sinn Féin’s unnatural dominance continued, the less likely it was that Labour would ever take power. As Labour’s columnist covering the Dáil wrote in 1922, ‘the peaceful evolution of the Free State will mean the triumph of the landlord, large land-​holding and big commercial classes’.21 To prevent this from happening, the Labour Party resolved to use the machinery of the Free State to protect the interests of the workers. To make this a success, workers had to do their part. An editorial admonished them to ‘acquire a thorough knowledge of the machine of State, so that they might be aware of the extent to which it could be used as an instrument to

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secure the emancipation of the working class’.22 This desire for engagement was a common theme for Labour, as its leaders did not support republican abstentionism. David Hall, a Labour TD from Meath who supported the removal of the oath, trenchantly said of Fianna Fáil ‘when they take it they can remove it’.23 Labour moved into a role as the major opposition party for the entire period of the Fourth and Fifth Dáils between 1923 and 1927. Johnson said they would function as such in ways that were ‘friendly when possible, constructive when possible, obstructive if necessary’.24 They ended up having to take on a wider brief, though, because other potential opposition parties refused to act as such: republicans abstained and the Farmers generally supported the Government. Johnson noted in a 1922 lecture that ‘a responsibility had been thrown on them to deal with matter with which they were not primarily concerned, and they were not going to accept blame for not doing the work of a minority which had been elected to do it’.25 The implication was that it should have been republicans querying the imperial clauses of the constitution, not Labour. Given republican absence, though, it was Labour that often voiced issues involving civil liberties and individual protection from the state. The Voice of Labour wrote in 1923 that ‘on the big political issues it has always fallen to the Labour Party to champion the rights and liberties of the citizens against the encroachment and suppression by the Executive’. During the Third Dáil, that ‘political’ work took up the time of Labour TDs and prevented them from raising the economic issues around which the party was ostensibly formed. That same editorial continued: it has not been possible to keep them [such issues] continually in the forefront. Unemployment, housing, the development of agriculture and industry, the reform of local government and public health services, the welfare of children, the aged and blind, a drastic reconstruction of our educational system –​ all these big social issues must be forced to the front and dealt with by the next Dáil.26

This was an odd position for a statist socialist party to champion in the 1920s, and O’Higgins delighted in pointing out the tension between Johnson’s commitments to collectivism and individual civil liberties. But with republicans abstaining, Labour had to criticise the Government and thereby create a different atmosphere than had been prevalent in the revolutionary Dáil. A Labour correspondent wrote that the Government thought ‘that the Dáil is a one-​party assembly and its job is simply to assent to whatever is said or done by the Ministry. Against that view the Labour group continues to kick very vigorously.’27 Since the Government spent much of its early years setting up the political framework of the state, much of Labour’s

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opposition was focused on those efforts. While the Government did not need Labour’s votes to pass legislation, the party knew that Cumann na nGaedheal could not afford to have the Dáil look like a parliament that ran roughshod over the minority, as did the northern parliament. The distinction between political and social issues was the foundation of Labour’s strategy for the future, a future they imagined would involve winning power. Labour leaders believed fervently that as the Treaty issue receded –​an event expected to happen sooner rather than later –​economic issues would increase in importance, to Labour’s advantage. Labour articulated this belief repeatedly during the decade. In 1923, while forming a Cork branch of the Labour Party, Johnson declared that ‘they were coming to the real cleavage that was to divide political parties in the future. The Labour party stood for humanity above property, for social service against private interest.’28 The relatively good results of the 1922 elections for Labour (seventeen out of eighteen candidates elected) convinced them that the electorate would vote according to their economic interests and that whatever hold Sinn Féin had on the population had been broken by the sordidness of the civil war. An editorial on ‘Irish Labour and Irish Nationalism’ proclaimed that ‘the career of the Sinn Féin movement has ended; its principal leaders have died in conflict with each other, and they have left behind them two deadly hostile parties who are at present more concerned with destroying each other than with the solution of the problems which press down heavily on the backs of the working classes’.29 Sinn Féin and Cumann na nGaedheal were ‘making desperate efforts to make the Treaty the sole issue at this [1923] election’, but Labour’s role was to insist that economic issues ‘are brought to the front and kept there as the dominant issues upon which the Dáil must take decisions’. Labour candidate Eamonn O’Carroll promised to oppose ‘the substitution of stale political cant for constructive statesmanship’ and ‘futile effeminate gossip about incidents that occurred nearly two years ago and cannot be undone at this stage’.30 He also wanted to stop ‘wasting valuable time upon academic, vexatious and wholly useless discussions of incidents which are now history’. William O’Brien observed that during the Third Dáil Labour ‘were a minority in an atmosphere of civil war, where all demands for social reconstruction and economic improvement were brushed aside by the majority in favour of military claims’.31 While the economic conservatism of the 1920s Free State is well known at this point, as is the electoral decline of Labour, candidates in 1923 felt confident that the dominance of Sinn Féin was temporary and unnatural, and would soon be replaced with the rise of class-​based parties. This shift would expose that, far from being a national party, Cumann na nGaedheal ‘will turn out to be only a class party, if it is to be judged by the large proportion of shopkeepers elected to the General Council’.32

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As the dominance of Sinn Féin was artificial, it was part of Labour’s job in opposition to point this out and return Irish politics to a more grounded state. This meant reintroducing a sense of realism into an Irish politics that Labour felt had lacked it over the past year. Although socialist parties were themselves often accused of being utopian, in this case Labour meant that there had been too much focus on the abstractions of the republic rather than on the bread-​and-​butter issues that affected working-​class life. A 1923 Labour editorial praised ‘its sense of realism’ as ‘the great value of Labour’. Too much concern with ideals and abstractions had led to the civil war, and Labour believed it could lead Ireland out of that morass: ‘Labour is showing that realist view of things now, when we are coming into a kind of a peace and actual issues that have no bearing upon past controversies are rising up as the every day material of political affairs.’ The shift in focus from the immaterial ‘past controversies’ of Sinn Féin to the ‘actual issues’ facing the Irish people would enable Labour to take its rightful place in a more normal political spectrum.33 This was, in essence, taking Griffith’s dismissal of republican objections to the Treaty as ‘a quibble of words’ and applying it to both wings of Sinn Féin. Into 1924, Labour was still calling for this redefinition of politics, referring to the ‘Dilly-​Dally Dáil’ and the Government’s unwillingness to get down to ‘real practical work’. Instead, Cumann na nGaedheal was debating ‘the merits and demerits of the Turks, the American Liquor Treaty, the Tailteann Games, and the rivalries of our many brand new commandant-​ generals and general commandants, and up to the present they have not attempted to deal with the one and only function of Dáil Éireann –​the feeding, clothing and housing of 3,000,000 people, out of whose pockets the Treasury of the Free State is filled’. By this time, Labour was frustrated that the general electorate still seemed fascinated with the internal disputes of Sinn Féin, while the Labour electorate dallied with Larkinism and communism. After highlighting Labour TDs’ criticism of this state of affairs in the Dáil, the paper issued ‘a warning equally to the Larkins, as to the Cosgraves, that the time for dope is passing, and that the people want common sense and a sound and practical solution for their present miseries’.34 Labour also tried to play to one of its ostensible strengths: a populist attempt to speak for the ordinary man or woman who was not part of the revolutionary elite. As that elite descended into futile squabbling, Labour claimed to speak for a different electorate. Commenting on Labour’s performance in the Dáil, the Voice of Labour observed that ‘on every important topic Labour has voiced the views of the plain man and woman’.35 This populism would be a ‘new force’ and a ‘living truth’ that would ‘replace the dying delusions and pitiful falsehoods of bourgeois nationalism’.36 Cumann na nGaedheal had become elitist, as the paper noted in starkly racist terms

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regarding Cosgrave’s trip to the League of Nations: ‘Surely Mr. Cosgrave has more serious duties to attend to in Merrion Street than hob-​nobbing with Chinks and Japs under the shadow of the Alps.’37 The underlying assumption in all of this was that postrevolutionary politics would be defined by something other than nationalism. On the one hand, this was a misreading of ‘normal’ conditions on the Continent, as questions of nationalism certainly continued to animate, if not wholly define, party divisions. On the other hand, though, Labour felt that the unity of the revolutionary period was unnatural and that people would soon vote based on economic needs. The problem was that all parties, animated by an anticolonial sense of the perfidy of elites, attempted to be populist. Anti-​ Treatyites became increasingly adept after 1924 at addressing the concerns and speaking the language of those who were nationalists but also felt disadvantaged by the revolutionary settlement.38 The Farmers’ Party spoke for the average farmer against the perceived domination of the state by urban elites. And Cumann na nGaedheal attempted to articulate the interests of the ordinary people who wanted life to return to normal after the upheavals of the revolution. Labour felt well positioned to win these sorts of rhetorical battles, as initially they seemed more in tune with economic realities than pre-​1924 Sinn Féin, and more concerned with civil liberties and the working class than Cumann na nGaedheal. We know that this did not pan out for Labour, but that should not take away from how rational this assumption seemed at the time. As it became clear that Labour’s expected electorate continued to vote for Cumann na nGaedheal and Sinn Féin/​Fianna Fáil, the party began both castigating its electorate and lamenting its misunderstanding of politics. Labour felt, in short, that political conditions were returning to normal but that the electorate was not. Just as workers organised to help themselves economically through unionisation, they should do the same politically through the Labour Party. The Voice of Labour said it was ‘the duty of the workers to give their votes to the working-​class candidates, because the working-​ class candidates are the only ones who will be answerable after the election to their working-​ class constituencies’.39 The problem was that workers continued to vote for Cumann na nGaedheal or Sinn Féin, despite Labour’s admonitions. At times, this was put off to a lack of political education among the working classes. On the eve of a County Dublin by-​election in 1924, the Voice anticipated an electoral loss but wrote ‘we have no doubt what the verdict would be if the workers clearly realised the issues at stake and recognised how intimately this election will affect their interests’.40 After the inevitable electoral defeat –​the Labour candidate finished at the bottom of the poll –​the editor lamented that ‘the number of workers who voted for other parties, and the still greater number of apathetic ones who

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did not vote at all, point to the necessity for renewed effort on our part in the work of agitation, organisation, and education’.41 At other times, workers were accused of being duped by the bigger parties. Christopher Mathews, a candidate in Meath in 1927, told voters that they had been ‘led astray’ in 1923 and warned them against a repetition.42 In particular, Labour worried about the language of a classless national movement taking in working-​class voters. An editorial cautioned that Cumann na nGaedheal ‘will make much show of being a “no class party”, and in that way it hopes to rope in working men and working women’.43 A pointed letter to the editor titled ‘Workers Helping Labour’s Enemies’ criticised the defection of the working-​class vote in Cork, prompting the paper’s editor to reply that ‘workers in Ireland –​and everywhere else –​are too fooled by political phrases and catch-​cries’, but he hoped that ‘when they commence to think for themselves they will be well on the way to freedom, and it is our business to help them to realise this’.44 At times, Labour leaders dropped the hopeful façade and directly blamed the workers for the party’s plight. Johnson rejected a resolution from the Cork branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union about releasing the civil war prisoners by pointing out that Cork workers had chosen not to vote for the Labour candidates in the previous elections as ‘they preferred to leave the case of the prisoners in the hands of either the Government Party or the Republican Party’.45 Johnson also told County Dublin voters in 1927 that working men in that electorate bore some responsibility for the reduction in the old-​age pension because they voted for a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate. Johnson hoped ‘that showed them the meaning and the importance of an election and of deeply considering their vote and thinking of its potential consequences before they gave it away’.46 After several years, Labour leaders began to realise that ‘the workers have been too long tied to the tails of other political parties, with the result that the measure of political independence which has been won for the nation has resulted in a worsening instead of an improvement in the economic conditions of the working-​class’.47 Throughout the 1920s, the party hoped to reverse this trend through political education, shame, and a higher profile in the Dáil. Johnson certainly worked tirelessly to raise Labour’s profile –​ one letter to the editor of the Irish Independent in 1923 referred to Johnson as ‘himself a formidable Opposition’ –​and the party sponsored lectures on the political workings of the Free State and the importance of elections, but it also continued to be disappointed by the apathy and defection of Labour’s expected electorate.48 Despite this, there remained a belief that time was on Labour’s side so long as normality reigned. Writing in 1926, Archie Heron, a past president of the party, dismissed the fortunes of the other political

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parties and opined ‘the future is with the Labour Party –​the political ball is at Labour’s feet. Is Labour prepared to kick?’49

The agrarian state The Farmers held many of these same tenets as Labour, although they would have been loath to admit any similarities. The Farmers were treated as a bit of a joke, with their sharp-​tongued leader Denis Gorey drawing more derisive laughter than support in the Dáil. The party was not terribly well organised, and its leaders often seemed to lack political instincts. In launching a Farmers’ election campaign in County Limerick, the candidate started his speech with ‘Men of Drombanna and Annacotty! … You have been summoned at short notice to attend this Meeting. We could on adequate notice have a larger crowd present in more populous centres, but I think it is only your due to give you the honour of formally opening the Election Campaign in your midst.’50 In some ways this approach rather sums up the Farmers’ Party: it could have been better were it more organised. Despite what often seemed like bumbling, they did play a serious role in the formation of democracy in the new state. The Farmers’ problems in building an organisation stemmed from a number of different issues. For one, the potential constituency was not terribly engaged with political propaganda. A memorandum from a board member of the Irish Farmer newspaper noted: ordinary farmers are not good readers in any country and least of all in Ireland –​ where their education has long been wrongfully directed. Large farmers may be readers because they have been better educated –​have travelled –​enjoy leisure –​and can afford the expense. But the holdings in Ireland are small on the average, and the fact is unquestionable that the ordinary occupier reads little or nothing.51

Gorey also said that farmers were not a letter-​writing people, so they were perhaps not as susceptible to political journalism as other electorates were imagined to be. But the larger problem was that the Farmers had difficulty distinguishing their programme from that of Cumann na nGaedheal. The way they did so was to rely on the same strategy that Labour used. The return to normality involved returning farmers to their rightful places in the parliament, as they felt sidelined by the rise of the revolutionary cohort. To them, the Free State was an agrarian state whose parliament should reflect the vocational and geographic composition of its population. An editorial in the Irish Farmer from 1926 expressed some support for industrialisation, but also warned ‘we cannot safely divorce ourselves

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from Old Mother Agriculture’.52 A meeting of the Meath Association of the Irish Farmers’ Union (IFU) concluded that ‘the farmers controlled 65 per cent of the whole voting power of the country’. Consequently, ‘if they were true to the men of their own class’, they could control a Dáil elected under nonrevolutionary circumstances.53 As an official of the Longford IFU put it, ‘the Farmers’ Party would contest every seat at the next parliamentary elections and would have the voice to which they were entitled in the expenditure of the taxes which they had to pay’.54 As it stood in the early postrevolutionary years, though, farmers felt they were underrepresented in the Dáil. A lengthy editorial in the Irish Farmer set out the farmers’ representative plight in the context of pending elections to the Seánad. The editorial explained that Irish agriculture had suffered under British colonialism, as ‘it has been stricken when alien policy and self-​interest deemed the welfare of the Irish people inimical to Imperial ambitions’. Irish farmers continued to have their interests sidelined during the revolution, but ‘Irish farmers –​large and small –​cheerfully accepted that exigency and helped the supreme cause with fervour.’ But when farmers prepared to take their place in the Dáil, they continued to be ‘debarred from the councils of the nation’. This spoke badly of the Free State: ‘a country in which any appreciable element of the community can find no voice is a negation of political experience and an anomaly in statecraft’.55 For the farmers, the Free State could not be a democracy if its largest vocation was underrepresented. Instead, what the farmers wanted was their ‘rightful place as the predominating one in the country’.56 As with Labour, the Farmers’ Party recognised that it was small in numbers but believed that time would change that circumstance. An organiser in County Limerick said ‘they had an asset in the Farmers’ Party that they never had before. Numerically it was small, but it was the nucleus of a larger party which would be in the Dáil when it was re-​modelled, as it would be very soon.’57 As a small party, they still had a role to play as opposition, even though they supported the Government far more often than did Labour. An editorial titled ‘Where We Agree with Mr. Hogan’ observed ‘the best-​intentioned people need a check at times … the public desires a strong Opposition in An Dáil, and no class has more claims to representation there than the agricultural community for whom Mr. Hogan’s department is intended to cater’.58 While their opposition was less broadly construed than that of Labour or the National League, they did see themselves as playing that part in the affairs of the state. The Farmers also felt that an eventual shift to a politics dominated by economic issues would be to their benefit. In fact, they denied even more strongly than Labour that they were a political party and continued with the Sinn Féin practice of considering politics a dirty word. Sir Henry Grattan

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Bellew, a delegate to the Farmers’ Union meeting in Mountbellow, claimed in 1923 that ‘before the last election the Farmers’ Union approached both parties and asked them to allot some seats to farmers’ representatives. The farmers were turned down. Seats in the legislative assembly of the country were to be reserved for politicians.’59 The Farmers were not politicians and their party cared little about what it defined as political issues. A speaker at a Westmeath branch meeting said ‘the farmers were not a political party’, and an attendee at the Offaly nominating convention was assured ‘the Farmers’ Union was a non-​political organisation that welcomed and expected Republican farmers into its ranks’.60 In the Dáil, Farmers’ TDs ‘acted as an independent unit, dealing specifically with economic issues as they arose in An Dáil and leaving its members free to take independent courses on matters of general political concern’.61 This distinction –​clear in their minds –​between political and nonpolitical questions was a hallmark of the Farmers’ style of politics and explained away party members’ tendencies to vote separately on some questions.62 This distinction was particularly meaningful to Farmers because, like Labour, they felt economic questions would soon become the most important business of the Dáil. A lengthy editorial by Michael Heffernan, Farmers’ TD, in 1925 laid out the Farmers’ problems thus far and their hope for the future. He argued that Ireland, unlike Britain, most definitely needed an organised Farmers’ Party. Those who rejected this and urged support for Cumann na nGaedheal did so only ‘because of selfish personal reasons, or because their mentalities have become so accustomed to an antiquated system of party government in England that they have never attempted to stand away from events and to visualise the future development of this state’. These developments would include the formation and perpetuation of economic-​based parties while still somehow avoiding the English party system or party government. The problem for the Farmers was the Treaty split, which furthered the dominance of political issues and disrupted ‘normal’ political development: Once self-​government had been secured it was naturally anticipated that the causes and reasons for the old political distinctions would cease to exist, and that parties would be formed in accordance with the industrial and other well-​ marked distinctions which prevail in the country. It was unfortunate that the predominant party at the time of the signing of the Treaty should have split into two parts, and thereby caused the formation of two political parties, whose differences were political rather than industrial or social.

This is what decolonising meant to the Farmers: the rise of an agrarian party that would break the moulds of English politics. Unfortunately for the Farmers, ‘the attention of the electors has been diverted to the struggle

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between those two branches of what was once the same party, with the result that important financial, industrial, and economic aspects have been obliged to take a secondary place’.63 Farmers’ leaders believed, though, that this state of affairs would end soon and normal economic divisions would be restored. The Irish Farmer again called at the end of 1925 for voters to ‘be guided in their choice of representatives largely by the economic policy and programme outlined by the various Party leaders’.64 Heffernan told the South Tipperary Farmers’ Union that ‘we believe that the people will make economy a sine qua non of their support of candidates at future elections’.65 This change would come about through voters’ recognition of their self-​interest –​the Farmers rarely made idealistic appeals –​and general fatigue with Sinn Féin-​inspired issues. A speech by Farmers’ candidate J.F. O’Hanlon, the publisher of the Anglo-​ Celt newspaper, declared ‘the people were sick of party squabbling. They wanted to get down to concrete things, to bread and butter politics.’66 The Farmers’ distinction between ‘party squabbling’ and their own criticism of other parties was clear to them: their criticism was on economic grounds and came from people who were not themselves politicians. The latter referred to those who focused on ideals, abstractions, and the nature of Anglo-​Irish relations, whereas non-​squabbling, nonparty politicians focused on bread-​and-​butter issues. Farmers’ leader Denis Gorey criticised the vote of no confidence in the Government moved by the splinter National Group by criticising that ‘the past was still happening’ and that ‘the sooner they got down to plain facts and had less of the supermen and sad faces and idealists the better for the country’.67 The parameters of the Farmers’ normal politics included representation that mirrored vocation, the sidelining of futile political issues, the foregrounding of economic concerns, and appeals to economic self-​interest. Farmers perceived themselves as the majority in the country, and, if the Government’s commitment to majority rule was genuine, then the farmers should run the country. As Sir Henry Grattan Bellew said, ‘they constitute the majority and if majorities have a right to rule, the farmers have the right’.68 This right had been denied to farmers by the vagaries of election results and also by the imposition of an alien and urban colonial bureaucracy. Farmers chafed at what they perceived as rule by Dublin elites, a colonial legacy that they expected to change after independence because of Ireland’s essentially rural character. When the revolution did not shift power to the periphery, the Farmers’ Party criticised the urban focus of the regime. A Farmers’ speaker in Kilworth said that the Free State was ‘a country fit only for officials to live in’.69 A Cork delegate to the IFU National Congress said that the Free State was a ‘paradise for officials’, and Conor Hogan, a Farmers’ TD, descriptively claimed that the people ‘were being literally

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blood-​sucked by this mass of officials’.70 In particular, the Farmers called out officials’ too-​high salaries and too-​few duties. Gorey repeatedly highlighted jobs that he felt were not remunerative, nicely summed up by his statement in the Dáil that ‘the staffs in each of these Departments are doing nothing. I know some of them who are doing nothing. There is a multitude of people paid huge salaries doing nothing.’71 In this case, Gorey was speaking about the Department of Agriculture, but he liberally applied such criticism to other departments as well. One Farmers’ supporter even said that tariffs –​ probably the most significant economic dispute in the Free State –​were not based on ideological or economic assumptions but would be levied ‘to enable them to pay the enormous salaries of their huge staff of officials’.72 These officials were particularly resented by farmers because they thought agriculture was the source of most of the revenue. Officials were ‘parasites living on the back of agriculture’, and the luxuries of Dublin were paid for by ‘the cart-​horse of the country, the farm labourer and the farmer’, at least according to Gorey.73 Much of this sounds like a typical lower-​middle-​class party that resented the educated and salaried elite above them and the working class below them, especially as Gorey also thought that unionised workers, particularly those paid by municipalities, were overpaid and did nothing.74 The Farmers’ response, though, was somewhat different than that of such parties elsewhere. They wanted the Free State to emulate other smaller, progressive European countries, particularly Denmark, which was seen as a modern and more cost-​effective state. These attacks by the Farmers on the relative expense of the Free State provoked a strong letter to the editor from Margaret Collins-​O’Driscoll, a Cumann na nGaedheal TD. She wrote that the real figures indicated the Free State was cheaper per head in administrative costs and that the attacks had come from ‘men of warped or dwarfed intellects’. She added that such criticism was expected, if not exactly helpful, in a postcolonial context. It was the result of ‘the one serious difficulty that self-​government would bring’, which was ‘the highly developed faculty of destructive criticism which in the time of the British regime had no outlet but in attacks on the Government’. Even after three years of self-​government, she considered it ‘amazing to find the number of people who are so lacking in vision and in a sense of proportion as to be unable to see any difference between their own Government and government by the foreigner who dominated this country for the past 300 years’.75 To the Farmers, it was exactly the continuity with colonial times that was so frustrating, as they fully expected an Irish government to have a more rural focus. The Farmers’ Party hoped that a normal postcolonial or postindependence political practice would take root in the Free State and empower sectional parties. Like Labour, though, they were perpetually disappointed

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by an electorate that seemed wedded to revolutionary-​era issues. This was attributed to the continuing importance of political questions and the rural electorate’s misunderstanding of their self-​interest. In addition to hordes of urban officials, the revolution had bequeathed a primacy of political issues and a plethora of Sinn Féin guerrilla chiefs elected to local councils, ‘whose energies were unnaturally divided between attention to functions of war and administration of affairs of peace’. Fortunately, ‘times now have altered, however, and the occasion for such anomalies no longer exists’.76 The electorate, though, needed to elect more farmers. According to Patrick McKenna, a Farmers’ TD, ‘if the farmers were true to men of their class’, then there would be a farming majority in the Dáil.77 P.J. Healy, the secretary of the Clare Farmers’ Union, said: gentlemen, class loyalty is the cue. Let every section get its proper representation, let majority rule be respected, then you, who constitute approximately two-​ thirds of the population, produce approximately 84 per cent of the nation’s wealth, and contribute approximately 80 per cent of local and general taxation, will have a voice to command respect.78

The problem was that voters continued to support Cumann na nGaedheal and Sinn Féin candidates in constituencies where the Farmers expected a stronger showing. Often this was put down to a desire for stability: the Farmers’ own post-​mortem on the 1923 elections observed that farmers voted for government candidates ‘in the interests of law and order’.79 Other times, it was concluded that the farmers needed to be shaken from their electoral apathy.80 But the larger question was whether a broad coalition party could best represent and protect farmers’ interests, as had been asserted during the revolution. Bart Laffan, whose stirring musings on the unsuitability of Drombanna for a campaign launch were quoted earlier, also commented on the need to stay separated from Cumann na nGaedheal. He said ‘now we come to our relations with the new born child Cumann-​na-​ nGael. I was present at its birth but declined to be one of the sponsors as I clearly saw that its future interests would sooner or later come into conflict with that rising youth of six whose prospects I have so much at heart.’ Worried, doubtless, that the sparse audience might not have fully appreciated his humorous metaphor, he hastily added ‘I mean the Irish Farmers’ Union.’ More seriously, he noted, ‘you ask too much when you require me to scrap my class organisation to join a new political one which I know well can only be built on the ruins of the Farmers’ Union’.81 This was the dilemma in postrevolutionary Ireland: continuing adherence to a revolutionary model of unity or the development of normal class-​based parties in a multiparty democracy. Labour and the Farmers both hoped throughout the 1920s that the balance would tip decisively toward the latter.

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The Irish Party returns The National League, the Irish Party successor founded in 1926 by William Archer Redmond (John Redmond’s son) and Thomas O’Donnell, also called for a more normal politics, but the normality they envisioned was retrospective: governance by the elites who had been set to take power if Home Rule had passed. The party intended to form an opposition that was less sectional and more experienced than the existing opposition parties, while sidestepping the legacy of the revolution and looking to the prerevolutionary Irish Party as a model. Many of the members of the League were veterans of the Irish Party who had felt themselves exiled from politics during the revolutionary years. Their return made O’Donnell feel that ‘the breach that was made in the great national movement which had carried the people triumphantly from success to success from the days of Parnell to the death of Redmond was healed and that the chain was again linked and that Irishmen could rejoice in the new order of things which would bring her men to lead her to peace and prosperity’. The abilities and experiences of these political veterans was crucial, according to O’Donnell: ‘the last ten years had taught them that useful as the work of young men in the national cause might be it was a mistake to think that the prudent counsel and long experience of tried and trusted leaders could be thrust aside’.82 Sinn Féin had erred in building a ‘national’ coalition without the Irish Party leaders, and the National League wanted to rebuild a politics for those whose skills had been honed at Westminster. Unlike Sinn Féin, these men were not tainted by their actions during the revolution. A National League candidate in Monaghan characterised the execution of anti-​Treatyite Rory O’Connor as ‘the plain Anglo-​Saxon name of murder’, and O’Donnell reminded League supporters that ‘their hands were clean. No man’s blood was upon them. They sent none of their sons or their brothers to destruction or violated God’s or man’s laws. Mr. Kevin O’Higgins who was now the darling of the tea-​tables of Rathmines was the republican of 1920 who would now shoot republicans at sight.’83 O’Donnell’s comment elided over the party’s role in First World War recruiting, but also made an argument for the failure of the revolutionary generation and its replacement with those on course to govern the country before war and revolution interceded. In O’Donnell’s words, ‘the happy promises then made when the revolutionary movement began and when the constitutional movement was swept out of existence … had all and every one of them been falsified’.84 This failure meant that ‘the peace and order of the Free State was as safe in the hands of John Horgan, the [National League] candidate, as in the hands of the one-​time revolutionaries and republicans’.85 At the very least, as Michael Gilvary of Bray wrote in support of Redmond, ‘he can’t be blamed for having a try’.86

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Although there was much talk about men who had served the nation and then been shunted aside for the last ten years, the real point of reference was often Parnell, the lost leader. The infamous John Jinks, in running for office in Sligo, covered all his bases by endorsing the policies of Parnell, Redmond, and Davitt.87 William Redmond, although at times invoking his father, frequently held up Parnell as a model for the League and for himself personally. Redmond told a Drogheda audience that he was being attacked as bitterly as Parnell had been, and by the same sorts of people.88 He also proudly maintained that he was ‘going to continue to use the same old weapon forged by Parnell, namely, that of constitutional opposition’.89 When accused of running too few candidates to form a government, Redmond replied ‘did Parnell’s Party at any time have sufficient numbers to form a Government at Westminster, and did they ever do any good for the people of Ireland?’90 This seems to have been meant not as a specific threat of a return to obstructionism –​the League described its aspirations frequently as being a ‘constructive’ opposition –​but instead as a desire to hold and wield the balance of power, as Parnell and John Redmond had. Another aspect of the legacy on which William Redmond drew was the notion of the national party. As with both wings of Sinn Féin, the National League declared itself a party that appealed to and welcomed all. Advertisements for National League candidates specifically promised nondiscrimination on the basis of class or creed.91 The chairman of the Carrickmacross branch narrowed this a little, calling on ‘all creeds and classes who believe in the national right of Ireland to come forward and unite’.92 Like Sinn Féin, they abhorred sectional parties, which were, according to Redmond, ‘fractional groups representing interests rather than political principles’, or ‘unorganised and therefore powerless and sterile Independents’.93 Redmond also said that he found the representation of sectional interests ‘abhorrent to any proper system of government’.94 But the National League also took the national party line in different directions than Sinn Féin, and in fact claimed to be more ecumenical. For example, they specifically called out Sinn Féin’s exclusion of ex-​servicemen.95 Redmond said at a meeting in Rathmines that Irish veterans of the British Army ‘had not got fair play’ and that he ‘care[d]‌not whether they fought in France or in Ireland, on one side or the other, whether they fought as Free Staters or Republicans. What we want is equal treatment for all Irishmen.’96 These statements caused some murmuring at the back of the hall. A month later, he said that the attitude of Cumann na nGaedheal toward ex-​servicemen was ‘enough to condemn the Government as not a national but a mere sectional and party one’.97 The new Redmondites were also national, in that their leaders remained above civil-​war and religious differences. O’Donnell said his party was ‘free from all affiliation with past controversies and free

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from all tests calculated to exclude any section of the Irish people. Protestant and Catholic, orangeman or nationalist or republican has the right to come and help in the country of his birth and of his love.’98 An appeal for funds promised to ‘advocate united effort to these ends in a spirit of mutual reconciliation which, so far as possible, shall draw a veil of silence and forbearance over the memories of past troubles and differences’.99 This was a unity purportedly based on co-​operation, not on hostility to a common foe. As O’Donnell said, ‘instead of hate and bitterness, instead of recalling ancient feuds as driving forces in politics, we shall direct the nation to bedrock economic and business principles’.100 The National League generally did a better job than the Farmers in mixing practical and idealistic appeals, but, lest one think the Irish Party veterans had put all their dissensions behind them, O’Donnell called Tim Healy ‘that miserable little creature in the viceregal lodge’.101 They also thought that Ireland needed a national opposition that was more independent from the Government. The National League criticised the machine politics of Cumann na nGaedheal, the very same thing for which Sinn Féin condemned the old Irish Party. A National League TD would be a ‘man’ who would look after constituents’ issues and ‘not a man who will merely attend at Government Buildings as a voting machine’.102 This was the antithesis of how Cosgrave ran the country, as, at least according to Redmond, Bills were passed in the Dáil by ‘a machine of a government majority’ and ordinary deputies lacked sufficient time to read and digest them.103 This was all the more objectionable because Cosgrave led a minority government, and ‘if our republican fellow countrymen determined today to go into the Dáil, this government would be swamped’.104 The National League, instead, wanted to have a real opposition in the Dáil, one that transcended sectionalism and had experience with government. Redmond promised that, if elected, his party would ‘secure adequate discussion of new laws, a closer scrutiny of public finance, and a full recognition of the responsibility of ministers to the House. They desired the Dáil to be a National Parliament in truth, and not merely a party caucus.’105 The appearance of the latter was the risk Sinn Féin and Cumann na nGaedheal ran in promoting their vision of a national party and a continuation of the atmosphere of the First and Second Dáils. National League opposition would be carried on by ‘men of knowledge and experience’ who would function as watchdogs.106 Redmond summed this up by saying: what is required is a Sane national opposition. I do not mean opposition to the Constitution; on the contrary, I mean Opposition in the constitutional sense … The Opposition should be made up of men who, if the time came, should, by their qualities and abilities, and by their knowledge of procedure and experience, be able to take office themselves.107

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This is what the National League meant by normal politics. There would be a government and an opposition, but that opposition would be national, not sectional, and constitutional, not republican. It would halt Cosgrave’s autocratic drift –​a charge levelled specifically by Redmond –​and would show the world, and most particularly the north, that the Irish could have a responsible politics that respected difference. Redmond promised ‘our first endeavour is to restore the unity of the country’. He disavowed force, instead claiming that ‘given the proper men, the proper methods, and the proper conduct of our parliament, eventually we must succeed in this direction’.108 Northern unionists would be so impressed by respectable parliamentary conduct, a change of government away from Sinn Féin’s heirs, and the reintegration of the Irish Party –​the very men that Ulster first promised to take up arms against –​that they would voluntarily rejoin the Free State. This was neither the first nor the last time that Free State politicians would hope to entice reunion by trumpeting their sense of fair play toward political minorities.

Cumann na nGaedheal politics The response of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government to the small parties was multifaceted and always conducted with at least one eye on the absent republican opposition. Cumann na nGaedheal continued to maintain the revolutionary-​era definition and practice of politics so as to hold on to power and prevent a political fragmenting that would weaken the state. The general approach taken by the Government, particularly O’Higgins, was to claim that opposition parties lacked an understanding of practical politics and actual governmental work. O’Higgins derided Johnson as a mere ‘abstract theorist’ in the Dáil and repeatedly said that he was disconnected from reality. Cumann na nGaedheal, like many postrevolutionary parties, was trying to navigate the transition from dreaming to governance, to balance the practical with the ideal. They claimed that they alone had made this transformation and were thus the only party that could be trusted with both the guarding of revolutionary ideals and their translation into policy. Their opponents, on the other hand, lacked realism. This line of argument was initially deployed against republicans during the Treaty debates, as Collins and Griffith portrayed themselves as eager to get down to the business of governing while republicans focused on ‘a quibble of words’. The perceived love of abstraction continued to be used against republicans –​ O’Higgins enjoyed referring to the imprisoned de Valera as ‘the gentleman who is reading Einstein in Arbour Hill’ –​and was turned against Johnson

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and Labour once they entered the Dáil.109 Patrick Hogan said during the debate on the 1923 Enforcement of Law Act that: we are here in Parliament passing laws, making and discussing laws, and defining things. It seems to be the idea that we are merely making them for the purpose of hearing ourselves talk; that we are here spending three or four hours per diem discussing principles of Constitutional law and all sorts of abstract matters; but that once we have the law passed we are not going to enforce it. The conception of the Parliament seems to be some place where Deputies can show their mental agility, their knowledge of Constitutional law, their ability to split hairs, and so on.110

After listening to Johnson speak on the Land Act, O’Higgins said ‘Deputy Johnson is a great idealist, and, like other great idealists, he is inclined to lose touch with realities.’ At times the enunciation of such ideals were harmless and at other times ‘someone ought to take the trouble and responsibility of clearing the air’, which again depicted the Government as the adults in the room. The Government, by contrast, blended ideals and pragmatism. O’Higgins said ‘there are idealists who keep their feet on the ground, and who endeavour within the circumstances confronting them, and within their own day and generation, to do the best that is reasonably possible’. He praised the Land Act as ‘a measure of practical idealism, the idealism of Griffith shall we say’.111 The opposition, on the other hand, could never function properly because they lacked an understanding of the quotidian business of government and of the difficulties involved in translating high ideals into drafted legislation. This contention formed the centrepiece of another way that Cumann na nGaedheal responded to criticism from the smaller parties: they promoted technocracy and the centrality of governmental experience. Like the sectional parties and the National League, Cumann na nGaedheal were trying to move from a focus on the discredited ‘politics’ to one on economics, but they were trying to do so while keeping the national party and its idealism alive. The Farmers, with their focus on economics, felt no need to be keepers of the revolutionary flame. Cumann na nGaedheal, on the other hand, had to tout its achievements on agricultural standardisation while still defining politics negatively as the province of former Sinn Féiners who were committed to revolutionary ideals. Writing in the New York American to mark the third anniversary of the Treaty, Cosgrave stressed this return to normality in politics: ‘the Irish mind is turning from politics in the old sense to economics. The work of the Oireachtas, particularly in the last six months, has been almost entirely in that sphere … It is with such practical matters affecting the lives of the people that the Irish Parliament is now mainly concerned.’112 J.J. Walsh,

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the strongest advocate for tariffs within the Cumann na nGaedheal elite, said something similar after Cumann na nGaedheal’s surprising success in a series of 1925 by-​elections: ‘people had tired of political juggling, and were determined to support any body of men likely to advance the nation’s economic interests’.113 Cumann na nGaedheal leaders accepted the diagnosis that people were sick of politics, but did not see themselves as targets of that ire. This self-​image was partly tied to their continuing promotion of a ‘national party’, as discussed below, but another component was the removal of some issues –​particularly economic ones –​from the political realm through the use of committees of experts. The Government did that numerous times throughout the 1920s: banking, finance, the currency, agriculture, and tariffs. The committee dealing with the fiscal question was given a charge that made it clear it was to be outside politics: The committee is not intended to be an instrument by which beneficially interested parties can secure the acceptance of particular doctrines; its purpose, on the contrary, is to secure a disinterested, balanced and exhaustive analysis of a complex problem on which the future of the whole largely depends … What we feel is essential is that we should have a Committee consisting of persons with expert knowledge of all the various factors and circumstances that make towards the economic welfare of the country, who are at the same time disinterested parties and can accordingly give impartial consideration as between the interests of the general community and the interests of any particular section that may seek to establish a privileged position.114

The task of weighing the interests of the general against the particular, as mentioned in the charge, was very much the role that Cumann na nGaedheal set for itself in being above politics and at the head of a broad national coalition. Even when there were no formal commissions set up, such as in the creation and financing of the Shannon Scheme, the emphasis was on policy being set by experts.115 Noted Griffithite Seán Milroy derisively called the fiscal commission ‘a Commission of Professors’ and expressed disappointment at what he perceived as its milquetoast conclusions.116 The Town Tenants’ League criticised and refused to participate in the Government’s proposed Town Tenants’ Commission in 1927, as they saw it as a delaying tactic ‘set up with the deliberate object of shelving the whole question until after the general election’.117 This view was generally endorsed by Mary Daly in Industrial Development and Irish National Identity, which characterises many of the commissions, and Cumann na nGaedheal’s economic decision-​making in general, as rooted in a desire to postpone or delay anything that risked political controversy.118 This was part of the motive, although the Government

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also used the discourse of technocracy in promoting policies that were not stalled, such as the Shannon Scheme. And Cumann na nGaedheal and the Farmers alike called for technocratic management in the reconstruction of urban and rural councils –​the hiring of city managers and financial experts –​ as part of the reform of local government. This was not always a stalling technique but reflected a desire to remove some issues from ‘politics’ and thus create a space for the discussion of economic issues without conceding the arguments from the sectional parties regarding actual practitioners being the best-​positioned to represent such interests. It also marked a European-​ wide fascination with technocracy as a way around increasing political polarisation. Both left-​and right-​wing parties expressed a hope that government could be made into more of a science than an art. Cosgrave, speaking in Bandon in 1926, urged that the ‘question of tariffs be taken out of the sphere of political agitation and put on a higher plane’.119 This higher plane appealed to those who feared that the technicalities of economic policy could get lost in the political arena, but also to those who wanted to focus on economic issues without empowering the economically organised parties that might ordinarily benefit from a return to normal politics. This discourse of expertise was something that had evolved since the revolution, an attempt by Cumann na nGaedheal to define what they hoped would be normal politics. The revolutionary Government depicted themselves as well-​ meaning amateurs, but the longer Cumann na nGaedheal remained in power, the harder it became to depict themselves as such, particularly in a way that would differentiate them from their rivals outside of government. Instead, the party began promoting its experience in government and its knowledge of governmentality as a key element of its appeal. This was summed up in its eventual electoral slogan, ‘Vote Government’, and references to the party as the ‘Government Party’, in widespread use by the early 1930s, although first appearing in the mid-​1920s.120 It was another way to define a politics that did not empower the smaller parties that expected to gain from the end of the civil war. The Government was expected to act differently than a party, and its members acquired skills that were not available to ordinary members of the opposition. J.M. O’Sullivan said on the campaign trail in 1927 that ‘the art of government is difficult, even onerous, sometimes, perhaps painful, but the experience that is necessary for that task the present government have learned’. He concluded ‘that experience should not be lightly thrown aside in answer to appeals from those who have no such experience, who have shown no capacity’.121 This kind of argument tried to set out a different standard for postrevolutionary service: actual experience in governing or administering, rather than a revolutionary pedigree. This was essentially the same issue over which the Army Mutiny was fought.

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The lack of experience meant that candidates could make promises that bore no relation to reality. O’Sullivan again said ‘there would … be no limit to the promises of other parties, because those parties knew they would not likely to be called on [sic] to put them into effect’.122 The Cumann na nGaedheal Convention summary for 1925 used this argument to set Cumann na nGaedheal members above those of other parties: opposition ‘Parliamentary representatives are not tied down to official duties, their programmes and declarations of policy and intention are not expected to conform to the acid test of realisation, their pronouncements need not be restricted by the responsibilities of office. They can make promises which are pious aspirations.’123 This freedom from responsibility is partially what allowed opposition deputies to remain unrooted in political reality. This argument was contested bitterly by opposing parties, claiming correctly that it was an argument for perpetual power for the current Government. An article charmingly headlined ‘Mr. Duggan Gets Hot Time’ detailed how Eamonn Duggan told voters that ‘his was the only party who had any experience of government, the other parties were in opposition’. A pro-​National League interrupter pointed out that Captain Redmond had parliamentary experience, which prompted Duggan to reply ‘if the people elected an inexperienced party in a majority the effect of that would be that for three or four years the country would be governed by senior civil servants and not by the men who were elected’.124 The National League often ridiculed the claim that only Cumann na nGaedheal could govern. O’Donnell responded ‘never was there a more impudent or more audacious statement made by any body of serious statesmen who believe in free Government’.125 Redmond said ‘it is arrogant, unjust and fallacious to say that there are no others in the country except this Government who are willing to ensure the future prosperity and stability of Ireland’.126 The republican paper The Nation said the same thing: ‘the Free State Ministers wish the people to believe there is no alternative to themselves. That would surely be a black outlook for Ireland.’127 This is partly why the National League emphasised its experience so often, as a counter to Cumann na nGaedheal’s assertions about the necessity of experience. The other way that Cumann na nGaedheal responded to parties seeking normality was to continue to promote the vision of a single national and nationalist party. This meant, in the postrevolutionary context, trying to co-​opt some groups and to keep the fragile pro-​Treaty coalition together. This was the same kind of activity that the Irish Party had engaged in before the revolution, but at some point during the 1920s the focus of the national party rhetoric changed. During the revolution, the unity was directed against Britain, as there was a fear that the colonial power benefited from division. Amidst the initial Treaty split, the emphasis was on rebuilding the fractured

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Sinn Féin coalition. But by the mid-​1920s, Cumann na nGaedheal used the same language of unity and described itself as a national party, but the concern was less on rebuilding Sinn Féin and more on the kind of class-​based and region-​based anxieties that were besetting European politics. In the specific Irish context, the unity was directed against fears of Labour and, most directly, republicanism.

The Cork Progressive Association and the National Group As it became increasingly clear that any subsequent national party would not include republicans, the reconstitution of such a party would have to include some who stood aside during the revolution. John Regan argued that the incorporation of such elements –​ex-​unionists, businessmen, and the like –​was a fundamental component of Cumann na nGaedheal’s counter-​revolution.128 The ways in which such groups tried to incorporate themselves into postrevolutionary politics are also demonstrative of the evolving notions of opposition in the Free State. One such example is the Cork Progressive Association (CPA), a group of pro-​business interests that associated itself with but remained separate from Cumann na nGaedheal.129 This is, in fact, how Cumann na nGaedheal wanted ‘opposition’ groups to function: maintaining a separate identity was acceptable as long as the group voted with the Government on issues fundamental to the continuance of the state. The CPA ran candidates in Cork for the 1923 general election and hoped to serve as a model for similar business-​friendly organisations across the country. A CPA leader said in 1923 ‘the feeling amongst the people of all classes and creeds who had any stake in the country was that such an organisation as theirs was very badly needed’.130 The reference to all classes and creeds, borrowed initially from the Gaelic League, was undoubtedly a nod to the overrepresentation of Protestants in the business community, and in fact one of the two successful CPA candidates in 1923 was Protestant. T.P. Dowdall, the chairman of the CPA, told an audience that ‘the Association was not inimical to any class. In fact, their programme could cover all classes in Cork to the public good.’131 The two TDs who were elected in 1923 were ‘not out against any class’ and were ‘representatives of no special class’, but would attack waste and jobbery, presumably issues about which all voters were concerned.132 The CPA also would accept people from either side of the Treaty divide, again separating economic organisations from politics: ‘any person who had the interest of the city or county might join, no matter what his political opinions may be’.133 By ‘any person’, though, they seemed to mean ‘any man’, as Dowdall spoke about how the organisation

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was made up of the ‘best men’ of Cork and ‘every man in Cork who had an interest in its progress and development’. The Association was also depicted as ‘strong and virile’.134 The Association also believed the Dáil should represent vocational interests, as did Labour and the Farmers. Its founding objects included ‘to secure adequate representation for Commerce in the Oireachtas and other Public Bodies’.135 This had not been the case during the revolution, according to Dowdall: ‘the main object … was to seek representation for parties who, in the past, had practically no representation. He referred to the commercial class.’136 Commercial representation would improve the country because it would increase the vocational diversity of the Dáil and because ‘the running of a country is nowadays largely a business concern’.137 This fitted well with the emerging technocracy of Cumann na nGaedheal. In pushing economic and business concerns, the CPA also invoked the continuing disdain for politics. A Mr Mercier spoke at a CPA meeting on the eve of the 1923 election and said ‘if that were a political meeting in the old sense he would not be there, but he considered that they were acting on the national ground of patriotic citizenship in coming forward to support a Government constitutionally elected’. Sir Stanley Harrington echoed the fatigue with the old sense of Sinn Féin politics at another meeting: ‘people are sick and tired of dissension and politics and what we should concentrate on is peace, economy, and development’.138 As with the National League, the CPA believed its focus on economic prosperity could help move Ireland past civil war divisions. A CPA supporter wrote to the Cork Examiner before the 1923 election and argued ‘the Progressive programme … will help to eradicate the political divisions of the past by uniting all responsible citizens on an economic basis. The substitution of an economic for a political background will go a long way toward bringing about the new unity which will be so essential for the rebuilding of our country.’139 The Association wanted to ‘forget the past so far as possible’, according to J.J. Horgan, and Harrington added ‘the old party distinctions should be laid aside’.140 Whereas Labour and the Farmers thought an economic focus would separate voting groups, the CPA thought it could unify them. This was also a different path than that of Sinn Féin –​using economic issues to forge unity –​ but was hardly ecumenical. ‘All responsible citizens’, given the general tenor of the CPA’s arguments, was most likely a reference to ratepayers, a group that it continually claimed was marginalised post independence. The CPA, then, drew on a number of the revolutionary and postrevolutionary tropes that were common during this period. They wanted to populate the Dáil with a class perceived to be heretofore underrepresented, but they wanted to do so while claiming to welcome all classes and creeds. They believed that the population was tired of Treaty politics and wanted to move

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on to a politics organised around questions of national economics and individual financial well-​being. They also, though, supported the Treaty and pledged to work with the Government on security and constitutional issues. Their concept of opposition was similar to that of the Farmers: they would support the Government on fundamentals and pressure it on legislation contrary to the CPA’s specific economic interests. Of this, T.P. Dowdall said: if their candidates were returned to the Dáil it was intended that they should work in co-​ operation with the Government; but Governments were only human, and they, like most people, followed the line of least resistance. Their representative would put before the Government their views, and thus prevent, perhaps, legislation being enacted with which they might not be in agreement.141

Their opposition, when manifested, would provide resistance to the Government in defence of their interests, but did not seem designed to replace it with another. The greater fear of the anti-​Treatyites drove groups such as the CPA into broad support for Cumann na nGaedheal on security issues, but the Association thought it could provide a needed, practical set of economic principles to a government that seemed steeped in ‘political’ issues and concerns. As such, they could help to deliver on the economic promise of the revolution, something the Government initially seemed ill-​ equipped and not disposed to consider. They could thus help the country materially, as commercial success would lift all citizens. As a CPA member said in 1923, ‘the life of many people in this country had been a drab affair compared with other countries. Even where the people were not in a condition of absolute poverty life in the country had something sordid about it. Now, that was one of the things the Progressive Association could and would alter.’142 In addition to reducing the general sordidness of Irish life, the Association also tried to define a politics that was more pluralistic, and focused on economics, but not a challenge to the foundations of the Treaty settlement. This was the kind of opposition movement with which Cumann na nGaedheal could and did work. More troubling was the tendency of Cumann na nGaedheal’s ‘National Party’ to splinter and decay. Unlike Fianna Fáil, which emphasised internal discipline, Cumann na nGaedheal had difficulty holding its coalition together. As issues developed separate from the passage of the Treaty, Cumann na nGaedheal began to fragment. The biggest split within Cumann na nGaedheal came after the Army Mutiny in 1924. Without rehearsing the complicated series of events here –​it is well covered in Maryann Gialanella Valiulis’s Portrait of a Revolutionary –​the fallout from the way that the Government handled the issue, particularly its refusal to reinstate some of the officers involved and its seeming disinterest in revolutionary service as a

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measure of vocational fitness, led a group of ten Cumann na nGaedheal deputies to withdraw support from the Government and move into opposition in 1924. Dubbing themselves the National Group, nine of them resigned from the Dáil in late 1924, creating a number of risky by-​elections for the Government the following spring.143 The new party ‘emphasised that they stood midway between the Government Party, who were “lacking in National vision”, and another element who were “lacking in reason” ’.144 This was another attempt to create a constitutional nationalist opposition, with the nationalism distinguishing it from the sectional parties and the constitutionalism distinguishing it from republicans. Seán Milroy, one of the National Group, emphasised that his disagreement with the Government was not personal, but political, which Milroy found ‘an indication that we are approaching a healthier and more normal political atmosphere than has obtained for many years in Ireland’. He noted that he was loyal to the state, but not the Government, the very definition of loyal opposition: ‘I am not going to be led into the blunder of confusing the Executive in power with the State itself. Criticism of the Executive must not be misconstrued into an attack on the State.’145 This differentiation was critical to Milroy, who thought such a role was hugely important for the new state. In running again for the Dáil in 1925, he said ‘the responsibilities of those who exercise the functions of Government are undoubtedly heavy, but equally exacting are the responsibilities of those who criticise Government policy seriously’.146 The National Group also disparaged the Government for its machine politics. Milroy noted that the calls for a national party simply forced Treaty supporters into a position where they were supposed to support the Government no matter what. After the disputes over the Government’s handling of the Mutiny, he said, ‘they were expected to take part in a game of make-​believe, pretending to be once more a happy family of politicians’.147 Milroy did not want to be a ‘political marionette’ and he was ‘unwilling to prostitute the position of a representative of the people to that of a party hack’.148 Reviving revolutionary rhetoric, he charged Cumann na nGaedheal with abandoning the revolution and returning to Irish Party machine politics as well as welcoming former Irish Party men into the revolutionary coalition. This was a criticism of the same ills that Sinn Féin politics were designed to replace in 1919. The National Group announced their desire to form a united national movement around the principles of Collins and Griffith that the Treatyites had allegedly abandoned. Pádraic Ó Máille, chairing a meeting for Milroy in Dublin in 1925, said ‘we believe in creating a movement –​I might call it a new Sinn Féin movement –​which would be a rallying ground for all progressive Irishmen and women’. Because they had no ‘narrow spirit’ and

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stood ‘for the blotting out of the unhappy differences that have divided Irishmen during the last few years’, they were ‘prepared to meet those on the Anti-​Treaty side as brothers’. This required ‘men and women who have the courage and manliness to cut themselves adrift from all party ties’, an odd turn of phrase to be sure.149 To go into opposition and attempt to create this national movement, the National Group focused on broader issues that it thought would animate the population. Milroy decided to run for the Dáil after resigning his seat because ‘I believe that it is of the utmost moment that some issue should be raised at the elections other than that of for or against the Treaty upon which the electors have already twice given their decision.’150 The Treaty remained, for some, too dominant in politics, and that issue overshadowed other more important ones. For many of the National Group, particularly Milroy, a more important issue was tariff reform, on which the Government had departed from the principles of Griffith and refused to introduce general tariffs. This was blamed on the nefarious influence of permanent civil servants, particularly in the Finance Ministry, who rejected any proposal that was seen as too Irish. Dan McCarthy and Joe McGrath, two prominent members of the National Group, emphasised this in an interview on its founding. They accused the Government of having no economic policy and instead ‘accepting dictation from the officials of the Treasury’.151 Liam Tobin, an army officer at the centre of the Mutiny and an oft-​rumoured National Group Dáil candidate, also demanded the removal of anti-​Irish officials, as well as ‘the introduction of a history into schools showing the reasons for the acceptance of the Treaty’.152 Despite frequent disclaimers that the National Group supported the Treaty and did not want to overturn the state or the revolutionary settlement, its move into opposition was greeted with widespread disdain from politicians and the press. Much of this was fuelled by a sense of betrayal. Ernest Blythe, in his usual nuanced way, said that he would rather a republican win Milroy’s vacated Cavan seat than have Milroy regain it, as ‘people who were elected to the Dáil should not behave like children out of a nursery’.153 The Wexford Free Press criticised its TD, Osmond Grattan Esmonde, for dishonourably breaking his pledge after running as a government candidate in 1923.154 Much criticism also focused on the necessity for by-​elections. The Irish Independent said that their resignations ‘caus[ed] needless political distraction, and a waste of energy and money at a time when the undivided attention and the co-​operation of all upholders of the Treaty are required to build up the nation’.155 The Connaught Telegraph and the Cork Examiner also condemned the National Group, with the Examiner opining that ‘the country has had enough of elections, and it expects of its representatives to do what they promised to do when seeking the votes

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of the people –​it expects them to support the Government’. It continued that ‘there are quite enough parties at present –​more parties than are good for the state’.156 McGrath himself said the same thing when resigning from the Dáil and abandoning his attempt to form an independent opposition within it: ‘we have come to the conclusion that there is no room in this small country of ours for three parties, all claiming to be national, particularly taking into account the bewilderment of the people even when there were but two such parties’.157 The National Group was short-​lived, with only Milroy showing any sustained interest in remaining in politics after the mass resignation. But the furore over their departure from the Government and their attempts to form an independent opposition demonstrate the difficulty in forming a Treatyite opposition: the fear that such an opposition would only help republicans. As the Westmeath Independent editorialised with the by-​elections looming, the resignation of the National Group is deprecated by every right-​thinking person in An Saorstát … Dissension or division in the ranks of the Cumann na nGaedheal party will not serve the best interests of the country … One result of the petty squabbling, which is deplorable at this juncture when unity is so much desired, will be that Mr. de Valera’s nominees will succeed in getting elected wherever there are three-​ cornered contests.158

A national party This opinion was entirely echoed by the Government, which increasingly attempted to hang on to the idea of a national party and a united pro-​Treaty movement, despite what appeared to be the growing electoral strength of the Farmers’ Party and the defections from Cumann na nGaedheal after the Army Mutiny and the Boundary Commission fiasco. But unlike during the immediate post-​Treaty years, when the national party was seen more as a movement and there was significant hope that a Gaelic state would not be dominated by permanent parties, by the mid-​1920s the national party was seen as a necessary check against either governmental instability or republican threats to the Treaty settlement. The Treatyites very much wanted a definition of normal politics that included a large party, but instead of that party capturing all nationalists, as was imagined by Sinn Féin in 1921, the party would unite all pro-​Treaty forces against the intertwined threats of disorder and republican electoral success. The promotion of smaller temporary factions and the rejection of the British two-​party system in favour of a more organic ‘Irish’ style of postcolonial politics, much mooted in 1922, had disappeared, replaced with a notion of two great warring parties: Cumann na nGaedheal and the republicans. This created a problem for sectional

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parties, which were increasingly left without a place in this definition of politics, and for other Treatyite nationalist parties, who were accused by their very existence of threatening the Treaty settlement. This again made opposition a more difficult task, as evidenced by Cumann na nGaedheal’s eventual absorption of the Farmers’ Party, the CPA, and the remnants of the National League. The promotion of a national party was an early feature of Treatyite propaganda: a 1923 electoral handbill called for ‘A NATIONAL PARTY: Strong enough to govern and to develop the country to the advantage of all its people’.159 The context for this had completely changed by the middle of the decade. The party laid out its national party philosophy fairly clearly in its 1925 Annual Convention Report: We have the great advantage of being bound to no special class in the community … We have in our ranks the farmer, the labourer, the distributor, the clerk, the producer, and the consumer. The divergency in interest amongst them all exists only in details. It is proper, it is assistful, it is essential that these details of divergent interest should receive due attention from representatives of these divisions among our people, but it is equally important that their general community of interest should be not obscured or endangered by the absence of a strong co-​ordinating force. We look to Cumann na nGaedheal to be that co-​ordinating force.160

This was the model for Cumann na nGaedheal: the party absorbed and reconciled diverse interests in order to keep the nation together. This left little rhetorical space for opposition: while it was acceptable for representatives of particular interests to voice those interests (as with the CPA), they needed to submit to the strong co-​ordinating force of the national party. Such representation of interests was clearly distinguished from independent sectional parties. Those who refused to accept the whips of the national party were weakening the nation. Cumann na nGaedheal’s criticism of small parties increased after the 1923 general election, which saw Sinn Féin outperform expectations. As its own propaganda was increasingly linked to its governmental experience, Cumann na nGaedheal poured scorn on the parties that nominated insufficient candidates to gain a majority and form a government. O’Higgins told an audience in the June 1927 campaign that their role was not just to choose individual deputies, but to elect a government, something that could not be done by returning candidates from smaller parties. Independents, to O’Higgins, were even worse: ‘every time a difficult situation arises, or a definite choice comes to be made with the risk of losing a certain number of votes in their constituencies, the independents walk about and funk the division lobby. Oh, it is an easy game to be in opposition.’ A government’s

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job, according to O’Higgins, was much harder, as ‘it would have to take decisions and to meet the opposition of little private sectional interests’.161 The more parties, the more likely that coalitions would be formed and broken ‘behind the backs of the electors’ through ‘secret intrigue’.162 This is different than the coalition that made up Cumann na nGaedheal, at least according to J.M. O’Sullivan, the Minister for Education: ‘here is one real, open, above-​board coalition, a coalition not formed behind the backs of the people, but before their eyes –​the coalitions of interests represented by the Government party’.163 An editorial in the Fermanagh Herald agreed with this diagnosis of the dangers of small parties, conceding that ‘Labour, the Farmers, Independents, and the National League are all important from the point of view of their followers’, but could not form governments and, ‘except as exercises of a balance of power … are out of the picture for all practical purposes’.164 There was a fear that too many small parties might lead to the frequent rise and fall of governments, as happened in Third Republic France and Weimar. Blythe’s memo argued that multiseat constituencies led to voter apathy because ‘the excitement of a man to man contest is removed’, and that same editorial in the Fermanagh Herald blamed the governmental chaos in France on similar voter apathy. O’Higgins, Blythe, and O’Sullivan also argued that governments dependent on coalitions with small parties were inherently unstable and could not pass serious legislation or deal with deep-​ rooted problems. Electing small parties to wield the balance of power –​the exact strategy pursued by Parnell and trumpeted by Redmond –​was seen as destabilising by O’Sullivan, who said it ‘might result in the policy of the country being dictated by a small minority’.165 But the major concerns raised about the plethora of small parties were that they harmed Ireland’s reputation abroad and played into republican hands. Cosgrave, in an exchange of letters with Joe McGrath about reunification with the National Group, foregrounded both of these concerns. Cosgrave argued that any news of Irish division reinforced colonial-​era stereotypes of the Irish as divisive and ungovernable. He told McGrath ‘the merest shadow of a difference, however superficial, is sufficient to be seized upon by the enemies of this country and blazoned in their Press’ and played to a public ‘eager for the excitement of the news of the “new dissensions in Ireland”; readily swallowed because of an earlier history into which it seems to fit to our discredit’.166 Among other things, this denigration of Ireland’s international reputation harmed Irish financial credit. J.M. O’Sullivan warned of this before the first 1927 election: ‘if there is a multiplicity of parties returned to the Dáil, and if no party is sufficiently strong to form an independent Government … we should have, in all probability, a political crisis, with consequent loss of credit. There could be no real policy made effective

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and no reasonable act done.’167 Margaret Collins-​O’Driscoll confirmed this after the election created exactly that result: ‘a scheme for 2,000 houses prepared for Dublin was held up because of the difficulty of borrowing money cheaply as the result of the indecisive vote of June.’168 Small parties and factions, instead of being the cornerstone of an Irish style of democracy as in 1922, were now deleterious to governmental action and risked the Free State’s joining the ranks of other failing democracies in interwar Europe. The reason for this shift was the surprising electoral and popular persistence of anti-​Treaty republicanism. Cosgrave told McGrath during the National Group split that ‘you and your friends are of the party within which any division at the present moment must, of necessity, operate to the disadvantage of the country’.169 Blythe combined fear of republicans with fear of bad credit: the election of a number of irregulars in the coming elections would have a very serious effect. It would shake confidence in every respect. It would make the borrowing of money dear, and that would prevent their carrying out any constructive work. The position of the country was not ideal, and if people simply sulked in their tents, then the position was going to be much worse.170

The message was clear: electing republicans harmed the country, and anyone who stood aloof from the Cumann na nGaedheal programme abetted republicanism. When Seán Milroy met with his Cumann na nGaedheal constituency organisation after resigning, one of the delegates explained the problems with Milroy’s separation from the Government party: We regard the position as very serious for the country seeing the desperate and continuous efforts being made by the opponents of the Treaty … to destroy the position won for us, and we assert that men, who were elected to represent the people in support of the Treaty should be very cautious and very slow about raising schisms [and] … bringing about resignations which show disruption and weakness on the part of supporters of the Treaty and give strength and power to our opponents.171

This speech shows very clearly the difficulty for Treatyite democrats. They recognised the norms of multiparty democracy –​the delegate said ‘clean, healthy criticism is good for any organised body of men in this country’ –​ but also worried that the special circumstances of Ireland’s postcolonial and post-​civil-​war contexts meant that divisions of opinion on the Treatyite side risked the entire Free State settlement. The norms of multiparty democracy were fine in the abstract but could not always be implemented in times that were anything but normal. The delegate said this directly: If we had obtained normal conditions we would have room for any number of parties; but we must remember that we are faced by a powerful Party, a young

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Party supported by the youth who know nothing of Ireland … Until we have disposed of that danger I say we are not at liberty to set up a Party of Treaty supporters here, a Party there and a Party somewhere else.172

Cumann na nGaedheal thus remained wedded to the notion of a single national party, the job of whose leadership was to take a variety of component interests and weld them into something powerful, harmonious, and national. The last part was often tricky because, as John Regan has documented, the party’s leadership cadre spent significant effort attempting to woo non-​nationalist elements into Cumann na nGaedheal. In part to counteract this impression, and in part to undermine non-​ nationalist parties such as the Farmers and Labour, Cumann na nGaedheal began re-​emphasising its roots in the violent separatist revolution. Although its model of government remained evolutionary, not revolutionary, the party did trumpet revolutionary credentials during elections and in squabbles with other parties, while still maintaining meritocratic criteria for the civil service and the military. It was a complex balancing act that did not always result in a unified message. Some Cumann na nGaedheal advertisements emphasised the revolutionary records of the candidates. A speech on behalf of Seamus Hughes’s candidacy in the 1924 Dublin South by-​election emphasised that Hughes was ‘a 1916 man who did his bit then and ever since’. Another speech at the same rally said that Hughes ‘had a glorious fighting record and would not be a dud in the Dáil’.173 Another Cumann na nGaedheal candidate, Richard O’Connell, was proclaimed to have ‘participated in the 1916 Rising and was most active against the Black and Tans’.174 And in a tense Dáil exchange over the Boundary Agreement, Cosgrave mocked his critics for their lack of revolutionary records: Mr. Johnson had taunted people who undertook at great personal risk and at great sacrifice of time to do something useful for the country. As for the wordy professor [William Magennis, a university TD] who had just spoken, he [Cosgrave] was wondering how many sleepless nights he passed in this great struggle and what contribution he gave toward making this possible. Ten million Magennises … with all the resources of their wordy warfare at their back, would not have altered by an inch the Boundary … He could imagine Deputies Johnson, Magennis, and Esmonde shouldering machine guns to prevent their country being partitioned. Their brains not having prevented it, their valour would not prevent it, their military genius would not prevent it.175

Cosgrave frequently disparaged intellectuals, but this also was an attempt to deflate critics who lacked revolutionary records. After later criticism of the Government’s performance at the Imperial Conference of 1926, Cosgrave noted ‘There are people who say we did not do our work well at

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the last Imperial Conference. I observe that most people who say that are those who did not take up arms to achieve the freedom of this country.’176 While this was undoubtedly tied to a constant Treatyite refrain that most anti-​Treatyites during the civil war had not actually fought against the Black and Tans, it also targeted the minor parties whose members often did not have revolutionary military service –​those in the Irish Citizen Army being the exception –​and who made their distance from Sinn Féin a key part of their platform. Taken together, these were all attempts to paint the ‘national party’ as nationalist in composition, history, and ideology. This would preserve politics as the domain of Sinn Féin without settling into the old British party model that was denigrated by nearly all Irish politicians in the 1920s.

Outsiders Finally, the emerging political system had to account for three groups who were not fully integrated into it: women, Protestants/​unionists, and republicans. Under the Free State constitution, women were made citizens with political rights equal to those of men. However, they faced significant legal handicaps in pursuing public activity, most notably restrictions against jury duty and civil service employment. The perceived return to a normal postrevolutionary politics ended up reversing the increasing political prominence of women during the revolution, a fact that should surprise no one who has studied European revolutions in any fashion. Women’s invisibility in the political system was marked by their near-​disappearance from Dáil politics, their absence from the leadership of all nonrepublican political parties, and the relatively small amount of political propaganda directed at female voters. No one aside from a few republicans thought women would vote en masse for a single political party, and even republicans mostly focused their attention on young female voters. A 1927 article in the Offaly Independent noted that ‘the vast mass of women voters are as a rule approached by candidates at election time, less as women than as human beings’.177 There also was little attempt to woo female votes with female candidates, except to some extent among post-​Treaty republicans. As the Cork Examiner dismissively said about the 1925 Seánad elections: Another noteworthy feature of the election was the rejection of all the women candidates. This not due to any antipathy on the part of the other sex. There are enough women on the register to return all the female candidates, and probably enough voted –​but they must have voted for the males. This refusal of the electorate to return even one woman Senator confirms what we have suggested earlier, that the Irish are essentially conservative-​minded. They have

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had enough of political and other experiments, and prefer to be left as they are, in quietness.178

This dismissal of women’s voting behaviour seemed to be the norm among the almost exclusively male party leadership cadres. Some types of female activity from the revolution persisted into the early 1920s. Maud Gonne and Charlotte Despard continued to head the Women Prisoners’ Defence League, holding meetings on Sundays on O’Connell Street in Dublin to call attention to the plight of republican prisoners.179 While those were certainly public political activities directed at women, they often emphasised women’s roles as mothers and wives. At an October 1923 meeting during republican hunger strikes, Gonne ‘called on the mothers in the crowd … they would start a hunger-​strike on the doorsteps of the Free State Ministers’. She also said ‘her own son [Seán] was free by the mercy of God, but she would continue to stand by the wives, mothers, and sisters of those still in jail’.180 The Irish Women’s Republican Federation also publicised the deplorable conditions in Free State prisons and called on the Red Cross to investigate.181 While female relatives made potent arguments during the revolution and this was one of the main avenues for female political participation, Treatyites worked assiduously to undermine such discourse during the Treaty debates and civil war, and this role seemed increasingly unlikely to establish a permanent political position for women. In fact, this rhetoric was coming under fire from more directions than just Free Staters. A column by ‘Deirdre’ in the Voice of Labour said that she had listened to female politicians in the streets and had heard no ‘common sense’ or ‘a demand for the right to live. The women I have heard up to the present seemed to be mainly concerned about the right to die … Politics and hate on every side, but social conscience nowhere.’182 Republicans were also increasingly concerned about their reputation as a party dominated by women. P.J. Ruttledge, acting Sinn Féin president, described the 1,300 delegates at the recent Sinn Féin Ard-​Fheis as: a few priests, and not many women, a few old men and not many middle-​ aged. But the young men were there in the hundreds, the young men who are the bedrock of every successful movement in the world. Mr. Cosgrave has his sedate Peace Commissioners and Mr. Blythe his merchant princes, but Sinn Féin has the cleareyed young men, the men that make the nation.183

Sinn Féin wanted its post-​civil-​war image to be one of masculine virility, and there was an increasingly circumscribed space for women within that movement.184 Labour and republicans at times had an alternative vision of women within the political system that focused on them as homemakers. The political appeals that were made to women by the major parties most often cited

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their roles within the home and family. De Valera, addressing the 1924 Sinn Féin Ard-​Fheis, referenced ‘the duty of women –​the buyers of the household –​and the great role they can play in stimulating Irish industry and agriculture and reducing unemployment by purchasing home-​made goods and home-​made food products’.185 Deirdre’s advice was that women should pay more attention to their ‘first, last and greatest duty –​that of life conserving, the building up of homes, whence springs the welfare of a nation’. As a Labour supporter, Deirdre emphasised the connections between homes and social issues such as food prices, education, and shelter, rather than the spiritual sanctity of the home, as had often been done in republican propaganda. But the result was the same: a desire to carve out a space for women outside ‘politics’ and in the realm of economics. Deirdre complained that ‘we who are surrounded by our Cumann na mBan and our Cumann na Saoirse and our Cumann na everything except a Women’s League for the right to live, have wasted our powers and squandered our energies in the barren fields of strife, torn up by the masculine antics of party politicians’.186 Deirdre’s attitude fits with the third-​party arguments that politics was damaging and attention needed to be redirected toward social issues. She assumed female Labour voters were particularly attuned to these issues. Male Labour leaders tended to present the issue in the same way, as their political appeals to women were often rooted in concerns about the home. Labour generally supported the family wage, and much of their discussion of ‘workers’ seemed to assume that said workers were male with wives and children.187 Johnson referenced women as consumers in attacking the taxes on tea and sugar, calling them ‘breakfast table taxes. It is a tax upon the housewife.’188 Some Labour candidates did openly seek female voters. Edward O’Carroll in Dublin North ‘respectfully solicit[ed] the VOTES OF THE WOMEN electors … and to strengthen the hands of the Labour Party in securing EQUAL TREATMENT FOR WOMEN as for men in all industries and services’.189 A letter-​writer to the Voice of Labour thanked ‘young and loyal girl members’ for protecting Labour meetings from Larkinites in 1927.190 And, as mentioned before, Louie Bennett’s Irish Women Workers’ Union advocated a nonparliamentary public role for women. Other parties specifically appealed to female voters rarely, if at all. The Farmers had no propaganda tailored to female voters, and only occasionally did Farmers’ candidates even urge rural women to vote for them. The same despondent memorandum that complained that farmers were generally not readers also noted that, at best, ‘occasionally farmers’ wives or daughters may read “The Daily Sketch” or such like picture papers’.191 There were brief mentions of a women’s auxiliary to the National League, but their activities did not make the local or national press.192 Redmond spoke to a specially called meeting of women electors in the Theatre Royal in Waterford

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in 1927, telling them he was pursuing something ‘that must specially appeal to women –​that is, peace’. He directed this to women as victims of war or as relatives, not as political actors in their own right: ‘You women, by now must have had enough of war. I want your fathers, brothers, and sweethearts to give up the struggle with one another.’193 And the National Group’s Seán Milroy was given advice on appealing to women voters. The writer told Milroy that ‘your attitude is sympathetic to them’ and then wrote a call for the restoration of women’s political activity that had been squelched by the Free State, including greater female representation in the Dáil and more consultation with women on issues particular to them.194 In general, though, these were not common, as most parties blithely assumed that their general propaganda designed for an idealised male voter equally appealed to women. This belief was reinforced by the fact that there were few women involved in party leadership. Hanna Sheehy-​Skeffington wrote in 1927 that the Dáil ‘now has only one woman deputy, an anti-​suffragist who puts party before sex in matters affecting women. The Six-​County Parliament also has one woman deputy.’195 There were women’s groups trying to rectify this and highlight issues particularly affecting women. One of these groups was the Irish Women’s Citizens Association (IWCA), which sought equal citizenship for women and encouraged female participation in the electoral process. They obtained particularly high visibility when issues involving women came up in the Dáil. For example, the frequent attempts by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government to restrict female jury service led to considerable agitation on the part of the IWCA and similar groups. As is well known, the Free State Government repeatedly eroded women’s public rights. In 1924, otherwise eligible women were allowed to opt out of jury service, and in 1927 women were excluded automatically and could only serve on juries if they opted into the system. Both Bills were piloted through the Dáil by Kevin O’Higgins as Minister for Justice. The debates over these Bills demonstrate the potential role of women as an opposition group in the Free State. Those who supported the Bills generally argued that women’s first duty, even as citizens, should be to the home. An Irish Independent editorial declared that ‘a woman’s home should have first claim’, and another later said that women ‘desired to be left in their homes to do the work that best befits a woman’s nature’.196 O’Higgins argued from majority rights, as was his wont, claiming that most women did not want to be on juries and that the letter-​writers and campaigners only represented a small fraction of Irish women.197 There were also discussions of how mothers could be expected to care for their children if they were called into jury service. The notion that women’s identity was tied to the home was not unusual, but in this case,

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the home was not a way for the women to practise politics, but a device to exclude them from it. A group called the Women’s Independent Association said that O’Higgins’s 1924 Bill was ‘discouraging to civic responsibility and would prove to be a thoroughly retrograde step. … it would open the door a little wider to the forces of reaction, and women may see their power for good, which they have so hardly obtained, being gradually nullified’.198 Hanna Sheehy-​ Skeffington said that women who did not opt out were pre-​emptively struck from juries by lawyers, a situation she compared to ‘the same methods formerly used to disqualify Catholics in the old days of jury-​packing’.199 Mary Hayden, a University College Dublin professor of history, wrote to the Independent that ‘the person of either sex who finds jury-​service agreeable is, indeed, rare –​as rare I suppose, as the French lad who thinks his years of conscript duty a delight’.200 Rosamond Jacob wrote in a letter to the editor that ‘the Constitution of the Free State guaranteed equal rights to men and women. If this is so the proposal to deprive women of the right of jury service is an infringement of the Constitution.’201 Mary Kettle put this even more succinctly: ‘I submit that even-​handed justice cannot be dispensed if a sex is excluded from jury service.’202 There were also claims that women’s jury service was particularly vital on charges involving sexual crimes, so as to afford maximum sympathy and protection to victims.203 Margaret Collins-​O’Driscoll’s unwillingness to speak on this issue in the Dáil was specifically called out by K. Nicholls from the IWCA, saying that the Cumann na nGaedheal TD ‘did not speak for the rights of women, and the protection of children, during this debate’.204 The idea that women needed to focus on the home instead of jury service was also roundly dismissed. Hayden expressed her doubt that women actually wanted to avoid jury service so as to have more time for housework, and a ‘Woman Voter’ memorably wrote that ‘ “the poor dinnerless husband” has been used to argue against women’s franchise [and] jury service … Masculine imagination could picture, apparently, no greater calamity.’205 Many of the women protesting these Bills called specifically for organised political action by women to stop them. The IWCA wrote to all TDs in 1927 and urged them to oppose the removal of women from jury rolls, noting pointedly that women were allowed to serve on juries in Northern Ireland.206 The IWCA also met with O’Higgins on the issue in 1927, unsurprisingly finding no common ground with the minister. A combined deputation from the Irish Women’s Equality League, the Women’s International League, and the Irish Women Workers’ Union was turned aside by O’Higgins, but managed to meet with Lord Glenavy through the influence of Senator Jennie Wyse Power.207 While the Seánad did not suspend the 1927 Juries Bill, one of the other female senators, folklorist Eileen Costello (always called

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‘Mrs Costello’ in the papers) commented that ‘the position of women had been whittled down since 1919’.208 The discussion around the second Juries Bill did prompt some calls for the election of more women to the Dáil. The Offaly Independent covered this in some detail in a February 1927 article.209 After first noting that ‘the theoretical power to elect members of their own sex as members of the legislature has but rarely been practically applied’, the author explained that no parties have appealed specifically to women, and that ‘candidates have tacitly assumed that whatever politics appeal to men should appeal to women, and the womenfolk in a household will generally vote as their menfolk do, and so far their assumption has been justified’. The article then cited Louie Bennett’s testimony to the Committee on Technical Education as demonstrating that ‘there are problems of great importance which need special representation by women in the Dáil, or at least an organisation of women voters sufficiently strong to ensure attention to their views’. The author concluded that the Irish Women Workers’ Union should put up female Labour candidates, although the article acknowledged Bennett’s well-​known suspicion of political action. The IWCA did support a female candidate for the June 1927 election: Mary Guinness (referred to in the papers as Mrs Noel Guinness), who ran in County Dublin. Guinness had served on the county tuberculosis committee and said that she chose to run because the IWCA had been trying to get TDs to sponsor legislation on matters dealing with women and children and ‘had been simply brushed aside’.210 Guinness’s platform covered public health, housing, and public morality, offering very specific proposals for school meals, dental inspections, and tenant-​purchase housing schemes. She also appealed specifically to female voters in the constituency ‘because she was going to work principally for the interests of women and children’. This was a focus on home-​based issues, but it was coupled with an attempt to use those issues to propel women into public office. Mary Hayden spoke at Guinness’s meeting and said that ‘they wanted good women in the Dáil because women’s viewpoint was different to men’s’.211 Despite all of these very specific and detailed plans, the meeting’s chairman, Dr W.F. Fulham, at several points emphasised that Guinness’s candidacy was only viable because they had ‘some extra votes to give’ in the eight-​ member constituency, as Cumann na nGaedheal was only running four candidates and Labour three. Guinness was preferable to the republicans, ‘who blew up the coast guard station’, and she was ‘a non-​ political woman, a free hand and one that could go in and stir up the men a bit and he thought it would be no harm’ to elect her.212 Guinness was not elected, and the paucity of women in the Dáil continued unabated. A letter to the editor from M. Gaillard Palmer said that the ongoing lack of female

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TDs left the Government ‘legislating for us in the dark’ on issues affecting women, a situation she said would not be changed until more women ran for office.213 Throughout the mid-​1920s, though, women remained a largely ignored and untapped constituency. Despite republican efforts to activate the ‘women of Ireland’ as an anti-​Treaty constituency, there was little active effort to rebut this by the other parties. Those organisations that did call attention to women’s issues tried to address all parties in the Dáil and preserve the appearance of being nonpolitical. They also joined the chorus from the small parties in attempting to direct attention to socioeconomic issues, or at least to issues that did not directly touch on the Treaty. But the revolutionary promise, as happened so often in postrevolutionary societies, was not delivered, and women remained largely unintegrated into the ‘normal’ politics of the Free State. Protestants were also ambiguously amalgamated into the new state. The Government and eminent Protestants often touted the Government’s inclusiveness, but there was also a great deal of euphemistic language that barely hid sectarian attacks. Much of the discussion of tolerance was designed, explicitly or implicitly, to contrast the Free State with the intolerant Government of Northern Ireland. The emphasis on tolerance also frequently included assertions that the apparent divisions between some Protestants and the state were fundamentally political, not religious, and therefore were not evidence of a sectarian state or sectarian hostility. In a 1924 interview with the International News Service, de Valera was asked about religious strife and responded ‘Catholics and Protestants live side by side in peace and amity in almost every parish in this country, just as they live side by side in the United States, and in practically all Christian countries. Our problems are political –​not religious. The religious pretence is propaganda, pure and simple.’214 Several prominent Protestants seemed to believe that distinction. Alderman Richard Beamish, a Protestant TD elected for the Cork Progressive Association, issued a postelection statement that read ‘they had come to the stage when men had laid aside the shibboleths of political antagonism, bred on religion, and found themselves on level terms that concerned their economic and political outlook’. This reflected Irishmen’s ‘own inborn toleration’. The Irish Independent printed this quote with the attribution ‘Ald. Beamish (Protestant)’.215 A government supporter wrote to the paper that ‘I hope there would be a good sprinkling of Protestants in the new Dáil. Their presence would greatly tend to hasten the advent of a United Ireland.’216 Lord Glenavy said ‘the Free State Government has made good these assurances [to southern unionists] in every particular … I know of no single instance in which Southern Unionists have been prejudiced or ill-​treated by that legislation either in person or property or by any discrimination of any sort or kind.’217 William Thrift, a Protestant

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TD from Trinity, said ‘a notable characteristic of our debates here has been the absence from those debates of anything like religious intolerance or bad feeling’.218 Even when there were issues that directly involved religion, such as the famous debates about the banning of divorce, Protestant TDs were loath to raise the religious issue directly. W.B. Yeats’s speech against the Bill is well known, but Thrift made many similar points in his speech. He said that the Divorce Bill would ‘have the effect of imposing on the whole population the religious views, in respect of divorce, of the majority of the population’, but framed it by saying ‘I have the greatest reluctance to utter any word in this House which can be interpreted as having anything as a religious character’, and he conceded that ‘I have a strong conviction that fair treatment of all sections of the community was the wish and aim and actual action of the present Government.’219 Thrift also put this in the context of Northern Ireland: ‘Governments have special obligations to protect the rights of minorities within their borders. That obligation holds in respect of the sparse minority in the twenty-​six counties, and it holds similarly in respect of a large minority in the six counties.’220 There were other issues, though, in which the sectarian element was masked by euphemism. Landlords within the Farmers’ Union were referred to by J.J. Walsh as ‘anti-​Irish elements’, rather than as Protestants. Gorey referred to those same people as Freemasons, a more common reference: ‘we have Freemasons all over the country. Colonel this and Major that, and I have met that class in the Farmers’ Union, but I never saw much brains or constructive ideas about their work.’221 From the republican side, Seán T. O’Kelly told an election meeting that ‘the backbone of the Free State in Ireland was … the old Conservative pro-​British Freemason element’, while Sinn Féin referred to the ‘Unionist-​Freemason-​controlled Government’.222 There were also attacks on Thomas Johnson for his Protestantism, often from the Catholic Truth Society, although these too were often filtered through an emphasis on his Lancashire birth.223 The most significant row about Freemasonry came from the National Group. Seán Milroy had always been concerned about ‘anti-​Irish’ holdovers in the civil service, particularly the Finance Ministry, who were thought to dictate policy, and the National Group consequently made it one of the centrepieces of their criticism of the Government. At times, these elements were referred to as Freemasons, although ‘anti-​Irish’ or ‘anti-​National’ or ‘Ascendancy’ remained the most-​used terms. The political term ‘unionist’ was used less by the National Group, most probably because it was attacking a group of people that were working for and presumably acquiescing to the Free State. But Milroy used other terms –​‘Kildare Street Club’ or ‘West British Ascendancy’ –​that certainly would have conveyed Protestantism to an Irish audience.224

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Cumann na nGaedheal ministers immediately condemned this as sectarianism and bigotry, claiming that such language should be out of bounds in political discussion. O’Higgins denounced the National Group’s rhetoric as ‘a shame and a scandal’ and ‘an attempt to raise a spirit of bigotry –​a thing that never flourished in this country’.225 MacNeill, in criticising Milroy and McGrath, moved from class to religion as if they were synonyms: he was not … in favour of class war. One would think from what they heard that it would be an awful thing for a Protestant to hold high position in this country. If Wolfe Tone, Thomas Davis, or Parnell were alive today and held high position in the public life of the country, there were people who would accuse the Government of backing up Freemasons.

MacNeill commingled Protestants as a single group that included Wolfe Tone, Davis, and current finance officials, whatever the clear difference in their political outlooks. O’Higgins also mocked the notion that ‘non-​ Catholics in the civil service’ should be pensioned off under the Treaty’s provisions for such action. When Milroy and McGrath followed O’Higgins and MacNeill to the platform to defend themselves, they were heckled by someone who queried Milroy’s use of the term ‘Ascendency’ and yelled that ‘Protestants better than Catholics died for Ireland.’ Milroy, as he did on several occasions, denied that he was invoking religious difference and pointed to political difference as the key marker: ‘He wondered did Mr. MacNeill put Wolfe Tone on the same level as the Castle hacks that were kept by the Government?’ Ernest Blythe, a Protestant himself, said, ‘there had been a lot of talk about Freemasons, and there was never greater nonsense than that talk. He did not know whether any of the civil servants were Freemasons or not, but he knew that ninety percent of them were Catholics. In any case, they could not do anything.’226 The National League also criticised ‘racial hate and creed ascendency’, and Labour defended Johnson’s Protestantism often.227 The Voice of Labour observed that while ‘one or two people who are not Catholics’ were among its leaders, that was no excuse for ‘a direct incitement to the introduction of the kind of sectarian intolerance and bigotry into the Labour movement in the South as has rendered the Northern movement ineffective’.228 This comment gets to the heart of the rhetoric around Protestant incorporation into the politics of the new Free State, as the shadow of the north always hung over such discussions. The Free State leaders wanted to project their state as tolerant of the Protestant minority in a way that the northern state was not tolerant towards its more numerous Catholic minority. Southern politicians believed that politics in the north was drawn almost entirely around religious divisions, and there was a desire to depict Free

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State politics as working differently. Milroy demanded that the Boundary Commission guarantee better treatment for northern Catholics because ‘those who differ from the majority in the Saorstát enjoy full civil, religious and civic equality’.229 After Thrift spoke on the Divorce Bill, Patrick Baxter said: I think it would be a happy day for Ireland if a representative of the minority in the Northern Parliament could stand up there and give expression to the views that Deputy Thrift has given expression to here today. It would be a happy day if conditions were such in Northern Ireland that the minority there could, through their spokesmen and leaders in the Parliament of that State, say to the world that their treatment by the majority had been fair and just.230

Bryan Cooper, himself a Protestant and former British Army officer, said that he hoped the Belfast Government would treat the Catholic minority better and that his experience in the Dáil has led him to believe that Protestant and Catholic political differences were eroding in the Free State: ‘we judge questions on their merits; we judge questions as friends who want to see the best for our country, not as individuals who want to maintain the position of a particular interest or of a particular Party’.231 There were other ways in which the Free State compared itself favourably with the north: Blythe mentioned that the Land Act was better than what ‘the people across the border’ would get, and O’Higgins noted the lower taxes in the Free State and the funding of forward-​looking projects such as the Shannon Scheme.232 The existence of the Senate was also a key part of this image of tolerance, as the first Senate was almost 40 per cent Protestant and that body had been created to give expression to Protestant oppositional voices.233 Though tolerance of the Protestant minority was a key component of the attempt to make the Free State seem better than the northern state, it also demonstrated the uneasy incorporation of Protestants and Protestantism into the new Free State politics. Protestants were able to participate in the system, but often felt the need to disavow doing so specifically as Protestants. Certain parties, particularly the National Group and the Farmers, often made coded attacks on Protestants in positions of power, but also generally denied that they were targeting those elites because of their religion. Cumann na nGaedheal and the National League, as organisations that sought a Protestant electorate, continued with the ‘all classes and creeds’ appeal that had been pioneered by the Gaelic League and picked up by Sinn Féin. They were also quick to condemn what they saw as bigoted attacks on Protestants in groups such as the civil service. Protestants were in some ways integrated into the emerging political system, but generally in a way that stripped them of their identity as Protestants. Supporters identified them as simply Irishmen, and opponents labelled them Freemasons.

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Republicans were the last group that was unevenly integrated into the new politics, at first largely by choice. Initially, republicans resisted the transition to a politics based on economics and material concerns. They continued to advocate for a united national party based on loyalty to the republic and hostility to England. Mary MacSwiney said ‘it was unity … that defeated England, and it is unity that will defeat England again’. P.J. Ruttledge echoed ‘unity is essential and unity can only be obtained on the basis of a free and independent Ireland’.234 De Valera said in Carlow that ‘no matter what our class differences may be at home, we should, one and all, unite to prevent that interference from abroad’.235 Sinn Féin also retained the disdain toward politics from the revolutionary era. A Sinn Féin editorial declared that ‘the Republican movement is not a mere party in the political sense. It is a great National movement.’236 De Valera told the 1924 Sinn Féin Ard-​Fheis that ‘Sinn Féin is not a mere political machine but the citizenry organised for self-​help.’237 Caitlin Brugha ‘did not ask for votes in any Party interest, because they placed Ireland above all’.238 As the unity of this national movement was defined as against Britain, those on the Treatyite side were depicted as British lackeys. The Free State Government was, according to Mary MacSwiney, ‘that tottering erection of England’s in Merrion Street’.239 Helena Moloney called Treatyites ‘men with Irish names, but who were still mere instruments of the English government’.240 Far from being a national party, the Government was concerned only with the ‘welfare of the moneyed and middle classes’, and was representative of ‘the old Unionist gang’.241 Those who supported such a state were either West Britons themselves or driven by a desire for material gain or jobbery. They also were selling out other colonised peoples, as by furthering British interests in Ireland they allowed Britain to repress India or Egypt.242 Taken together, the definition of politics followed by republicans in 1923 and 1924 was very much similar to that during the revolution: they were a national movement united against the coloniser, and their opponents were either actively pro-​imperial or part of the detritus of the colonial period. Republicans also continued to wrestle with the rights of minorities in a democratic system, claiming that they respected majority rule while refusing to recognise the Free State. A lengthy multi-​issue feature in Sinn Féin called ‘THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE: Minorities in History’ set out the rights of minorities within a democratic state.243 The argument was a combination of common republican tropes dating from the Treaty debates: majorities did not have the right to give away Ireland’s independence; minorities had an obligation to protect that independence even in the face of indifference or hostility from the majority; and moral and practical limitations restrained any political principle, including the supremacy of the majority. The limitations in the Irish case included war fatigue, a corrupt and Anglophilic press, and

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misleading propaganda from Treaty supporters, all of which combined to make it difficult to ascertain the will of the people. Sinn Féin even claimed that the people supported the Treaty because of a ‘greed for peace’, a strange and telling phrase.244 De Valera observed that majority rule was ‘an inevitable rule of order’ that could clash with ‘the fundamental rights of the nation’, and that in that clash, the right of the nation to independence must prevail.245 Republicans also continued to undermine the particular legitimacy of the Free State parliament. De Valera referred to the Free Staters as usurpers, as Brugha had done in the Second Dáil, despite their majority status.246 They also said the Dáil was not a true national parliament because it ‘excluded from its assembly the representatives of the second greatest party in the state’.247 Its Bills were often passed by a minority of the representatives on account of abstention and poor attendance. Sinn Féin Notes remarked that O’Higgins’s Treason Bill was approved at one stage with twenty-​four votes, which was less than one-​sixth of the Dáil: ‘this is a travesty on the “Will of the People” ’.248 During a debate on the army, fifty-​three out of 105 oath-​taking members of the Fourth Dáil were absent, leading Sinn Féin Notes to call those TDs the real abstentionists.249 This kind of attendance undermined the notion that Cumann na nGaedheal were legislating via majority right, as the best they could get deputies to do was function like a political machine, ‘like the old Irish Party … walking in and out of the division lobbies in support of the Government’.250 The emphasis on a national party or movement survived the creation of Fianna Fáil, but, as Tim O’Neil has detailed, the republican movement began reinventing itself as an economic protest party in the mid-​1920s, a shift that would eventually lead to its entrance into the Dáil in August 1927.251 This action disrupted the emerging normal politics of the 1923–​27 period. It once again thrust politics to the forefront of discussion, dashing the hopes of the smaller parties that hoped a political system organised around economic difference would be to their advantage. It also undermined Cumann na nGaedheal’s attempt to present itself as the only constitutional national party, as republicans adopted parts of that same mantle. In fact, Fianna Fáil became an amalgam of the national party rhetoric of Cumann na nGaedheal and the economic concerns of the Labour and Farmers’ Parties, and through this combination it would come to power considerably faster than most expected. However, republicans’ entry into the Dáil as a ‘slightly constitutional party’ did not lead to the triumph of constitutionalism and the immediate normalisation of opposition, as Fianna Fáil’s rapid rise would drive Cumann na nGaedheal and later Fine Gael into different definitions of politics and opposition that would keep that issue alive well into the 1930s.

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Notes Irish Independent, 2 January 1922. 1 2 For Sinn Féin’s increasing focus on economics see Timothy M. O’Neil, ‘Reframing the Republic: Republican Socio-​Economic Thought and the Road to Fianna Fáil 1923–​26’, in A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s, ed. Mel Farrell, Jason Knirck, and Ciara Meehan (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2015), 157–​76. 3 Ian d’Alton, ‘  “No Country”? Protestant “Belongings” in Independent Ireland, 1922–​49’, in Protestant and Irish: The Minority’s Search for Place in Independent Ireland, ed. Ian d’Alton and Ida Milne (Cork: Cork University Press, 2019), 19–​33 (24). 4 Quoted in the Southern Star, 11 October 1924. 5 Strabane Chronicle, 14 March 1925. 6 Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution, Chapters 6–​11. 7 Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922–​ 1973 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007); Úna Newell, The West Must Wait: County Galway and the Irish Free State, 1922–​32 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). 8 Ciara Meehan, ‘Labour and Dáil Éireann, 1922–​32’, in Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912–​2012, ed. Paul Daly, Ronan O’Brien, and Paul Rouse (Wilton: Collins Press, 2012), 43–​53 (46). 9 Mel P. Farrell, ‘A “Cadre-​Style” Party? Cumann na nGaedheal Organisation in Clare, Dublin North, and Longford-​Westmeath 1923–​27’, Éire-​Ireland 47, nos. 3–​4 (Autumn/​Winter 2012): 91–​110. 10 Martin O’Donoghue, The Legacy of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Independent Ireland, 1922–​49 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), 83, 102. 11 Ann Matthews, Dissidents: Irish Republican Women, 1923–​1941 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012); Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries; McCarthy, Cumann na mBan. 12 Peter Hart, ‘The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland’, in Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture, ed. Richard English and Graham Walker (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 81–​98. 13 Caleb Wood Richardson, Smyllie’s Ireland: Protestants, Independence, and the Man who Ran the ‘Irish Times’ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019); d’Alton, ‘ “No Country”?’, 20. 14 DD, 25 October 1922. 15 Redmond quoted in Munster Express, 15 October 1926. Notes from National League Convention, 10 March 1927: Thomas O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186. 16 Patrick Hogan said this in the Dáil; DD, 23 November 1927. 17 Cork Examiner, 8 October 1925. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 10 October 1924.

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20 Voice of Labour, 14 January 1922. 21 Ibid., 23 September 1922. 22 Ibid., 16 February 1924. 23 Drogheda Herald, 4 June 1927. 24 Voice of Labour, 21 April 1923. 25 Ibid., 4 November 1922. 26 Ibid., 28 July 1923. 27 Ibid., 23 December 1922. 28 Ibid., 21 April 1923. 29 Ibid., 7 July 1923. 30 Ibid., 25 August 1923. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 12 May 1923. 33 Ibid., 2 June 1923. 34 Ibid., 12 July 1924. 35 Ibid., 12 May 1923. 36 Ibid., 25 August 1923. 37 Ibid., 1 September 1923. 38 See the work of Timothy O’Neil for the republican turn toward economic issues. 39 Voice of Labour, 18 August 1923. 40 Ibid., 15 March 1924. 41 Ibid., 29 March 1924. 42 Drogheda Independent, 4 June 1927. 43 Voice of Labour, 13 January 1923. 44 Ibid., 15 September 1923. 45 Freeman’s Journal, 9 November 1923. 46 Drogheda Independent, 4 June 1927. 47 Voice of Labour, 19 January 1924. 48 Irish Independent, 1 August 1923. 49 Voice of Labour, 1 May 1926. 50 Speech by Batt Laffan, 1923: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 19021. 51 Memorandum on Papers, Propaganda, and Publicity with Special Reference to Farming Publications, n.d.: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 43567/​4. 52 Irish Farmer, 24 December 1926. 53 Freeman’s Journal, 7 February 1923. 54 Ibid., 6 April 1923. 55 Irish Farmer, 28 August 1925. 56 Irish Independent, 19 May 1927. 57 Freeman’s Journal, 24 January 1923. 58 Irish Farmer, 25 June 1926. 59 Irish Independent, 10 May 1923. 60 Freeman’s Journal, 5 May 1923; Irish Independent, 10 August 1923. 61 Farmers’ Gazette, 9 April 1927. 62 A Farmers’ TD, Patrick Baxter, voted against the Boundary agreement.

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63 Irish Farmer, 28 August 1925. 64 Ibid., 18 December 1925. 65 Irish Independent, 26 July 1926. 66 Ibid., 30 December 1924. 67 Derry Journal, 18 July 1924. 68 Irish Independent, 10 May 1923. 69 Ibid., 19 May 1926. 70 Irish Farmer, 26 March 1926. 71 DD, 17 November 1922. 72 Irish Independent, 10 August 1926. 73 Irish Farmer, 29 October 1926. 74 See, for example, DD, 19 September 1922 and 14 December 1922. 75 Irish Independent, 21 September 1925. 76 Irish Farmer, 19 June 1925. 77 Freeman’s Journal, 7 February 1923. 78 Irish Farmer, 5 March 1926. 79 Irish Independent, 28 June 1926. 80 Ibid., 17 March 1926. 81 Speech by Batt Laffan, 1923: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 19021. 82 Minutes of meetings of the Dublin Central Organising Committee of the Irish National League, 10 March 1927: Thomas O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186. 83 Irish Independent, 13 May 1927; minutes of meetings of the Dublin Central Organising Committee of the Irish National League, 10 March 1927: O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186. 84 Cork Examiner, 29 November 1926. 85 Irish Independent, 2 June 1927. 86 Ibid., 15 August 1927. 87 Election poster for John Jinks, NLI ILB 300 p7. 88 Drogheda Independent, 17 September 1927. 89 Irish Independent, 1 September 1927. 90 Ibid., 2 June 1927. 91 See electoral poster for John Jinks, NLI ILB 300 p7; advertisement for R. P. Trench, Leinster Leader, 28 May 1927. 92 Anglo-​Celt, 9 April 1927. 93 Irish Independent, 11 October 1926. 94 Ibid., 8 February 1927. 95 For the role of ex-​servicemen in the Free State see generally Mandy Link, Remembrance of the Great War in the Irish Free State, 1914–​1937: Spectres of Empire (London: Palgrave, 2019); and Jason R. Myers, The Great War and Memory in Irish Culture, 1918–​ 2010 (Washington, DC: Academica Press, 2014). 96 Cork Examiner, 16 March 1927. 97 Drogheda Independent, 30 April 1927. 98 Minutes of meetings of the Dublin Central Organising Committee of the Irish National League, 10 March 1927: O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186.

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99 Cork Examiner, 18 October 1926. 100 Munster Express, 15 October 1926. 101 Minutes of meetings of the Dublin Central Organising Committee of the Irish National League, 10 March 1927: O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186. 102 Anglo-​Celt, 9 April 1927. 103 Drogheda Independent, 30 April 1927. 104 Minutes of meetings of the Dublin Central Organising Committee of the Irish National League, 10 March 1927: O’Donnell papers, NLI MS 16186. 105 Irish Independent, 11 October 1926. 106 Ibid., 23 April 1927. 107 Ibid., 8 February 1927. 108 Ibid. 109 DD, 14 December 1923. 110 Ibid., 31 January 1923. 111 Ibid., 14 June 1923. 112 Reprinted in Irish Independent, 29 December 1924. 113 Southern Star, 21 March 1925. 114 DD, 15 June 1923. 115 See McKayla Sutton, ‘ “Harnessed in the Service of the Nation”: Party Politics and the Promotion of the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme, 1924–​32’, in Farrell, Knirck, and Meehan, A Formative Decade, 86–​107. 116 The Nation, February 1925; Seán Milroy, Protection for Irish Industries: The Report of the Fiscal Inquiry Committee. An Answer and a Reply (Dublin: Irish Protection League, 1924): Seán Milroy papers, NLI MS 46066. 117 Cork Examiner, 25 March 1927. 118 Daly, Industrial Development, 44. 119 Quoted in Irish Farmer, 5 November 1926. 120 Cumann na nGaedheal Annual Convention Summary, May 1925: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​616. 121 Irish Independent, 11 April 1927. 122 Cork Examiner, 29 March 1927. 123 Cumann na nGaedheal Annual Convention Summary, May 1925: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​616. Emphasis in original. 124 Irish Independent, 10 May 1927. 125 Cork Examiner, 18 April 1927. 126 Irish Independent, 8 February 1927. 127 The Nation, 29 March 1927: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 16. 128 Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution. 129 For further background on the CPA see Martin, Freedom to Choose. 130 Cork Examiner, 4 July 1923. 131 Ibid., 25 August 1923. 132 Ibid., 3 September 1923. 133 Ibid., 27 July 1923. 134 Ibid., 3 September 1923.

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135 Ibid., 16 June 1923. 136 Irish Independent, 20 July 1923. 137 Cork Examiner, 22 August 1923. 138 Ibid., 25 August 1923; ibid., 10 October 1924. 139 Ibid., 7 August 1923. 140 Ibid., 15 June 1924; Irish Independent, 20 July 1923. Horgan later was elected to the Dáil as a National League candidate. 141 Irish Independent, 20 July 1923. 142 Cork Examiner, 25 August 1923. 143 For the difficulties this caused Cumann na nGaedheal see Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution. 144 Fermanagh Herald, 30 August 1924. 145 Anglo-​Celt, 24 May 1924. 146 The Nation, February 1925: Milroy papers, NLI MS 66360. 147 Anglo-​Celt, 6 December 1924. 148 Ibid., 24 May and 6 December 1924. 149 The Nation, February 1925: Milroy papers, NLI MS 66360. Election, c. February 150 Statement by Seán Milroy, North (Dublin) City By-​ 1925: Milroy papers, NLI MS 66360. 151 Cork Examiner, 10 May 1924. 152 Ibid. 153 Derry Journal, 24 December 1924. 154 Quoted in the Freeman’s Journal, 7 July 1924. 155 Irish Independent, 19 January 1925. 156 Cork Examiner, 12 January 1925; Connaught Telegraph, 8 November 1924. 157 Derry Journal, 31 October 1924. 158 Westmeath Independent, 10 January 1925. 159 Cumann na nGaedheal election handbill, c. 1923: NLI ILB 300 p7. 160 Cumann na nGaedheal Annual Convention Summary, May 1925: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​616. 161 Meath Chronicle, 14 May 1927. 162 Memorandum, ‘Suggested New System of Representation’, c. 1925: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​198(3). 163 Irish Independent, 11 April 1927. 164 Fermanagh Herald, 10 September 1927. 165 Irish Independent, 11 April 1927. 166 Quoted in Derry Journal, 31 October 1924. 167 Irish Independent, 11 April 1927. 168 Ibid., 14 September 1927. 169 Derry Journal, 31 October 1924. 170 Cork Examiner, 12 January 1925. 171 Anglo-​Celt, 6 December 1924. 172 Ibid. 173 Freeman’s Journal, 10 November 1924. 174 Irish Independent, 19 May 1924.

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175 Quoted in Drogheda Independent, 19 December 1925. 176 Cork Examiner, 29 March 1927. 177 Offaly Independent, 5 February 1927. 178 Cork Examiner, 8 October 1925. 179 See ibid., 11 May 1923. 180 Irish Independent, 29 October 1923. 181 Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1923. 182 Voice of Labour, 4 August 1923. 183 Sinn Féin, 8 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 184 For more on the long-​term implications of this change see Shonk, Ireland’s New Traditionalists. 185 Sinn Féin, 8 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. Dev ‘addressed’ the meeting by jotting down notes and headings while imprisoned in the north and having those musings read to the assembled delegates. 186 Voice of Labour, 4 August 1923. 187 See, e.g., Johnson speaking in the Drogheda Independent, 4 June 1927; Voice of Labour, 9 June 1923. 188 DD, 27 March and 20 April 1923. 189 Voice of Labour, 25 August 1923. 190 Ibid., 29 January 1927. 191 Memorandum on Papers, Propaganda, and Publicity with Special Reference to Farming Publications, n.d.: Farmers’ Party papers, NLI MS 43567/​4 192 William Redmond was given a gift by the ‘Women’s National League’ at a speaking engagement at the British Legion Club in Waterford in 1927, and he thanked the Ladies’ National League Association after his election in June 1927. Cork Examiner, 23 September 1927; Munster Express, 17 June 1927. 193 Irish Independent, 14 September 1927. 194 J. Hoey to Milroy, 6 March 1925: Milroy papers, NLI MS 46846. 195 ‘Women’s Place in the Sun’, Irish Statesman, 3 December 1927: Sheehy-​ Skeffington papers, NLI MS 33617(3). 196 Irish Independent, 11 March 1924, 11 February 1927. 197 See his argument in the Senate as described in the Cork Examiner, 9 April 1927; and DD, 22 March 1927. 198 Freeman’s Journal, 10 March 1924. 199 Irish Independent, 17 November 1925. 200 Ibid., 20 October 1926. 201 Ibid., 16 February 1927. 202 Ibid., 18 February 1927. 203 See a letter from the IWCA in the Freeman’s Journal, 3 December 1923. 204 Irish Independent, 9 November 1923. 205 Ibid., 20 October 1926, 17 February 1927. 206 Ibid., 21 February 1927. 207 Ibid., 1 March 1927.

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208 Ibid., 9 April 1927. 209 Offaly Independent, 5 February 1927. 210 An article in the Drogheda Independent covered a campaign stop in Balbriggan in great detail; Drogheda Independent, 4 June 1927. 211 Ibid. 212 Ibid. 213 Irish Independent, 14 February 1927. 214 Sinn Féin, 15 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 215 Irish Independent, 1 September 1923. 216 Ibid., 1 August 1923. 217 Seánad Debates, 17 October 1924, www.oir​each​tas.ie./​en/​deba​tes/​ (accessed 17 July 2022). 218 DD, 9 December 1925. 219 Ibid., 2 November 1925. 220 Ibid. 221 Irish Independent, 16 May and 26 May 1927. 222 Ibid., 19 May 1924; Sinn Féin Notes, 18 July 1925: Fianna Fáil papers, UCDA P176/​18. These will hereafter be cited as FF papers. 223 Farmers’ TD Michael Doyle said this about Johnson, for example; Irish Independent, 15 September 1927. 224 See, for example, typescript of Milroy’s speech in Cootehill, 1 May 1927: Milroy papers: NLI MS 46846; Nationalist and Leinster Times, 17 January 1925. 225 This and the following quotations are from the Nationalist and Leinster Times, 17 January 1925. 226 Derry Journal, 24 December 1924. 227 National League Party Statement of Policy, c. 1927: Thomas Johnson papers, NLI MS 17172. 228 Voice of Labour, 20 October 1923. 229 DD, 13 June 1924. 230 Ibid., 9 December 1925. 231 Ibid., 5 December 1925. 232 Derry Journal, 24 December 1924; Offaly Independent, 20 August 1927. 233 For an analysis of the Senate’s role as a nonpartisan opposition see Elaine A. Byrne, ‘A Unique Experiment in Idealism: The Irish Senate 1922–​28’, in Farrell, Knirck, and Meehan, A Formative Decade, 59–​85. 234 Sinn Féin, 20 October 1923: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 235 Ibid., 11 October 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 236 Ibid., 3 January 1925: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 237 Ibid., 8 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 238 Cork Examiner, 25 August 1923.

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239 Sinn Féin, 20 October 1923: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 240 Ibid., 13 October 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 241 Ibid., 6 December, 27 December 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 242 Ibid., 29 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 243 Ibid., 6 October and 13 October 1923: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 244 Ibid. 245 Untitled notes by de Valera, c. 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23 (21). This is probably an early version of one of the speeches he gave on the foundation of Fianna Fáil. 246 Sinn Féin, 15 November 1924: Canon Rogers papers, BC Burns Library, Box IV, Folder 18. 247 Sinn Féin Notes, 21 February 1925: FF papers, UCDA P176/​18. 248 Ibid., 21 March and 4 April 1925: FF papers, UCDA P176/​18. 249 Ibid., 16 May 1925: FF papers, UCDA P176/​18. 250 Ibid., 20 June 1925: FF papers, UCDA P176/​18. 251 O’Neil, ‘Reframing the Republic’.

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5 A slightly constitutional opposition

On ‘a very dull morning’ in November 1930, standing in front of Leinster House in his formal dress, President Cosgrave spoke to the cameras of British Pathé studios. He talked about the role of Ireland in the world economy and his reasons for believing that international capitalist structures would right themselves, but he started his talk by noting that ‘the apparatus to which I am now speaking for the first time affords one very stimulating thought: it gives no opportunity for the opposition to interrupt or to tend towards pessimism, and therefore I have … the field almost entirely to myself’.1 He was, in fact, interrupted by an automotive horn. Cosgrave was presumably joking about the absence of opposition, but the comment does betray a feeling that the Government struggled to get its message across in the face of active opposition. Opposition certainly broadened during the period from 1927 to 1932. Fianna Fáil’s entry into the Dáil in August 1927 completely altered ideas about normal politics in the Free State. The efforts of the small parties to foreground economic issues and push politics and civil war hatreds into the background were undermined by the entry of the other civil war party into constitutional politics. The desire to focus on economics remained, but the small parties’ role in creating this new normal political practice evaporated almost completely after Labour, the National League, and Fianna Fáil failed by one vote to topple the Government in August 1927. The hope of a politics operating independent of Sinn Féin dissolved also. After 1927, the political structure advocated by Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil echoed much of the politics of the revolutionary period, with the model being a large cross-​class united party composed of all those who considered themselves nationalists. The parties’ policies and membership were to be rooted in revolutionary experience, again excluding the small parties. There had been some changes since the Sinn Féin days, most notably in that there were now two great united parties instead of one, but also in that economics were newly to the fore, as each party accused its rivals of unnecessary focus on political red herrings. Generally, though, the desired style of

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politics after 1927 was dominated by cross-​class parties; the fielding of sufficient candidates to form a government; and, for Fianna Fáil at least, a Dáil that included all of the nation’s representatives, as the oath had morphed in Fianna Fáil’s propaganda from an issue of external political loyalty to one of internal political rights. In the mid-​1920s, the hope –​or fear, depending on one’s political perspective –​was that economic issues would be fought out in an atmosphere that was not dominated by the Sinn Féin split. The Farmers’ Party, Labour, and the National League all tried to build platforms on addressing economic issues that would shape a standard left–​right political spectrum. This was showing signs of working electorally, but once Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil, the efforts of the small parties were torpedoed, partly because this foregrounded the national issue again, and partly because Fianna Fáil co-​ opted many of the concerns initially raised by the Farmers’ and Labour Parties. As Labour’s The Irishman wrote in late 1927, ‘Mr. de Valera was engaged in the accustomed task of stealing the Labour Party’s thunder.’2 As with the 1923–​27 period, historians have often passed over many of the developments between 1927 and 1932 other than the entry of Fianna Fáil into the Dáil and the transfer of power in 1932. According to Regan, Cumann na nGaedheal merely continued to act according to the mindset of 1922.3 Mel Farrell also pinpoints the summer of 1927 as crucial, as the time at which the Free State became ‘a normal functioning democracy marked by keen electoral competition between the two main parties’. The following five years ‘proved critical in further stabilising the politics in independent Ireland in advance of the Great Depression’.4 As for Cumann na nGaedheal, the impression given from most histories is that of a party past its prime, incapable of adapting and waiting to be swamped by an inevitable Fianna Fáil wave. R.M. Douglas observes that Cumann na nGaedheal persisted in office because of the ‘inadequacy of its opposition rather than the popularity of its policies’.5 Mary Daly argues that Cumann na nGaedheal adopted the fundamentally antimodern tenets of nineteenth-​century Irish nationalism in its focus on agriculture, a choice that doomed it given the collapse in trade and agricultural prices after the war.6 Laura Cahillane contends that Cumann na nGaedheal, in allowing the alteration of the constitution by ordinary amendment throughout its tenure, essentially nullified any attempts to create a constitutional state, as the courts followed the doctrine that any law that appeared repugnant to a constitutional provision should be read as in fact making that alteration. Cahillane called this the doctrine of ‘implicit amendment’ and claimed that it made a mockery of normal constitutional law.7 There has been some work on the rise of Fianna Fáil. Regan’s otherwise detailed coverage of the first fifteen years of the state glosses over the 1927–​ 32 period, focusing mostly on the summer of 1927 and the 1932 election

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campaign. He argues that Fianna Fáil joined the ranks of the counter-​ revolutionaries in 1927, as evidenced by their condemnation of O’Higgins’s assassination and their entry into constitutional politics.8 The most substantial analysis of the creation of Fianna Fáil is Richard Dunphy’s The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland 1923–​1948. Dunphy characterises Fianna Fáil’s rise as the product of its ability to highlight economic issues that appealed to a cross-​ class constituency, while still using nationalist talking-​points as ‘a back-​up weapon with which to put rivals on the defensive and to consolidate a bloc of social forces’.9 While Dunphy’s book is no Fianna Fáil apologia, it perhaps unintentionally gives the impression that Fianna Fáil was always cleverer and more far-​seeing than the other parties, which raises the question as to whether Fianna Fáil’s success was mostly due to the other parties’ incompetence. Ken Shonk’s recent Ireland’s New Traditionalists argues that Fianna Fáil discarded most of Sinn Féin’s positions in order to craft a message that fitted within the new democratic politics of the Free State and the emerging anxieties of the interwar period, particularly those relating to changing gender roles. Fianna Fáil sought to fashion a new Irish man who was dynamic, industrial, and productive, as well as a new Irish woman who was active, consumerist, and committed to buying Irish. This package was ‘constructed to assuage the anxieties of the period through the construction of a nationalist party aesthetic that heralded an age of national regeneration’.10 The smaller parties, particularly Labour, have received more credit of late for their achievements at this time. Arthur Mitchell and J. Anthony Gaughan praised the party for its role in normalising constitutional politics by encouraging Fianna Fáil to enter the Dáil in 1927 and by building up the prestige of that institution.11 All of this points to a consensus that 1927 was crucial and that it established normal politics in the Free State. Richard Finnegan wrote that by 1927 ‘both parties, though with different rhetoric and constituencies, had accepted the path of constitutional government. Irish democracy was no less admired by de Valera and Fianna Fáil than by Cosgrave and Cumann na nGaedheal.’12 While certainly 1927 brought change, the nature and permanence of that change has been both underdefined and overstated. The entry of Fianna Fáil into the Dáil marked the first step in the eventual ascendance of that party, but at the time, it was assumed to pave the way for the minor parties, as a Labour and National League coalition was primed to take power in the summer of 1927. Even in the aftermath of O’Higgins’s assassination, the normality that many observers believed to be pending was the rise of a multiparty state focused on economic issues, with strong contributions from the ‘sectional’ parties: the same kind of normality that had been pursued by those same parties. That did not happen, but its failure was not apparent in 1927.

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The commitment to constitutional politics by the two large parties also needs a bit more nuanced discussion. Redmond and Johnson argued that Fianna Fáil should get the benefit of the doubt because it entered the Dáil, but even its putative coalition partners in 1927 were somewhat unsure of its allegiance to democratic forms, and many Fianna Fáil speakers continued to assert the party’s conditional acceptance of Free State institutions. Cumann na nGaedheal, meanwhile, would resort to extraconstitutional measures with its embrace of fascistic elements in 1933. Too much emphasis on the stability of 1927 assumes, often implicitly, that this dalliance was merely a blip, rather than part of an ongoing process by which Cumann na nGaedheal attempted to institute a certain type of ‘national’ political practice. In fact, both parties committed, however half-​heartedly, to constitutional norms in 1927, but they also continued to promote a style of politics that emphasised a single national movement united against internal or external enemies. They had little use for other parties and continued to denigrate coalition government as inherently unstable. It is less a question of whether the two large parties were constitutional or antidemocratic, and more a question of what kind of democracy each envisioned and how the other parties attempted to fit within or resist those hegemonic visions. Those relationships changed during the 1927–​32 period, as there was a long-​awaited push to focus on economic issues that did not end up favouring the sectional parties as many had hoped or feared. The founding of Fianna Fáil was a monumental event in the history of the state, although observers at the time certainly did not anticipate the juggernaut that it became. Fianna Fáil was established in 1926 after de Valera lost a vote in Sinn Féin, ostensibly over whether the party could enter the Free State Dáil if the oath was removed (the majority of Sinn Féin delegates voted no), but the real concern was the increasing futility of abstention. Republican leaders such as de Valera, Markievicz, and Lemass were progressively more sceptical of abstentionism and, like many protest parties, Fianna Fáil worried whether voters would continue to support a party seemingly uninterested in gaining power. From the outset, the new party’s leaders indicated its focus would be on economic matters, as the process of ‘reframing the Republic’ in economic terms had been consolidated by 1926.13 Seán Lemass wrote in An Phoblacht in 1925: ‘teach them [the Irish people] that National Independence means real concrete advantages for the common people and not merely an idealists’ paradise, and they will be with us’.14 This was Fianna Fáil’s big gamble: that many of the people disillusioned with the Free State and voting for an abstentionist party were doing so not because of the abstract republic, but out of a deeper disappointment with the outcomes of the revolution. Lemass usually gets most of the credit

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for this ultimately successful strategy, but O’Neil also cites Markievicz and Kathleen Lynn as advocates for a more sharply defined economic policy.15 In announcing the split and his intention to found a new movement, de Valera tried to assure Irish America that the ‘republican party’ was still concerned about sovereign independence and would not focus wholly on economics, but the reality was that much of Fianna Fáil’s early appeal rested on economic criticisms of the Government.16 Armed with a new party-​approved flexibility toward the legitimacy of the Free State Dáil, Fianna Fáil argued more strenuously against the oath in order to smooth their way into parliament. Although the party certainly emphasised that the oath pledged fealty to a foreign king, they increasingly reworked their criticism of it as something that prevented the growth of legitimate opposition. The Free State Dáil was depicted as problematic not only because of its origins (as the previous republican arguments had stressed), but because of its composition and the fact that the second largest party in the state was ‘barred’ from entry. In founding the party in May 1926, de Valera articulated his own willingness to enter the Dáil if the oath were removed, as well as his concerns that the current Free State constitution had been unduly dictated by England. But he also explained how the oath limited the representative nature of the assembly: ‘At the present moment it [the Dáil] is not representative of the twenty-​six counties because there is a large section of our people who are not represented at all.’ If the oath were eliminated, ‘then we could have a central government and from it we would be ultimately able to arrive at an all-​Ireland assembly’.17 Describing the summer of 1922, a Fianna Fáil writer said that Free Staters mandated the oath for entry into the Dáil –​something republican lawyers thought unnecessary –​and that ‘thus freed from Republican opposition within the Parliament, the Free State Government prosecuted the Civil War’.18 The oath was referred to as a ‘political test’, rhetorically linking it with the various Test Acts that had long kept Catholics out of Westminster.19 This approach dated back to the civil war, at the end of which Sinn Féin’s cease-​fire proposals agreed to accept majority rule ‘as determining national policy from day to day’ as long as the inalienability of national and popular sovereignty was admitted and there existed ‘the right of free and uncompromised entry into the assembly where national policy was being determined’. The maintenance of the oath was a barrier to the national and parliamentary unity that Fianna Fáil desired because the oath meant that ‘nearly one-​half of the electorate was shut out from having an effective voice in determining their rulers’. The oath was in many ways the focus of republican opposition during the Treaty debates, but by the time Fianna Fáil was founded, the discussion of it was less about the individual consciences of TDs and more about its internal political effects. It was, put simply,

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‘the primary barrier to national unity’.20 Fianna Fáil candidates pledged to remove the oath and thereby unlock a more functional political system. Agnes O’Farrelly, running for a UCD Dáil seat in June 1927, argued that ‘full representation of every class in the community will be the best guarantee of that stability of government without which there will be no progress’. She then swore to work to remove ‘such tests as would debar any section of the Irish people from participating fully in the public or educational life of the country’.21 A Fianna Fáil handbill from spring 1927 imagined all the possible advances ‘if there were no oath’, such as a Dublin parliament that could ‘represent the real feelings of the people’ and that ‘all the Nationalist elements could come together in the same Parliament’. Lest this seem an ecumenical gesture to Cumann na nGaedheal, though, the advertisement also promised that ‘the pro-​British minority would no longer control the Government of the Twenty-​Six Counties’.22 The latter pledge indicates another feature of early Fianna Fáil: it very much promoted itself as a revival of the old Sinn Féin model of politics. The party depicted itself as a cross-​class all-​encompassing party, much as Sinn Féin had done and as Cumann na nGaedheal was still doing. Martin Maguire wrote that ‘the binary opposition of the revolutionary movement was between Irishness and Englishness’.23 This remained true in Fianna Fáil propaganda, although by the 1920s, ‘Englishness’ was often conflated with Protestantism, unionism, and Freemasonry. Fianna Fáil sought to construct a movement, not a political party, that united all citizens who were pro-​ Irish. A party handbill from 1927 said ‘there are only two sides’. The ‘FOR IRELAND’ side was not specifically defined by class or occupation but was ‘those who love Ireland and would serve her’. The ‘AGAINST IRELAND’ side was more specific: ‘Imperialists, Unionists, Free Masons, Job-​hunters, Ex-​Black and Tans, Bailiffs, Those who gave away Six Counties, Those who agree to pay six millions yearly to England, ex-​ judges’.24 Certain characteristics, vocations, or affiliations defined Ireland’s opponents, whereas Ireland’s friends need only love her without membership in any of the delineated groups. The revolutionary roots of this trope are betrayed by the inclusion of the non-​Irish Black and Tans. Frank Aiken made the same appeal while holding out a small olive branch to former Cumann na nGaedheal supporters: ‘We can, I believe, unite all who love Ireland and hate to see her dominated by England –​both those who have proved themselves strong, brave, and self-​sacrificing beyond telling, and those who, because of one or other of our many little human weaknesses, failed, as St. Peter failed, to be true and brave all the time.’25 After being asked about whether Fianna Fáil supported Connolly’s vision of a workers’ republic, de Valera claimed ‘I for one can never think in terms of any section whatever of the community. I have never been able to think in

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terms of any one class’, although he did concede ‘the workers at present are not treated as they should be treated’.26 This was the challenge for Fianna Fáil: it wanted to be a populist party, but feared that too close an identification with any particular section of the people would jeopardise its desire to be an all-​encompassing movement. The sectional parties invoked populism by advocating for particular groups of people that they perceived were on the outs with the new state –​workers, farmers, ex-​Irish Party members, businessmen –​and even Cumann na nGaedheal identified particular groups that had been harmed by the civil war, such as investors, ranchers, and others who required security of property. Fianna Fáil wanted a broader populism than that practised by the smaller parties, and mirrored the emerging fascist parties in Europe (this is not to say that Fianna Fáil was fascist) by merging very specific targeted appeals with calls for cross-​class unity.27 This desire for unity was a call-​back to revolutionary Sinn Féin, but was also, as Shonk highlights, a response to interwar fears of class conflict and fragmented sectional politics. De Valera wrote to Irish-​American supporter Joe McGarrity in 1925 and articulated these anxieties: It is vital that the Free State be shaken at the next general election, for if an opportunity is given it to consolidate itself as an institution –​if the present Free State members are replaced by Farmers and Labourers and other class interests, the national interest as a whole will be submerged in the clashing of rival economic groups. It seems to be a case of now or never –​at least in our time.28

As with many contemporary observers, de Valera feared that Irish politics would normalise sectional interests and class conflict short of some intervention by republicans. Once again, the conditions eagerly awaited by the Farmers, Labour, and the National League in the 1920s were seen as negatives by Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil. The response was to emphasise unity, particularly in Fianna Fáil’s early days when the rise of the small parties seemed inevitable. They recognised the irony in calling for unity while splitting with Sinn Féin, but appreciated the familiarity of such an appeal. Seán T. O’Kelly linked unity with economic development: ‘any chance they had of restoring economic prosperity to Ireland could only be given to them by electing a majority of men and women, representing truly every class in the community who had the interests of the nation at heart’.29 This unity would transcend the interests of a party. As Fianna Fáil candidate Eamonn Cooney said in Kilkenny, ‘Fianna Fáil aimed at directing the people to think in terms of the nation rather than of parties … [T]‌here are in Ireland to-​day, as in the past, only two parties –​ those who stood for a free and unfettered Irish nation, and those who stood for the Imperial connection.’30 This was the same division articulated during

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the revolution. For the September 1927 election, de Valera told American supporters that he wanted ‘all friends of Irish Ireland to unite and to come to our aid in this final battle against English imperialism’.31 The notion of sub-​party organisation, with shifting and temporary factions, had collapsed under fears of permanent instability, and what remained from the hoped-​for ‘Irish’ polity of 1922 was supra-​party politics, aimed at uniting the nation against an external foe. Armed with an economic focus, a reframing of the oath as a domestic political issue, and a call for renewed revolutionary unity against imperialism, Fianna Fáil joined the political fray in 1926. They were not committed to entering the Dáil while the oath remained and were wary of having their vitality sapped by too close an association with parliamentary politics, as Lemass thought had happened with Labour.32 This was the most seismic change that had affected Free State politics heading into the crucial summer of 1927, but there had been others. Cumann na nGaedheal’s fear of the normalisation of sectional politics had increased, and they pressed for a merger with the Farmers’ Party. The Farmers’ Party initially decided to remain independent, but its leader, Denis Gorey, defected to Cumann na nGaedheal. He did so in the name of creating a united front: ‘fusion would have meant that the strongest party in the State would be overwhelmingly agricultural … Our object can be attained only by massing our forces into one harmonious whole.’33 The later leader of the Farmers’ Party, Michael Heffernan, opposed the merger, claiming that small parties had a place because most governments would be coalitions under proportional representation. The pressure from the Government to merge with Cumann na nGaedheal was ‘a selfish effort to defeat the inevitable ends of that system’.34 As the country faced a general election in June 1927, Heffernan’s diagnosis seemed correct. The parties not descended from Sinn Féin received their highest-​ever collective vote totals, and Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil together received barely over 50 per cent of first-​preference votes. Cumann na nGaedheal was only able to form a government because of the abstention of Fianna Fáil and the support of most independents. Cumann na nGaedheal was very worried about the threat from the Farmers and the National League on the right, so much so that the party spent much of the campaign praising Thomas Johnson and attacking the two right-​ leaning parties.35 The Farmers, for their part, ran as a law-​and-​order party distinct from Cumann na nGaedheal, and the National League emphasised its opposition to partition and the Government’s reckless spending.36 The drive to a normal politics seemed to be progressing apace, but the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins in July 1927 changed all this. Famously, it led to the series of events that brought Fianna Fáil into the Dáil, but it also reinjected ‘politics’ into Irish electoral struggles and derailed the attempts to

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make politics about economics and sectional interests. Observers, particularly those connected to the smaller parties, recognised this immediately and feared its consequences. The Farmers’ Gazette lamented that the brief Fifth Dáil had no time for economic discussion because of the political chaos that arose after the assassination. The Farmers assured their voters that this was only temporary because ‘the economic problems which are, and have been, our great concern cannot be solved by purely political expedients … [T]‌his country cannot go on indefinitely disputing about political theories and the sooner the country concentrates on economic questions the better it will be for everybody.’37 Johnson similarly told an audience that ‘a strong Labour party was necessary to ensure that a focus on economic issues was maintained in the House’.38 After the inconclusive June election, the murder of O’Higgins, and the Government’s heavy-​ handed response, Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil on 12 August 1927. The manoeuvring that led up to the failed vote of no confidence in Cosgrave displayed all of the competing notions of politics that were at play in the Free State. Thomas Johnson worked assiduously to assemble a coalition that would topple the Government and eventually brokered a deal by which Labour, the National League, and some independents would form a government with Fianna Fáil support. Johnson was to be prime minister, with Redmond serving as minister for external affairs. For the first time in the history of the state, there were potential alternative governments: either Fianna Fáil, Johnson’s coalition, or a coalition of right-​leaning parties. As Johnson said in introducing the no-​confidence motion, this was a major step in the development of the country and the coming to fruition of a normal politics under proportional representation. Cumann na nGaedheal was itself, according to Johnson, a rather loose coalition, and ‘there is nothing at all extraordinary in the idea that there may be other coalitions possible for this country … which were inevitable once Ministers introduced the constitutional scheme which rightly, in my opinion, provided the system of proportional representation’.39 Johnson said that the country ‘needed a rest from turmoil and trouble, that there was need for a period of settlement, for a period of reconstruction, for a period of devoted national service’. This could be provided by a government that was not made up of civil war opponents. Such a government could protect democracy, because if Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil opposed each other directly in the Dáil ‘the possibilities of carrying on Parliamentary Government successfully … are very much less’. The day before the vote, Johnson sent a statement to the press arguing that ‘a Government from outside the two contending sections of the Sinn Féin split should hold office for a period sufficiently long enough to clarify to some degree the vitiated political atmosphere resulting from the Treaty split and civil war, which still hangs around us and prevents

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healthy growth’.40 This was the opportunity for the small parties’ version of normal politics: a peaceful change of government, the preservation of the Treaty, and a government run by sectional interests. While certainly personal ambition was involved, Johnson also genuinely believed this would create a healthier politics. Redmond defended his alliance with Labour in similar terms. He said the vote ‘was no mere trial of strength between rival groups anxious for victory in the game of Party politics. It is a crisis which marks a turning point in the history of the country.’ The options were ‘a sterile perpetuation of an embittered feud’ or ‘the adoption of wholesome and beneficent processes of growth in the inner political life of our country’. Redmond wanted a coalition government of non-​Sinn Féiners that could end the ‘wretched vendetta that is bedevilling the fair name of Ireland’.41 Privately, Redmond told Johnson to take leadership of the coalition because Labour had larger numbers and Johnson had long experience of opposition. The National League, with its prerevolutionary political experience, would ‘contribute a minor force, a certain imponderable moral element and a capacity for holding a watching brief’.42 Redmond believed such a coalition could also assist Fianna Fáil with the transition from poachers to gamekeepers that Cumann na nGaedheal had already made.43 Both parties also criticised Cosgrave’s government for trampling the constitution. Labour noted again that the Government’s repressive measures after O’Higgins’s assassination commanded the support of a minority of TDs (forty-​eight out of 140 for the Second Reading of the Constitutional Amendment Act) because of abstention.44 Redmond said the Government was ‘hindering rather than helping the cause of constitutionalism’ by arrogating to itself unconstitutional powers and removing all checks on the executive, and that they also committed ‘the stale old blunder of attacking the legitimate exercise of constitutional rights and political action under the pretext of seeking to suppress or prevent crime’, adding the stinger that ‘there are a good many people in the Saorstát who still remember that stale old blunder being perpetrated in Ireland by the British Government’.45 Fellow National League member James Coburn supported Redmond and noted that he ‘opposed Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal when they were both united in the year 1916’.46 Another National League supporter said that Redmond had a ‘grand opportunity’ to alter politics for the better, as the country was ‘sick of the bandying of political shibboleths while the state was struggling for existence’.47 Cumann na nGaedheal defended itself by articulating a different vision for democracy. It thought that sidelining the two largest parties in the state was anything but democratic, as was having the state headed by a coalition that commanded a small fraction of TDs. Even before Fianna Fáil entered

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the Dáil, Cosgrave complained about their outsized influence and the continuing electoral relevance of the Treaty split: the opponents of the Treaty are in a minority of one-​third of the electors. The issue of the Treaty has now been before the people at least three times. It is time that parliamentary institutions were protected from prostitution by a minority. This country has been run on the most democratic lines … minorities are amply recognised and provided for. But the majority has its rights too.48

Hogan said that de Valera still claimed ‘that the differences between majority rule and minority right would yet have to be bloodily fought out’, and that Fianna Fáil attacked ‘not so much individual members of this Government, but the Government itself, the Oireachtas, which represents the majority of the people’.49 Cosgrave and his colleagues also rejected coalitions as dangerous, in line with their new interpretation of postrevolutionary politics. The President said he ran against coalitions and had not changed his mind in the weeks since the election. Despite lamenting the re-​emergence of the Treaty issue, he also sneered at the economic foundations of this particular coalition, noting that Johnson was willing to enter a coalition with him in the aftermath of O’Higgins’s death but now wanted to bring down the Government over its poor handling of the economy. Cosgrave said ‘if I am a bad economist today, I was, apparently, much the same bad economist four or five weeks ago’. He believed that Fianna Fáil would control the coalition from outside, and condemned the lack of openness about their role, deploying Wilsonian language to condemn ‘secret agreements secretly arrived at’.50 John Marcus O’Sullivan, the minister for education, made a similar point. He admitted that the entry of Fianna Fáil was ‘a distinct advance for the Constitution’, but charged Labour with not disclosing the terms of their agreement with Fianna Fáil: ‘Why did the man who has come to us to preach Constitutionalism, to preach the advantage of deliberative assemblies, remain silent on that bargain?’ He also said that Johnson kept the Dáil in session previously to conduct futile opposition when the Government had the numbers to pass Bills, and said ‘it was the business of Parliament to do so, and yet, on the most essential point in this whole debate he was eloquent in his silence’. O’Sullivan also noted that a newly independent and postrevolutionary nation could not risk the kind of political deals that were characteristic of normal politics elsewhere: ‘they plunge into this gamble … without the faintest realisation of what they are facing. They apply to us here in this country exactly the same maxims and ideals as are applied to countries with half a century of settled government and accustomed to changes of party’.51 The message was clear: the Free State was not ready for the kind of normal politics expected by the smaller

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parties, and to experiment with anything but a large national party risked instability and collapse. The Farmers’ Party supported Cosgrave in the no-​confidence motion but did so while continuing to advocate a version of politics distinct from that of Cumann na nGaedheal. Patrick Baxter, the leader of the party after Gorey’s defection, said ‘the Farmers’ Party are not going to turn down President Cosgrave and install Deputy Johnson in his place. … The Farmers’ Party are not taking a decision on this motion on political grounds. They are taking it on economic grounds.’ Baxter said that he would welcome a coalition government, but one with clearer aims that could protect the nation’s credit. He pledged that if the two National parties came together, rejected the leadership of both Cosgrave and de Valera, and put new men in their place in the name of healing past divisions, the Farmers’ Party would support a coalition and ‘the country will welcome that with greater satisfaction and enthusiasm than anything that has been experienced in our lifetime’.52 Another concern that appeared during these debates was a belief that Irish politics should be practised by Irish people born in Ireland. Several independent and National League deputies announced that they could not vote for Johnson because he was an Englishman. Independent TD Jasper Wolfe observed that Fianna Fáil stood for the principle that ‘we were to have the government of Ireland by Irishmen … free from any interference by Englishmen or by England’ but supported a coalition where ‘we are going to have the Dáil ruled over by an Englishman’. Wolfe concluded ‘I am off that job.’53 The vote famously failed by the casting vote of the Ceann Comhairle and the unexplained absence of National League deputy John Jinks, who left before the division. Despite its defeat, Thomas O’Donnell said of the no-​ confidence vote ‘we did the best day’s work for Ireland done in the past ten years. We are responsible for getting Fianna Fáil into the Dáil.’ The idea was that the parliamentary atmosphere would itself tame Fianna Fáil, as ‘once there, they must appeal for support upon the wisdom of their conduct and policy in the future; the gun as a force in politics is buried forever’. The vote gave the country ‘a real hope of burying past controversy’ and the chance to create ‘a Government of peace to give the common people a chance of considering the economic and financial interests of the nation. We wanted breathing time … [with] men who never were connected with revolution.’54 The National League also assumed that the opportunity would recur.55 Captain Harrison, another National League supporter, said that ‘Capt. Redmond and his small band of five or six followers in the Dáil had been instrumental in completing the conversion of the Fianna Fáil party from revolutionary methods to constitutional methods’, and added that it would therefore now be wrong to persecute Fianna Fáil with the Public Safety Act.56

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O’Donnell also assured his listeners that they were not ‘handing the country over to Bolshies’.57 Some of the press was less kind, especially once the Government dissolved the Dáil and called a snap election for September. The Fermanagh Herald wished that the ‘long-​sustained vendetta will disappear, and that better ideas of patriotism and toleration will hold the field … [W]‌hat the Free State needs more than anything else is the growth of unity among its people.’58 The Offaly Independent tendered a common opinion on Redmond that ‘the Nationalists [meaning the old Irish Party] have once more failed Ireland’: Redmond overestimated his importance, ‘disgusting those who voted for him … and ruining himself and his miniature party. Labour had been ambitious, Fianna Fáil inconsistent, but the National League something not very far from despicable.’59 Once the September election took place, the consensus was that it marked the onset of a two-​party system and a return to a focus on political issues. The Strabane Chronicle predicted that ‘the struggle will be almost entirely one between the Government Party and Fianna Fáil. The Independents, National League, Farmers, and Labour deputies are painfully aware of this.’60 The Farmers’ Gazette said that ‘the country evidently concentrated upon the main issue –​maintenance of the Treaty and the Constitutional position –​with the result that the two Principal Parties standing pro and con gained largely at the expense of the smaller groups’. The Farmers’ Party’s commitment to economic issues was ‘side-​tracked’ by this development. But the paper hoped that some sense of a focus on economics would return after Fianna Fáil acquired ‘a little more practical experience of the bread-​ and-​butter problems which will be forced upon them in the Dáil’.61 The idea remained that parliamentary experience would lead to a focus on economics, which was consistent with the position of the smaller parties before 1927, but oddly blind toward Fianna Fáil’s co-​option of some of the same economic issues raised by Labour and the Farmers. Recognising eventually that their small party would not be the harbingers of a new sectional normality in politics, the remaining Farmers agreed to vote in tandem with Cumann na nGaedheal in October 1927, keeping a tenuous independence as a party but following the Government’s lead. This would, it was hoped, strengthen Cosgrave’s majority and also gain administrative experience for Farmers’ deputies.62 The party’s new leader, Michael Heffernan, was duly appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister for posts and telegraphs. The summer of 1927 turned out to be the last gasp of the small parties’ visions of a normal politics, although that was probably not evident at the time. The argument that the state ought to focus on economic issues and have a transfer of power, preferably away from the legacy of Sinn Féin, was powerful, and very nearly toppled the Government. Even Cosgrave

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admitted privately to Johnson that somebody who was not in the ‘old Dáil group’ would have to be president before the civil war wounds would heal, and he suggested John Marcus O’Sullivan.63 Had Jinks not been absent, the expected development in this direction might have gained strength. But keeping Cosgrave in power accelerated the trend toward two large parties, each claiming to be national. There was still the revolutionary-​era disdain for ‘politics’, and all sides emerged from the summer with a desire to spend more time talking about the economic performance of the state, albeit from very different perspectives. There was also widespread belief that Fianna Fáil would more fully accept parliamentary politics the longer it served as a formal opposition in the Dáil. A Cumann na nGaedheal advertisement said that if de Valera had really seen the error of his ways, he should ‘do full and ample penance by working loyally and submissively as leader of a Minority party in the Parliament’. This probation would allow the electorate to judge de Valera’s sincerity.64 Despite similar claims to national status and shared origins in Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil clearly set out to be a different kind of party than Cumann na nGaedheal. Historians have frequently noted that Cumann na nGaedheal failed electorally in part because of its poor organisation and its leaders’ disdain for organisational work, which is often contrasted with Fianna Fáil’s superior local organisation. While this is true, Fianna Fáil operated differently than its rival in more ways than that, and in fact many of its structures and practices were attempts to avoid some things for which Cumann na nGaedheal had been criticised. For example, the party in its early years was obsessed with internal discipline and the maintenance of a choreographed presence in the Dáil. Eunan O’Halpin called discipline the party’s ‘main preoccupation’.65 Even before entering Dáil Éireann, Fianna Fáil circulated statements among TDs regarding ‘the line of criticism to be adopted’ on Free State laws.66 The goal was to ‘act in concert and as a unit in all matters of Public Policy except on such matters as may be decided to be matters of minor importance not affecting vitally the national status or the lives of the people’. Aiken’s motion that formalised this policy naturally passed unanimously.67 If they wanted to take part in Dáil debates, TDs had to attend meetings of the parliamentary party.68 When attendance at Dáil and party meetings lagged, Lemass successfully proposed that members absent for two days because of illness needed to produce a doctor’s note. Martin Corry handed in notice of a motion that would have rescinded Lemass’s rule as ‘useless’, but, delightfully, Corry’s motion failed without debate when he was absent for three successive meetings where it was to be discussed.69 They did eventually expel Tom Mullins from the party for poor attendance, and he would have to wait another seventeen years before running for office

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again as a member of Fianna Fáil.70 This focus on discipline and attendance was a response to the constant splintering of Cumann na nGaedheal, either formally through people leaving the party (the National Group, William Magennis’s Clann Éireann) or through the spectacle of ministers opposing each other publicly on key issues, such as J.J. Walsh’s frequent criticism of his cabinet colleagues over tariff reform. Cumann na nGaedheal was also disparaged for the lack of attention its TDs paid to debates, only showing up for divisions. Fianna Fáil did not want to give the same impression, and ordered its whips to ensure that there was good attendance during debates, not just votes.71 Low attendance, according to Lemass, made a very bad impression on the country.72 When the deputies were in the Dáil, they were supposed to behave decorously unless told otherwise. There was a long discussion in March 1928 on how to prevent Fianna Fáil deputies from interrupting in the Dáil.73 At times, such as during the debate on the removal of the referendum from the constitution, the party decided on an obstructionist policy. Lemass proposed a motion to this effect, citing the antidemocratic nature of the legislation, and the party whips were told to make the strategy work in the Dáil. The party also considered withdrawing from the Dáil over the Bill, but decided against it.74 More prosaically, TDs were also told to avoid fraternising with ministers and Cumann na nGaedheal TDs in common areas.75 Even relatively minor issues required the party imprimatur. A note from one party meeting indicated that they had ‘decided that the Party should vote against treason as disqualifying a dentist from practising’.76 Party discipline not only maximised the power of the opposition in divisions, but also conveyed to the electorate that Fianna Fáil were actively working to alleviate their concerns and prevent the Government from causing harm or unduly restricting the livelihoods of treasonous dentists. This appearance of activity differentiated Fianna Fáil from its rivals in Sinn Féin and also eased the anxieties of the party leadership, which feared its voters would abandon a party unwilling to take power. There were other ways that the party tried to appear active without being in government. The first was for deputies to work in their constituencies, an approach that started before Fianna Fáil even entered the Dáil. A letter from Lemass and Gerry Boland to each Fianna Fáil cumann in July 1927 said: the Fianna Fáil Teachtaí have been prevented from representin[g]‌their Constituents in the Twenty-​Six County Assembly. They must, therefore be all the more active within their constituencies … Whenever there is any local trouble –​an unjust eviction, an unfair division of land, a case of political victimization, etc. –​or whenever a local agitation requires a leader, write to your Deputy and tell him about it. He will do his duty. He was elected to lead the people.77

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The party also set up committees to shadow government ministries and provide input on specialised legislation. The idea was for a committee to study a particular government department, formulate a party policy for each department, and tabulate the statistics and arguments needed to support that policy.78 Fianna Fáil were ‘behaving in a dignified manner befitting a government in waiting’, and that was certainly part of the plan, especially as Cumann na nGaedheal were increasingly citing their own experience in government as a main reason for supporting them.79 But there was, as with Parnell at Westminster, some pressure from the grass roots to appear militant and aggressive, as well as parliamentary and decorous. The Erskine Childers cumann from Dublin City North proposed a resolution at the 1928 Ard-​Fheis that ‘this Ard-​Fheis, in re-​affirming its determination to continue the struggle for the attainment of a Republic for the whole of Ireland, calls upon our Dáil members to adopt a more fighting and militant policy in conducting their opposition in the Free State Parliament’. The resolution was amended to call on ‘our Dáil members to continue their fighting and militant policy’ before being passed. Multiple cumainn also proposed resolutions condemning deputies for absences at party and Dáil meetings.80 This was a hard line to walk: the party needed to combine a focus on economics, a presence in parliament, and a militant pose. Cumann na nGaedheal played up the quotidian elements of its economic policy, arguing that the apparently boring nature of such issues showed that the state was moving beyond the excitement and chaos of civil war. But Fianna Fáil needed to convey militancy, interest, and action while still focusing on nuts-​and-​bolts issues. Its parliamentary mix of decorum, obstructionism, and forcing divisions was designed to cultivate this image. Fianna Fáil also positioned itself as the defender of minority rights that were purportedly being trampled by an unchecked executive. At times, they defended the interests of unpopular minorities, such as when they called for an investigation into the poor treatment of ex-​servicemen by the Free State.81 But generally, whereas ‘minority rights’ was often code for Protestantism in the early Free State, after 1927 this phrase referenced the state’s treatment of republicans, the political minority. Cumann na nGaedheal consistently argued that proportional representation was the main constitutional mechanism for protection of political and social minorities, as it made the Dáil into a ‘picture of the electorate’.82 Fianna Fáil, though, identified a number of things that disproportionately restricted minority rights. The first and foremost was the oath, although the argument that it prevented representation lost some of its force after Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil, as the oath then only prevented a handful of Sinn Féin deputies from taking their seats. Fianna Fáil did continue to claim that the Free State Dáil was not fully representative of the electorate, but that was largely to cast aspersions on its

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overall legitimacy and perhaps partially due to an overestimation of Sinn Féin’s electoral future or the IRA’s political clout. This is why Fianna Fáil claimed that the Dáil could be the nucleus of a legitimate assembly: they wanted to ‘broaden and widen’ it and ‘free it from all foreign control and influence’ so as to make it ‘truly representative of the whole people as to secure for it the necessary authority and influence to have its decisions readily accepted and its laws willingly obeyed’.83 Fianna Fáil also thought the use of motions to close debates on a Bill, itself a hedge against obstructionism, was ‘an infringement on the rights of the minority’.84 After the summer of 1927, the main focus of minority rights became the referendum and the initiative, constitutional provisions that allowed for a minority of the Dáil to submit a law to a popular referendum or to pass a law by popular vote. Initially, O’Higgins had promoted these as ways to make the people feel closer to and take ownership of legislation, but they had not been used and the ability to amend the constitution by ordinary legislation in many ways negated their appeal. The Cumann na nGaedheal Government had already decided to abolish these provisions in January 1926, but the issue became more crucial as republicans started to use the processes to abolish the oath.85 By the time the constitutional amendment was proposed in the wake of O’Higgins’s assassination, it had become entangled with the republican effort to remove the oath and was seen as an attempt to damage minority rights. When this amendment finally came up for debate in the summer of 1928, Seán MacEntee invoked the founders of the Free State in arguing for the articles’ preservation. He said that Griffith and Collins ‘saw the danger of a non-​controlled Executive’ and ‘wished, therefore, to place in the hands of the people some weapon which would make the Executive at once the instrument of the people’s will and at the same time protect and secure the rights of minorities in the State’. MacEntee concluded: remove Article 47 [the referendum] from the Constitution and what protection is there for any minority, or any individual, in the country who dares to oppose the power of the Executive? That is the argument; that is the reason –​ to protect minorities and to secure the rights of the weakest among us –​why Griffith and Collins inserted Article 47 in the Constitution.

De Valera noted that ‘a tyrannical majority has been tearing up and intends to continue tearing up every article of the Constitution which is liberal’.86 Aiken said they looked to the other political minorities in the Dáil to oppose this assault on minority rights, and MacEntee criticised the Trinity College deputies, themselves members of the religious minority, for voting with the Government.87 Cumann na nGaedheal ministers again said that the referendum gave the minority too much power –​Cosgrave said that 3 per cent

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of the electorate could hold up legislation –​but this did little to appease republicans.88 The amendment eventually passed, but this was the beginning of the process by which Fianna Fáil depicted themselves as defenders of constitutional rights, particularly those granted to minorities. Fianna Fáil spent four and a half years as the principal opposition party in the state. Predictions from the smaller parties that this would tame Fianna Fáil and make it more parliamentary were in part accurate, and Fianna Fáil continued to emphasise economics in its criticism of the Government, as the smaller parties had earlier. Ryan McCourt argued in particular that ‘developing concrete opposition to Blythe’s policies was a central component of Fianna Fáil’s emergence as a serious political force’.89 The party’s notes for speakers prior to the June 1927 elections recommended that ‘speakers at public meetings should concentrate on the Economic Aspects of Free State Administration’. In particular, they were told to highlight the Government’s overspending. Even the political issues were supposed to be framed in economic terms: Definitely link up the Oath with the economic position. Point out that the depression in trade is due to the feeling of insecurity that exists, which in turn is due to the fact that a large portion of the people are debarred from having a voice in the framing of legislation. State that the oath is the biggest factor, preventing a return of a sense of confidence in the future, and consequent prosperity.90

Fianna Fáil had adopted the idea that politics should be about the clash of economic ideas, but had not accepted the often-​linked notion that it should also be a clash of parties representing different classes. Ultimately, its ability to be both national and economically focused is what doomed the smaller parties, and this became increasingly evident by the election of 1932. In pursuit of this goal, Fianna Fáil continued to emphasise their mission to restore nationalist unity. Seán T. O’Kelly asked electors ‘to return Fianna Fáil candidates for the purpose of restoring unity in the National ranks, which was first essential to victory’.91 De Valera said ‘Fianna Fáil … had been founded to give an opportunity to Irish Nationalists who were divided to come together again.’92 This was explicitly a backward-​looking call to restore revolutionary unity, or, as de Valera put it, ‘the aim of Fianna Fáil is to retrieve the unity that existed in 1918, and which defeated the greatest menace that threatened the country for generations –​Conscription’. He also said this was working, as ‘they are now coming together again as they had not come together since 1921’.93 That unity, he said, would gather together ‘all who wish well towards the Irish nation’ and increase the legitimacy of the Dáil.94 Somewhat ironically, though, the Dáil’s legitimacy could only be augmented through its domination by a single national party. Eamonn Cooney, a Fianna Fáil TD,

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told an election meeting that ‘nothing less than a clear majority over all other Parties would suffice. To be dependent on a Coalition majority would be disastrous. Such a situation would tend only to weaken the National resolve and adulterate National principles.’95 Like O’Higgins, Lemass openly queried the value of independent candidates, a negation of the early hopes for an ‘Irish’ politics but a validation of the all-​encompassing national party approach.96 As in 1918, this unity was directed against the imperialist enemy and its agents in Ireland. This meant attacks on Cumann na nGaedheal’s Anglophilia and indebtedness to English or Protestant interests. An Irish Press cartoon showed Cosgrave running a store called ‘Cumann na nGaedheal and Co.’. A keyhole marked ‘for Ex-​Unionists’ reads ‘control of government policy’ and ‘war memorial’ with a £50,000 price tag.97 Another had a decrepit house marked ‘Cumann na nGaedheal’ and titled ‘Europe’s Oldest Ruling House’. The house was propped up by Redmondites and ex-​unionists, with braces denoting ‘war memorial’ and ‘threat of war’.98 Fianna Fáil candidate P.S. Murphy ‘asked the people to return a National Government that would not be dependent on sectional interests, and which would be a majority Government. The last Government was not a majority Government; it had been kept in power by Freemasons and Unionists.’99 Seán Brady, a Fianna Fáil TD from County Dublin, claimed that de Valera would run the communists out of Ireland, while charging that Freemasons had nearly doubled under Cosgrave’s watch.100 There were references to ‘anti-​Irish forces’ supporting the Government, and to County Dublin as having been a ‘strong Unionist and Freemason constituency’.101 More specifically, Fianna Fáil members asserted that the Freemasons had supported the draconian Constitution (Amendment no. 17) Act of 1931, which inserted a provision (Article 2A) that allowed the Executive Council to rule under a state of emergency and use military tribunals to try certain classes of political offenders.102 Even Labour agreed, with a candidate saying that Cosgrave had been ‘kept in power by the remnants of imperialism in this country’.103 Politicians tried to avoid overt sectarian bigotry, though. De Valera said a Fianna Fáil government would mean ‘fair play for everyone –​for the present members of the IRA and the Unionists’.104 This forced Cumann na nGaedheal to respond so as not to give the impression that their ecumenical national party was just a front for unionists, Freemasons, and Protestants. The government newspaper The Star assured its readers that the old Ascendency structures were gone, although it might not be noticeable as they were ‘tumbled down almost in the dark’.105 After an interrupter said that Freemasons, not communists, were threatening the foundations of the state, Cosgrave answered ‘are the Freemasons responsible for the language policy of the Government? [Are] they responsible for our flag, or … our National Anthem?’106 As for the Public Safety Act,

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Cosgrave maintained that ‘the Dáil division lists would prove that there was a Catholic majority for it’.107 Minister for External Affairs Patrick McGilligan, himself a northerner, attacked those few Protestants who wanted to preserve the right of Irish citizens to appeal to the Privy Council. He started by decrying anti-​Protestant bigotry: ‘except for a few frenzied bigots the view is held that it would be deplorable if Protestant Irishmen did not take the fullest part in every field of national activity on a footing of equality with their Catholic fellow-​countrymen’. But then he turned around and criticised ‘a small group of their [Protestant] co-​religionists who wish to perpetuate religious strife by identifying the Protestant religion with political and class privileges’ in supporting the appeal to ‘an external institution [the Privy Council] for the purpose of accentuating and perpetuating the political detachment of the Irish Protestant’.108 This was an attempt to combine Cumann na nGaedheal’s cross-​class appeal with its desire to reach out to Protestants and unionists: like others, Protestants had to submerge their class status and privileges in order to join the party. A long article in The Star by the Earl of Longford (Frank Pakenham’s father) spelled out the transition from revolution to national party that Cumann na nGaedheal sought to make. He started by observing Ireland’s ‘tendency to split up into small groups’ that ‘at first allowed the invader to get control of the country, then impeded the progress of the national struggle for freedom, and at present are still impeding the reconstruction’. That was followed by the necessary fiction of unity during the revolutionary period, but ‘today, when it is more necessary to build than to fight, a different mentality is demanded’. That mentality was to put nation above party and to admit that while there were differences of opinion about particular policies, there should be no ‘violent factionism … If we think directly in terms of the nation rather than in terms of the nation as represented by a party, we would attempt to find points of agreement with our fellow-​citizens, rather than points of difference.’ He admitted that Cumann na nGaedheal could not encompass everyone, but that party is ‘all the more important in so far as it attempts to raise its members to a higher conception of nationality, and to persuade them to look beyond any section or party’.109 This mirrored the self-​image of the Cumann na nGaedheal elites, who liked to depict themselves as working for the nation, with party interests secondary at best. Like Fianna Fáil, Cumann na nGaedheal imagined its coalition to be composed of all those who loved Ireland, and thus large enough to enable a single-​party government. Cosgrave told Cumann na nGaedheal TDs in January 1932 that ‘the Country’s interests demand that in the coming years that party [Cumann na nGaedheal] should have a majority which alone amongst the various parties seeking the electors’ support is in a position to choose a Government’.110 It continued to appeal to ‘men of good will …

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without distinction of class or creed’.111 This appeal explicitly included Protestants, as Cosgrave said in a statement prior to the 1932 election: ‘It has been the steady policy of the present Government to treat all citizens on a basis of equality, to afford to all classes and creeds opportunity to take their part in the Nation’s life.’ To bolster this argument, Cosgrave cited Wolfe Tone and Thomas Davis, ‘to whom Mr. De Valera, his organ [the Irish Press] and his followers are not slow to tender lip service when it suits them’.112 This tolerance, at least in its political manifestation, was shown by the inclusion of Captain Redmond in Cumann na nGaedheal in 1931. Of this, Cosgrave said ‘they had been fortunate in securing the help of Captain Redmond. It was easy to talk about unity, but its achievement was a difficult thing in the last ten years.’113 Mulcahy praised Cosgrave’s attempts to create unity on the right while disparaging de Valera’s in the other direction: ‘Mr. Cosgrave was striving to unify all the elements in Ireland, those who were represented by Captain Redmond and the late Major Bryan Cooper, while Mr. de Valera was playing up to people like Madame Despard, Peadar O’Donnell, and Seán MacBride, and to Saor Éire and the IRA.’114 These efforts to bring in old nationalists and other elements to Cumann na nGaedheal were designed to provide a defence against republicans, from whom the state was not safe. J.M. O’Sullivan said ‘alone of the political parties the present Government can justly make such a claim. In the fullest and truest sense we may claim to be a National Government.’ They were ‘a party whose personnel and whose policy have triumphantly stood the test of criticism unsparingly lavished during the last nine years’.115 Fianna Fáil, on the other hand, lacked experience and competence, as its performance in the Dáil since 1927 showed: ‘it is generally admitted that there are not more than three of its number possessing anything like administrative ability beyond what would be necessary to look after the affairs of a town council’.116 Strong words indeed, given the low regard with which local government was held in Ireland generally. Cosgrave admitted ‘politically speaking … it is right to say that ten years of office was too long for any Government, the difficulty here was that they could not have a change of Government without its being a violent one’.117 Patrick Hogan said the same thing: ‘this country would never be normal until there was a change; but every man knew that it was impossible to say what would happen if de Valera got into power’.118 Because of these unusual conditions and the perceived absence of an ‘honest and efficient opposition’, politics had not normalised enough to risk a change of government. Cosgrave summed this up at the Mansion House: ‘there is one party in Ireland today which has the experience, the determination and the honesty of purpose to bring you through the present crisis’.119

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Politics was increasingly framed around two national parties, each with a sense of urgency in going to the polls. Cumann na nGaedheal believed that it deserved support because experience was necessary, given the current international crises and the too-​short political apprenticeship of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil argued that its national front was critical because it was the only hope to reverse the continuing power of antinational elements circling around the Free State Government. The smaller parties had to adjust their strategies given this new situation. The Farmers and National League had been more or less incorporated into Cumann na nGaedheal, but Labour remained independent. Instead of arguing that it could take power under normal circumstances, Labour was left with the old Parnellite strategy of trying to hold the balance of power. The ‘normality’ that would empower them was due to proportional representation. Labour TD William Davin said during the campaign that ‘with so many Labour and independent candidates it would be impossible under proportional representation for either of the two big parties to secure a governing majority without the support of some other sections’.120 At best, Labour would hold the balance of power and ‘use their votes to force any other party that would come into power to carry out the policy of the Labour Party’, according to Davin.121 A Labour candidate said ‘we expect to hold the balance of power in the next Dáil, and we will use it to force whichever of the big Parties will be the Government to carry out a social and economic programme for the benefit of ordinary people’. This would follow Labour’s old blueprint of somehow compelling the larger ‘political’ parties to focus on economic issues. Candidate Martin O’Sullivan said ‘the Labour Party in the next Dáil would not allow valuable time to be wasted in fruitless and acrimonious discussion on mere political questions but would insist on the new Government concentrating on matters which affected the every-​day life of the worker’.122 Labour leader T.J. O’Connell also made the familiar call ‘for the setting aside of past differences and bitterness’, although Labour was in a much weaker position to call for that in 1932 than it was in 1927.123 This was a consistent refrain to minimise the dominance of political issues and elevate economic ones. With politics divided into two national parties, there still had to be lines of demarcation drawn or some sort of common enemy to rally people against. For Fianna Fáil, as shown above, this was often some combination of unionists, Freemasons, and anti-​Irish elements. Cumann na nGaedheal also united against a dangerous enemy. At times the enemy was depicted as Fianna Fáil, but as the election neared the enemy was more frequently blended with communism, an internationalist idea that increasingly was thought to be putting down Irish roots. Ernest Blythe, in his characteristically moderate way, said that the IRA was ‘directly infected with Communist

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propaganda’, and that ‘that body and the people associated with it should be dealt with by the methods by which gangsters in Chicago or Communists in other countries were dealt with’.124 In more measured terms, other Cumann na nGaedheal leaders depicted communism as the result of giving political minorities too much power. The oft-​cited parallel was Spain, where ‘Spanish Republican leaders while paying lip service to the principles of order and to the rights of the majority, have never ceased to pander to the Gunman and the Communist.’125 Fianna Fail would do the same thing, according to Cumann na nGaedheal. Sometimes this was depicted as the result of de Valera’s inherent duplicity and deceitfulness, as when the Irish Free State Election News said ‘Mr. de Valera, too, speaks about the rights of the people. But he tells you the next moment that he has accepted majority rule as a mere expedient.’126 At other times, de Valera was depicted as weak: ‘another Kerensky’, whose ‘flabby and dishonest attitude to the gunmen has been a direct encouragement to the apostles of violence’ and who ‘will be powerless to deal with the situation’.127 According to Cumann na nGaedheal TD and professor Michael Tierney, republican extremists had been drawn closer to communism, but it was also possible for them to be communists without really even following Marxism: ‘the Irish revolutionaries do not have to assimilate Marxian economics, the surplus-​value theory, the materialist interpretation of history, the fatalistic belief in the generation of opposite from opposite that is the basis of Marx’s prophesies’. Instead, what they needed from communism was a reinforcement of their ‘uncompromising belief in violence [and] the desire for a minority dictatorship’.128 One of the ways that Fianna Fáil was linked with communism, or charged with paving the way for communism, was its elevation of minority rights. In response, voters were asked simply to ‘PROTECT YOUR STATE’.129 The male voter was asked to reject ‘vain quibbling and futile quarrels’, and the female voter was told to ‘secure her home and children from the menace of communism and crime and irreligion’.130 Because communism was frequently depicted primarily as a threat to religion, it could be equated with a threat to women and the home, resulting in this rare appeal directly to female voters. Unlike the National Group and Fianna Fáil, who could only fulminate against unionists and Freemasons, Cumann na nGaedheal possessed the governmental power with which to pursue communist-​leaning organisations, which it did with the 1931 Constitution Amendment Act. Opponents, generally loath to defend communism themselves, quickly turned this into a discussion on the rights of political minorities in the Free State, already a favourite topic of Fianna Fáil and Labour. Labour leader T.J. O’Connell said the Government ‘had brought the very idea of democracy into disrepute … They took out of the constitution everything which put power in the hands

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of the people … They never hesitated to destroy or remove any Article in the Constitution which seemed to limit or control their own powers.’131 A pro-​ Fianna Fáil editorial in the Irish Press said ‘even if Cumann na nGaedheal could show that it possessed a sound, constructive policy, the attitude of its leaders toward their critics and political opponents would be enough to make a change of government desirable … The mildest criticism is distorted in their minds into an unforgivable offence.’132 P.J. Ruttledge in the Dáil said that the Government’s anticommunism was a distraction from the its poor economic performance, a charge repeated frequently by Fianna Fáil.133 De Valera similarly told the press that ‘the politicians of the Cosgrave party are at the moment feverishly engaged in working up a scare’.134 Seamus Kirwan, a Fianna Fáil candidate, memorably said that ‘if there were a Cumann na nGaedheal Government in power for another five years the country at the end of the term would be half an internment camp, and the other half a poorhouse’.135 As it turned out, Cumann na nGaedheal’s attacks on communism backfired spectacularly, playing right into Fianna Fáil’s charge that the Free State was still not a place safe for multiparty democracy and political opposition. Neither of the ‘national parties’ trusted the other to protect its right to exist, in large part because the rhetoric of the national parties tended to exclude some people, whether Freemasons or communists, from the nation. The rise of the two national parties also reinvigorated the debate over the revolution and the assertion that only revolutionaries had the right to take part in politics. After the civil war, the small parties hoped that general frustration with the way that both wings of Sinn Féin conducted themselves would motivate voters to ease the revolutionary generation out of the political limelight, replacing them with those who were neither revolutionaries nor politicians, but ordinary people voicing the concerns of their interest group. Sinn Féiners, of course, feared that, and worked to maintain a grip on relevance. By 1932, though, the competing claims to national status had created a revived interest in and discussion of revolutionary credentials, as members of the two large parties clearly thought politics should be practised only by Sinn Féin veterans like themselves. Here again, it is worth pointing out that for all the historical focus on the silences of the civil war, it rarely ceased to be a topic of political discussion. At times, this was merely spiteful relitigation of the events of 1922 and 1923, as when Eamonn Duggan told a campaign audience that ‘Mr. De Valera’s jealousy of Collins … was the cause of the Civil War.’136 But at other times, the issue was which side had the right to claim to be the true heirs of the revolution. Whereas the smaller parties hoped the revolution would fade into the political background and be replaced by sophisticated economic discussion, Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil both thought

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its mantle still worth claiming. Much of the rhetoric was designed to undercut the other side’s revolutionary credibility. Cumann na nGaedheal’s ‘Fighting Points’ noted that ‘in 1916 De Valera surrendered arms to Sir John Maxwell and his troops who were invaders upon our sacred soil’, but that ‘the tribute of war which he had submitted to an English general in 1916 he could never submit to an Irish general in 1923’.137 This was a continuation of O’Higgins’s frequent argument during the civil war that rebels who had been too afraid to fight the British had been willing to attack an Irish government because they assumed that it was weaker. Cosgrave invoked the murder of his uncle in his pub by republican robbers in 1922, to which MacEntee responded with a reference to the killing of Noel Lemass by Criminal Investigation Department men in 1923.138 Patrick Hogan said the people of Ireland abandoned the republic because ‘it was soiled by murder and looting in 1922’.139 J.M. O’Sullivan told the North Kerry Cumann na nGaedheal Executive that Fianna Fáil was hostile to the real principles of Sinn Féin: ‘we have always preached for the nation and for the individual a doctrine of hard work and self-​reliance –​self-​reliance which is the great spiritual message of the old Sinn Féin. The doctrine of the extremists intended to revive that old spirit which Sinn Féin was meant to kill. It was the very negation of the spirit of Sinn Féin.’140 The Government also began to tie itself more closely to revolutionary events. For all its apparent lack of concern for the Collins–​Griffith cenotaph, as detailed by Anne Dolan, it did invoke Collins when necessary. The Free State Election News had a large picture of Collins on the front, and he played a key role in the Star’s issue commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the Easter Rising.141 In his front-​page message, Cosgrave argued that the ideals of 1916 should still motivate Irish people, even though the tasks now seemed less heroic: ‘may the same inspiring ideals of true Irish patriotism guide us to accomplish the less spectacular but not less essential tasks of the present and the future’. The entire commemorative issue subtly repackaged those revolutionary ideals and the story of 1916 for the more prosaic atmosphere of 1931. Easter was a sacrifice and a ‘defeat … utter and complete from the military point of view’. The article emphasised that the Irish flag had been lowered by the GPO garrison and had not been raised again until the Treaty was signed. The Treaty was the real triumph –​the 1916 rebels had failed, but their failure had paved the way for a great success. And that success had come because Sinn Féin leaders, particularly Griffith and Collins, had taken a realistic view of Ireland’s situation and signed the Treaty: ‘while other men were prepared to risk the whole prospect of a national settlement in a wrangle over labels and formulae, Griffith and Collins concentrated upon realities and left the words to the word-​spinners’. The Easter rebels had been realists, but only in surrender: ‘they not only accepted the role of

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martyrdom, but they set an example of stern realism which has been faithfully followed since by those to whom national responsibility has descended. It was in a spirit of realism that they ordered surrender, when the spiritual purpose of fighting had been achieved.’ This was the same spirit with which Collins signed the Treaty. Even those who did not fight in 1916, such as O’Higgins, were brought into this repackaged tradition: ‘Kevin O’Higgins laid down his life for Ireland in 1927 with that same calm courage as that which animated the men of 1916 in face of the firing squad. To carry out fully the work of undoing the Conquest is the task which the heirs of the 1916 tradition in the present Government have set themselves.’ Cumann na nGaedheal redefined the revolution in their own image: that of everyday realistic heroes who did quotidian jobs for the greater good. Fianna Fáil too tried to claim the revolutionary heritage. For de Valera, this often meant extended defences of his civil war utterances, as when in 1931 –​with a characteristic mix of defensiveness, courage, and tone-​ deafness –​he again tried to explain his 1922 ‘wading through the blood of Irish ministers’ speech. In trying to defend himself and lay claim to the political revolution, de Valera argued that it was men like Blythe who had written bloodthirsty tracts about killing policemen: I was not one of those who supported the soldier cult. It was the gentlemen on the opposite benches who were out for that during the period of the fight from 1919 to 1921. It was the citizens of the country, the plain people who when an ambush took place had to face unarmed and alone the Black and Tans, these were the most courageous section of our people … not the man with the gun in his hand.142

De Valera was trying here to seem less a soldier of destiny and more of a sober politician. He said ‘I never felt so safe or free from danger in my life as when I had a gun in my hand’, a statement the force of which was immediately undermined by an opposition deputy yelling out ‘or when you were in America’. This quickly descended into attempts by Cosgrave and de Valera to besmirch each other’s revolutionary record, but the goal was to put the nationalism into the national party, to convince voters that one party or another was the real repository of revolutionary dreams.143 The main issue with regard to which the battle over the revolutionary legacy was fought in 1932 was economics. The smaller parties got their wish that political debate became more centred on economic policy, but the terms of that debate were increasingly unfavourable to them, as Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil mostly focused on whichever side was more faithful to Sinn Féin economic policy. Tariffs became the easiest shorthand for that debate, as Griffith’s dedication to tariffs was the formative element of Sinn Féin revolutionary economic policy. Fianna Fáil repeatedly depicted its policy as a return to Sinn Féin’s revolutionary-​era maxims. De Valera

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said ‘the Fianna Fáil programme of building up industries was not new. In 1917 and 1918 it was called a Sinn Féin programme because it was a programme of self-​realisation.’144 He also said ‘there was a solution for their unemployment problem –​the old Sinn Féin solution, or to become as self-​ supporting as they could’.145 The Irish Press also ran a framed 1902 quote from Griffith about industrial protection.146 Cumann na nGaedheal had abandoned these policies, according to its opponents. This was why they were, as a Fianna Fáil advertisement read, ‘the Greatest Failure in Irish History’.147 P.J. Ruttledge said that economically they were ‘a hopeless failure’ who had only succeeded in ‘waging war upon their fellow countrymen’.148 In large part, this was because they were economic apostates. Seán T. O’Kelly said that Blythe ‘could tear up, as it were, all the teachings of Griffith … He now tears up all the things he was taught and read as a young man and that he himself endeavoured to teach for a good many years.’ Instead, Blythe ‘adopts the British Empire gospel of Free Trade as a suitable gospel for the Free State’.149 De Valera put it more succinctly, charging the Government with abandoning all of the revolutionary creed: those people [the Government] turned their backs on their programme. They had at least the power to put their economic policy into force, but they were no more true to that economic programme than they were true to the political programme, and because those people were not true to it, you have the same state of affairs now as when the British were here.150

Cumann na nGaedheal responded in a number of ways. First, they tried to duck the charge completely and claim that they were the only party focusing on economic issues, while Fianna Fáil went on about sterile issues such as the oath. Blythe warned a crowd: ‘one of the results of returning Fianna Fáil to power would be that for the next two or three years there would be no attention paid to the economic interests of the country. The party was pledged to a programme that would keep it down to political work almost entirely.’151 It was also Fianna Fáil’s fault that the Treaty was still a live issue and had to be discussed, instead of the more pressing economic issues facing the country.152 Cumann na nGaedheal TD Martin Roddy said ‘whatever Mr. de Valera might say, the question of progress and development was the real issue, because the plain, sensible people of the country –​and they were the vast majority –​were more concerned with bread and butter problems than they were with the Treaty and the oath, or other political red herrings’.153 As Fianna Fáil charged Cumann na nGaedheal with inventing a communist plot, Cumann na nGaedheal charged Fianna Fáil with exaggerating political issues such as the oath. Both sides talked about the economy while claiming the other side was not, an unspoken recognition that few Irish people outside the political elite cared much about the oath.

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Cumann na nGaedheal also argued that things had changed and that Griffith’s ideas no longer applied across the board. Mulcahy expressed that it was the Treaty that made this change. He said in the Dáil ‘we are asked what has brought about the change in the attitude of Deputies on this side of the House from the days in which Arthur Griffith was writing up the philosophy of Dean Swift in his pages. A very definite thing has happened. We have entered into a Treaty with the British people for international co-​ operation for the purpose of bettering our people.’ That plan for co-​ operation with Britain mandated a different economic approach.154 While this argument was unlikely to convince Fianna Fáil, it did recognise, as Griffith had not, the centrality of agriculture and the British market to Irish prosperity. They also promoted fiscal responsibility, constantly talking about the preservation of favourable credit in the midst of the depression. Cumann na nGaedheal also cautiously engaged with the tariff issue. The party lacked the discipline of Fianna Fáil, and its leaders did not always agree on the relationship of tariffs to party economic orthodoxy. The ‘Fighting Points for Cumann na nGaedheal Speakers’ said that the Government was ‘frankly protectionist’ and ‘not a free trade government’, but also declared that ‘protection is not an Article of economic or national faith’. Instead, it was based on reason, which is why the Government tried to make it ‘not a party issue. The Government has striven all along to lift the question of Protection out of the maelstrom of purely party issues and to insure that every tariff proposal is decided absolutely on its merits after the most careful and comprehensive investigation by experts.’ The idea was to make this a practical issue of job creation instead of a test of economic orthodoxy. Finally, in stretching the definition of ‘Fighting Points’ to its breaking point, the guide advocated the policy of the Fiscal Subcommittee of the Dublin Industrial Development Association, which set out the arguments necessary to make a claim before the tariff board.155 While this fence-​sitting was presumably official policy, Patrick Hogan had other ideas. He thought tariffs were, to put it mildly, objectively stupid: ‘I doubt very much if in Jugo-​ Slavia or some of the minor Balkan states that sort of thing would pass for political wisdom, and yet it is trotted out here by the Deputies opposite.’ Hogan found the discussion a waste of his time: At the present moment we are one hundred years behind the times economically. You have the fatuous statement made by Deputy de Valera, that all we have to do in order to get rich quickly is to adopt a rigid system of high protection and that we will be all right. Over 100 years ago that principle was found out, and here I am in 1931 under the unfortunate necessity of having to take that seriously and to debate it seriously here.156

In the Pathé video referenced at the outset of the chapter, Cosgrave explained how Ireland’s economic self-​sufficiency and agrarian nature had

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actually shielded it from some of the effects of the depression. Even in 1930, before the depression had fully hit Ireland, he realised that economics played a larger role in current political debate than it had during the revolution. In fact, by 1932 the situation hoped for earlier by the smaller parties had come to fruition: economic issues had come to the fore and came to define the differences between the political parties. However, that situation had not been to the benefit of the small parties. Instead, the two major parties had increasingly distinguished themselves on economic lines, while still claiming to be cross-​class parties with broad appeals and big tents. Neither party would admit that it was a party of large farmers or petty bourgeoisie, in the way that the Labour and Farmers’ Parties had defined themselves as representing a class. Instead, by 1932, Ireland had settled into a system that merged the economic focus of the smaller parties with the national or ecumenical politics of the revolutionary years. But while the Free State had arguably developed a system dominated by two parties, that did not mean that a stable multiparty democracy emerged once Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil. Neither of the large parties still accepted the political legitimacy of their opponents. In part that was because they were competing for the same turf –​the revolutionary legacy –​but it was also because they still clung to this notion of single-​party revolutionary politics and defined those outside that coalition as anti-​Irish or treasonous. Cumann na nGaedheal depicted its opponents as gunmen or communists, two groups deemed to be outside ‘normal’ political expression. Fianna Fáil saw Cumann na nGaedheal as Anglophilic and dominated by unionists and Freemasons. Rather than marking the coming of democracy, 1927 instead altered the definitions of politics in a way that ultimately led to the transfer of power and the growth of the Blueshirts. Addressing the initial Fianna Fáil Ard-​Fheis in 1926, de Valera said ‘one thing we ought to try to do is to remove from the name of politics that dirty stain that it has attached to it in this and other countries. That ought not to be the case. Politics ought not to be something that is associated with graft, meanness and lying. It ought to be associated with the idea of what our nation as a whole stands for.’157 Fianna Fáil clearly had not succeeded in doing this by 1932. De Valera’s definition of politics as national harmony was imaginary as long as there were two somewhat evenly balanced national parties in contention. And the idea that politics had a ‘dirty stain’ attached to it was something Sinn Féin had worked hard to create and that could not easily or quickly be overthrown. That would be demonstrated by Cumann na nGaedheal’s first five years in opposition, when it initially attempted to transcend politics with a cult of personality surrounding Cosgrave, and then when it sought to abandon and denigrate politics completely through the Blueshirt movement.

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Notes 1 Archived on the British Pathé website, www.briti​shpa​the.com/​video/​presid​ent-​ cosgr​ave (accessed 18 July 2022). 2 The Irishman, 5 November 1927. 3 Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution, 276, 303. 4 Farrell, Party Politics in a New Democracy, 113, 153. 5 Douglas, Architects of the Resurrection, 8. 6 Daly, Industrial Development, 174. 7 Cahillane, Drafting the Irish Free State Constitution, xii. 8 Regan, The Irish Counter-​Revolution, 273. 9 Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland 1923–​1948 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 84. 10 Shonk, Ireland’s New Traditionalists, 4. 11 Mitchell, Labour in Irish Politics, 296; Gaughan, Thomas Johnson, 398. 12 Richard B. Finnegan, ‘The Blueshirts of Ireland during the 1930s: Fascism Inverted’, Éire-​Ireland 24, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 79–​99 (83). 13 O’Neil, ‘Reframing the Republic’. 14 Daly, Industrial Development, 32. Lemass quoted in Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power, 69. 15 O’Neil, ‘Reframing the Republic’, 103–​4. 16 De Valera to Boston Post, 12 March 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23(8). 17 De Valera’s speech at La Scala Theatre, 16 May 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 23(1). 18 ‘Who Caused the Civil War?: Extracts from Some Speeches, Documents, and Records, which Free State Ministers Forget’, c. 1926–​7: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23(3). 19 ‘A Brief Outline of the Aims and Programme of Fianna Fáil’, c. 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23(20). The programme pledges to ‘remove … all oaths of allegiance and all political tests’. 20 Eamon de Valera, ‘Draft of a National Policy’, c. 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23(21). 21 Election address of Agnes O’Farrelly, June 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 829(2). 22 ‘If There Were No Oath’, c. spring 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​827(11). 23 Martin Maguire, ‘Protestant Republicans in the Revolution and After’, in d’Alton and Milne, Protestant and Irish, 191–​212 (200). 24 ‘Fianna Fáil: Now or Never’, election handbill, 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 827(14). 25 ‘Frank Aiken on Fianna Fáil: A Call to Unity’, March 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​23(15). 26 ‘Re: The Leaflet’, c. 1925/​6: FF papers, UCDA P176/​18(32). These appear to be de Valera’s sketches of answers to questions sent to him about the split from Sinn Féin. 27 Thomas Childers’s work highlights how this was done in the 1920s by the Nazis, who made very specific appeals to vocational groups while still calling

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for a Volksgemeinschaft and claiming to be a Volkspartei. See Thomas Childers, ‘The Social Language of Politics in Germany: The Sociology of Political Discourse in the Weimar Republic’, American Historical Review 95, no. 2 (April 1990): 331–​58. The fascists generally squared this circle by outlining an organic view of the nation as being composed of different, unequal parts that worked in harmony. Fianna Fáil rhetoric generally did not adopt this position. 28 Quoted in Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power, 71. 29 Quoted in Martin, Freedom to Choose, 73. 30 Fianna Fáil Weekly Bulletin, 10 January 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​26. 31 De Valera to Irish-​American Supporters in Chicago, 25 August 1927: Eamon de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2095. 32 Quoted in Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power, 120. 33 Irish Independent, 7 May 1927. 34 Ibid., 12 May 1927. 35 For a sampling of the positive comments about Johnson see Gaughan, Thomas Johnson, 454–​5. 36 Irish Independent, 7 June 1927. 37 Farmers’ Gazette, 10 September 1927. 38 Meehan, ‘Labour and Dáil Éireann’, 47. 39 Johnson’s quotes from DD, 16 August 1927. 40 Cork Examiner, 15 August 1927. 41 DD, 16 August 1927. 42 Redmond to Johnson, 15 August 1927: Johnson papers, NLI MS 17165/​9(1). 43 DD, 16 August 1927. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Irish Independent, 16 August 1927. 48 DD, 28 July 1927. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 16 August 1927. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. Independent J. F. O’Hanlon also said he would not vote for an Englishman as head of government. A Farmers’ deputy made the same claim during the subsequent election campaign. 54 Irish Independent, 23 August 1927. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 1 September 1927. 57 Ibid., 23 August 1927. 58 Fermanagh Herald, 10 September 1927. 59 Offaly Independent, 20 August 1927. 60 Strabane Chronicle, 3 September 1927. 61 Farmers’ Gazette, 24 September 1927. 62 Irish Independent, 13 October 1927. 63 Gaughan, Thomas Johnson, 298.

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64 Quoted in Martin, Freedom to Choose, 176. 65 Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Parliamentary Party Discipline and Tactics: The Fianna Fáil Archives, 1926–​32’, Irish Historical Studies 30, no. 120 (November 1997), 581–​90 (586). 66 Minutes, Organisation Committee Meeting, 27 June 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​372(12). 67 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 24 May 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 68 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 21 February 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 69 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 12 July 1928, 21 March and 2 May 1929: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 70 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 28 October 1930: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 71 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 18 April 1929: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 72 Minutes, General Committee of Fianna Fáil Party, 19 June 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​452. 73 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 30 March 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 74 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 7 June 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443; minutes of the General Committee of the Fianna Fáil Party, 12 June and 25 June 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​452. 75 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 29 November 1928: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 76 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 25 October 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 77 Lemass and Boland to Honorary Secretary of each registered cumann, 1 July 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​351(16). Emphasis in original. 78 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party Meeting, 7 October 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 443; minutes, Standing Committee of Fianna Fáil Party, 28 September and 6 October 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​452. 79 O’Halpin, ‘Parliamentary Party Discipline’, 590. 80 Clár for Third Fianna Fáil Ard-​Fheis, 25–​6 October 1928: FF papers, P176/​ 742. 81 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Meeting, 15 November 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​443. 82 DD, 28 July 1927. 83 Eamon de Valera, What Fianna Fáil Stands For, 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 827(3). 84 Minutes of General Committee of Fianna Fáil Party, 28 February 1930: FF papers, UCDA P176/​453. 85 Draft minutes for Meeting of the Amendments to the Constitution Committee, 8 January 1926: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​211(14). 86 DD, 15 June 1928.

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87 Ibid., 20 June and 28 June 1928. 88 Ibid., 26 June 1928. 89 Ryan McCourt, ‘Ernest Blythe as Minister for Finance in the Irish Free State, 1923–​32’, Parliamentary History 33, no. 3 (2014): 475–​500 (487). 90 Fianna Fáil Notes for Speakers, c. spring 1927: FF papers, UCDA P176/​ 351(64). 91 Irish Press, 22 January 1932. 92 Ibid., 3 February 1932. 93 Ibid., 5 February 1932. 94 Ibid., 29 January 1932. 95 Ibid., 22 January 1932. 96 Ibid., 29 January 1932. 97 Ibid., 2 January 1932. 98 Ibid., 14 January 1932. 99 Ibid., 4 February 1932. 100 Ibid., 5 February 1932. 101 Ibid., 1 February and 29 January 1932. 102 Sen. Joseph Connolly made this charge in ibid., 1 February 1932. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., 29 January 1932. 105 Star, May 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. This article was titled ‘The Cult of the Inessential’. 106 Irish Press, 1 February 1932. 107 Ibid., 4 February 1932. 108 Star, May 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. For the Privy Council issue see Thomas Mohr, Guardian of the Treaty: The Privy Council Appeal and Irish Sovereignty (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016). 109 Star, May 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. 110 Cosgrave to deputies, 11 January 1932: Seán Mac Eoin papers, UCDA P151/​ 848. 111 Star, December 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. 112 ‘Fighting Points for Cumann na nGaedheal Speakers and Writers, General Election 1932’ (Dublin: Temple Press, 1932): Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D. 113 Irish Press, 4 February 1932. 114 Ibid., 5 February 1932. 115 J.M. O’Sullivan, Political Notes, c. 1931: John Marcus O’Sullivan papers, UCDA LA60/​113. 116 ‘Fighting Points, General Election 1932’: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D. 117 Irish Press, 2 February 1932. 118 Ibid., 3 February 1932. 119 Speech by Cosgrave at Mansion House, c. December 1931: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2096. 120 Irish Press, 8 February 1932. 121 Ibid., 11 January 1932. 122 Ibid., 4 February and 5 February 1932.

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123 Ibid., 8 February 1932. 124 Ibid., 18 January 1932. 125 Ibid., 29 January 1932. 126 Irish Free State Election News, 6 February 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​ 622(2). 127 Star, September 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. 128 Ibid. 129 Irish Free State Election News, 6 February 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​ 622(b)(1). 130 ‘To the People of the Irish Free State’, 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​622b(4). 131 Irish Press, 4 January 1932. 132 Ibid., 16 January 1932. 133 DD, 14 October 1931. 134 De Valera to a representative of the United Press, 29 October 1931: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2168. 135 Irish Press, 22 January 1932. 136 Ibid., 1 February 1932. 137 ‘Fighting Points’, 1932: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D. 138 DD, 16 October 1931. 139 Irish Press, 4 February 1932. 140 J.M. O’Sullivan, speech to the North Kerry Executive, February 1931: O’Sullivan papers, UCDA L60/​120. 141 Irish Free State Election News, 6 February 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​ 622(b)(1); Star, April 1931: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​170. 142 DD, 15 October 1931. 143 Ibid., 14 October 1931. 144 Irish Press, 11 January 1932. 145 Ibid., 4 January 1932. 146 Ibid., 18 January 1932. 147 Ibid., 29 January 1932. 148 DD, 14 October 1931. 149 Ibid., 17 December 1931. 150 Irish Press, 4 January 1932. 151 Ibid., 8 February 1932. 152 Notes for speeches, c. 1931–​2: O’Sullivan papers, UCDA L60/​116. 153 Irish Press, 25 January 1932. 154 DD, 17 December 1931. 155 ‘Fighting Points’, 1932: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D. 156 DD, 2 December 1931. 157 De Valera’s speech to First Ard-​Fheis of Fianna Fáil, 25 November 1926: FF papers, UCDA P176/​440.

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6 Cults of little personality

Ernest Blythe, writing in the Fine Gael paper United Ireland in November 1934, stressed that ‘the Blueshirt movement is definitely a political movement … As soon as the Blueshirt movement began to develop a comprehensive policy of its own it ceased to be possible for it to be non-​ party.’ The column was headed ‘Politicians All’.1 This came after several years in which the Blueshirts and Cumann na nGaedheal had denied being politicians and claimed to see little to no value in politics. The split with Eoin O’Duffy in the autumn of 1934 and the rough waters into which he had attempted to lead the party had sent many more experienced Fine Gael leaders scrambling back to what seemed like the safety of ‘politics’. This even affected Ernest Blythe, one of the old Cumann na nGaedheal ministers who seemed the most attached to fascist and antidemocratic tropes. Blythe’s apparent transition mirrors that of many in his party between 1932 and 1935. During its decade in power, Cumann na nGaedheal came to define itself as the ‘government party’, its virtues demonstrated by its commitment to law and order, its promise of a new kind of non-​British politics, and its technical and administrative ability in government. When it lost the election of 1932 and watched de Valera become president of the executive council, the former ‘government party’ struggled to rebrand itself and function as an opposition. The 1933 election saw Cumann na nGaedheal again trumpet its experience in government and its rival’s inexperience, while adding pages from what it believed to be Fianna Fáil’s playbook: a cult of personality surrounding its leader and a series of rather wild economic promises. When that again failed, the party merged with the Blueshirts to form Fine Gael and continued some of the strategies of opposition, particularly the focus on a personality cult. In fact, the Blueshirts and Fine Gael ended up voicing many of the same concerns with politics as many leaders had in the aftermath of the revolution.2 They criticised politics itself as degrading, corrupt, and of little use to the nation at large. They also prioritised the creation of a national movement that would encompass all right-​thinking people, rather than merely alternating in power with its

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rivals. Like the smaller parties in the 1920s, the Blueshirts also foregrounded economic issues and sought to minimise merely political issues, but they had a different vehicle for so doing. Rather than force the Dáil to take up economic issues, as Labour and the Farmers desired, the Blueshirts wanted to remove economic issues from the Dáil and place them in the hands of statutory corporations, reducing the Dáil to a political talking shop that retained geographic representation. Pointing out these continuities between the Blueshirts and previously expressed notions of Irish politics is, of course, not to say that pre-​1932 Irish political parties were fascist, protofascist, parafascist, cryptofascist, or fascistish. An argument in which Cumann na nGaedheal, Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Labour, and the Farmers all demonstrated key elements of fascism must rest on a fairly elastic definition of fascism. Instead, the argument is that the Irish fascists expressed many of the same frustrations with ‘politics’ as their predecessors: a lack of focus on economics, unnecessary party strife, and a belief that politics was sordid and not ennobling. Like Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal, the Blueshirts wanted to foreground economics while keeping a national party framework and without introducing a left–​ right division that would normalise a multitude of parties. When this too failed, and politicians such as Blythe hastened back to ‘political’ solutions, the Free State ended up with a form of what Irish leaders had decried from the beginning: a two-​party state. The formulation was still different than British politics, as both parties in many ways mirrored the Sinn Féin model of a national party, but in a vastly different context. By the middle of the 1930s, multiparty democracy had finally been normalised, albeit largely through the failure of other alternatives and the consistent refusal of the Irish electorate to sanction a single Volkspartei. Historians of this period have largely concentrated on the Blueshirt ­phenomenon. Maurice Manning’s The Blueshirts was the first such attempt, and the subsequent literature has largely tried to place the Blueshirts within the spectrum of fascist activity in Europe.3 Richard Finnegan argued that the Blueshirts represented a re-​emergence of the old civil war struggles, caused largely by the resurgence of the IRA. He wrote ‘clearly, the orientation of the Blueshirts was the Irish political passions of 1922–​23 not that of the Europe of the 1930s’.4 Mike Cronin rejects this conclusion, instead applying established definitions of continental fascism to the Irish case. Cronin separates the rank and file, who, he claims, mostly joined because of adverse consequences from de Valera’s economic war with Britain, and the leadership, who were undoubtedly influenced by continental fascism. He concludes, using a taxonomy put forward by Roger Griffin, that the Blueshirts were ‘potential parafascists’, a movement with fascist external trappings, but one that would reject genuinely fascist ideology.5 Cronin has

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also written on the connections between Irish fascism and Catholic intellectualism, particularly the discussions of vocational representation stemming from Pope Pius XI’s 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno. Cronin concludes that Catholic intellectualism drew on ideas also used by fascists, but was not itself fascist.6 Fearghal McGarry’s study of Eoin O’Duffy finds a consistency in O’Duffy’s career that other scholars have not, writing that he stood for ‘respectability, temperance, disciplined service, patriotism, and virility: values which he summarized as manliness’. He also consistently promoted a cult of personality, whether as police commissioner or director-​ general of the Blueshirts. McGarry also expresses surprise that Cumann na nGaedheal leaders would have ever partnered with O’Duffy, given his involvement in a possible coup attempt in 1932, the general irritant that he proved to be as police commissioner, and his inflated sense of self. McGarry calls the merger ‘one of the most opportunistic decisions in the history of Irish politics’, motivated by a sense of crisis that played out in the Free State and across Europe.7 McGarry and R.M. Douglas, though, both maintain that Irish historiography has underplayed the seriousness of the fascist threat, although even Douglas admits that the 1930s were not a crisis in Irish democracy.8 The separation of Cumann na nGaedheal leaders from the Blueshirts has also been a trend in the historiography. Several historians have emphasised the old leadership’s disinterest in fascism, with Cosgrave, Patrick Hogan, and Patrick McGilligan generally seen as the most sceptical. Michael Laffan asserts that only Blythe and O’Duffy, among the senior Cumann na nGaedheal leadership, were interested in fascism. Cosgrave ‘showed no signs of enthusiasm’ for the Blueshirts and was embarrassed by those who wore the shirt in the Dáil. Laffan also claims that Patrick Hogan disappeared from Fine Gael and returned to his law practice out of frustration with the merger.9 Mel Farrell identifies Cumann na nGaedheal’s ‘lacklustre’ performance in opposition but sees the Blueshirt period as one in which the moderates eventually triumphed over the radicals.10 Regan, on the other hand, takes the opposite view. He thinks the Blueshirts ‘completed the consolidation of the Irish right begun by Kevin O’Higgins a decade before’. O’Duffy was also not an outsider to Regan, but someone whom the Treatyite elite had relied upon repeatedly in moments of crisis, from the Army Mutiny to the birth pangs of the Garda.11 The leaders gave O’Duffy a free hand initially, perhaps out of disinterest as much as anything else, but reacted with alarm as he tried to mould the Blueshirts into a republican-​leaning, agrarian protest organisation. They then retreated, in Regan’s words, ‘back into the intellectual void of Cumann na nGaedheal’.12 The Blueshirts certainly had their origins in Treatyite and Sinn Féin ­politics. This is not to deny the very obvious overlap between the Blueshirts

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and continental fascism, an overlap that the Blueshirts themselves readily admitted in the pages of United Ireland and The Blueshirt, although there were frequent attempts to give some of these practices Irish roots. The Blueshirts built on some of these longstanding attempts to create a postcolonial Irish politics, while offering new (and fascist) paths to an oft-​ expressed goal: preserving the nationalist unity of revolutionary days and preventing politics from sinking into a squabble among corrupt and self-​ serving parties. Cumann na nGaedheal clearly had little idea what to do in opposition after de Valera was elected president. Although the party decided it would oppose the Removal of Oath Bill, it was difficult to contest the more popular nationalist elements of Fianna Fáil’s programme.13 And the two issues on which Cumann na nGaedheal felt it had the most overt differences with Fianna Fáil –​tariffs and enforcement of the law –​had been the central elements of the 1932 campaign in which the party was decisively defeated. So Cumann na nGaedheal was left to wait for Fianna Fáil to fail so massively that the electorate would turn on them quickly and re-​establish the government party to power. While that may have seemed a worthwhile gamble, it was not a great motivator for the party faithful. Cumann na nGaedheal had already tried to tighten its organisation in recent years, motivated by its shrinking majority once Fianna Fáil ceased abstaining. The parliamentary party threatened to expel TDs who voted against government measures when the whips were on.14 They also created a party pledge for all members in May 1932.15 But after only three months out of power, Cosgrave was already complaining about poor attendance in the Dáil leading to large majorities for the Government on its Bills. Wider reading of the United Irishman was prescribed as an antidote.16

The Cosgrave cult The party recognised by the summer of 1932 that it had to be ready for a snap election in case de Valera wanted to discard his Labour partners. Already floundering in opposition, they evolved a new strategy: a cult of personality focused on Cosgrave. This was unlikely for several reasons. For one, it was a marked departure from earlier Cumann na nGaedheal derision of such cults. Eoin MacNeill said in 1927 that ‘he asked no one to adopt “Up Cosgrave” as a motto. Their motto was “Up Ireland”.’ MacNeill also pointed out the incongruity in ‘so-​called Republicans who were followers of the Royal Imperial King-​Emperor Republican leader de Valera’.17 The United Irishman also criticised de Valera’s ego and his need for attention. It claimed he only attended League of Nations meetings so he could be ‘where

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the limelight is brightest’. Such meetings ‘minister to the boundless vanity of the Great White Chief … With him, to hear the click of the cameras, to see his name sprinkled over the pages of a newspaper printed in a language he is unable to read, is more gratifying than to do something substantial for the people who, however mistakenly, put him in power.’18 The result of this focus on de Valera’s personality was that ‘Irish people unfortunately have not yet grown out of the tendency to expect wizardry rather than statesmanship from their politicians. President de Valera seems to have succeeded in imposing on a great many citizens the idea that while he is assuredly no statesman he is very much a wizard.’19 The paper also denied that its party would ever practise a cult of personality: ‘the Cumann na nGaedheal Party are not going to identify one man with Ireland and … cry “De Valera right or wrong” ’.20 Cosgrave’s own personality, or perceptions of it at least, also militated against a personality cult. Colleagues remembered him as a good leader, but generally mild and unassuming. Ernest Blythe, not known for positive takes on colleagues or animosity toward dictators, said ‘Mr. Cosgrave was a great believer in team work … He frequently criticised the idea that a man in authority should personally consider every detail and judge every issue. His attitude toward the tasks of Government was therefore anti-​dictatorial.’21 His friend Michael Hayes called him ‘frail and lovable’, and he was ill frequently during his political career.22 John Costello remembered his ‘sincerity, simplicity, and lack of desire for personal advancement’.23 Costello also remembered that he ‘wasn’t a man going around doing what people do at the present moment, if I am to use a horrid expression, creating an image of themselves’.24 Accounts of Cosgrave’s funeral reinforced Cosgrave’s hatred of the limelight. An Irish Times column entitled ‘Example’ observed that ‘when Mr. Cosgrave was laid to rest, he had no Tricolour … [though he] had fought in arms and had been sentenced to death for doing so. We are not without virtues in our public life today, but the cult of personality, even the cult of vulgarity, stands rebuked.’25 A 1927 profile in the New York Herald Tribune emphasised the romantic and mysterious image de Valera cultivated while Cosgrave ‘does not demand, perhaps he does not desire, personal enthusiasms from his followers. He is one of the school of Irishmen who believe that Ireland has had too much of personalities and not enough of program.’26 The public view of Cosgrave, much emphasised by Fianna Fáil, also seemed to indicate that Cosgrave would be a poor choice for a personality cult. He was seen as a social climber who, while coming from a modest background, enjoyed the trappings of wealth. His preference for formal wear came to symbolise this.27 Fianna Fáil depicted him as out of touch with ordinary Irish people and their problems. Seán MacEntee called Cosgrave

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a ‘wealthy deputy’ without experience of labour: ‘except blunders, did any one of them [Cumann na nGaedheal ministers] ever make anything? Except hair, what did any one of them ever grow?’28 Fianna Fáil relentlessly highlighted his high salary and intimated that his support for the Treaty was driven by his desire to gain material wealth, a fairly consistent republican trope.29 His devout Catholicism was also mocked, as MacEntee called him ‘the holy Willy of the opposition party’.30 Cumann na nGaedheal as whole was depicted as favouring the wealthy, and Cosgrave was often held up as beneficiary and exemplar of this policy. Nevertheless, when de Valera called a snap election for January 1933, Cumann na nGaedheal very clearly focused on Cosgrave in their promotional materials. They still claimed to be a tolerant and all-​encompassing national party –​a newspaper article praised the fact that four out of their fifty-​seven deputies were Protestant –​but the national party very definitely was presented as Cosgrave’s in 1932 and 1933. The party was called ‘the Cosgrave Party’ by supporters and opponents alike, a sobriquet that had been used before this campaign, but not with anywhere near the frequency that it appeared in 1933. Cumann na nGaedheal told its speakers to emphasise that ‘the government must be given notice to quit … Cosgrave [is] the only man who can do this.’31 The election was told to ‘give Cosgrave a win –​he will win for you’.32 The United Irishman published large photos of Cosgrave, one entitled ‘The Nation Looks to Him’ and another ‘The Man of the Hour’.33 He was called Dublin’s ‘greatest son’ in a piece that noted that ‘Dublin stands by Cosgrave.’34 The campaign set up a division of labour for Cumann na nGaedheal supporters: ‘YOUR JOB: To work and vote for Cosgrave. THE DÁIL’S JOB: To make Cosgrave president. COSGRAVE’S JOB: To stand up for Irish Rights’.35 Other candidates were markedly in his shadow. Voters in other constituencies were told ‘Vote for the Cosgrave candidates’, and the candidates themselves were often referred to only at the bottom of the ad, with an exhortation to support ‘Cosgrave’s Cumann na nGaedheal Candidates’.36 More specifically, voters were ordered ‘vote for the Cosgrave Candidates. When you have voted for all the Cosgrave Candidates, vote for the Farmers and Independents, and then stop.’37 They were also urged to contribute to the ‘Cosgrave Victory Fund’.38 Patrick McGilligan’s campaign speech in Dublin was advertised with the speaker’s name in small, difficult-​to-​read type and ‘Work and Vote for Cosgrave’s Party’ in much larger lettering.39 One ad in the United Irishman simply began with ‘Cosgrave is the MAN’ in large type.40 The emphasis on Cosgrave was designed to turn the election into a direct contest between him and de Valera, a contest that Cumann na nGaedheal thought, rather oddly in hindsight, that they could win. The idea was that Cosgrave’s trustworthiness, experience, and honesty would contrast

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favourably with de Valera’s inexperience, equivocation, and perceived dishonesty. Cumann na nGaedheal wanted to turn their time in opposition into a test of honour, with their conduct and character juxtaposed against de Valera’s civil war behaviour. As a result, Cosgrave propaganda emphasised certain aspects of his persona. The first was his competence, experience, and skill in governmental matters. Fianna Fáil was repeatedly charged with incompetence, including an ad foreshadowing an ‘incompetent and capricious dictatorship’ and a directive from a Donegal Treatyite paper to ‘kick out the present incompetent and irresponsible Ministry and put [in] Mr. Cosgrave’.41 Cosgrave’s experience in government was particularly stressed when he put two motions before the Dáil in November 1932: one to indicate a lack of confidence in the Government and one to urge the Government not to collect the land annuities due to British financiers for the duration of the tariff war with England. The annuities were a complicated question that roiled Irish politics in the early 1930s. The payments originated in the various prerevolutionary Land Acts that had allowed tenants to purchase the land they rented, with payments scheduled to continue for decades. Under Cumann na nGaedheal, the British Government collected these annuities and distributed them to lenders and investors. When Fianna Fáil took power, the Irish Government collected the annuities, but refused to pass them along to Britain, instead retaining them for Irish use, as they claimed Britain had no moral right to the proceeds from Irish lands. Britain responded with a series of tariffs targeting Irish agriculture. While there had been some on the left, particularly Peadar O’Donnell, who had claimed that the annuities should be retained by farmers, the Fianna Fáil Government railed against the annuities while still collecting and retaining them internally. This left Cumann na nGaedheal in a difficult position. There was tremendous pressure from its farming constituents, deeply hurt by the tariff war, to withhold the annuities, but Cumann na nGaedheal’s history made it difficult for party leaders to endorse disobedience to the law. Cosgrave’s motions in November 1932 attempted to find a workaround. He promised to suspend collection of the annuities for two years –​pending a new trade agreement with Britain –​on the theory that Britain was collecting the equivalent to the annuities through its new tariffs. Cosgrave explained this to the party before the motions: ‘don’t say that people should not pay; say that the Government should not collect’.42 Both motions were defeated in the Dáil by relatively narrow margins but Cosgrave’s skill in debate was fulsomely praised by the party afterwards. At a subsequent parliamentary party meeting: Deputy Beckett begged permission to move a vote of congratulation to the President [Cosgrave] on the wonderful service rendered to the country and the

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Party during the week. The speech which he packed into such a short time on Thursday was the most wonderful climax to any discussion which had taken place in the House. Such an achievement could not be paralleled in the history of any Parliament.

Seán Mac Eoin said ‘we expect so much from Mr. Cosgrave that we are never surprised even when he exceeds our expectations’.43 His mastery of the Dáil, even in defeat, allegedly forced Fianna Fáil to change its policies, and a Cumann na nGaedheal ad asked ‘Who Made them Change? Cosgrave’, and referenced his Dáil performance.44 In addition to governmental ability and oratory skill, the party also emphasised Cosgrave’s personal honour and decency. Cosgrave framed his discussions of the oath and the annuities as a matter of Ireland keeping its obligations honourably. He told the Cumann na nGaedheal convention in 1932 that he wanted ‘no man or combination of men in any country to point the finger of dishonour at this State in any of its acts’.45 Cosgrave’s personal morals aligned with this. Ads said that ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, and ‘Cosgrave Plays Straight. Unlike the Fianna Fáil quibblers, Mr. Cosgrave can insist on bargains being kept’ because he was ‘universally acknowledged to have kept his word in all circumstances’.46 Cosgrave’s courage was also emphasised, and often tied to his Easter Week service. He ‘has stood up to the British since 1916, and will always stand up to them’, although in this case that courage would be manifested ‘by standing up to them in sensible negotiations’ that would be ‘fair and courageous’.47 Part of ‘Cosgrave’s job’, if elected, would be to ‘stand up for Irish Rights, as he has always done, with the courage of the men of Easter Week’.48 This was contrasted with de Valera, who was ‘the most inveterate pettifogger that ever cursed this country’, according to Patrick Hogan, who also said that de Valera introduced ‘sharp practice’ into Irish nationalism.49 His unilateral alteration of the Treaty was consistently depicted by Cumann na nGaedheal as largely motivated by personal vanity and vindictiveness. John Marcus O’Sullivan said that de Valera ‘would sacrifice nationality and everything else if he can only say “I was right.” ’50 Cumann na nGaedheal opposed the Removal of Oath Bill by admitting that de Valera had the legal power to remove it but that such action was unwise and spoke poorly of his character and honour.51 J.A. Nix, a former supporter of de Valera’s, excoriated his character in an open letter. He wrote ‘rodent-​like you desert every ship as you think it is going to sink but the Collins cutter is still afloat and Mary’s [MacSwiney] boat is only becalmed in a side stream. Anyway you sought to immolate them all on the altar of your egoism, opportunism, and vanity.’ The writer memorably concluded ‘you are like a lusty young bridegroom Sir who divorces a life partner every morning and weds a new one every night’.52 Patrick Hogan denied that de Valera was either

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honourable or competent. After listening to him speak on the tariff war, Hogan told the Dáil: The President probably thinks that he has made something in the nature of a historic or, at least, a courageous speech. I regard the speech as hysterical and I genuinely regard the speech as cowardly. We could adopt that attitude, too. Apparently, patriotism in this country consists in always delivering ultimatums, taking up a fixed attitude, talking big and getting popular applause instead of settling down and trying to solve the details of government, which is much harder, much more humdrum but much more patriotic.53

This was the kind of feeling that Cumann na nGaedheal tried to tap into during the 1933 campaign. Cosgrave’s honour and straightforwardness, they hoped, would contrast positively with de Valera’s duplicity and double-​speak. Using de Valera as a foil turned some of Cosgrave’s perceived weaknesses –​modesty, lack of a desire for the spotlight, indecisiveness –​ into strengths. In contrast, Fianna Fáil was constantly accused by Cumann na nGaedheal of being rash and acting without thinking. J.M. O’Sullivan summed this up: It is quite evident to anybody who has followed the actions of the Executive Council since they were elected on the 9th March last, that their policy has been practically speaking a hand-​to-​mouth policy. First create your difficulty and then see how you are to get out of it. Plunge into a difficulty blindly. Do not examine, do not investigate, but plunge in. When you are in, look about you, flounder about and see whether you can get any foot-​hold. At all events do something that will distract the mind of the country from the mistakes you have already made.54

Cosgrave, on the other hand, was much more cautious and thus avoided such mistakes. He lacked de Valera’s megalomania, flair for the dramatic, and impulsiveness, all of which were represented as ruining the Free State economy and polity. This was a somewhat odd personality cult built around the quotidian and competent, not the active and visionary. Fianna Fáil saw this as reducing all questions of policy to personality, and noted that this seeming aggressiveness had done nothing to increase the profile of Cumann na nGaedheal in the Dáil. Hugo Flinn said that ‘when they get up [in the Dáil] they use every personality and scurrility which they have, everything they can find in a man’s personal life or record to attack him, but, when it is their own time, they clear out. There is a perfectly empty Opposition Front Bench on a question which they regard as of appalling seriousness.’55 De Valera at times responded to charges that he was dishonourable by levying the same charge at Cosgrave, particularly over the acceptance of the Treaty and the disavowal of his oath to the republic. He also noted that appeals to honour had misled Irishmen in the past: ‘it was such an appeal that took

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our young men out to the trenches and left their bones whitening in Suvla Bay and elsewhere.’56 In general, though, Fianna Fáil focused its campaign on two things: the ultimate wisdom of the party’s national and economic policies, and the fact that Cumann na nGaedheal were British stooges. As a result, Cumann na nGaedheal borrowed from what had been common political currency during the 1920s and argued that Fianna Fáil was refusing to focus on economic issues in order to pursue political ends. The elimination of the oath and the withholding of the annuities were represented as political stunts with real economic consequences that Fianna Fáil refused to face. Thus Cumann na nGaedheal’s first campaign as an opposition combined what it perceived as Fianna Fáil’s personality cult with the economic focus that had been urged by the smaller parties and by Fianna Fáil in the 1920s. The types of issues that Cumann na nGaedheal sought to push off onto experts and technocrats while in office were brought to the centre of the Cosgrave campaign in 1933. ‘Points for Speakers’ highlighted that ‘the first duty of an Irish government is to care for Agriculture’, a duty Fianna Fáil was shirking with its tariff war.57 The party also directed economic promises at particular constituencies and linked them to Cosgrave. Farmers were told that ‘Cosgrave will get back your markets in three days.’58 There also was a ‘SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM MR. COSGRAVE’ to the farmers, in which he promised not to collect annuities for two years or pursue missed payments from the previous year.59 Dockworkers were told to ‘Load Cosgrave’s boat with votes on Jan. 24th’, in return for which ‘Cosgrave will bring back trade to the port. Cosgrave will give you work and give your families comfort and hope.’60 Employees of Jacob’s Biscuit Factory were informed that ‘Cosgrave can save you. Cosgrave can give you security in your employment. Cosgrave’s policy is to have friendly relations with the people who buy what you make.’61 Civil servants, whose salaries and positions were threatened by Fianna Fáil austerity, were urged ‘For Your Children’s Sake and the Country’s Sake THE WAR MUST END. Vote for Cosgrave. The Man Who Will End It.’62 Cumann na nGaedheal also targeted female voters, something that the party had rarely done before. Generally such women were imagined as wives and housemakers, not as workers. Farmers’ wives, undoubtedly struggling with rising costs and lower farm income during the tariff war, were told ‘Cosgrave Will Reduce Taxation, End the Economic War, and Bring Back Better Prices, Peace, and Security.’63 Another ad aimed at nonworking women charged ‘Fianna Fáil promised the WOMEN of Ireland to find work for the Husbands and Sons. Since Fianna Fáil came into power the NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED HAS RISEN BY OVER 73,000’, and ‘Fianna Fáil has added to the Household Expenses by a Multitude of Taxes.’

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The conclusion was for ‘WOMEN OF THE FREE STATE’ to ‘BRING BACK COSGRAVE –​HE WILL BRING BACK THE GOOD TIMES.’64 The particular ‘good times’ that were being referenced were left unclear, as agricultural wealth had been generally declining in Ireland throughout the 1920s. The only nod to women workers was when Cumann na nGaedheal’s ‘Points for Speakers’ reminded supporters that Fianna Fáil had not created good jobs during its first months in power: ‘the majority of those newly-​ employed are young girls earning a few miserable shillings a week’. This was derisively referred to as ‘flapper-​sweating’.65 This appeal combined Cosgrave’s omnipotence with a focus on the economic ills he would allegedly cure. Voters were told ‘COSGRAVE WILL END THE WAR … COSGRAVE is the only man in Ireland who can save Ireland and save you. A WIN FOR COSGRAVE IS A WIN FOR YOU.’66 Gearóid O’Sullivan claimed that ‘there was only one man who could end the economic war, and that was Mr. Cosgrave’.67 Lacking any experience in opposition except that dating back to the days of colonialism, Cumann na nGaedheal essentially presented the election as a compact between an all-​ powerful and wise party leader and the bedraggled population. The electorate would see through the falsity of Fianna Fáil’s promises and return the skilled and trustworthy Cosgrave to office. In return, he would end the economic war while somehow halting annuity payments, leading to a restoration of prosperity for agriculture and a reduction in the cost of living. This approach did a number of things for Cumann na nGaedheal. For one, it gave the election a national scope as a referendum on de Valera. This made up for the party’s well-​known organisational deficiencies on the local level, where it tended to prioritise local notables and struggle to generate enthusiasm. The party sent a ‘talkie van’ to ‘small towns and villages which Mr. Cosgrave could not possibly find the time in such a short campaign to visit’. A film of Cosgrave was shown on a screen on the back of the van and synchronised with an audio recording of the speakers. This gave more people the chance ‘to hear Mr. Cosgrave’s policy from his own lips’.68 A focus on Cosgrave also drew attention away from his colleagues, a number of whom were unpopular for a variety of reasons: Ernest Blythe (cutting old age pensions), Richard Mulcahy (civil war executions), Patrick Hogan (opposition to tariffs), and Patrick McGilligan (exhorting people to starve). Cosgrave had not been specifically associated with any of those controversies and so having him head the ticket in all constituencies could deflect from the unpopularity of the former Government as a whole. Cumann na nGaedheal, struggling in opposition for the first time, ended up blending their longstanding national party strategy with a personality cult borrowed from Fianna Fáil and a focus on economics for which the smaller parties had been clamouring since the mid-​1920s. But this was

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still not the normal politics anticipated during the 1920s: there were two national parties, instead of one, and the focus on economics almost totally sidelined the smaller parties and did not result in the posited ‘normal’ left–​ right divisions. Cumann na nGaedheal’s much lauded peaceful transfer of power in 1932 most definitely did not normalise multiparty democracy. Both major parties were still claiming to be national, and Fianna Fáil did not accept Cumann na nGaedheal’s opposition as legitimate. In response to Cumann na nGaedheal’s frequently repeated claim that Cosgrave could end the economic war in three days, a Fianna Fáil handbill predicted ‘One day to cross over to England, one day to sign away the people’s rights, and one day to return’.69 A Fianna Fáil ad asked in large type ‘Who Makes England’s Case?’, and then charged Cumann na nGaedheal with taking Britain’s side on the land annuities, however ineffectually: ‘their preposterous contentions and pseudo-​arguments, on Britain’s behalf, were too absurd even for the British Government’.70 Fianna Fáil’s ‘Make It Clear’ poster shows a group of British politicians sitting around a table and contemplating making a deal with Fianna Fáil because ‘we cannot unseat this new Irish government’. However, their resolve stiffens when they hear a radio broadcast of comments from Cumann na nGaedheal politicians attacking de Valera’s case against the annuities. After hearing these words from Cosgrave, FitzGerald, Blythe, and McGilligan, the British politicians cry ‘Saved Again’ and ‘Attaboy’.71 Another ad notes that de Valera’s argument was so watertight that ‘even the British Government would have admitted it long ago if they had not been encouraged to hold out by the stupid speeches from the members of Cumann na nGaedheal’.72 Another Fianna Fáil advertisement is headed ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises –​to England’ and directly attempts to undermine Cumann na nGaedheal’s attempt to call a referendum on de Valera’s character. It notes ‘Mr. Cosgrave tried by every device to keep his secret promise –​to England’, referring to the Cosgrave Government’s 1923 agreement to pay the annuities. The ad calls Cosgrave’s honour into question: ‘Mr. Cosgrave broke every promise he made to the Irish People during his political life –​and the leopard cannot change its spots … Eamon de Valera keeps his word. Even his opponents cannot deny his honesty or sincerity. He is the man for Ireland now.’73 While de Valera’s opponents most definitely questioned his honour and sincerity over and over again, the ad again emphasises that Cosgrave, and by extension Cumann na nGaedheal, were deliberately playing England’s game. Seán MacEntee, in the Dáil, said that ‘with Deputy Cosgrave and the members of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, it has been “For Great Britain, right or wrong” and “Against Ireland, right or wrong” ’. He also noted, as did other Fianna Fáil speakers, that the British Government was actively seeking to return the Cosgrave party to power

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and that Cosgrave himself was complicit in this.74 Cumann na nGaedheal, according to MacEntee, manifested an ‘anti-​national attitude’.75 In kicking off the election campaign, de Valera foregrounded the point that Cumann na nGaedheal was helping England to undermine his position on the annuities. He said that the opposition undermined de Valera’s government ‘heedless of the damage it was doing to the national interests’. He asked ‘what foreign government would treat seriously with us so long as they thought that by exercising sufficient pressure they could break our people’s will and get us replaced by an administration they could bend and twist as they chose’, in effect blaming Cumann na nGaedheal for the stalled trade negotiations. He also used military language to describe Cumann na nGaedheal’s resistance: ‘I want the people to declare that this ambushing on the flank and on the rear must definitely stop … This sapping and mining and ambushing is party politics at its worst.’ This language was an odd choice, as ambushing had been what the IRA had been celebrated for during the revolution, although de Valera had never particularly cared for that strategy. But the result of Cumann na nGaedheal’s tactics in opposition, according to de Valera, was to undermine the Government internationally, aid Britain, and assist ‘those who built their fortunes under the old regime of exploitation’.76 Fianna Fáil deputies essentially charged the opposition with treason for actively helping the colonial enemy and its remaining garrison. Cosgrave and his colleagues denied this, with Mulcahy pointing to the tenacity with which the Cosgrave Government had fought the British to get the Statute of Westminster: ‘the British know the fight we made for Irish rights. The prints of McGilligan’s teeth are still in [Dominions Secretary J.H.] Thomas’s throat as a mark of the fight made by Cosgrave and his Executive up to the nose of the British Government.’77 Mulcahy had an unusual way with words, but the larger point is that the transfer of power in 1932 did not settle the issue of the desirability of multiparty democracy, as both large parties still aimed for an all-​embracing national party and generally accused their opponents of being antinational, disloyal, and working for foreign interests. This was a far cry from a widely accepted notion of loyal opposition. Cumann na nGaedheal’s turn toward fascism after this election made the acceptance of loyal opposition even more difficult. Undoubtedly, the tactics of 1933 had failed: Fianna Fáil was returned with a larger majority. As Ciara Meehan argues, after 1926 Cumann na nGaedheal lost more votes to smaller protest parties –​in 1933, it was the National Centre Party –​than it did to Fianna Fáil, but that took little of the sting out of the defeat.78 There were some within Cumann na nGaedheal who still professed optimism. Party General Secretary Liam Burke spoke of ‘the great enthusiasm for Cumann na nGaedheal’ during the campaign, and said that postelection

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reports from constituencies ‘show that everywhere Cumann na nGaedheal is anxious to be up and doing’.79 Blythe, who lost his seat, also told his constituency that ‘a very short time will elapse before there is once again a majority of the electorate in favour of our policy and methods’.80 English papers concluded that Cosgrave lost on his chosen ground: a personality contest. The Sunday Times cited ‘the romantic appeal of his own personality’ in explaining de Valera’s victory.81 Some Cumann na nGaedheal Party insiders were also open about the failure of their electoral strategy. One concluded: the politicians have beaten the statesmen, and however unpalatable it may be, it was the fault of the statesmen. There was no touch with the constituencies. There was a decided reluctance to address public meetings. [Ex-​Ministers] were out of touch with members of the party. TDs were unaware of what was happening in constituencies. In only one constituency, West Cork, was there accurate information about the trend of public opinion.82

Cosgrave publicly acknowledged the defeat and said that the party would continue to pursue the ideals of Cumann na nGaedheal in opposition: ‘the policy of the main Opposition in the new Dáil will be that which distinguished it in the more responsible position it held in the first formative decade of the State –​progress on a sound national economic basis of construction, and courage in shaping the country’s political destiny’.83 Despite this message, the party in the spring of 1933 was already having trouble with Dáil attendance and created a cumbersome rotation to make sure there were at least two ex-​ministers on the front bench at all times.84 Cumann na nGaedheal voters were told ‘this is a time for courage’ and ‘to face the present situation with the courage which is the characteristic of our leader’.85 But it is clear that behind the scenes Cumann na nGaedheal leaders were not feeling particularly confident. They genuinely believed that de Valera’s term in government would be short and that voters would be turned off by his apparent recklessness and inexperience. They thought the chaos of the economic war and its ruinous effect on farmers would have an immediate electoral effect. When that did not happen, they were at a loss, particularly when they realised they were losing ground to agrarian parties such as the National Centre Party.

Blueshirt unity The electoral defeat led to a merger between Cumann na nGaedheal, the Centre Party, and the Blueshirts to form Fine Gael in September 1933. The motives were clear: the Army Comrades’ Association and the Blueshirts in

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various guises had already been protecting Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings and had established a working relationship between the two. An alliance with the Centre Party meant that Cumann na nGaedheal could inoculate itself against attacks from the right, or at least from another group that was having some success appealing to Cumann na nGaedheal’s agrarian constituency. The new party was called the United Ireland Party or the Fine Gael Party. Its leaders believed that together they could protect the interests of Irish export agriculture, and Cumann na nGaedheal also specifically hoped it would get a considerable infusion of local enthusiasm and youthful energy. The Blueshirts, for their part, wanted the cover that a legal political party could provide, as becoming part of the main opposition party made them harder to proscribe.86 After the merger was finalised, Cosgrave praised ‘the co-​operation which had taken place between the Leaders of the three Organisations since the new Party was formed’.87 The Blueshirt leaders were a bit less sanguine, frequently reassuring their members that the movement would retain its radicalism and vanguard status despite the merger. Blythe told his readers that Fine Gael’s policy statement took its lead from the Blueshirts: it must be gratifying to all members of Young Ireland that the policy contains so much that was foreshadowed in the programme of the original Youth Movement. The document issued on Saturday is proof … that the members of the late National Guard were not ‘let down’ when their organisation was merged with the two political parties to form United Ireland.88

Although people expected Fine Gael to produce a ‘colourless and over-​ cautious statement of policy’, it instead created ‘a policy which is, in fact, distinguished by its boldness and its far-​reaching character’.89 The idea was not simply to revive Cumann na nGaedheal but instead to incorporate some new political ideas borrowed in part from continental fascism and from traditions of Irish agrarian radicalism. The focus in 1933–​4 was also on creating a new normal in Irish politics, one that was modelled after both continental practice and the Sinn Féin idea of a national party. Unlike the smaller parties in the 1920s, the continental model the Blueshirts referenced was not the usual left–​right spectrum divided by economics –​that notion they continued to deplore –​but the newer fascist-​style single-​party response to economic crisis and class conflict. For the Blueshirts, examples on the Continent, particularly in Italy, had demonstrated the weakness of party politics and the inability of nineteenth-​ century liberal economics to address the current crisis of capitalism. They wanted to emulate countries on the Continent that had discarded laissez-​ faire liberalism without adopting communism. The continental normal the Blueshirts sought involved discipline, order, a single party, and a corporate

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state. This vision was more easily blended with elements of Sinn Féin political practice than was the sectional or economic vision of the Farmers or Labour. But it also involved some new departures from Sinn Féin politics as well, most notably in economics. As with other continental models, this one was initially put forward and tried out while in opposition. The Blueshirts started life as the Army Comrades’ Association (ACA), initially a social and lobbying group for former Free State Army officers before becoming a mass organisation in August 1932. The first ACA members came from a Sinn Féin and Treatyite background, and as such many of its ideas reflected earlier iterations of nationalist politics. When the IRA began disrupting Cumann na nGaedheal election speeches in 1932, famously saying there was ‘no free speech for traitors’, the ACA took up the task of protecting Cumann na nGaedheal speakers and meetings. The ACA’s first director, T.F. O’Higgins, Kevin O’Higgins’s elder brother, espoused an organic theory of the nation in outlining the aims of the movement: ‘our tens of thousands of members [should] form one great and efficient machine, each part working smoothly and each individual a disciplined unit –​all together working for law and order, the safety of life and the safety of property and ensuring that no voice or voices will rule in Ireland except the majority voice of a free people’.90 The ACA initially insisted it was ‘non-​party’, but admitted that it could be ‘prepared to enter to some extent on the political field for the purpose of securing that the national destiny shall be determined by a genuine and free expression of the majority will’.91 There was a commitment to democracy and to the protection of opposition speech, but the references to the majority were designed as rejoinders to the IRA, a definite minority group in the Free State whose members, it was feared, were going to have an outsized effect on policy under Fianna Fáil. As with Sinn Féin, Fine Gael was not a political party, but was the ‘United Ireland Movement’ that would ‘control the national and spiritual destiny of the Saorstát’.92 This movement, like its predecessors, needed to transcend class and religious conflict. The ACA’s proposed political goals included ‘to prevent the development of class warfare by ensuring justice and succor for the poor’.93 Fine Gael stood for ‘the abolition of class consciousness, and of narrow and intolerant conceptions of patriotism, and the creation of a national spirit based on cordial and constructive co-​operation between all sections of the community’.94 They invoked Protestant Young Irelander Thomas Davis in making this pledge: ‘what was good enough for Davis is good enough for us. We are the true democrats, because we stand not for a section, but for all the people.’95 In addition to a sense of tolerance and unity springing from Davis, this desire for a national party was also consistent with Sinn Féin’s vision. The United Irishman wrote:

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the desire of the mass of our people for a general national party is constant and deep-​seated. A lot of the unnecessary party hatred and cynical apathy which have bedevilled national affairs during the past ten years are undoubtedly due to the fact that our people, having for generations regarded mass unity not merely as a necessity but as an ideal, do not want and do not like the ordinary party contests which are the breath of life to English politics. The cut and thrust of constitutional party conflict which the Englishman loves or takes as a matter of course irritate our people into acerbity and hatred.

The prescription for fixing this state of affairs was the same as the Sinn Féin parties had practised before: ‘The way to get tranquillity and business-​like politics (and to allow the corporations scheme of Fine Gael to thrive) is to form a big national party which will have the support of, say, nine-​tenths of the people, as O’Connell had, as Parnell had, as the Irish Party under Redmond had.’ This would allow discussion ‘not of fundamental national aims, but of all economic and political problems’.96 Here was the old style of politics, inherited from O’Connellite and Irish Party days, that Sinn Féin leaders thought would be the foundation of postindependence politics. In the early 1930s the Blueshirts were repackaging this with alterations and again presenting it as a normal political state for Ireland. Now, though, not only was this marked as different from colonial practice, but it was assumed to be in line with the development of similar European Catholic countries. If elected, Fine Gael would command ‘such a wave of national feeling and with such a mandate that it will remain in charge of the destinies of the country for at least fifteen or twenty years’. This would be contrary to what people expected who were too used to ‘the English system of rhythmic alternation or … [to] the French system of perpetual shuffling’. The prototype was again Mussolini’s Italy, which was consistently depicted as a democratic one-​party state, instead of de Valera’s petty ‘Mexican Dictatorship’.97 This model meant that all elements of the Fine Gael coalition had to remain nominally united. There were a number of ways in which this unity could be demonstrated to the population both in practice and in ideal form. For one, as with many revolutionaries, a common style of address was chosen. In the case of the Blueshirts it was the term ‘comrades’, although it was stripped of any communist connections. Instead, it was used ‘to emphasise our conviction that beyond the differences that separate men of various views, classes, interests and occupations there lies a fundamental Irish unity. And we want to make sure that in the future the power of that unity will dominate national affairs.’98 The main signifier of unity was the wearing of a uniform. Blue shirts were explained as honouring the colour of St Patrick, rather than as emulating continental shirted movements. Blythe, not surprisingly, took particular care with the specifics of the Blueshirt uniform.

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His columns in United Ireland constantly chastised Blueshirts for wearing parts of their uniforms wrong and detracting from the overall message of disciplined unity. Favourite admonitions were directed against people who smoked while making the Blueshirt salute, wore a coat or sweater over their blue shirt, or sported a tweed hat instead of the expected beret.99 Nothing was to distract from the sartorial message of unity. This concern with outward appearance connected to another way to demonstrate unity: discipline. A cigarette in one hand and a fascist salute with the other did not show the discipline required of Blueshirt members. The ACA, in a fundraiser, identified a lack of discipline as one of Ireland’s fundamental problems. After listing some material reasons for Ireland’s problems in 1932, the letter asserts that ‘the mental laziness which allows people to dwell on out-​worn shibboleths and ancient hatreds, an apathy amounting to inertia and a complacent refusal to face responsibility are all symptoms of a dangerous national disease’. Part of the cure was ‘the discipline which the ACA offers’, which was ‘not the discipline of an illegal army, but a mental and physical training for the protection of national interests’.100 This is, of course, precisely how that illegal army would have described themselves as well. Blythe tried to distinguish this emphasis on discipline from those offered by other entities, in particular because ACA discipline was tied to a broad and open movement, not a small secret army. He wanted ‘the individual member [to] feel all the time that he was in something different from the ordinary political society’. Discipline would serve as a transcendent and motivational force, as ‘the less a man feels under discipline the less willing he will be to do work except of course at times of excitement’.101 A 1933 draft speech for O’Duffy indicated that the ACA wanted to avoid street brawls: ‘while you are not expected to submit to vulgar abuse or humiliation, while you must display manliness, pluck and courage if attacked, while you must face opposition with vigour and decision, you must always bear in mind that you are members of a disciplined organisation … Do not get mixed up in party wrangles.’ If you were to abandon discipline, O’Duffy concluded, ‘you would not please me’.102 The overall intention was to ‘organise the young manhood of the country for disciplined public service in such a way as to secure a true expression of the national will in a revitalised State’.103 While the Blueshirts did eventually seek to organise girls’ units (as they called them), the movement’s early ethos and liturgy were steeped in concerns with Irish masculinity. The Blueshirts too designated some people as outside the nation. They limited membership to people of Irish birth, although the women’s division allowed people who were Irish citizens by marriage.104 Much of the ire against those who fell outside these strictures was directed against de Valera’s Spanish heritage and American birth. Fine Gael branches proposed

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resolutions to the 1934 Ard-​Fheis that ‘no person can hold the office of President of the Executive Council of the Free State unless he be a true born son of Ireland’, and that ‘all future Presidents and Cabinet Ministers of this State must be children of Irish parents on both sides’.105 In commenting on the issue that was before the Ard-​Fheis, ‘Outlook’ wrote that a president should have one Irish-​born and two Irish-​domiciled parents, so as to avoid someone who was ‘neither cosmopolitan nor morbidly and artificially by-​ national [sic]’. Blythe, writing in the same issue, concluded that one Irish-​ born parent sufficed, citing Thomas Davis, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Patrick Pearse, but not Eamon de Valera.106 O’Duffy called de Valera ‘a bloody foreigner’ and a ‘half-​breed’ in a 1933 stump speech.107 A United Irishman cartoon pictured de Valera doing a Spanish or Latin American dance, and referred to him as ‘the Kid from Spain’, after a popular movie.108 De Valera’s Spanish or Cuban heritage was also put in the context of ‘Mexican politics’, a common Irish political slur for violent chaos and disorder. O’Duffy said that Fianna Fáil was ‘creeping toward … a dictatorship of the Mexican brand’, as well as a ‘Shylock dictatorship … Like the Jew in the celebrated “Merchant of Venice”, the present Government clings to the letter of the law precisely in order that it might violate the spirit.’109 Coverage of lawlessness under de Valera’s government was headed ‘pax Mexicana’.110 When Cosgrave argued that Fine Gael should not urge people to break the law and hold the annuities, he said ‘the alternative is a Mexican state. It could be brought about by a son of Mexico.’111 These were the racial and ethnic lines delineating the nation that Fine Gael promised to unite. In order to further the connection between the party and some sort of essential Irishness, Fine Gael acknowledged the continental inspiration for some of their ideas, but still claimed they were somehow authentically Irish. The party ‘cannot adopt unchanged even the most successful measures that have been applied elsewhere. Our corporative system must be Irish through and through.’112 O’Duffy admitted that Mussolini was a dictator but said that his own party would not be making those ideas part of its corporate state, as they arose from ‘the special conditions of Italy’.113 After he resigned from Fine Gael and became free of its traditionalist confines, O’Duffy still said that corporatism was ‘neither Fascist nor German. We are no more concerned with Italy or Austria than we are with Russia or Spain or Mexico.’114 The Blueshirts believed that normal politics was moving toward the exemplars of Spain and Italy but wanted to avoid the impression that they were pale imitators of movements there. Part of this was to imply that Irish nationalism remained sui generis, but they also wanted to distinguish themselves from internationalist movements, such as communism, that were thought to be unsuitable for the Irish character and experience.

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The Blueshirt emphasis on unity was clearly a carry-​over from previous generations of Irish politics, as they themselves realised. It was old classless and creedless wine in new bottles. But their emphasis on a cult of personality around O’Duffy demonstrates some of what was new in the Blueshirt appeal. Cumann na nGaedheal had used a fairly mild cult of personality around Cosgrave in the 1933 election, to no avail. The party had always elevated its three greatest ­figures –​Collins, Griffith, and O’Higgins –​into a pantheon of Treatyite heroes, cheerfully ignoring the fact that neither Collins nor Griffith was ever a member of Cumann na nGaedheal. Ciara Meehan has written about the ways in which Fine Gael used Collins –​but not O’Duffy –​ in its propaganda and still looks to him as one of its forefathers.115 By the late 1920s, commemorations of Collins, Griffith, and O’Higgins were fairly common for Cumann na nGaedheal, particularly around the summer anniversaries of their deaths. The commemorative number in August 1933 had pictures of the three men with representative quotes connecting them to Cumann na nGaedheal policy.116 The 1934 issue repeated Mulcahy’s claim that Griffith was the greatest sower and Collins the greatest reaper in Irish history, and then doubled down on the metaphor, writing that ‘O’Higgins might be described as the man who brought the precious grain of national freedom home to the people.’117 O’Duffy said that the respect accorded to those three men guaranteed that Fine Gael was committed to democracy: our best and bravest died that democracy might live in Ireland. Many of them perished at the hands of the men who now have the effrontery to shout at us that we are not democrats. The passion with which the President of the Government tells the Dáil … that we, comrades and followers of Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and Kevin O’Higgins, are the enemies of democracy, would be beyond belief if we had not seen it happen.118

This adulation continued in the Blueshirt era –​a proscribed march in August 1933 was designed to commemorate those three men –​but to it was added a personality cult around the still very much alive Eoin O’Duffy. A full-​page article in the United Irishman explained the importance of individual initiative and leadership as against committees and collective responsibility.119 There was hope that O’Duffy could fulfil the role for Fine Gael that de Valera did for Fianna Fáil, while Ciara Meehan and Stephen Collins’s Saving the State observes that Fine Gael leaders hoped O’Duffy could be the next Michael Collins.120 And O’Duffy happily surrounded himself with many elements of the fascist cults of personality on the Continent. There was an air called ‘O’Duffy Abú’ that urged listeners ‘to fight with O’Duffy and his brave boys in blue’.121 A large picture of O’Duffy being released from Arbour Hill prison and carried on the shoulders of his saluting supporters was entitled ‘Hail! O’Duffy’.122 Chants of ‘Hoch O’Duffy’ were

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also encouraged. The coverage of the 1934 party Ard-​Fheis focused almost entirely on O’Duffy and his lieutenant Ned Cronin, with hardly any mention of Cosgrave.123 His public meetings went along with this theme, as in Cashel, where ‘the streets were lined with people of every creed and class, young and old, to catch a glimpse of the Director-​General and give him a cheer as he passed’.124 He was also saluted by twenty uniformed members of the Blueshirts. It was not hard for O’Duffy to get into the spirit of this sort of adulation. He told a crowd in Tipperary that ‘I don’t like parading records … but I challenge any man in Ireland to-​day to come along who has a better national record, or who suffered more or worked harder or more conscientiously, or took more risks for Ireland’s sake than I did.’125 While such boasts seem ridiculous now, Fine Gael was cognisant that it had no one of de Valera’s stature among its leaders, and thought O’Duffy could be used to raise the profile of the party in a way that the failed Cosgrave campaign had not. The Director-​ General could be a mouthpiece, but the idea among Cumann na nGaedheal elders was always to have him repeating their ideas. As many conservatives who supported fascists found out across Europe, this was easier said than done once personality cults were launched.

Parliaments and democracy One of the main differences that Fine Gael showed from its Sinn Féin and Cumann na nGaedheal predecessors was its critique of parliamentary institutions. Sinn Féin and Cumann na nGaedheal criticised ‘politics’, which they equated with sharp practice and careerism. Anti-​ Treaty Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil criticised the Dáil, but their concern was more the legitimacy of that particular parliamentary institution, rather than the merits of parliaments themselves. Fine Gael, and particularly O’Duffy, went farther in criticising the existence of a parliament, and used more explicitly antiparliamentary –​opponents said antidemocratic –​rhetoric than nearly all of its predecessors in opposition. This was not a complete departure from the previous Irish political rhetoric of opposition parties. Fine Gael certainly said that the state should focus more on economic affairs, as had several parties beforehand, and its call for vocational corporations somewhat expanded Cumann na nGaedheal’s emphasis on technocracy in the 1920s. The Blueshirts’ notion that a future Irish parliament would be devoid of parties but instead would have smaller and shifting groupings of delegates was more or less exactly what Sinn Féiners had predicted for postrevolutionary Irish politics. These critiques also connected with common interwar European discourse, particularly

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from the younger generation, that parliaments were outmoded talking shops. While extreme right-​and left-​wing movements were the most likely to make this kind of argument, it was common among more mainstream conservatives as well. Former Irish Party and National League supporter John J. Horgan wrote an article in the Jesuit journal Studies in 1933 that industry had produced new products and new problems, and that society was still ‘content to use the political institutions of the days when the sailing ship and the stage coach still reigned supreme on sea and land’.126 O’Duffy was a little more careful while under the Fine Gael imprimatur, saying ‘the debates in the Dáil are undignified and barren of good results for the people’, which is not quite the same thing as saying parliament ought to be scrapped.127 Michael Tierney wrote: there could be nothing funnier than the spectacle of a piebald and, in general, unintelligent and uneducated assembly of public representatives, chosen by most defective methods, claiming, or having thrust upon it, the whole enormously and very subtle task of conducting the march of a complicated and subtle civilisation. Yet that is the exact spectacle with which [we] are presented in the countries which yesterday were regarded as the leaders in political wisdom.

Tierney stumped for the Italian solution, which was not ‘a crude individual or party dictatorship’, but was instead ‘an attempt to create out of the wreckage both of Parliament and party a really well-​designed and complex machinery for dealing with a complex situation’.128 United Ireland ran a long article titled ‘Liberalism Out of Date’ charging that the ideals of the French revolution that had animated much of the nineteenth century were ‘as hollow-​sounding as an empty coffin’. The article was basically an attack on post-​Enlightenment liberalism, arguing: the way to realise individual liberty is not by attempting to create chaos in society but by eliminating the disorderly and the haphazard and by trying to secure perfectly planned social organisation. It is only through order and planning that we can have justice; it is only through order and planning, both in economics and politics, that we can prevent the waste and heart-​break of radical collisions of individual effort.129

This kind of argument was common among the interwar European right but sounded odd coming from ex-​Cumann na nGaedheal stalwarts, some of whom had been accused by opponents of reducing the entire revolution to the creation of a parliament. Some of this was, of course, frustration with Fianna Fáil’s ability to entrench itself in power despite what Treatyites saw as hypocrisy, incompetence, and civil war guilt. But it also reflected ongoing vexation with the unexpected and undesired triumph of what seemed to be party politics in

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postrevolutionary Ireland. A lengthy piece in United Ireland wanted ‘To End Bitter Party Strife’ through the corporate system. The problem was that ‘this country has not had a normal political development. The Saorstát started on its career with a peculiarly tragic species of Civil War. Subsequently political alignments have, roughly speaking, grouped themselves according to the opposing sides in that unnatural conflict.’ This origin story ended up aggravating party hatreds. The result was that ‘large sections of the people are forever doomed to dwell in a stale and unhealthy political atmosphere, the progressive spirit of the younger generation perpetually retarded by the reactions of old feuds’. Serious decisions were put off because of ‘minds preoccupied by perfervid politics’.130 This was the same argument made by the minor parties during the civil war, but now it was adopted by one of the larger parties as a way of bypassing a political game that it was clearly losing. What made this dismissal of partisan politics different was the solution proposed. Whereas the Sinn Féin parties wanted to replace politics, as they understood it, with a single nationalist party, and Labour and the Farmers wanted to replace it with a normal sectional division in the Dáil, Fine Gael wanted to use vocational corporations to bypass the Dáil altogether. The distinction usually drawn by Fine Gael was that parliament was for purely political questions, while the vocational corporations would be for economic questions. This derived largely from two sources: Mussolini’s Italy and the Pope’s Quadragesimo anno encyclical. The idea, in short, was to create vocational corporations –​decision-​ making bodies that would include representatives of employers, employees, and the Government –​ for each major industry, and those corporations would be given statutory authority by the Dáil over that industry, while an overarching economic council composed of members of the corporations would make economic decisions for the nation as a whole.131 This would follow the pope’s dictum to organise society vocationally and thus reduce or eliminate class conflict, as the different classes would be working co-​operatively within the corporations.132 Mussolini had done this in Italy, although the Italian corporations were significantly tilted toward the interests of the state and the employers, something left unmentioned in Fine Gael propaganda. This programme had a number of advantages, according to Fine Gael, all of which were connected to a general attempt to make ‘politics’ work differently than it had before. For one, it removed economic issues from a body that was not designed to deal with such questions. O’Duffy asked ‘Can the Parliamentary system be an effective instrument for the control of the economic life of the country?’ His answer, unsurprisingly, was no, as ‘it certainly was never intended for that purpose, and its constitution renders it wholly unfitted for the positive, continuous and enormously complicated task of regulating economic processes in a large community’.133

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Sidelining politicians would allow experts to make decisions in their fields rather than have to defer to politicians who knew far less about the subject, although the same line of thought surely indicated that O’Duffy ought not be speaking about matters of economic organisation.134 O’Duffy also warned ‘there is no reason why we should make an idol of parliament. It is a human institution, and like everything human, has its limitations.’135 This is different than what Labour wanted, which was to move away from professional politicians but keep economic issues at the forefront of Dáil debate. This split between politics and economics would also minimise party friction and hatred, always a goal of Irish postrevolutionary politicians. United Ireland wrote that the corporate system would allow politicians ‘to work for the common good –​differing, possibly, in their judgment of what the common good demands –​but not having that difference of judgment governed by a divergence of economic interest’.136 Professor Hogan argued that ‘party politics will lose their rigid and violently partisan character in a society where cultural and economic interests are adequately represented’. Parties would no longer be able to confuse their partisan political interests with the national interest.137 In the 1920s, Cumann na nGaedheal and anti-​ Treaty Sinn Féin both argued for the removal of sectional parties from the Dáil –​by electoral means, not through law –​in order to make way for a national party. They claimed the time was not right for sectional interests to dominate in the immediate postrevolutionary and postcolonial period. By the 1930s, Fine Gael was again calling for the removal of such interests, but rather than claiming such parties or conflicts should not exist, they were proposing to remove them from the sphere of politics and relocate them elsewhere. This would result in a unified system –​the national party writ somewhat large –​that avoided the standard party-​political tropes of left–​ right divisions and instead worked in harmony toward a greater good. Such organisation would ‘abolish the factious and fatuous party strife’ that is ‘so often personal or unreal in its basis’.138 O’Duffy said that corporatism ‘offers a practical alternative to the extremes of both socialism and capitalism, because it avoids at once the competitive anarchy and the waste of human life of the former and the enslavement of the latter’.139 In addition to defusing party rancour, this also promised to bring large swaths of the population back under a broad nationalist party. The positioning of a form of economic democracy side-​by-​side with political democracy should appeal to Labour, or at least Fine Gael convinced itself that it would, and the corporations would motivate the population to be more aware and more active politically.140 The corporations would serve as mediators between the individual and the more distant bureaucratic state, and through this mediation collective and individual needs would

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be harmonised. O’Duffy said ‘only by the interposition between the State and the individuals of such vocational corporations can such satisfaction be guaranteed and the extremes of Communism without liberty and Liberalism without justice be avoided’.141 Fine Gael felt the need to define itself as something other than a party in favour of the status quo ante, and wanted to be seen as much more dynamic, activist, and forward-​looking than Cumann na nGaedheal. The corporate state was their shiniest new idea that allowed them to rebrand themselves while still drawing on themes that were prevalent during the immediate postrevolutionary years when Sinn Féiners hoped for a similarly pervasive, if conceptually different, redefinition of the political. But the party also had the legacy of Cumann na nGaedheal’s self-​defined role as the protector and builder of Irish democracy to deal with, and were sensitive to criticisms that they wanted to end democracy once it no longer favoured them. That is why they pitched this as a completion of or supplement to democracy, rather than its replacement. O’Duffy assured his listeners that ‘we in Ireland will move towards the corporative social order by the same path we have always followed –​by the path of democracy’. Political democracy, instead of being involved in economics, would instead ‘stand guard over the large field of human activity which does not belong to economics’. This would lead not to the abandonment of democracy, but to its completion.142 James Hogan said the same thing in a piece called ‘Production Brought under Discipline’, writing ‘it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that far from contradicting or superseding political democracy, functional or economic democracy actually completes it’.143 Fine Gael called this the ‘new democracy’, which superseded outdated republicanism. An article laying this out was subtitled ‘World Progress since Wolfe Tone’s Time’.144 Fine Gael’s new vision of politics was also pitched as one that supported minority rights, another key issue that had been bandied about since the revolution. This was, of course, a question raised by the desire for a single national party: what to do with those that are not part of it? In balancing the rights of the majority and the minority, the Cumann na nGaedheal Party had generally come down on the side of the rights of the majority politically, while protecting the rights of the Protestant minority to some extent. But the loss of the 1932 election and the apparent revival of the IRA made political rights difficult to assert for Cumann na nGaedheal, as many of their meetings were disrupted or attacked by IRA men wanting to deny speech to people whom they considered traitors. Mulcahy called this ‘a vicious campaign of slander and incitement [undertaken] … with a view to silencing the voice of opposition and getting the Fianna Fáil followers to drive it off public platforms’.145 Cosgrave was shouted down at a meeting at Trim, and a few weeks later the Fianna Fáil press threatened to have

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Cosgrave arrested and brought before the military tribunal. Seán MacEntee also called ex-​ministers traitors.146 These types of events allowed organisations such as the ACA to frame their political purpose as a defence of free speech and minority rights. In 1932, ACA leader T.F. O’Higgins told potential donors that the ACA were ‘non-​political and they recognise no class distinction, but they intend to defend, if necessary with their lives, the State which they founded and saved, and they are pledged to stand for the maintenance of order, and to secure the fullest freedom of speech for all parties who are acting within the Constitution’.147 After the 1933 election, he congratulated the ACA on ‘the manner in which you stood for the democratic right of free speech for all candidates and free franchise for all voters’.148 O’Higgins painted this as a last stand in defence of democracy, much in the same way that Cumann na nGaedheal defined their majority status in 1922. He wrote, looking back, that ‘during the Spring, Summer, and Autumn of 1932 to all intents and purposes democracy was dead in this country and free speech was down in the gutter’. He claimed not a single Cumann na nGaedheal meeting took place without violence or disruption.149 Blythe predicted that a Fianna Fáil victory would be the end of free elections: ‘future elections would be won not by argument and persuasion but by organised terrorism. Fianna Fáil needs your vote to put it in power. It would not need your vote to keep it in power. The gun bullies would do that.’150 In fact, de Valera urged supporters to refrain from disrupting opposition meetings, in part because it made Ireland look bad to the rest of the world. In the speech kicking off his 1933 election campaign, he said ‘No Irishman abroad must be made to hang his head on our account. The reputation of Ireland abroad, as well as its peace at home, must suffer from any interference with public meetings or any attempt to curtail freedom of speech during the election.’151 The Blueshirts’ defence-​of-​free-​speech argument waned after 1933, when it became clearer that de Valera’s government did not really intend to shut down political speech. Fine Gael, nevertheless, continued to market themselves as defending minority rights from a tyrannical majority, although this sat uneasily beside their simultaneous desire for a totalising mass movement. The protection of minorities, though, was framed as necessary because of de Valera’s thin skin and inability to tolerate dissent from his views. Fine Gael said that de Valera believed ‘the majority is entitled to use the power thus acquired in any way that suits them. There must be no restriction and no criticism.’152 Protecting the Seánad from de Valera’s attempts to abolish it was depicted as vindicating minority rights, although the minority in question were no longer Protestant unionists, as had been the case at the time of the Seánad’s founding. Instead, it was the political minority that was being protected by the Seánad, largely because

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the incident that drew de Valera’s ire was the Seánad’s rejection of his Bill banning the wearing of uniforms. Local Fine Gael branches suggested resolutions that ‘this Ard Fheis reaffirms its faith in the bi-​cameral legislature as being the only protection which the people can have against the tyranny of a party majority, and … condemns the action of the Government in abolishing the Senate and setting up a virtual dictatorship’.153 Fine Gael writers noted that de Valera ‘is not going to tolerate power in anybody even to postpone his desires’, and quoted approvingly a local paper that said de Valera ‘cannot tolerate even democratic opposition or criticism’.154 In protecting the rights of opposition, whether free speech rights at meetings or the existence of the Seánad, Fine Gael depicted itself, as its predecessor had, as protecting democracy, although its concerns about the right of minorities against majorities had been completely reversed.

The young, the worker, and the woman Fine Gael also wanted to define opposition as generational and reverse Cumann na nGaedheal’s stuffy image. That was difficult to do in the initial postrevolutionary years because the generation that made the revolution was itself young, but as a new post-​Rising generation grew up in the 1930s, Fine Gael aimed to capture that demographic in the same way that republicans attracted younger voters after the Treaty split. Having manifestly failed to build a permanent coalition of elites capable of retaining power –​Cumann na nGaedheal’s electoral strategy in the 1920s generally involved capturing the support of local no­tables –​the new party turned that on its head in the 1930s and appealed to constituencies that it felt had been left out of 1920s politics. As an internal memo from 1933 proclaimed, Fine Gael would organise around ‘the young, the worker, and the woman’.155 This intent to attract the new generation was mentioned constantly in internal party documents and public speeches. A Cumann na nGaedheal reorganisation plan for County Clare was ‘seeking new members (particularly young men)’.156 Even though the ACA started as an organisation for civil war veterans, it defined itself in 1932 as ‘a party of young men with the courage and enthusiasm of youth’ that was ‘drawing into its ranks the flower of the youth of Ireland’.157 O’Higgins emphasised the youth of the movement even in writing to wealthy donors who, one suspects, were not the flower of the youth of Ireland. Blythe argued that young people would bring energy and undertake a different kind of electoral work than their elders, thereby attracting new supporters to the Treatyite coalition. He observed that tasks such as checking the register and calling on voters at their houses took time, and that it ‘won’t

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be possible to get responsible businessmen, middle-​aged farmers or busy professional men to do such work … It must be done mainly by young men and boys.’ Blythe urged that a separate, subsidiary organisation be set up for this, which was the role the ACA and the Blueshirts eventually took on. While the young would ‘naturally fight shy of any organisation which older men control’, if they had a separate organisation with slightly different aims it would ‘attract elements of support which we could not get’.158 For Blythe, aged forty-​four in 1933 and nearing the tragically staid status of ‘middle-​aged farmers or busy professional men’, the incursion of the young was vital for Fine Gael’s chances to return to power. Writing his ‘Blue Flag Notes’ in United Ireland, Blythe opined that ‘young men and women in the movement should take the lead in political thought as well as in political action. Older people tend to be conservative and a party that has the conservatism of age cannot keep abreast of the times.’159 Clearly, some in Cumann na nGaedheal had diagnosed the party’s problem as a stodgy backward-​ looking conservatism and wanted to redefine themselves, like Fianna Fáil, as forward-​looking and activist. In many ways, the recruitment of youth mirrored the appeals to young men to join the Volunteers from twenty years before. Mulcahy made this explicit in a 1933 speech. After remembering how young Ireland mobilised around Pearse and Clarke in 1916, he said ‘today Ireland looks to its youth again … to bring about the unity of our country which strife destroyed and the building up of our country which the youth of yesterday freed’.160 The placement of an apparently charismatic IRA veteran such as O’Duffy at the head of this movement seemingly furthered this goal. O’Duffy himself saw the Blueshirts as a movement of the young and appealed constantly for young followers. ‘Young Ireland’ and the ‘League of Youth’ were among the names the Blueshirts cycled through as they tried to avoid proscription. His proposed scheme of organisation for Fine Gael ordered that ‘efforts be made to infuse new blood, particularly young blood, into the organisation in each area. Young people, girls as well as boys, should form the mainspring of organisation in every Branch area, and should be given responsibility and representation on each Branch Committee.’161 O’Duffy’s call to Fine Gael members to ‘Stand Firm’ in December 1933, as the Government moved against some elements of the party’s operation, again referenced the Rising and the revolutionary generation, and said that the ‘youth of Ireland in those years knew how to tread the path of national duty fearlessly and faithfully. Today let the youth of Ireland prove equally steadfast to the sacred trust of national freedom and regeneration.’162 United Ireland said that O’Duffy was arrested in December 1933 in part because the Government (‘ex-​Irregulars’) feared his mobilisation of patriotic youth. This article ran next to a photo of children and adolescents in Blueshirt uniform with the

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caption ‘Will They Be Arrested?’163 In appealing to youth, O’Duffy’s newspaper also deployed tropes common in postwar political rhetoric, claiming that youth were ‘in revolt’ against an older generation of statesmen ‘who pass from one futile Conference to another, haggling still over spoils that have disappeared’. The newer generation ‘feel keenly the unfairness of their position in which they must suffer for older men’s deeds and pay for wars in which they had no part’. They also discern ‘no results coming from these interminable conferences and empty parliamentary discussions; he becomes impatient of the old governmental machine creaking away but producing nothing’.164 The emphasis on youth dovetailed nicely with calls for physical activity and organised recreation, again a trend common across interwar Europe. Fine Gael’s policy document in late 1933 called for ‘the encouragement and development of athletics and gymnastics, the provision of parks and playgrounds in our towns and cities, and of greater facilities for healthy recreation for our rural population’.165 The ACA called for ‘compulsory physical training for all male members between the ages of 15 and 35’.166 The Young Ireland Association also promoted ‘physical drill … in the interest of health and character and for the purpose of inculcating discipline and of ensuring proper deportment on parade’.167 Blythe constantly proposed ‘a taste for the German and Austrian habit of long walking trips’.168 The organisation of female Blueshirts also served to bring new blood into the party. Cumann na nGaedheal made little attempt specifically to mobilise women, but by late 1933, its successor formed numerous women’s units. O’Duffy called for the party to ‘make a special effort to interest women in the social and recreative work of the Branch, and to organise Women’s Committees in every parish’.169 Liam Burke, the party’s general secretary, noted that Blueshirt women ‘have succeeded in bringing about a reawakening of political consciousness among the women of Ireland unprecedented in recent times’.170 Once mobilised, these women sought a halfway house between traditional women’s roles and those roles suggested by ‘radical’ feminists. Blueshirt women were not promised an ‘emancipation from emancipation’ as were German women, but they were also warned away from an embrace of what was seen as radical individualistic feminism. Instead, Blueshirt women believed they could play an important role in a modernising state by demonstrating discipline, respect for order, and sartorial standardisation. This would mark not a retreat to the home or a blurring of gender boundaries, but a greater representation of women and their perceived particular attributes in public life. As the columnist ‘Blueshirt Lady’ wrote in 1935, ‘Why should we not have women candidates at elections, and why should not our Cabinet, when it is formed, have a woman representative?’171

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A Fine Gael speaker in Dunmanway said ‘the men … were doing their bit for their country, and it was up to the ladies to give them the support and assistance they required’.172 Women should want to give their ‘support and assistance’ because they would be the first to suffer from Fianna Fáil economic policy. A Fine Gael speaker said ‘it is the housekeeper and the house-​ manager who in the long run are most affected by good or bad government. The man is, in the main, the supplier of whatever wages or money he can earn for the household, but the administration of that money is entirely the function of the housekeeper.’173 Women were also told, although not with as much frequency as might be expected, to use their control of household budgets to purchase Irish-​made goods.174 Talk of housekeeping and ‘support and assistance’ gives the impression that the women were intended to take a purely subordinate home-​based role. But the female columnists in United Ireland clearly did not see things that regressively. Columnist ‘Unit Leader’ conceded that ‘while the girls like the men in the movement are pledged to the ideal of discipline and sacrifice in the public service they feel that their participation must in some respects be on different lines to those pursued by the men’. However, she also wrote of: the mistake that lots of people are making of assuming that because the movement has some similarities to Continental movements it is like them in all things. The Fascist and the Nazi movements are commonly held to be animated by the belief that women’s place is in the home … Because we wear shirts and they wear shirts it is taken for granted that the Irish Blue Shirts must hold the same view.

Unit Leader described the movement’s view as more complicated, designed to appeal to a generation of women who had grown up after the previous generation had achieved greater equality: the girls who are flocking to the Blueshirt movement do not belong to the pioneering generation of feminists. They have no sense of belligerent feminism … the majority are working in domains in which up to one or two generations ago women workers were unknown. They take the fact that they have jobs more or less for granted. They do not feel any great necessity to be standing up for their rights. In a word they are at home in a world where girls enter remunerative employment without comment and in which the clever and ambitious ones may, though probably with more difficulty than their brothers, carve out careers for themselves … They have a more natural attitude to women’s occupations than their pioneering elder sisters. They have been out in the business and professional world and have proved themselves. And now they are prepared, as equals, to consider what are the best lines on which economic and social life is to be planned. They realise that they have a responsibility to the whole race that is to come, not only to the feminine section of it.175

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Blueshirt women were told to do more than just demonstrate enthusiasm. ‘Finola’ wrote ‘Enthusiasm, after all, is a transient quality –​a thing that if it is too fierce to-​day may, by tomorrow, have burned itself out, leaving behind enervation, disillusionment, perhaps even despondency.’176 The mobilisation of Blueshirt women was intended to reverse this trajectory. Unit Leader also called for more attention to be paid to women’s occupations, and Blythe –​not a noted feminist –​declared that the Irish movement was not reactionary on women’s issues, as were some of its shirted European counterparts.177 These Blueshirt women were supposed to wear a blue blouse when engaged in group activities. Most newspaper accounts of party demonstrations particularly noted the presence of shirted women. The Irish Independent’s coverage of a march in Ballybay noted that ‘a feature of the parade was 50 young women garbed in the blue blouses of the organisation and marching two deep’.178 Male speakers often vaguely sexualised these outfits, with O’Duffy telling a Blueshirt audience ‘you manly boys will wear those blue shirts and you pretty girls will wear those blue blouses’.179 Another male speaker called the blue blouse ‘the more picturesque co-​partner’ of the blue shirt.180 Senator Kathleen Browne even wore her blue blouse in the Senate chamber.181 The blouses, as with all uniforms, served to mask class differences. Finola talked of the ‘great influx of women of all classes to the organisation’, and ‘Another Blueshirt Woman’ claimed that ‘if the Blueshirt women keep doggedly on insisting on no class divisions, they will be doing one great service to the country’.182 The blouse was never mandatory, and women were given the option of wearing the blue blouse to party functions. There was a range of activities that women were supposed to undertake while garbed in their blue blouses. While some of these spoke to women’s traditional roles, they did not collectively envision confinement in the home. The columnist ‘A Keen Blueshirt’ said that Blueshirt women attended the Irish language classes and started a swimming club, while other coverage mentioned ‘music, lectures [and] stitchery’. Unit Leader also urged the girls to teach themselves Irish language and dancing, emphasising women taking action on their own: ‘the great idea behind these activities is, of course, to accustom young people to provide their own pastimes for themselves, to develop their own resources, in a nutshell –​Sinn Féin’.183 One of the functions of women that generated the most hostile response from Fianna Fáil was the organisation of dances. A local paper gushed about the organisation of a ‘Blue Dance’ in Kinsale, hyperbolically commenting that ‘the name of Mrs. Eamonn O’Neill, as the Hon. organiser of the first Blue dance in Kinsale will go down in the pages of Irish history for her highly efficient management of this brilliant function’.184 A Fianna Fáil speaker sardonically remarked that ‘General O’Duffy himself, down in Mayo told

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that girls need have no fear being a wallflower at a dance if they had a blue blouse, for he would see that they were provided with partners.’ The speaker concluded ‘When that was the main plank in their platform, it was perfectly evident that they had no serious policy, nothing but play acting.’185 Another Fianna Fáil platform speaker went from Blueshirt dances to complete social segregation in only a couple of steps: Deputy Dillon had said that Blueshirt girls would not dance with anyone who was not a member of the Blueshirt organisation, and had asked young men if there was a girl wearing a blue blouse left without a partner to take her out. It was all very well to laugh at that, but what would it mean if it was carried to its logical conclusion? What if Blueshirt girls only danced with members of the Blueshirt organisation, if Blueshirt children only went to schools where there was a Blueshirt teacher, if Blueshirt Catholics only went to chapels where there was a Blueshirt clergyman? What if Blueshirt people could not deal anywhere except at Blueshirt houses?186

There was a sense among Blueshirt columnists that more traditional female activities would not necessarily hold the attention of modern Irish women, and so women were also encouraged to undertake a greater number of public activities, albeit often in gendered ways. Women organised public meetings with female speakers: a common feature of the revolutionary period but decidedly less common among the major political parties in the 1920s. Margaret Collins-​O’Driscoll, Anne Blythe, and Kathleen Browne were frequent speakers.187 There were also larger political roles expected of female Blueshirts, especially at election time as canvassers and monitors of the register. The 1934 United Ireland election handbook praised women’s effectiveness in electoral organisation, instructing that ‘the final canvass should, if possible, be done by Ladies’ Committees’.188 Most of these instructions were rooted in assumptions about gender difference. ‘Blueshirt Lady’ wrote: the power of women at election time can scarcely be overrated; nobody will deny, for instance, that they are excellent propagandists. They are very sincere and thorough when they believe in the cause which they espouse … They have the power of discrimination in picking out the points in our policy which appeal best locally, and likewise the weakest point in our opponents’ policy.

Women also had special talents in compiling the register: ‘They have the facility for finding out information that would take our male members quite a long time, and having found the information, they will be glad to have it recorded and reported to the right quarter … They will canvass with effect that cannot be obtained by the mere male canvasser.’ Demonstrating the blend of difference and equity that animated many of these writers, this was the same column that called for more women in the cabinet and Dáil.189

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In conjunction with this, women were told to learn the policies of Fine Gael and promote them at election time.190 Finola also claimed that women should study social problems and propose solutions: Probably one of the best ways of sustaining the women’s now genuine enthusiasm is to do something that will not only improve the members themselves, that will develop mind and character, but that will also enable them to promote the well-​being of less fortunate folk … The study of social science in its various aspects and the putting of such study into practice should prove a most interesting, even essential and definitely valuable occupation for the women who are to be the pioneers of the new Ireland.191

‘Another Blueshirt Woman’ worried that organising social functions and other useful but ‘trivial’ things would dissipate the enthusiasm of the Blueshirt women, and she recommended a similar solution to Finola: There are many serious problems of a social nature existing in Ireland today, the solution of which might well provide plenty of scope for the brains and energies of the Blueshirt women … There are, for instance, the appalling conditions under which girls work in some factories and shops that seem to be a law unto themselves. Subjects like this, however, require much thought and detailed study before anything could be done to remove present evils. It might be well to plan now among the more serious-​minded women members the formation of study clubs, wherein matters of social service in relation to many existing problems could be discussed and wherein women Blueshirts could fit themselves to take definite action with regard to securing remedial measures when a Fine Gael government introduces its Corporative system.192

And ‘Blueshirt Woman’ said that education and social services were ‘two spheres in which commonsense indicates that women should take a lively interest’.193 A particular concern would be to reform women’s education in Ireland so as to make it more useful, rather than getting ‘an expensive and often impractical education that leads perhaps only down a blind and crowded alley … learning “trimmings” that may be ornamental but not at all useful’.194 Finally, women were not immune from political violence, and the blue blouse was often a trigger for such violence. Mary Kiely, returning home from a Fine Gael meeting in 1934, was attacked, having her tie pulled off and her coat torn.195 Attendees at a meeting of Maud Gonne’s Women Prisoners’ Defence League confiscated two batons from male Blueshirts in the vicinity, and then ‘attention was drawn to the two girls [in blue blouses] and a rush was made at them. One of the girls received rough treatment, her coat being partly torn off.’196 An attack on blue blouses heading to a Fine Gael meeting in Drogheda involved a crowd assaulting their male

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driver, and ‘some of them were about to tear the blue blouses off the girls when a section of the hostile crowd intervened and prevented them’.197 The Government’s proposed Wearing of Uniforms Bill could worsen this sexualised violence, according to many male Fine Gael speakers. O’Duffy told a crowd at Kildare that the Bill would give the police the power to remove women’s blue blouses by force.198 He later said that women should use their hatpins to defend themselves in such circumstances, concluding ‘I hope that no girl in the League of Youth will allow any person to take off her blouse without resistance.’199 The increasing political violence of the 1930s did not spare women. There was relatively little discussion of pronatalism in the movement, although Fine Gael did claim in various ways to be protecting the interests of the family. Unit Leader had claimed that the concern about women replacing men in employment had been massively overstated, but there was an attempt to emphasise that women who wanted to run a household should be afforded the opportunity to do so. Fine Gael’s policy statement called for an end to the labour of juveniles and pensioners, but not women.200 Party propaganda emphasised that its promotion of housing, family endowments, and employment would naturally tend to lead to earlier marriages. The columnist ‘D.J. O’L’ wrote that ‘under the Corporative system, with Christian courage in evidence and the healthy social instincts of a great and ancient race asserting themselves, this half-​empty land will fill up again’.201 Blythe also wrote that later marriages were harming the country and that the Blueshirt focus on the community over the individual would reverse this.202 Fine Gael would prevent Ireland from becoming ‘A Country of Old Maids and Bachelors’.203 But in general, pronatalism featured a lot less centrally in Fine Gael propaganda than it did in other European right-​wing and fascist movements. O’Duffy said in Galway, without either irony or basic knowledge of recent history, ‘It [the Blueshirts] has become a great new spontaneous movement, which has stirred the whole youth of Ireland, and which can no more be broken now than could the Sinn Féin movement be broken fifteen years ago.’204 Blueshirt women were seen as a vitally necessary part of this movement, with organisers particularly keen to increase the number of female members and to establish women’s branches of the party. This was a marked difference from the party’s Cumann na nGaedheal predecessor, which spent little time specifically appealing to female voters. Blueshirt women rejected the wholesale return to the home and kitchen promoted by some species of continental fascism, instead arguing for a more public role for Irish women in politics, albeit one riddled with rather traditional gender assumptions. They sought to build on the gains of the pioneering generation of Irish feminists without completely rejecting domesticity or adopting the ‘belligerent’ methods of those feminists. They advocated roles for women

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that would play to perceived female strengths without silencing them in the political realm. A cross-​class movement of engaged and active women could play a key role in returning Fine Gael to power and ushering in a corporative society. As ‘Blueshirt Woman’ wrote, The women of Ireland have always played an important role in influencing public opinion, and where this influence has been exercised unobtrusively and with restraint it has always been most effective. The weight of sincerity and dignity, which even one hundred genuine Irishwomen could throw behind any project which they wished to further would go a long way towards bringing about much-​needed reforms.205

Mr. T. McCluskey, speaking to a women’s branch meeting at Cashel, had an even more specific goal in mind. He appealed ‘to the women, rich and poor, to join the organisation, and to do their bit in sending Mr de Valera bag and baggage to Spain, Mexico, Russia, anywhere out of this country’.206 Fine Gael also continued its emphasis on reducing sectarianism. O’Duffy, a northerner himself, consistently articulated the need to pay more attention to Northern Ireland, although he veered wildly between bellicose threats and condemnations of sectarianism. He demanded from Fine Gael ‘an active effort to banish sectarianism and to secure for our fellow-​countrymen fair treatment everywhere in their own country. Our Northern fellow-​countrymen have nothing to expect from us except the equal justice and fair dealing that we have given their former associates in the South.’207 Blythe, a northern Protestant, also wrote against sectarianism. He praised the Blueshirts for trying ‘to break down the prejudices of creed and class’ and said that officers had a duty to make sure that their units were representative of ‘all the decent elements of the Community … In areas in which there is any appreciable Protestant population he seeks to break down the tendency which has hitherto subsisted among them to stand apart from national movements.’208 A letter-​writer argued that Blueshirt youth groups should model themselves after the Catholic Boy Scouts, but without bringing in any sectarian feeling.209 This was part of a general campaign against partition, as it had already become the mark of an opposition party to criticise partition and claim that the Government of the day was not doing enough to end it. The National Group and the National League had done so in the 1920s, and the National Farmers’ and Ratepayers’ League and Fine Gael followed suit when out of power in the 1930s. O’Duffy, upon being elected head of the ACA, called for an ‘All-​Ireland movement extending from Antrim to Cork’.210 Mulcahy accused Fianna Fáil of pursuing policies that made reunification less likely, while Fine Gael’s official policy urged reunification.211 The party also criticised Fianna Fáil’s attacks on economic elites and the Seánad as sectarian in nature.

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Blueshirt collapse Fine Gael’s notion of opposition in the first few years of Fianna Fáil government both drew on old tropes and transformed them for different times and a new generation. They again promoted a party that would encompass all elements of the nationalist movement and some who had previously held aloof from that movement. Unlike Sinn Féin, though, they used new techniques to mobilise this movement, such as uniforms, cults of personality, and an emphasis on discipline and sport. They argued for greater attention to economic matters, but this time outside the Dáil instead of inside. Fine Gael also tried to incorporate elements of the population that Cumann na nGaedheal had done a poor job appealing to, in particular women and youth. While the Blueshirts and Fine Gael claimed to stand for the rights of political minorities, their vision was ultimately not one of an entrenched multiparty democracy but instead one of a state dominated by a single party. As in the 1920s, there was no indication that Fine Gael wanted to ban other parties, but instead it wanted to reinforce a political culture in which a national party was seen as normal. The norms of multiparty democracy, however much praised during the revolution, still had not taken firm root. Fianna Fáil’s actions at times reinforced this ambivalence about multiparty democracy. The Government raided houses of political opponents, withdrew firearm permits from ex-​ministers, and banned some elements of political opposition. A meeting of Fine Gael’s General Purposes Committee in November 1933 was cut short because the homes of Blythe and O’Duffy were being raided.212 The Fianna Fáil Government also banned various manifestations of the Blueshirts, prohibited the large public meeting to commemorate Collins and Griffith in August 1933, and tried to outlaw the wearing of uniforms. Just as Cumann na nGaedheal had never made Fianna Fáil illegal, but only proscribed what it saw as adjacent organisations such as the IRA and Saor Éire, Fianna Fáil never proscribed Cumann na nGaedheal or Fine Gael, and in fact the Government was disdainful of attempts to wreck opposition meetings.213 Internally, Fianna Fáil stuck to the strategies that had served it well in opposition. As it still intended to be an all-​encompassing national movement, it wanted to keep dissent within the party to a minimum. Deputies were told to raise concerns with ministers and government departments privately rather than complaining about them in the Dáil or to the press.214 They were also urged to speak freely at closed party meetings but to hew closely to the party line in Dáil or stump speeches, and there were frequent admonitions against leaking internal party debates to the press.215 Fianna Fáil TDs were expected to attend Dáil sessions –​again, as a contrast with the often-​absent

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opposition TDs –​and to present a united front in the Dáil so as to project party and governmental strength.216 The notion of a national party was crucial to both Fianna Fáil’s conceptions of democracy and its ongoing negotiations with the British. The crumbling of the Fine Gael–​Blueshirt alliance ended this period of two squabbling national parties. In September 1934 O’Duffy stepped down from the leadership of Fine Gael. He claimed that his work had been hampered by ‘the political element’ in the party and promised that the Blueshirts, of which he failed to retain control, would never again be enmeshed in party politics.217 Others blamed O’Duffy’s increasingly erratic speeches, as the parliamentary leaders were becoming more and more concerned with his calls to withhold annuity payments and his refusal to stay on script in public meetings. After O’Duffy departed, political leaders Cosgrave, James Dillon, and Frank MacDermot immediately returned to the cover of United Ireland, a place where they had not been featured much over the previous year. The article noted that Fine Gael was about ‘the country, not an individual’.218 The party waited until the March 1935 Ard-​Fheis to re-​elevate Cosgrave to the presidency –​Ciara Meehan and Stephen Collins point out that this showed some concerns over his abilities –​but he did regain some degree of prominence in party materials.219 A large picture of Cosgrave in a March 1935 issue proclaimed that he was ‘at work again’ after an illness, and his Ard-​Fheis speech a few weeks later was glowingly covered.220 Cosgrave and the revived political leadership continued to maintain that Fine Gael desired to be a national party for all classes and creeds. The split was referred to as ‘growing pains’ by Cosgrave and put down to O’Duffy’s ‘egoism, not nationalism’. O’Duffy’s actions were even compared to de Valera’s in 1922, which remained the Treatyite touchstone for selfish politics.221 Cosgrave made it clear that, initially at least, the Blueshirts would be retained, but they were placed under more steady control and a new, more ‘democratic’, constitution to avoid the centralisation of power in one person. Blythe argued that ‘under our new democratic constitution the task of keeping strictly in line with Fine Gael, though preferably a few paces in front of it, will become easier’.222 Fine Gael kept its adherence to corporatism, but this was all placed in a context that was much more explicitly parliamentary and political. Blythe declared ‘the Blueshirt movement is definitely a political movement … The Blueshirt who is not a politician is not worthy to wear the shirt. He is only aiming at being a blind member of an unintelligent mob.’223 Its young members were now urged to ‘learn something about politics’, and Blythe argued that while the Blueshirts did have nonpolitical and cultural work, ‘if it is to be effective and satisfactory, its members must understand political

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issues’.224 Blythe of course insisted this had always been his view. Blueshirts were told that their immediate purpose was to win votes for Fine Gael and that they could not oppose the democratically expressed will of the people. Doing so would make them fascists, and ‘the Blueshirts are not a fascist organisation’.225 O’Duffy, for his part, began referring to his former party as ‘Cumann na nGaedheal’, and branded its leaders as hopeless failures.226 He resurrected a desire to move beyond civil war politics, arguing that the Irish people were sick of both civil war parties and that his new National Corporate Party would transcend civil war hatreds.227 Despite a somewhat comic effort to intervene in the Spanish civil war, O’Duffy’s profile dropped dramatically after the split, and the politicians in Fine Gael charted a different course for the party. At the end of 1935, United Ireland editorialised on what it considered a ‘disgraceful’ scene in the Dáil, in which Fianna Fáil parliamentary secretary Hugo Flinn –​‘in his best Liverpool style’ –​behaved disrespectfully toward the Ceann Comhairle. The writer contrasted Flinn’s behaviour unfavourably with that of Tom Johnson, leader of the opposition in the 1920s: ‘He intervened too frequently and at too great length himself, but he was certainly in favour of ordered debate and certainly received from the Government of the day every facility and encouragement in that direction.’ This was ‘radically different’ from Fianna Fáil’s attitude in the Dáil, in which ‘they devoted themselves to slander and vituperation … [and] broke every convention of decent debate’ by calling opponents Freemasons and murderers.228 This small column shows how Fine Gael finally reinforced multiparty parliamentary norms after the failure of the Blueshirt experience. This is not to say that O’Duffy was solely responsible for the nonparliamentary turn and that once he was gone Fine Gael reverted to being democrats. While there is evidence that some Fine Gael leaders remained aloof from the Blueshirts, the permutations of Fine Gael were not really based on individual personalities. In opposition, the party embraced tactics that aimed to emulate and unseat Fianna Fáil, including cults of personality, extrapolitical organisation, and solutions that transcended parliamentary democracy. None of these particularly worked and, after they began to backfire, the party abandoned them. But for a good portion of the early 1930s, the Free State again had a main opposition party that was openly questioning the norms of parliamentary democracy. While this may not have amounted to much in the end, and retrospectively most of those involved conceded that the threats to democracy posed by their opponents had been much overblown, this period did extend the time period that it took the Free State to adjust to multiparty democracy.

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Notes United Ireland, 10 November 1934. Blythe signed these columns ‘Onlooker’. 1 2 While there are arguments for analytically separating the Blueshirts and Fine Gael, it is very hard to do so between the merger and O’Duffy’s abrupt departure a year later. The party’s newspaper (United Ireland) also made little attempt to distinguish between the two except on grounds of age. I will use the terms as synonymous when precision isn’t possible or stylistically appealing. I will also use the more generic ‘Blueshirts’ instead of the various names (League of Youth, National Guard) that the organisation went by at different times. 3 Maurice Manning, The Blueshirts (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1970). 4 Finnegan, ‘The Blueshirts of Ireland’, 99. 5 Mike Cronin, The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 62–​3. 6 Mike Cronin, ‘Catholicising Fascism, Fascistising Catholicism? The Blueshirts and the Jesuits in 1930s Ireland’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 2 (June 2007): 401–​11 (410). 7 Fearghal McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-​ Made Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 121, 142, 220. 8 Ibid., 267; Douglas, Architects of the Resurrection, 40. 9 Laffan, Judging W.T. Cosgrave, 307–​9. 10 Farrell, Party Politics in a New Democracy, 200, 219, 5. 11 Regan, Irish Counter-​Revolution, 341, 343. 12 Ibid., 370. 13 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party Meeting, 20 April 1932: Cumann na nGaedheal papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. Hereafter referred to as CnG papers. 14 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party meeting, 9 July 1931: CnG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. 15 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party Meeting, 19 May 1932: CnG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. 16 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party Meeting, 2 June and 9 June 1932: CnG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. 17 Irish Independent, 7 September 1927. 18 United Irishman, 24 September 1932. 19 Ibid., 6 August 1932. 20 Ibid., 9 July 1932. 21 Irish Times, 19 November 1965. 22 Ibid., 17 November 1965: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​115. 23 Newspaper clipping, ‘Death of Mr. W.T. Cosgrave’, 17 November 1965: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​115. 24 Typescript, ‘Tribute to the Late Mr. Cosgrave’, c. November–​December 1965: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​115. 25 Irish Times, 19 November 1965: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​115.

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26 Anne Hard, ‘Two Idols of Erin’, New York Herald Tribune, 25 September 1927: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​46. 27 For a great analysis of dress and civil war politics see Foster, The Irish Civil War and Society. 28 DD, 24 May 1932. 29 Fianna Fáil poster, ‘Why Wouldn’t They?’, 1932: NLI Ephemera collection, ELE/​193–​40/​20. 30 DD, 7 December 1932. This is all further evidence of MacEntee’s penchant for measured political rhetoric. 31 ‘Points for Speakers, General Election 1933’: Mac Eoin papers, UCDA P151/​ 854(1). 32 ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, Cumann na nGaedheal flyer, 1933: Desmond FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​1135(1). 33 United Irishman, 24 December 1932, 7 January 1933. 34 Ibid., 21 January 1933. 35 Ibid., 7 January 1933. 36 ‘To the Electors of Dublin City North’, handbill, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 68. See also an ad for Desmond FitzGerald and Denis Gorey in Kilkenny, ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, handbill, 1933: FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​1135(3). 37 Irish Independent, 24 January 1933. 38 Ibid., 17 January 1933. 39 Ibid., 7 January 1933. 40 United Irishman, 14 January 1933. 41 ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, handbill, 1933: FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​ 1135(3); Donegal People’s Press, quoted in United Ireland, 21 January 1933. 42 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party Meeting, 9 November 1932: CnG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. 43 Minutes, Cumann na nGaedheal Parliamentary Party Meeting, 18 November 1932: CnG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​3. 44 United Irishman, 21 January 1933. 45 Ibid., 21 May 1932. 46 ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, handbill for South Dublin, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 80; United Irishman, 26 November 1932. 47 ‘Cosgrave Keeps His Promises’, handbill for South Dublin, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 80. 48 United Irishman, 7 January 1933. 49 DD, 15 October 1931, 16 November 1932. 50 Ibid., 19 May 1932. 51 See ibid., 3 May and 19 May 1932. 52 J. A. Nix, ‘The Coming Crisis: Whither Are You Drifting? An Open Letter to Deputy de Valera’, c. late 1931/​early 1932: Patrick McGilligan papers, UCDA P35c/​129. 53 DD, 13 July 1932. 54 Ibid., 4 August 1932.

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55 Ibid., 22 July 1932. Flinn was undoubtedly referencing the opposition’s charges that he was not Irish –​a Manxman or a ‘Liverpool Irishman’ –​but he also called Cosgrave’s last Executive Council ‘a bundle of duds’ in the Dáil, so perhaps his is not the final word on personal attacks. See ibid., 3 May 1932. 56 Ibid., 29 April 1932. 57 ‘Points for Speakers’, November 1932: FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​1121. 58 United Irishman, 7 January 1933. 59 Ibid., 21 January 1933. 60 ‘Dockers!’, handbill, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 65. 61 ‘Employees of Jacob’s!’, handbill, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 66. 62 ‘Civil Servants’, handbill, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 73. 63 ‘The Farmer’s Wife’, handbill, 1933: NLI ILB 300p7 66. 64 ‘Now is Your Chance’, handbill, 1933: Ephemera collection, NLI POL/​1930s–​ 1940s/​6. My thanks to Ken Shonk for this reference. 65 ‘Points for Speakers’, November 1932: FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​1121. 66 ‘Are You a Casualty?’, handbill, 1933: Ephemera collection, NLI POL/​1930s–​ 1940s/​6 67 Irish Independent, 20 January 1933. 68 United Ireland, 14 January 1933. 69 ‘Scissors and Paste’, handbill, 1933: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2096. 70 Irish Independent, 12 January 1933. 71 ‘Make It Clear’, poster, 1933: NLI Ephemera collection. 72 Irish Independent, 12 January 1933. 73 Ibid., 20 January 1933. 74 DD, 15 November 1932. 75 Ibid., 7 December 1932. 76 Speech, 5 January 1933: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2097. 77 Irish Independent, 9 January 1933. 78 Meehan, The Cosgrave Party, 115, 208. 79 Liam Burke to each cumann secretary, 4 March 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90. 80 Blythe to Northern Standard, Anglo-​Celt, and Dundalk Democrat, 14 February 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​1050(a). 81 The Sunday Times, 20 January 1933: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2097. 82 Memo, c. March 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90. 83 United Irishman, 4 February 1933. ministers), 17 May 84 Cosgrave to Cumann na nGaedheal Dáil deputies (ex-​ 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90(66). 85 United Irishman, 4 February 1932. 86 Eoin O’Duffy, Why I Resigned from Fine Gael (Dublin: League of Youth, 1934): Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​673(b). 87 United Ireland Party Meeting, 27 September 1933: Fine Gael papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​4. Hereafter cited as FG papers. The Fine Gael and Cumann na nGaedheal papers are the same collection (P39) but I cite them differently for ease of reference.

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88 United Ireland, 18 November 1933. 89 Ibid. 90 T.F. O’Higgins to each county secretary, 6 February 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​646. 91 ‘Notes on Organisation’, c. 1932–​3: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​652. 92 United Ireland, 16 December 1933. 93 Draft of Suggestions for the ACA, c. 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​654. It is not clear if Blythe wrote this originally. 94 General Purposes Committee Minutes, 9 November 1933: FG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​2. 95 Eoin O’Duffy, ‘An Outline of the Political, Social, and Economic Policy of Fine Gael’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. Hereafter cited as ‘Outline’. 96 United Ireland, 27 January 1934. 97 Ibid., 3 March and 27 January 1934. 98 Draft Speech of Eoin O’Duffy on being elected leader of the ACA, July 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​657(a). Blythe contributed to this draft. 99 United Ireland, 21 April 1934; 18 November and 23 December 1933; 17 April and 26 May 1934. 100 T.F. O’Higgins, ‘Appeal for Funds’, 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​644(a)(2). 101 ACA, ‘Notes on Organisation and Discipline’, c. 1932–​3: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​651(a). 102 Draft speech of O’Duffy on being elected leader of the ACA, July 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​657(a). 103 ACA, ‘Notes on Organisation’, c. 1933: Eoin O’Duffy papers, NLI MS 48286/​ 5(1). Óig Éireann, September 104 Constitution of the Young Ireland Association/​ 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​665(a). 105 Fine Gael, First Annual Ard-​Feis, Resolutions from Executives and Branches, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​628. 106 United Irishman, 10 February 1934. 107 McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy, 227. 108 United Ireland, 27 January 1934. 109 ‘Outline’. 110 United Ireland, 27 January 1934. 111 Minutes of National Executive, 30 August 1934: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​ 92(5). September 1933: Blythe papers, 112 ‘Notes on Vocational Corporations’, post-​ UCDA P24/​681. 113 ‘Outline’. 114 Eoin O’Duffy, ‘Why I Resigned from Fine Gael’: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​ 673(b). 115 Ciara Meehan, ‘Fine Gael’s Uncomfortable History: The Legacy of Cumann na nGaedheal’, Éire-​Ireland 43, nos 3–​4 (Autumn/​Winter 2008): 253–​66. 116 United Ireland, 12 August 1933.

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117 Ibid., 18 August 1933. 118 ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 119 United Ireland, 23 June 1934. 120 Stephen Collins and Ciara Meehan, Saving the State: Fine Gael from Collins to Varadkar (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020), 41. 121 United Ireland, 28 October 1933. 122 Ibid., 6 January 1934. 123 Ibid., 17 February 1934. 124 The Blueshirt, 12 August 1933. 125 Ibid. 126 John J. Horgan, ‘The Problem of Government’, Studies 22, no. 88 (December 1933): 537–​60 (537). 127 Draft Speech of O’Duffy on being elected leader of the ACA, July 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​657(a). 128 United Ireland, 16 December 1933. 129 Ibid., 13 January 1934. 130 Ibid., 22 September 1934. 131 See General Purposes Committee Minutes, 9 November 1933: FG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​2. 132 O’Duffy cites the Pope’s admonition to end class conflict in ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 133 Ibid., February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 134 The Blueshirt, 12 August 1933. Needless to say, the citation is for the first half of the sentence, not the second. 135 ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 136 United Ireland, 14 July 1934. 137 Ibid., 2 June 1934. 138 Ibid., 15 September 1934. 139 ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. One suspects here that O’Duffy or his ghostwriter got ‘former’ and ‘latter’ confused. 140 United Ireland, 28 April 1934. 141 ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 142 Ibid., February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 143 United Ireland, 26 May 1934. 144 Ibid., 3 February 1934. 145 Press release for Clare speech, 10 December 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​91(47). 146 United Ireland, 10 September and 1 October 1932. 147 T.F. O’Higgins to businessmen, c. 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​644(a)(1). 148 T.F. O’Higgins to each county secretary, 6 February 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​646. 149 T.F. O’Higgins, typescript about the ACA, c. 1933: McGilligan papers, UCDA P35c/​172. 150 Notes on election speech, c. 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​622(a). 151 Speech, 5 January 1933: de Valera papers, UCDA P150/​2097.

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152 United Ireland, 4 August 1934. 153 Fine Gael Ard-​Fheis resolutions, 5 March 1936: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​ 638. 154 United Ireland, 28 April 1934. 155 Fine Gael review of organisers and local organisers, c. late 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90(4). 156 Plan for organisation of Cumann na nGaedheal in County Clare, c. 1932–​ 3: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90(23–​24). 157 T.F. O’Higgins, appeal for funds, 1932: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​644(a)(2); ‘ACA Policy, Rough Draft for Discussion’, c. 1932–​3: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​649(a). 158 Note on organisation, c. 1932–​3: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​652. 159 United Ireland, 28 October 1933. 160 Mulcahy, notes for speech in Clare, 10 December 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​91(47). 161 Eoin O’Duffy, United Ireland scheme of organisation, 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​633. 162 United Ireland, 16 December 1933. 163 Ibid., 23 December 1933. 164 The Blueshirt, 12 August 1933. 165 General Purposes Committee Minutes, 9 November 1933: FG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​2. 166 Draft of suggestions for ACA, c. 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​654. 167 Young Ireland Association, 1933: O’Duffy papers, NLI 48286/​8/​3. 168 Draft of suggestions for ACA, c. 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​654. 169 Fine Gael, review of the role of organisers and local organisers, c. 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​90(4). 170 United Ireland, 16 December 1933. 171 Ibid., 16 November 1935. Oddly, the writer notes that one of the difficulties involved in this would be that ‘they might change their names off and on’. 172 Southern Star, 28 October 1933. 173 United Ireland, 16 November 1935. See also Cork Examiner, 17 January 1934. 174 United Ireland, 15 December 1934. 175 Ibid., 31 March 1934. 176 Ibid., 24 March 1934. 177 Ibid., 14 April 1934. 178 Irish Independent, 30 October 1933. See also Irish Press, 21 August 1933; The Nationalist (Tipperary), 31 January 1934. 179 Connacht Tribune, 10 March 1934. 180 Drogheda Independent, 10 March 1934. 181 Irish Press, 22 February 1934. 182 United Ireland, 24 March 1934; ibid., 30 June 1934. 183 Ibid., 8 September 1934; Southern Star, 28 October 1933; United Ireland, 28 April 1934. 184 Southern Star, 23 December 1933. 185 Irish Press, 21 March 1934.

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186 Ibid., 2 March 1934. 187 See, e.g., Evening Herald, 5 December 1933. 188 United Ireland Organisation Election Handbook, 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​634. 189 United Ireland, 16 November 1935. 190 Ibid., 16 June and 12 May 1934. 191 Ibid., 24 March 1934. 192 Ibid., 30 June 1934. 193 Ibid., 19 January 1935. 194 Ibid., 24 March 1934. 195 Nenagh Guardian, 21 April 1934. 196 Irish Independent, 30 April 1934. 197 Drogheda Independent, 17 February 1934. 198 Cork Examiner, 26 February 1934. 199 Connacht Tribune, 10 March 1934. 200 Draft of heads of policy for the League of Youth, c. late 1933: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​670. 201 United Ireland, 15 September 1934. 202 Ibid., 10 November 1934. 203 Ibid., 26 January 1935. 204 Connacht Tribune, 10 March 1934. 205 United Ireland, 19 January 1935. 206 Cork Examiner, 17 January 1934. 207 ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 208 United Irishman, 23 June 1934. 209 United Ireland, 28 October 1933. 210 Draft speech for O’Duffy, July 1933: Blythe papers, P24/​657(a). 211 Mulcahy, notes for speech in Clare, 10 December 1933: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​91(47); ‘Outline’, February 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​629. 212 General Purpose Committee Minutes, 30 November 1933: FG papers, UCDA P39/​MIN/​2. 213 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Meeting, 22 March and 24 May 1934: FF papers, UCDA P176/​444. 214 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Meeting, 7 February 1933: FF papers, UCDA P176/​444. 215 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Meeting, 14 June 1933: FF papers, UCDA P176/​444. 216 Minutes, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Meeting, 3 August and 28 September 1933: FF papers, UCDA P176/​444. 217 E. J. Cronin to each county/​unit officer or captain, 4 October 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​510(1); Eoin O’Duffy, ‘Why I Left Fine Gael’, 1934: Blythe papers, UCDA P24/​673(b). 218 United Ireland, 6 October 1934. 219 Collins and Meehan, Saving the State. 220 United Ireland, 2 March and 30 March 1935. 221 Ibid., 15 December, 17 November, 27 October 1934.

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222 Ibid., 31 August 1931. 223 Ibid., 10 November 1934. 224 Ibid., 5 January and 16 March 1935. 225 Ibid., 8 June and 18 May 1935. 226 The Blueshirt, 3 November and 10 November 1934. 227 The Nation, 29 June 1935; summary of the Blueshirt policy, c. 1935: O’Duffy papers, NLI MS 48287. 228 United Ireland, 21 December 1935.

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Coda: multiparty democracy in the Irish Free State

After the Blueshirt period, Fine Gael collapsed into largely ineffective ­opposition for the next decade or so. Mike Cronin writes that after 1934, ‘the Fine Gael party quickly retreated from the policies that had been outlined by O’Duffy and instead began championing an opposition to Fianna Fáil based entirely on the traditions of constitutional politics’.1 They returned to accusing their opponents of practising the evils of party politics –​there was a spate of this surrounding the presentation of de Valera’s new constitution in 1937 –​but they offered no solutions for this outside such politics.2 John Costello said that Fine Gael remained so long in opposition because the voters trusted Cosgrave to behave responsibly in such a role, while they did not trust de Valera or Fianna Fáil to so do.3 This was undoubtedly a hollow achievement for Cosgrave. There was also considerable internal criticism of his passive leadership during this period. James Hogan said ‘to Mr. Cosgrave’s omissions, ineptitudes and utter want of vision and initiative I attribute most of Fine Gael’s misfortunes’. Hogan was a staunch corporatist and Cosgrave was not, but Hogan still blamed Cosgrave for letting O’Duffy run the party into the ground: ‘he was so sure O’Duffy was a great man that he sat still and let him run amuck for a whole year while I was a crank and a lot worse because … I dared to oppose the mad mullah’s more outlandish suggestions’.4 Mulcahy also criticised Cosgrave’s leadership at this time and called for ‘non-​reticent, non-​enigmatical’ action.5 For his part, Cosgrave was upset at internal party divisions and claimed the party would not make extravagant promises on which it could never deliver.6 Fine Gael still claimed, however faintly, to be a national party, but this increasingly rang hollow given its rather dismal electoral performance. By the time it returned to power in 1948, it had fully embraced multiparty democracy, taking part in a formal coalition and allotting ministerial seats to other parties. Fine Gael at that time may have viewed itself as broader in appeal than its coalition partners, but it did not seek to incorporate them into a single national party.

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When W.T. Cosgrave died in late 1965, he was widely hailed by former colleagues and in the press as the founder of modern Irish democracy. Fionán Lynch called him ‘the ultimate democrat’ and Michael Hayes specifically praised his fairness and tolerance toward the smaller parties and independents in the 1920s. The Irish Independent remembered him as one of ‘the chief architects of the new Ireland’, and Joe McGrath said his achievements were all that more impressive given the struggles of other postcolonial states after the Second World War. Seán Mac Eoin put this more pithily: Cosgrave ‘prevented Ireland becoming a Congo of today’. He was also credited with ‘lead[ing] the party back to the democratic path after the Blueshirt episode’. Costello said that the permanence of an Irish parliament was due to Cosgrave, while Hayes asserted that ‘our Irish institutions of State are his monument’.7 When de Valera died, his biographer Lord Longford said that ‘his contribution to the freedom of Ireland is unrivalled in Irish history’.8 Costello, twice his successor as Taoiseach, concluded ‘he navigated the civil State in the direction he wished it to go and formed the basis of the State which we now have’.9 The Sunday Telegraph said he was a great democrat who could have become a dictator but ‘chose instead to accept at one time rejection at the polls by an ungrateful electorate’. Des O’Malley credited de Valera with realising that force no longer had a place in Irish politics.10 There is some truth in all of this, but the reality is that the solidifying of Free State democracy, long praised as a triumph and an outlier in interwar Europe and among postcolonial states, relied on more than just personality. This process required not only the adherence of Irish leaders to democratic norms, but a shift in the political culture that had produced those leaders. Most Sinn Féiners professed simultaneously a belief in multiparty democracy and a desire for a single totalising nationalist movement that would rule over postrevolutionary Ireland. This was partly due to some particular historical circumstances of the revolutionary period –​the near elimination of the Irish party in 1918, the willingness of Labour to sit out general elections, the surprise of the civil war split, and the deep desire to undo it –​but it also stemmed from some longer-​term elements in Irish political culture. For most of the nineteenth century, revolutionary activity was furtive and underground, but ‘politics’ was imagined as a broad national movement that spoke for the nation and delegitimised political opponents as antinational. Sinn Féin, in working with the Volunteers and IRB, merged these two traditions, seeking to build a unified national coalition while also tolerating clandestine military activity. The revolution fetishised unity and normalised a single-​party government. Despite anti-​Treaty attempts to harass third-​party candidates in 1922, there was no attempt to ban opposition. There was, though, a tremendous desire to reconstitute a single

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national movement, even in the wake of an open split over the Treaty. Both wings of Sinn Féin poured scorn on the smaller sectional parties, claiming alternately that they ought not to exist at all or that the time for them had not yet come. Political actors of the 1920s also worked within a political culture that expressed a deep disdain for ‘politics’, which signified at times the meaningless two-​party alternation of the British system or the corrupt dealings of the Irish Party. All politicians sought to banish politics but did not agree on what should replace it. There was a general desire, particularly among former Sinn Féiners, to create a postcolonial Irish politics –​the Gaelic state –​that would avoid the evils of the two-​party system and of party politics in general. This was variously defined, but a national party was seen as the antidote for undesirable forms of politics. Both Cumann na nGaedheal/​Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil held on to this vision of politics for over a decade after the civil war. The Farmers’ and Labour Parties were seen as interlopers in this Gaelic state: Labour for bringing in class conflict and external ideas, and the Farmers for being needlessly divisive and refusing to have their interests represented by Cumann na nGaedheal. The smaller parties hoped that a ‘normal’ post-​civil-​war politics would arrive, in which they could foreground economic issues and leave the politics of the Sinn Féin split and the relations with Britain behind. Nearly all politicians in the mid-​1920s expected this to happen, with pro-​and anti-​ Treaty Sinn Féin seeking to contain it, while Labour, the Farmers, and the National League welcomed it as a path to power. The entry of Fianna Fáil into the Dáil did not normalise politics in the Free State, as is often asserted by historians. Neither Cumann na nGaedheal nor Fianna Fáil had fully embraced multiparty democracy by that time, as both still considered themselves national parties and sought to unite the country behind them. On the one hand, this can be seen through policy –​ Cumann na nGaedheal’s insertion of Article 2A into the constitution, Fianna Fáil’s references to its opponents as traitors –​but it is more easily seen in the culture, in how politicians talked about politics. The Treatyites increasingly embraced an ideology that was grounded in the notions of the national party current during the revolution, while also drawing in elements of continental fascism. They increasingly sought solutions outside parliament that would replace the evils of the party system. Fianna Fáil vacillated between suppressing elements of this movement and hoping that it would implode or lose public support. In the end, multiparty democracy was normalised in the Free State as much from exhaustion of other ideas as through sudden conversions that took place in 1922, 1923, 1927, or 1932. Anti-​Treaty Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael all ended up fearing electoral and political consequences if they refused to play by the normal rules of parliamentary behaviour. By

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1935, they all had complied with such norms, but not before trying other visions for a Gaelic state. The failure of these alternative visions had as much to do with the Irish people’s refusal to sanction electorally a single party after 1918 and 1921: there was to be no Irish Volkspartei, despite numerous attempts to create one. The political culture created by the nationalist movement in the nineteenth century, and furthered by Sinn Féin during the revolution, seemed acceptable to the Irish people in times of conflict, but neither heir of Sinn Féin could sustain it through the life of the Free State. Irish politics did thereby become ‘normal’, although through a process that was more cumbersome, lengthy, and resisted by the political class than is often argued.

Notes 1 Cronin, ‘Catholicising Fascism’, 406. 2 Desmond FitzGerald to James Hogan, 1937: FitzGerald papers, P80/​1149. 3 ‘Tribute to the late Mr. Cosgrave’, c. late 1965: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​ 115. 4 James Hogan to FitzGerald, c. 1935: FitzGerald papers, UCDA P80/​1148. 5 Notes on Party Meeting, 21 December 1936/​18 January 1937: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7b/​101(76). 6 Cosgrave to TDs, 16 October 1936: Mac Eoin papers, UCDA P151/​ 783; Cosgrave Speech to Ard-​ Fheis, 19 March 1937: O’Sullivan papers, UCDA LA60/​114. 7 All of these are from clippings on Cosgrave’s death collected by Mulcahy: Mulcahy papers, UCDA P7/​D/​115. 8 Irish Press, 30 August 1975. 9 Ibid. 10 Sunday Independent, 31 August 1975.

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Bibliography

Government documents Dáil Éireann and Seánad debates (www.oir​each​tas.ie/​en/​deba​tes/​)

Private paper collections Boston College Burns Library Canon Rogers collection

National Archives of Ireland Department of the Taoiseach papers

National Library of Ireland Ephemera collection Farmers’ Party papers Thomas Johnson papers Seán Milroy papers Thomas O’Donnell papers Eoin O’Duffy papers Hanna Sheehy-​Skeffington papers

University College Dublin Archives Ernest Blythe papers Cumann na nGaedheal/​Fine Gael papers Eamon de Valera papers Fianna Fáil papers Desmond FitzGerald papers

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Hugh Kennedy papers Seán Mac Eoin papers Patrick McGilligan papers Richard Mulcahy papers John Marcus O’Sullivan papers

Newspapers Boston College Burns Library The Nation New Ireland Sinn Féin

Irish News Archives (www.irishn​ewsa​rchi​ves.com) Anglo-​Celt Connacht Tribune Connaught Telegraph Cork Examiner Derry Journal Drogheda Herald Drogheda Independent Evening Herald Fermanagh Herald Freeman’s Journal Irish Independent Irish Press Irish Times Leinster Leader Meath Chronicle Munster Express The Nationalist (Tipperary) Nationalist and Leinster Times Nenagh Guardian Offaly Independent Southern Star Strabane Chronicle Sunday Independent Western People Westmeath Independent

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Index

Aiken, Frank 175 Belfast Boycott 29–​30 Bennett, Louie 35, 38, 63, 74, 76, 141, 144 Blue Blouses 221–​7 Blythe, Ernest 78, 97, 133, 136–7, 147–8, 180, 193, 195, 197, 203, 207, 209–11, 218–​21, 223, 228–​30 Browne, Kathleen 223–4 Brugha, Cathal 1, 31, 48, 69 Chubb, Basil 5 Collins, Michael 3, 22–​3, 31–​3, 46–​7, 49, 59, 69, 80, 183–​4, 212 Collins-​O’Driscoll, Margaret 13, 119, 137, 143, 224 communism 180–​2 Connolly, James 37, 64–​5, 164 Cork Progressive Association 129–​31 Corry, Martin 172 Cosgrave, W.T. 16, 40, 44, 55, 78, 80, 83–6, 108, 113, 125, 127, 136–8, 159, 169, 172, 177–​9, 183, 186, 195–206, 211, 217, 229, 239–​40 Costello, John A. 197, 239, 240 Craig, Sir James (Trinity TD) 76 Cronin, Ned 213 Cumann na Saoirse 75, 106, 141 Curran, Joseph 7 Davin, William 66, 71, 89, 180 de Roiste, Liam 26, 30, 40

de Valera, Eamon 3, 16, 20, 25, 27–8, 33, 40, 45, 141, 145, 149–50, 160, 163–6, 175–7, 181–5, 187, 196–​8, 201, 204–5, 210–​11, 218–​19 Dolan, Anne 11, 183 Dowdall, T.P. 129, 131 Duggan, Eamon 128, 182 Farmers’ Party 13, 38, 56, 62–​3, 66, 73–​5, 83, 96–​7, 104, 115–​20, 141, 166, 170–1, 241 Farrell, Brian 5, 7, 10–​11, 26 Farrell, Mel 4, 107, 160, 195 Figgis, Darrell 22, 87 FitzGibbon, Gerald 76, 92 Freemasonry 79, 146–​7, 177, 181, 187, 230 Gaelic State 2–​3, 15, 22–​3, 43, 50, 56, 80, 96, 103–​4, 241 Garvin, Tom 6, 7, 11, 15 Gavan Duffy, George 27, 48, 92 Gonne, Maud 140 Gorey, Denis 66, 73, 118–19, 146 Griffith, Arthur 27, 32, 48, 77, 183–​4, 186, 212 Guinness, Mary 144–​5 Hayden, Mary 143–4 Hayes, Michael 197, 240 Hogan, James 216–17, 239 Hogan, Patrick 50, 89, 125, 169, 179, 183, 186, 195, 200, 203

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152

Index IRA/​Volunteers 25, 30, 194, 208, 217, 240 Irish Parliamentary Party 2, 8, 24, 55, 121, 150, 209 Irish Women’s Citizens Association 142–​5 Irish Women Workers’ Union 35, 74, 141, 143–4 Jacob, Rosamund 143 Jinks, John 122, 170 Johnson, Thomas 34, 38, 58, 62, 65, 72, 89–​91, 97–​8, 107, 110–11, 114, 125, 138, 141, 167, 230 Kennedy, Hugh 84 Kissane, Bill 6, 7 Labour Party 13, 26, 34–​8, 39, 56, 61​–​6, 71–​3, 76, 81–​3, 86​–​91, 96, 97, 104, 109–​15, 140–​1, 147, 167–8, 180, 216, 241 land annuities 199–​200, 202, 204–5 League of Nations 29, 196 Lee, J.J. 7, 15 Lemass, Seán 162, 172–3 Little, Patrick J. 60, 92, 93 local government 35–​6 McCartan, Patrick 41, 91 MacDonagh, Joseph 29, 31 MacEntee, Seán 29, 31–2, 47, 49, 175, 183, 197–8, 204, 218 MacEoin, Seán 200, 240 McGarry, Fearghal 24, 195 McGilligan, Patrick 178, 198, 203, 205 McGrath, Joseph 106, 133–4, 136–7, 240 MacNeill, Eoin 26, 147, 196 MacSwiney, Mary 43, 44, 47–8, 70, 74, 94, 149 Magennis, William 77, 138 Markievicz, Countess Constance 25, 28, 34, 41, 42, 68, 69, 97 Meehan, Ciara 8, 107, 205, 212 Milroy, Seán 71, 85, 89, 126, 132–3, 137, 142, 146–8

251

Moloney, Helena 149 Monaghan, Shannon 21 Mulcahy, Richard 55, 179, 186, 203, 205, 212, 217, 220, 227, 239 National Centre Party 205–7 National Group 106, 131–​4, 142, 146–​7, 227 National League 3, 104, 121–​4, 128, 147, 167, 168, 170–​1, 227 Northern Ireland (Six Counties) 29–​30, 49, 78, 106, 124, 143, 146–​8, 227 O’Brien, William 71, 90, 111 O’Callaghan, Kate 68 O’Connell, T.J. 180, 181 O’Donnell, Thomas 108, 121–3, 128, 170 O’Duffy, Eoin 71, 193, 195, 210–17, 220–​1, 223, 226–30, 239 O’Higgins, Kevin 2, 31, 67, 71, 83–4, 86–​8, 124–5, 128, 135–​6, 142, 147, 148, 184, 212 O’Higgins, Thomas F. 208, 218, 219 O’Kelly, Seán T. 146, 165, 176, 185 O’Shannon, Cathal 34, 63–​5, 72, 76, 89 O’Shaughnessy, Andrew 109 O’Sullivan, John Marcus 127–8, 136, 169, 172, 179, 183, 200–1 Parnell, Charles Stewart 122, 136, 147, 180, 211 Pearse, Margaret 74 Protestantism 20, 38–​9, 42, 76–​9, 106, 107–​8, 145–​8, 174–5, 178, 218, 227 Redmond, William 104, 121–4, 128, 141, 167, 168 Regan, John 4, 7, 107, 138, 160, 195 Ruttledge, P.J. 140, 149, 182, 185 Senate, Free State 108, 143, 148, 218, 223 Sheehy-​Skeffington, Hanna 66, 68, 75, 93, 142–3

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252 Stockley, W.F.P. 43 Sweetman, Roger 30–2 tariffs 184–​5, 186, 199, 202 Tierney, Michael 181, 214 unionism 42, 146, 177, 187, 218

Index Versailles, Treaty of 4, 20, 26 Walsh, J.J. 27, 32, 48, 125, 146, 173 women’s enfranchisement 67–​70 Wilsonian self-determination 1, ​21 Wyse-​Power, Jenny 75