This Easter Monday, the “Irishman’s Diary” in THE “IRISH” TIMES, written by Brian Maye, commemorates the Centenary of the birth of Liam Cosgrave, described as a man ” unafraid to speak his mind”.
I reopened a volume called “Great Irish Speeches” which selected the speech he made as leader of Fine Gael at that Party’s Ard Fheis in 1972. It is remembered as the “Momgrel Foxes” speech promising that members of the party ex hibiting liberal or social-democratic tenencies, such as Garret Fitzgerald and Declan Costello , will be torn apart by himself and his adherents. The tenor of the speech was more shocking to me than that made by Lloyd George in Cosgrave’s infancy in 1920 boasting of “having murder by the throat” and sneering at Sir Horace Plunkett, the Unionist whose life-work had been the organisation of farmers’ co-operatives,who had condemned the depredations of “security forces.” ” He cannot speak even for his own creameries” sneered Lloyd George, at London’s Lord Mayor’s Banquet, in the presence of some of the world’s most comfortably rich men
To find a speech as spine-chilling as Cosgrave’s you’d need to get a translation of the one given by Adolf Hitler in the Reichstag in July 1934 following his murder of his own Brownshirt followers.
An ironic co-incidence is the inclusion in Great Irish Speeches, one given in Dail Eireann on 28 February 1934, by John A Costello, father of Declan Costello, a mere five months before the Night Of The Long Knives.
The Fianna Fail Government, aware of the suppression of democracy on the Continent brought in a Bill to ban the wearing of political uniforms. Cumann na nGael, rejected by the electorate ,after ten years in power in 1932, and more thoroughly rejected in 1933 despaired of returning to power in a parliamentary democracy was advocating a system akin to that of Mussolini, and had organised its more robust followers on paramilitary lines, wearing Blue Shirts and adopting Fascist Salutes. Sean Lemass, for Fianna Fail ,gave a measured and constructive speech, not included in any anthology of which I’m aware. A shame!
John A Costello’s speech included this, mercifully unfulfilled prophecy –
“The Minister gave extracts from various laws on the continent, but he carefully refrained from drawing attention to the fact that the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy and the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as, assuredly in spite of this bill and in spite of the Public Safety Act, the Blue Shirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.”
The IRISH FREE STATE was abolished by the votes of Irish voters in 1937 and a Sovereign, Independent Democratic Constitution enacted by them.
Herr Hitler’s Third Reich was destroyed by the Red Army in May 1945.
Benito Mussolini was strung up by anti-Fascist Italian Partisans at the same time
In 1948, John A Costello, by then converted to democracy, was chosen to lead the first non-Fianna Fail Irish Government since 1932. It was a coalition led by Fine Gael, and included two antagonistic Labour factions, Sean MacBride (who had remained in the IRA until the Free State was abolished), and various odds and sods. MacBride converted .Costello to Republicanism, and those Fine Gael people who had abandoned Republicanism under duress in 1922 returned to their former faith.
They declared the State to be a Republic.
This was merely putting a label on the Republican state enacted in 1937
In February 1933 THE IRISH TIMES in an Editorial, warned its readers of the woes which would be unleashed on Ireland, should Fianna Fail and de Valera, which had been in office a year, be returned to power in the pending election.
In March 1933 the same Newspaper of Record, welcomed the accession to power of Adolf Hitler, in an Editorial – HERR HITLER’S WAY.
I suppose you are waiting with bated breath for the recollection of those Editorials in the supposed Paper of Record?
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