Three Conceptions of Civil War Politics

Abstract

Three Conceptions of Civil War Politics Bill Kissane Until 1966, when Fianna Fáil's Jack Lynch became taoiseach, the politics of the Irish Republic were dominated by men who had become prominent in the War of Independence (1919–21) and the resulting Civil War (1922–23). There is nothing unusual about a revolutionary cohort continuing to dominate a new state in this way. That it could be a bone of contention is suggested by the character of Moran in John McGahern's novel Amongst Women. Moran asks of the independence struggle, "What did we get for it? A country, if you'd believe them. Some of our own johnnies in the top jobs instead of a few Englishmen."1 This veteran of both the War of Independence and the Civil War clearly suffered from postrevolutionary disillusionment. And Moran had a point. All taoisigh appointed before 1966 had been involved in the Civil War in some way. Later, Liam Cosgrave, chosen in 1973, and Garrett FitzGerald, chosen in 1981, as Fine Gael Taoisigh, were sons respectively of the president of the Executive Council and the minister of external affairs during the Civil War. Charles Haughey, taoiseach on three separate occasions between 1979 and 1992, was a son-in-law of Seán Lemass, who ended the Civil War in an internment camp and had been taoiseach between 1959 and 1966. Between 1973 and 1974 the president was Erskine Childers, whose father had been executed by the Provisional Government in October 1922. Evidently, Irish politics remained in the shadow of the Civil War for quite some time. The impact of the conflict on Irish political development has also long been an issue in Irish Studies. Most historians consider this impact to have been deep and traumatic. For Ronan Fanning Irish society "never escaped the bloody shadow cast at its birth."2 Fearghal [End Page 101] McGarry concluded that it is "difficult to overestimate the Civil War's impact."3 Niall Whelehan suggested that its "psychological impact" was "immense."4 When it comes to party politics specifically, the Civil War "shaped and structured the new party system."5 It both "froze the development of party politics in a unique mould"6 and "fixed attitudes in a way that would otherwise have been absorbed into the political system quite differently."7 Up to the formation of the current Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael coalition in 2020, the pattern established in the 1920s had been "difficult to shift."8 This article explores the impact of the Civil War on Irish party politics through a fresh look at an old concept, "civil-war politics." This concept has been used to characterize a specific style of politics emanating from the conflict and to convey a sense of its overall impact on Irish party politics. This article looks at the different ways in which the style of politics rooted in the Civil War allowed the larger two parties to fend off challengers and to dominate Irish politics for most of the twentieth century. The causality involved ran in two directions: the Civil War gave shape and structure to the party system, but since the leading parties were Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the issues raised by the Treaty were in turn perpetuated by civil-war politics.9 The focus here is on the period between 1922 and 1938, a time in which the emotion of the Irish independence movement was channelled into party political activity. Civil-war politics is one way of describing what this channelling involved. For some the problem was the bitterness that this process engendered. The Civil War mattered to party politics in three ways: in structuring the party system, in retaining the capacity to polarize the [End Page 102] electorate, and in engendering bitterness among the political elite. While politics was not altogether enveloped in this bitterness, scholars accept that political conflicts could easily lead to its expression, especially at election time. The emergence of a two-and-a-half party system after 1922 "ensured that the division would be intense and bitter."10 Moreover, the bitterness did not heal and "was all the more important for being felt by the...