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If Wednesday’s landmark announcement between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael marked the end of Civil War politics, its beginnings date back to a vote on the Anglo-Irish Treaty almost 100 years ago.
On January 7, 1922, the Dáil voted closely with 64 votes in favor and 57 to accept the Treaty negotiated by the British and Irish delegations a month earlier in London.
His terms, as Michael Collins opined during that debate, gave the nascent state “the freedom to achieve freedom.” For Éamon de Valera it was a betrayal of the idea of an independent Irish republic.
After the vote, De Valera removed his followers from the Dáil and resigned as president two days later to be replaced by Arthur Griffiths. The provisional government took office on January 14.
In March 1922, the anti-Treaty IRA held a meeting at the Mansion House in which it promised its opposition to the new government. In April it occupied the Four Courts as its headquarters.
There were now two rival armies and political camps, but even then civil war was not inevitable. Both Sinn Féin’s wings, the pro-treaty and anti-treaty parties, held a pact election on June 16, 1922 in which they agreed to present candidates according to their relative strengths in the Dáil.
However, the result of the election was interpreted as a victory for those who supported the Treaty. Pro-Treaty candidates outperformed anti-Treaty candidates before 60:40 (38.5 / 21.2). A large part of the electorate, 40 percent in total, voted for the Labor Party, the Farmers’ Party and Independents who were in favor of the Treaty.
Even then, de Valera hoped to form a Sinn Féin pact government with Collins, but events occurred in the space of two weeks that made it impossible. The murder of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson by two IRA members in London on June 22 was blamed by the British government, wrongly as it turned out, on the anti-treaty side and a warning was sent to the provisional government to deal with the rebels in the Four Courts or the British would solve them.
The kidnapping of Free State General JJ Ginger O’Connell in response to the arrest of anti-treaty officer Leo Henderson was the final trigger.
The Civil War began on June 28, 1922 when the forces of the Free State bombed the Four Courts. Nine months later, the anti-treaty side was defeated, but it never gave up, and the Civil War, in effect, never ended.
Exceptionally, the government of the Free State, which emerged in December 1922, was a government in search of a party and not the other way around. The pro-treaty government broke with Sinn Féin during the Civil War, and Cumann na nGaedheal was founded in April 1923.
The party garnered 40 percent of the vote in that month’s general election, but was able to rule due to the anti-Treaty Sinn Féin side of Abba Féin led by De Valera.
In 1926, De Valera also broke with Sinn Féin over Dáil Éireann’s policy of abstentionism, which was becoming increasingly unsustainable. Fianna Fáil was founded in October 1926, however, there was still a major barrier to her entry into democratic politics: the oath of allegiance of Dáil members to the British monarch.
Things came to a head when Justice Minister Kevin Higgins was assassinated on July 10, 1927, proving that the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War still existed for a long time afterward. Higgins was blamed for extrajudicial executions carried out by Free State forces during and after the Civil War.
In response, the government of the Free State made it a condition to stand for election that a TD must be sworn in. Fianna Fáil came up with the “empty formula” of words to dismiss the oath and entered Dáil Éireann.
A minority government of Cumann na nGaedheal ruled until the 1932 general election. These general elections saw the peaceful handover of power from a pro-treaty government to an anti-treaty government.
That year’s often vicious election campaign demonstrated that both sides held divergent views of themselves and each other that went beyond their stance on the Treaty.
Posters of Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil from the 1932 elections
An element of class politics entered the election with Fianna Fáil, who relentlessly ridicules Cumann na nGaedheal as a party of the privileged Western British out of contact with the public. Fianna Fáil’s motto summarizes this vision of the world: “Government of the rich for the rich”.
These tropes have lasted to this day with the leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin, accusing Fine Gael during the general election of being a party of privileged individuals. This sparked outrage from many Fine Gael politicians, including ministers. Simon Harris and Joe McHugh, who said their education was anything but privileged.
Cumann na nGaedheal portrayed Fianna Fáil as a crypto communist party that would bankrupt the state and was enslaved by shadow gunmen who were the party’s real power base.
After the defeat of Cumann na nGaedheal in 1932, the party merged with the National League Party and the Association of Army Comrades (ACA) to found Fine Gael in September 1933.
The National League Party (NLP) had formed a group of like-minded independents and the Farmers’ Party that had supported Cumann na nGaedhael during the 1920s. NLP won a respectable 11 seats in the 1932 general election. The ACA was a group of former National Army personnel led by Eoin O’Duffy, who was fired as Garda commissioner by the incoming Valera government.
The ACA was best known for the blue shirts its members wore in the conscious imitation of the black shirts of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Blueshirts numbered around 30,000 and were considered by the Valera government as a threat to the State. This was somewhat ironic given their previous status as defenders of the state.
O’Duffy was Fine Gael’s first president, but was unsuccessful and resigned in 1934.
During the 1930s, the Fianna Fáil government dismantled the treaty. He got rid of the oath of allegiance in 1933, the office of the Governor-General in 1936, and regained the Treaty ports in 1938.
However, it was the Fine Gael government of John A Costello who provided the complete coup de grace for the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the declaration of a republic in April 1949.
This was highly resented by De Valera, who opposed him on the grounds that it would make a united Ireland more difficult to achieve. It was an affront to those who argued that Fine Gael was a western British holiday.
Since the Treaty is no longer the defining issue, the two giants of Irish politics had to find something else to differentiate themselves.
Irish Times front page advertisement taken by Cumann na nGaedheal on Election Morning, February 16, 1932
When asked what separated Fine Gael from Fianna Fáil in 1950, Costello is said to have said at a diplomatic meeting that “there really was no essential difference between the two.”
According to historian Dr. Ciara Meehan, who is co-writing a Fine Gael story with Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins, Costello “dared to express what many nonpartisan voters already suspected.”
She explained: “Costello’s comment was due in part to frustration at Fine Gael’s lack of interest in policy making, but there was also an element of truth to his comment.
“Essentially, the sons of Sinn Féin separated in 1921/22, Cumann na nGaedheal, later Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil positioned themselves in relation to the Treaty and it continued to be the main marker in the following decades.
“When other countries formed national governments during World War II (or the Emergency, in Irish terms), the two sides did not unite, or could not.
“Long after the Civil War was no longer immediately relevant, the deep divide it caused still influenced the minds of the strongest grassroots supporters. At the most basic level, Fine Gael was once seen as the political home of big business and big farmers; Fianna Fáil was the feast of the small farmer and the ordinary worker. Fianna Fáil’s propaganda portrayed this as the wealthy versus the working class, and the dichotomy was the subject of a myriad of cartoons.
“Cumann na nGaedheal’s willingness to work within the Commonwealth framework also provided Fianna Fáil with the material to remove her rival as West British, while at the same time taking pride in her own label,” the Republican Party. “
“Apart from the division of the Treaty, I think the real difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, for a long time, was a psychological one. Fianna Fáil was Fianna Fáil, but Fine Gael was “not Fianna Fáil”. In other words, Fine Gael was concerned with defining himself in relation to his rival.
“Fianna Fáil’s impressive electoral record after 1932 fueled the confidence of the party, while prolonged periods in the political desert demoralized Fine Gael and left the party in the shadow of its rival. Fine Gael’s achievements were in the past , with the creation of the new state. Instead of articulating what it really represented, he stopped at that phase of his history and, more particularly, he was concerned to explain that it was not Fianna Fáil “.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the product of an electoral system in which commitment and coalitions are fundamental
University of Maynooth educated historian Dr. Mel Farrell, author of the Political Party in a New Democracy, the Irish Free State 1922-1937, says that perception has grown through the decades that Fine Gael is more Fianna Fáil’s right-wing political spectrum on economic issues, but even those distinctions have been blurred over the years.
“Different leaders have put their own stamp on each of the two parts. In 1965, conservative Fine Gael moved to Fianna Fáil’s left with the adoption of the Just Society manifesto as the party sought liberal reform during the 1980s, ”he says.
Until the last years of Charles Haughey, Northern Ireland politics would have been another issue that clearly delimited the two sides. In 1985 Haughey strongly opposed the Anglo-Irish Accord, but later came to work on it upon his return to power. During the 1997, 2002, and 2007 elections, Fianna Fáil’s alliance with progressive Democrats likely kept Fianna Fáil slightly to Fine Gael’s right. “
He argues that Ireland is not the only country in Europe that has big parties that are ideologically similar. Germany, with the dominance of the Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties, is another.
“People tend to examine Irish politics with reference to British politics because we consume a lot of UK media.” The British system in the first post has led to a system in which two clear blocks dominate. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the product of an electoral system in which commitment and coalitions are fundamental ”.
Endless academic treatises and commentaries have been written over the past century on the differences between the two sides. The late Jackie Healy-Rae, when still a Fianna Fáil stalwart, once said cryptically about such speculation. “Those who know do not need to ask and those who ask will never know.”
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar. Photography: Getty
The two O’Keeffes, Jim (Fine Gael) and Ned (Fianna Fáil), who have spent more than half a century between them representing Cork in Dáil Éireann, believe that there are clear distinctions between the two sides.
Ned says: “I have no problem with (the end of) Civil War politics, but Fianna Fáil has a more social orientation, while Fine Gael would be the party of a different class in society.”
“Fianna Fáil would be the feast of ordinary people in towns and cities and the common farmer in rural areas.”
Jim disagrees: “That image of Fine Gael as part of the professional classes may have been true in the 1930s and 1940s, but everything changed in the 1960s with Garret Fitzgerald and the Just Society.
“Garrett was a brand new broom at Fine Gael and the issues he was dealing with at Fine Gael would have been social issues, he would have been talking about divorce and contraception.
“Because of his leadership, Fine Gael would have been seen as a party of change, of course, the problem was that when we were in government, we inherited a wasteful spending from Fianna Fáil under Haughey.
“I am not concerned that Fine Gael will go to government with Fianna Fáil on the issue of them working together. I have no doubt that they can and will work together and do a good job, but they need a solid majority to do it. that.”
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