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The Reluctant Taoiseach; A biography of John A Costello

John A Costello was the pioneer of Inter Party or coalition Government in Ireland.   His modest and endearing personality was crucial in making his two Governments work. His first Government consisted of five parties, and relied for support on a number of independent TDs as well.  His second consisted of only two parties, but it relied for support on a third party and also on numerous independents.
  Although a combative advocate in public, he had a remarkable lack of partisanship in his personal relations. He was considerate toward colleagues, some of whom were difficult people.
He had taken no part in the War of Independence, and was thus relatively unaffected by the Civil War split. This enabled him to work with people like Sean McBride, who came from the anti Treaty side.
 As a lawyer during the 1930s, he had represented trade union interests, and as a TD he had defended the pension and other rights of civil servants transferred from the British service into that of the Free State. Both activities involved close cooperation with the man who was later to become his Tanaiste , Bill Norton.  Their mutual respect held two Governments together.
 The involvement of Labour in his first Government was not to be taken for granted. Labour had, after all, supported Fianna Fail in 1932, and because of a split in the trade union movement, there were two Labour parties in 1948.
John A Costello was a native of Phibsboro and the son of a civil servant in the Registry of Deeds, whose family came from Clare. He was educated in O Connells School, the same school as Sean Lemass and Sean T O Kelly attended. He attended UCD and, like James Joyce, he tried and failed to become   Auditor of the L and H.
When he qualified as a barrister in 1914, he had no family legal connections.  He made up for this with hard work and a talent for appealing to the feelings of juries. He was so successful that he was invited to become Attorney General in WT Cosgrave’s Government in 1926, at the age of 35.
He was first elected to the Dail in 1933, and remained a member until 1969. Except when he was Taoiseach, he combined Dail service with an active career as a barrister.  This led to criticism of his Dail attendance, but it enriched the quality his contributions to debates, especially on the 1937 Constitution. His legal reputation was such that de Valera offered him the post of Chief Justice at one time.
 This biography by David McCullagh, RTEs political correspondent, is an original contribution to the writing of modern Irish history. It is authoritative in its judgements and careful in its research. It is sympathetic even affectionate, towards its subject. The book is easy to follow and the author draws on his own intimate knowledge of current politics to place Costello in a context relevant to modern Ireland. It is also full of colourful detail about the politics of the time.
Costello’s economic record comes in for some criticism. The Irish economy fell behind during the 1950s. Growth   was less than in other European countries. Costello wanted to open Ireland to foreign investment as early as the late 1940s, but this was opposed at the time by the Labour party, Fianna Fail, the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Federation of Irish Industries. He  did not push the issue.
 It took the severe balance of payments crisis of 1955/6 for Costello to be able to win approval for a repeal  Of the Control of Manufacturers Act  which put on the restrictions on foreign investment , and  for  a zero or low corporation tax policy to promote exports.  This imaginative  tax policy, which provides the basis for Irish policy to attract overseas investment  up to this day, was put in place by Costello’s Minister for Finance, Gerry Sweetman  in 1956.  The restrictions on investment, though agreed in principle under Costello, were not removed until 1958 when he had lost office. 
Divisions on economic policy crossed party lines.   Both Costello and Lemass favoured Keynesian style stimulus of the economy through capital  spending funded by borrowing.  Both Ministers for Finance of the period, Fine Gael’s Gerry Sweetman and Fianna Fail’s Sean McEntee, believed  that balancing the budget and restraining consumption  was  the better  way to release  funds for investment. 
 Food subsidies, an untargeted and expensive form of Government spending, were favoured by  Costello and Norton,  but were opposed by Sweetman.  These differences on economic policy between Labour and Gerry Sweetman remained an obstacle to a renewed Fine Gael/Labour  Coalition as late as 1970.
 David McCullagh  clarifies John A Costello’s role in the Mother and Child  controversy is.  He was influenced much more by the views and interests of the medical profession than he was  by those of Archbishop McQuaid. His hands off management style, helpful most of the time in defusing inter party tensions, did not serve him at all well in this case. But it was not Noel Browne’s resignation over the Mother and Child question that brought Costello’s first Government down in  1951. It was the Minister for Agriculture, James Dillon’s refusal to grant dairy farmers a milk price increase!
 The book shows that John A Costello  did not at all foresee the effects of his  impromptu  answer to a question at a  press conference in Canada in 1949, when he said that   his Governments planned  to  declare Ireland  a Republic , and  consequently  to withdraw from the Commonwealth.
  In fact, Ireland had not been participating in the Commonwealth since 1936, and his Government had already   agreed informally to declare a Republic and   withdraw fully  from the Commonwealth.
  But the consequences had not been teased out through diplomatic channels with the British Government. They were taken by surprise. They reacted by passing the unnecessary Government of Ireland Act to reassure Unionists. This Act appeared to nationalist opinion at the time entrench partition, because of the mistaken nationalist assumption that it was really British laws, not  Unionist people, who were keeping partition in place.    
This is a great biography of a neglected but central figure in modern Irish history, and deserves to widely read.  His record, in making coalitions work in difficult economic times, has many valuable lessons for his party today.  

Book Review for the “Irish Times” by John Bruton.
The book is to be published on 15 October and publishers request that no review appear before that date.
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The Reluctant Taoiseach; A biography of John A Costello
By David McCullagh
Gill and Macmillan
27.99 euros/ 24.99 stg.

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