Cosgrave, William Thomas (1880–1965), first
president of the executive council. Cosgrave was one of the delegates to the first
Sinn Féin convention in 1905, and was elected to Dublin Corporation in 1909. He joined the
Irish Volunteers in 1913, and fought in the South Dublin Union during the
rising of 1916. A sentence of death was commuted to imprisonment. He won the Carlow‐Kilkenny seat for Sinn Féin in the 1917 by‐election and sat in the first Dáil. He was minister for local government from April 1919 to September 1922. He succeeded Michael
Collins as chairman of the
Provisional Government and minister for finance in July 1922, and Arthur
Griffith as president of the Dáil government in August 1922. His experience in local government was one of the main reasons for his appointment. He was not as flamboyant or as charismatic a leader as his predecessors but was effective and a good chairman who knew how to delegate. In September 1922 he became the first president of the executive council of the Free State. He founded
Cumann na nGaedheal in 1923 and became its first leader. When
Fine Gael was formed in 1933 he stood aside in favour of Eoin
O'Duffy, but succeeded O'Duffy in 1934 and led the opposition to the
Fianna Fáil government until 1944.
Together with his talented right hand man, Kevin
O'Higgins, Cosgrave is generally seen as the stabilizing force in the young Free State. His term in office was dedicated to the establishment of a stable democratic state witnessed by the smooth transfer of power to Fianna Fáil in 1932. His policies have been characterized as extremely careful and conservative, broadly representative of the rural petite bourgeoisie which dominated the new state. His son
Liam Cosgrave was leader of Fine Gael 1965–77.
Bibliography
Regan, J. M. , The Irish Counter‐Revolution, 1921–36 (1999)
Prager, Jeffrey , Building Democracy in Ireland: Political Order and Cultural Integration in a Newly Independent Nation (1986)
Joost Augusteijn
