A fantastic approach to dealing with the Provos. Helped draft Sunningdale, sadly a bit too early for the children up there to deal with. Dealt a poor economic hand but made the wrong calls on tax and spend like many would after him. Like his father before him, a great democrat who was eventually outmanoeuvred by populist FF. Pity about the son.
Mid ranking.
Voted against the contraceptive bill I have just discovered.
Not surprising.
Some great Reeling in the Years moments though.
a better approach than the great Bertie?
Like his father before him, he was a British spy.
He didn’t deal with the Provos.
He hid under some coats and hoped everything would turn out alright.
He was also nonchalant to foreign spies bombing our streets
His father was a fine Irishman.
His father had four fine Irishmen taken out of a prison cell and shot in the back of the head without trial.
No he was strong in the face of them. Would have been very easy to cowtow to Anti Brit sympathies and let them on their merry way.
The Provos bombed themselves out by the 90s and rolled over. Democracy is key.
Who? Drumboe?
The worst thing he ever did was take part in the unlawful 1916 insurrection which had no democratic mandate and killed over 250 innocent civilians. You don’t have a problem with that though.
Did you ever open a history book?
He is referring to the executions of Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellowes and two others which took place during the civil war in a reprisal for the murder of Sean Hales, a stain on WTs legacy certainly but he did a lot of good things.
Those were lawful.
They were unfortunate at the least, I believe it was mulcahy that pressed for them but WT would have had to sign off
I asked you a question. The Provisional Government had the authority to make plenty of executions, regardless of your moral opinion of those.
There were unlawful executions, but not Ines authorised by the democratically elected Government of Ireland.
The Anti treaty IRA ignored the democratic will of the people.
They undertook an insurrection, taking over land they had no right to.
They murdered elected politicians.
They ignored an amnesty.
They called for the execution of newspaper editors and judges.
The Free State army did plenty wrong alright and many more morally wrong things too, I wouldn’t put those executions near the top of the list though.
He never give a shit about bringing the perpetrators of the Dublin and Monaghan bombs to justice.
These executions were unlawful as the four gentlemen had been captured before the relevant law had been adopted.
The late Breandáin Ó Hehir had a great anecdote about W.T. Cosgrave visiting the Vatican and tormenting Pope Pius over whether it was sinful to refer to St. Anne as “God’s Granny” as his family were wont to do in his formative years.
The Pope turned to one of the Curia and, in Latin, basically told them to “get this asshole out of here”
Wrong. That is subjective and a purely moral viewpoint. The Act isn’t relevant anyway as it talks about military tribunals.
The Irish Free State government were de jure and de facto ruling authority of Ireland, and had the authority to repress by force all attempts to over throw it. As the case law in the Childers case stated.
The executions stopped other elected TDs being executed, as admitted to by Anti IRA members who stopped going around shooting them then.