The Reluctant Taoiseach
Page 49
In December 1956, he secured the appointment of the author Seán Ó Faoláin as Director of the Arts Council—as Patrick Lynch noted, this was “the first official recognition he had ever received—apart from having his excellent novels banned”.183 Ó Faoláin himself said Costello was “the first person in authority to recognise that an Irishman is not necessarily, by being an artist, a fool or an irresponsible citizen”.184 The author’s name had been suggested to the Taoiseach by his son Declan and Alexis FitzGerald, and was supported by Bodkin.185
The appointment was strongly opposed by Archbishop McQuaid because the writer was seen as something of an anti-establishment figure, and had clashed with the Archbishop in the past.186 McQuaid “spent over one hour with Taoiseach and Dr Bodkin trying to prevent Ó Faoláin’s nomination, by persuading Bodkin to take the post”. Bodkin, however, turned down the offer, much to Costello’s own disappointment—the Taoiseach told McQuaid “it had been my life’s dream that he would work for Ireland in connection with the promotion of the Arts and particularly the application of the Arts to Industry in Ireland”. He added that he considered Ó Faoláin’s appointment as a way of giving Government support to artists and writers. “While I cannot expect Your Grace’s blessings I feel sure that I will have your prayers.” McQuaid replied that he “can only hope that the nominee will not let you down”.187
One of the responsibilities of Cabinet was to decide whether to advise the President to commute capital sentences. In his autobiography, Noël Browne suggested that the First Inter-party Government routinely decided to have such sentences carried out, over-ruling the objections of the two Clann ministers. In fact, as John Horgan pointed out, only one person was hanged during that government’s term—five capital sentences were commuted.188 The most notorious capital case to confront the Second Inter-party Government was that of Nurse Cadden, a backstreet abortionist who accidentally killed a patient. She was sentenced to be hanged, and the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed her appeal.189 The matter then came before Cabinet. Everett informed his colleagues that the Prison Medical Officer found that she “is quite amoral, and in that sense I would consider her abnormal”.190 The Minister told his private secretary that Cadden was “unrepentant in a state of mortal sin, but if given life imprisonment there was hope that she would see the error of her ways”.191 The sentence was duly commuted.192
This was in line with Costello’s general approach: he disapproved of capital punishment and was an advocate of civil liberties. In fact, he had been an early supporter of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, which was established in March 1948. In advance of the founding meeting, the Irish Independent reported that the Taoiseach was among the sponsors of the new organisation, along with Gerard Sweetman, Lord Killanin, and Owen Sheehy Skeffington.193 A letter writer to the Irish Independent accused the new group of being a communist front organisation, comparing it to similar organisations in Britain and America. There was official suspicion too, with a Garda report being prepared, noting the names of the sponsors. Justice official Peter Berry noted beside Sheehy Skeffington’s name, “This is the only left-wing agitator in the group.”194 Berry sent the Garda report to Maurice Moynihan, the Secretary to the Government, who raised it with the new Taoiseach. Costello explained that he had agreed to attend the inaugural meeting before he became Taoiseach; now he had decided not to attend.195 Presumably, the official disapproval of the new organisation played a part in his decision, but as we shall see, he continued to oppose the use of special powers, even when the IRA began its Border Campaign at the end of 1956.
So how did the public view the Government? Perhaps the best gauge is by-election results, which indicate that up to the first quarter of 1956, Costello and his colleagues were viewed relatively favourably by the voters. By-elections were particularly important for this government. Defeats would not only have the usual effect of reducing its majority; they would also undermine its democratic legitimacy. While in opposition, Costello had claimed that government defeats in by-elections signalled a withdrawal of confidence by the voters. Perhaps foolishly, he continued to make this argument while in government, offering a significant hostage to fortune. For instance, in July 1956, during the Cork by-election campaign, he said the Fianna Fáil government had in 1954 “finally accepted the result of a whole series of by-elections adverse to them [as] the real wishes of the people and gave up Office”.196
The first test of opinion didn’t come until December 1955, after the death of Fine Gael’s David Madden of Limerick West. Opening the campaign, the Taoiseach gave a less than ringing endorsement of his government’s performance: “… we have done reasonably well despite the many bewildering problems with which we were confronted”.197 He later added another strangely lukewarm assessment of the progress the Government had made: “The balance between success and failure, though perhaps not spectacular, is well on the credit side.”198 During the campaign, Costello made the best of his government’s record on prices, insisting that it was outside the power of any Government to control “the prices paid to workers on Ceylon tea plantations or to British coal miners”. He pointed out that increases in the price of food produced in Ireland would increase farm incomes—presumably a resonant argument in this mainly agricultural constituency. And the Taoiseach reminded voters that the only general election promise he had made was to “give good government to the best of his ability”.199
The Fianna Fáil candidate, Michael Colbert, won on the first count with 56 per cent of the vote, which was 2 per cent up on the party’s general election result. Fine Gael’s vote was marginally up, from 34 per cent to 35 per cent. Despite the fact that this had been a Fine Gael seat, Labour contested the by-election, a curious breach of the usual inter-party procedure in by-elections. The party’s vote was down three points to just under 9 per cent. The loss of a Government seat was a blow, but in the circumstances it certainly wasn’t a bad result. The Fianna Fáil victory gave that party all three seats in the constituency—the defeated Fine Gael candidate, Denis Jones, went on to top the poll in the 1957 general election, restoring the traditional balance of 2 Fianna Fáil and 1 Fine Gael.
Early in 1956, there was a more impressive show of inter-party solidarity—in favour of Clann na Poblachta, which was of course only supporting the Government from outside. Despite this, Costello threw his full support behind the Clann candidate, Kathleen O’Connor, who was attempting to hold the seat of her late father in North Kerry. He spoke at public meetings, and signed a newspaper ad urging voters to support O’Connor to “send a message of encouragement to the government”.200 This they did—O’Connor held the seat with 53 per cent of the vote, while the Fianna Fáil candidate received 47 per cent. A comfortable victory, although Fianna Fáil’s vote had increased by seven points since the general election, at the expense of the combined inter-party total. Costello hailed the result as “a significant victory” and “a decisive vote of confidence to the Inter-party Government”.201
The Leader was less complimentary, observing that “Mr de Valera wrung his hands in horror at the Coalition’s financial ineptitude, but Mr Costello offered everybody factories … Instead of escaping into the sugar-candy world of make believe, Mr Costello should have come out and told the electors in an adult way what they have to expect in the next twelve months and what his Government proposes to do. A little less parish pump and more national politics would have increased public confidence in his Government.”202 Such sour comments could not dent the coalition’s satisfaction. Two by-elections had resulted in one win and one loss, a reasonable record. However, it was to be the last political success Costello and his government would enjoy as they headed into a miserable year, which would end with the victor in the North Kerry by-election helping to remove them from office. But first, John A. Costello would enjoy a stimulating and diverting interlude away from the burdens of office.
Chapter 12
WE MUST HAVE FRIENDS
“In existing circumstances we canno
t have formal alliances. Because we cannot have alliances we must have friends.”1
JOHN A. COSTELLO, APRIL 1956
“… your chivalry is so beautiful, and I am deeply moved by it.”2
JACQUELINE KENNEDY TO JOHN A. COSTELLO, 1967
John A. Costello’s visit to the United States in 1956 was a personal milestone for him. It brought him into contact with the highest levels of the American political system, saw him honoured by a prestigious university, and gave him an opportunity to put his stamp on Irish foreign policy. It was also emblematic of his private life, and his capacity for friendship, which brought into his circle an elderly priest, an eccentric American scholar, and the widow of an assassinated president.
He had been to the United States twice before—in 1948, on his way to Canada, and in October 1953, when he attended an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Washington (at which the Irish, inevitably, tried to bring up partition).3 He liked Americans—his son John remembered him as being “charmed” by them, as he loved their “informality and their old world courtesy”.4 In both his terms as Taoiseach, he received a constant stream of visitors from the United States. He went out of his way to be helpful too—one visitor in 1949 mentioned that he had two elderly aunts living in Roscommon. The Taoiseach personally phoned the Garda sergeant in Ballaghadereen, asking him to drive out to let the ladies know that their nephew would be down to visit them a few days later.5
Costello’s American connection began with Father Joseph Leonard, a Vincentian priest with an international reputation as a scholar and author on the life of St Vincent de Paul. Costello came to know him at the start of the Second World War, when he was living in semi-retirement in All Hallows on the north side of Dublin. Leonard had been a chaplain in the First World War—possibly as a result, he was rather deaf.6 Their friendship was an important feature of his later life, with Costello taking him most weeks for a Saturday afternoon drive in the Dublin Mountains, where the elderly priest enjoyed the scenery. A mutual friend said after his death that the drives “meant everything to him”.7 Fr Leonard was, according to one of Costello’s Garda drivers, a “saintly, jovial old man with a great sense of humour”.8
After the priest’s death, Costello wrote warmly of “a valued and rewarding friendship with a man older and wiser than myself”. Fr Leonard had either given or recommended to him a long and varied list of books, from the theological works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his own translation of a life of St Vincent de Paul, to D.W. Brogan’s “The American Political System”, to the novels of Henry James, to paperbacks by P.G. Wodehouse and detective stories by Rex Stout. As Costello remarked, “It is certainly not Father Leonard’s fault if I have not gained much and varied fruit in my post graduate course under his guidance!”9
The reference to the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin is interesting—he was a liberal and controversial theologian whose work was banned by the Vatican. In 1960, Archbishop McQuaid proudly informed the Nuncio that he had forbidden students at Clonliffe College from reading de Chardin several years before the official ban.10 It is unlikely that Costello was greatly influenced by these works. According to his son Declan, he was “a practising Catholic, rather than an intellectual one”, and wouldn’t have read a great deal of theology.11 Whatever about Teilhard de Chardin, Father Leonard was credited by some in the family for softening Costello’s approach to religion, which had been rather rigorous.12
Before his return to All Hallows in 1939, Fr Leonard had been Vice-Principal of St Mary’s, the Vincentian college at Strawberry Hill outside London. Strawberry Hill was built in the eighteenth century by Horace Walpole, son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole and in his own right a politician, art historian, and literary figure. It was because of this connection that Fr Leonard was introduced (by Lady Hazel Lavery)13 to Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, an American expert on, and collector of, Walpole’s work. “Expert” is probably too mild a word—his autobiography reveals him as something of an obsessive. Lewis had the good sense to marry a wealthy wife, Annie Burr Auchincloss, whose fortune allowed him to amass an unrivalled collection of Walpole’s voluminous correspondence. This was brought to the couple’s home in Farmington, Connecticut; both house and collection were eventually donated to Yale. Costello had visited Farmington in 1953, when he was in Washington for a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and no doubt was given a full tour of the collection.14
Lewis was known to his friends (including Costello) as “Lefty”,15 a nickname which quite unjustifiably implied a certain raffish quality. In fact, he had been given the nickname in honour of a gangster called Lefty Louie. He was grateful to the gangster, because, as he wrote later, “the possession of a nickname is a gift beyond rubies”.16 He may have been no gangster, but he was extremely well connected. He was one of the trustees of Yale, serving alongside such luminaries as former Secretary of State Dean Acheson (who had been a classmate at the college) and leading Republican senator Robert A. Taft17 (father of the US Ambassador to Dublin).
The Lewises met Father Leonard on a visit to Strawberry Hill in 1928. Characteristically, the visit was part of their honeymoon trip to Europe—whether she liked it or not, the new Mrs Lewis was to find much of her life taken up with Horace Walpole. The couple became close friends with the priest, who introduced them after the war to his circle in Dublin, including Costello. In return, they “sent him friends they knew he would enjoy, Jackie Bouvier among them”.18 Jackie, the future Jacqueline Kennedy, was the stepdaughter of Hugh Auchincloss, Annie Burr’s brother, and spent time with the couple while at school near their home. She was reportedly “fascinated” by her step-uncle’s Walpole collection.19
In 1949, Jackie and her stepbrother Yusha Auchincloss visited Ireland, where they met Father Leonard. The three visited Costello, then Taoiseach, at his office in Government Buildings, where he presented them with seven signed books on Ireland.20 He later described her as “full of youthful vivacity, charm and great delight at what she found in Ireland”.21 She also became very fond of Father Leonard, asking him to officiate at her marriage to Jack Kennedy in 1953, and later to christen their first child, Caroline. He was too ill to travel to the United States on either occasion.22
Jackie had met the then Congressman Kennedy in 1951, and after a “spasmodic courtship” they married two years later in what was described as “the social event of the year”.23 They visited Ireland at the end of September 1955.24 The Taoiseach was out of the country (in Rome), but in his absence the couple were entertained by Declan and his wife, Joan. Over dinner in the fashionable Jammet’s restaurant, the Senator asked the TD to explain Irish politics to him. Declan found him “very agreeable, highly intelligent and anxious to learn”.25 In turn, Jackie Kennedy remembered the young couple, telling Jack Costello in 1966 that she had “never forgotten you, Declan and Joan’s kindness to us”.26
Jack and Declan were both in the Dáil chamber on 28 June 1963, when John F. Kennedy addressed the House. Later, at a reception in Áras an Uachtaráin, the President asked Declan how he could get in touch with Father Leonard, as he didn’t want to leave Ireland without contacting him. A phone call to All Hallows ensued, which gave the priest “great joy”.27 After the priest died, Costello wrote to Jackie Kennedy, by then a widow, seeking permission to quote from one of her letters to Father Leonard in an appreciation he was writing. He later sent her copies of her other letters to Leonard. She was effusive in her thanks for the confidence with which her correspondence with Leonard had been treated by Costello. “In the strange world I live in now, where privacy barely exists, and where I spend all winter in New York holding my breath and wondering which old letter of mine will come up for auction next!—your chivalry is so beautiful, and I am deeply moved by it.”28
It was this American connection, through Father Leonard and Lefty Lewis, which led to Costello’s trip to the United States in 1956. In November 1955 the President of Yale, Whitney Griswold, wrote to the Taoiseach inviting him to deliver a lecture to the
School of Law, and to take part in informal conferences with faculty and students as a Chubb Fellow—for all of which he would receive an honorarium of $1,000.29 Lewis, who was responsible for the invitation, urged his friend to accept. “You would have an interesting experience, I think—one that, so far as I know, no other Prime Minister has ever had, certainly no other Taoiseach! We would do everything we can to protect you from ambitious politicians and allow you full opportunity to meet and talk with students and faculty.”30
Costello jumped at the opportunity. He told Griswold it would be “refreshing intellectually to pass a few days in the legal and University atmosphere and away from the political atmosphere”, although he admitted to “some misgivings in view of the world-wide reputation of the Yale Law Faculty”. He added that he wouldn’t expect an honorarium, suggesting the payment could be described as a contribution towards expenses, as “I would not like it to be thought that I wished for reward for what I regard as an honour and a pleasure.”31 He told Lewis that he felt the invitation to be “of high significance”, adding that Father Leonard was delighted and had “sent me a book to prepare my education. He thinks, evidently, that I must do a lot of ‘home-work’ in preparation for the Yale Law Faculty.”32