There is a wealth of scholarship on the Free State period in Irish history (1922–37). Therefore, it is a testament to this book that it manages nonetheless to enhance our understanding of the two most seminal decades in the history of independent Ireland. Its success in this regard probably flows from the fact that, unlike previous studies, it does not set up a false dichotomy between the two adversarial administrations of the Free State period: the pro-Treaty, Cumann na nGaedheal governments of 1922–32 and the anti-Treaty, Fianna Fáil governments of 1932–7. Instead, it identifies as having defined the period as the continuum between these two successive party political factions of pre-independence Sinn Féin. When the gap opened up between the two sides in 1922, following the split over the Anglo–Irish Treaty, countervailing political and social policies, not to mention impassioned rhetoric, filled it gradually but both parties continued to pursue a sovereign Ireland. Whatever about their new affiliations, the members of both parties remained, fundamentally, members of the revolutionary generation: men and women who had been shaped by the precepts of political separatism and of cultural nationalism.
Mel Farrell highlights that across the Free State period, first Cumann na nGaedheal, and then Fianna Fáil, extended Irish sovereignty incrementally. William T. Cosgrave's Cumann na nGaedheal governments spearheaded the campaign for the equality of the dominion states with Britain and Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil governments removed those constitutional instruments of deference to Britain, such as the oath of fealty to the British monarch. In this way, Michael Collins and de Valera, who had been so misaligned in 1922, came back into alignment, with de Valera tracing those stepping-stones to complete freedom that Collins had envisaged would appear if the Treaty were accepted. Culturally, Fianna Fáil would seek to preserve and to propagate the Irish language in the 1930s, establishing (or re-establishing) a Gaeltacht in County Meath, for example. However, this was only after Cumann na nGaedheal, as Farrell emphasises once again, had established a commission of inquiry into how best to save the existing Gaeltacht areas in the 1920s.
Party politics in a new democracy is as strong on the micro analysis as it is on the macro analysis. Document No. 2, de Valera's alternative to the Treaty, which was presented in 1922, is notorious for its constructive ambiguity in attempting to reconcile British imperial interests with Irish republican interests but Farrell makes remarkably simple, even persuasive, sense of the proposal. Before that, he deals with the more protracted complexity of the Treaty negotiations by maintaining a daily diary of developments as the negotiations reached their denouement. Just as the Free State period is defined by the continuum between Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil, so it is characterised by the rise and fall of the former and the rise and rise of the latter.
On the fall of Cumann na nGaedheal, and on the ongoing insipidness of the pro-Treaty side, Farrell is particularly compelling. Marshalling detail and nuance, he paints a picture of a political cadre whose vitality dissipated. This began with Cumann na nGaedheal's promotion of fiscal prudence – austerity measures are never likely to appeal to an electorate, even if they are for the best (and even if historians judge them favourably in the future, as they have the economic policies of Cumann na nGaedheal). It continued with the very letting of the lifeblood of Cumann na nGaedheal. When Minister for Justice Kevin O'Higgins was gunned down on his way to mass in 1927, Cumann na nGaedheal lost one of its most senior figures, but it had already lost Joseph McGrath, the minister for industry and commerce, and J. J. Walsh, the minister for posts and telegraphs, both of whom had resigned from the party. A new impetus was restored to the pro-Treaty side in 1933, when Cumann na nGaedheal united with the National Centre Party and the National Guard (Blueshirts) to become Fine Gael. Fine Gael was a response to the ascendancy of Fianna Fáil and with the departure of the Blueshirt leader Eoin O'Duffy as its president in 1934, it shrivelled back into being Cumann na nGaedheal.
The fascistic proclivities of the Blueshirts aside, the new Irish state famously preserved its democracy during the interwar period. Throughout his text, Farrell juxtaposes the Irish narrative very usefully with what was happening on the continent. Not only does this serve to draw the Free State out of the isolation that historians have tended to look at it in but it also augments the narrative – national histories are not understood by comparison with the histories of other countries but they are understood better. For this reason, some apposite integrated analysis – as well as juxtaposition – of the trajectories of the Free State and those European countries that abandoned their democracies would have augmented the narrative still further. Likewise, some more contextualisation of the literature reviewed in the introduction, which reads too much like a reading list, would have formed the text that little bit more fully. Nonetheless, Party politics in a new democracy is a tremendously accomplished piece of scholarship.
