Desmond FitzGerald

FitzGerald was elected as a Sinn Féin MP in 1918, leading to his release from custody. During the Irish War of Independence FitzGerald worked as the rebels' Minister for Publicity. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, he supported the pro-Treaty side, leading to his involvement in the Irish Civil War as a member of the Free State government. He served as Minister for External Affairs from 1922 to 1927, during which he worked to establish the international presence of the newly formed Irish Free State on behalf of the Cumann na nGaedhael political party. His presence in Irish politics greatly lessened after his party's defeat in the 1932 Irish general election. His son, Garret FitzGerald, would later become Taoiseach.

Desmond FitzGerald studied at Queen's University Belfast and St Bonaventure's RC School. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Positions recorded include Minister for Defence and member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom.

• Office — Minister for Defence • President — W. T. Cosgrave • Term Start — 23 June 1927 • Term End — 9 March 1932 • Predecessor — Peter Hughes • Successor — Frank Aiken • Office1 — Minister for External Affairs • President1 — W. T. Cosgrave • Term Start1 — 30 August 1922 • Term End1 — 23 June 1927 • Predecessor1 — Michael Hayes • Successor1 — Kevin O'Higgins • Office2 — Minister for Publicity • President2 — W. T. Cosgrave • Term Start2 — 26 August 1921 • Term End2 — 9 September 1922 • Predecessor2 — Office created • Successor2 — Office abolished • Office3 — Director of Publicity • Term Start3 — 17 June 1919 • Term End3 — 11 February 1921 • Predecessor3 — Laurence Ginnell • Successor3 — Erskine Childers • Office4 — Senator • Term Start4 — 7 September 1938 • Term End4 — 8 September 1943 • Constituency4 — Administrative Panel • Office5 — Teachta Dála • Term Start5 — February 1932 • Term End5 — July 1937 • Constituency5 — Carlow–Kilkenny • Term Start6 — May 1921 • Term End6 — February 1932 • Constituency6 — Dublin County • Term Start7 — December 1918 • Term End7 — May 1921 • Constituency7 — Dublin Pembroke • Birth Name — Thomas Joseph FitzGerald • Born — 13 February 1888 • Birthplace — Forest Gate, Essex, England • Died — 9 April 1947 • Place of death — Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland • Party — * Sinn Féin (1918–1922) • Cumann na nGaedheal (1922–1933) • Fine Gael (1933–1943) • Children — 4, including Garret and Desmond • Relatives — * John D. FitzGerald (grandson) • Eithne FitzGerald (granddaughter-in-law) • Education — St Bonaventure's • Branch — Irish Volunteers • Battles — Easter Rising

Desmond FitzGerald was born Thomas Joseph FitzGerald in Forest Gate in West Ham, Essex in 1888. His parents were Patrick Fitzgerald (1831–1908), a labourer from south Tipperary, and Mary Anne Scollard (1847–1927) from Castleisland, County Kerry. He changed his first name as a teenager to the more romantic "Desmond", and first visited Ireland in 1910. He was a student at St Bonaventure's. In London, he was a member of the Tour Eiffel group of poets and writers, which included Ezra Pound, T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint and another Irish writer, Joseph Campbell. The group was named after the restaurant in which the group met, the Tour Eiffel in Soho. In April 1908, FitzGerald and Florence Farr introduced Ezra Pound to the Tour Eiffel group, a meeting out of which the Imagist group was later to emerge.

In 1911 FitzGerald, a Catholic, married Mabel Washington McConnell (1884–1958), a daughter of John McConnell, a whiskey salesman from Belfast, and granddaughter of a Presbyterian farmer near the city. Educated at Queen's University Belfast, she shared FitzGerald's interest in the Irish language; she met him in London at a language seminar. They lived in France until moving to County Kerry in March 1913. During this period he became involved with the Imagist group of poets. They had four children: Desmond (1911–1987), Pierce (1914–1986), Fergus (1920–1983) and Garret (1926–2011).

FitzGerald joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914 and organised a Volunteers group in County Kerry. As an organizer he was expected to drill even the most unsuited recruits. This offended his disciplined morality. The organization was under enormous pressure: many leaders were expelled in July 1915 under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. FitzGerald took the place of Ernest Blythe. In 1915 FitzGerald was imprisoned for making a speech against recruitment during the First World War. He was later expelled from Kerry, and moved to County Wicklow. FitzGerald's abstemious, parsimonious character, backed up by a long Anglo-Norman family history, made him an unpopular figure in the movement. He felt his bosses were unaware of his situation.

During the occupation of the General Post Office during the 1916 Rising, he commented "I was bemused by the general attitude of security". At the height of the battle he was in the midst of the conflagration that shook the GPO garrison. Ever the sceptic, FitzGerald, who was in charge of rations, mentions in his memoir of the 1916 Rising the sudden and unexpected mobilisation, followed by a description of conditions in the GPO, the rebels' headquarters. While many accounts describe the Rising as a form of blood sacrifice, FitzGerald discussed its wider rationale with the leader Patrick Pearse, and with Joseph Plunkett who had travelled to Germany in 1915 for assistance. They expected that Germany would win the First World War, and that a rising of at least three days would allow Ireland to take a seat at the peace conference. Though declaring an Irish Republic in 1916, they considered it would probably be necessary to invite the Kaiser's youngest son Joachim to reign over a reformed kingdom of Ireland after the war, where Irish was to again become the everyday language.

FitzGerald was released in 1918 when he was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the Dublin Pembroke constituency. Following the assembly of the First Dáil in 1919, and the declaration of the Irish Republic, he was appointed Director of Publicity for Dáil Éireann, first joining the paper Nationality in May to replace the arrested Laurence Ginnell. FitzGerald remarked in the first report he made to the Dáil that 'our chief means of publicity was by means of publicity'. He struggled to make an impression on the British press, who supplied most of Ireland's foreign news. In May 1919, Erskine Childers, FitzGerald's friend and colleague, went to Versailles intending to be part of the Peace Conference. Childers became increasingly frustrated by the high-handed British attitude towards Irish independence. FitzGerald started a mimeograph entitled Weekly Summary of Acts of Aggression by the Enemy in July 1919. By November he had joined with Childers to produce the Irish Bulletin. For twenty-two months they publicized the crimes of England, with the purpose of bolstering the Dáil's credibility with Sinn Féin. Despite the Dáil's complaint in 1920 that the lists were "inadequate", the momentum behind the Propaganda Department threw their opponents into confusion. During the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) the Bulletin managed to publicise the aims of the Irish Republic to the wider world with increasing success, and removed the likelihood of the conflict being widened. In devising a strategy to retain Ulster, leading republican Ernest Blythe believed a blockade would be disastrous for Belfast. Conversely, Seán MacEntee demanded a response to what he considered to be a war of extermination against nationalism; there was, he argued, "the potent weapon of blockade". Many leading republicans were firmly against it: FitzGerald declared a blockade would be tantamount "to a vote for partition". The Dáil's department seemed to be winning the propaganda war with the Castle, whose operations could not convince the public. The Secretariat was convinced the Bulletin should continue, when its papers and materials were seized in a raid. FitzGerald was arrested in March 1921, but was released. In late August 1921 Éamon de Valera reshuffled his Cabinet, in which FitzGerald was not included; although in replacing Childers he was named Minister of Publicity. He was one of the TDs who were unsuccessful in persuading de Valera to join the negotiators of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that was signed on 6 December.

FitzGerald supported the Treaty. On 30 August 1922, he was designated the Minister for External Affairs of the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland. On the date he was appointed, Southern Ireland was still part of the UK; only because the administration was a transitional one did it have a Minister for External Affairs. The Irish Free State was established on 6 December 1922. FitzGerald, by letter dated 17 April 1923, applied on behalf of the Irish Free State for membership of the League of Nations. Ireland was admitted to membership the following year. FitzGerald also represented the new state at the Imperial Conferences. In 1927 FitzGerald became Minister for Defence.

Following the defeat of the government in 1932 general election, FitzGerald's interest in politics began to wane, although he continued to be involved. In 1933, following the merger of Cumann na nGaedhael, the National Centre Party and the Army Comrades Association (Blueshirts), FitzGerald became a member of the ACA. FitzGerald attempted to add "intellectual substance" to the organisation and was one of the members of the Oireachtas who wore their uniform into the Chambers before doing so was outlawed by the new Fianna Fáil government. The 1930s saw FitzGerald radicalised by world events, and FitzGerald began to take the view that in a showdown between the forces of Fascism and Communism occurred, he would choose Fascism. FitzGerald supported Franco's nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, and, for a time, was supportive of Hitler's Germany. In private, FitzGerald began to indulge in anti-Semitic impulses, although he never did so publicly. FitzGerald lost his seat in the 1937 general election but was thereafter elected to Seanad Éireann, where he remained until retiring from politics in 1943 following a bad loss in the 1943 general election where he placed 9th. Some historians attribute FitzGerald's 1937 loss to the fact he had pulled away from his constituency to begin work as a lecturer in the philosophy of politics at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. This position only lasted a year but lead to FitzGerald switching his attention to writing the book Preface to Statecraft (1939).

FitzGerald spent some of the World War II period in Stratford, England managing his brother France's chemical Factory following France's death in 1941.

One of his sons, Garret FitzGerald, likewise served as Minister for Foreign Affairs in the 1970s and Taoiseach on two occasions in the 1980s. Desmond FitzGerald died of a heart attack on 9 April 1947 in Dublin, aged 59.