Life
1892-1927 [Kevin Christopher]; b. Stradbally, Co Laois, nephew of Tim
Healy; ed. Clongowes, Maynooth; UCD; BA, LLB.
solicitor; bar 1823; imprisoned for anti-conscription speech, 1918; elected
Sinn Fein MP for Laois-Offaly (Queen’s Co.) while in gaol; lost a
br., Michael, in WWI; Minister for Economic Affairs [local government],
1919; on the run on 1920; TD South Dublin, 1922; strong Treaty advocate
(‘I say it represents such a broad measure of liberty for the Irish
people and it acknowledges such a large proportion of its rights, you
are not entitled to reject it without being able to show that you have
a reasonable prospect of achieving more’; 19 Dec. 1921); rejected
Document No. 2 advanced by de Valera; assistant to Michael Collins; Minister
Economic Affairs, then of Justice and External Affairs; also vice-president
Executive Council, 1922; Signed reprisal death-warrants and defended execution
of 77 imprisoned Republicans, 1922-23; father shot in raid on house in
Stradbally, 1923; sought united Ireland within Commonwealth, 1922; established
Civic Guard, and new judiciary, 1924; led diplomatic mission in London
to attempt renegotiation of Border Commission debacle, 17 Nov. 1925, resulting
in suppression of Commission Report (until 1969) the cost of the Free
State accepting financial liability for ‘malicious damage’ during
the Anglo-Irish War; participated in Imperial Conference, 1926, redefining
Commonwealth membership on basis of equality; spoke against World War
I Memorial planned for Merrion Square, 7 April, 1927; assassinated on
Booterstown Ave., Sunday, 10 July 1927, near his home on his way to Mass;
State Funeral held at St. Andrew's Church, Westland Row, presided over by Archbishop of Dublin; bur. Glasnevin Cemetery; there is a portrait
by Sir John Lavery (Municipal Gallery); a bibliography was prepared by P. S. O’Hegarty in 1937. DIB DIH DNB FOST
Criticism
Terence de Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins (1948; pbk. ed. Tralee
1967).
Patrick Keatinge, ‘The Formative Years of the Irish Diplomatic Service’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.57-71.
Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society (CUP 1989).
John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-revolution (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1999).
Eunan O'Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies since 1922 (Oxford: OUP 1999).
W. B. Yeats, ‘Kevin O’Higgins’ countenance that
wears / A gentle questioning look that cannot hide / A soul incapable of remorse
or rest’ (Collected Poems, 1955, p.368).A. N. Jeffares, New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, p.270.
R. N. D. Wilson, q uoted by his widow in Kevin Myers’s portrait, [Sat.] Irish Times, June 1992.)
Donal O’Sullivan, in The Irish Free State and Its Senate (London: Faber & Faber 1940), Quotes tributes by Lord Glenavy and Ernest Blythe’.
Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society (Cambridge UP 1989).
Terence de Vere White, interview with Mrs Brigid O’Higgins (Irish Times [in June-July] 1992).
Una Higgins O’Malley & Roy Bradford, Special Supplement, “Kevin O’Higgins”, with Fortnight [331] (Jan 1993); inc. short piece by Una O’Higgins O’Malley, an assessment by Roy Bradford, first delivered as a lecture to the Irish Association in Belfast, June 1992; incls.. short piece by Una O’Higgins O’Malley, an assessment by Roy Bradford, first delivered as a lecture to the Irish Association in Belfast, June 1992.
Charles Townsend, reviewing Eunan O'Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies since 1922 (OUP), in Times Literary Supplement, 7 Jan. 2000, p.22.)
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‘To appreciate Ireland in 1922 it is necessary to remember that the country had come through a revolution and to remember what a weird composite of idealism, neurosis, megalomania and criminality is apt to be thrown to the surface. The provision government was simply eight young men in the City Hall standing amid the ruins of one administration, with the foundations of another not yet laid and with wild men screaming through the keyhole.’ (O’Higgins in Dail, 1922; cited in Roy Bradford, “Kevin O’Higgins” [Special Supplement], Fortnight [331], Jan 1993, p.8.)
(War Memorial in Merrion Square:) ‘I do not want a little park on front of this state’s seat of Government dedicated to those who fell in the War’ (7 April, 1927; cited Sighle Bhreatnach-Lynch, ACIS paper 1998.)
‘“Nobody can expect to live long who has done what I have done” [was] a phrase of O’Higgins’s that W. B. Yeats’s was frequently to cite.’ (A. N. Jeffares, New Commentary, 1988, p.271).
Liam O’Flaherty’s novel The Assassin
(1928), which ascribes a mixture of Nietzchean and Dostoievskian motives
to the leading conspirator, is loosely based on the assassination of Kevin
O’Higgins.
Reputedly when Kevin O’Higgins introduced legislation to alcohol abuses in the drink trade, the strong opposition that he met with from the drink trade moved him to say that the publicans were harder to deal with than the Republicans. (See ‘Alcoholism’, in W. J. McCormack, ed., Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture, 1999.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)