Clann na Poblachta
[4] Clann na Poblachta also drew support from people who were tired of the old Civil War politics and were disillusioned with Éamon de Valera and his approach to the partition of Ireland.
In post-war Europe many people blamed the social evils of unemployment, poor housing, poverty and disease for the rise of fascism and communism.
Fine Gael was in disarray because of their rival's seemingly hegemonic dominance and because of a perceived failure to be able to offer anything to disillusioned Fianna Fáil supporters.
Fianna Fáil was visibly losing support because of the failure of the party's program to end mass unemployment, poverty and emigration.
The Labour Party had bitterly split in 1944 over personal differences between William O'Brien and James Larkin, while Clann na Talmhan was regarded as being too specialist and too greatly concerned with the needs of farmers.
[7] The Taoiseach, de Valera, saw the threat posed by the new party, and in February 1948 he called a snap general election to try to catch Clann na Poblachta off guard.
In the 1948 election Clann na Poblachta won 173,166 votes and ten seats in the Dáil Éireann — far fewer than was expected but formed a coalition government with the Fine Gael party.
[8] In September 1948 the newly formed coalition government released the bodies of Irish Republicans who had been executed in the early 1940s and buried within prisons: Richard Goss, Patrick McGrath, George Plant, Charlie Kerins and Maurice O'Neill.
They were particularly opposed to a government headed by Fine Gael leader Richard Mulcahy, who had been a Free State general during the Civil War.
Clann was an uneasy coalition of socialists and republicans; to placate the left wing, MacBride named Noël Browne for appointment as Minister for Health.
On taking office MacBride burnished the party's republican anti-partitionist credentials by having Costello nominate the northern Protestant Denis Ireland to Seanad Éireann.
MacBride regarded Ireland as a republic in any case (in much the same way as de Valera did) and saw the repeal of the Act as merely removing the last vestiges of the British connection.
He was however deeply angry that Costello had stolen his idea, and refused to attend the official ceremony marking the inauguration of the Republic of Ireland.
The Government and opposition jointly mounted what they called the "Anti-Partition Campaign', arguing the opinion that partition was the only obstacle preventing a united Ireland.
He served as President of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from 1949 to 1950 and is credited with being a key force in securing the acceptance of this convention, which was finally signed in Rome on 4 November 1950.
Officials in the Irish Department of Finance, who had an excellent relationship with the British Treasury and thought a decoupling would isolate Ireland and discourage investment, resisted the policy.
Though Browne made a significant contribution to the campaign, it had actually originated with Conn Ward, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in de Valera's government; it was Ward's preparatory work and Browne's practical implementation that produced the acclaimed scheme that practically wiped out TB in Ireland.
In 1954 the Clann made Kelly's election to Seanad Éireann (courtesy of Fine Gael councillors' votes) a condition for supporting the Second Inter-Party Government.
[14] The Government's increasingly firm action against the IRA, which had just launched the Border Campaign, was one of the main reasons why the Clann withdrew its support at the beginning of 1957, along with a sharp deterioration in the economy.
