by Simon Heffer
Casement was more prescient than effective: Smith became Lord Chancellor in 1919. However, the Lord Chief Justice, Reading, presiding over the case, knew Casement had as a British subject broken the law as it applied to the whole United Kingdom. Sentencing Casement to be hanged, he announced that ‘your crime was that of assisting the King’s enemies, that is, the Empire of Germany, during this terrible war in which we are engaged.’ The Times reported that ‘the prisoner bowed and smiled, and then left the dock.’ It was announced the next day that Casement’s name had been removed from the Register of the Order of St Michael and St George, and his knighthood was forfeit.
On 10 July Asquith, having prevented Long resigning over the treatment of the Unionists, broke his silence and made a statement to the Commons. He still believed there was a unique opportunity for reconciliation and a new settlement after a process of ‘give and take’.118 He said Lloyd George had functioned as an ‘intermediary’ between the interested parties and had kept him informed at every stage. He had discovered that only one basis of an agreement was possible: the implementation of the Government of Ireland Act as soon as Parliament had modified it to exclude six of the nine Ulster counties. This outcome would be widely supported, including by Law as leader of the Unionists. Asquith indicated that appropriate measures would come before Parliament imminently.
He described the Selborne difficulty as a ‘misunderstanding’.119 He admitted that ‘there are features in the proposed settlement which none of us, voluntarily, would have chosen; one or another of which, for different reasons, all of us dislike.’120 It had been thus at the Buckingham Palace Conference of July 1914: but common sacrifices made during the war meant, he believed, the two sides would compromise.121 He spoke of the Irish divisions then fighting on the Somme, notably the Ulster Division that had ‘covered itself in undying fame’, as having created a ‘new bond’ between Ireland and Britain.
He believed it would be ‘in the highest degree inconvenient’ to give any details of the Bill at that juncture, though said members of the Irish House of Commons would be MPs sitting for Westminster seats; and the British government would appoint Appeal Court judges in Dublin. He also awaited proposals from Unionists outside Ulster. He imagined some sort of gentlemen’s agreement between London and Dublin, that Ireland would do nothing to impede prosecution of the war, with DORA remaining in force there; and the proposed arrangement would endure until a year after the peace had been concluded or, if Parliament had not made a permanent arrangement by then, to be extended by Order in Council until it had. He wanted a united Ireland: but realised that could be achieved only by agreement with the excluded counties, not by force. He continued to misunderstand the role Sinn Féin now played in such calculations. He confirmed to Carson that an Act of Parliament would be required to include Ulster subsequently: the six counties would be struck from the 1914 Act, which Nationalists now accepted, having been assured it could be changed.
VII
Hardinge’s report, delivered on 26 June, had come to several conclusions about Ireland that were embarrassing for the government, expressing barely concealed astonishment that the republicans’ private army had been allowed to parade in Dublin and elsewhere unmolested before the Rising. ‘It was owing to the activities of the leaders of the Sinn Féin movement that the forces of disloyalty gradually and steadily increased, and undermined the initial sentiment of patriotism,’ Hardinge said.122 It noted that the RIC – armed with carbines and thus a quasi-military force – was considerably under strength, having lost so many men to the Army. The Dublin Metropolitan Police were slightly below strength, but were unarmed, which was why when shooting broke out they were removed from the streets and the Army was sent in. The commission said the nature of arrangements in Ireland made the system ‘almost unworkable in a crisis’.123
Birrell’s regime came under withering attack, not least because it had done so little to halt sedition. As well as noting the comparatively free circulation of anti-British literature, Hardinge remarked how priests and schoolmasters, using the Irish language, had spread ‘treason’ among the young.124 He believed a republican press campaign, branding any attempt to disarm the Volunteers as an English ruse to provoke ‘bloodshed’, had intimidated Dublin Castle.125 ‘The main cause of the rebellion,’ Hardinge concluded, ‘appears to be that lawlessness was allowed to grow up unchecked, and that Ireland for several years past has been administered on the principle that it was safer and more expedient to leave law in abeyance if collision with any faction of the Irish people could thereby be avoided.’126 The report called this ‘a negation of that cardinal rule of government … the enforcement of law and the preservation of order should always be independent of political expediency.’
The Royal Commission could not grasp why Dublin Castle had tolerated paramilitary activities by people ‘under the control of men who were openly declaring their hostility to Your Majesty’s Government and their readiness to welcome and assist Your Majesty’s enemies.’ It exonerated Wimborne, whose appointment in February 1915 post-dated Birrell’s permissive policy; Wimborne was reappointed on 9 August. Birrell carried the can, along with Nathan, who was judged to have kept Birrell insufficiently informed, during the chief secretary’s frequent and long absences from Dublin, about how febrile the situation had become, and ‘the necessity for more active measures’.127 The RIC and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, whose senior officers had demanded full reports from their subordinates and, having received them, passed them on to Dublin Castle, were exonerated. There had been no excuse for Birrell not to act. Dillon called the report ‘scandalous … one-sided, full of misrepresentation.’128 No Nationalist politician had been asked to give evidence.
The House of Lords debated the Hardinge report on 11 July, despite Asquith’s plea not to do so lest it set back Lloyd George’s attempt to broker a solution. The Earl of Ancaster dismissed Wimborne as ‘ornamental’ but demanded Birrell be held to account: ‘It seems an extraordinary thing that the Minister who was in that responsibility and whose policy brought about this rebellion, with the loss of so many hundreds of lives, should go practically unscathed and practically without condemnation.’129 Later, the Earl of Camperdown was yet more condemnatory: ‘He is very much to be pitied for his misfortune in ever having been appointed to an office which he was by temperament and in every other way entirely unfitted to fill. He never tried to govern Ireland. Indeed, I do not believe he went there very much. His policy was influenced and dictated to a large extent by the Irish Members of Parliament, and he was deaf to the warnings which he received from every quarter’.130
Ancaster wanted a hard line to continue. ‘While Britons have been sending their bravest and best to fight the battles of the country,’ he said, ‘the Government of the day have been openly allowing treachery and sedition to go broadspread throughout Ireland.’131 He believed the government ‘had sent repeated signals that bad behaviour would be tolerated.’ The hard line was not gratuitous, he argued; it was because of the war, which meant Britain could not afford another front on which to fight. Ancaster said of ministers that ‘when engaged in a great war they must not be guided by any false sentimentality or imaginary ideas or vague dreams, but must deal as practical statesmen with the circumstances as they are; and the first duty which the Government owe to the country is to see that those men who are traitors and who are working against us should have the power taken from their hands.’132
Wimborne, still then under the impression that his resignation would have legal effect any day, made matters worse by admitting that, in his view, the Rising could have been forestalled had there been more troops in Ireland, and had Dublin Castle acted more swiftly after Casement’s arrest to understand the significance of his return, and to intern potential troublemakers. The system by which there was a Lord Lieutenant (with no power) and a chief secretary (with all of it) had been misunderstood and had functioned poorly. The divergence of aim between Ulster Protestants, who saw themselves
as British, and the rest of Ireland who rejected rule from London, had made the country ungovernable. The shadow cast over the Asquith administration for the casual, almost amateur fashion in which it had run Ireland was considerable. It would contribute greatly to the momentum for change in the direction of the United Kingdom and of Britain’s conduct of the war.
It was Lansdowne who dealt the killer blow. He demanded that until structural alterations were made to the Home Rule Act, to make Ulster permanently excluded, Ireland should be ruled by a variant of DORA that a Dublin parliament could not overturn. Thus it was southern Unionists – Lansdowne owned much of County Kerry – and not the Ulstermen who wrecked the plan to have the Government of Ireland Act effected as soon as possible, with Ulster’s exclusion not permanent, but to be reviewed after the war. Nationalists were shocked and believed he could not stay in the cabinet; but he did. Asquith was horrified, telling Crewe that Lansdowne’s speech ‘has given the gravest offence to the Irish’ and that ‘it was with great difficulty’ that he stopped Redmond asking him in the Commons whether what Lansdowne had said was now government policy.133 Redmond told Asquith that a ‘permanent and enduring’ exclusion of Ulster was unacceptable, and that Lansdowne’s allusion to such a change to the 1914 Act was ‘totally uncalled for by the subject matter of the debate.’ Nonetheless Lansdowne’s remarks changed the climate and, just a day after Asquith’s statement, the impression arose – accurately – that the new legislation would not be brought before Parliament just yet.
The Unionists in the government, led by Lansdowne and Long, also told Asquith they would not accept continued representation of a Home Rule Ireland in the Commons, and indicated their ministers would resign sooner than see Home Rule enacted on that basis. The prospect of breaking up the government, and its effects on the war effort, forced Asquith’s and Lloyd George’s hands. The Nationalists were adamant that they would not accept reduced representation at Westminster. The government was in a bind because Lloyd George had not obtained the prior consent of the cabinet before suggesting representation would remain as it was. Yet he was still talking tough. On 16 July he told Riddell a Bill would be brought in and would face a difficult passage because of attempts to amend it. ‘However,’ he added, ‘I have pledged my word to the Irish, and if the pledge is not fulfilled, I shall have to resign. There are certain pledges which leave the person who makes them no alternative. This is one of them.’134 Lloyd George’s credibility would be a victim of his own braggadocio, and of Asquith’s unnecessary timidity in the face of the Unionists – for the most influential of them supported Lloyd George’s deal, and those who did not could have been let go. Long told Riddell that ‘the PM is terribly lacking in decision, and it is strange that a man with such a great intellect should be so indecisive.’135 Asquith shared these traits with Balfour; it was because of their high and analytical intelligence that they could see all sides of a problem and all consequences of any course of action: which made it far harder to decide which was the best.
Asquith said on 19 July that he hoped to introduce the Irish amending legislation the following week. The next day, however, Redmond was told that consideration had been postponed, and new proposals were being brought forward. He was also told he would not be consulted, at which point communications with him were cut off. He warned the government that further delay ‘would be fatal’.136 The Unionists were now driving the cabinet, unable to see how their intransigence was handing Ireland over to Sinn Féin. On 22 July Redmond learned that the new proposals were to exclude Ulster permanently and to end Irish representation at Westminster during the transitory period. This was presented as a fait accompli.
On 24 July Redmond forced Asquith to make a statement in the Commons on the draft Bill. Asquith said no Bill would be introduced without full agreement between all parties. Redmond sought to move a motion to discuss ‘a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the rapidly growing unrest in Ireland and the deplorable effect on the Irish situation which must result from the fact that the Government do not propose to carry out in their entirety the terms proposed by them for the temporary settlement of the Irish difficulty, and which were submitted by us to our supporters and accepted by both Irish parties.’137 Some MPs tried shouting him down – ‘You will betray Belgium if you betray Ireland’ – but he succeeded.
He recalled the previous two months’ negotiations: how he had agreed to temporary exclusion because he hoped that, by the time the moment arrived to discuss a permanent arrangement, the excluded counties would see that Ireland could govern itself fairly and properly, and none would wish to stay outside the Home Rule state. The Nationalists viewed the retention of Irish members at Westminster as a safeguard of the ‘temporary character’ of the transitory arrangements.138 Redmond had secured the support of his followers on the original proposals, and could not support a revised measure. He said the government ‘have entered upon a course which is bound to increase Irish suspicion of the good faith of British statesmen, a course which is bound to inflame feeling in Ireland, and is bound to do serious mischief to those high Imperial interests which we are told necessitated the provisional settlement of this question.’139 He added:
I cannot and I will not agree to new proposals which would mean an absolute and disgraceful breach of faith on my part towards my supporters in Ireland, and I warn the Government that if they introduce a Bill on the lines communicated to me my Friends and I will oppose it at every stage. Some tragic fatality seems to dog the footsteps of this Government in all their dealings with Ireland. Every step taken by them since the Coalition was formed, and especially since the unfortunate outbreak in Dublin, has been lamentable. They have disregarded every advice we tendered to them, and now in the end, having got us to induce our people to make a tremendous sacrifice and to agree to the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties, they throw this agreement to the winds and they have taken the surest means to accentuate every possible danger and difficulty in the Irish situation.
Lloyd George made a poor response. He had become Secretary of State for War a fortnight earlier, and pleaded an inability to spend as much time as he would have liked on uniting Irish opinion. He claimed it had never been considered that the excluded counties would, at one point, be automatically included: which was not what the Nationalists had believed. But Lloyd George said specifically that ‘Ulster could only be included … with its consent’, and as part of a permanent settlement.140 He believed that had been made clear; the Nationalists disagreed. Redmond told him it had been in the draft Bill; Lloyd George, resorting to weasel words perhaps sooner than he would have liked, pointed out that Bills went through stages of drafting. The government had changed the wording: but Lloyd George was determined to blame the Nationalists for any failure to proceed with the legislation rather than himself; he stressed that without a promise not to end Ulster’s exclusion automatically, the Bill could not be introduced, because Unionists in the cabinet would not agree to it. He promised the government would not force the measure on the Irish. It was not a dignified performance; his earlier indication that he would resign rather than see the agreement wrecked evaporated.
Carson, despite having at first opposed an immediate grant of Home Rule, recognised hopes had been raised on both sides in Ireland to such an extent that it would be a ‘calamity’ if it were not to be implemented now; though it was his community that was safeguarded under the revised proposals, whereas the Nationalist aspiration of an Ireland united under Home Rule would be thwarted. He took a longer view: ‘There is one thing: At the end of the War we will have had enough of fighting. We will have other great questions – reconstruction for the whole Empire, the reconstruction of the whole basis of society, financial difficulties so great that one does not like to ponder upon them, questions of trade so far reaching that one can hardly contemplate them. In the middle of all that we are to resume, forsooth, our old quarrels. I know that many things I say do not please some of my own party, but I would ra
ther say them, because I know they are true.’141 The problem for the moment, however, was how the underhand behaviour of the government had destroyed trust. Dillon said: ‘You have struck a deadly blow at the whole future government of Ireland. How will you ever get the Irish people to have confidence in the terms and the words of British Ministers?’142
When Asquith wound up the debate – claiming to be mystified that the Nationalists should have expected Ulster might be coerced – he implored the Nationalists to change their minds; but they would not, and a week later, on 31 July, it was announced there would be no Amending Bill. Dillon demanded an immediate statement about what, now, were the government’s intentions. He felt the Irish had been duped, in that Lloyd George had pretended he spoke on behalf of a united cabinet, when he did not. ‘At every stage we were aware of the fact that Lord Lansdowne had seen the terms and had not left the Cabinet or the Government on the terms, and that he allowed us to go and stake our political life on the basis of these terms without sending us any word of protest at all. I think that, according to our idea of honour and of the obligations of Cabinet Ministers, Lord Lansdowne was bound by the terms, and he was bound not to break up the settlement if it was agreed to in Ireland.’143
Coercion cut both ways:
If we were to consent to leave the predominant counties of Ulster free to shape their own fate, are we not to claim the same right for the Nationalists of Ulster? If Belfast and Antrim are to be free to come into a united Ireland or to remain out, are the same terms not to be enjoyed by Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Derry City? How can you apply this Bill in such a one-sided way? What about the overwhelming majority of the Irish people whom you have coerced for 116 years to have to submit to a system of government which they detest, and which the Prime Minister the other day, and even the Hardinge Commission, spoke of as having hopelessly broken down?144