A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  And what about Ireland? What about Ulster? Such questions deeply concerned Winston Churchill as he addressed fellow-MPs in 1920:

  Then came the Great War. Every institution, almost, in the world was strained. Great Empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed. The position of countries has been violently altered. The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.

  A Daily News correspondent reported that ‘Soldiers who fought for the Allies as they return home are becoming converted by the thousand into Sinn Féiners.’ Many became leading activists in the IRA, now in deadly conflict with the forces of the crown. Other ex-servicemen—recruits for the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries—recklessly spread terror over much of the southern countryside. And as the War of Independence edged into Ulster it detonated a sectarian conflict there more vicious and lethal than all the northern riots of the previous century put together.

  The trouble began in Derry city in April 1920. Here nationalists, for the first time ever, had won a majority in the Corporation. Loyalists, fearing abandonment by a British government, revived the pre-war Ulster Volunteer Force. Intense sectarian rioting spread out from Long Tower Street and Bishop Street. Catholics burned Protestants out of the Bogside after Protestants had set fire to Catholic homes in the Waterside. In June the UVF seized control of the Diamond and Guildhall Square. The Derry Journal reported: ‘The Long Tower, an exclusively Catholic district, was kept for hours under a deadly fire from the City Walls.... At least three men were shot dead.’ Troops rushed in. Imposing a curfew and directing heavy machine-gun fire into the Bogside, the soldiers killed six more people. And as shootings, assassinations and reprisals continued, despite the presence of the army, the death toll for the city eventually reached forty.

  In Co. Fermanagh Lieutenant-Colonel George Liddle formed a loyalist vigilante patrol at Lisbellaw. On the night of 8 June his men succeeded in driving back an IRA assault on the local constabulary barracks. Captain Sir Basil Brooke, the Fermanagh landlord awarded the Military Cross during the war, took out UVF rifles from their place of concealment in Colebrooke House and took command. He later recalled: ‘I had thought my soldiering days were over.... I was to become a soldier of a very different sort ... but I had the added stimulant of defending my own birthplace.’

  Trouble also erupted in the Belfast shipyards on 21 July 1920, the first full day back at work after the July holiday break. It was also the day of the funeral of a Banbridge RIC divisional commander, shot dead by the IRA in Cork. Men shouted enthusiastic support for the call to drive out ‘disloyal’ workers. Hundreds of apprentices and rivet boys from Workman Clark marched into Harland & Wolff’s yard. One Catholic worker remembered: ‘The gates were smashed down with sledges, the vests and shirts of those at work were torn open to see if the men were wearing any Catholic emblems, and woe betide the man who was.... One man ... had to swim two or three miles.’

  Meanwhile loyalists forced out virtually the entire Catholic populations of Banbridge and Dromore in Co. Down. Much of Belfast plunged into outright intercommunal warfare, most ferociously in east Belfast. In the ensuing days expulsions continued from all the major engineering firms. A committee headed by Bishop Joseph MacRory estimated that 10,000 Catholic men and 1,000 women had been driven from their work in the city.

  IRA assassins murdered a police district inspector in Lisburn on 22 August. Protestants spent the next three days burning Catholic-owned property and drove out almost all Catholic residents of the town.

  The violence seemed to have reached a climax. But in fact the destruction and killing in Belfast was only just beginning.

  Episode 226

  PARTITION

  Liberal though he was, David Lloyd George headed a coalition government in 1920 which was overwhelmingly Conservative. Several prominent members of his cabinet on the eve of the Great War had pledged themselves to ‘use all means which may be found’ to prevent the setting up of a Home Rule parliament. By now, it was true, these Conservatives were prepared to accept Home Rule, but only if loyal Ulster remained within the United Kingdom.

  At a crucial meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1916 it had been agreed to seek partition of the six north-eastern counties. Since 1914 the balance of power had tilted away from Irish nationalists—especially because of, as Arthur Balfour, Lord President of the Council, put it, ‘the blessed refusal of Sinn Féiners to take the Oath of Allegiance in 1918’. The absence of 73 Sinn Féin MPs left only half a dozen demoralised Irish Party MPs in the Commons. And so Ulster Unionists essentially got the constitutional arrangement they desired.

  In 1920 Ireland acquired a new frontier—through the decision of parliament, not by international accord. The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 allowed the exact positioning of Germany’s borders in Upper Silesia, Schleswig, Marienwerder and Allenstein to be agreed after holding ‘plebiscites’ or referendums. Should Westminster also apply American President Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination by holding a referendum in Ulster? The cabinet committee on Ireland hastily dismissed this proposition. Balfour argued that referendums were only suited to vanquished enemies: ‘Ireland is not like a conquered state, which we can carve up as in central Europe.’

  The British government, however, could not ignore the prevailing spirit of the times. This, in part, explains the complexity of the solution it offered. The bill for ‘the Better Government of Ireland’ proposed two Irish parliaments, one for the six north-eastern counties to be called Northern Ireland, and another for the remaining twenty-six counties to be known as Southern Ireland. Both parts of Ireland were to continue to send representatives to Westminster. Without taking the trouble to consult Irish nationalists on the matter, Lloyd George assumed that they would find two Home Rule parliaments less objectionable than a straightforward exclusion of the north-east.

  Ulster Unionists publicly declared they were making a ‘supreme sacrifice’ by accepting a Home Rule parliament in Belfast. Actually the whole arrangement suited them very nicely. Those in the six north-eastern counties had no wish to see the Ulster counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal included in Northern Ireland. If they had been so inclined, the Unionist majority would be perilously thin, as the Co. Down MP, Captain Charles Craig, bluntly told the House of Commons: ‘A couple of members sick, or two or three members absent for some accidental reason, might in one evening hand over the entire Ulster parliament and the entire Ulster position.’

  Unionists soon got to like the idea of having their own parliament in Belfast. After all, the Labour and Liberal parties might form a government one day and decide to end partition. Having a parliament in Belfast might offer a protection against such an awful eventuality. As Charles Craig pointed out, ‘We believe that if either of those parties, or the two in combination, were once more in power our chances of remaining a part of the United Kingdom would be very small indeed.’

  Did Northern Ireland have to engulf the entire counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh? Tyrone and Fermanagh then had nationalist majorities. In 1914 the Ulster Unionist leader, Sir Edward Carson, had argued that the four most Protestant counties, with a population greater than that of New Zealand, would make a perfectly viable unit. He kept quiet on that issue now. Poor Law Unions, rather than counties, could have been used as a better guide to drawing the frontier.

  On 23 December 1920 the Government of Ireland Act entered the statute book. Northern Ireland came into being, with elections due on 24 May 1921. Carson privately hated partition and had no liking for devolution in Northern Ireland: ‘You cannot knock parliaments up and down as you do a ball, and, once you have planted them the
re, you cannot get rid of them.’ But Carson was not going to fall out with the Ulster Protestants now. Instead he pleaded ill-health and graciously handed the leadership over to his faithful lieutenant, Sir James Craig. Craig threw himself enthusiastically into Northern Ireland’s first election:

  Rally round me that I may shatter our enemies and their hopes of a republic flag. The Union Jack must sweep the polls. Vote early, work late.

  The Union Jack did sweep the polls. Forty Unionists returned; and only six Sinn Féin and six Nationalists. By then it had become starkly obvious that the Government of Ireland Act had not solved the Irish Question. The most intense violence for more than a century now convulsed the whole island.

  Episode 227

  ‘STRETCH OUT THE HAND OF FORBEARANCE’

  In January 1921 the Irish War of Independence entered its most terrible phase. On New Year’s Day British soldiers burned down seven houses in Midleton, Co. Cork. Reprisals of this kind, all too familiar over the previous six months, now had full government approval for the first time. It was a clear admission by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, that he had no remedy other than naked force.

  Sinn Féin, representing a clear majority of the Irish people, contemptuously rejected the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. To them it was a ‘Partition Act’, offering a divided island and miserably weak devolved powers. The IRA fought on with relentless ferocity. Nearly 50,000 troops, police, special constables, Black and Tans and Auxiliaries in turn set pity aside. During the first six and a half months of 1921 at least 700 civilians died violently. Some fell caught in the crossfire. The IRA executed more than a hundred fellow Irish men and women, condemned as ‘spies’. On a corpse found on the roadside in Co. Cork was pinned a label reading:

  Convicted Spy. The penalty for all who associate with Auxiliary Cadets, Black and Tans and RIC. — IRA. Beware.

  The crown forces killed even more Irish people in cold blood. Herbert Asquith, a former Prime Minister, declared from the opposition benches: ‘Things are being done in Ireland which would disgrace the blackest annals of the lowest despotism in Europe.’

  On 25 May 1921 over a hundred IRA volunteers entered the Custom House in Dublin, Ireland’s finest Georgian building, and set fire to it. Troops quickly surrounded the men, killed five of them and captured seventy. The loss of men and arms represented a severe setback for the IRA. Avoiding roads and railways, troops operated across country with increasing success. But the government’s ruthless repression attracted mounting criticism both at home and abroad. Lloyd George desperately sought a way out.

  When George V offered to open the Northern Ireland parliament, Lloyd George seized the opportunity to offer an olive branch to Sinn Féin. The king’s decision to go to Belfast was a brave one—ferocious sectarian battles raged there every day and night. Civil servants, Lloyd George and Jan Christian Smuts, the South African Prime Minister, carefully touched up the text of the king’s speech. Lady Craig, wife of Northern Ireland’s new Prime Minister, Sir James Craig, recorded in her diary:

  June 22nd. The great day.... The King and Queen have the most wonderful reception.... Even the little side streets that they will never be within miles of are draped with bunting and flags, and the pavement and lampposts painted red, white and blue, really most touching.... Trusted men stationed in each house, and on every roof top ...

  In Belfast City Hall King George addressed only the Unionist MPs, senators and their wives. Nationalists and Sinn Féiners held to their pledge ‘not to enter the north-eastern parliament’. But the king intended his speech to reach far beyond the walls of the City Hall:

  I speak from a full heart when I pray that my coming to Ireland today may prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst her people, whatever their race or creed.

  In that hope, I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to forgive and forget, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment and good will.

  Back at the docks the king said to Craig: ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am I came, but you know my entourage were very much against it.’

  George V’s entourage had reason to be anxious. On the following day the IRA blew up the train carrying the king’s cavalry escort back to Dublin, killing four men and eighty horses. June had been a violent month: RIC men killed at Swatragh, Co. Londonderry; special constables shot dead in Newry and Belfast; ten Catholics murdered, apparently in reprisal, by members of the Special Constabulary; intense intercommunal warfare and expulsions in Belfast’s York Street, New Lodge Road and Tiger’s Bay.

  But the king’s appeal had been heard. The IRA had had enough. Michael Collins later told a government minister: ‘You had us dead beat. We could not have lasted another three weeks.’ A truce was agreed on 9 July 1921, to come into force on 11 July. During those intervening three days the Black and Tans murdered a justice of the peace in Cork; the IRA killed two unarmed Catholic policemen and three unarmed soldiers in Co. Cork; and republicans assassinated three fellow-Irishmen as spies in the midlands, placing a label on one of the bodies: ‘Sooner or later we get them. Beware of the IRA.’

  A truce was one thing. A lasting settlement was quite another.

  Episode 228

  THE TREATY

  On 14 July 1921 Eamon de Valera, President of Dáil Éireann, made his way to No. 10 Downing Street. A truce between the IRA and the British army had just come into force. Prime Minister David Lloyd George knew that this was a historic moment. Frances Stevenson, his private secretary and, indeed, his mistress, recalled:

  I have never seen David so excited as he was before De Valera arrived, at 4.30. He kept walking in and out of my room.... As I told him afterwards, he was bringing up all his guns! He had a big map of the British Empire hung up on the wall in the Cabinet room, with its great blotches of red all over it. This was to impress De Valera with the greatness of the British Empire and to get him to recognise it, and the King.

  De Valera was not impressed. All that was agreed was that a delegation from the Dáil should go to London in the autumn to discuss terms.

  De Valera refused to lead the delegation. He said this was to ensure unity at home. But was it because he knew that that he could not bring back from London the holy grail of a thirty-two-county republic? Arthur Griffith was chosen instead to lead the delegation of five, with Michael Collins as his deputy.

  On Tuesday 11 October the Irish, wildly cheered on by supporters on the pavements, made their way from their base at 22 Hans Place to No. 10 Downing Street. Once inside, they faced a formidable team of seven cabinet ministers across the table. The Dáil representatives agreed on the following tactic: if the British would allow Ireland to leave the Empire, then the Irish would accept the existence of Northern Ireland. If not, then they would insist on ‘essential unity’, that is, a united Ireland. Weeks of deadlock followed.

  Deftly Lloyd George worked separately on Griffith and Collins. He advanced a suggestion made by his principal secretary at the negotiations, Tom Jones, that a boundary commission could revise the frontier with Northern Ireland. The Irish in turn pressed de Valera’s proposal that an independent Ireland could be ‘externally associated’ with the Empire. Further deadlock ensued.

  The crucial development occurred on 5 December. Churchill subsequently recalled: ‘After two months of futilities and rigmarole, unutterably wearied Ministers faced an Irish delegation themselves in actual desperation, and knowing well that death stood at their elbows.’ It was in this highly charged atmosphere that Lloyd George suddenly fished an envelope out of his pocket. One of the Irish delegates asked Collins: ‘What is this letter?’ Collins replied: ‘I don’t know what the hell it is!’ Then the Prime Minister said: ‘Do you mean to tell me, Mr Collins, that you never learnt of this document from Mr Griffith?’

  Lloyd George passed over the letter. It revealed that three weeks earlier Griffith had signed a document declaring that he would not bre
ak off negotiations simply because of disagreement on Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister asked Griffith if he was breaking faith. Griffith threw his pencil across the room, exclaiming: ‘I have never let a man down in my whole life and I never will!’

  Lloyd George then declared that he had promised to inform the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Sir James Craig, immediately of the Irish delegates’ response. Melodramatically Lloyd George held up two envelopes, one in either hand:

  Here are the alternative letters which I have prepared, one enclosing Articles of Agreement reached by His Majesty’s Government and yourselves, and the other saying that the Sinn Féin representatives refuse to come within the Empire. If I send this letter it is war, and war within three days. Which letter am I to send? Whichever letter you choose travels by special train to Holyhead, and by destroyer to Belfast. The train is waiting with steam up at Euston. Mr Shakespeare [the Prime Minister’s special envoy] is ready. If he is to reach Sir James Craig in time we must know your answer by 10 p.m. tonight. You can have until then, but no longer, to decide whether you will give peace or war to your country.

  Actually it was 2.10 in the morning, on 6 December 1921, before the Irish delegation finally signed. Churchill handed round cigars, recalling afterwards: ‘Michael Collins rose looking as if he was going to shoot somebody, preferably himself. In all my life I have never seen so much passion and suffering in restraint.’ Later that day, on his way back to Ireland, Collins wrote home: