I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  ‘Our proposal is,’ he added, ‘that they should come in. We can afford to give them more than justice. We can afford to be generous. That is our message to the north, and it is meant for those who are opposed to us rather than for those who are with us. But to those who are with us, I can say that no matter what happens, no matter what the future may bring, we shall not desert them.’

  Collins was sharing the platform with Eoin O’Duffy and Harry Boland, among others. ‘If they are for Ireland we will ex­­tend the hand of welcome as we have done in the past,’ O’Duffy said. ‘If they decide that they are against Ireland and against their fellow-countrymen, we will have to take suitable action. We will have to put on the screw. The boycott of Belfast – we will tighten that screw, and, if necessary, we will have to use the lead against them.’

  Mary MacSwiney complained to Harry Boland that the Collins’ speech was ‘much too “safe” on the only point that matters’. The debate about the forthcoming negotiations had already begun even though it had not yet been agreed to hold negotiations. Boland told Collins what MacSwiney had written and the Big Fellow confronted her and she, in turn, protested to Boland, as the debate went in circles. ‘You need not have told your friend Mick that I thought him a compromiser,’ she wrote to Boland. ‘He says he is not and I believe him but I wish people could realise that the Republic means the Republic and nothing less.’

  On the afternoon of de Valera’s formal election as president, when the Dáil first discussed in private session the possibility of appointing a delegation to negotiate he gave no hint that he did not intend to be a member of delegation. During the course of a rambling discussion he talked about ‘the advisability of not committing this Dáil in advance to anything that the plenipotentiaries might do.’ He said that they should do ‘the best they could’ under the circumstances. ‘Certainly if there was to be any limitations of any kind further than have been stated broadly in their reply he for one could not retain office.

  ‘Either they gave a free hand to the plenipotentiaries or they tied them up,’ he continued according to the official report. ‘If they tied them up they would get no one to go.’

  ‘They would have to do the best they could for the country and they could not do that if they tied up the hands of their plenipotentiaries,’ he repeated later. ‘He would oppose it to the extent of resigning.’ He said that all the members of the delegation would have to be ratified by the Dáil. Liam de Róiste formally proposed and Pádraig Ó Máille seconded a motion that the Speaker put to the floor:

  ... that if plenipotentiaries for negotiation be appointed either by the Cabinet or the Dáil, such plenipotentiaries be given a free hand in such negotiations and duly to report to the Dáil.

  The motion was passed unanimously.

  De Valera stunned his cabinet colleagues with his announce­ment that he did not intend to take part in the conference with the British. He suggested Arthur Griffith to lead the delegation, with Michael Collins as his back up.

  Griffith, who founded Sinn Féin, was born in 1872, He also established the United Irishman newspaper, which he used to promote the idea that Irish members of parliament should withdraw from Westminster and set up their own assembly in Dublin. He advocated the creation of a dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland on Austro-Hungarian lines, so he was not a republican, and he did not believe in the use of physical force. He took no part in the Easter Rebellion, but the British jailed him anyway. He stepped down as leader of Sinn Féin to allow de Valera become president of party in 1917. Griffith was promptly elected vice president, and he took over the acting leadership of the party and the movement when de Valera went to the United States in 1919.

  The president wished for Collins to accompany Griffith. They had worked well together in the Dáil, but Collins initially refused to go. ‘I was somewhat surprised at his reluctance for he had been rather annoyed with me for not bringing him on the team when I went to meet Lloyd George earlier on in July,’ de Valera wrote. ‘I now considered it essential that he should be on the team with Griffith.

  ‘They by themselves alone, it seemed, would form a well balanced team,’ the president continued. ‘Griffith would, I thought, have the confidence of the “moderates” and Collins that of the IRB and the Army.’ He added that ‘with these two as the leaders no one could suggest that the delegation was not a strong and representative one.’

  Collins did not want to be a part of the delegation, especially when de Valera was staying at home, but he was urged to go by his friend Harry Boland. He and Boland discussed the whole thing for hours at de Valera’s home on the night of 30 August.

  ‘For three hours one night, after the decision had been made to send a delegation to London, I pleaded with de Valera to leave me at home and let some other man take my place as a negotiator,’ Collins recalled. ‘The point I tried to impress on de Valera was, that for several years (rightly or wrongly makes no difference) - the English had held me to be the one man most necessary to capture because they held me to be the one man responsible for the smashing of their Secret Service organisation, and for their failure to terrorise the Irish people with their Black-and-Tans.’ It really did not matter whether the legend was true, or was simply the product of press sensationalism. ‘The important fact,’ he emphasised, ‘was that in England, as in Ireland, the Michael Collins legend existed. It pictured me as the mysterious active menace, elusive, unknown, unaccountable, and in this respect I was the only living Irishman of whom it could be said.’

  In effect, Collins was arguing that he was seen as the real leader; so he would be in a better position to influence republicans to accept a compromise if he was not involved in the negotiations. Back in April and May, for instance, Lloyd George had ruled out talks with Sinn Féin, because he did not wish to talk with Collins, whom he considered the real Irish leader. The delegation could always delay in order to consult him or demand further concessions to placate him. The Irish delegation would thereby be able to get better terms from the British without him.

  De Valera was not impressed. ‘His argument,’ according to Collins, ‘was that aside from whatever truth might be in my view the menace I constituted was of advantage to us.’ That was how de Valera explained the situation, but his insistence on the inclusion of Collins was motivated not so much by the belief that he would be an asset to the delegation as the realisation that it would be too risky not to include the real architect of the Black and Tan war.

  Collins, after all, had been questioning the president’s judgment on military and political matters in the lead up to the Truce and had bitterly resented his exclusion from the delegation that went to London in July. Moreover, he had deliberately stampeded the president in the matter of demanding MacEoin’s release, and de Valera – with his acute sensitivity to criticism – was no doubt suspicious of the implied criticism in the Big Fellow’s lavish praise of James O’Mara in the Dáil on 26 August.

  Very few in the Dáil would have thought there was any sinister significance in those remarks, but de Valera and Collins were aware. From the president’s standpoint the best way of committing Collins to any settlement terms was to ensure that he was part of the negotiating team.

  When the supreme council of the IRB discussed the issue on 1 September, some members were deeply suspicious of de Valera’s motives and they told Collins. ‘There were certain members of the Supreme Council who thought there was something sinister behind the suggestion, and we had the temerity to tell him that he was likely to be made a scapegoat in the matter,’ Seán Ó Muirthile, the secretary of the IRB’s Supreme Council noted.

  ‘From what I have learned since I came back from America you will not succeed in overthrowing the British militarily,’ Harry Boland argued. ‘If it is a question between Peace and War, I’m for Peace. If there are negotiations I think “Mick” should go, and I’ll tell you why. In my opinion a “Gunman” will screw better terms out of them than an ordinary politician.’

  ‘When w
e argued the matter further with Collins,’ Ó Muirthile noted that they were unable to convince him.

  ‘Let them make a scapegoat or anything they wish of me,’ Collins said. ‘We have accepted the situation as it is, and someone must go.’

  ‘It was a job that had to be done by somebody,’ he ex­plained later. In the past he had not shirked responsibility and now was no different, even though he was warned by several people not to trust de Valera. On the other hand, however, the president had courageously confronted the Dáil hard-liners by emphasising his unwillingness to exclude the possibility of any kind of settlement.

  On 7 September Lloyd George wrote to de Valera ‘for a definite reply as to whether you are prepared to enter a conference to ascertain how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire can best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.’ The British proposed that the conference should begin in Inverness, Scotland, on 20 September 1921.

  The Dáil cabinet selected the delegation for the negotiations on 9 September. Although de Valera had told his colleagues a couple of weeks earlier that he was not going to be part of the delegation, Griffith insisted that the president should go and the cabinet debated the issue at length. De Valera gave several reasons for not going. If Lloyd George tried the strong-arm tactics he used in July, the delegation could, he said, always use the necessity of consulting him as an excuse to prevent it being rushed into any hasty decisions. There were, however, much broader considerations.

  ‘There seemed, in fact, at the time to be no good reason why I should be on the delegation,’ he later wrote. ‘There was, on the other hand, a host of good reasons why I should remain at home. One had, above all, to look ahead and provide for the outcome of the negotiations. They would end either in a “make” or “break” - in a settlement based on the accepted cabinet policy of External Association, or in a failure of the negotiations with a probable renewal of war. In either case I could best serve the national interest by remaining at home.

  ‘If the outcome were to be the settlement we had envisaged, that based on External Association,’ he continued, ‘it was almost certain that it would be no easy task to get that settlement accepted wholeheartedly by the Dáil and by the Army.’ He had already got a taste of the kind of bitterness such a proposal could generate, not only from Brugha’s vitriolic outburst at the cabinet meeting on 25 July, but also in the United States during a controversy that erupted following an interview he gave the Westminster Gazette in January 1920. External Association was essentially a more developed version of the ideas he first propounded in that controversial interview.

  By not taking part in the negotiations, de Valera argued he would be in a better position to influence radical republicans to accept a compromise agreement. ‘My influence,’ he said, ‘would be vastly more effective if I myself were not a member of the nego­­tiating team, and so completely free of any suggestion that I had been affected by the “London atmosphere”.’

  Those negotiating would inevitably have to compromise, but even this might not be good enough in the last analysis. Consequently, by staying at home, he would be in a position to rally both moderates and radicals to fight for an absolute claim, instead of a less appealing compromise. ‘Were there to be a “break” with any substantial section of our people discontented and restless, the national position would be dangerously weakened when the war resumed. I was providing for this contingency much better by remaining at home than by leading the delegation.’

  Throughout the struggle his primary role within the movement at home was as a unifying figure. He had tried to be all things - a moderate among moderates and a radical among militants. He wished to maintain that role, so it made good sense not to get too involved in the nitty-gritty of the negotiations. Moreover, if the negotiations collapsed, de Valera would also be in a better position to initiate further contacts with the British, if he had not been involved in the conference. In the last analysis his decision to stay in Dublin was based on sound, though selfish, political grounds. He knew that those who went were likely to become scapegoats – with the radicals if they compromised, and with the moderates if they did not.

  ‘We must have scapegoats,’ de Valera told his cabinet.

  Later in trying to justify his decision, he sought to rationalise his selfish considerations by cloaking them in the national interest. In the process he seemed to protest the merits of his own position a little too much. He contended, for instance, that by staying at home he could play his part ‘in keeping public opinion firm’ and also ‘in doing everything possible to have the Army well organised and strong.’

  ‘Feeling ran pretty high here, the Black and Tans and Auxi­liaries were still amongst us,’ Barton noted. ‘The Republicans forces had to be kept together and consolidated, someone had to stay and keep the home fires burning and yet prevent them blazing up the chimneys. We felt de Valera was best fitted to do this.’ That may have convinced Barton, who had been in jail throughout the worst of the troubles, but it sounded rather hollow to Collins, seeing that de Valera had spent most of the Black and Tan period in the United States.

  ‘Collins was determined that Dev should go,’ according to Barton. A vote was eventually taken with each of the members of the cabinet being asked whether the president should go to London. Griffith said, “Yes”; Brugha “No”, Stack “No”, Cosgrave “Yes”, Collins “Yes”, and Barton “No”. The vote was therefore tied at three for going and three for staying, leaving de Valera to exclude himself with his own vote.’

  Thus it was Barton who provided the crucial vote that allowed de Valera to remain at home. ‘I voted against Dev going for purely tactical reasons,’ Barton later explained. ‘He was undoubtedly our best negotiator and the most difficult antagonist the British had to meet but he was also our President and the National pivot. If Dev went on the delegation and the negotiations failed we had a reserve. We could never discuss and return to Ireland except to commence war. If Dev remained in Ireland we could always break off negotiations and threaten war and still have Dev in the background to come in at the last and find some way of carrying on if the Army was not ready. If Dev went on the delegation then our last word must be said in London. If he remained in Dublin the scene of negotiations must return there before the final rupture.’ It should be remembered that Barton had helped to negotiate the Truce ‘mainly to enable the volunteers to rearm and equip’. Hence he felt that this aim could be furthered by de Valera staying in Dublin.

  4 - ‘Better bait for Lloyd George’

  The president proposed that Griffith should be chairman of the delegation. ‘All agreed that Arthur Griffith must act as chairman,’ Barton noted. De Valera then proposed Collins as vice-chairman, even though he knew that Griffith and Collins were more amenable to the British terms than any other members of the cabinet. He was using them. Three months later, for instance, he wrote to Joe McGarrity in the United States that he selected them because he thought they would be ‘better bait for Lloyd George - leading him on and on, further in our direction.’

  ‘That Griffith would accept the Crown under pressure I had no doubt,’ he explained. ‘From the preliminary work which M.C. [Collins] was doing with the IRB, of which I had heard something, and from my own weighing up of him I felt certain that he too was contemplating accepting the Crown.’

  Stack made ‘a weak kind of objection’, according to himself. He complained that ‘both gentlemen had been in favour of the July proposals.’

  ‘Collins then took up my objections to himself, and denied that he would accept the proposals,’ Stack noted. ‘I reminded him of what he had said at Blackrock. He protested he said nothing of the kind.’

  Well, Stack explained, he got the impression that Griffith only wanted some modifications.

  ‘Yes,’ said Griffith, ‘some modifications.’

  ‘Cathal and the President then assured me I had misunderstood Mick at Blackrock,’ Stack noted. ‘I accepted this and
said no more.’

  Collins still protested his reluctance. ‘We all realised that the delegation would not be representative if he was not included,’ Barton noted. The Big Fellow’s reluctance to go was prompted by a number of reasons, some selfish. ‘Of course,’ he later wrote, ‘we all knew that whatever the outcome of the negotiations, we could never hope to bring back all that Ireland wanted and deserved to have, and we therefore knew that more or less opprobrium would be the best we could hope to win.’ Nobody could be expected willingly to court such infamy, and Collins was no exception. ‘I had got a certain name, whether I deserved it or not,’ he later told the Dáil, ‘and I knew what I was going over there that I was being placed in a position that I could not reconcile, and that could not in the public mind be reconciled with what they thought I stood for, no matter what we brought back.’

  ‘For my own part,’ Collins explained on another occasion, ‘I anticipated the loss of the position I held in the hearts of the Irish people as a result of my share in what was bound to be an unsatisfactory bargain. And to have and to hold the regard of one’s fellow countrymen is surely a boon not to be lost, while there is a way to avoid it.’

  Instead of arguing on those lines in cabinet, however, Collins actually made many of the same points in favour of his own exclusion that de Valera had already made for not going. He could be of use to the delegation if he were ‘kept in the background (against all eventualities) to be offered in a crisis as a final sacrifice with which to win our way to freedom.’