The Republic- The Fight for Irish Independence

by Charles Townshend

  Britain’s Irish policy faced pivotal decisions, with no real sense of direction. Shortly before the end of the war, Lord French had put his views in uncompromising terms: ‘every day that has passed since I became Viceroy of Ireland has proved more clearly the unfitness of Ireland for any form of Home Rule.’ He did not say ‘ever’ but rather ‘now, or in the very near future’, but even so, this was a straight negation of the policy enshrined in the 1914 Home Rule Act, which was due to come into effect after the war. When Asquith’s government had pushed the Act through under the wartime ‘party truce’, he had promised that the unionist north-east of Ireland would be given some (as yet unspecified) special treatment. But Ireland was certainly due to receive a national parliament with substantial legislative powers when the war ended. Asquith’s successors were not above deferring this commitment by defining the end of the war as the day on which the last peace treaty was signed (which they expected in 1919, though in the event this would not have come until 1923). But they accepted that the commitment could not be deferred indefinitely, and set about reframing the Act to make it workable.

  The committee eventually set up in November to find a new formula for the relationship between the prospective Irish parliament and Westminster, and above all for the exclusion of Ulster from the Dublin parliament’s authority, would take six months to come up with a draft bill. In the meantime, Macpherson and French were left to find a way of controlling the situation. The two key issues that French pressed were the extension of military powers and the suppression of Sinn Féin and the Dáil as well as the Irish Volunteers. French wanted to put Ireland under martial law as it had been in 1916 – only more effectively. This was never on the cards in 1919. All that could be done was to react to local challenges by creating Special Military Areas under the 1887 Criminal Law and Procedure Act, with tightened controls on movement and assembly. This move was the reaction to the Soloheadbeg attack in South Tipperary, and also to an attempt to rescue Volunteer and trade union leader Robert Byrnes from Limerick prison in April. Limerick was proclaimed a Special Military Area on 9 April, but the public assumed it had been placed under martial law – an irony French cannot have relished. The local reaction to this – the establishment of a ‘soviet’ – was disconcerting. The Limerick Trades and Labour Council declared a general strike, set up a governing committee that effectively took over the city, imposed its own controls on movement and issued its own currency.281

  The Limerick Soviet was shortlived (only ten days), and was probably inspired at least as much by memories of the bitter industrial dispute of 1913 as by Russian revolutionary ideas, but inevitably it fed the British government’s mounting alarm about the wave of industrial unrest sweeping postwar Europe. Indeed it may well be that industrial conflict looked more immediately threatening than the separatist movement in the spring of 1919. But fears of ‘Bolshevik’ revolution, fanned by the conservative press, should have been moderated by the unenthusiastic response of the labour leadership in Ireland to the Limerick confrontation.282

  These local measures of ‘pin-pricking coercion’ were a poor substitute for a general strategy, but it was not until the autumn of 1919 that French’s demand for direct measures against the republican leadership was accepted by the Cabinet. The coalition government was divided on party lines: its Liberals were dismayed by the idea of proscribing a political party and an elected assembly, however disagreeable. Conservatives were less squeamish; but even the high Tory Walter Long opposed proscription when it was proposed in May. He thought the Irish Executive machinery too weak to make a ban effective, so the government’s credibility would be damaged. This clear-eyed line of argument did not survive the heightened challenges of the summer of 1919. The assassination of RIC District Inspector Hunt in Thurles on 23 June spurred French to renew the demand that Sinn Féin be ‘proclaimed’ as ‘an organised club for murder of police’. The ban was to be local, but when the Cabinet discussed it, only Shortt upheld the Liberal argument that ministers should try to drive a wedge between moderates and extremists, not drive them together. Critical public reactions to the violence in South Tipperary had suggested that this would be a possibility. ‘No one would be more relieved than the Sinn Feiners if the Irish Volunteers were proclaimed,’ Shortt suggested. This insight was brushed aside by the Cabinet, along with any doubts about the propriety or advisability of banning a political party. On 4 July Sinn Féin, the Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and the Gaelic League were all declared illegal in Tipperary, laying the ground for the blanket ban of all separatist organizations throughout Ireland in September. This included Dáil Éireann, a body whose members had been elected by the British democratic system. The fierce attempt to suppress the Dáil Loan, with a mass of prosecutions and the suppression of several mainstream newspapers, suggests that the government grasped that its challenger was now moving from ‘theatricalism’ to real action. Macpherson’s explanation of the ban was that the Dáil had been allowed to meet ‘in consultation’, but when it ‘conspired by executive acts … to overthrow the duly constituted authority, then we could act.’

  But could they? There might (more or less) be a will, but it was not clear that there was a way. The attempt to suppress the loan was widely denounced as an attack on the press, and was seen even by government supporters as counter-productive. The army complained, not for the first or last time, that ‘the situation would be perfectly simple to deal with if the Government only had a policy.’ The weakness of the police had if anything increased as the boycott steadily drove them away from the community; as the Galway RIC reported in late 1919 they were ‘receiving no support from the people’. A trickle of resignations – giving up a secure job with a good pension was not an easy matter – suggested the possibility of a flood. The military garrison was numerically under-strength, and full of raw recruits thanks to the ‘first in, first out’ postwar demobilization policy. Senior commanders were particularly concerned about the quality of the officer corps, and worried that the troops ‘being taunted by young Irishmen … are getting in such a state that they may take the law into their own hands’.283 Though it increased funding for the RIC and the DMP Special Branch, the Cabinet was still reluctant to give French all he wanted, in particular the extension of powers of internment and deportation under Regulation 14B. In late September the Home Office accepted that there were ‘of course strong objections to extending the DRR [Defence of the Realm Regulations] now that the war is over’, but thought that nonetheless ‘the condition of Ireland is such as to justify the full use of the powers given by the DRA [Defence of the Realm Act]’ – notably curfew powers. It even considered making Ireland an area where the operation of Section 1 of the Defence of the Realm Amendment Act 1915 was ‘suspended’.284 Since the 1915 Act prohibited internment of British citizens without trial, this would in effect mean the suspension of habeas corpus – which had not been done in peacetime since 1866.

  French would go on chafing against the Cabinet’s restrictive view of the powers that could be exercised in peacetime Ireland. ‘I have means of gauging the feeling of the country which Mr Shortt does not possess,’ he insisted. He had ‘lived a good deal in Ireland, and amongst Irish people’, and ‘frequently visit my home [Drumdoe in Roscommon] in one of the most disturbed districts of the west’.285 ‘I feel that all [Shortt’s] training and experience render him peculiarly incapable of arriving at just conclusions when dealing with a people who nourish secret sedition and are in a condition of veiled insurrection.’ This could only be ‘held at bay by careful military vigilance’. He still believed that, as he told Lloyd George, it was because of Shortt’s ‘inexperience in such matters that you sent me to Ireland to exercise the full functions of a Governor-General de jure and de facto.’286 Eventually, in mid-November, the Cabinet agreed to the replacement of jury trial in Ireland, in serious criminal cases, by a special court of three high court judges. French was told that it would be ‘inconvenient’ to bring the so-called ‘Three Judges Bill’
before the Christmas recess, but was given (or so he believed) ‘a perfectly free hand as regards “deportation” and possibly the introduction of martial law’.287

  The Cabinet was acutely aware of the political risks of using special legal powers. In the executive sphere, though, it was more easygoing. French, in cahoots with Walter Long, was allowed to reconstruct the police in a way that would have huge repercussions on the legitimacy of the British state in Ireland. At the end of the year an order was issued, in the name of the Inspector General of the RIC, authorizing recruitment of non-Irish personnel into the constabulary.288 French had been pushing for this radical step for months, against the Inspector General Sir Joseph Byrne’s dogged resistance. For the IG it was a question not only of principle, but also of the kind of recruits that were in practice likely to appear: war veterans who might not be controllable by the RIC’s disciplinary code. Back in May, Long had snorted that ‘the head of the police has lost his nerve,’ and on 4 November French delivered a virtual notice of dismissal, telling the Chief Secretary that ‘Byrne is still showing great weakness.’ It was ‘most prejudicial to the accomplishment of what we have to do that he should remain in his present position’. The last straw for French came when he ordered the arrest and deportation of seventeen ‘of the worst suspects’ early in December. The police chiefs had repeatedly assured him that ‘they knew always where they could lay their hands on these men’, but ‘when everything should have been in complete readiness, it appeared as a matter of fact that nothing was ready.’ ‘The Police Officials met, consulted, pondered, then decided to do nothing!’289

  But it was not easy to remove someone in Byrne’s position quietly. Until a new job was negotiated, he was simply ordered to go on leave ‘for the benefit of his health’. (He was not keen to quit, and demanded a colonial governorship as the price of his departure.) More importantly, perhaps, his objections to what would become a drastic change in the nature of the old police force were pushed aside. Lloyd George, accepting that Byrne had ‘clearly lost his nerve’, added a remarkable rider: ‘It may, of course, very well be that the task in Ireland is a hopeless one and that Byrne has simply the intelligence to recognise it.’ But for the time being, ‘until we are through with Home Rule a man of less intelligence and more stolidity would be a more useful instrument to administer the interregnum.’290 A few days after the New Year, the first British recruits began to arrive: the ‘Black and Tans’ were born. Their notoriety would in the event give this ‘interregnum’ a dangerously unstable character.

  French hinted darkly that it would be ‘necessary to increase considerably the numbers of people to be sent away for the benefit of their health’. He thought that the administration was ‘totally inadequate’ to enforce its legal powers. The attempt to conciliate Catholic opinion had produced ‘a dual control in the inner circle of Government officials’, leading to ‘great friction and serious leakage of official secrets’. The head of the DMP, Colonel Edgeworth Johnstone, ‘in many ways an excellent commander’, had been ‘overtaxed by the tension of the work’, but French hoped that the new Assistant Commissioner, William Redmond, would help to ‘infuse new energy and fresh brains into the police command’. He had no doubt that the situation could be saved, bad as it looked. Although ‘the campaign of outrage and murder is growing in strength and intensity every day’, it actually represented ‘the last desperate struggle of Sinn Fein’, and if it could be put down, the prewar political atmosphere could be restored. ‘The Irish are an impulsive and quick-witted, but not a deep-thinking people,’ he once again insisted. They had ‘no will of their own’ and were simply intimidated and ‘mentally paralysed’ by Sinn Féin. The ‘real feeling of the country was never in favour of a Republic, or indeed any form of complete separation’. Sinn Féin’s attempt to create a rival state structure had, he believed, failed. ‘After nearly a year’s trial no one in the country can discern anything but the same bombastic talk which has brought no change whatever in the life of the people.’ Just before Christmas, he concluded that ‘in short, the year 1919 has seen the ruin of Sinn Fein as a clean, sane, and ideal organization, and has reduced it to the level of a foul murder club.’291

  ‘THE INCULCATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF GUERRILLA WARFARE’

  Many Volunteers could not remember any novel ‘military’ activity in 1919; if anything the year seemed less exciting than 1918. Most units went on with training and occasional arms raids. Even these were often less than dramatic – in Closetoken, Co. Galway, for instance, it was ‘hardly correct to term them raids as the people handed over any arms they had quite willingly’. Others continued with the public displays that had been largely abandoned a year before: in the 5th Battalion of Kerry No. 2 Brigade, ‘we were adopting a defiant attitude … by parading within sight of the RIC and marching to local sports’ meetings.’292 Even in the most active areas, actions were sporadic, and hard to identify as the beginnings of a coherent campaign. In Tipperary, the dramatic shooting of DI Hunt in Thurles was not followed by any significant escalation of operations. One of the most successful of all Volunteer operations, the raid on the guard post at Collinstown aerodrome in March 1919, was not obviously linked to previous or subsequent patterns of activity. The haul of seventy-five rifles (with seventy-two bayonets) and 4,000 rounds of ammunition was simply enormous in relation to the stocks held by Volunteer units, and would never be exceeded in the whole course of the struggle. The Fingal Brigade seems to have done little with this hoard, if it held on to it: it remained ‘peaceful’ in 1919 and into 1920; Walter Brown’s battalion still had no ‘proper arms’ at the time of the Truce.293

  As late as September 1919, local IV units still probably had little idea what, if any, overall plan of action was favoured by GHQ. The bolder and more adventurous were testing the limits, experimenting with possibilities. A classic case in point was the action of the North Cork Brigade at Fermoy. On 7 September a party of fifteen men of the East Kent Regiment on their way to Sunday worship at the Wesleyan chapel were rushed and disarmed. The project had been worked out by Lynch and the Fermoy battalion commander George Power in July, and submitted for GHQ approval. When this came, it was on the condition that the attack could be carried out without loss of life.294 This suggests a persistent anxiety about the public reaction to violence; the condition carries a whiff of refusal to take responsibility. In the event – as GHQ must surely have suspected – it could not be met: despite careful restriction of the lethal weapons carried by the thirty attackers (six had revolvers, the rest ‘short thick clubs’), one of the soldiers was killed in the affray. GHQ’s caution may look excessive, since at the inquest the local coroner’s jury refused to describe the death as murder – on the grounds not only that the attackers had only intended to disarm rather than kill the troops, but also that the attack had been a regular act of war. This indicated at least some public acceptance of, if not enthusiasm for, the escalation of conflict. The furious reaction of the military garrison to this verdict, charging out into the town and wrecking the shops of some of the jurors, was the first serious ‘reprisal’ of the conflict. But this may well have been the kind of escalation GHQ feared, and its effect on public opinion was probably double-edged. (It seems to have cowed as many townspeople as it antagonized.)

  But the Fermoy attack was undeniably a conspicuous military success. Fermoy itself was a challenging target, a major garrison town (the HQ of the British army’s 16th Infantry Brigade) on the edge of Lynch’s North Cork Brigade area. The brigade acquired thirteen service rifles, about as many as it had possessed when it was created in January 1919. On the same day, 7 September, the 8th Battalion of Cork No. 1 Brigade attacked a military patrol at the Slippery Rock near Coolavokig, capturing several rifles and bicycles. GHQ’s restrictive attitude began to ease over the next few months. In mid-October, Liam Deasy of West Cork went to Dublin for meetings with two sets of national leaders. At Vaughan’s Hotel – where he met Michael Collins, Gearoid O’Sullivan, Seán Ó Mui
rthile, Diarmuid O’Hegarty, Peadar Clancy and Dick McKee on the 14th – he was impressed by the comradely and nonchalant atmosphere. At Lalor’s on Upper Ormond Quay next day he had a less informal meeting with Collins, Mulcahy and Brugha. ‘In an atmosphere of military efficiency’, various reports were analysed. ‘It was clear that military efficiency was the target to be aimed at … and that the inculcation of the principles of guerrilla warfare was to be an essential part of all training.’ Most significantly, it seems Deasy was quizzed on his brigade’s capacity to ‘carry out attacks on enemy barracks’. He left (according to his memoirs) with authorization to mount such attacks in the new year.

  Deasy’s account suggests a logical planning process and a harmonious working relationship between GHQ and the local units (and also, incidentally, between Brugha, Collins and Mulcahy). The reality was certainly not so harmonious. Mulcahy later wrote rather acidly that among the regrettable effects of the South Tipperary violence was that the British counter-measures ‘pushed rather turbulent spirits such as Breen and Treacy into the Dublin area … where their services were not required and their presence was often awkward’.295 The acid view was reciprocated, certainly by Seamus Robinson, who along with Breen and Treacy joined the ‘Squad’, GHQ’s full-time unit, when Tipperary became ‘too hot for them’.296 Robinson had griped about GHQ’s ‘insatiable maw for written reports’ and the security risk they represented. (He recalled that when Ernie O’Malley went to Tipperary he brought an office typewriter – with a porter to lug it – to churn out reports, but after some of his dispatches had been captured in a raid he saw the sense in Robinson’s declaration that ‘we would stand for no more written reports … being sent to Dublin’.) For him GHQ meant dead bureaucracy: ‘Not a single member of the GHQ staff ever came down to the country to see things for himself.’297