The courts still touched British nerves. In mid-October Lloyd George brandished in Cabinet a newspaper report of a republican court in Dublin, which had opened with the formula ‘I now declare this Court open in the name of the Irish Republic.’ Invoking the Vereeniging Conference, the peace talks that had ended the South African war, he fumed that even though there had been a Boer republic before the war, it would have been out of the question for such a court to operate during the negotiations. ‘It is to do a thing which was not done before. This is not the status quo. I shall have to tell them that we shall have to scatter these courts.’313 This was bluster, partly designed to placate colleagues like Birkenhead who said that ‘otherwise it would be absolutely impossible to carry on.’ But the Irish delegation agreed to a joint declaration that ‘no courts shall be held in Ireland otherwise than as before the Truce’ – hardly an unambiguous formula, though Collins saw it as a setback. He fretted that it was ‘a dam [sic] shame’ – ‘if the unostenticity part of it had been maintained we would not have been let down like we have been’ by this ‘cheap bravado’. The military authorities certainly interpreted it as confirming that ‘as all Sinn Féin courts were illegal before the truce they are all illegal now.’ A local commander who got the impression that courts could be held as long as they were in ‘out of the way places’, and proposed to tell the republican liaison officer this, was firmly corrected – ‘Your proposed course of action would really be an incitement to the rebel liaison official to break the truce.’314
‘THE CELTS NEVER WERE REPUBLICANS’
How did the opposing delegations match up? Once de Valera had opted out, the Irish team might appear politically inexperienced. On the British side, the Prime Minister led a group of undoubted political heavyweights: the Leader of the House of Commons, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Chancellor Birkenhead and Winston Churchill. Even so there was a potentially fatal omission: Bonar Law, the moving spirit in pushing the Conservatives to the brink of civil war during the 1912 Home Rule crisis – and the man who would head the Tory revolt against the Treaty that eventually brought Lloyd George down – was on the sidelines.
Given their complexity, much time would inevitably be consumed in the issues of delimiting Irish fiscal autonomy and arranging the fiscal balance between Ireland and Britain. But such issues were in principle resolvable. Two others – Ireland’s unity and allegiance to the Crown – were not. The issue of unity, for all its nationalist emotional charge, was somewhat illusory (and would be all but ignored in the eventual debates on the Treaty). Because Britain had accepted that there could be no ‘coercion of Ulster’, partition was already a reality. The majority of British ministers disliked it, but it was effectively irreversible except by bilateral agreement between Dublin and Belfast. Of course the old nationalist belief that Ulster resistance was fomented by Britain and would collapse without British support persisted, and was fervently espoused by republicans. (De Valera would rehearse it to Griffith at a late stage in the negotiations.) When Griffith accepted the compromise developed by the British in late October – exclusion of ‘Ulster’ from the Irish Dominion, a ‘new delimitation’ of the boundary on the condition that no new powers were given to ‘Ulster’ – he certainly believed that this support had now disappeared. (‘They are I think willing to go any distance short of using force against Ulster.’) In the case of Lloyd George himself, Griffith was right, but his promise on 12 November not to ‘repudiate’ the Prime Minister ‘while he was fighting the “Ulster” crowd’ meant that at the crisis of the negotiations the delegation’s options were cut. It could not break on the issue of Ulster intransigence, on which British public opinion was likely to be supportive, rather than the issue of allegiance to the Crown, on which it was not.
The most crucial issue was always that of Ireland’s sovereign status. Republicans had generally understood their claim, whether for ‘independence’, ‘separation’ or simply ‘freedom’, to mean absolute legal sovereignty. Most rejected any concession on this issue as ‘going into the Empire’ – a phrase vividly expressing the belief that the Irish Republic was already an independent state. De Valera’s position was different: his concept of ‘association’ would inevitably modify the claimed sovereign powers of the Republic, though exactly how was not entirely clear. In the tussle over this issue, which repeatedly brought the talks to the brink of collapse, the British had a crucial advantage: they knew exactly what they wanted to secure. The ‘oath of allegiance’ in some form – even though the form might be, and was, significantly modified – represented the symbolic salve to unionist suspicion of Irish separatism.
Addressing the ‘conflict of ideas’ that shaped the Treaty negotiations, Frank Pakenham’s classic study perceptively invoked Carlyle: ‘of man’s whole terrestrial possessions and attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols.’ Under these ‘divine or divine-seeming’ things, ‘what we can call his Realised Ideals’, ‘he marches and fights with victorious assurance in this life-battle’. As Pakenham noted, the British saw the existing Imperial symbolism as vital to the Commonwealth, even though (or maybe especially because) it was now rapidly evolving away from British control. Even the arch-unionist Bonar Law (Canadian by birth) had publicly accepted that the Dominions would take ‘control of their whole destinies’, and that if one decided to go it alone ‘we would not try to force them’ back.315 The problem for Anglo-Irish relations was that, whereas for the British what Lloyd George called ‘the potency of the invisible bond’ was ambiguous and ‘not easy to interpret’, outsiders – most Irish nationalists certainly included – took the symbolism literally.316 The story of the negotiations is in essence the story of the movement of two nationalist leaders, Griffith and Collins, away from this literalism to a belief that acceptance of symbolic British suzerainty would no longer compromise effective Irish independence.
For Griffith the move was effectively made already. He was an advocate of dual monarchy on the Austro-Hungarian model, though this did not make him a ‘monarchist’ in the usual sense of the term. He was (like de Valera) a republican in the sense of being a separatist rather than a ‘doctrinaire’ supporter of republican forms of government. But for him separation was a practical rather than a symbolic project. This had been what Sinn Féin was all about. In this sense he ‘accepted the Crown’, as de Valera would allege. Griffith was more interested in effective governing power than in abstract sovereign status – hence the story of how, as he walked down Whitehall with Austin Stack in July, he gestured towards the Home Office building and asked ‘Would you like to take that to Dublin with you, Austin?’ (Stack by contrast reacted in symbolic terms, protesting, ‘look at the dead who have given their lives for the Republic.’)317
Collins does not seem to have given any systematic thought to the precise nature of freedom, sovereignty or forms of government before he went to London. The negotiations were a kind of crash course in constitutional politics for him, and as usual he was a prodigiously quick learner. ‘No man was to be so much influenced by the actual course that the negotiations ran,’ Pakenham judged. The result was probably, for de Valera, an unintended outcome of his determination to send Collins to London. Collins found he shared Griffith’s ‘conception of an Ireland free from British occupation, British penetration and British laws’; they had ‘the same concern for practical construction’.318 This was in sharp contrast to Childers – the Englishman – who never ceased to believe that if Britain was left with any constitutional power over Ireland it would use it. Collins did some reading on the recent evolution of the British Commonwealth and concluded – more perceptively – that it was inexorably turning into a league of free states.319
Collins seems to have made a genuine effort to push the external-association concept. At the sixth and seventh sessions in late October, the issue of Irish neutrality was discussed at length. Pithily noting that ‘all your argument depends on your security,’ Collins said ‘we propose a condition which I contend is a better guarant
ee of security’ than naval bases. He drew up in what Lloyd George called a ‘formidable document’ (and Churchill hailed as a document of ‘marked ability’) – an example of Collins’s rapidly acquired grasp of high-level administrative procedures – detailing a policy of guaranteed neutrality. He went on to argue, perceptively, that the evolution of the British Empire into a freer community of states made some flexibility possible. But at this point in history the British were never going to be convinced by mere neutrality, however guaranteed. As Churchill insisted, ‘Ireland’s control of her neutrality might be ineffective,’ and in any case even ‘a completely honest neutrality by Ireland in the last war would have been worse for us’ (than its rebellious disposition, presumably).320 It did not help that the conference atmosphere at this point was poisoned by altercations over breaches of the Truce. The sixth session opened with a complaint by Lloyd George that the republicans were using the Truce ‘to accumulate destructive stores for the purpose of manufacturing bombs and arming your forces’, and ended with a fierce spat over a bomb factory found in Cardiff – the Prime Minister querulously asking why ‘Sinn Féin’ did such things, which just lost them (British) public sympathy.
Republican political symbols proved, paradoxically perhaps, ultimately less rigid than the British. A sign of this appeared right at the start of the negotiation process. When de Valera, escorted by Art O’Brien, had first met Lloyd George in July he handed over a document headed – like most official ministry documents over the last couple of years – ‘Saorstát Éireann’. In 1919, the 1916 title ‘Poblacht na hÉireann’ had been superseded, for reasons that were not clear to everyone. Pakenham speculated that Saorstát was ‘broader’, Poblacht ‘more abstract’, but it was not a matter of meaning so much as one of linguistic purity. Pearse’s word poblacht was a neologism, which looked like a loan-word, derived from Latin rather than Gaelic, though it could be seen as evoking the power of the people. Saorstát was a new compound of two Gaelic words – ‘free state’ (the latter itself a fairly recent coinage). Lloyd George, looking as if his curiosity had been aroused, ‘began by asking modestly for a literal translation, saying that “Saorstat” did not strike his ear as Irish’. When told, he asked ‘what is the Irish word for Republic’? De Valera and O’Brien were apparently unable to provide a satisfactory answer, allowing the Prime Minister – who had been making a great show of Celtic affinity with his Irish visitors (he ‘received the Irish Chieftain cordially as a brother Celt’, according to Tom Jones) – to ask ‘must we not admit that the Celts never were republicans and have no native word for such an idea?’321
Frank Pakenham maintained that Lloyd George would not have been guilty of the ‘indescribable folly’ of deliberately embarrassing his visitor by such a question. He thought the story, which he found in Winston Churchill’s book The Aftermath, was unreliable because Churchill had not been at the meeting. Actually it came from Jones himself, who was certainly there – though he did not set it down until eight years after the event. Pakenham took the same view of the story (also relayed by Churchill) that the Prime Minister ‘discomfited’ his visitors by talking with Tom Jones in Welsh while the Irishmen debated the linguistic question in English. Though Jones recorded this with evident relish, it does indeed seem dubious, since it supposedly happened while de Valera and O’Brien were struggling to find a more ‘Irish’ word than saorstát for republic. Jones did not indicate how long the debate lasted, but there were not very many possibilities; one perhaps was comh-fhlaitheachd, the term for ‘commonwealth’ given in Dineen’s Irish dictionary, though never adopted by Sinn Féin. If they failed, or refused, to come up with the word poblacht, this would seem to have been taking linguistic purism absurdly far.322
But, whatever actually happened then, it is quite clear that Lloyd George fixed on the label ‘free state’ as one he could do business with. Did it carry any different meaning from ‘republic’? De Valera seemed to confirm their equivalence by signing the plenipotentiaries’ credentials under the letterhead ‘Saorstát Éireann/Respublica Hibernica’.323 Lloyd George appeared content to treat it as equivalent to ‘dominion’. The battle over conceding or accepting ‘Dominion status’ would consume a lot of energy on both sides, and the way forward involved abandoning the term ‘dominion’ itself (whose undertones definitely sounded very different to British and Irish ears).
The labelling seemed a classic fudge, offering a path for the common desire for a solution to navigate past irreconcilable symbols. This was, as Collins put it in mid-October, ‘the first time practically all parties wish a settlement.’ Whether the wish was equally strong on all sides was the question. Some of the British negotiators remained acutely conscious that they were sailing very close to the wind – Lloyd George famously said, ‘the life of the Government is put in issue by our proposals,’ and Chamberlain urged his Irish counterparts, ‘do not press it too far I beg. You are not aware of the risks we are taking with our whole political future.’ His warning of course applied just as forcefully to Griffith and Collins themselves. Within two years of signing the Treaty, Chamberlain’s distinguished political career would indeed be shipwrecked along with Lloyd George’s. But, long before that, Collins would be killed in the internecine fight over the Treaty terms.
Part Four
THE REPUBLIC FRACTURED: 1922–1923
‘THE TREATY AS IT IS DRAFTED IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO US’
By the end of November 1921 the London negotiations had produced a roughly agreed draft Treaty. On 3 December the Dáil Cabinet met in the Dublin Mansion House, with the two delegates who were not members of it, Duggan and Gavan Duffy, and the delegation’s secretary, Erskine Childers, to discuss it. It was not an easy discussion, or an amicable one, and it showed how divisive the central points at issue were. As it stood the Treaty would create a twenty-six-county Irish Free State with ‘Dominion status’. From a republican point of view, what was striking about it from the outset was not the powers this state would possess but those it would lack. It would not possess full fiscal autonomy; it would have no independent foreign policy; and its defences would be substantially in British hands. Some were ready to break over these issues: Robert Barton believed that fiscal independence was vital, and also achievable. Erskine Childers argued that Articles 6 and 7, which effectively committed Ireland to join all Britain’s wars by giving Britain the right to defend the Irish coasts (including the occupation of several ports), would deprive the ‘free state’ of national status.
The majority seemed able to live with these terms. At least, the discussion was inconclusive (next day in London the delegates could not agree on what if anything had been decided). Two other issues threatened sharper division: partition and the ‘oath of allegiance’ to the British Crown. For de Valera himself, neither issue seemed absolutely fundamental – he said he could understand giving up independence for national unity, but objected that Griffith had ‘got neither this nor that’. Partition could be regarded as a temporary setback; nobody at that stage (including the British ministers) imagined it could be permanent. The ‘boundary commission’ guaranteed in Article 12 of the Treaty was expected by nationalists to draw a border that would make Northern Ireland unviable. The issue of allegiance was harder to sidestep. Collins suavely dismissed the oath as the ‘sugar-coating to enable the English people to swallow the pill’ of conceding real Irish autonomy. According to one account of the meeting, he pointed out that it would not come into force for a year, and proposed waiting to ‘see how it would work’ – a pre-echo perhaps of his later gradualist approach.1 De Valera again said that ‘if … we get all else we want, what harm would it be if we had an oath like this’? Here (as Austin Stack recalled) he ‘spoke words paraphrasing the form in the draft treaty’ – ‘true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the Irish state and to the Treaty of Association’, and ‘to recognise the King of Great Britain as Head of the Association’.2 Stack himself at first agreed with de Valera, and tried unsuccessfully to persu
ade Brugha to agree to such an oath; only later did he decide ‘that Cathal was right’. Brugha, of course, refused to entertain any idea of an oath of allegiance to the Crown.
The discussion hinged on Griffith’s insistence that the draft Treaty represented the most that could be got from Britain in the existing circumstances. The terms were disagreeable, but they were not dishonourable – and there was no alternative. Barton and Gavan Duffy took the view that they were not Britain’s last word. Brugha latched on to the fact that key negotiations had been conducted in small sub-conferences – with only Griffith and Collins on the Irish side. Once again he shocked some of his colleagues with the directness of his accusation: the British had ‘selected their men’. Griffith immediately forced a vote requiring Brugha to withdraw the remark. But of course there was some truth in it. The British had preferred to work with Griffith and Collins; but that did not mean that they had (as Brugha’s words had, for some, implied) suborned them. Collins simply retorted that he should pick his own – ‘get another five to go over’ – if he wanted. Barton seemed to take this up, disputing Griffith’s assertion that the British were at the limit of their concessions, and again urging de Valera to go to London in his place. De Valera may have reconsidered his position for a moment; he later told Joe McGarrity that he decided once more to stay, ‘to get those republicans who desire isolation to consent’ to external association, if the British accepted it. At this point Griffith tacked a little. Having first said that he would sign the Treaty (if he thought the only alternative was war) and then submit it to the Dáil, he now said he would not sign it until it had been submitted to the Dáil – and ‘if necessary the people’. Brugha, who had protested ‘you will split the country from top to bottom’, seemed to be mollified by this change (presumably in the belief that with this procedure there would be no division of opinion). Griffith, for his part, presumably expected the people to share his view of the Treaty.
The Republic- The Fight for Irish Independence Page 46