Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  As a result, ‘to place them under national rule against their will would be as glaring an outrage on the principles of liberty and self-government as the denial of self-government would be for the rest of Ireland. It would be a stupid way of attempting to redress the past in Ireland by repeating in Ulster the fatal error of Irish misgovernment, to reproduce the condition of the past in a corner of Ireland, whilst you are redressing the past in the rest of Ireland. It would be government against the will of the people.’187 For the avoidance of doubt, he asserted that the British would not tolerate their Ulster brethren being forcibly governed by those they considered unlike them: and the government would not make them. In this, he said, his policy maintained that announced by Asquith in September 1914, when assuring Ulster that Britain would not repay the loyalty of its people in the war by handing them over to rule from Dublin.

  The problem thus remained intractable. ‘Are Irish Members prepared to leave out the six counties until they are ready to come in? No. If not, are they ready to wait for Home Rule until the six counties are willing to be included? No. If neither of these, are they prepared to coerce Ulster? The answer is, No.’188 He was afraid the only alternative was the permanent division of Ireland; whereas if the Irish accepted the right of the six counties to make their own decision, it might be that within a few years they would come in. He believed if Ulster were coerced the results would be divisive and would undermine the Home Rule state. He urged the Irish to convene a conference, and talk to each other; but said the other twenty-six counties could have Home Rule now if they would let Ulster take its time. MPs heckled him about the Roman Catholic enclave in West Belfast, and the large Nationalist communities in Fermanagh and Tyrone; that was not a degree of detail into which Lloyd George was prepared to go. Nor would he discuss how the instability of Ireland was in part caused by its economic problems.

  Asquith suggested an Imperial Conference to arbitrate on the question: it provoked Lloyd George’s interest. Redmond, however, attacked the prime minister for offering Home Rule to just twenty-six counties: striking a low blow, he said the policy was one of ‘wait and see’.189 He dismissed the idea of yet more talks: ‘I take leave to tell him that after my experience of the last negotiations that I will enter into no more negotiations.’ He thought the Germans would ‘chuckle with delight’ when they read the reports of the debate.190 He warned Lloyd George what would happen unless matters changed. ‘That great issue is whether Ireland will still rely, as she has been doing for so many years, upon constitutional action to obtain her national rights, or whether she will go back to the methods and ideas of revolution.’191

  Redmond was deeply pessimistic.

  If the constitutional movement disappears, I beg the Prime Minister to take note that he will find himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it impossible to preserve—there is no good in him thinking he can do it—any of the forms even of constitutionalism. He will have to govern Ireland by the naked sword. I cannot picture to myself a condition of things in which the right hon Gentleman, with his record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of that kind in Ireland. But that is what he must come to if he persists in taking a course which plays right into the hands of the revolutionists and weakens and tends to destroy the constitutional party.192

  There was no point constantly appealing to the Nationalists to give ground; it was time to make that appeal to Carson and his supporters, to let the Home Rule Act apply to all of Ireland, and to let the Ulster people see they had nothing to fear. Otherwise, a Sinn Féin government, and all that entailed, was the likely outcome.

  Redmond then led his party out of the House rather than continue to participate in a ‘useless, futile and humiliating debate.’193 Given that the Irish had voted against the government in most divisions since December 1916, it made little odds that they absented themselves now. The next day they issued a statement saying that if Lloyd George stuck to his views it would ‘involve the denial of self-government to Ireland for ever.’194 The party said it could ‘never assent’ to giving an effective veto to Ulster. They accused Lloyd George of lying about never having changed his mind on the coercion of Ulster, given his support for the Home Rule process in 1912–14; and said he had spoken only of a ‘temporary war arrangement’ for Ulster’s exclusion during the failed negotiations of 1916. The constitutional movement could be saved, but was ‘hampered by a British Government which plays into the hands of the Irish pro-German revolutionary party with a stupid perversity worthy of the worst reactionaries of Petrograd.’ It was barely an exaggeration. More alarming, the Nationalists drew attention to the support of the Australian Senate for Home Rule, implying they would seek to divide the Empire over the question.

  The question pervaded not merely imperial policy, but the most important areas of foreign policy. President Wilson, knowing the ubiquity of Americans with Home Rule sympathies or Irish roots, was pressing Lloyd George to act; and the prime minister was sure there would have been more recruits from Australia had the matter been settled fairly. But he could not escape the domestic political question: if the government granted full Home Rule, it could count on Irish Nationalist votes in the Commons. That would stop them teaming up with the Asquithian Liberals and defeating the government on an Irish question, of which there was a high possibility. Lloyd George dreaded such a defeat, because he feared Asquith would form a government without an election – there being no up-to-date register upon which to hold one. That might explain why, a few weeks later, when he discovered that Lord Reading, one of his closest cronies, would be staying with Asquith for the weekend, Lloyd George asked Reading to invite Asquith to join the government in ‘almost any post … except that of head of the Government.’195 Asquith replied that he would continue to support the government if it prosecuted the war ‘in the proper spirit’, but that ‘under no conditions would I serve in a Government of which Lloyd George was the head. I had learned by long and close association to mistrust him profoundly. I knew him to be incapable of loyalty and lasting gratitude.’196 Reading persisted, and to shut him up Asquith said: ‘I could not associate myself with what he called “the counsel” of any Government unless I had supreme and ultimate authority.’ Asquith sent Crewe notes of the discussions marked ‘secret’ that he said ‘show at any rate in what direction the wind is blowing.’197

  Typically, what really vexed Lloyd George about Asquith and his friends returning to power was that ‘they will take the credit for all the measures I have taken for the prosecution of the war.’198 For all his protestations, the good of the country always came second to his amour propre. Yet Ireland got under his skin: he told Miss Stevenson he had been a ‘coward’ not to resign when Asquith backed down on Home Rule the previous July.199 He asked Carson to moderate his opposition ‘for the sake of the Empire’. He secretly put pressure on him by asking Wilson to write to him to emphasise American concerns, and Lord Bryce, the ex-ambassador to Washington, also wrote to him. Carson was certainly reluctant to dismiss their pleas out of hand, and Lloyd George offered Redmond the twenty-six/six deal of the previous year again: however, Redmond refused, since Sinn Féin was winning every by-election and threatening to wipe his party out. On 16 April the War Cabinet discussed Ireland at length, starting by agreeing that the 1914 Act was ‘in certain respects, out of date’.200 It also agreed that ‘the permanent partition of Ireland has no friends’, but that an attempt to impose Home Rule on Ulster would end in failure. It appointed a committee of three under Curzon to draw up a Bill to amend the Act, but also not to force it through if the Irish objected: which meant the impasse remained.

  Attempts throughout the spring of 1917 to find a settlement failed, because of the steady haemorrhage of Nationalist supporters to Sinn Féin, especially among younger men. The Russian revolution was interpreted by some optimists as ‘the peaceful triumph of democracy’ that could promote a peaceful settlement in Ireland.201 The feeling did not last: as in Russia,
a more extreme outcome quickly evolved. Lloyd George was sufficiently concerned by mid-May to consult his predecessor about how to proceed. Stamfordham received a letter from a member of the public asking the King to take an active role in soothing Ireland: he was told that ‘Loyalty to the Throne, in my humble opinion, must be inspired by the Throne itself, and not be the result of organisation or propaganda.’202 Dillon, who had grasped the new, post-Rising reality, told Scott on 15 May that if Sinn Féin found a capable leader ‘they would wipe the floor with us’.203

  The next day Lloyd George proposed to Redmond and to the Unionists that a Bill be introduced to grant Home Rule immediately to all but six counties in Ulster, whose exclusion Parliament would reconsider after five years. The hope was that Nationalists, and not Sinn Féin, would rule Ireland, and that Ulster Unionists would soon see that the rest of their island was governed in a way sufficiently acceptable to them to end exclusion. It was also suggested a Council of Ireland be established to deal with questions affecting the whole country, to be composed of Ulster MPs and an equal number from Dublin: it could decide to end exclusion before five years were up if it wished. The government also admitted the proposed financial settlement for Ireland under the 1914 Act was inadequate. Were this idea rejected, Lloyd George said he would establish an Irish Convention, composed of representatives of all parties, to consider the future.

  Northcliffe, like Asquith, had suggested the matter could be handed to a tribunal of the Dominion prime ministers, gathered in London for the Imperial Conference; but that was dismissed as unpractical. Redmond rejected partition immediately – he told Lloyd George his colleagues believed it would ‘find no support in Ireland’.204 However, he was much taken with the convention idea, not least because he had recently suggested it to Crewe, who had passed the idea to Downing Street: Redmond knew the constitutions of various Dominions had been agreed solely by those who lived in them, so it might work in Ireland. Southern Unionists, led by Midleton, reluctantly agreed, while stating their belief that ‘Imperial government under the Union’ was the only solution.205

  Lloyd George told the Commons on 11 June that the chairmen of Irish county and county borough councils would be invited to form the convention. They would be joined by two representatives of smaller communities in Ireland from each of the four provinces; by leaders of the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Presbyterian churches; by businessmen; and those of the trades unions. Political parties would be asked to send members, including separate representation for southern Unionists, though the prime minister was vexed that Sinn Féin had refused in advance to take part unless independence for all of Ireland could be discussed: the terms of reference were to settle ‘a Constitution for the future government of Ireland, within the Empire’, which was unacceptable to republicans.206 Sinn Féin also wanted the convention to be chosen by universal suffrage and for interned rebels to be treated as prisoners of war, none of which the government would brook. Lloyd George pledged to reserve five places for them in case they changed their minds. The government would also nominate fifteen leading Irishmen to ensure every shade of non-political opinion was heard: and the total number would be one hundred and one.

  He hoped the Irishmen would agree on a chairman but, if not, the government would nominate one. He still seemed unable to grasp that a huge swathe of Irish opinion now supported Sinn Féin. Indeed, one reason Lloyd George was so little concerned whether Sinn Féin sat in the convention or not was that he believed the movement would survive just a few months, before returning to the margins of Irish political discourse. Yet during May and June around seventy Sinn Féin clubs were formed across Ireland, ostensibly to help elect Sinn Féiners to local government posts, but as an embryonic political machine for a general election.

  On the day Parliament heard Lloyd George’s proposals it also heard tributes to Major William Redmond, younger brother of the Nationalist leader, who had enlisted at the age of fifty-three and been killed at Messines Ridge in Belgium. His death, after his determination to join up over age and to be in the thick of the fighting, had massive resonance in Britain, exemplifying the sacrifice that Home Rulers were prepared to make fighting ‘side by side in the trenches’ for what Carson called ‘the common cause of liberty’. Sinn Féin held such men in contempt, and would see that recognition of their gallantry was suppressed in Ireland for decades.207

  On 15 June Bonar Law announced that as an ‘earnest’ of British goodwill – and in order not to prejudice the convention – all prisoners still being held after the Rising would be released. This happened two days later. Law professed that ‘the Government are inspired by a sanguine hope that their action will be welcomed in a spirit of magnanimity, and that the Convention will enter upon its arduous undertaking in circumstances that will constitute a good augury for the reconciliation which is the desire of all parties in every part of the United Kingdom and the Empire.’208 Ginnell, the Nationalist MP who had become a voice of Sinn Féin in the Commons, warned Law that ‘the majority of the Irish people repudiat[e] the proposed Convention as being unrepresentative, composed of persons whom no section of the Irish people would now elect, held under martial law and the suppression of public opinion and of the right of public meeting, precluded from entertaining the only form of settlement now acceptable, denied power to give effect to any decision, restricted by the reference to a prearranged decision so detested by the Irish people that no power is now strong enough to enforce it upon them’.209 He believed that ‘a Convention thus restricted to pro-English purposes would be a betrayal of the principles and sacrifices of 1916 which have made a settlement urgent’, and wanted ‘a free Convention elected by adult suffrage … or the idea of a Convention abandoned’.

  The prisoners returned to Dublin to a welcome of unprecedented jubilation, proving republicanism was no longer a minority sport. The released leaders, such as de Valera, started to contest by-elections: he won in East Clare, whose electorate he said embodied ‘the ideas of the men of Easter Week’ and whose victory ‘set up a lasting monument to the dead.’210 In keeping with the doctrine of republicanism, he did not sit in the Imperial Parliament. As prisoners returned to their communities the Volunteer movement, heading for coalition in Sinn Féin with other separatist groups, revived and became more powerful than ever, with Volunteers out canvassing for de Valera showing the extent to which they were part of the political process.

  The convention assembled on 26 July in Trinity College, Dublin, where it met over the next nine months, often picketed by Sinn Féin demonstrators. The government asked the chief secretary to act as a provisional chairman, because of a failure to agree on one. Sir Horace Plunkett, an agricultural reformer from the old Ascendancy who believed in Home Rule, soon assumed the post. He lacked the confidence of Midleton and the other southern Unionists, not because of his views but because of his perceived abilities as a chairman. The government warned Sinn Féin that no civil unrest, riot or sedition would be tolerated.

  The convention temporarily calmed the question down; even more usefully for Lloyd George, it bought goodwill with the Americans early in the new alliance, and with the Dominions. However, despite long discussions, nothing else was achieved except buying some time. Another reason the convention was doomed was that the ten members representing southern Unionism, led by Midleton, and the twenty-one from Ulster simply could not agree: as Midleton noted, ‘co-operation between ten men who were bent on finding a solution of this age-long problem and twenty-one men who were determined to frustrate any settlement for Ireland as a whole was soon found to be hopeless.’211 In October 1917 the convention visited Cork for a special session and saw the reality of feelings in a rebel stronghold. ‘On landing,’ Midleton recalled, ‘a number of roughs began to hustle Redmond, who had to be rescued by his colleagues.’212 The next day, after an official lunch, ‘the police had to spirit Redmond away by a side door directly after his speech.’

  Reports of deliberations of the convention were illegal under DORA
, leaving the nation mystified about progress despite the anodyne reports released after each session. The Irish might, however, have taken some consolation from a change of policy in another branch of Britain’s imperial relations, when Montagu went to the India Office and instituted a far-reaching reform. On 15 August, thirty years almost to the day before Indian independence, and in recognition of the services India had performed during the war, Montagu announced that ‘the policy of His Majesty’s Government is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to progressive realisation of responsible government in India under the aegis of the British Crown.’213 This would lead in 1918 to a report outlining the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms (named after himself and the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford) that acknowledged the need for India to evolve into a dominion such as Australia or Canada. Most of its proposals would be embodied in the 1919 Government of India Act, which began a process of self-government albeit only at lower levels. It was an early step in the dismantling of the British Empire, and a crucial one – and one perhaps insufficiently noticed by those working for a measure of autonomy in Ireland.