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
Page 64
You’ve taken our brave Liam and Rory,
You’ve murdered young Richard and Joe,
Your hands with our blood is still gory
Fulfilling the work of the foe.
Executions continued—seventy-seven in all before the war’s end. Included was the anti-Treaty publicity officer, Erskine Childers, an Englishman.
The Irregulars began the Civil War far better armed than the whole IRA had been during the War of Independence. And the quality of the National Army recruits was low, as one of its generals, Eoin O’Duffy, admitted:
We had to get work out of a disgruntled, undisciplined, and cowardly crowd. Arms were handed over wholesale to the enemy, sentries were drunk at their posts, and ... a whole garrison was put in clink owing to insubordination, etc.
But the Irregulars lacked sufficient support on the ground, as one of their leaders explained to Lynch:
Our principal weakness then is that we have lost by the opposition of the people, our cover, our sources and intelligence, our supplies, transport.... The republican forces may have military successes, they cannot hope to beat the people.
So it proved. In daring amphibious operations the Provisional Government landed troops behind Irregular lines in the counties of Cork and Kerry. Then, on 10 April 1923, Lynch died fighting in the Knockmealdown Mountains in Co. Waterford. The surviving republican leaders faced the inevitable. On 24 May they issued a ceasefire order and allowed de Valera to publish this message:
Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the Republic.
Episode 233
DIVIDED ULSTER
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for me and Tommy Todd,
I’m a Fenian, he’s a Prod,
Holy Mary, Mother of God.
The outbreak of a vicious civil war in the Irish Free State in the summer of 1922 had been a remarkable stroke of good fortune for the Northern Ireland government. IRA units disengaged or withdrew from the north to fight each other south of the border. Incidents of violence—horrific though many of them were—steadily declined, and by 1923 it could be said that the region was at peace.
The price in blood for Northern Ireland’s survival had been heavy. Between July 1920 and July 1922 the death toll had been 557 men, women and children—303 Catholics, 172 Protestants, and 82 members of the security forces. In Belfast 236 people had been killed in the first months of 1922 alone. The remarkable fact is that there was not a single sectarian murder in Belfast between 1923 and 1933.
After the horrors of 1922 Northern Ireland enjoyed a remarkable calm, with perhaps the lowest ‘ordinary’ crime rate in Europe. But the ‘Troubles’ had left a bitter legacy, and intercommunal tensions had not been significantly reduced.
The people of Ulster liked to think their problems were unique. They were, but close parallels could be drawn between Northern Ireland and states emerging after the First World War from collapsed empires in central Europe. In a vain attempt to get him to agree to an all-Ireland parliament, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had once written to Craig: ‘The existing state of central and south-eastern Europe is a terrible example of the evils which spring from the creation of new frontiers.’ No doubt it had been in reaction to a similar lecture that Craig had emerged from Downing Street in December 1921, saying: ‘There’s a verse in the Bible which says Czecho-Slovakia and Ulster are born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.’
Whether or not the Northern Ireland Prime Minister understood the full implications of his remark is difficult to say. Czecho-Slovakia contained 4,600,000 Germans, Poles, Ruthenes and Hungarians out of a total population of 14,300,000. And here Czechs and Slovaks spoke the same language, though in different dialects; and in spite of appalling dangers threatening them, the devout Catholic peasants of Slovakia fiercely resented the domination of the urbanised Czech sceptics of Bohemia and Moravia. Only two-thirds of the inhabitants of Poland spoke Polish. Here, unlike Northern Ireland, language was the badge of distinction. Yugoslavia, however, provided a closer parallel, in that it was the ethnic tensions in the region that constantly threatened to destroy the new state. Mirroring the situation in Ulster, Bosnians, Croats and Serbs spoke the same language but remained bitterly divided by memories of past wrongs, cultural traditions and religion. Ethnic groups in Yugoslavia claimed to be able to distinguish each other by smell—just as people in Ulster had their own equally bogus means of identifying ‘the other sort’.
Northern Ireland started out with assets that most of the new central European states did not possess. The evils of landlordism had largely been swept away. Like Czecho-Slovakia, but unlike most of the other new states, Northern Ireland had a developed industrial base, experience of representative institutions, and a substantial middle class from which competent public servants could be recruited. And, unlike Czecho-Slovakia, Northern Ireland had a powerful neighbour ready to provide support in times of crisis.
In September 1921 Craig had said in the Northern Ireland House of Commons:
We have nothing in our view except the welfare of the people.... Every person inside our particular boundary may rest assured that there will be nothing meted to them but the strictest justice. None need be afraid.
A year later this magnanimity had been severely eroded by the IRA campaign and mounting criticism from the British press. By the end of 1922 Craig’s Protestant supporters had come to the conclusion that Catholics were aiming for nothing less than the destruction of Northern Ireland. Any Unionist MP offering compromise and concession risked annihilation at the polls.
Catholics formed one-third of the population. Their elected representatives refused to take their seats in the Northern Ireland parliament. Nationalist councils had given their allegiance to the Irish Free State. Catholics felt they were now much worse off than they had been under the direct rule of Westminster. More Catholics than Protestants had been killed in the recent violence. And Catholic relief organisations estimated that in Belfast between 8,700 and 11,000 Catholics had been driven out of their jobs, that 23,000 Catholics had been forced out of their homes, and that about 500 Catholic-owned businesses had been destroyed.
Craig and his colleagues now had to face this daunting challenge: how to govern fairly a population deeply divided for generations and possessing clashing political aspirations.
Episode 234
‘NOT AN INCH!’
In 1922 the Northern Ireland government not only had to bring violent conflict to an end, it had also to establish its authority. It began by suppressing twenty-one nationalist-controlled local authorities which had pledged their allegiance to Dáil Éireann. Then in July the government rushed through a bill to abolish proportional representation in local government elections.
The London government hesitated: it had introduced PR in Ireland in 1920 to ensure the fair representation of minorities. But Lloyd George’s rapidly disintegrating coalition government did not have the stomach to face down the Unionist cabinet in Belfast. And so, after two months’ delay, the bill received the royal assent.
Nationalists paid a heavy price for refusing to co-operate with the commission which rearranged local government boundaries in the months that followed. The result was that local Unionist branches throughout the province, with the enthusiastic co-operation of Richard Dawson Bates, the Home Affairs minister, dictated the positioning of electoral boundaries with meticulous care to their own complete satisfaction.
The outcome of this blatant exercise in gerrymandering could be seen most obviously west of the River Bann. In Omagh Rural District Council, for example, Nationalists cast 5,381 more votes than Unionists, but the new electoral boundaries gave Unionists there a majority of eighteen.
Westminster seemed too absorbed by crises abroad to intervene. Joseph Devlin, the West Belfast MP, came to the conclusion that the Nationalists he led had no alternative but to end abstention and take their seats in the Northern Ireland parliament. Meanwhile William T
. Cosgrave, premier of the Irish Free State, concentrated his energies entirely on ruthlessly crushing republicans in a savage civil war.
Not until the spring of 1924 did Cosgrave feel that he could turn his eyes northwards. Article XII of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 provided for a Boundary Commission to revise the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Free State. Justice Richard Feetham represented Britain. Cosgrave appointed his Education minister, Eoin MacNeill to represent the Free State. And since Prime Minister Sir James Craig refused to have anything to do with the commission, Britain asked the Unionist journalist J. R. Fisher to represent Northern Ireland as the third commissioner.
Most nationalists expected large chunks of Northern Ireland to be assigned to the Free State. Certainly Craig and his colleagues feared as much. In April 1925 Craig called a snap election to demonstrate Unionist solidarity while the commission was at work. He coined an emotive rallying-cry: ‘Not an inch!’
Craig need not have worried. This commission, unlike those determining German, Danish and Polish frontiers after the First World War, did not have to hold a referendum in border areas. Article XII vaguely allowed ‘economic and geographical conditions’ to be taken into account as well as ‘the wishes of the inhabitants’. Feetham and Fisher argued that Newry and Derry were economically tied to Belfast.
Two against one: all was revealed when Fisher leaked the report’s recommendations to the press. On 7 November 1925 the Morning Post published a ‘forecast’ of the Boundary Commission’s report. Its map showed that slices of Donegal and Monaghan would be awarded to Northern Ireland, that Crossmaglen was the only town of any size assigned to the Free State, and that the population of Northern Ireland would be reduced by a mere 1.8 per cent.
MacNeill resigned. Cosgrave and Craig hurried over to London to confer with Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister. There they agreed to suppress the Boundary Commission and to maintain the existing border. Craig returned to Belfast on 5 December to a magnificent reception. Shipyard workers gave him a gold-mounted portion of a foot rule—the inch he had not surrendered. The Northern Ireland parliament presented Craig with a large silver cup with the words ‘Not an inch’ inscribed on the plinth.
Nationalists had been forced to accept that, whether they liked it or not, they were all citizens of Northern Ireland. By 1928 ten Nationalists sat on the opposition benches along with three Labour MPs and a couple of independents.
Nationalists got no reward for returning fully to constitutional politics. In the whole period of devolved rule up to 1972 the only bill Nationalists successfully sponsored was the Wild Birds Protection Act. Then in 1929 Craig—now elevated to the peerage as Lord Craigavon—abolished pr in Northern Ireland parliamentary elections. The impact proved most severe not on Nationalists but on the smaller parties. Nationalists, nevertheless, regarded this as another slap in the face for the minority. In 1932 Devlin addressed the governing party in the House of Commons:
You had opponents willing to co-operate.... We sought service. We were willing to help. But you rejected all friendly offers.... You went on the old political lines, fostering hatreds, keeping one-third of the population as if they were pariahs in the community.
Episode 235
NORTHERN IRELAND: DEPRESSION YEARS
There is a happy land, far, far away
Where they eat bread and jam three times a day.
O how we sweetly sing, dancing round the gravy ring,
O how we’d love to be far, far away.
Hunger marked the years between the two world wars in Northern Ireland. During the winter of 1920 the brief post-war boom had juddered to a halt. By 1922 the unemployment rate reached 23 per cent, and for the rest of the 1920s on average one-fifth of all insured workers had no jobs. For Northern Ireland the Depression began early—the ‘roaring twenties’ had no meaning here. The slump developed into a protracted depression.
No one had predicted this. Was the Unionist government to blame? No—Westminster had not really given it enough power to provide significant help. And Belfast and Derry were not alone: Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Tyneside all suffered in the same way.
The basic problem was that the First World War had brought about traumatic changes in world trading conditions. Dangerously dependent on exporting a limited range of products, Northern Ireland found that other states now built ships, constructed machinery and wove cloth in more effective competition. Then on 23 October 1929 security prices on the Wall Street stock market crumbled in a wave of frenzied selling.
The collapse of business confidence after the great speculative orgy of 1928–9 resulted in an unrelieved world depression lasting ten years. The shock waves surged east across the Atlantic: in June 1931 came the collapse of Austria’s leading bank; in August 1931 there were six million out of work in Germany; in January 1933 the volume of international trade was barely one-third of what it had been on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.
In Belfast grass grew on the slipways of Harland & Wolff. Queen’s Island did not witness the launch of a single ship between 10 December 1931 and 1 May 1934. Workman Clark, the ‘wee yard’, had no choice but to close down forever in January 1935.
Datsie-dotsie, miss the rope, you’re outie-o,
If you’d’ve been, where I have been,
You wouldn’t have been put outie-o,
All the money’s scarce, people out of workie-o,
Datsie-dotsie, miss the rope, you’re outie-o.
As the economic crisis worsened the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sir Crawford McCullagh, received a blizzard of letters desperately requesting help; for example, ‘I think I am not getting fair play.... As a Champion Side Drummer and the most known man in the procession I think I should get a start somewhere.’ A failed businessman also wrote: ‘I am both Orange and Freemason.... I am appealing to you Sir Crawford.... I am without food both Wife and myself for these past Four days.’
The feelings of frustration and anger eventually found expression in the Northern Ireland parliament. On 30 September 1932 Jack Beattie, Labour MP for Pottinger, leaped to his feet in the House of Commons and threw the mace on the floor, shouting: ‘I am going to put this out of action.... The House indulges in hypocrisy while there are starving thousands outside.’ In support, Tommy Henderson, Independent MP for Shankill, roared above the tumult: ‘What about the 78,000 unemployed who are starving?’
The insured unemployed got the dole, the ‘b’roo’, for six months only. Then they had to survive on ‘outdoor relief ’ provided by the Board of Guardians. This relief, which had to be earned by work on the roads, was the lowest for any city in the United Kingdom.
On Monday 3 October 1932 60,000 unemployed, Protestants and Catholics together, marched to a torch-lit rally at the Custom House. Their bands—careful to avoid party tunes—played the hit of the day, ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’. Protests, banned by the government, reached a climax on Tuesday 11 October. At Templemore Avenue, the Belfast Telegraph reported, police drew their batons:
They formed up in marching order, whilst at their lead rushed a man wearing a cap, shouting wildly, ‘Fall in and follow me’.... As the crowd continued to advance an order was given: ‘Draw-Ready-Charge!’ Men in the crowd went down like ninepins, and the rest fled helter skelter. [On the Lower Falls] constables wearing bandoliers filled with bullets and with rifles at the ready were speedily jumping out of caged cars.... Batons were useless and the police were compelled to fire.
On the Falls Road two men, one a Protestant and another a Catholic, fell mortally wounded. News of the fighting reached the Shankill. The Irish Press journalist James Kelly reported: ‘I remember a woman with a shawl come running to the people I was talking to. She shouted: “They’re kicking the shite out of the peelers up the Falls. Are youse going to let them down?”’ Shankill Protestants swiftly ran to the aid of the Lower Falls rioters.
Soon after these events the government, highly alarmed, forced the Belfast Guardians to announce sub
stantial increases in relief. Peace returned, but prosperity did not.
Episode 236
‘AN EMPTY POLITICAL FORMULA’
Kevin O’Higgins, the Irish Free State’s first Home Affairs minister, described the Provisional Government as
simply eight young men … standing amidst the ruins of one administration, with the foundations of another not yet laid, and with wild men screaming through the key-hole. No police was functioning through the country, no system of justice was operating, the wheels of the administration hung idle, battered out of recognition by the clash of rival jurisdictions.
That was in 1922. By the end of May 1923 the government had crushed the anti-Treaty forces. A heavy price had been paid: perhaps as many as 4,000 killed; a debt of £17 million; the cost of destruction, a further £30 million; and a legacy of bitterness for decades to come. The defeated republicans would not forget that seventy-seven of their number had been executed on the orders of military courts. And 12,000 republicans languished in jail, including in solitary confinement their leader, Eamon de Valera.
Could democracy survive in the Free State, the British Commonwealth’s youngest dominion? In central and eastern Europe democracy proved a tender flower: it had already been trampled underfoot in Italy, Poland, Hungary and Romania. In Dáil Éireann the Labour Party, the Farmers Party and independents played a crucial role in tending the young Irish plant, scrutinising the work of the government.