I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  ‘Must we not admit that the Celts never were Republicans and have no native word for such an idea!’ Lloyd George ex­claimed triumphantly. He was content that Saorstát Éireann could be used in any agreement, provided the literal translation – Irish Free State – was used. He promised to send settlement proposals to de Valera before their next meeting.

  There was widespread press speculation at this stage about de Valera’s willingness to compromise, which was hardly surprising after he had spent six months making conciliatory public statements. Le Matin, the Paris newspaper now quoted him as having supposedly said he would drop the word republic provided Ireland was given ‘the substantial equivalent’ to it. This was no doubt a leak inspired by somebody close to the talks, but de Valera denied making the statement or anything like it. ‘The press give the impression that I have been making compromise demands,’ he said. ‘I have made no demands but one – the only one I am entitled to make – that the self-determination of the Irish nation be recognised.’

  Sir James Craig, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, jumped on this to proclaim that the six counties had already exercised a right of self-determination to separate from the rest of the island and were not therefore involved in the London talks. ‘It now merely remains for de Valera and the British people to come to terms regarding the area outside of that which I am Prime Minister,’ Craig said.

  The formal British proposals, which were delivered to the Irish delegation on the night of 20 July, offered the twenty-six counties a form of dominion status, limited by defence restrictions curtailing the size of the Irish army, prohibiting a navy, and according Britain the right to obtain whatever military or naval facilities might be desired in time of a war or international crisis. The proposals also included an insistence on free trade between Britain and Ireland, as well as a stipulation that the new Irish state should ‘allow for full recognition of the existing powers and privileges of the parliament of Northern Ireland, which cannot be abrogated except by their own consent.’

  That day Collins returned to Clonakilty. He reported that the local Black and Tans were very provocative and he essentially warned them off. ‘I had it conveyed to them that, if they were on the streets when I got out, they would be regarded as breaking the Truce,’ He added that they were not there ‘a few minutes afterwards’.

  Collins did not yet know what was in the British offer but ‘in the final result,’ he wrote to de Valera, ‘it would be worthwhile stipulating that, no matter how bad the terms are, they would be submitted to a full meeting. You know my object in this.’ His aim, of course, was to be in a position to demand the release of all members of the Dáil so that the offer could be properly considered.

  On discussing the British terms with Lloyd George next day, de Valera indicated a willingness to accept unfettered dominion status, as he had in his discussion with Smuts a fortnight earlier in Dublin and with various journalists earlier in the year, but he complained that the latest proposals did not even amount to an offer of dominions status, because the restrictive conditions meant that Ireland would have an inferior status to existing dominions like Canada and South Africa.

  ‘The British Dominions have been conceded to them all the rights that Irish Republicans demand,’ de Valera had told Manchester Guardian back in February 1921. ‘It is obvious that if these rights were not being denied to us we would not be engaged in the present struggle.’

  Now he told Lloyd George that he would agree to ‘the status of a dominion sans phrase, on condition that Northern Ireland would agree to be represented within the all-Ireland parliament,’ according to the prime minister. ‘Otherwise, de Valera insisted that the only alternative was for the twenty-six counties to be a republic.’

  ‘This means war,’ Lloyd George warned.

  But de Valera was not intimidated. He became quite dis­missive of the British proposals. At one point he actually said he would not ‘be seen taking these things home’. That stunned the prime minister, who threatened to publish the proposals, even though it had earlier been agreed that neither side would do so without the prior approval of the other.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give me a considered reply?’ Lloyd George asked.

  ‘I’ll give you a considered reply if you keep your part of the bargain.’ If the British desired counter proposals in the form of a considered reply, they would have to wait for them and keep their own offer secret in the meantime. With that de Valera departed, leaving the British document behind him. He later sent word to Downing Street to forward the proposals to him in Dublin. In effect, he not only called Lloyd George’s bluff but also made good his own threat not to be seen carrying the proposals home with him.

  The British had used Smuts to sound out de Valera before the Truce, and now the Long Fellow used the South African prime minister to reinforce his rejection of the British terms. ‘I was greatly disappointed with the British government’s proposals,’ de Valera wrote to Smuts. ‘They seem quite unable to understand the temper of our people, or appear not to have the will to realise the opportunity that is now presented to them.’

  While de Valera was in London, Collins had engaged in an amount of posturing, and the Long Fellow promptly demon­strated that he was not about to allow himself to be upstaged. Upon his return to Dublin he spoke briefly at a reception at the Mansion House.

  ‘This is not the time for talk,’ de Valera told the gathering. ‘We have learned one magnificent lesson in the last couple of years, and that is that it is by acts, and not talk, that a nation will achieve its freedom.’ The gathering cheered. ‘I do not want, therefore, to begin a bad example by starting speech-making. If we act in the future as we have acted in the last couple of years, we will never have to talk about freedom, for we will have it.’

  ‘There is, I fear, little chance of his counter-proposals being satisfactory,’ Lloyd George wrote to King George V, ‘but I am absolutely confident that we shall have public opinion overwhelmingly upon our side throughout the Empire and even in the United States when our proposals are published.’

  The British proposals were a significant advance on anything previously offered to Ireland, so de Valera had to thread carefully. Unless the Irish people were given some alternative other than ‘continuing the war for maintenance of the Republic,’ he later admitted, ‘I felt certain that the majority of the people would be weaned from us.’ Hence he had to come up with an alternative for which the Irish people would be prepared to fight.

  2 - ‘Free to consider every method’

  The Dáil cabinet gathered in a front room of the Mansion House. De Valera sat at the head of a table facing Dawson Street, while Cathal Brugha was at the foot of the table. Arthur Griffith was on the president’s left with Joe McDonagh beside him, while Austin Stack, Robert Barton and Erskine Childers sat on a lounge chair withdrawn from the table, with Eoin Mac Neill next on a chair partly facing the president. Richard Mulcahy came next, while J. J. O’Kelly (Sceilg) and Countess Markievicz sat behind Brugha on another lounge chair facing de Valera, and Collins, who came in late, sat partially facing the president on a seat alongside Kevin O’Higgins. Then came Ernest Blythe, W. T. Cosgrave and Count Plunkett sitting well back from the table. Diarmuid O’Hegarty, the cabinet secretary, sat between them and de Valera.

  De Valera hoped to persuade all concerned to agree to a settlement in which Britain would acknowledge Ireland’s freedom and the Irish people would then freely accept the same de facto status as the dominions, without formally being a member of the British commonwealth. He had not yet worked this out fully in his own mind when he presented his idea to the cabinet. He had not even thought of a name for the plan.

  It was a thorny meeting at which ‘elements of friction were already manifest’, according to J. J. O’Kelly, the minister for education. Things were not helped by de Valera’s poor chairmanship. His cabinet meetings lacked discipline. Instead of considering one thing at a time, he tended to deal with everything together in the hope o
f reaching a general consensus. This would have been extremely difficult at the best of times, but it was almost impossible in a cabinet of eleven headstrong ministers, who were often joined by obstinate understudies. As a result the discussions tended to ramble and they were often quite inconclusive. Ministers frequently came away with conflicting opinions about the outcome of discussions.

  Griffith and W. T. Cosgrave said the British offer was better than they had expected and MacNeill welcomed it. ‘You all know my opinion,’ said Collins, who nevertheless described the British proposals as ‘a step forward’, but Stack was very critical. Childers was also hostile. O’Kelly suggested that relevant docu­ments should be circulated so that everyone could give the issues more consideration, and Constance Markievicz, the minister for labour, agreed with him.

  Brugha sat silently until de Valera asked him for his views after everyone else had spoken. A normally quiet, reserved man, he nevertheless had definite views and did not be­lieve in mincing words. Resolute and utterly fearless, he was prone to obstinacy. When he spoke everybody knew exactly where he stood.

  ‘I haven’t much to add,’ Brugha now said, looking straight at de Valera, ‘except to say how glad I am that it has been sug­gested that we circulate these documents and consider them fully before we meet again, if for no other reason than to give you and the great masters of English you keep at your elbow an opportunity of extricating us from the morass in which ye have landed us.’

  ‘We have done our best,’ de Valera replied, ‘and I have never undertaken to do more than my best.’

  ‘We have proclaimed a Republic in arms,’ Brugha reminded him. ‘It has been ratified by the votes of the people, and we have sworn to defend it with our lives.’

  ‘The oath never conveyed any more to me than to do my best in whatever circumstances might arise.’

  ‘You have accepted a position of authority and responsibility in the Government of the Republic,’ Brugha said striking the table with his fist, ‘and you will discharge the duties of that office as they have been defined. I do not want ever again to hear anything else from you.’

  The meeting adjourned shortly afterwards and did not resume until two days later. By this time de Valera had decided to call his plan, External Association. He presented his colleagues with a memorandum arguing that ‘the Irish people would be ready to attach themselves as an external associate to that partial league known as the British commonwealth of Nations.’ With this he overcame Brugha’s objections, and the members of the government unanimously agreed that External Association would be acceptable.

  The president sought to use the South African Premier Smuts to explain his position to the British. ‘Unless the North East comes in on some reasonable basis no further progress can be made,’ he wrote. ‘An Ireland in fragments nobody cares about. A unified Ireland can only be happy or prosperous.’ He added that the country could readily become friendly with the British commonwealth and Britain itself, ‘but it is only in freedom that friendship could come,’ he said. ‘To the principle of national self-determination our people are devotedly attached, for they recognise in it a principle vital to the peace of the world. The Republic is the expression of that principle in their own regard. These then they will not readily abandon, but they are prepared to make great sacrifices in other directions.’

  In the light of what subsequently happened, de Valera added a very pertinent observation. ‘The questions of procedure and form as distinguished from substance are very important, as I pointed out to you,’ he wrote. ‘The British do not seem to realise this at all.’

  He had already indicated to both Smuts and Lloyd George that he was prepared to accept the real status of a British dominion, but this did not mean that he would accept dominion status – this was what he meant by the distinction between form and substance. In form the dominions were subject to the British crown, but they were substantially independent. In accordance with External Association, Ireland would be formally independent but it would assume the same substantial responsibilities of the dominions. He was hoping that Smuts would try to influence the British, but the South African leader decided to return home.

  Although Collins had been showing moderation within the government, he remained uncompromising in public. Indeed he made another of his unauthorised pronouncements on 8 August when the British announced the release of all members of the Dáil with the exception of MacEoin. Without consulting with the president, Collins issued a statement warning ‘there can and will be, no meeting of Dáil Éireann unless and until Commandant Seán MacEoin is released. The refusal to release him appears to indicate a desire on the part of the British govern­­ment to terminate the Truce.’ It was a gross piece of arrogance to issue such a statement without even consulting the president.

  De Valera said he was hoping to work quietly behind the scenes, believing it would be easier to secure the prisoner’s release if the British were not forced to back down publicly, but Collins’ intervention destroyed any chance of this. The president therefore declared publicly that he could ‘not accept responsibility for proceeding further in the negotiations’ unless MacEoin was freed. The British cabinet promptly backed down and released him.

  De Valera essentially acted with the same disregard for the Dáil that Collins displayed towards him. In view of the fuss kicked up over the MacEoin affair, it was ironic that de Valera did not bother to consult the Dáil before formally rejecting the British offer. ‘On the occasion of our last interview,’ he wrote to Lloyd George on 10 August 1921, ‘I gave it as my judgment that Dáil Éireann could not and the Irish people would not accept the proposals of your Government. I now confirm that judgment.’ But the Dáil had not even met, and did not convene until the following week when it was presented with a fait accompli and simply asked to endorse this reply.

  At the time the Dáil was composed largely of people selected by the leadership of Sinn Féin to represent the party. Since independent thinkers could be difficult to handle, the individuals selected were those who would give unquestioning support to party leaders. As a result all initiative was invariably left in the hands of the few recognised leaders. The general body of the Dáil approved decisions rather blindly and took much for granted. As one member observed, ‘nothing could well be less democratic in practice than the government which we recognised as the government of the Irish Republic.’

  In his letter to the prime minister, de Valera stated that the restrictive conditions proposed for Ireland were unheard of in the case of the dominions. ‘A certain treaty of free association with the British commonwealth group, as with a partial league of nations, we would be ready to recommend,’ he wrote, ‘had we an assurance that the entry of the nation as a whole in such an association would secure it the allegiance of the present dissenting minority, to meet whose sentiments alone this step could be contemplated.’ The Irish factions would settle partition among themselves without resorting to force, if the British would just stand aside. ‘We agree with you,’ he added, ‘‘that no common action can be secure by force”.’

  Back in 1918 de Valera had concluded that the British undermined the Irish Convention by assuring Ulster Unionists that they would not be coerced. Bolstered by the assurance, unionists insisted on having their own way and, when the nationalists balked, the convention inevitably ended in failure. ‘It was evident to us,’ de Valera wrote shortly after the convention, that ‘with the “coercion-of-Ulster is unthinkable” guarantee, the unionists would solidly maintain their original position.’ Thus when he gave Lloyd George a similar assurance on 10 August 1921, he was obviously accepting that some form of partition would be a part of any settlement.

  Following de Valera’s formal rejection of their proposals on 10 August, the British decided to publish their offer ‘because of the importance of ranging on the side of our proposals all sane opinion, not merely in this country and in Ireland, but throughout the whole world.’ Austen Chamberlain, the Conservative leader, was sure that
the government would have popular support. ‘I feel confident that nothing but the most extreme opinion will support an attitude of refusal on their part,’ he noted.

  The reaction of the British press justified his optimism, and the cabinet was satisfied. The Times noted that the terms repre­sented ‘the extreme limit of concession to which the British people is likely to allow this Government or, indeed, any other British Government, to go’, while the Daily Telegraph observed that the offer might even be too generous, ‘If Lloyd George should appeal to the country on the basis of the published cor­respondence between de Valera and himself and General Smuts, he will win hands down,’ the New Statesman concluded. ‘And he will gain a mandate.’

  The Dáil convened in the Round Room of the Mansion House on the morning of 16 August 1921. The hall was crammed as de Valera entered ceremoniously, followed by the rest of his ministry in Indian file. The gathering rose to give them a rapturous welcome.

  The president sat facing the general body as the speaker read out the republican oath in Irish, allowing the deputies to repeat it after him. For some, including de Valera, it was the first time they took the oath, obliging them to ‘support and defend the Irish Republic, which is Dáil Éireann, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’

  ‘For many of the press this would be their first glimpse of Collins. Bertie Smyllie of The Irish Times remembered the previous October when he was sitting in a Dublin restaurant with a friend who seemed to know everybody. ‘Suddenly I notice that my companion had turned very pale.’

  ‘Don’t look round yet,’ his friend whispered, ‘Michael Collins has just come in.’