I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  Collins and Childers argued that various leading politicians had asserted that the dominions had the right to remain neutral, and Childers noted that the dominions had signed the Versailles Treaty separately. If they had the right to make peace, then ‘it surely followed they would have a voice in the making of war.’

  ‘The position is really this,’ Churchill explained. ‘If we set about a war of aggrandisement, or an unjust war, there would undoubtedly be considerable divergence of opinion amongst some of the Dominions. The British Empire can only go to war when a strong and united feeling in favour of war exists.

  ‘That is all in favour of our arguments,’ Collins insisted. ‘Assume the neutrality of Ireland. In a just war Ireland would in her own interest unite with you.’

  ‘The constitutional position is that war is made on the advice of the Dominion Ministers,’ Childers argued.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Churchill.

  ‘But it is developing to that,’ said Collins.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you engage in an unjust war would not all your safeguards regarding the Dominion go?’ Collins asked.

  ‘I think that is so,’ Churchill admitted

  ‘That is just the point,’ Collins said. ‘Good feelings are much better than good clauses.’

  But Churchill insisted that the defence situation had to be clarified. ‘Even if you were a Republic we would have to have a treaty covering this matter.’

  ‘I take it that you would agree that our coming into a war as a free associate would be preferable to our being forced to come in. But so long as our position does not interfere with your safety that should be sufficient. I think we could agree on that basis,’ Collins said.

  The issue of bases was about more than naval ports. The British also wanted air facilities, but they showed little interest in military bases though Worthington-Evans noted ‘the Curragh had always been a camp and was always a source of income to Ireland. Perhaps Ireland would not like the Curragh to go.’

  ‘But we will want it to train our territorial force,’ Collins insited.

  ‘It is really only a question of the defended ports,’ Worthington­Evans replied.

  ‘I cannot see what you people are afraid of,’ Collins added. ‘It is like a London policeman being afraid of a child.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Churchill, ‘but there are dangerous children who play with matches and fireworks.’

  On the issue of air bases, Collins noted that Irish territory was of no significance in the air war with Germany. Therefore he tried to manoeuvre Churchill into the position of arguing that such facilities would be necessary in the event of war between Britain and the United States.

  ‘What we want really is that we may have Irish ports from which our destroyers can leave to protect and convoy our food supplies at those places where trade routes converge and where the submarines operate most effectively. We want our aeroplanes to start from flat places in connection with these naval port to scour for submarines. I want to be quite frank – we do not want you to think that we want these ports as facilities for war with the United States. You are forcing me into a position, and I do not want you to say that you are prepared to agree to everything but that you broke because we wanted facilities for war with the States.’

  ‘The fact that you are taking over certain concessions from Ireland would give the impression that you are at present securing facilities for such a war,’ Collins argued.

  They ended the day’s discussion arguing about British re­cruiting stations in Ireland. Collins contended that Britain would not be able to recruit because Irish people would no longer join the British services. But Churchill argued that his government were only seeking that recruiting should not be proscribed. ‘We will be satisfied if there is no ban,’ Churchill concluded.

  The spotlight was very much on Collins at the talks. ‘Collins seems to have attracted everybody,’ Austen Chamberlain noted. Health minister Alfred Mond said at a military dinner on 17 October that Collins was a better general than any of the Eng­lish generals, much to the irritation of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.

  ‘He had certainly done a thing that none of us had done yet – that was that he had taken the “Prime Minister and the Cabinet by the throat and cowed them,’ Wilson said.

  ‘It was the British Army he cowed,’ Mond replied.

  ‘That’s a lie, and you know it is a lie and you will apologise,’ the field marshal insisted.

  Mond apologised. ‘The matters amicably settled, Mond went to work and cursed Lloyd George in a way that did me good to hear,’ Wilson continued in his diary. ‘Mond said that Lloyd George knew nothing, cared nothing except for himself, interfered with everybody, and made chaos of everything he touched!’

  The same morning Collins submitted a memorandum, written by Childers, and the subcommittee held a further meeting shortly after noon. ‘This able memorandum will shorten the task of this committee, in fact will bring it to an end. It amounts to a reasoned, measured, uncompromising refusal to meet us at any point,’ Churchill began. ‘The right to build an Irish navy is claimed. I regard this as a mortal blow.’

  Childers argued that Ireland, ‘an island with a maritime frontier, is to be denied responsibility for her own naval defence.’ This was, in essence, a denial of Ireland’s ‘existence as a nation’. But in the memorandum submitted to the British before the meeting, Childers conceded that the use of the requested facilities would be a convenience to the admiralty, but it would have ‘the grave disadvantage of curtailing the status of Ireland’. The memorandum added ‘an offensive fighting navy is not of course feasible or dreamed of,’ with the result that British apprehensions were not understandable, ‘for no Irish naval forces could be a menace to England’.

  ‘Ireland would be very unlikely to plan the building of sub­­­marines which are eminently an offensive weapon out of harmony with her purely defensive policy’, the memorandum continued. As far as Collins was concerned, however, this concession made nonsense of the Irish arguments. The right to have a navy was useless, if Ireland could not have submarines, seeing that the Irish people simply could not afford to build and sustain a navy of surface ships. Believing that attack was the best method of defence, Collins thought that submarines, which were comparatively inexpensive to build and cheap to run, were the country’s only hope of defending herself properly.

  In a speech in Ballinamuck on 17 February 1918, he had said that within three years of independence Ireland would be able to run ten submarines and ‘they would make England keep her Dreadnoughts and Super-Dreadnoughts in their own ports’. If Churchill had been aware of that speech he would, no doubt, have made use of it, but being a practical individual Collins must have appreciated the British thinking on the issue, in the light of his own arguments in Ballinamuck.

  By renouncing the right to have submarines, Childers effectively undermined the Irish case by conceding ‘a point that really mattered. This cannot be stated too emphatically,’ Collins later contended.

  He realised, of course, that concessions would have to be made on defence, or he would hardly have submitted the memorandum drawn up by Childers to the British in the first place. The difference between himself and Childers was that once Collins recognised the necessity to concede a point, he was prepared to carry the concession to its logical, or practical, conclusion. Yet, like one of those politicians he so despised, he now went through the motions of arguing the case.

  Collins afterwards told Childers that he thought the British might yet acknowledge Ireland’s right to neutrality. ‘I am more doubtful,’ Childers noted in letters to both de Valera and Brugha.

  Childers thought the British demands were motivated by political considerations, rather than strategic interests. ‘They took the line of evading the strategical argument as much as they could by harping on the political impossibility of neutrality, but we got them down to a certain amount of detail,’ Childers wrote to Brugha. ‘They have a poor strategical case.�
�

  8 - ‘There might be a plan for a boundary commission’

  Lloyd George and his colleagues were exploiting their own political difficulties. Griffith recognised that they were doing this ‘for negotiating purposes, but it would be a mistake for the people at home to think there are none.’

  ‘There is no doubt whatever that Lloyd George has the diehard crowd to fight,’ de Valera acknowledged, ‘but it is well that he should realise there are people in this country who are just as determined.’ Some Irish groups had actually been petitioning the delegation, much to the annoyance of Griffith.

  ‘I received a resolution from the Mayo Co. Council to the effect that we should break off negotiations unless the prisoners were released,’ he complained to de Valera. ‘So the whole national fight of the past five years is sought now to be put on the basis of an amnesty movement. I suppose there is nothing more behind these resolutions but stupidity and mawkishness, but it is bad to see any section of our people back to resolution mongering and seeking unwittingly to regard us as a political party whose policy they control rather than an established Government whose policy they uphold.’

  In the midst of all this Collins was deeply uneasy. ‘Trouble everywhere,’ he wrote to Kitty next day. ‘Last night I escaped all my own people and went for a drive alone.’ He was feeling lonely and made arrangements for her to spend some time in London with him.

  The negotiations were especially trying for Collins as he felt he had to act as a politician. ‘To be a politician,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘one needs to have the ability to say one thing and mean another; one needs to be abnormally successful at the “art” of twisting the truth. Can you wonder that I think and think yet never manage to achieve peace of mind?’ He was afraid that anything he might say would be twisted and used against him. ‘I do not in the least care for the false atmosphere of these discussions,’ he wrote.

  In this frame of mind he tended to become undiplomatically irritable. During one sub-committee meeting, Emmet Dalton recalled that Churchill was making a forceful case about Irish violations of the Truce.

  ‘Have we any answer to these?’ Collins scribbled a note to Dalton.

  ‘No.’

  Collins then listened for a while longer before suddenly be­coming exasperated and slamming his fist on the table. ‘For Christ sake,’ he said, ‘come to the point.’

  The loquacious Churchill was momentarily stunned speech­less. He sat there with an astonished expression on his face. At that point Collins erupted with an infectious laugh. Even Churchill joined in the laughter, thereby dissipating much of the force from his carefully prepared argument.

  Yet this was only a moment of light relief for Collins, who was otherwise deeply agitated. He was finding it necessary to hide his true feelings, not only from the British but also from some of his own colleagues, especially Childers, who was critical of the Irish delegation for conceding too much. Chiders was sending his own secret reports to the members of the cabinet in Dublin. It would not long before Collins would come to the conclusion that those in Dublin were the ‘real problem’ in the search for a settlement.

  The trade issue was discussed at the third plenary session of the conference on 13 October. Barton did most of the talking for the Irish side. He noted that the Dominions had complete control of their trade, and Ireland was therefore being put in an inferior position by the British demand for free trade between the two countries. ‘Why do you put us in this unfair position?’ he asked.

  ‘We propose a mutually binding and reciprocal treaty,’ Lloyd George explained.

  ‘I hear that Resolutions are on the way from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce contending that Ireland should have complete fiscal control,’ Barton said.

  ‘How can we protect ourselves against the danger of dump­ing?’ Collins asked.

  ‘You can produce more cheaply,’ Lloyd George replied. ‘If there is no Treaty there may be a demand here for protection against Irish cheap labour.’

  ‘We do not want to impose a tariff on Britain but we want the free development of our industrial life,’ Collins insisted.

  ‘I propose we shall both be bound,’ Lloyd George said.

  ‘I want most favoured nation treatment,’ Barton argued. ‘We won’t penalise you as regards other nations.’

  But Lloyd George wanted more. If Ireland was going to be free to impose a tariff, then Britain should also be free to do so also, even to introduce one first. ‘We bind ourselves to receive your stuff without tariffs,’ he said, ‘and you bind yourselves to receive our stuff without tariffs.’

  ‘It is not unreasonable to give us safeguards for our develop­ment?’ Collins asked. ‘I mentioned the case of dumping.’

  ‘Perhaps the Attorney General can find a formula for that,’ the prime minister said.

  ‘Take the trade for 1921 between Ireland and England as a basis and allow for fair increase,’ Collins argued.

  ‘I think we can go into the question of meeting the case of the crushing of an infant industry in its cradle,’ Chamberlain replied.

  There was no Ulster clause in Draft Treaty A, and the Irish delegation had to deal with the question at the fourth plenary session of the conference on 14 October, before the clause had arrived from Dublin. Griffith did most of the talking for the Irish side, with Collins and the others merely interjecting, while Lloyd George did most of the talking for the British.

  ‘If the British government stands aside and does not throw its force behind Ulster we will come to an agreement,’ Griffith argued, ‘but so long as they feel the British behind them there is non possumus. Northern Ireland is but a portion of Ulster. What you have done is as if some few counties in England had been separated from the rest. In the six county area there is a population of 1,200,000 of whom 800,000 are Protestant, 400,000 Catholics. In the whole of Ulster the population is 1,600,000, with Protestant 850,000, Catholics 750,000.’

  ‘You and Northern Ireland are faced with the coercion of one-third of its area,’ Collins told the British delegation. ‘Tyrone and Fermanagh, more than half Armagh, a great deal of Derry and a strip of Antrim will go with the authority they prefer and can put this N.E. corner into the position of Vienna. As to the use of force: if our people are attacked they will have to defend themselves.’

  The Ulster question had undermined Gladstone and it would have defeated his own government if he had not introduced partition, the prime minister contended. ‘Ulster was arming and would fight,’ he said. ‘We were powerless. It is no use ig­nor­ing facts however unpleasant they may be. The politician who thinks he can deal out abstract justice without reference to forces around him cannot govern.’ He had tried to persuade Craig and Carson to accept a united Ireland in 1916 but they refused.

  ‘They said their followers would desert them if they did,’ Lloyd George added. ‘It is a mistake to assume that the population of Ulster for the time being is opposed to partition. It is not. I am glad that de Valera has come to the conclusion we favoured that force is not a weapon you can use. It would break in your hands. We should have a terrible civil war and you would draw men from all parts into the vortex of the whirlpool. Mr Collins shakes his head. He knows Ireland. I know Great Britain and the Empire. It would resolve itself into a religious war. You do not want to begin your new life with a civil war which would leave you with despoliation in its train. Therefore I am glad that we are agreed that force is impossible.

  ‘Take the case of the Dominions,’ Lloyd George continued. ‘They all began with partition except New Zealand.’ Australia, Canada and South Africa were all partitioned. ‘Use persuasion and we will stand on one side.’ The prime minister repeatedly referred to de Valera’s assurance ruling out the use of force. He was content to allow Dublin induce Belfast to agree to unity by any peaceful means.

  ‘It is not intended to use force, not because Ulster would not be defeated in a fight,’ Collins said, ‘but because defeat would not settle the matter.’ He made it clear, how
ever, that some provisions would have to be made for many of the nationalists who had been included in Northern Ireland against their will.

  The historical province of Ulster consisted of nine counties, but the unionists might not have been able to rule the whole province, so it was partitioned, with Counties Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan being hived off to join the rest of the island. But the Catholic minority in the six counties was still much greater than the Protestant minority was in the island as a whole. Thus if the Protestants were entitled to partition, the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland had an even better case for further partition. The two largest counties in Northern Ireland – Fermanagh and Tyrone – actually had Roman Catholic majorities that wished to go with the rest of the island. In addition, the adjacent areas of south Down, south Armagh and the city of Derry (or Londonderry) had Catholic majorities. All of those had been included in Northern Ireland to give unionists the maximum area that they could safely control. Collins quoted Edward Carson as having said that ‘a strong Ulster of six counties could do far more than a weak tottering fabric of the whole nine counties.’

  ‘In order to persuade Ulster to come in,’ Lloyd George argued, ‘there is an advantage in her having a Catholic population. I think you will get Ulster into an Irish unit on agreed terms. We promise to stand aside and you will have not only our neutrality but our benevolent neutrality.’

  ‘We do not want to coerce them,’ Collins explained, ‘but we cannot allow a solid block who are against partition in the north of Antrim, through a part of Derry and parts of Armagh and Strangford Lough. If we are not going to coerce the N.E. corner, the N.E. corner must not be allowed to coerce.’ At this point he made what was, in the light of subsequent events, a particularly significant addition. ‘There might,’ he added, ‘be a plan for a boundary commission or for a local option, or whatever you may call it.’ This was the first time anyone mentioned a boundary commission.