I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  Although there was no mention of the crown in any of the partial draft treaties that de Valera gave to Childers and Chartres on 7 October, Chartres began working on a relationship consistent with External Association. During the first two weeks of the conference he drew up a couple of memoranda suggesting that the ‘The King could be recognised as the official head of the whole combination’. The Irish would recognise the crown as head of the External Association. ‘Freedom must be technical as well as substantial,’ Chartres argued. ‘There will be no Veto, no Viceroy, no Union flag. The King will have no concern, however technical, in Irish legislation, [and] not be the head, however shadowy, of the Irish Army.

  ‘As an external act of recognition Ireland should vote a modest annual amount to the Civil List,’ Chartres added. ‘It would be a sum voted annually by the Irish to the King, not as King of Ireland, or as any factor in the Government of Ireland, but by way of contribution in respect of those “affairs of agreed common concern” outside Ireland in which Ireland would be associated with the partnership of States over which the King reigns.’

  That weekend Collins returned to Dublin and pleaded with de Valera to go back to London with him, but the pres­ident refused on the grounds that there was no necessity at the time. He added, however, that he would go later if it could be shown that his presence was really required. In an undated letter writ­­ten to a friend during the negotiations, Collins alluded to his growing distrust of de Valera. ‘I was warned more times than I can recall about the ONE,’ he wrote. ‘And when I was caught for this delegation my immediate thought was of how easily I walked into the preparations. But having walked in I had to stay.’

  Childers sending reports to the members of the cabinet at home compounded his uneasiness. He was not just reporting but commenting on what was happening and even suggesting what he thought should happen, as well as consulting people outside the delegation. ‘Neutrality was brushed aside at the 1st session of the main conference. It was argued more reasonably at the informal Defence Conference,’ Childers wrote to de Valera. ‘We must put up a strong fight for neutrality.’

  What the plenipotentiaries should or should not do was not his call, though in fairness, it was essentially the role that de Valera envisaged for him. He was making observations that conflicted with the views of the leaders of the delegation. Collins described his reports as ‘masterpieces of half-statement, painting a picture far from the true state of things.’ For instance, he was reporting separately to Brugha on defence matters. Brugha had refused to be part of the delegation and Childers had no right to consult him off his own bat, even if it was only about defence over which Brugha was the responsible minister. Following the meeting with Admiral Beatty, Childers wrote to Brugha: ‘They claim the occupation of three ports but it looks as if they might propose that these should be under Irish maintenance and con­trol in peace time, subject to an agreement for facilities in them,’ he wrote. ‘In war they want access to all our coast. They also want coastal Air Station for anti-submarine work, but we have no details till Monday. This, of course, would mean their occupation of the soil in peacetime. We are contesting every point and keep the Neutrality solution in the foreground.’

  ‘Personally,’ Brugha replied next day, ‘if it were a case of war or peace over the leasing of even one port I would deliberate very deeply before I came to a decision.’

  Childers noted that his memorandum on defence submitted by Collins was initially treated as if it would lead to the break up of the conference, ‘but two hours of warm argument followed! At the end they asked us to bring up a formula which would meet our views and theirs,’ Childers wrote to Brugha on 18 October. ‘They evidently do not stand by theirs of the 17th which was sprung on us and was explained today to mean, among other things, that we were to be allowed no naval forces at all.’

  ‘There is nothing to be pessimistic about anyway as you people over there, no more than ourselves, are not likely at the finish to accept anything that would put us in an inferior posi­tion,’ Brugha responded. ‘Your memo means there is not going to be a settlement.’

  Collins understandably saw such correspondence as in­tolerable. He also surmised – correctly as it turned out – that Childers was also sending messages to de Valera, though a series of telegrams through third parties were little more than suggestions that an official report was on the way, or a request for an ack­nowledge­ment that a report been received by then.

  Griffith had detested Childers for years, and now Collins came to look on him as a kind of spy within the delegation. They therefore decided to eliminate him from the actual discussions by secretly having Eamonn Duggan suggest to Andy Cope that Lloyd George should invite the two Irish leaders to a private discussion after one of the plenary sessions of the conference. Cope and the assistant cabinet secretary Tom Jones were working in the background to help Lloyd George achieve an Irish settlement.

  The prime minister jumped at the opportunity of cutting out Childers, whom he considered a retarding influence. During the seventh plenary session of the conference, the Irish counter–proposals, presented on 24 October, were discussed in a general way, Childers only recorded two brief interjections by Collins, totalling a mere twenty-three words. The Big Fellow clearly felt inhibited in the presence of Childers and the others, so he let Griffith do most of the talking for him. There was no significant progress that day, except in the area of defence.

  The counter–proposals reiterated that the British offer did not even amount to dominion status, because of the unpre­cedented defence concessions being demanded, as well as fiscal demands that were not being made on the dominions. ‘We are to bear a financial responsibility for your Imperial debt which they do not bear,’ the Irish delegation asserted.

  They called on Britain ‘to renounce all claims to authority over Ireland and Irish affairs’ and in return, ‘Ireland will consent to adhere for all purposes of agreed common concern, to the League of Sovereign States associated and known as the British commonwealth of Nations.’ In relation to defence, Ireland would solemnly ‘bind herself to enter into no compact and to take no action nor permit any action to be taken inconsistent with the obligation of preserving her freedom and integrity.’ The British commonwealth, League of Nations and the United States of America ‘would be invited to join that guarantee’. If they declined, ‘we propose that the question of our naval defence should be discussed and adjusted between the Imperial Conference and the representatives of Ireland.’

  ‘Now as to “agreed common concern”, what do you mean by that?’ Lloyd George asked.

  ‘War and peace, trade, all the large issues,’ Griffith explained. ‘It is a matter of drafting.’

  ‘More or less, the same matter as we have of common con­­cern with the Empire,’ the prime minister observed. ‘What do you exclude?’

  ‘I would not like to say at this moment,’ Griffith replied.

  ‘Great Britain and the dominions discuss defence of the empire at Imperial Conferences,’ the prime minister said. ‘Would you regard that a matter of common concern?”

  ‘Yes,’ replied Griffith. But he added that if ‘Canada had trouble with another country we might not consider it our con­cern.’

  The Irish document did not mention neutrality, but the proposals amounted to seeking an international guarantee of Ireland’s permanent neutrality, if possible. There was no mention either of the common citizenship of Britain and the dominions. Instead, the Irish proposed ‘mutual agreements in regard to reciprocity of civil rights.”

  ‘Would you be British subjects or foreigners?” the prime minister asked.

  ‘We would be Irish subjects,’ Griffith said. ‘We would ass­ume that Irishmen in England and Englishmen in Ireland would have the same rights. The position would be the same as at present. We would make no change and expect you not to make a change. Actually it would be status quo.’

  ‘Our experts think it impossible to defend the main stream of commerce unless
we can defend ourselves against submarines, and for that end have certain facilities in your harbours,’ Birkenhead said. If these facilities were provided, neutrality would be ‘reduced to a shadow – a meaningless trophy which would give you nothing.’

  ‘In principle we make no objection to taking those safeguards which are necessary to your security,’ Griffith explained. ‘We accept the principle that your security should be looked after, though the working out of the details might be very difficult.’

  ‘Britain had won on defence,’ Frank Pakenham (later Lord Longford) declared in Peace by Ordeal. If this was so, they really won before the negotiations began, because de Valera had long ago acknowledged that Ireland would accommodate Britain’s legitimate security needs. That had been at the very heart of his controversial Westminster Gazette interview in February 1920, and he had reaffirmed it just before his arrest in June in a twenty-minute interview with Chris O’Sullivan for an Australian syndicate headed by Keith Murdoch, the father of Rupert Murdoch. O’Sullivan asked what attitude the Irish would adopt, if there were a settlement and Britain subsequently became involved in a war.

  ‘In that event Britain would have the right to throw her troops across Ireland’ to repel an attack, de Valera replied.

  As a courtesy O’Sullivan showed his report to Childers, who had arranged the interview. Childers was appalled at the report.

  What was wrong with it? O’Sullivan asked.

  ‘Sometimes de Valera doesn’t appreciate fully what “Republic” means,’ Childers replied. ‘No Republic could agree in advance to another power throwing troops across its territory. This commits us to something that could not be tolerated. I cannot let it go,’ he said. ‘Cancel it.’

  Childers may have been able to block the president in June, but he had very little influence following Griffith’s acceptance of the principle that Ireland would provide Britain with defence facilities. Of course, it did not mean that the right to neutrality was being abandoned; it still remained to work out the details of the necessary defence concessions.

  Affording facilities to Britain ‘would entitle other nations with whom we were at war to make you an enemy,’ Birkenhead argued.

  Collins admitted this. ‘A country refusing to recognise Ireland’s neutrality would make Ireland an enemy,’ he said. Hence the British should not worry about Irish neutrality.

  ‘They contemplate a situation where they would not auto­matically be at war,’ Chamberlain observed when the British delegates withdrew to talk among themselves in Frances Steven­son’s office.

  ‘They will give way on that,’ Birkenhead pre­­­dicted.

  Members of the British delegation generally believed that Griffith’s answers marked an important advance in the negotiations. But Birkenhead said that the answers ‘have shaken me’. He thought Lloyd George and Chamberlain should make it plain to Griffith and Collins that the crown had to be accepted as ‘we cannot possibly have agreement without that’.

  ‘They have some idea of a president,’ Churchill noted.

  Before going to Downing Street on 24 October the Irish delegation was informed that Lloyd George and Chamberlain wished to meet with Griffith and Collins for about ten minutes after that day’s conference meeting. Thereafter the conference never met again in full session. Instead there were twenty-three informal sub-conference meetings before the signing of the Treaty.

  Barton was given to believe by Griffith that ‘Lloyd George was conscious of what he thought must be obvious to us also namely that the negotiations were making no material progress. He explained that their cabinet was a coalition and that its members represented different parties with divergent political views. He held that the conferences with our delegation were too large for the interchange of views and the discussion of matters vital to a final settlement. The impression conveyed was the Lloyd George’s difficulty was rather with his own colleagues than with us and that if we wanted to make any progress at all we must assist him to get rid of his recalcitrants by agreeing to a reduction of members during two or three sub-conferences.’

  ‘We discussed this proposition among ourselves,’ Barton continued. ‘Griffith was very anxious to agree to it and none of us had any reasons for opposing him. It was a temporary expedient. It was not suggested that these meeting should become stereotyped. So Duffy and I agreed.’

  There were no secretaries to take notes at those meetings. Childers and Chartres attended one meeting each, but that was in their capacity as advisors. Griffith attended twenty meetings. Collins was at nineteen; three of the four meetings that he missed were held during his frequent visits to Dublin. Barton attended four sub-conference meetings, and Gavan Duffy and Duggan two each.

  Barton and Gavan Duffy quickly became disillusioned at their virtual exclusion from the conference talks. ‘We were led to understand that the difficult people were Hamar Greenwood and Worthington-Evans,’ Barton noted. Although Collins despised Greenwood, the latter was the most sympathetic of the British delegates towards External Association. As a Canadian he understood the Irish desire to ensure that they had the full freedoms enjoyed by Canada.

  Barton quickly concluded that the British argument for the rationalisation of the conference was specious. He did not suspect his colleagues were behind the whole thing at first. ‘We all thought more progress might be made in this way,’ he explained. ‘Gavan Duffy and I had not at that stage lost confidence in our colleagues!’

  ‘The reasons given for the smaller conference were false is now obvious to me,’ Barton later wrote, ‘and I have grave doubts as to whether the suggestion emanated from the English in the first place at all.’ Of course, he was right. Duggan said he had been told by Cope that the prime minister wished to arrange the meeting, but it was Duggan who suggested to Cope, on behalf of Collins, that Lloyd George should ask for this meeting with Griffith and Collins. Technically Duggan was telling the truth when he said that the British requested the meeting. He just did not bother to mention that he had asked them to request it.

  As the British delegates were conferring amongst them­selves Barton, Duggan, Gavan Duffy, and the two secre­taries – Childers and Chartres – were led to another room while Griffith and Collins were asked to remain in the cabinet room for the private meeting with the prime minister and Chamberlain.

  In his account of the day’s discussions Griffith merely reported that Collins and himself ‘were asked to see Lloyd George and Chamberlain this evening.’ It was actually Griffith and Collins who conspired to bring about the rationalisation of the conference, mainly in order to exclude Childers. But Barton thought it was a ploy to cut out Duffy and himself. ‘I believe that this suggestion was the thin end of the wedge to get rid of us both,’ he wrote. Of the four sub-conferences to which he was invited, three were in the final thirty-six hours of the conference. In the following days they would become growingly suspicious, especially of Duggan’s meetings with Cope.

  ‘Duggan was practically a cipher throughout the negotiations and acted as an echo to Collins but there was a constant corres­pondence by meetings between Cope and Duggan,’ Barton ex­plained. ‘Duffy and I soon became suspicious that our leaders were giving away more than we were willing to give away and the delegation took sides against itself.’

  ‘From the moment Griffith and Collins met Lloyd George and Chamberlain alone their power to resist was weakened,’ Barton wrote in 1924. ‘They became almost pro-British in their arguments with us and Duffy and I often felt that we had to fight them first and the English afterwards. We grew personally anti–pathetic to one another and the cleavage showed itself in numerous ways. Duffy and I felt that we were kept deliberately in the dark and that another channel of communications over which we had no control was opening up by clandestine meetings between Duggan and Alfred Cope.’

  Of course, at the same time Griffith and Collins felt that they had gone to London to negotiate and compromise, not make a hopeless stand. They likewise felt that they had to struggle w
ith their own colleagues within the delegation first before confronting the British. It was all part of the tug-of-war that de Valera envisaged.

  10 - ‘The oath – that’s a pretty big pill’

  The first sub-conference meeting was supposed to be for only ten minutes but it lasted about an hour and a half and that was longer than the last plenary session, which preceded it. The prime minister and Chamberlain briefed their colleagues afterwards.

  ‘Griffith is better than Collins,’ Lloyd George said. As representatives of a republic Griffith had said they could not accept the crown, but if everything else was satisfactory, he would undertake to recommend it.

  ‘If we came to an agreement on all other points,’ Griffith wrote to de Valera that evening, ‘I could recommend some form of association with the Crown.’

  Collins was not sure what acceptance of the crown entailed. ‘What does it involve?’ he asked.

  ‘The oath of allegiance,’ Lloyd George replied.

  ‘That’s a pretty big pill,’ said Collins. ‘Cannot we have an oath to the constitution?’

  Lloyd George believed at this stage that the Irish would accept the crown, if they were satisfied on other matters, but Chamberlain thought the crown would be the real difficulty, because the Irish seemed to be thinking of ‘a republic within the Empire’.

  Next afternoon when he and Collins met Chamberlin and Attorney General Gordon Hewart, Griffith emphasised that he could only recommend acceptance of the crown, if unity were assured. Chamberlain asked if it would be easier to accept the six county set up, if Stormont agreed to come under the Dublin Parliament. No, they replied. Why would the British not ‘agree to a County Option?’

  Chamberlain told his colleagues afterwards that he said that they ‘could not put a more difficult question’. Birkenhead and Churchill realised that they were in a very difficult position on the Ulster question. ‘We can’t give way on six counties,’ Churchill argued. ‘We are not free agents; we can do our best to include Six in larger Parliament plus autonomy. We could press later to hold autonomy for Six from them instead of from us.’