I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  ‘I rather agree with Winston,’ Birkenhead said. ‘Our position re Six Counties is an impossible one if these men want to settle, as they do.’

  ‘I don’t see how Ulster is damnified,’ Churchill said. ‘She gets her own protection, an effective share in the Southern Parliament and protection for the Southern Unionists.’

  ‘If they accept all subject to unity we are in a position to go to Craig,’ Lloyd George argued. ‘If they don’t, the break is not on Ulster. My proposal is to put Ulster on one side and to ask S[inn] F[éin] for their views in writing.’

  ‘I think it conceivable that if they could agree with Craig on unity,’ Chamberlain said, ‘they would accept the Six Counties.’

  When Griffith talked about ‘some form of association with the Crown’, he was not necessarily talking about allegiance, as Chamberlain clearly realised. Griffith was thinking on lines being advocated by John Chartres, but de Valera assumed he was referring to allegiance. When the Dublin-based members of the cabinet met to consider the report, the president asked whether anyone present would be willing to give allegiance to the British crown. All answered in the negative, including Kevin O’Higgins.

  De Valera therefore warned the delegation that agreeing to allegiance was out of the question. ‘If war is the alternative we can only face it,’ he wrote, ‘and I think that the sooner the other side is made to recognise it, the better.’

  Griffith and Collins were furious. They considered the warning an unjustifiable interference with their powers. De Valera had been giving somewhat vacuous advice since the start of the conference, suggesting they do something without specifying what they should do. ‘I note that LG is just covering again the ground he covered with me,’ the president wrote to Griffith after just the first day of the conference, for instance. ‘You will have to pick him up soon, I fear, on this “further than this we can’t go” stunt.’

  ‘The Ulster question should be pushed ahead at once,’ he wrote to Griffith on 25 October, and in the same letter he suggested that ‘the big question should be put to them at once’.

  ‘The main thing now it seems to us is to clinch with them on the “Ulster” question without delay and get the basis for representation in an all-Ireland Parliament agreed upon definitely,” de Valera wrote next day. And after that, the “make or break” question.’

  He had not provided the delegation with the Ulster clause for Draft Treaty A until after the issue had been first discussed at the conference, and when the delegation asked for advice on the crown, none was forthcoming. Yet when they took one of the courses outlined by Childers, he admonished them.

  Griffith drafted a strong letter of protest and insisted that the whole delegation sign it. Barton, who considered the fuss a mere ‘storm in a tea cup’, initially refused to sign, as did Duffy. Collins complained that those in Dublin were attempting to put him in the wrong by trying to ‘get me to do the dirty work for them.’

  ‘Unless the Cabinet at home left our hands free,’ Griffith said, according to Barton, ‘he would go home, and it was largely to gain time and learn something more about the matter that Duffy and I signed it.’

  ‘Collins was still very angry and said he would not sign the letter, but return home,’ Barton continued. ‘Duffy and I said that if Collins was not going to sign it, certainly we would not, for it would then look as tho’ we were all willing to give allegiance while Collins refused.’

  Eventually Griffith persuaded Collins to make his protest by signing the letter, instead of returning home. Barton, puzzled at ‘what was the cause of Collins’ extraordinary outburst’, noted in the light of what he learned later that ‘Collins feared he was being led into a trap by Brugha and Stack. That he was in some way to be committed to a compromise and discredited.’

  ‘We strongly resent, in the position in which we are placed,’ Griffith wrote in the letter signed by the delegation, which protested against ‘this interference with our powers’. Although the instructions committed the delegation to refer back to the cabinet before signing any agreement, the powers given to the delegates imposed no limits on the fullest form of discussion, ‘Obviously,’ the delegation continued, ‘any form of association necessitates discussion of recognition in some form or another of the head of the association.’

  De Valera was stunned by the tone of the letter. ‘There is ob­­viously a misunderstanding,’ he replied. ‘There can be no question of tying the hands of the plenipotentiaries beyond the extent to which they are tied by their original instructions. These memos of mine, except I explicitly state otherwise, are nothing more than an attempt to keep you in touch with the views of the cabinet here on the various points as they arise. I think it most important that you should be kept aware of these views.’

  The president soon came to appreciate that a form of recognition of the crown advocated by Chartres was compatible with External Association. He enthusiastically endorsed the idea and eventually persuaded Brugha and Stack to agree to recognise the King as head of an association to which Ireland would be externally linked.

  Before allowing his name to go forward for re-election as president in August de Valera had stressed that no road to a peace settlement was being barred. But in an address to the Sinn Féin Árd Fheis (Convention) on 28 October he announced before his re-election as president of the party, that one road was barred and there were barriers on others. Ireland’s Representatives would never call upon the people to swear allegiance to the English King, he said, and they might therefore have to call upon them to face the ‘abomination of persecution’ if a settlement could not be agreed in London.

  ‘The problem is to devise a scheme that will not detract from Irish freedom,’ he told the Árd Fheis. ‘They may come back having found what seems to them a way and recommend it to us. When they come we in the Cabinet will have to decide our policy with respect to the scheme, Dáil Éireann will then have to consider it. What may happen I am not able to judge, but I am anxious that you should realise the difficulties that are in the way, and the fact that the best people might legitimately differ on such a scheme. The worst thing that could happen would be that we should not be tolerant of honest differences of opinion. I believe that if such difference of opinion arose and were carried to the country it would mean disaster for our hopes.

  ‘One question, the allegiance question, is closed from our point of view,’ he said, winding up his address. ‘The question of some form of association with the States of the British Empire is open. There is no reason why this nation should not associate itself with other nations provided the association was one a self-respecting nation might enter, and that it was not against our interests to do so. The question of defence is partially open. We have never denied that, if the rights of other people should conflict with ours, it was a question of adjusting our respective rights. We will not, however, ever take the view that English interest may over-ride our rights.’

  Some of those in Dublin were tending to under-estimate the weakness of Lloyd George’s political position. His government had presided over victory in the First World War, and the coalition enjoyed the largest parliamentary majority in history, but his own party had been hammered in the 1918 general election and was a distinct minority within the coalition, while his unionist coalition partners enjoyed a comfortable overall majority. In the coming days there would be two separate challenges to the government – one, a backbench revolt in the House of Commons, and the other at the Unionist Party Conference in Liverpool.

  Many Conservatives, or unionists as they were more com­monly called at the time, were anxious to withdraw their party’s support of the coalition and set up a government of their own. unionist diehards, led by Colonel John Gretton and Captain Charles C. Craig, a brother of prime minister Sir James Craig of Northern Ireland, tabled a motion of censure against the government over its Irish policy. The challenges were not something that could be dismissed lightly, especially as there was an obvious alternative leader waiting in th
e wings. In March 1921 Andrew Bonar Law had stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party after ten years, and he resigned from the cabinet for health reasons, but his health had since improved. He was ready to take up where he had left off. He had always been a particularly strong supporter of Irish unionists. He could have challenged Lloyd George for the position of prime minister in 1916, but chose to support the Welshman instead. Born in 1858 in New Brunswick in what would later become Canada, he was the son of a Coleraine-born Presbyterian preacher. Bonar moved to Glasgow as a twelve-year-old to complete his education. He was elected to parliament in 1900 and became leader of the Conservative Party in 1911. One of the strongest opponents of Home Rule, he described ‘fair play’ for Ulster unionists as one of his two great political passions, with the result that the Conservative dissidents had an obvious candidate for the leadership in him. He had the experience and political stature to form a government. Indeed, within twelve months he and the Conservatives would oust Lloyd George.

  With the censure vote due to be taken on 31 October 1921, Lloyd George was anxious for a distinct indication from the Irish delegation that a settlement was possible to keep most of the Conservatives in line. Cope suggested to Duggan that he call Tom Jones to arrange a meeting with the prime minister for Griffith and Collins. The meeting was duly arranged for Churchill’s home, where the prime minister was due to dine on the eve of the censure motion.

  Many people have exaggerated Churchill’s role in the nego­tiations. He did not play a major part, other than in matters related to defence, which were essentially resolved during the plenary sessions. He only attended four of the sub-conference meetings – the one at his home and the other three in the last thirty-six hours before the Treaty was signed. None of his own team really trusted him. Even his Liberal colleague, Lloyd George, only included him in the delegation because he was too dangerous to leave out.

  Churchill stated that there was always ‘a certain gulf’ be­­tween himself and Collins, who looked on him as a political animal who would ‘sacrifice all for political gain’. Describing Churchill as ‘inclined to be bombastic’ and ‘full of ex-officer jingo,’ Collins had his own reservations. ‘Don’t actually trust him,’ he wrote. Had he got on very well with Collins, Churchill would undoubtedly have played a much greater role in the actual negotiations.

  While Griffith was upstairs with Lloyd George, Churchill and Birkenhead remained down stairs with Collins. ‘He was in his most difficult mood, full of reproach and defiance,’ according to Churchill. ‘It was very easy for everyone to lose his temper.’

  ‘You hunted me night and day,’ Collins exclaimed. ‘You put a price on my head!’

  ‘Wait a minute, you are not the only one,’ said Churchill, who took down a framed copy of a reward notice for his re­capture after he had escaped from the Boers during the Boer War some twenty years earlier. ‘At any rate it was a good price -£5,000. Look at me -£25 dead or alive. How would you like that?’

  ‘He read the paper, and as he took it in he broke into a hearty laugh,’ Churchill continued. ‘All his irritation vanished. We had a really serviceable conversation, and thereafter - though I must admit that deep in my heart there was a certain gulf between us – we never to the best of my belief lost the basis of a common understanding.’

  Upstairs, Griffith was holding out the possibility of accom­modating the British on association, the crown and defence, if the British could assure ‘the essential unity’ of Ireland. This was the kind of talk Lloyd George had wanted to hear. ‘If I would give him personal assurances on these matters,’ Griffith reported, ‘he would go down and smite the diehards and fight on the Ulster matter to secure essential unity.’

  Lloyd George was ‘in an expansive and optimistic mood’ that night as one of his secretaries, Geoffrey Shakespeare, drove him back to Downing Street. ‘We have really made progress tonight for the first time,’ the prime minister said. ‘I really feel there is a chance of pulling something off.’ Next day the diehard censure motion was routed by 439 votes to 43.

  The prime minister was apparently lulled into a false sense of security. He told friends he would resign if the Ulster crowd proved recalcitrant, but this was just a temporary thing. Some of the same diehards tabled a motion calling for the break up of the coalition at the Unionist Party conference that was due to begin in Liverpool on 17 November. Lloyd George was again in political difficulty.

  He, Chamberlain and Birkenhead met with Griffith and Collins the following morning to get further assurances on the crown and empire. After the meeting Collins told Tom Jones that he was disappointed with the meeting, especially after the way things went at Churchill’s home.

  ‘I told him that unless a reasonable compromise was reached on Ulster,’ Jones noted, ‘I felt certain the P.M. would rather resign than start a war of reconquest.’

  Griffith had agreed to provide the prime minister with a per­sonal letter of assurance, which could be used to bolster wavering Conservative support. ‘Provided I was satisfied on every point,’ Griffith wrote, ‘I was prepared to recommend recognition of the Crown, the formula in which this recognition was to be couched to be arrived at a later stage. I similarly agreed to recommend free partnership with the British commonwealth, the formula defining the partnership to be arrived at a later discussion.’

  Next day, 1 November, Griffith presented the Irish delegation with the draft of a letter that he planned to send to Lloyd George to assure opponents within the Conservative Party that there was a real chance of a settlement. If Irish unity were assured, Griffith would be prepared to ‘recommend recognition of the Crown’ and ‘free partnership with the British commonwealth’. This provoked a storm in the delegation.

  ‘Duffy and I strenuously opposed the sending of a personal letter, and objected vehemently to its tone,’ Barton noted. ‘Childers, who being Secretary, and not a delegate, was diffident about taking a prominent part in such discussions, supported us. Collins and Duggan took very little part. We dispersed without having reached any agreement, and after Griffith had made use of some very abusive language to Duffy.’

  ‘I felt very strongly the appeal that Dev had made to work as a team and made every effort to smooth our difficulties,’ Barton explained. ‘Griffith was very insulting to both Duffy and Childers.’

  ‘Griffith was very anxious to sign that letter as from himself alone claiming that he wished to shield Collins from attacks that might be made upon him at home as a result of it,’ Barton added. ‘Duffy, Childers and I met afterwards, and decided that in no circumstances would we permit this letter to be sent as a personal letter, or in the form submitted to us.’

  Collins was too busy hiding his own views to take an active part in the wrangling within the delegation, but his behaviour at a formal banquet in the Hans Place headquarters that night could hardly have endeared him to all of his colleagues. ‘When the feast was at its height, Michael Collins with Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Emmet Dalton, Joe Guilfoyle and Joe Dolan came in,’ according to Kathleen McKenna. ‘They were a happy, boisterous group who preferred horse-play to formalities. I do not know how it came about but first of all they began throwing cushions at one another, then the tangerine oranges, apples and nuts from the table. We all know Collins’ exuberant character.’ This was the Big Fellow letting off steam.

  Next morning Gavan Duffy was up early to put his views in writing against Griffith’s plans to provide Lloyd George with a personal letter. At 9.45 am Childers asked Griffith what time he wished the delegation to meet.

  ‘What meeting?’ Griffith asked. ‘No meeting is required.’

  There were others present in the room so Childers just whispered that the other delegates wished to make some sug­gestions. ‘He was much put out, but consented to come to my room,’ Childers noted. Barton, Gavan Duffy and Chartres were already there. Duffy read out the letter he had prepared protesting against the letter Griffith planned to send to Lloyd George.

  ‘The main effect o
f the letter must be to undermine the stand we have taken,’ he explained. ‘We had in our last Memorandum very carefully limited the recognition of the British Crown that we would recommend; your letter abandons that for a form of words which by its very omissions will be used by Mr Lloyd George as indicating your willingness to sponsor allegiance by the Irish people to the British Crown.

  ‘I want to see a settlement, which I am persuaded we can get on non-allegiance lines, explored to the utmost, before our Chairman even suggests that he is prepared to go further,’ Gavan Duffy continued. ‘Until such a settlement has been discussed, and our proposals criticised in writing by the other side, we cannot say that we have explored that avenue.’ The British had not responded in writing to two Irish memoranda and Gavan Duffy argued that there should be a response to those before the Irish delegation furnished anything else in writing. ‘We are entitled to have in writing from the arch–trickster of the Universe a reply on each matter we have put up.’

  Griffith was determined to go ahead and he refused to countenance changes ‘first with violent emphasis,’ according to Childers. But then he relented and agreed to modifications. ‘After considerable debate our party won its points,’ Barton ex­plained. ‘The letter was re-drafted, and was signed by Griffith as Chairman.’

  Collins and Duggan had joined the meeting by this stage, but again they said very little. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Collins’ willingness to compromise was influenced during the protracted discussions. He undoubtedly gave different impressions to different people. When a nationalist deputation from Northern Ireland called on him during the negotiations, for instance, he indicated that partition would not be acceptable in any form.