I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  There was ‘no principles whatever to justify’ the cutting off of the six counties, he explained. ‘In operation it would be a mani­festation of the tribalistic interpretation of the principle of self-determination reducing it to an absurdity unless as originally enunciated the nation was understood as the unit - no other unit is possible in practice.’ Yet he had already indicated a readiness to the British to recognise the separation of the area in the north-east in which the unionists had a majority. Tom Jones noted in his diary that on 1 November Collins ‘remarked that they must be satisfied at present with the nominal unity of the whole of Ireland and that it would take time to make it real.’

  The Big Fellow was obviously misleading somebody – but whom? Was he fooling the British by feigning a readiness to accept re-partition, if no other agreement could be reached, or was he deceiving the nationalist deputation by pretending to be unwilling to accept any form of partition? It is not possible to answer these questions with any degree of assurance. Indeed, in the light of subsequent events, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he was deceiving both, and himself as well.

  Collins was playing a complicated and devious game in deliberately giving different impressions to different people. On the allegiance question, for example, he obviously tried to give the idea that he was prepared to take a firmer stand against the British than was apparently the case. ‘They’ll give us anything practically but say they must preserve the link of the Crown,’ he explained in a letter home at the beginning of the third week of the conference. ‘A very nominal thing is all they want.’

  ‘Go to the devil says I in effect,’ he wrote. Yet he was not the kind of man to be bothered about nominal things, and it was unlikely that he would have felt differently at this stage. There can be little doubt from his private correspondence that he had come to the conclusion that dominion status was the most they could expect to get for the time being. He wanted to accept it, but dared not admit this openly, because neither he nor Griffith really knew how far they could go with those in Dublin.

  ‘What do we accept?’ Griffith asked him privately.

  ‘Indeed what do we accept?’ Collins wondered. If they accepted any British terms, he was afraid it would be considered ‘a gross betrayal or a similar act of treachery.’ He was already in favour of a settlement on the dominion lines. ‘Dominion status will be to a large extent beneficial to us,’ he wrote to a friend on 2 November. ‘I do not look on the above as being anywhere near a finalised solution. It is the first step. More than this could not be expected.’

  But he did not say this at the meeting of the delegation that morning. ‘Griffith and Collins insisted that we had undertaken to explore all avenues of settlement,’ Barton noted. ‘If we ex­pected the English to explore our aims we must also be prepared to explore theirs.’ Gavan Duffy, Barton and Childers insisted that Griffith tone down his approach. In return for Irish unity, Griffith wrote that he was ‘prepared to recommend that Ireland should consent to a recognition of the Crown as head of the proposed Association of Free States.’

  ‘After this discussion Duffy and I seriously considered the advisability of going back to Dublin,’ Barton noted. Griffith and Collins delivered the revised letter to Birkenhead at the House of Lords around noon and they discussed it with Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Chamberlain that evening. The British tried to get them to drop ‘a’ from the phrase ‘a recognition of the Crown,’ but Griffith refused. He also rejected an amendment stipulating that he would recommend that Ireland agree to be associated within the British commonwealth, but he assented when the British suggested ‘free partnership with the other States associated within the British commonwealth.’

  ‘I was prepared,’ the final version of Griffith’s letter to Lloyd George read, ‘to recommend a free partnership with the other States associated within the British commonwealth, the formula defining the partnership to be arrived at in later discussion. I was, on the same condition, prepared to recommend that Ireland should assent to a recognition of the Crown as head of the pro­­posed Association of free States.’ All of this, of course, ‘was conditional on the recognition of the essential unity of Ireland’.

  ‘The tactical course I have followed,’ Griffith explained to de Valera, ‘has been to throw the question of Ulster against the question of association and the Crown. This is now the position: the British Government is up against Ulster and we, for the moment, are standing aside. If they secure Ulster’s consent we shall have gained ‘essential unity’ and the difficulty we shall be up against will be the formula of association and recognition.

  ‘You will observe my words, which they accept, is consistent with External Association and external recognition.’

  11 -‘What about Bonar?’

  A distinct fission quickly developed within the Irish delegation, with Griffith and Collins more amenable to the British proposals than Childers, Barton and Duffy. But de Valera had essentially anticipated this situation. He had selected Griffith and Collins in the hope that they could entice the British to compromise, while he hoped that Childers could use his influence to prevent the two Irish leaders giving away too much.

  Griffith sought to get Lloyd George to pressure the Belfast regime into agreeing to a united Ireland by providing the prime minister with documentary evidence to deceive the unionists into thinking that the Irish delegation would accept dominion status and provide allegiance to the crown. The final version of Griffith’s letter was not inconsistent with External Association, but in the different drafts he showed his hand, and the British were confident that he would ultimately agree to their terms. ‘What they really meant to Griffith himself is a matter of speculation,’ Barton wrote. ‘It was my opinion at the time that he was sailing too close to falsehood and his diplomacy was really attempted deception, I told him so frankly; he bitterly resented it and henceforward I was in just as bad odour as Duffy and Childers. Like some of other determined leaders Griffith was autocratic and when thwarted, a tyrant.’

  ‘From that day on Childers, Duffy and I were recipients of more insults from our colleagues than I like now to remember,’ Barton explained. ‘You may wonder that we did not resign. We discussed doing so but it had been so impressed upon us that we were to act as a team that we considered that we should be wrong in permitting personal relationships to interfere with our outward solidarity.’ He later wrote, ‘In my opinion these Conferences between the English and Griffith and Collins on October 30th, November 1st, and November 2nd, sealed the doom of the Republic.’

  Lloyd George was probably more hopeful than convinced that Griffith and Collins would accept the crown, empire, and British naval demands when he talked to the newspaper tycoon Lord Riddell on 30 October, but he believed they would demand Fermanagh and Tyrone. The prime minister described Griffith ‘a pretty considerable man’ and Collins as a different sort of person with ‘a simple sort of mind such as is often found in great military commanders.’ He noted that the two of them were ‘very angry about de Valera’s message to the pope’.

  ‘Do you think the delegates want to settle?’ Riddell asked.

  ‘Yes, I am sure they do,’ the prime minister replied. ‘But I doubt whether they will be prepared to give way on the three points mentioned.’

  Lloyd George had hoped to attend the Washington naval con­ference, but cancelled his plans due to the Irish negotiations. ‘Things look very awkward,’ he told Riddell on 3 November. ‘Bonar Law has come out as an advocate of Ulster. Whether he thinks he sees his opportunity to become prime minister or whether he is solely actuated by a conscientious desire to champion the cause of Ulster I don’t know but I can hardly bring myself to believe that he would desire to supplant me. However, as I have often told you, “there are no friendships at the top”.

  ‘I am not going to continue the Irish war if a settlement is possible,’ Lloyd George continued. ‘I shall resign and the king will have to send for someone else.’ As a result of the talks with Griffith and
Collins over the past few days Lloyd George had come to the conclusion that ‘Sinn Féin are prepared to accept allegiance to the Crown and to agree that Ireland shall remain part of the Empire, subject to Tyrone and Fermanagh being joined to Southern Ireland,’ he explained. ‘If the matter can be settled on those lines I am not prepared to continue civil war.’

  Childers was deeply upset about the defence situation, feeling that Griffith and Collins had given away too much. ‘They had weakened badly on Defence and I protested at length, but in vain,’ he wrote in his diary on 2 November. ‘No one supported me.’ De Valera had clearly over-estimated Childers’ influence. He was almost preoccupied with defensive matters, but nobody else shared that preoccupation.

  ‘I think the position is bad,’ Childers added having discussed matters with Gavan Duffy and Chartres. Barton shared the same view, but he was reluctant to express it outside the dele­­gation.

  ‘Duffy and I had cause for apprehension that our case was not being sufficiently pressed,’ Barton explained. ‘We de­­cided that we must make some protest other than personal remonstrations with our colleagues,’ he added. ‘The cabinet in Dublin must be made aware that in our opinion the negotiations were not being properly conducted and that much more was being given away than they were aware. We felt that we were not fighting our case. We were in­­stead giving it away and giving it away piecemeal to an extent that would make it difficult if not impossible to retrace the ad­­missions made. One of us must therefore go to Dublin and inform our colleagues of the present state of affairs and ask that our hands be strengthened or at least the responsibility for the present policy and tactics in the negotiations to be shared by the Cabinet as a whole and not left to us alone.’

  Having discussed it together, ‘it was decided that Duffy should go as he was better acquainted with de Valera, Brugha, Stack and Cosgrave than I was and because his family traditions and longer connection with politics would cause his statement to carry more weight with the Cabinet than it would if it came from me.’ This was further evidence of Barton’s lack of self-confidence. After all he was a member of the cabinet. He may not have known his cabinet colleagues very well, but neither did Gavan Duffy, who was only included in the delegation, along with Duggan, as ‘mere legal padding’, according to de Valera.

  Gavan Duffy went to Dublin on 4 November, and pleaded with de Valera next day to intervene and insist the conference go back into plenary session, but he received no support. ‘Those to whom he spoke appeared to take very little interest in our apprehensions,’ Barton wrote. ‘They affirmed that they were fully acquainted with the situation from the correspondence received from Griffith and on Duffy’s return he reported that our colleagues were completely satisfied. I gathered that he had been rather snubbed than welcomed.

  ‘Had we been more experienced politicians we should there and then have resigned our posts,’ Barton noted, ‘but even Erskine Childers did not advocate this course.’

  De Valera was content that things were going according to his plan. Griffith and Collins were acting as bait for Lloyd George, while Childers and Barton were preventing them from going too far. In fact, the president warmly endorsed the way the delegation had been handling things.

  ‘I have been of the opinion from the very beginning of the negotiations that if the conference has to break the best issue to break on would be “Ulster,” provided we could so manage it that “Ulster” could not go out with the cry “attachment to the Empire and loyalty to the Throne”, de Valera wrote to Griffith on 9 November. ‘There can be no doubt whatever that the Delegation has managed to do this admirably. The danger now is that we shall be tempted, in order to put them more hopelessly in the wrong, to make further advances on our side. I think, as far as the Crown-Empire connection is concerned, we should not budge a single inch from the point to which the negotiations have now led us.’

  The spotlight moved from the Irish Conference to Ulster for most of the fortnight leading up to the Unionist/Conservative Party Conference. There were no sub-conference meetings between 3 and 12 November, but there was plenty going on behind the scenes on the Irish sides

  Lloyd George was initially confident that he could persuade Craig to accept the principle of Irish unity. On Saturday, 5 November, Craig ‘discussed conditions under which an all-Ireland would function,’ according to Lloyd George. ‘But when he came again on Monday afternoon he had changed: Under no circumstances could Ulster look at an all-Ireland parliament.’ Craig, who had just come from a meeting with Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson and Worthington-Evans, was utterly intransigent.

  Lloyd George was despondent and talked about resigning. ‘I had about half an hour with him alone during which he paced up and down the cabinet room, more depressed than I had seen him at all since the negotiations began,’ Jones noted in his diary.

  ‘Craig will not budge one inch,’ the prime minister said. ‘He is sending for his cabinet as he will not be responsible alone for turning our offer down. This means, therefore a break on Thursday. I would like you to see Griffith and Collins and prepare them for it. I shall go out. I will not be a party to coercing the South.’

  ‘What about Bonar?’ Jones asked. ‘Isn’t he helping you?’

  ‘No, he is not. He’s had six months’ rest and has come back and is busy.’

  ‘I always knew he was fanatical on Ulster,’ Jones said, ‘but I thought with peace in sight he would take a statesman’s view on the situation.’

  When Lloyd George talked about resigning, he was not thinking in terms of retiring but of stepping down as a tactic to provoke a political crisis. He thought that Birkenhead and Chamberlain would continue to support him and that the Conservatives might not then be able to form a government without the support of their leader in either of the houses of parliament, but Churchill warned him that Bonar Law would take up the challenge.

  ‘Why should he not do so?’ Churchill asked. ‘The delusion that an alternative Government cannot be formed is perennial.’

  This advice merely emphasised the weakness of the prime minister’s position. He felt that he could not even depend on Churchill, who was from his wing of the Liberal Party. ‘I cannot rely on Winston in a crisis,’ Lloyd George told Jones. ‘I never could.’

  Jones was convinced that the prime minister was serious about resigning. He therefore urged him to stall.

  ‘There is just one other possible way out,’ Lloyd George said. ‘I want to find out from Griffith and Collins if they will support met me on it; namely that the 26 Counties should take their own dominion parliament and have a Boundary Commission.’ He asked Jones to sound them out on this.

  Next day Jones talked with Griffith and Collins for about an hour and a half at the Grosvenor Hotel. ‘Collins was obviously very much upset at the news but it is much harder to tell what Griffith feels about anything as he keeps himself well in hand,’ wrote Jones, who now tried to enlist the two Irishman in a bid to save the British government and thus stave off the danger of Bonar Law taking over as prime minister.

  ‘I then threw out the suggestion of the southern parliament plus Boundary Commission as my own and asked them what did they think of it,’ Jones continued. ‘Griffith said that they preferred a plebiscite. Collins did not like the suggestion at all because it sacrificed unity entirely. I agreed, but what was the alternative? Chaos, Crown Colony Government, Civil War. We were bound to try every device to avert that. Griffith was not alarmed at the proposal and I left promising to sound the P.M. upon it.’

  Collins was actually the first person to mention a boundary commission at the third plenary session of the conference. No doubt he would have preferred Irish unity, but a boundary commission was obviously the next best thing if unity proved impossible.

  Jones told Griffith and Duggan next day that Lloyd George ‘was prepared to play the Boundary Commission as an absolutely last card if he felt sure that Sinn Féin would take it.’

  ‘It is not our proposal,’ Griffith replied
, ‘But if the P.M. cares to make it we would not make his position impossible. We cannot give him a pledge, but we will not turn him down on it. We are not going to queer his pitch. We would prefer a plebiscite, but in essentials a Boundary Commission is very much the same.’

  Collins, Childers, Barton and Duggan returned to Dublin, while John Chartres had already gone to Germany to try to straighten out complications as a result of the seizure in Hamburg of arms bound for Ireland. John Smith Chartres was the mystery man of the Irish delegation. Born in England of Irish parents in October 1862. The son of a staff surgeon in the British army, John worked for the London Times for a period before joining the ministry of munitions in 1905, and he was called to the bar in 1908. He travelled to Ireland frequently during the First World War for his work with the ministry for munitions. He was incensed at the suppression of Easter Rebellion and afterwards offered his services to Griffith and was engaged to write an article on the death of Thomas Ashe for Nationality. He was appointed Irish envoy to Germany, where he engaged in smuggling guns for Collins. At fifty-nine he was the oldest member of the Irish team. There was no question about his loyalty, except in the overheated imagination of those inclined to think that anybody who differed with them was a spy.

  Joe McGarrity received a telegram in Philadelphia on 8 November that was apparently based on information supplied by Chartres:

  Only great pressure on trustees in l by directors at home will save surrender of free title to old homestead stop all trustees weakening including m stop c stop top man stands firm and strong stop correct official information from inside stop.

  The message was easy to decipher. The ‘trustees in L’ referred to the delegation in London, while ‘the directors’ were the cabinet in Dublin, ‘M.C.’ was Collins and the ‘top man’ was de Valera. In short, the telegram amounted to a warning that Michael Collins and the delegation was cracking and only great pressure from the cabinet in Dublin could prevent a surrender. McGarrity telephoned the warning to Harry Boland, who cabled de Valera.