I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  At 1.30 the cabinet broke for lunch. During the recess Collins had a hurried meeting with Ó Muirthile, who explained that their IRB colleagues had reservations about the oath, together with the defence and partition provisions of the British terms. He gave Collins an alternative oath acceptable to his IRB colleagues. As it was comparatively similar to the one al­­ready suggested by Collins to the British, it was likely the wording was actually suggested by somebody who was aware of the lines on which Collins was thinking.

  The cabinet reconvened at three o’clock and Barton appealed to de Valera to join the delegation on the grounds that it was unfair to ask Griffith to break on the crown when he was un­­­willing to fight on the issue. The president later said that he was seriously considering the suggestion but was reluctant to go because, as he later explained, ‘my going over would be in­terpreted as anxiety on our part and likely to give in. I did not want this interpretation to be placed on my action, and that extra little bit I wanted to pull them and hoped they could be pulled could not be done if I went and therefore I was balancing these.’

  Griffith – who never lost an opportunity of declaring that he would not break on the issue of the crown - emphasised his own attitude. When as many concessions as possible had been gained, he said that he would sign the agreement and go before the Dáil, which was the body to decide whether it should be war or not.

  ‘Don’t you realise that, if you sign this thing, you will split Ireland from top to bottom?’ Brugha interjected.

  ‘I suppose that’s so,’ replied Griffith, obviously struck by the implication of the Brugha’s words. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go back to London. I’ll not sign the document, but I’ll bring it back and submit it to the Dáil and, if necessary to the public.’

  De Valera was satisfied with this. He later said that he would ‘probably’ have gone to London but for Griffith’s undertaking not to sign the draft treaty. It never seemed to have occurred to him that he did not have the authority to join the delegation, seeing that he had not been selected as a plenipotentiary by the Dáil, as had the other members of the delegation.

  Although various defects were pointed out in the draft treaty during the seven hours of discussion, the oath was the single item that evoked most criticism. In fact, with the exception of Griffith, every member of the cabinet advocated rejecting the oath.

  Unfortunately, Ó Murchada’s brief notes did not reflect much of the criticism. For example, he never even mentioned any contributions by W. T. Cosgrave. But about thirty minutes before the meeting broke up, Cosgrave actually declared that he would not ‘take that oath’. There followed a discussion in which the cabinet was asked to suggest an alternative.

  Brugha objected to any oath unless the British were, in turn, willing to swear to uphold the Treaty. De Valera also questioned whether an oath was necessary but, on being told that the British were insisting on one, he sought an acceptable formula to replace the oath in the draft treaty.

  ‘It is obvious that you cannot have that or any like “and the King as head of the State and the Empire”,’ he said. ‘You could take an oath of true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of Ireland.’

  ‘I started trying to get some sort of oath,’ de Valera explained afterwards. ‘Here is the oath I refer to, “I, so and so, swear to obey the Constitution of Ireland and to keep faith with His Britannic Majesty, so and so, in respect of the Treaty associating Ireland with the states of the British commonwealth”.’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ Brugha snapped, ‘there is going to be no unanimity on such an oath as that.’

  ‘Surely Cathal, you can’t object to taking an oath if you agree to association,’ de Valera said.

  Stack agreed with the president, so he, too, tried to persuade Brugha that such an oath would be acceptable.

  ‘Well,’ Brugha sighed in resignation, ‘you may as well swear.’

  ‘At the end of the discussion on the oath,’ Childers recalled, ‘I expressly raised the point myself as to whether scrapping the oath in the draft mean scrapping of the first four clauses of the British draft, that is to say the clauses setting out Dominion Status.’

  ‘Yes,’ the president replied. Childers was therefore satisfied, but Collins never heard this exchange.

  Before the meeting concluded some decisions were taken hurriedly. It was decided that the delegation should return to London with the same powers and instructions. If the oath were not amended, the draft treaty would be rejected regardless of the consequences. If this led to the collapse of the conference, Griffith was advised to say that the matter should be referred to the Dáil, and he was to try to blame the northern unionists for the impasse, if possible.

  It was also decided that the trade and defence clauses should be amended, according to Childers, who noted that no specific suggestion was made about how to change the trade provisions. But the president did advocate that the British should be given ‘two ports only’ instead of the four they were demanding.

  ‘All this amendment business was too hurried,’ Childers noted in his diary, ‘but it was understood by Barton, Duffy, and me that amendments were not mandatory.’ They were ‘only suggestions.’ Later, de Valera emphasised this point himself in the Dáil.

  ‘I did not give, nor did the cabinet give, any instructions to the delegation as to any final document which they were to put in,’ he said.

  Some writers have suggested that the fact the two elements of the delegation returned to London separately was evidence that the division between them was deeper than ever, but it seems the real reason was purely personal. After the meeting Childers returned to his home with Barton, and they had dinner there, and Childers saw his son Bobby to bed before heading back to London. Barton, Duffy and Childers took a boat from the North Wall, while Griffith, Collins and Duggan went on the mail boat from Dun Laoghaire.

  Childers, Duffy and Barton talked together in a cabin until Cope arrived. ‘He was all agog for information,’ Barton recalled. ‘We were in a similar state but we gave none and got none. On the train to London, Diarmuid O’Hegarty arrived at Barton’s sleeper to invite him to go for a chat with Tim Healy who was un­­able to walk along the train. Barton and Hegarty then talked with Healy for a couple of hours. ‘Healy expatiated on the dreadfulness of the crisis, the imminent risk of a renewal of war, and the generosity of the settlement the English were prepared to offer us,’ Barton noted. ‘I told him quite frankly and Hegarty supported me that he was on the wrong line and going full speed astern. He was furious at first but grew maudlin later and I left him and Hegarty to finish their bottle.

  ‘Next day Healy saw Lloyd George and afterwards came across to us where we had a long interview,’ Barton continued. ‘Later I met him in the hall and he told me that Collins was the only sensible man amongst us, possibly he told Lloyd George so too.’

  ‘There’s a job to be done and for the moment here’s the place,’ Collins wrote to Kitty upon his return to London. ‘That’s that.’

  Childers began drafting an alternative to the British draft treaty, with help from Barton and later Gavan Duffy. ‘The Cabinet gave us no written direction, no draft agreement, nothing but the hazy verbal headlines,’ according to Barton. ‘Griffith Collins and Duggan made no attempt to write any­thing or if they did, they did not show us the result of their deliberations which took place as was usual in some other room. When we were finished we requested them to come for a conference and presented them with copies of the proposals we suggested should now be sent to the British.

  ‘On reading the document to our colleagues an extraordinary scene ensued,’ Barton wrote. ‘Griffith was very angry. He declared that the cabinet had been prepared to go much further towards agreement than we had indicated. That the terms we were proposing were stiffer than these already declared by the English to be impossible and that he was not going to stand for any such silly tactics.’

  Collins objected to the inclusion of External Association. He thou
ght the British guarantee about according the de facto status of Canada had been acceptable to the cabinet. He noted that nobody had talked about pressing for External Association at the cabinet meeting. He was right. There had been no such discussion, but the president had responded affirmatively when Childers asked if the suggested alterations to the oath also applied to the first three clauses of the British proposals. When Childers mention this exchange, Collins could not remember it, but Griffith confirmed that it had taken place.

  Collins was understandably furious. Such an important issue – indeed, what ultimately became the vital issue – should not have been determined by a simple answer to an almost throw­away question from a secretary.

  Part of Collins’ confusion was undoubtedly contributed to by his recollection that de Valera had proposed an oath that was consistent with Dominion Status. Together with Griffith and Duggan, he recalled that the president had suggested that they could ‘recognise the King of Great Britain as Head of the Associated States.’ This could be interpreted to mean that the king was head of each state individually as well as the head of the combined association of states.

  Barton and Childers contended, however, that de Valera had proposed recognising the king only as ‘Head of the Association’. Barton produced his notes, but these proved inconclusive because he had simply written ‘Head of the Assoc’. Childers, on the other hand, actually recorded in his diary that the president had suggested ‘King of the Associated States’. Moreover, Ó Murchada’s notes were identical with the version remembered by Griffith, Collins and Duggan.

  When de Valera later contended that he had said ‘Association’ and not ‘Associated States’, he found himself in the embarrassing position of confronting formidable evidence. He actually damaged his own case during a secret session of the Dáil by recalling what he had said a fortnight earlier.

  ‘I do swear to recognise the King of Great Britain as Head of the Associated States,’ he said. ‘That is the way I expressed it verbally meaning the association of states.’

  As this oath was rejected by the British, it is not really of much importance, except that the whole controversy does help to illustrate why Collins could have wondered whether Dublin was trying to advise or confuse the delegation. He was so annoyed over the confusion about re-proposing External Association that he became quite obstreperous.

  Childers essentially accused him of ‘deliberately’ trying to make the new document ‘unreasonable’ by insisting that ‘Dev had said that only two ports [and] nothing else’ could be conceded to the British. Childers took issue with Collins. ‘I protested against making Dev’s words ridiculous,’ he noted.

  ‘Collins declared that our proposals had already been dis­cussed again and again with English and turned down by them and he was not going to stultify himself by saying it all over again,’ according to Barton. ‘He stated that the proposals in the document were defeatist tactics and it was for those who wanted to break to present them. I do not remember what Duggan said but he probably echoed Collins as he always did. All three refused to present them at Downing Street.’

  The other three had challenged them to go alone and present their proposals. ‘Duffy and I immediately accepted it,’ Barton continued. ‘I certainly realised and I suppose that Duffy did too that it was a hopeless kind of Balaclava charge as it was an obvious indication of a divided delegation but as we had com­posed the document and as they challenged us to present it of course we accepted it, tho’ knowing that we were going like lambs to the slaughter house. Directly we did accept Griffith jumped up and said he would go too. He had changed his mind and I had little doubt but that the reason was that he did not wish us to break or have words with the English.’

  Collins refused to go and Duggan supported him. ‘I did not attend this conference,’ Collins wrote next day, ‘for the reason that I had, in my own estimation argued fully all points.’ In addition, he had already shown his hand to the British by suggesting an oath that was consistent with Irish membership of the British commonwealth.

  ‘Failure was foredoomed,’ according to Barton. ‘To succeed, our cause would have to have been pressed with vigour by all five of us.’ Not one word was spoken in the car as the three of them set off for Downing Street. ‘But when we got in front of the English,’ he noted, ‘Griffith played up like a man and fought as hard as we did.’

  The British again flatly rejected External Association, as Collins predicted. The meeting actually broke up when Gavan Duffy blurted out that the Irish ‘difficulty is coming within the Empire’. At that point the conference broke down. The two sides announced that they would submit their final proposals the following day, and they would formally announce that the conference had collapsed.

  As Duffy emerged from the conference room he whispered to Childers who was waiting outside, ‘C’est fini’.

  ‘I admire the way you stuck like a bulldog to the Ulster issue,’ Barton said to Griffith as they were leaving Downing Street in a car. ‘It may all be for the best yet.’

  ‘For Duffy and myself it was a gloomy drive back to our house in Hans Place,’ Barton wrote. ‘Griffith was cynical, morose and insulting by turns. He twitted Duffy with his lack of discretion in having brought the conference to so abrupt a conclusion. Declared that we had undone all the good work that he and Collins had done in private negotiations and that not content with having to put forward proposals impossible for English acceptance we had been so inept as to cause a rupture on the very point which it had been our policy to avoid a break, namely on the crown, and the Empire connection. We let him have his innings for a while, for I think we were both a bit crestfallen but before we reached our house we had turned the tables upon him by reminding him that two of our colleagues had run away from the most critical conference and therefore made its success impossible.’

  The Irish delegation held a meeting at Hans Place. Griffith drafted a report of the meeting for de Valera and read it to his colleagues. Barton insisted that he add that Lloyd George had said the amendments in the latest Irish proposals were ‘a complete going back on the discussions of the last week or so.’ Collins objected strongly that this implied that Griffith and he ‘had given way’. Barton refused to retract, but did not object when they contended the real meaning of the prime minister’s complaint was that the latest proposals were merely a ‘revision to amendments already discussed and rejected’.

  While this report was being prepared, Griffith came back to say that ‘he forgot to say that something had been said about the possibility of changing for the form of the Oath.’ Barton and Gavan Duffy had left Hans Place by then and Childers waited to check with them upon their return. Barton agreed to the inclusion although he could not remember the incident, but Gavan Duffy did remember it ‘and said Birkenhead remarked it rather casually’.

  ‘The negotiations were over then as we thought,’ Barton ex­plained. He was despondent. ‘Bob says all the dead fought for is lost,’ Childers wrote to his wife. ‘I say no – the dead died to prevent surrender.

  ‘There can’t be war on this,’ Childers added. ‘Our offer is too generous.’

  ‘Duffy, Childers and I prepared to leave London next day but this was not to be,’ Barton continued. ‘The English must have noticed the significance of Collins’ absence and at 2 a.m. Jones, the English Cabinet Secretary, came to Hans Place, unknown to the rest of us, and had a long private conversation with Griffith. What transpired at that Conference we shall never know but it is reasonable to suppose that Griffith informed the English that he and Collins had not said their last word, anyway Jones invited Collins to confer with Lloyd George again the next morning.’

  Barton was right. Jones found Griffith ‘labouring under a deep sense of the crisis’. The Irish chairman ‘spoke throughout with the greatest earnestness and unusual emotion’. Collins and himself were in favour of the British terms, but needed some­­thing further to offer the Dáil. Their position would be simplified, Griffith said, if the Bri
tish could get Craig to give ‘a conditional recognition, however shadowy, of Irish national unity in return for the acceptance of the Empire by Sinn Féin.’ If the British delegation could obtain an assurance that Northern Ireland would agree to unity, he said that Dublin would give all the safeguards the northern majority needed and the Boundary Commission could be scrapped. With a northern acceptance of unity, he was confident he could get the Dáil to accept a treaty with an oath that would be acceptable to the British. He added that Barton and the doctrinaire republicans could then be ignored, because ninety per cent of the gunmen would follow Collins.

  Without the support of Collins, however, Griffith did not have a chance of getting the Dáil to accept the British terms. He therefore asked Jones to arrange a meeting so that Lloyd George could have a ‘heart to heart’ talk with Collins. Jones then left and arranged a meeting with the prime minister for the following morning, but Griffith had great difficulty persuading Collins to attend.

  Collins was so annoyed over the confusion in Dublin that he was refusing to have anything further to do with the negotiations. It was not until just before the meeting with Lloyd George was due to begin that he finally relented and agreed to go to Downing Street. In fact, he had been so determined not to attend that he was some fifteen minutes late for the meeting, which was most uncharacteristic as he had a virtual obsession with punctuality.

  During the meeting Collins emphasised he was ‘perfectly dissatisfied’ with the British terms regarding Northern Ireland. He said the British government should get the position clari­fied by pressing Craig for a letter specifying the conditions under which unity would be acceptable, or else rejecting it outright. At that point Lloyd George said, according to Collins: