I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  ‘If there is anything, any matter of detail, if, for instance, the differences as they arose from time to time, should be discussed first in private, I am of the opinion that having discussed it in private I think we ought then to be able to make it public,’ he said. In short they could discuss these matters privately to clear up any misunderstandings, but then they should be free to explain their own points of view. ‘I am willing to go as far as that, that is only detail. But on the essentials I am for publicity now and all along.’

  The debate drifted as various members argued whether or not to go into private session. Although de Valera wanted one, Brugha objected, thereby demonstrating that sincerity and independence which even Collins admired. Suddenly the president revived the controversy over the credentials.

  ‘Do you wish to lay stress on the word conclude?’ de Valera asked Collins

  Collins looked up and replied promptly and emphatically, ‘No, sir, no.’

  ‘What is the point then of raising the original credentials, if the word “conclude” did not mean that when you had signed it was ended?’ the president asked. But nobody asked why de Valera had included the word in the first place.

  Griffith settled the issue by pointing out that ‘whether they had full power to make this Treaty on this nation’, they had not tried to do so. Neither they nor the British signatories had bound their nations by the signatures. ‘They had to go to their parliament,’ he said, ‘and we to ours.’

  ‘Deputies sensed the underlying meaning of this momentous phrase, and there was relieved applause,’ according to The Irish Independent reporters. ‘One felt that they were glad at being thus told so bluntly by the Chairman of the Delegation of Plenipotentiaries that they had the fullest and most perfect freedom of actions in the discussion over ratification. Eamon de Valera for the first time smiled – not a mocking or an ironical smile but one that illuminated his grave and austere features.’

  After the Dáil went into private session, the president again referred to the powers of the delegation. Although some people were confused about those powers, he left no doubt that the delegation had the right to sign the agreement. ‘Now I would like everybody clearly to understand,’ he said, ‘that the plenipotentiaries went over to negotiate a Treaty, that they could differ from the cabinet if they wanted to, and that in anything of consequence they could take their decision against the decision of the cabinet.’ He stressed the same point in the Dáil at least five other times during the debate. He also said on 14 December, for instance, ‘The plenipotentiaries, I repeat, had a perfect right to disagree with the cabinet and a perfect right to sign.’ Three days later he said, ‘The plenipotentiaries got full powers if they wanted to sign on their own responsibility.’ Moments later, he said, ‘The plenipotentiaries had full power to sign whether we liked it or not.’ By using the term ‘plenipotentiaries’, de Valera said they realised the delegates had ‘full power to negotiate and to take responsibility for negotiating and signing’. Earlier during the public session, he had said, ‘If there was a definite difference of opinion, it was the plenipotentiaries had the responsibility of making up their own minds and deciding on it.’

  In short, de Valera’s position was that the delegation had a right to sign but should not have done so in view of the under­taking given by Griffith at the cabinet meeting not to sign the draft treaty. ‘I think it only right to say there was a document there and Mr Griffith said he would not sign that document and a different document was signed,’ Collins admitted. If this was the case, however, the new document should have been submitted to the cabinet in accordance with the instructions. There could be no doubt that Griffith had broken the undertaking involved either in his acceptance of the instructions or his declaration at the cabinet meeting on 3 December that he would not sign the draft terms being discussed.

  De Valera was annoyed that they had not only signed with­out consulting him again but also published the text of the agreement. ‘They not merely signed the document but, in order to make the fait accompli doubly secure,’ de Valera wrote, ‘they published it hours before the President or their colleagues saw it, and were already giving interviews in London and proclaiming its merits and prejudicing the issue at the time it was being read in Dublin.’

  The president was clearly irritated that the plenipotentiaries had not taken their lead from him. ‘I was captaining a team,’ he told the private session on the first afternoon of the debates, ‘and I felt that the team should have played with me to the last and I should have got the chance which I felt would put us over and we might have crossed the bar in my opinion at high tide. They rushed before the tide got to the top and almost foundered the ship.’

  ‘A captain who sent out his crew to sea, and tried to direct operations from dry land!’ Collins remarked to those about him.

  ‘I am excusing myself to the Dáil as the captain of the ship and I can only say it is not my fault,’ de Valera continued. ‘Had the Chairman of the delegation said he did not stand for the things they had said they stood for, he would not have been elected.’ Here the president’s argument was a patently disingenuous. He knew well where Griffith stood when he proposed him for the delegation, and that was why he sent Childers to keep an eye on him.

  During the afternoon Collins called several times for the release of various documents relating to the latter stages of the negotiations so deputies could determined for themselves the difference between the signed terms and what the others wanted. In particular, he argued that the counter proposals, which were presented to the British on 4 December, should be ‘put side by side’ with the Articles of Agreement. Otherwise people were likely to think that de Valera, Stack and Brugha had been standing for an isolated republic, whereas Collins himself believed the difference was not worth fighting over.

  De Valera had come prepared to explain exactly what he wanted. He produced his own alternative, which Collins dubbed Document No. 2, and the name stuck. The president made the startling admission that it was ‘right to say that there will be very little difference in practice between what I may call the proposals received and what you will have under what I propose. There is very little in practice but there is that big thing that you are consistent and that you recognise yourself as a separate independent State and you associate in an honourable manner with another group.’ He contended that if the Dáil stood by his counter proposals, the British would ‘not go to war for the difference. In other words, both Collins and de Valera were saying that the difference was not worth fighting over.

  ‘I felt the distance between the two was so small that the British would not wage war on account of it,’ de Valera ex­plained. ‘You may say if it is so small why not take it. But I say, that small difference makes all the difference. This fight has lasted through the centuries and I would be willing to win that little sentimental thing that would satisfy the aspirations of the country.’

  Document No. 2 included External Association on the lines of the proposals put forward by the delegation during the final weeks of the London conference. There was no oath in the new document, but there was a stipulation that ‘for the purposes of the Association, Ireland shall recognise His Britannic Majesty as head of the Association’. Britain would be afforded the same defence concessions, except that instead of stipulating that the two countries would reconsider the defence clauses in five years, the alternative stated that coastal defence would be handed over ‘to the Irish Government, unless some other arrangement for naval defence was agreed upon by both Governments’. The partition clauses were also included practically verbatim in the alternative document, except that there was a declaration to the effect that ‘the right of any part of Ireland to be excluded from the supreme authority of the National Parliament and Government’ was not being recognised.

  In other words, de Valera explained, the alternative would not ‘recognise the right of any part of Ireland to secede’, but for the sake of internal peace and in order to divorce the Ulster q
uestion from the overall Anglo-Irish dispute, he was ready to accept the partition clauses of the Treaty, even though he found them objectionable from the standpoint that they provided ‘an explicit recognition of the right on the part of Irishmen to secede from Ireland’.

  ‘We will take the same things as agreed on there,’ the presi­dent told the Dáil. ‘Let us not start to fight with Ulster.’

  Collins welcomed Document No. 2 because it confirmed his contention that the delegation had practically achieved its aim. ‘The issue has been cleared considerably by the document the President has put in,’ he explained. The alternative was basically in line with the proposals put forward by the delegation during the latter stages of the conference.

  ‘We put this before the other side with all the energy we could,’ Collins said. ‘That is the reason that I wanted certain vital documents and these will show that the same proposals that the President has now drafted have been put already.’ Consequently he thought it would be pointless trying to get the British to accept Document No. 2. They would not even listen to any delegation that went back and tried to substitute the alternative for the Treaty. He predicted the British would say, ‘You can go to the devil; you can’t speak for anyone: you can’t deliver the goods.’

  De Valera appeared to confirm this assessment of his own proposals. ‘No politician in England would stand by them,’ he admitted. ‘Because they would have the same difficulty in legally ratifying this proposed Treaty that I hold our delegates have in ratifying it here constitutionally. It would not be a politician’s peace but a people’s peace.’ He subsequently made the same statement in public.

  After the cabinet accepted the Treaty, de Valera essentially argued that this meant nothing that it was a matter for the Dáil, but at the end of the third day of the private session, he recognised that a majority of the Dáil were likely to support the Treaty. ‘I know that most of you will vote for ratification of the Treaty,’ he admitted. But he already seemed to be saying that this did not matter either, because it was really a matter for the people. ‘The Republic will not be disestablished until it is disestablished by the will of the people,’ he said. ‘This assembly cannot ratify a Treaty which takes away from the Irish people the sovereignty of the Irish people,’ he emphasised the following morning.

  In some respects Collins actually believed the Treaty was better than Document No. 2, but he was keeping his views to himself until the public session resumed. ‘Anything I have to say will be said in public,’ he told the Dáil on the first afternoon of the private session. ‘In my opinion no good purpose is served by making speeches in the private session that can be made in the public session.’

  Describing the External Associations clauses of the alter­native as a dangerously loose paraphrase of the Treaty, Collins later complained that Ireland would be committed to an asso­ciation so vague that Britain might be able to press for con­­trol of Irish affairs as a matter of common concern amongst the countries of the British commonwealth. Ireland would not have the same status as the dominions, with the result that the dominions would not have a vested interest in ensuring that the Dublin government would not be forced to make special concessions to Britain. Such concessions would not establish a precedent for relations between Britain and the dominions as would be the case under the terms of the Treaty. Thus Collins believed that Document No. 2 ‘had neither the honesty of complete isolation’ nor the advantages of ‘free partnership’. He admitted there were restrictions in both the Treaty and the president’s alternative. ‘But,’ he added, ‘the Treaty will be operative, and the restrictions must gradually tend to disappear as we go on, more and more strongly solidifying and establishing ourselves as a free nation.’

  De Valera quickly realised that he had made a tactical error in introducing Document No. 2. He therefore withdrew the document at the end of the private session.

  Collins found the debate a particular strain. ‘In a few days I may be free from everything and then we can see how the future goes,’ he wrote to Kitty Kiernan at the end of the second day. ‘It’s a dreadful strain and it’s telling a good deal on me.’ He was still writing on similar lines at the end of the private session on 18 December.

  ‘All this business is very very sad – Harry has come out strongly against us. I’m sorry for that, but I supposed that like many another episode in this business must be borne also. I haven’t an idea of how it will all end but with God’s help all right. In any event I shall be satisfied.’

  19 - ‘I am a representative of Irish stock’

  When Collins entered the Dáil for the resumption of the public session the following Monday, 19 December 1921, something was obviously wrong. He was not smiling as usual. Instead he looked sour and he slammed his attaché case down on the table in front of him before taking his seat.

  On opening the session the speaker announced that the president wished to inform the Dáil that Document No. 2 was ‘withdrawn and must be regarded as confidential until he brings his own proposal formally’. Griffith and Collins objected vociferously before the speaker made it clear that he was not ruling on the issue. Each individual deputy would be free to decide whether or not to comply with de Valera’s request.

  Griffith formally proposed the motion ‘That Dáil Éireann approves the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, signed in London on December 6th, 1921.’ In the course of his speech he complained about not being able to refer to Document No. 2 and also the fact that some people were representing themselves as having ‘stood uncompromisingly on the rock of the Republic – the Republic, and nothing but the Republic.’

  ‘It has been stated also here that,’ he continued, ‘the man who won the war – Michael Collins – compromised Ireland’s rights. In the letters that preceded the negotiations not once was a demand made for recognition of the Irish Republic. If it had been made we knew it would have been refused. We went there to see how to reconcile the two positions and I hold we have done it.’

  The Treaty was seconded by Seán MacEoin. Then de Valera spoke. ‘I am against this Treaty because it does not reconcile Irish national aspirations with association with the British Government,’ he declared. ‘I am against this Treaty, not because I am a man of war, but a man of peace. I am against this Treaty because it will not end the centuries of conflict between the two nations of Great Britain and Ireland.’

  The president, who never even alluded to the partition ques­tion, kept his remarks very general as he contended the Treaty was ‘absolutely inconsistent with our position; it gives away Irish independence; it brings us into the British Empire; it acknowledges the head of the British Empire, not merely as the head of an association but as the direct monarch of Ireland, as the source of executive authority in Ireland.’ Basically the oath was the only aspect of the Treaty to which he took specific exception during his speech.

  De Valera’s opposition to the oath was by no means straight forward. He had already told the private session that he had suggested that the Irish people could swear ‘to keep faith with his Britannic Majesty’. Moreover during the Dáil debate he told an American correspondent, Hayden Talbot of the Hearst newspaper chain, that his problem was not with swearing to be ‘faithful to the King’. He did not find the word ‘faithful’ objectionable at all because he said it could be taken in the context of ‘the faithfulness of two equals’ to uphold a bargain. His real problem with the oath was in swearing ‘allegiance to the constitution of the Irish Fee State as by law established.’ This, he argued, would be tantamount to swearing direct allegiance to the crown, seeing that the law which would establish the Free State constitution would be enacted by the British parliament in the name of the crown. The Provisional Government, which would take over the administration of Ireland from the British would not be set up by the Dáil, but by the southern Irish parliament established under the partition act passed at Westminster. Thus the Provisional Government would derive its authority from the British king in whose name parliament h
ad passed the partition act in the first place. In addition the Free State constitution, which would be drafted by the Provisional Government, would be enacted at Westminster, with the result that if the British had the acknowledged right to enact the Irish constitution in the name of their king, then it would automatically follow that they could amend the constitution if they wished. They would, in effect, be legally able to act in the king’s name to interfere in Irish affairs at will.

  Stack then seconded de Valera’s opposition to the Treaty. In the course of his speech he bragged about being the son of a Fenian. As was mentioned earlier Moore Stack had been arrested in 1886 and sentenced to ten years in jail. While incarcerated he wrote to the crown authorities explaining that some colleagues had previously suspected him of informing and he proceeded to outline all he purported to know about the Fenian organisation. While researching a biography of Austin Stack more than a century later, Fr J. Anthony Gaughan would find this letter after it was opened under the existing hundred-year secrecy rule. ‘Some experienced person should be instructed to see me when it is probable that many things which do not occur to me may be elicited on a personal interview,’ Moore Stack added. Of course, it would be wrong to blame the behaviour of the father on the son, especially as he was not even born at the time, but Austin Stack was on dubious ground when he invoked the patriotism of his father in the fight against the Treaty.

  Collins did not speak until immediately after a lunchtime break. As the Dáil reassembled there was a great buzz of excitement and expectation. ‘At the back of the hall visitors, clergymen and telegraph messengers crushed forward to hear,’ according to the Freeman’s Journal. ‘A Japanese journalist was wedged in the crowd, and three coloured gentlemen from Trinidad – medical students – leant forward to view the scene’ when Collins rose to continue the debate. He was the focus of everyone’s attention. ‘His flashing eyes, firm jaw, and thick black hair, through which he ran his fingers from time to time, were all revealed under the dazzling light of the electoliers.’