Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (116 page)

A new chapter opened as the Great War closed. At the general election of December 1918, Lloyd George was whipping up support for ‘squeezing Germany till the pips squeak’. But in Ireland, demands for total independence had risen to the top of the agenda, and pushed out other concerns. Of 105 Irish MPs elected, 73 belonged to Sinn Féin. They promptly turned their backs on Westminster, and on 21 January 1919 those of them who were not in British prisons assembled in the Round Room of Dublin’s Mansion House as a separate Dáil or parliament. The Papal Count George Plunkett (1851–1948), father of three condemned sons, and Eoin (John) MacNeill (1867–1945), military commander and medieval historian, kept order. The Assembly voted to sever links with Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland was proclaimed for a second time, in Gaelic, as if the United Kingdom did not exist. Éamon de Valera was appointed the chief executive, and the Republic’s armed force, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), was formed from a variety of amalgamated units, including the IRB. Instructions were drawn up for ambassadors to be sent to the Peace Conference in Paris, and an ‘Address to the Free Nations of the World’ was framed. The session was finished within an hour and a half.

The British press watched in disbelief. British journalists, like many participants, were not well attuned to the proceedings:

Twenty-eight Sinn Féin members of parliament were here… But there must have been at least two thousand others in an improvised Strangers’ Gallery. Many other thousands waited outside, but a strong body of the Sinn Féin Volunteers kept an effective and sometimes a rather stupid guard.

It would have offended against the national spirit, of course, to carry on the debates of the National Assembly in the language of the Sassenach, and the result was a self-denying ordinance which kept some members quite silent and even reduced others to mere French.

It was a very quiet and rather stilted National Assembly. Probably nine-tenths of those there did not know what it was saying, and when the instructed raised a cheer, the Speaker broke into English to tell them that the rules of parliament did not allow it. The Mansion House, which gives it hospitality to all comers, had provided a few seats for the benches, and, roped off from [the rest the room] these made the House.
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In 1919–20 a massive campaign of civil disobedience brought the British administration in Ireland to its knees. Taxes went unpaid, government offices were boycotted, dockers refused to handle British army supplies, orders from London went unheeded. But formal recognition proved more elusive. The British government was not willing to recognize a state within the state; and it persuaded foreign countries to follow suit. Representatives of the Irish Republic who travelled to the Peace Conference in Paris were not admitted. Lenin, who accepted a loan from Ireland for Soviet Russia, was the sole foreign leader to acknowledge the Irish Republic’s existence.

The first hostile act against British forces occurred on 21 January 1919, when a couple of lone marksmen killed some officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in Tipperary. The British government reacted with restraint, merely designating a Special Military Zone in the south-west. Similarly, the Dáil made no haste to declare war. The majority of IRA leaders favoured guerrilla-style tactics like those of the South African Boers, whom they greatly admired, and a minority led by Arthur Griffith favoured passive resistance. Even so, violence spread. IRA raids provoked RIC reprisals. Hundreds of policemen were shot, and scores of country houses belonging to Anglo-Irish landowners were torched. By the summer, an undeclared armed conflict variously called the ‘Anglo-Irish War’ or the ‘War of Irish Independence’ was well and truly ignited.

In 1920, the British government lost patience. Reluctant to deploy the regular British army, which was in the throes of demobilization, it raised two notorious auxiliary formations to bring the rebels to heel. One of them, the RIC Reserve Force, universally known from the colour of their uniforms as the ‘Black and Tans’, were recruited from hardened war veterans, paid 10 shillings per day, and exempted from normal military discipline. The other, the Auxiliary Division of the RIC, known as the ‘Auxies’, were drawn exclusively from ex-British army officers. Together, they burned, plundered and murdered their way round Ireland. Regular courts were suspended, and subsidies halted to non-loyalist districts. In the autumn Westminster introduced new legislation. The Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920) provided for martial law, internment and death sentences without trial. In December the Government of Ireland Act (1920), passed under Unionist pressure, attempted to limit the contagion by dividing the island into two parts – Southern Ireland, made up of twenty-six counties, and Northern Ireland, containing the remaining six. Each was to have its own assembly. Contrary to intentions, the partition proved permanent.

The initial years of military struggle against the British brought the IRA to the peak of its popularity. Lacking comparable firepower, its leaders avoided open battle with professional British troops, and were duly denounced as terrorists. But by keeping up their attacks and staying in the field, they created an impasse in which the British began to review their policies. The misdeeds of the ‘Black and Tans’ strengthened the Irish cause with every day that passed:

They burned their way through Munster,

Then laid Leinster on the rack.

Thro’ Connacht and thro’ Ulster

Marched the men in brown and black.

They shot down wives and children

In their own heroic way, but

The Black and Tans like lightning ran

From the Rifles of the IRA!
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Over the winter of 1920–21, bloodshed intensified. The worst episodes occurred in Belfast, where ‘loyalist’ mobs attacked Catholic enclaves indiscriminately. The creation of paramilitary ‘B-specials’ to support the Ulster Constabulary was opposed by the Catholic hierarchy, but few Protestant leaders publicly reprimanded loyalist violence.

Three men co-operated in the construction of a truce. General Smuts, the South African champion of the Boers, suggested to King George V that he make a ‘speech for conciliation in Ireland’. The idea was taken up by Lloyd George, who persuaded a reluctant Cabinet to comply. The king’s speech, delivered in Belfast on 22 June 1921, called on all Irishmen ‘to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and forget, and to join in making for the land they love a new era of peace, contentment and goodwill’.
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The words were judged to match the public mood. A truce came into effect on 11 July 1921. The forces of the Crown and their militant opponents appeared to have fought each other to a standstill.

At this point, Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) reached the first pinnacle in a long career characterized by successive peaks and troughs. Born in the United States, the son of an Irish mother and a reputedly Cuban father, he had grown up in Ireland with his maternal relatives, had learned Gaelic and qualified as a teacher. Known as ‘the Long Fellow’ because of his height, he was a principled republican among comrades holding a variety of constitutional views. He had been saved from execution after the Easter Rising by his American citizenship, and was pushed into prominence by being a rare survivor of the original leadership. In 1917–19 he rose from the position of Sinn Féin’s chairman, to that of president of the
Dáil Éireann
, and of
príomh aire
or ‘prime minister’.
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For the whole of 1920, however, the
príomh aire
had absented himself, disappearing from Dublin to raise funds in the United States. In consequence, he lost ground to his deputies, notably to Michael Collins, ‘the Big Fellow’, sometime head of the IRB and another survivor of the Rising,
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and to Arthur Griffith, one of the original founders of Sinn Féin.
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Griffith, a surprising voice of moderation, had long advocated a ‘two kingdom solution’, such as had pertained prior to 1801, publicizing the idea of a dual, Anglo-Irish monarchy similar to that of Austria-Hungary.
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Among these leaders, there was no common blueprint regarding the nature of the future state.
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Three days after the truce, Éamon de Valera went to Downing Street to sound out Lloyd George, and a priceless scene ensued. De Valera was used to thinking of Ireland’s oppressors as ‘the English’. He had not counted on his British adversary being both a Celt and a native Welsh-speaker. He read out his declaration in stilted Gaelic, then handed Lloyd George an English translation. The ‘Welsh Wizard’ played along with him. ‘So what’s the Gaelic name for your state?’ he enquired. ‘
Saorstát
’ (‘Free State’) came the reply. ‘I see,’ said Lloyd George. ‘I didn’t hear the Gaelic word for “Republic” in your speech.’ He then launched into a lengthy discussion in Welsh with his personal secretary, T. J. Jones. De Valera, flustered, couldn’t follow. Eventually, reverting to English, Lloyd George delivered the knock-out blow. ‘We Celts don’t have a word for a Republic,’ he announced, ‘because we’ve never had one.’
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If this account reflects even part of the truth, De Valera already knew that one of his key demands – the recognition of the Irish Republic – was unlikely to be met. Nonetheless, on returning to Dublin, he persuaded the Dáil to proclaim him president of the Republic. He was throwing down the gauntlet not only to the British but also to many Irish colleagues.

Work began soon after on an Anglo-Irish Treaty. Its main aims were to design a new political order for Southern Ireland, and to define the border with Ulster, which was to have the right to secede. The Irish delegation at the negotiations was led by Arthur Griffith, assisted by Michael Collins and others, who installed themselves at 44 Hans Crescent in Kensington. Its secretary was the English novelist and Hibernophile, Erskine Childers. The negotiators wrestled in London, while killings in Ireland persisted; they only reached a conclusion after the British threatened to restart a full-scale war. Ratification had to be undertaken in triplicate – by the Dáil, by the British-backed House of Commons of Southern Ireland and by the British Parliament in Westminster. All was completed in January 1922. The king had reason to be satisfied. After a civil war (as he would have seen it) a wayward realm had returned to the fold, and had made its peace with the home country.

The details, however, were crucial. As determined by the treaty, the Irish Free State was to take the form of a constitutional monarchy, not a republic. It was to resemble the existing dominions, such as Canada or Australia, thereby achieving more than the pre-war Home Rule Act, which had only promised self-government within the United Kingdom; but the king was to remain head of state – albeit of a different state – and was to be represented in Dublin by a governor-general. The legislative Dáil, elected by universal suffrage, was to name its candidate for prime minister for the governor-general’s approval. The national anthem, as previously, was to be ‘God Save the King’. These arrangements were the fruit of a reluctant compromise between the British hard line, which upheld the rights of the Crown, and the initial Irish demands, which had hoped to preserve their Republic. They were set to take effect on 6 December.
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Reactions to the treaty were threefold. First, the Unionists in Northern Ireland hastened to exercise their opt-out. At the province’s first general election in May 1921, they had won a 66 percent majority. A second vote was staged with certain outcome. Sir James Craig MP, sometime organizer of the Ulster Volunteers, took the night ferry from Belfast carrying a loyal petition to the king. The whole operation was completed within a month, and six of the nine historic counties of Ulster adopted the position from which they have never since wavered. Secondly, the Irish Free State applied for membership of the League of Nations. Thirdly, the politicians in Dublin who appeared to have achieved a large part of their objectives fell into deadly dispute.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty passed in the Dáil by only sixty-four votes to fifty-seven; the treaty’s opponents, who lost out, flatly refused to accept the result. De Valera resigned, and started making provocative speeches about ‘Irishmen wading through Irish blood’. Michael Collins, who had prosecuted the war against the British but who had also signed the treaty, was denounced as a renegade. In order to prove his patriotic credentials, he launched an abortive attack on Ulster, in the first of the so-called ‘Border Wars’, before entering into armed conflict with his ‘irreconcilable’ Irish adversaries. Nineteen twenty-two, therefore, was a year of civil war. The ‘Free Staters’ and their army were pitted against the rump of the IRA, and were subjected to the same guerrilla-style attacks that the British had endured earlier. Before the treaty entered into force, Collins was killed in an ambush. He claimed to have won ‘the freedom to win freedom’, and he was eventually proved right. Arthur Griffith, too, died that year, from a heart attack. But the pro-treaty forces prevailed, and the Free State took flight as envisioned. George V was the king; Tim Healy (1855–1931), a lawyer and former Westminster MP, was the first governor-general, and W. T. Cosgrave (1880–1965), once sentenced to death, the first
taoiseach
. As one of the Free State leaders put it: ‘We were probably the most conservative-minded revolutionaries ever.’
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