reading

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Kathleen O’Brien, my aunt Medb Ní Bhriain, and my father, Breandán Ó Beacháin. Without their encouragement, love and support I would have achieved little in life.

The passing of the revolutionary elite and the institutionalisation of the party

On 23 December 1920 an international boundary was constructed in Ireland by the arbitrary movement of the British imperial pen. The partition of Ireland received the British monarch’s ‘royal assent’ on that date, having been approved by Parliament the previous March.

Not only was the concept of partition inherently undemocratic, considering that 80 per cent of the Irish population favoured independence from Britain, but its execution compounded the iniquity. As Joseph Lee has noted, ‘the geographical boundaries did not attempt to follow the mental boundaries.’¹ The nationalist majorities in Cos. Fermanagh and Tyrone were greater than the unionist majorities in Cos. Derry and Armagh; and the new state included towns such as Derry and Newry, which had large nationalist majorities.

To satisfy the demands of a small regional majority, and to preserve British hegemony, a new state was established, ostensibly to protect a 20 per cent minority while simultaneously creating a new minority that made up 34 per cent of the population. In not one of the six counties was the unionist majority greater than the nationalist majority in Ireland as a whole. Taking cognisance of these facts, Lee states that the objective of partition was ‘to ensure Protestant supremacy over Catholics even in predominantly Catholic areas,’ and that it did not separate two warring peoples but actually brought them closer together.² During the principal debate on the Government of Ireland Act, David Lloyd George declared, with breathtaking honesty, that the measure conflicted with the aspirations of the great majority of the Irish people.

If you asked the people of Ireland what plan they would accept, by an emphatic majority, they would say ‘We want independence and an Irish Republic.’ There is absolutely no doubt about that. The elected representatives of Ireland, now by a clear majority, have declared in favour of independence.³

The leader of the House of Commons, Andrew Bonar Law, outlined the alternatives to the bill, one of which was ‘to give self-determination to the representatives of the Irish people: that is to create an Irish Republic’; but this option was rejected.

The undemocratic nature of the partition is clear when it is compared with the way in which the British subsequently handled the question in India.⁴ There the Muslim minority, like the Irish unionists, had sought a partitioned state for an area far larger than they were entitled to on the grounds of their numbers and demographic distribution. They were, however, confronted with a choice. Control over the desired area was dependent on the establishment of a federal relationship with the majority Hindu population. If they preferred complete separation they would be entitled only to rule those areas where they comprised an impregnable majority. However, the dissident unionist minority in Ireland were indulged to the extent that more than half the area under their control was nationalist in sentiment. But while unionists had a large appetite, they had poor digestion, and the forcible incorporation of so many nationalists in the new state merely sowed the seeds of future strife.

Ireland was partitioned while Irish nationalists were engaged in an armed struggle against British rule. The insurrectionary spark had been struck in April 1916, when a body of men and women launched an insurrection in Dublin during which an Irish republic was proclaimed. Seven men—Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Éamonn Ceannt, Tom Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh and James Connolly—signed the proclamation, knowing as they did so that they were also signing their death warrants, as the rebellion was doomed from the start. The bulk of insurgent arms, imported from Germany, with which Britain was locked in a ferocious world war, were seized the day before the Rising, and it was actually called off by the nominal head of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill.⁵ A minority persisted with the rebellion, and for a week, hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned, and holding out in strategic buildings around the city, they fought the British forces. Much of Dublin city centre was destroyed, 450 people were killed and at least 2,600 wounded.⁶

After the surrender the British rounded up the insurgents and sentenced ninety of them to death. Most of these sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, including that of a 33-year-old mathematics teacher, Éamon de Valera, whose American birth proved decisive in saving him from the firing squad. But fifteen of the leaders were shot in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, between 3 and 12 May.⁷ As any seasoned observer of Irish politics could have forecast, and certainly as the leaders had hoped, the executions turned a military debacle into a stunning political victory. The Rising, like some before it, had been spearheaded by small armed groups—in this case a minority of the Irish Volunteers (under the control of the IRB) and the Irish Citizen Army—though it represented a much larger body of opinion. Within two years the spirit of 1916 was institutionalised in a resurrected Sinn Féin, which eclipsed the moderate nationalist Irish Party that had garnered the majority of votes in Ireland for almost half a century.⁸ In so doing, the 1916 Rising reinforced the belief among republicans that the sacrifice of honest patriots, however outnumbered militarily or electorally, would be vindicated.

In modern republican and Irish politics (and for much of the time these have been synonymous) 1916 is Year 1. Before 1916 the agitation of the Irish Party in the House of Commons in London, where it regularly held the balance of power, had promised a parliament for Dublin. Two failed legislative attempts, in 1886 and 1893, to introduce a domestic legislature (albeit with limited powers) had put politics to one side for a generation, and a spectacularly vibrant cultural revival filled the void in nationalist activity.⁹ In 1910 the Irish Party once again held the balance of power, and it exacted its price for supporting the British Liberal Party: a reduction in the power of the House of Lords, and a third Government of Ireland Bill (commonly called the Home Rule Bill) to be introduced in Parliament.

By 1914 it seemed that the Irish Party had finally achieved a parliament for Dublin; but the outbreak of war meant that no such parliament would be established until the conflict had subsided. Eager to curry favour with the British elite (the better to secure generous terms for a Dublin parliament) and to compete with the Ulster unionists in demonstrating loyalty to the Crown, the leader of the Irish Party, John Redmond, urged Irishmen to join the British forces to fight in Europe. As the war dragged on and the British political elite seemed disinclined to resist unionist demands for separate treatment, the moment seemed ripe to some revolutionaries in the IRB for staging a rebellion.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood represented a different tradition of political agitation. Declaring itself the heir of the United Irishmen¹⁰ and the Young Irelanders,¹¹ the IRB was a secret revolutionary organisation founded in 1858 by Irish exiles in New York.¹² Active throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, it had co-existed, competed and co-operated with the Irish Party when it was led by the formidable Charles Stewart Parnell, and some prominent home-rule MPs were also members of the IRB. (Joseph Beggar, for example, was a member of the Supreme Council.)

With Parnell’s demise the paths of the IRB and the Irish Party increasingly diverged.¹³ Each organised and waited patiently, the Irish Party for British parliamentary arithmetic and wisdom to recognise the necessity of Irish home rule, the IRB for British vulnerability and Irish revolutionary consciousness to be exploited for achieving an independent republic. Home-rulers had confidently expected to be the leaders of a new legislature in Ireland—just reward for two generations of patient endeavour. But while thousands of Irishmen died in the First World War, 1916 was not to be the year remembered mainly for the slaughter of the Somme: it was to be for the defence of the General Post Office in Dublin by a few hundred republicans. Quite simply, what happened between 1916 and 1921 was a revolution.

In the two years following the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin won a string of by-elections. In North Roscommon on 3 February 1917 George Plunkett became the first Sinn Féin member of the British Parliament, though, like all other Sinn Féin MPs who were to follow him, he refused to take his seat.¹⁴ The election of Plunkett, the father of one of the seven signatories of the 1916 proclamation, represented a clear electoral endorsement of the actions and ideals of the 1916 rebels. Equally symbolic was the victory of the only surviving 1916 commandant, Éamon de Valera, who was elected MP for East Clare in July 1917.¹⁵

The election had been called to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Willie Redmond (brother of John Redmond), who had died fighting in the British army with the vain hope that his exertions might further the cause of home rule. De Valera’s annihilation of Redmond’s nominated successor, Patrick Lynch, indicated that the hegemonic grip of the Irish Party on the nationalist electorate was coming to an end. As the British army was killing off the last of the 1916 rebels sentenced to death, John Dillon, the last leader of the Irish Party, had made an impassioned plea to the House of Commons for the executions to stop, saying, ‘You are washing out our whole life’s work in a sea of blood.’¹⁶ The tidal wave that the Irish Party expected engulfed it during the 1918 general election. It was the first election held since 1911, and the Representation of the People Act (1918) enfranchised all men over twenty-one and all women over thirty, thus tripling the Irish electorate.

The Irish Party did not bother to contest twenty-six constituencies, but the scale of Sinn Féin’s victory still came as a shock to the British government and conservative elements in Ireland. Of the 105 Irish seats the republican party took 73, the unionist party 26 (including those in the rotten-borough university seats), and the once-mighty Irish Party was reduced to a mere 6 seats, 4 of which were obtained through a pre-election pact that had divided eight Ulster seats with Sinn Féin. Britain refused to acknowledge that Sinn Féin’s sweeping victory, fought on the platform of securing an independent Irish republic, necessitated discussing a new constitutional framework with republicans.

Sinn Féin resolved to act as if it had already secured a republic. A parliament, to be called Dáil Éireann, was established in January 1919. Membership was open to all Irish MPs elected in 1918, but as the unionists and home-rulers continued to attend the House of Commons in London, and as a majority of the Sinn Féin deputies were in prison, most members did not attend. Still, the new parliament opened in the Mansion House in Dublin amid great ceremony and pomp. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic (1916) was reaffirmed, and British forces were ordered to leave the country. The assembly adopted a Declaration of Independence and an Address to the Free Nations of the World, calling for support for the new republic. Alternative structures of government were established to compete with existing British institutions. A judicial system, commonly called Dáil courts, was established throughout the country. These achieved considerable support, not least because many parts of the country were not under British control, as the Royal Irish Constabulary was forced to withdraw from four hundred rural police stations during the war.¹⁷ Moreover, having won control of twenty-eight out of Ireland’s thirty-two county councils in the 1920 local elections, Sinn Féin was now entitled to receive and spend revenues throughout the country.

The exact nature of Sinn Féin’s and Dáil Éireann’s relationship with the IRA was a vexed question during the struggle for independence. The IRA’s shooting of two members of the RIC at Solloghodbeg, Co. Tipperary, which marked the beginning of the War of Independence, was not sanctioned by the Dáil. Subsequent events, together with the fact that the Dáil assembled for the first time on the same day as the attack, helped to obscure the nature of the conflict.¹⁸ Arthur Griffith,¹⁹ for one, was outraged and described the action as the work of outlaws that would only encourage Britain to use its superior force.²⁰ Throughout the War of Independence, Griffith and many of the moderate wing of the movement only learnt of IRA activities from the newspapers. In particular, they condemned the actions of Michael Collins’s elite assassination squad.²¹ There was no regular channel of communication between the IRA brigades and the Dáil or, for that matter, IRA headquarters. This was not surprising, considering that both the IRA and the Dáil were declared illegal by the British and forced underground. Consequently, the IRA’s fight to defend the Republic was carried out largely unhindered by any influence from the politicians, which encouraged a strong sense of autonomy among guerrilla leaders.

The first major attempt to clarify the relationship was made after de Valera, now President of the Irish Republic, returned from America in March 1921, when he publicly acknowledged that the IRA was the official army of the Irish Republic and secured Dáil approval for his stance. During this Dáil session Richard Mulcahy²² suggestively commented that such recognition was timely, as the Volunteers had demonstrated that they would fight, and, with their effectiveness apparent, the Dáil was on safe ground acknowledging them.²³ It was not until November 1921 that the IRA was formally subordinated to the government of the Irish Republic and that the procedures for the granting of new commissions by that government were formalised.

The British government had responded to the independence struggle with military reprisals, martial law—selectively applied to individual counties and not applied throughout the country, in an attempt to deny the IRA belligerent status—and a plethora of security initiatives. David Lloyd George had repeatedly stated that, as Prime Minister, he would never negotiate with the IRA ‘terror gangs’ and boasted that he had ‘murder by the throat.’²⁴ But, faced with what seemed to be a ubiquitous but elusive guerrilla foe that enjoyed a large measure of support, the British empire—the world’s most powerful—found itself drawn into a costly, humiliating and deeply embarrassing war. A truce negotiated between IRA and British army leaders took effect from midnight on 11 July 1921. Though de Valera had met Lloyd George shortly afterwards, he controversially chose to stay in Dublin while his hand-picked plenipotentiaries—Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Éamonn Duggan and George Gavan Duffy—negotiated the future of Anglo-Irish relations with Lloyd George and his colleagues between October and December.

While many knew that participation in the London talks would ensure that painful concessions would have to be made, the signed document brought back from the negotiations fell far short of republican expectations. The Republic, for which so many lives had been lost, was to be formally abandoned and replaced with an Irish Free State that would have extensive powers in twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. Partition was not reversed; instead, a Boundary Commission would review the competing territorial claims. Ireland was to become a dominion within the British Commonwealth; the King of England would be in law the monarch of Ireland; and Irish parliamentarians would have to swear an oath of fidelity to the King and his heirs before being able to carry out their parliamentary duties in the new Dublin assembly that would replace the 32-county Dáil Éireann. Britain would retain three naval bases in the Irish Free State (in addition to those in Northern Ireland), denying Irish autonomy in determining foreign and defence policies. And while the Free State would have substantial fiscal powers—a fact prized by Arthur Griffith—it would remain heavily dependent on Britain as well as being deprived of its industrial base in the north-east. Moreover, the Free State would have to pay millions of pounds annually as a contribution to the imperial debt, paying British military and police pensioners in Ireland and recouping the land annuities from Irish farmers.²⁵

De Valera immediately rejected the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland (commonly called the Anglo-Irish Treaty), which had been signed without his consent, though the plenipotentiaries were under clear instructions to refer any draft agreement to Dublin for approval. In a letter to the Irish people de Valera claimed that the terms of the agreement were in ‘violent conflict’ with the wishes of the majority of the Irish nation as expressed in successive elections and stated that he felt it his duty to declare immediately that ‘I cannot recommend acceptance of this Treaty, either to Dáil Éireann or to the country.’²⁶

The conflicting sentiments about the Treaty found expression during the Dáil debate, which took place between 14 December 1921 and 7 January 1922. Pádraic Ó Máille summed up the feelings of some who voted for the Treaty by declaring unquestioning loyalty to his army leader, saying that ‘what is good enough for Michael Collins is good enough me.’²⁷ Others, such as Richard Mulcahy and Collins himself, emphasised the relative military weakness of the IRA and the fact that they had not approached the negotiations ‘in the position of conquerors dictating terms of peace to a vanquished foe.’²⁸ Both Barton and Gavan Duffy defended their decision to sign the Treaty by referring to Lloyd George’s ultimatum, according to which a refusal to sign would lead to ‘terrible and immediate war.’²⁹ Gavan Duffy declared that he was

going to recommend this Treaty to you very reluctantly, but very sincerely, because I see no alternative . . . It inflicts a grievous wound upon the dignity of this nation by thrusting the King of England upon us . . . The complaint is . . . that the alternative to our signing that particular Treaty was immediate war; that we who were sent to London as the apostles of peace . . . were suddenly transformed into the unqualified arbiters of war; that we had to make this choice within three hours . . . and that monstrous iniquity was perpetrated by the man who had invited us under his roof in order, mar dhea, to make a friendly settlement.³⁰

Not all those who supported the Treaty did so in a defensive, semi-apologetic manner or by conjuring up images of apocalyptic doom should an alternative route be considered. Some, like Griffith, concentrated on the positive attributes of the agreement and the powers that had been wrested from the British government. ‘We have brought back the flag,’ he told the Dáil.

We have brought back the evacuation of Ireland after 700 years by British troops and the formation of an Irish Army. We have brought back to Ireland her full rights and powers of fiscal control. We have brought back to Ireland equality with England, equality with all the nations which form that Commonwealth, and an equal voice in the direction of foreign affairs in peace and war.³¹

Austin Stack, the son of a Fenian leader, an exponent of traditional separatist sentiment and now Minister for Home Affairs, demonstrated the extent of the ideological chasm during the Treaty debate when he rejected dominion status. Griffith had stressed that Ireland had now the same degree of independence as Canada, Australia and New Zealand; but these countries, Stack pointed out, had ‘sprung from England,’ and their ruling populations were ‘children of England,’ who regarded England as their motherland.

This country, on the other hand, had not been a child of England’s nor never was. England came here as an invader, and for 750 years we have been resisting that conquest. Are we now after those 750 years to bend the knee and acknowledge that we received from England as a concession full, or half, or three-quarter Dominion status? I say no.³²

A difference between ‘true believers’ and ‘pragmatists’ could be detected. The pragmatist view stressed the gains that had been made: Britain had made Ireland an equal member of the British Commonwealth, with the same legislative and executive powers as Canada. The ‘true believers’ stressed what had been lost. Liam Mellows claimed that the Dáil

had no power to agree to anything inconsistent with the existence of the Republic. Now either the Republic exists or it does not. If the Republic exists, why are we talking about stepping towards the Republic by means of this Treaty? I for one believed, and do believe, that the Republic exists, because it exists upon the only sure foundation upon which any government or republic can exist, that is, because the people gave a mandate for that Republic to be declared. We are hearing a great deal here about the will of the people, and the newspapers—that never even recognised the Republic when it was the will of the people—use that as a text for telling Republicans in Ireland what the will of the people is . . . The people are being stampeded; in the people’s minds there is only one alternative to the Treaty and that is terrible, immediate war . . . That is not the will of the people, that is the fear of the people. The will of the people was when the people declared a Republic.³³

De Valera introduced a proposal that he hoped might form the basis of a compromise between the two sides. Quickly dubbed ‘Document No. 2’, it was a subtle attempt to achieve more effectively the promise of the Treaty: a stepping-stone to the ultimate freedom and unity of the country. The central theme was that all power must be derived from the Irish people alone. To this end, a constitution would be enacted that explicitly declared that the people, not the British Crown, were the source of all governmental authority. In deference to British sensitivities, this independent Ireland would be ‘externally associated’ with the other states of the British Commonwealth in certain matters and would enjoy equal status with Britain and other Commonwealth members.

Another important distinction was made with the Treaty’s provision that made Irish membership of the British Commonwealth a non-negotiable principle, violation of which would occasion an immediate resumption of armed conflict. Under the Treaty the Free State was an involuntary member of the Commonwealth, and its subordinate status to Britain was explicitly stated. De Valera’s alternative would make Ireland’s association with the Commonwealth a voluntary contract entered into by independent states in no way subordinate to another. A logical extension of this premise was the right of the Irish people to leave the Commonwealth if they so wished. If such a relationship were established the Irish government would recognise the King as head of the association. Moreover, if the British insisted that such a contractual relationship be sealed by the taking of an oath, then it would be an oath to obey the Irish constitution, to abide by the Treaty, and to recognise the king as head of that association. It is important to demonstrate how this differed from the provisions contained in the Treaty. If the Free State constitution was to be compatible with the Treaty it would have to contain an oath declaring fidelity to the King as King of Ireland. De Valera’s alternative merely required that representatives obey the constitution, which stated that all power came from the people of Ireland. Everything else stemmed from this concept, and the oath was compatible with this democratic principle.

Document No. 2 represented a constructive attempt by de Valera to bridge the gulf that was emerging between those who accepted the Treaty and those who opposed it. However, the pro-Treaty deputies were convinced that ‘neither renewed war—which they were offered—nor continued negotiations—which they were not offered—would bring them one iota nearer the realisation of their full demands.’³⁴ With the summary rejection of his alternative, de Valera became increasingly recalcitrant and resistant to compromise. Document No. 2 had been his attempt to reunite the Dáil, and its non-acceptance, he felt, absolved him from the compromises offered, which were becoming the subject of embarrassment and confusion in republican circles.³⁵

De Valera’s performance at this time has been criticised, largely because it is felt that he anticipated, as much as any of the plenipotentiaries—if not more so—the limitations the British would impose on negotiations. He had, after all, entered into talks with Lloyd George in July. His keen grasp of constitutional minutiae and semantics would have resulted in a different negotiating style, though it might not have produced a substantially different offer.³⁶

While indulgence in counterfactual speculation throws up some tantalising possibilities, it can never alter the historical record. The republican movement was, as Cathal Brugha forecast, split ‘from top to bottom.’ When the result was announced, 64 votes had been cast for the Treaty, 57 against.³⁷

A last-ditch effort to reject the Treaty by other means was attempted with a motion to re-elect de Valera as President of the Irish Republic. To murmurs of approval from pro-Treaty deputies, Arthur Griffith declared that it was ‘most unfair to this Assembly that the personality of Mr. de Valera should be used as it is being used,’ as ‘everyone knows how difficult it is for a man personally to vote against President de Valera.’³⁸ This vote was also narrowly lost—60 votes to 58—with several abstentions, including de Valera.³⁹ Griffith was elected in his stead; but, in the light of the concessions made in London, de Valera pointedly asked whether he was going to be elected as President of the Irish Republic—the position he had held—or something else. Griffith equivocated. The Treaty stipulated that before the Irish Free State could be established a Provisional Government must take over the functions of the state and that this body was to be created by assembling the ‘Parliament of Southern Ireland’ that had been created by the same Government of Ireland Act (1920) that had produced a parliament in Belfast. What would happen to the large amount of funds that had been collected from republicans in Ireland and America for the functioning of the Republican government? Were these going to be used by the Provisional Government? And, as Dáil Éireann was a 32-county body and the Parliament of Southern Ireland was a 26-county body, what would happen to the Dáil representatives from the excluded six counties?

Many of the ambiguities were buried beneath a landslide of rhetorical commitments to putting a new constitution before the electorate, who would be asked to endorse the changes. Republican opponents of the Treaty insisted that it was the duty of Dáil representatives to keep the Republican legislature intact and functioning; the people had established the Republic, de Valera claimed, and only they could discard it. Griffith and the other Treaty signatories knew, however, that the British would not permit any elections until a Provisional Government was created in line with the Treaty.

Meanwhile, the anti-Treaty IRA, which had withdrawn its allegiance to the Dáil and was not controlled by any political party, established its headquarters in the Four Courts, Dublin.

As a self-professed national movement, Sinn Féin was a broad coalition transcending sectional interests.⁴⁰ While the divisions within this coalition only became public during the Treaty debate, evidence of its fragility can be found at its source.

Despite being the founder of Sinn Féin, Arthur Griffith was ‘no Sinn Féiner.’⁴¹ The Sinn Féin constitution adopted in 1908 was ‘far from revolutionary’ and in fact proposed a central place for the King of England in any Irish constitution.⁴² Griffith’s monarchical policies and pacifist views did not endear him to many nationalists of a more radical hue,⁴³ so that by 1916 Sinn Féin as an organisation was moribund. The erroneous connection made by the British establishment between Sinn Féin and the Rising (which it called the ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’) saved Griffith’s organisation from political obscurity, occasioning the popular saying that ‘it wasn’t Sinn Féin made the Rising, but the Rising made Sinn Féin.’⁴⁴ Recruits flocked into the party, and the vast increase in membership ensured that the new Sinn Féin differed markedly from its predecessor.

Not all these new members were content to tolerate Griffith’s titular leadership, but they were satisfied that the militants were in the ascendancy. ‘The original Sinn Féiners were not in sympathy with the men of Easter week,’ wrote a correspondent to the new Sinn Féin figurehead, George Plunkett, ‘but the present Sinn Féiners, in the country at least, are heart and soul with them.’⁴⁵ The Rising also saved Arthur Griffith, who had opposed the insurrection but, ‘fortunately for his future reputation,’ was arrested in its wake and interned.⁴⁶ His ‘dual monarchy’ ideas survived the Rising, however, and the more militant republican elements thrown up after 1916 noted his ‘undeviating attachment to a political settlement with a monarchical character.’⁴⁷ In this context his fervent support for the Treaty is not difficult to comprehend, for it achieved everything—and more—that his original Sinn Féin movement had set out to attain in 1905.

Griffith’s unreserved enthusiasm for the Treaty contrasted with the reluctant support of others and indicated an important divergence of outlook. A fervent nationalist, Griffith was also a classic example of the ‘native intellectual’⁴⁸ unable to fully reject the power that had moulded him. His economic policy and political objectives were shaped by a peculiar love-hate relationship with the British Empire. Griffith was not an anti-imperialist: rather he resented Ireland’s subordinate position within the British Empire. Commending Australian Orangemen in 1913 for referring to the ‘Empire of Great Britain and Ireland’, Griffith confessed that he ‘thought the expression was a good one and I often wondered why it was not more extensively used.’⁴⁹ This ambiguity in Griffith’s position surfaced again and again throughout his writings. Indeed his series of articles called Pitt’s Policy is virtually a lamentation for the lost possibility of Anglo-Irish imperialism and contains a strong suggestion that England cheated Ireland out of its equitable and fitting role as joint ruler of Britain’s vast exploitative empire.

One day in July 1800, the Peers of Ireland entered their Parliament House rulers of a nation—co-rulers of an Empire—and came out less than the equals of the most illiterate Hodge in an English constituency. Mr. Pitt had destroyed the partnership of Ireland in the rule of the Empire—he had made England not the predominant partner, but the owner of the firm.⁵⁰

Griffith’s political ideology was far removed from the revolutionary and radical voices of such individuals as James Connolly, Jim Larkin and Liam Mellows.⁵¹ Ireland’s subordinate position within the British Empire wounded Irish pride and prestige, but rarely did Griffith interrogate the imperial system itself. Indeed at times his writings lapse into a tone of longing and regret for the Irish superpower that might have been.

An Anglo-Hibernian dual monarchy would be master of the world today . . . An Empire equally governed from Dublin and London was possible beyond all that the Empire had been . . .⁵²

Griffith’s vision for Ireland saw Britain not as a mother-country but as a twin sister—a dual monarchy. His analysis of foreign political situations did little to cultivate a reputation of anti-imperialism. While his sympathies were always instinctively with those who opposed England, no deeper examination of objectives, social structures or consequences was considered necessary. Like many of his contemporaries, Griffith viewed the Anglo-Boer War as a European conflict and unconditionally accepted the Boers as the true nation of South Africa. The interests and aspirations of Africa’s native population were dismissed, which is all the more curious considering Griffith’s two-year sojourn in the Transvaal. Indeed he declared himself ‘in hearty sympathy with the civilisation of Africa.’⁵³

Griffith’s fixation with the work of the German economist Georg Friedrich List is also something of an oddity. An ardent imperialist, List had little time for the rights of small nations, advocating the incorporation of the Netherlands and Belgium in a German superstate and arguing that Britain’s rule in Ireland was a legitimate conquest that remedied the latter’s deficiency in national resources and capabilities.⁵⁴ Furthermore, List believed that only through an alliance with a more powerful state was it possible for a small nation to retain its independence, and that even with such an alliance the small nation would have to sacrifice some of the advantages of nationality.⁵⁵

Griffith’s assimilation of many of the racist tropes of empire and his dubious ideological affiliations in international affairs were never more clear than in his lifelong promotion of an Austro-Hungarian solution for Ireland. Griffith’s elevation of Hungarian nationalism revealed a conservative and imperialist streak, at variance with ideals of egalitarianism and liberty. The coercive, oppressive rule of the Magyar minority over the Slavic peoples—widely documented during Griffith’s time—did not seem to offer the ‘parallel for Ireland’ that he claimed. Aristocratic and landowning, their struggle for power was more analogous to that of the Anglo-Irish propertied class than to any other comparable group in Ireland. Griffith’s advocacy of the Magyar cause is, however, consistent with his oft-derided nostalgia for ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ of the late eighteenth century.⁵⁶

The confusion that Griffith’s monarchical ideals aroused in republican circles was recalled by Bulmer Hobson, who claimed that Griffith’s talk of ‘the King, Lord and Commons of Ireland’ had disillusioned the separatist youth that he had helped to radicalise and ‘lowered the national claim of independence.’⁵⁷ For several years these fundamental differences were represented in numerous separate organisations, but in the post-Rising euphoria the two main strands came together at the 1917 Sinn Féin ard-fheis to provide a united front.

Writing some years later as president of Sinn Féin, Father Michael O’Flanagan drew attention to the inherent duality of the Sinn Féin movement and noted that ‘the split was there from the very beginning.’

The two vice-presidents elected [Griffith and O’Flanagan] were the two men of opposite views who formed the nucleus of the provisional committee. The two secretaries were Austin Stack and Darrell Figgis. The two treasurers were Laurence Ginnell and William Cosgrave. The highest votes for membership of the Standing Committee were given to John [Eoin] MacNeill and Cathal Brugha. When the so-called Treaty came, one of the original vice-presidents of the organisation [Griffith] became its foremost champion. The other [O’Flanagan] remained on the side of the Republic. One of the secretaries [Figgis] became an eloquent spokesman of the Free State cause, the other fought against it to his last breath. One of the treasurers [Cosgrave] became for many years the leader of the Free State majority party. The other died in harness in the ranks of the Republic. Of the two who came first in the list for the Standing Committee, the name of one [Brugha] will go down in history as that of the outstanding hero martyr of the Republican cause; that of the other as the leading intellectual champion of the policy of compromise. We had only one president. The President found it impossible to divide himself into two.⁵⁸

This does much to explain the subsequent Treaty split. Reflecting these divisions is the fact that during the October 1917 ard-fheis two lists of preferred candidates were apparently circulated, representing the two major wings of the joint executive.⁵⁹ Such a manufactured coalition of opposites was to be mirrored five years later when Collins and de Valera negotiated the famous pact aimed at retaining some semblance of unity within republican ranks. In 1922, as in 1917, the personnel of the opposing sides remained much the same. The papering over of the considerable fissure in this formal baptism of the ‘second’ Sinn Féin did not prevent some from questioning the revolutionary credentials of those present and from airing doubts about their suitability to hold prominent positions within the movement.

The elections to the National Executive provoked a vociferous attack against Eoin MacNeill by Kathleen Clarke (widow of Tom Clarke, one of the executed 1916 leaders) and Constance Markievicz, who castigated him for his attempt to call off the Rising. De Valera stepped in and took MacNeill and his acolytes under his wing. Indeed he made a point of including MacNeill during the East Clare by-election hustings.⁶⁰ On his release de Valera had been a deus ex machina and succeeded in uniting Sinn Féin, but the conservative influx that followed ‘widened the Sinn Féin front, but at the same time softened the character of the movement.’⁶¹ And while de Valera proved adept at splitting ideological hairs, he could not, as O’Flanagan pointed out, divide himself in two when it came to a vote. This problem, so painfully obvious during the Treaty debates, would also be a feature of his tenure as leader of Sinn Féin and ‘President of the Republic’ in the years leading up to the establishment of Fianna Fáil.

The 1916 Rising thus facilitated a merger of the monarchist and pacifist members of the old Sinn Féin, the militant separatists that formed the bedrock of the new Sinn Féin, and a host of other individuals of various motivations and outlooks. But this unity was always precarious and dependent for its cohesion on British coercion.⁶² The separatist movement was ‘composed of an uneasy mixture of bureaucrats and guerrillas,’ and in such circumstances revolutionary élan was continually threatened by bureaucratic rationalism.⁶³ The relationship between local units of the IRA and headquarters often strained, with the former believing that GHQ was out of touch with realities on the ground.⁶⁴ Moreover, contact with Dáil Éireann was tenuous at best. The politicos within Sinn Féin relied on press reports for their information on how the armed struggle was progressing; they had no effective say in how the war was conducted.⁶⁵

It was only during the truce that many of the guerrilla fighters and administrative leaders came into contact with one another, and some were surprised to discover that they had a mutual antipathy. An occupational cleavage existed at some level within the movement, later evident in the Treaty split. Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn have commented that ‘there seems to have been a predominance of professional people and possibly white collar workers on the pro-treaty side.’ They are cautious, however, in placing too much emphasis on this, as occupational distinctions, they claim, are not sufficiently clear-cut to permit any general conclusions.⁶⁶ Tom Garvin has gone further and has claimed that a statistical analysis of the Dáil vote ‘strongly suggests that the division was indeed one between administrators, who were pro-Treaty, and local guerrilla leaders, who were against.’⁶⁷ In addition, he notes that of the twenty-six TDs who held significant administrative positions in the Dáil government or the movement two-thirds voted in favour of the Treaty.⁶⁸ A similar cleavage can be detected within the IRA. Nine of the thirteen members of the GHQ staff agreed to support the Treaty, while eight of the nineteen divisional headquarters reported a majority in favour of acceptance. At the brigade level, however, opposition to the Treaty was between 70 and 80 per cent. These statistics suggest a vertical division within the IRA, with the highest echelons less opposed to the Treaty than those at the regional and local level.⁶⁹

Personal loyalties also played a large part in determining the attitude of individual republicans to the Treaty. Some, like de Valera, found themselves opposing it despite relatively moderate inclinations, while ‘there were those who followed Collins who would have been equally happy on the hillsides.’⁷⁰ Indeed, as Ronan Fanning has argued, Collins was temperamentally ‘closer to the fighting men in the Four Courts than to some of his government colleagues in City Hall.’⁷¹ These divisions, however, were largely internal to the Sinn Féin movement; others outside this ideological framework would also be making judgements.

Even before the Treaty was formally signed, many republicans had detected a softening of the Sinn Féin position and a revival of groups ‘who did nothing to gain the victory, but will reap the gains of others.’⁷² The Treaty brought out the job-seekers and the peace brigade and was the signal for the re-emergence of a plethora of interests implacably opposed to revolution. Joseph Sweeney, who was to become one of Collins’s trusted generals in the new Free State army, remembers attempting to approach a depressed Collins shortly after the Treaty to seek clarification of the IRB position on the agreement only to find Collins besieged by ‘a lot of fellows who were looking for jobs, the sort of self-seekers that follow in the wake of an agreement like this.’⁷³ Another pro-Treaty observer admitted that material rewards were offered and that there was ‘an unseemly rush of friends and relatives for a share in the plums of office.’⁷⁴ Garvin notes that careerism was exploited to secure the allegiance of waverers and that Free State leaders ‘offered jobs and promotions to key leaders to attract them away from “irregularism”.’⁷⁵

Collins himself was alert to the dangers of allowing ambitious sectional interests to exploit both the impasse facing the independence struggle and the lapse in fighting.⁷⁶ On 3 April 1922 he wrote to a friend, Patrick Daly:

I am in sympathy with a majority of the IRA; I would wish them to continue now and finish the fight. I want to help them to do so. To postpone the struggle for 15 or 20 years would be a forlorn consolation. The ‘big’ businessmen and the politicians will come forward when peace is established and perhaps after some years gain control. Their interests will never demand a renewal of war.

The signing of the Treaty caused a large section of the IRA to withdraw their allegiance from the Dublin parliament, contending that they had fought for and pledged allegiance to the established government of the Republic and would not countenance the disestablishment of that government. Shortly after the Treaty vote was announced, Michael Collins, who emerged as head of the pro-Treaty Provisional Government (not to be confused with Dáil Éireann, over which Arthur Griffith presided), came under intense and sustained pressure from the British government to confront his anti-Treaty opponents militarily. Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies and chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Ireland, made these demands particularly forcefully.

Collins’s instinct was to patch up a deal with his erstwhile republican comrades rather than submit to Churchill’s ever more belligerent demands. On 1 May 1922 the two wings of the IRA produced an agreed ‘Army Document’—signed by eight officers, including Collins, Mulcahy and Dan Breen—in an effort to close ranks and preserve unity.⁷⁷ These efforts were mirrored by political developments, with Collins and de Valera entering into negotiations that yielded a pact for the forthcoming election. There would be an agreed Sinn Féin panel, and both pro and anti-Treaty sides would be represented according to their existing strength. Assuming that Sinn Féin secured a majority, the government would consist of an elected President, a Minister of Defence, who would represent the army, and nine other ministers proportionate to the Dáil division: five pro-Treaty and four anti-Treaty. The personnel would be selected by the respective sides, while the allocation of portfolios would rest with the President.