Birth of a State: The Anglo-Irish Treaty by Irish Academic Press

MÍCHEÁL Ó FATHARTAIGH & LIAM WEEKS

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

vii 1

Negotiating the Treaty

The Second Dáil

Debating the Treaty

The Irish Free State and the Dominions

125

The Politics of the Treaty

170

The Anglo-Irish Treaty: The Document

194

Conclusion: The Case for a Reappraisal of the Treaty

219

Notes

224

Bibliography

245

Index

258

Introduction

atification Day in the United States falls on 14 January, marking the anniversary of the ratification in 1784 of the Treaty of Paris by the US Congress. Even though this was a monumental event in the formation of the United States of America, it is probable that few Irish readers are familiar with either the day or the treaty. Signed by British and US representatives, the treaty marked the end of the sevenyear American War of Independence and established the boundaries between the British Empire and the new state. The date that is more celebrated is, of course, 4 July 1776, when the Second Continental Congress issued a declaration of independence from British rule. That the commemoration of this declaration takes greater prece dence than an actual moment of independence bears many comparisons to the Irish experience. The most important date for nationalists in Ireland is Easter Monday 1916, when Patrick Pearse issued a proclamation of independence outside the General Post Office in Dublin. That event marked the beginning of a week-long insurrection that was largely confined to the capital, but which had longer-term repercussions, sparking off a revolutionary war that culminated in a qualified form of Irish independence. This materialised under the Articles of Agreement between Great Britain and Ireland, signed on 6 December 1921, which came into effect as a treaty exactly one year after the signing. Under this agreement, for the first time in over 700 years, the twenty-six counties that were to constitute the Irish Free State would be free of British rule. This event achieved a significant modicum of success in contrast to the celebrated episodes of failure, and yet there

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is no official day in Ireland to commemorate either the signing of the Treaty or the formation of the state. For many, the Treaty is associated with failure. Failure to achieve a republic. Failure to achieve full sovereignty and sever the link with the United Kingdom. Failure to establish a thirty-two-county state. Failure to honour the mandate that was given to Sinn Féin in 1918 when it won 70 per cent of seats on the island of Ireland in that year’s elections to the House of Commons. This understanding, however, is in part built on a mythology perpetuated by those opposed to the agreement, which was sustained through the decades, particularly by the dismantling of the Treaty by its opponents’ leader, Éamon de Valera, when he came to office in 1932. As is shown in this book, a thirty-two-county, fully sovereign republic was never on the cards in 1921, and most of the Sinn Féin leadership knew this. They were content, albeit reluctantly so, to maintain an association with the United Kingdom, as this was the best that could be achieved, and with this relationship some form of an oath was inevitable. While it is correct to say that Sinn Féin had a landslide victory in 1918, taking this one step further to claim that it was a mandate for a republic that the Treaty betrayed requires numerous leaps of imagination. Interpreting public opinion on one issue from a general election result where people vote for parties and candidates across different constituencies is fraught with difficulties. While 1918 was perhaps the most single-issue election ever contested in Ireland, it needs to be recognised that it was held under the first-past-the-post voting system, known to produce radically disproportionate results where seat returns do not match votes won. So, while Sinn Féin won 73 seats out of 105, compared to the Irish Parliamentary Party’s (IPP) 4 seats, it won only twice as many votes as its nationalist opponents. More than one in five voted for the IPP, while fewer than half voted for Sinn Féin. Throw into the mix Labour’s voters not being represented due to its decision to stand aside from the election, and those in twentyfive constituencies (31 per cent of the electorate) not being allowed to

Introduction

exercise their franchise at all due to the lack of candidates willing to oppose Sinn Féin, and it is obvious that 1918 was not a normal election in the sense that we understand these events in the twenty-first century. In any case, transposing contemporary ideas and values onto events over a century ago is a task that should be treated with caution. The Treaty was not the democratic outcome of free and fair negotiations between two state powers; the realpolitik of 1921 was that states with more resources used them to exert their will, whether fair or not. The agreement between British and Irish representatives was reached only under threat of war, and this duress impinged on the satisfaction with which the outcome was greeted in Ireland. This is not meant to be reproachful of the British side for using such aggressive tactics. That was the way of the world then when it came to international relations, and the British Empire, like any empire, was not built on fair cop diplomacy. Liberal democracy was a fledgling concept in the early twentieth century, with there being few examples of states that could be categorised as such. Most people lived in empires or under other forms of non-democratic rule, and even for those who did not, the extent of democracy was limited. There was little discussion of mandates, many people were disenfranchised (women, minorities, young people, the non-propertied), and voting systems with high levels of disproportionality were common. Even if we were to impose a democratic interpretation onto events concerning the Treaty and defend the critics who claimed that the agreement was a rejection of the 1918 mandate, this group does not come out favourably. The Treaty’s opponents did not want a plebiscite on the agreement, and even though an overwhelming majority of the electorate voted for pro-Treaty parties in the June 1922 election, the anti-Treatyites still maintained that the majority had no right to do wrong. To criticise both the opponents and defenders of the Treaty from a modern values basis is unfair on both camps, and provides a false narrative and understanding of the period. The Treaty should be interpreted in a different light, and the outcome needs to be understood

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from the perspective of 1921, not 2021. That is the purpose of this book, which provides a fresh insight into a critically formative period that, for better or worse, produced the Irish state. THE TREATY

The Treaty came about as the result of attempts by the revolutionary Dáil Éireann, monopolised by Sinn Féin, to achieve a complete separation from the British Empire. This intention had been formally proclaimed in the declaration of independence issued when the Dáil first met on 21 January 1919, a reaffirmation of the proclamation of independence issued by Pearse and his comrades in 1916. The political campaign of Sinn Féin was matched by an armed conflict taken up by its sister paramilitary association, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which coincidentally began with the killing of two policemen in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary, on the same day the Dáil issued its declaration. While the British government initially attempted to deal with the Irish independence movement as it had done with previous nationalist insurrections – with armed resistance – by the summer of 1921 the Crown forces were no nearer to eliminating the insurgents than they had been at the outbreak of hostilities. As was the case with the British government’s policies vis-à-vis paramilitary violence in more recent times, behind policies of open conflict and condemnation were diplomatic manoeuvres to seek a peaceful resolution. These were kept secret from the general body politic, but in July 1921, David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, changed tack and issued an open invitation to the self-declared president of the Irish republic, Éamon de Valera, to talks in London to resolve the Irish issue. These negotiations formally began in October, and after two months they culminated in the Articles of Agreement, which were signed by all members of the Irish and British delegations. Although immediately called a treaty by many in Ireland, particularly for propaganda purposes by the proTreatyites, the Articles did not take effect until approved by the House of

Introduction

Commons of Southern Ireland at its one and only meaningful meeting, as well as by the British parliament, and then ratified by legislation in the latter (and it is debatable if even then it strictly met all the criteria to accurately be called a treaty). While this might sound pedantic, it is a point that needs to be mentioned from the beginning, as it became a recurring issue in the discussions over the document. Although given the powers to sign an agreement with the British government, the Irish delegation would not necessarily have seen themselves as committing the country to its terms. In signing, they were merely deciding to give both the Irish cabinet and the Dáil the opportunity to consider the Articles; it was the latter body that had the ultimate power to decide if they were to become a treaty. While for Lloyd George and his government the Treaty was viewed as an end point in the issue of the Irish conflict, it was not to become so on the island. The Treaty was not accepted by all, and it split the cabinet, Dáil and country, resulting in a civil war just six months after its signing. Although the forces defending the Treaty initially proved victorious, within ten years its opponents had come to power, and they set about dismantling many of its provisions. It is in part for this reason that the Treaty has never been a popular element of nationalist, and consequently the Irish state’s, folklore. And for that reason, it is necessary to justify the importance of the document, and devote a whole book to the issue. It might seem strange to have to explain the significance of a treaty that established an independent state, but even those who defended the agreement were not its most avid fans. The Treaty was born in difficult circumstances, which was to impact severely on its legacy. While the press and governments overseas welcomed its signing, partly because it was sold as an end to the conflict, the reception for the agreement was much more muted in Ireland. The celebrations through the night when a truce had been declared between the British army and the IRA in July 1921 were in stark contrast to the impact of the settlement reached five months later. Celia Shaw, a student at University College Dublin in 1921, noted in her diary entry

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from 6 December: ‘No-one knows what to think. There is an oath, though subtly worded … not a bonfire, not a flag, not a hurrah.’1 Although Sinn Féin had achieved in the space of a few years what had eluded centuries of previous nationalist movements, the party split irrevocably over the Treaty. Those who opposed its ratification hoped that its future would be limited, and, indeed, its prime opponent, de Valera, did much to undo the Treaty on his coming to power ten years after its ratification. He removed the oath, denigrated the Office of the Governor-General, abolished the Senate, stopped the payment of annuities and realised his beloved concept of external association with the United Kingdom. In spite of all these actions, however, de Valera was not able to undo some of the lasting legacies of the Treaty, which justify a reconsideration of one of the key moments in Irish history. The Treaty’s consequences were numerous, but four of the more significant effects are considered here, as they left the greatest imprint on Irish political history. The first and most important legacy is that it was the document that granted Irish independence. Wolfe Tone, Emmet, Butt, Parnell and Pearse may all have demanded various forms of self-government in the past, but ultimately it was the Treaty that involved the greatest conces sion from a British government since the aforementioned Treaty of Paris, which recognised American independence. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was to grant Ireland a lot more freedom than was imagined at the time. To put this in perspective, consider the experiences of the other dominions of the British Empire, namely Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa, which are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. Australia formed a federation in 1901, but it was not until 1942 that the 1931 Statute of Westminster (which granted all dominions de facto independence) was ratified in Canberra, and only in 1986 that the right of the British parliament to legislate for Australia was removed. It also took until 1940 for Australia to have its first diplomatic mission outside Britain. Ireland, by contrast, had Timothy Smiddy appointed minister plenipotentiary to Washington in

Introduction

1924. Canada achieved full internal sovereignty only in 1982, which took all of 115 years to realise after the 1867 Constitution Act that established the Canadian Confederation, prior to which point the British House of Commons had the power to amend the Canadian constitution. Newfoundland had to give up its self-governing status in 1934 due to financial insolvency, handing governorship of the region back to the UK, before voting to become a province of Canada fifteen years later. New Zealand did not adopt the Statute of Westminster until 1947, ninety-five years after the New Zealand Constitution Act gave the colony powers of self-governance, with the Constitution Act of 1986 severing the last de facto constitutional link with the British parliament. One considerable difference between these cases and the Irish Free State was that a reason for the delay in realising the autonomy granted by the Statute of Westminster was these countries’ desire to maintain a constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom. It is the Union of South Africa that bears the closest resemblance to the Irish experience, where pressures for self-governance in the former Boer republics of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State led to the formation of the union in 1910. The Status of the Union Act in 1934 merged the Statute of Westminster into South African law, removing the last formal links with British rule. This statute was never formally adopted under Irish law because the Free State government maintained that the British right to legislate for Ireland was removed under the 1921 Treaty. On the occasion of the Statute of Westminster becoming British law in December 1931, the minister for external affairs, Patrick McGilligan, said: ‘The powers inherent in the Treaty position are what we have proclaimed them to be for the last ten years.’2 The statute was simply achieving for the other dominions what the Irish Free State had secured in 1921. In other words, this confirmed that the Treaty was the foundation of Irish independence. The second impact of the Treaty was a direct follow-on from the first, with the establishment of the new jurisdiction cementing the partition that had come about from the 1920 Government of Ireland

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Act. Although nationalists hoped that the border was temporary and would be undermined by the Boundary Commission proposed by the Treaty, the creation of a new polity significantly eroded the possibility of an all-island solution. As is discussed in Chapter 5, the commission on which Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith appeared to pin their hopes during the Treaty negotiations did nothing to resolve the issue of Ulster. While it is widely claimed that the 1920 act was responsible for partitioning the island, its outcome was not as definitive as we are led to believe. The legislation created two parliaments on the island, but within the realm of the United Kingdom, somewhat like the devolution process in Scotland and Wales in more recent decades. Provision was made for the establishment of an all-island Council of Ireland that would have authority over both Northern and Southern Ireland, ‘with a view to the eventual establishment of a parliament for the whole of Ireland’.3 In other words, it left open the possibility of a unitary approach, which to all intents and purposes was removed by the 1921 Treaty. Had the Dáil of 1921 known that the Boundary Commission would have no effect on the border, it is likely that the Treaty would have been rejected, and Ireland would have been plunged further into conflict, an ‘immediate and terrible war’, as Lloyd George had threatened. As it was, very little was said about partition or Ulster during the Dáil debates on the Treaty, despite it being a major topic of discussion during the negotiations in London. As is discussed in Chapter 3, far more attention was given over to the proposed oath to the British monarch, which proved shortsighted, given the impact partition was to have on the island, whereas the oath was abolished ten years later. The third legacy of the Treaty, discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, is that the division within Sinn Féin over its approval formed the basis of the party system that emerged in the new state, and was to remain the key fulcrum of party competition for the rest of the century. While in other European states the main political battlegrounds concerned social divisions, particularly class, Ireland was to remain a case apart in that the two main parties were descendants of the Sinn Féin split. The

Introduction

Civil War that ensued as a result of this division translated politically into a battle between Fianna Fáil, the descendants of the anti-Treatyites, and Fine Gael, the pro-Treatyites. So deep was their animosity that, just as the Tramecksan and Slamecksan parties in Gulliver’s Lilliput neither ate, drank nor spoke with each other, so too the inheritors of the Treaty division remained at loggerheads long after the original actors and memories from that time had faded away. It was not until May 2020 that the two sides were prepared to enter government together, which even then did not resemble an alliance of long-lost pals, but rather a temporary arrangement. It is especially noticeable that the party challenging the Treaty parties’ dominance of Irish politics in Ireland’s 2020 election was Sinn Féin, itself sharing a similar legacy back to the 1921 split. The Treaty remains the Banquo’s ghost of Irish politics, with the party system unable to shake off its underlying influence. For this reason, when describing the genesis of the Irish party system, it has been said that ‘in the beginning was the Treaty’.4 It is necessary to understand that agreement to understand Irish politics. The fourth consequence was the international impact of the Treaty. It set in motion the process by which Crown colonies were to become dominions, and by which dominions were to achieve full sovereignty. In this way it could be argued that the Treaty catalysed the process of decolonisation, and with it the beginning of the end for the British Empire.5 This international context is particularly important, because too often historical events in Ireland are viewed through a narrow nationalist lens. Momentous episodes are explained from a purely Irish narrative, as if being ‘une île derrière une île’ shelters the island from what is going on in the rest of the world. It is erroneous, however, to assume, à la F.S.L. Lyons, that as a nation the Irish are living in Plato’s cave, ‘with their backs to the fire of life and deriving their only knowledge of what went on outside from the flicking shadows thrown on the wall’.6 The evolution of Irish history can be viewed as a part of the wider international experience, which can provide a greater insight than a purely sui generis approach.

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Taking the wider period of concern in this book, Ireland’s revolutionary war and campaign for independence from the United Kingdom were not isolated global events. They came during a period of considerable political and social change. Empires were crumbling, the idea of nation-states and self-rule were emerging, as were democratic tendencies. The Russian Revolution and the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires were hugely significant events at the end of the 1910s, and it is arguable that the Irish independence movement might not have achieved the success that it did in the absence of these other upheavals. The clamour to make government more representative of the people was growing around the world, not just in Ireland, with increasing demands to extend suffrage to the non-propertied classes, women and minorities. Alongside all this was the Great War (1914–18), the war to end all wars, which speeded up the process of change and precipitated the fall of a number of regimes. Within this context, the Irish experience does not seem too unusual. Irish nationalists shared common cause with Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians and Czechs in seeking self-determination from a larger empire that subjugated their minority interests. But where the Central European states were aided in their cause by the collapse of their imperial masters (the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires), the British Empire had not collapsed after the First World War; rather, it had in expanded, with gains made under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 bringing almost onequarter of the global population within it. Given this context, British government policy vis-à-vis Ireland needs to be viewed as part of a wider imperial policy. Oliver Russell, Lord Ampthill, a former viceroy of India, noted in the House of Lords debates on the Treaty that ‘this Irish question is far more a question for the British Empire than it is an Irish question’.7 Whatever outcome was reached with its nearest neighbour would have knock-on effects for the rest of the empire, from Mesopotamia to India, and it is important to consider the Treaty in this international context. Sinn Féin was not the first nationalist movement attempting to break away from a colonial empire, and the Treaty was one of many

Introduction

attempts at reconciliation that various Western powers employed to resolve conflict both within, and affecting, their respective boundaries. For those aggrieved that the Treaty was achieved under duress, empires were not in the habit of willingly ceding portions of their territories. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 can thus be viewed not through a British– Irish or unionist–nationalist lens, but from the wider perspective of international settlements. For example, the British government had been heavily involved in drawing up the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, with a defeated Germany not even being invited to negotiations. That treaty was agreed among the Allied powers, who threatened terrible war on the Germans if its extremely harsh conditions were not accepted. Just as de Valera would reject a settlement signed under duress two years later, the German leader, Prime Minister Philipp Scheidemann, rejected the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. He resigned rather than sign, with his replacement, Gustav Bauer, demanding amendments to articles on war guilt. The Allies were not for budging, and Lloyd George threatened an invasion within twenty-four hours if the treaty was not signed. With little indication that this was a bluff, the German prime minister had little option but to accede to the terms. These developments would have been observed by Irish revo lutionaries with keen interest, since they too were attempting to deal with one of the Allied powers with whom they were at war. De Valera had also attended the opening sessions of the Versailles proceedings, so in the context of his own discussions with Britain, he would have been well aware of the international environment. De Valera knew that just by talking to Sinn Féin the British were conceding. The British had not spoken with any of the representatives of the nations of the Central Powers who were to receive self-determination under the Versailles treaty. A case could easily have been made that Ireland was a matter of domestic policy for the British government, which could have been resolved in cabinet or parliament and not with a self-declared and illegal government. Such is how contemporary Spanish administrations in Madrid deal with the autonomy-seeking Basque and Catalan movements.

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The Sinn Féin leadership was aware of the importance of the international context, which is why de Valera went to Paris, and why he later toured the United States during the War of Independence. Britain would not concede to Ireland as an isolated episode of separatism, but presenting the Irish case in line with the experience of the Czechs, Slovaks and Bulgarians strengthened the nationalists’ hand. For example, mention within the Irish nationalist community was frequently made to the concept of ‘Bohemian Ulster’, a reference to the German-speaking minority in Bohemia that ruled over a native Czech majority and was comparable to the Protestant Ascendancy in Ulster.8 Likewise, Arthur Griffith, the chair of the Sinn Féin delegation for the London negotiations in 1921, had cited the case of how Hungarian autonomy was satisfied within the structures of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His 1904 pamphlet The Resurrection of Hungary advocated a dual monarchy for Britain and Ireland, under which Ireland would have its own parliament with significant legislative powers. Examples abounded over the previous century of ‘woke nations’, with the emergence of nationalism as a new ideology taking the place of declining dynastic and religious allegiances. Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia all became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1868. Thirty years previously, Belgian independence had been realised, only decades after the 1815 Congress of Vienna had handed the region to the Netherlands. The 1827 Treaty of London restored a Greek state, six years after Greece had revolted against Turkish rule. After a resolution was passed in the Norwegian parliament in June 1905 and a plebiscite held three months later, negotiations began between the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, then in a union, for Norwegian independence, which was completed before the year was out. In examples from which the Irish movement may have drawn inspiration, Finland, Poland and the Baltic states all declared independence from Russia with the collapse of its empire in 1917. And the international experience of autonomyfuelled breakouts was not confined to Europe. In South America, Portuguese and Spanish colonies had been striving for independence

Introduction

since the early nineteenth century, which, 100 years prior to the AngloIrish Treaty, Daniel O’Connell had spoken of emulating. When the Treaty is considered in this international context, it does not look so unique, but neither does it look so bad. The opponents of the Treaty within Sinn Féin used the experience of the self-determination granted to other small nations to highlight how they had been wronged. In the London negotiations that culminated in the Treaty, Griffith told Lloyd George that just as England would hardly allow a Liberal constituency to secede from the United Kingdom if a Conservative government were in power, so too Ulster should not be permitted to withdraw from an Irish polity due to an opposition to nationalist rule from Dublin. The international context also demonstrated, however, how the situation could have been so much worse. In Greece, for example, Britain, France and Russia, in private discussions and without consulting the Greeks, established a monarchy in the 1830s, putting a Bavarian prince on the throne; something similar was done in Jordan, where an emirate was created for the Hashemite family in 1920. The Treaty of Versailles and the Paris peace settlement that was imposed on Germany and the Central Powers has already been men tioned. Borders were redrawn with little discussion or consideration of the peoples living in the regions. India, a case that has been the subject of considerable comparison with Ireland, further highlights how much worse the Treaty settlement could have been. The partition of British India in 1947 into primarily Hindu and Sikh India and Islamic Pakistan resulted in the displacement of approximately 15 million people and the deaths of up to 2 million. The violent manner by which partition was handled made the India–Pakistan border the hotspot of conflagration that it remains to this day. Whatever one thinks of the stability of the contemporary peace process in Northern Ireland, the border on the island has been a far more peaceful environment than that on the Indian subcontinent. In fact, had the Treaty negotiations been more successful for the nationalists, and had they gained more territory from Northern Ireland, this might have had longer-term negative consequences for

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the stability of the border. A jurisdiction lacking the regions where nationalists were in the majority (Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Down, south Armagh and south Derry and Derry city) would have made the North a far more sectarian and monoethnic region, and might have enhanced the siege mentality given such a smaller territory. For nationalists who would have been happy with nothing less than a thirty-two-county republic, the example of British policy in Mandatory Palestine in the interwar period indicates what could have happened had warring ethno-religious groups been put together. In that case it was Jewish and Arab nationalists, whose opposition to each other first culminated in the Arab Revolt in the 1930s, followed by the Jewish Insurgency (1944–8) and then the Palestine war of 1947–9. The end result was not peace and harmony between the two sides; rather, it was the carving up of the Palestinian territory between Jordan, Egypt and the new state of Israel. As it was, such a settlement was not enforced in Ireland, and while many of the Treaty’s opponents resented the self-determination that had been granted to other small nations in the interwar years, within twenty years most of them had lost their autonomy. The Irish Free State established by the Treaty was one of only five democracies to survive this period, so while many may have found fault with the jurisdiction, it was still no mean achievement. As is discussed in this book, there were many flaws with the Treaty, but it is most likely the best that could have been achieved given the circumstances. There is no obvious alternative that would have resulted in a better outcome, as there was no clear solution that would appease all parties. Someone had to lose, and the resolution reached was that all sides – nationalists, unionists and British – would lose a little. TREATMENT OF THE TREATY

Given the lack of political attention afforded to the Treaty, it is perhaps not surprising that this ostracism is reflected in the historical literature. Frank Gallagher’s The Anglo-Irish Treaty from 1965 is the only book

Introduction

solely on the topic, and not surprisingly, given it was written by de Valera’s publicity director – who was labelled ‘the Irish Dr Goebbels’ – it is coloured by Gallagher’s political leanings.9 Frank Pakenham’s Peace by Ordeal (originally published in 1935 under the author’s aristocratic title of ‘Lord Longford’) remains the definitive account of the negotiations, although, given that it too was authored by someone from the de Valera camp (Pakenham co-wrote de Valera’s official biography), it demands an element of caution.10 The only other texts dealing solely with the Treaty are more recent reconsiderations, with Jason Knirck’s Imagining Ireland’s Independence and these authors’ edited collection The Treaty, which considers the discussions in the Dáil over the settlement.11 Both texts emphasise the importance of those parliamentary debates as an insight into the politics of Ireland in the 1920s. These debates were a criminally under-utilised resource, not all of which had been available to earlier historians (some of the debates were held in private, the transcripts of which were not released until the 1970s). It was the latter work that proved the motivation for this book. A collection of essays providing different perspectives on the Treaty split, it stimulated a desire for a wider and deeper consideration of the Treaty as a whole. Why has so little been written about this document, relative to its significance? Was it the subject of an unspoken embargo? It is striking that two of the more comprehensive accounts of the period are over eighty years old (Dorothy Macardle’s The Irish Republic and Peace by Ordeal), both of which are hampered slightly by a shared leaning towards de Valera’s interpretation of events.12 Most of what is written about the Treaty considers just one angle, whether it be the violent events that precipitated its signing, the split, or the Civil War that followed. Our aim in this book is to provide a comprehensive account of a wider range of aspects, considering the Treaty from its causes to its consequences. In particular, with the latter, we consider more than the one impact that is usually examined – the Civil War – and address the Treaty’s historical, legal and political legacies.

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More recent valuable works on this era include Joseph Curran’s The Irish Free State, John M. Regan’s The Irish Counter-Revolution, Michael Laffan’s The Resurrection of Ireland and Charles Townshend’s The Partition.13 Numerous other texts make reference to the Treaty, but without a diversity of interpretations, being heavily reliant on Macardle’s and Pakenham’s accounts of events and disadvantaged by the lack of other sources owing to the premature death or silence of those involved. Collins and Griffith, the two main protagonists on the Irish side in the Treaty negotiations, were dead within a year of its signing, and those who survived did not have a great deal to say about the events. Desmond FitzGerald, minister for external affairs in the first government of the Free State, was in London for much of the negotiations and is particularly critical of Pakenham’s account of proceedings: ‘If he had made either [Collins or Griffith] the hero, he would have avoided certain wrong interpretations of facts, would have apportioned blame where blame was certainly due, and would have made a more valuable contribution to Irish history.’14 FitzGerald claims that Pakenham ‘omits many vital facts and wrongly interprets others’, but, in a fashion typical of many of those in attendance who had the opportunity to amend the record, did not use his own experience of the events to correct Pakenham. Likewise, Robert Barton, another member of the Irish delegation to the Treaty negotiations, in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History said that he would ‘rather not deal with this episode’.15 Any information Barton had he said he gave to Pakenham, but neither Barton nor George Gavan Duffy (the fourth member of the delegation) had much to say in response to the claims made in Peace by Ordeal, other than that FitzGerald was ‘a dangerous source from which to draw’.16 Éamonn Duggan, the fifth delegate, was equally reticent, with his papers in the National Library mentioning little of the negotiations.17 Most of the British delegation maintained a similar code of omertà on the topic. Winston Churchill’s account of events in volume four of his The World Crisis series needs to be treated cautiously, and his contradiction with Pakenham over a number of events leaves us none

Introduction

the wiser as to the truth.18 So, while the latter portrayed de Valera as a skilled political operator, Churchill said that in his preliminary discussions with Lloyd George, de Valera ‘would no doubt have gone on indefinitely fighting theoretical points without the slightest regard to the resultant misery and material ruin of his countrymen’.19 Lloyd George provided little insight into the events, but his cabinet secretary, Tom Jones, provided a detailed narrative in his Whitehall Diaries in the 1970s.20 Such was their preoccupation with Ireland that Jones devoted a whole volume to the subject, covering the 1916–25 years. Given his known academic record and impartiality, if not affection towards Ireland, Jones’s account of the inner workings of government has been treated as a reliable source. Perhaps surprisingly, it portrayed the British cabinet as an almost neutral referee on the Irish conflict, playing the arbiter between unionist and nationalist. Indeed, Jones claimed that Lloyd George said if it were possible his government would gladly accede to a united Ireland, an assertion that should certainly raise a critical eyebrow given the known proclivities of many of his colleagues towards the aims of the Ulster Unionists. The story written of much of this period has been that of Collins and de Valera, about whom a wealth of biographical information has been compiled. Far less has been written on the delegation that signed the Treaty. In part this is due to the limited impact many of them had on the new state for which they laid the foundations. Along with Collins and Griffith, Erskine Childers (a signatory, but not a plenipotentiary) was dead within a year, while the height of Duggan’s career was being government chief whip. Barton retired from politics in 1923, but later served on a number of state boards, while Gavan Duffy made perhaps the greatest impact, becoming president of the High Court in 1946. Few are the works on these four individuals, while even Griffith has been generally ignored in the historical literature.21 Of the three other cabinet members, Cathal Brugha was killed in 1923 and Austin Stack died in 1929, while William T. Cosgrave is mainly analysed through his role as president of the Executive Council in the new state. His part in

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the Treaty was fairly minimal until he went against de Valera in cabinet and voted for it to be passed to the Dáil for consideration, after which he went quiet again. As a consequence, much of the coverage of this period is written through the eyes of Collins and de Valera. This is unfair on the other actors concerned; although they have not captured the imagination in the same manner as the aforementioned duo, they all had a significant role to play, as is recounted in this book. Not all modern history need be revisionist. While this book is a reinterpretation of events that happened a century ago, it does not purport to reinvent the wheel. Rather, the aim is to bring all the data together in one publication, in as complete a fashion as possible, to tell the full story of the Treaty. Two events in recent years have demonstrated the significant influence it continues to wield on Irish political life. The first was Brexit and all the implications this had for Northern Ireland. The discussions about the backstop and the Northern Ireland protocol bore many startling similarities to what was the subject of negotiations 100 years previously. Just as Lloyd George’s government grew weary of the steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone, so too the cabinets of both Theresa May and Boris Johnson found Northern Ireland a considerable stumbling block in their dealings with the European Union. The strategies adopted 100 years ago in the Treaty and the Government of Ireland Act somewhat resolved the Irish conflict, at least temporarily, but as the events of Brexit showed, it did not remove the Ulster question from British politics. The Treaty parked it to one side, and it was only a matter of time before Fermanagh and Tyrone were to emerge from the deluge once again. The second event indicating the importance of the Treaty came south of the border, in 2020, when Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil formed a historic coalition with the Green Party. While old enemies in other countries, such as the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in both Austria and Germany, worked together in grand coalitions decades ago, it took 100 years for the Irish old firm to do so. While many may question the policy differences between the two parties and wonder

Introduction

why the alliance between them did not happen a lot earlier, such is the hold that the Treaty has had on the Irish political system. Many commentators have called it Civil War politics, but that is a misnomer; with the conflict being a result of the Treaty, Treatyite politics would be a more apt description. The consequence of these political developments on both sides of the Irish Sea is that 100 years after it was signed, the Treaty continues to exert an influence on Irish politics. This book purports to tell the story of this settlement, which has been pushed to one side in the telling of the history of the Irish state. It is sometimes seen as a mild embarrassment, an acknowledgement of the failure of the Irish revolutionary movement. Such a reaction is based on setting the bar at an unattainable height, and does not take into account the realities of both the national and international environment of the early twentieth century. When these are considered, the Treaty appears in a far more creditable light, and cannot be dismissed as readily as it was in December 1921. The layout of the book is as follows. First, there is a detailed account of the events leading up to the negotiations that produced the Treaty, including the negotiations of October to December themselves. Much focus has been on the outcome, with less attention given to the proceed ings, which has downplayed their importance. As was most apparent with discussions in recent years involving the United Kingdom and its attempts to negotiate a departure of its own from the European Union, actors and events can play a hugely significant role in the end result; we consider their relative importance in 1921. In this context, Chapter 2 considers the TDs in the Second Dáil who decided on the fate of the Treaty. A detailed analysis of their background is provided, which assesses the level of representativeness provided for the wider population. While we know a lot about some members of the Sinn Féin elite, there were 125 TDs in total in that Dáil. Who were they and what did they represent? Chapter 3 then considers the debate in the Dáil over the Treaty between December 1921 and January 1922. This was possibly the most important debate in the Dáil’s history to date, and an account and

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analysis is provided of what was said in that decisive period. Under the terms of the Treaty, the Irish Free State did not become a republic, but rather a dominion, joining a rather small group of states that included Australia, New Zealand and Canada. How did they perceive the events that led to their club gaining a new member, and how did Ireland fit into the general dominion experience? This is the focus of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 then considers the wider political impact of the Treaty, with a focus on the party system, the role of parliament and the border. Although the Treaty is a little-discussed topic a century after its signing, its significance has not disappeared from the political landscape, and in Chapter 6 a detailed analysis is provided of each and every article of the document. In total, the Treaty was just over 1,800 words long, but its legacy was to be far greater than this brevity suggests. Irish independence, the Civil War, partition, Northern Ireland, the party system, Irish–British relations and North–South relations have all been defined and shaped by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. What follows is our attempt, however modest, to contribute to an understanding and appreciation of this landmark event in modern Irish history.