Michael Collins and the Civil War E-Book

Ryle T Dwyer

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

On 14 April 1922 a group of 200 anti-Treaty IRA men occupied the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the Provisional Government. Michael Collins, who wanted to avoid civil war at all costs, did not attack them until June 1922, when British pressure forced his hand. This led to the Irish Civil War as fighting broke out in Dublin between the anti-Treaty IRA and the Provisional Government's troops. Under Collins' supervision, the Free State rapidly took control of the capital. In 'Michael Collins and the Civil War', Ryle Dwyer sheds new light on Collins' role in the Civil War, showing how in the weeks and months leading to the campaign he secretly persisted with guerrilla tactics in border areas. This involved not only assassination but also kidnapping and hostage taking. In confronting those tactics on behalf of the British, for instance, Winston Churchill engaged in similar behaviour, including killing and hostage-taking. But until now much of this has conveniently been swept under the carpet of history.

Leseprobe

MICHAEL COLLINS

AND THE CIVIL WAR

T. RYLE DWYER

TO FIONA, DAVE, NORA AND FINN DEENEY

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd

Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.iehttp://twitter.com/IrishPublisherhttp://www.facebook.com/mercier.press

© T. Ryle Dwyer, 2012

ISBN: 978 1 78117 032 8

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 100 4

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 101 1

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

CONTENTS

Preface

1.      ‘We will now call on the Irish people to rally to us’

2.      ‘You are a traitor’

3.      Chairman of the Provisional Government

4.      ‘Coercion-of-Ulster is unthinkable’

5.      ‘There was no Ulster question’

6.      The Collins–Craig Pact

7.      Taking Hostages

8.      The Clones Affray

9.      ‘The rats leaving the ship’

10.    ‘Let the bastard go’

11.    ‘Some of you know nothing about freedom’

12.    ‘Three of the most delightful hours’

13.    ‘Civil war can only be averted by a miracle’

14.    ‘We will co-operate in nothing’

15.    ‘Drift about in recriminatory correspondence’

16.    ‘We are fast verging to anarchy’

17.    The Election Pact

18.    ‘Northern Rebellion’

19.    ‘I can’t leave these people unprotected’

20.    ‘This gulf is unbridgeable’

21.    ‘Worse than Armenian atrocities’

22.    ‘Collins might appoint a charwoman’

23.    ‘You understand fully what you have to do’

24.    ‘The safety of the nation is the first law’

25.    ‘Keep open some avenue or avenues to peace’

26.    ‘Dogging the fortunes of Ireland’

27.    ‘What matter if for Ireland dear we fall’

28.    ‘Hang up your brightest colours’

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

Although I grew up and received all of my primary and secondary school education in Ireland, I do not remember hearing anything about Michael Collins until I went to university in Texas in the mid-1960s. It was not so much that he was written out of Irish history, but rather the fact that twentieth-century Irish history was not taught in school at the time. It was still less than forty years since the Civil War of 1922–3 and it seemed that the wounds were still too raw to cover the period in school. That was understandable enough, considering that in Texas the wounds of the American Civil War, which had ended a century earlier, were still apparent.

My first introduction to this period of Irish history was while taking a course on European history between the two world wars. I wrote a term paper on the causes of the Irish Civil War. I had thought it was fought primarily over the partition question and was stunned to learn that the conflict had essentially nothing to do with partition. I went on to write a master’s thesis on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and a revision of that was published in the Capuchin Annual 1971, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty.

Since then I have written over twenty books on Irish history, and this book is the final part of a trilogy covering the life of Michael Collins. Michael Collins: The Man Who Won the War dealt with his early years and his part in the War of Independence, ‘I Signed My Death Warrant’: Michael Collins & the Treaty covered his involvement in the Treaty negotiations of 1921, and this book deals with the final eight months of his life leading up to the Civil War and his untimely death.

In 1990, I was invited to take part in an RTÉ discussion programme. Other panel members were Tim Pat Coogan, Mary Banotti and the late Brendan O’Reilly. As a historian I felt distinctly uncomfortable when the programme began to sound like a case for the canonisation of Collins and, to some extent, the demonisation of Éamon de Valera. When I remarked that Collins was no saint, Joe Duffy, who was chairing the programme, joked that Mary Banotti – a grandniece of Michael Collins – had just fallen off her stool.

Some weeks later I received a letter from Liam Collins – who had given me access to the papers of his uncle Michael Collins – mentioning that he had heard the programme. ‘I was very taken aback at the time by your contribution,’ he wrote. ‘Since then I have decided to read your publication The Man Who Won the War. And quite frankly I am very glad I did so. As I see your book, it recognises in quite a fair and honest way the pluses and minuses of the man.’

Having written and read so much about Collins, I did not expect any surprise findings while researching this study, especially as so much has been written about him in recent years, but I was to be proven wrong. Collins has become an iconic figure of twentieth-century Irish history. Like President John F. Kennedy, he was assassinated at the height of his career and the similarities do not end there. There have been many conspiracy theories surrounding both men’s deaths and their love lives. For decades it seemed that nobody could suggest anything critical of Collins. However, his triumphs and failures should be kept in perspective. What I found most surprising during my research was not that Collins was involved in the taking or holding of human hostages for political purposes, but that this has essentially been ignored by history. What was even more surprising was that history has also ignored the fact that Winston Churchill retaliated against Collins by sponsoring the same kind of hostage-taking.

My aim in my three books on Collins has been neither to deify nor to demonise the man, but to present a balanced picture of an individual who lived in exciting times, his many contradictions and the phenomenal range of responsibilities that he undertook during his relatively short life.

T. RYLE DWYERTralee

1

‘WE WILL NOW CALL ON THE IRISH PEOPLE TO RALLY TO US’

After a protracted debate stretching over five weeks, with a break for Christmas, Dáil Éireann formally approved the Anglo-Irish Treaty on Saturday 7 January 1922. This was the first major step in the settlement of the Irish question and it marked a milestone in Irish history.1 ‘I do not regard the passing of this thing as being any kind of triumph over the other side,’ Michael Collins told the Dáil immediately following the vote. ‘I will do my best in the future, as I have done in the past, for the nation. What I have to say now is, whether there is something contentious about the Republic – about the government in being – or not, that we should unite on this: that we will all do our best to preserve the public safety.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Éamon de Valera, among others.

‘When countries are passing from peace to war or war to peace,’ Collins said, ‘they have had their most trying times on an occasion like this. Whether we are right or whether we are wrong in the view of future generations there is this: that we now are entitled to a chance; all the responsibility will fall upon us of taking over the machinery of government from the enemy. In times of change like that,’ Collins continued, ‘there are always elements that make for disorder and that make for chaos. That is as true of Ireland as of any other country; for in that respect all countries are the same.’

He called for ‘some kind of joint committee’ to preserve peace during the forthcoming transition, in which a democratically elected government would quickly take over the full reins from the British-appointed administration that had run Ireland from Dublin Castle for over a century. ‘Now, I only want to say this to the people who are against us – and there are good people against us – so far as I am concerned this is not a question of politics, nor never has been. I make the promise publicly to the Irish nation that I will do my best,’ Collins said. ‘The president knows how I tried to do my best for him.’

‘Hear, hear,’ de Valera said.

‘Well, he has exactly the same position in my heart now as he always had,’ Collins added.

‘I claim my right, before matters go any further, to register my protest,’ Mary MacSwiney interjected, ‘because I look upon this act tonight worse than I look upon the Act of Castlereagh. I, for one, will have neither hand, act, nor part in helping the Irish Free State to carry this nation of ours, this glorious nation that has been betrayed here tonight, into the British Empire – either with or without your hands up. I maintain here now that this is the grossest act of betrayal that Ireland ever endured.’

Some deputies later said that they thought de Valera was about to agree with Collins before the interjection of Mary MacSwiney. He responded instead by calling on those who voted against the Treaty to meet at the Mansion House the following afternoon.

‘Some kind of an arrangement could be fixed between the two sides,’ Collins maintained. ‘Some kind of understanding ought to be reached to preserve the present order in the country.’

‘I would like my last word here to be this,’ de Valera said. ‘We have had a glorious record for four years; it has been four years of magnificent discipline in our nation. The world is looking at us now …’ At that point he burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably. Others were also in tears.2

When the talks first began with the British back in July 1921, President Éamon de Valera had promised British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that he would submit British proposals to the Dáil and formally respond. Then, in early August, he wrote to Lloyd George that, as he had predicted, the Dáil had rejected the British proposals; but he sent this letter before the Dáil had even met, much less considered the document. When it did meet the following week, de Valera presented it with a fait accompli and simply asked it to endorse his letter of rejection.

After the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, de Valera issued a statement to the press: ‘In view of the nature of the proposed Treaty with Great Britain, President de Valera has sent an urgent summons to the members of cabinet in London to report at once, so that a full Cabinet decision may be taken.’3 He was essentially stating that it was a matter for the Dáil cabinet to consider. If the cabinet had opposed the Treaty, would the Dáil have been given any more say than it had with the July proposals? But the cabinet did accept the Treaty by four votes to three, and de Valera then announced it was a matter for the whole Dáil. ‘There is a definite constitutional way of resolving our political differences – let us not depart from it, and let the conduct of the cabinet in this matter be an example to the whole nation,’ he said. Once the Dáil had approved of the Treaty by sixty-four votes to fifty-seven, however, he said that only the Irish people could ratify it.4 ‘The resolution recommending the ratification of a certain treaty is not a legal action,’ de Valera told a meeting of anti-Treaty deputies at the Mansion House on the day after the Dáil vote. ‘That will not be completed until the Irish people have disestablished the Republic which they set up of their own free will.’5 He kept moving the goal line.

Opponents of the Treaty established a committee consisting of de Valera, Austin Stack, Cathal Brugha, Harry Boland, Liam Mellows, Mary MacSwiney and Erskine Childers. They decided that de Valera should formally resign as president and would then run for re-election and that there ‘should be no co-operation with the pro-Treaty leaders’ in implementing the Treaty. They also decided that ‘no action should be taken likely to lead to violence or civil war.’6 De Valera told the Mansion House gathering that he would run for re-election on a platform of ‘no co-operation with pro-Treaty leaders’ on matters relating to the implementation of the Treaty.7 If re-elected, he would not include any Treaty supporters in his cabinet.

When the Dáil reconvened on Monday 9 January 1922, de Valera formally announced his resignation. Collins suggested that de Valera continue as president with a joint committee to preserve peace, while the pro-Treaty side would set up the Provisional Government in accordance with the London agreement. ‘No one here in this assembly or in Ireland wants to be put in the position of opposing President de Valera,’ Collins explained. ‘The practical step in my estimation is to form a committee, if necessary on both sides for some kind of public safety.’8

When the British parliament had called elections to select members for the northern and the southern parliaments in line with the Partition Act in May 1921, Dáil Éireann had used the elections to elect a second Dáil. Anyone elected to either parliament was entitled to sit in the Dáil. Of all those elected to the southern parliament, only the four deputies elected for Trinity College failed to take their seats in the Dáil. Six Sinn Féin deputies were elected to the northern parliament, but five of those – de Valera, Collins, Arthur Griffith, Eoin MacNeill and Seán Milroy – had also been elected to the southern parliament; Seán O’Mahony was the only Dáil deputy elected exclusively to the northern parliament. As a result he was the only Dáil deputy who was not entitled to sit in the southern parliament that was supposed to implement the Treaty.

Members of the Dáil had had no problems using the British machinery in the past, and Collins essentially wished to adopt the same approach in having the Second Dáil call itself the southern parliament to secure the implementation of the Treaty. He called for a new executive to be formed from the two sides of the Dáil to preserve public safety and to facilitate a British withdrawal as soon as possible, which was the essence of what they had been fighting for. ‘We are faced with the problems of taking Ireland over from the English, and they are faced with the problem of handing Ireland over to us, and the difficulties on both sides will be pretty big,’ Collins said. ‘It does not matter what happens so long as we are assured that we are taking over Ireland and that the English are going out of Ireland.’9

‘We will have to proceed constitutionally in this matter,’ de Valera replied. ‘I have tendered my resignation and I cannot, in any way, take divided responsibility. You have got here a sovereign assembly which is the government of the nation. This assembly must choose its executive according to its constitution and go ahead.’10

If de Valera was re-elected in those circumstances, Collins warned, ‘everybody will regard us as being simply a laughing stock’.11

De Valera said he would ‘carry on as before and forget that this Treaty has come’ if he was re-elected. ‘I do not believe that the Irish people, if they thoroughly understood it, would stand for it,’ he added.12

‘Remember,’ he continued, ‘I am only putting myself at your disposal and at the disposal of the nation. I do not want office at all.’13 He was essentially saying that he wished to go back to private life but, because he was more intelligent and perceptive than most Irish people and could see things that they could not understand, he would therefore agree to serve them. ‘I do not ask you to elect me,’ he said. ‘I am not seeking to get any power whatever in this nation. I am quite glad and anxious to get back to private life.’14 It would be more than fifty years before he would actually retire from public life.

Arthur Griffith saw the president’s tactics as a ‘political manoeuvre to get round the Treaty’ by exploiting the emotions of the deputies. ‘There was no necessity for him to resign today,’ Griffith said. ‘His resignation and going up again for re-election is simply an attempt to wreck this Treaty.’15

The Treaty provided for a Provisional Government to take over the administration of the country from the British regime at Dublin Castle, and de Valera now argued that the pro-Treaty side should form a Provisional Government while he would remain on as president of Dáil Éireann to maintain the integrity of the Republic, at least until it had been formally disestablished by the Irish people. ‘If the Provisional Government goes to Dublin Castle and takes on the functioning we will not interfere with them,’ he said. ‘Let them deal with their government as they please.’16

Collins tried to propose that Griffith ‘form a Provisional Executive’, but Eoin MacNeill, the speaker, ruled the Dáil had to vote on de Valera’s nomination first. A roll call vote was then taken. When de Valera’s name was called he declined to vote. It was his way of showing that he was not seeking the office but was just making himself available. He lost – but only by two votes – sixty to fifty-eight. Even if he had voted in his own favour he would not have won, but he would have lost by only the closest of margins.

The problems of implementing the Treaty in the face of obstructionist opposition soon became apparent. Article 17 of the Treaty stipulated that ‘a meeting of members of parliament elected for constituencies in southern Ireland’ should select a Provisional Government – all the members of which had to signify in writing their acceptance of the Treaty. But de Valera balked when Collins tried to have the Dáil set up the Provisional Government. It made no practical difference if the British said its authority was derived from Westminster, or if the Irish claimed the authority derived from Dáil Éireann. ‘There must be a president elected,’ de Valera insisted. He would not agree to the simultaneous election of the chairman of a provisional government. ‘Try to proceed constitutionally,’ he said.17

De Valera was adamant that the Dáil could not transfer any of its authority, or do anything to implement the Treaty until the Irish people had formally ratified it. He was contending, in effect, that there would have to be two Irish governments – the Dáil executive, which would be recognised under Irish law, and the Provisional Government, which would take over from the administration at Dublin Castle and would thus be recognised only under British law. However, the Dáil had adopted its constitution without ever submitting it to the people, so it had the power to change its setup if it so wished.

In April 1919 de Valera had been elected príomh-aire (prime minister) of Dáil Éireann, but he subsequently changed the title without even consulting the Dáil, or any of his cabinet colleagues in Ireland. During a visit to the United States in June 1919 he had proclaimed himself ‘president of the Irish Republic’, because this would obviously have more appeal to the Americans. Before standing for re-election as ‘president’ in the Second Dáil on 26 August 1921, he had admitted that ‘no such office had been created’. He rectified the situation by obliquely slipping the title ‘president’ into the constitution with an amendment limiting the size of the cabinet to seven specified officers – ‘the president who shall also be prime minister’ and the ministers for foreign affairs, home affairs, defence, finance, local government and economic affairs.18 Now he was essentially insisting that members of the Dáil had to elect a president and that they could not call him chairman of the Provisional Government without the formal approval of the Irish people. Griffith resolved the wrangle the next day by giving in to de Valera’s demands and agreeing that he would only act as president. ‘If I am elected,’ Griffith told the Dáil, ‘I will occupy whatever position President de Valera occupied.’

‘Hear, hear,’ exclaimed de Valera. He had won his point. ‘I feel that I can sit down in this assembly while such an election is going on.’19 Minutes later, however, he changed his mind and announced that he was walking out of the Dáil ‘as a protest against the election as president of the Irish Republic of the chairman of the delegation who is bound by the Treaty’.20 He then walked out of the chamber followed by his supporters, in what could only be described as a contemptuous gesture towards what he insisted was the sovereign assembly of the nation. His actions seemed all the worse in the face of the conciliatory attitude adopted by his opponents.

Collins was indignant. ‘Deserters all!’ he shouted at those leaving. ‘We will now call on the Irish people to rally to us. Deserters all!’21

Griffith was duly elected president without any further opposition.

2

‘YOU ARE A TRAITOR’

Following his election as president, Arthur Griffith proceeded to call a meeting of the southern parliament. Only pro-Treaty deputies and the four unionists elected at Trinity College turned up at the Mansion House on Saturday 14 January. A speaker was elected and Piaras Béaslaí proposed a motion approving the Treaty, which was promptly agreed without a division. A further motion was then approved ratifying the appointment of an eight-man Provisional Government. Collins accepted the title of chairman of the Provisional Government. The Dáil cabinet had agreed to all of this in advance, so the members were just going through the motions – duplicating everything to satisfy both de Valera and the British. With the exception of Griffith and Richard Mulcahy, members of the Dáil cabinet were appointed to the same portfolios in the Provisional Government, so the two administrations were effectively being combined under the dual leadership of Griffith and Collins.

As part of the transitional process, Collins and his team of ministers went to Dublin Castle on 16 January 1922. He formally handed the resolution approving of the Treaty to the lord lieutenant, who then officially passed authority over a great many government buildings to the Provisional Government. In the process, Collins received his commission from the crown, but he obscured this with an exquisite piece of audacity. He issued a statement to the press immediately afterwards, announcing that the Provisional Government had ‘received the surrender of Dublin Castle at 1.45 p.m. today. It is now in the hands of the Irish nation.’ Thereafter, even historians have referred to what happened that day as ‘the surrender of Dublin Castle’, despite the fact that much of Dublin Castle was retained for the convenience of the outgoing British administration. Moreover, a garrison of Royal Corps of Engineers remained at the castle until August, when the whole place was finally handed over. The Provisional Government established Collins’ office in the room previously occupied by the town clerk in City Hall.

The task confronting the Provisional Government was formidable. There they were, ‘eight young men in the City Hall standing amidst the ruins of one administration, with the foundations of another not yet laid, and with wild men screaming through the keyhole,’ according to Kevin O’Higgins, who quickly established himself as probably the most dynamic of the younger ministers following his appointment as minister for justice in the Provisional Government. ‘No police force was functioning through the country, no system of justice was operating, the wheels of administration hung idle, battered out of recognition by the clash of rival jurisdictions.’1

There was a serious crime situation developing due to this power vacuum. Hamar Greenwood, the chief secretary for Ireland, had already reported to the British cabinet that there was an ‘alarming increase in the amount of ordinary crime, particularly highway robberies and house breaking’.2

On 20 January Collins left for London, where he joined Kevin O’Higgins and Éamonn Duggan, the minister for home affairs. They had been engaged in discussions to speed up the exchange of powers. The Provisional Government was authorised to raise money by overprinting British postage stamps with Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann (Provisional Government of Ireland). The British also authorised the Provisional Government to collect the land annuity payments due to the crown as a result of the loan of money around the turn of the century to tenant farmers for the purchase of the land they were renting. The British were insisting that this money would ultimately have to be repaid to Britain, but Collins insisted on reserving that issue for further consideration.

Collins was taking on mammoth responsibilities as chairman of the Provisional Government, especially as he was also minister for finance for both the Dáil and the Provisional Government, which meant that he was in charge of fourteen different offices or departments, including the treasury, internal revenue, board of works, customs and excise and others of the old Dublin Castle regime. These would normally be taxing enough for any politician, but as chairman of the Provisional Government he also had to oversee the transition of the overall structures of government, which necessitated frequent visits to London. He was stepping down as director of intelligence of the IRA, but he continued as president of the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). On top of all these he was required to play an arduous political role in defending his new regime against the constant sniping of political opponents, as well as overseeing the drafting of a new constitution, the establishment of a new army and a new police force, and preparations for a general election, or a possible referendum, to secure the ratification of the Treaty. In the circumstances he had to delegate a considerable amount of authority in the daily work on such matters, for example to Eoin O’Duffy in the formation of the new army, Michael Staines in setting up a new police force and James Douglas in drafting the new constitution.

***

Nine of the thirteen members of the headquarters staff of the IRA supported the Treaty, but a majority of divisional commanders were anti-Treaty. They met on 10 January 1922 to formulate their policy. Next day the four anti-Treaty members of the IRA headquarters staff – Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Seán Russell and Jim O’Donovan – served notice on Richard Mulcahy, minister for defence in the Dáil, demanding that he call an army convention, or they would call it themselves. In response to their demands, Mulcahy summoned a meeting of the headquarters staff and divisional commandants to discuss the situation on 18 January 1922.

Many of those who had been most active in the IRA during the War of Independence had naturally kept a low profile during the struggle. They would have been known locally and within the higher echelons of the IRA, but they burst onto the national scene during the growing unrest generated by the Treaty controversy. The anti-Treaty officers demanded a full convention on 5 February to select an executive that would take over supreme control of the army from the minister for defence. Ernie O’Malley, who had been one of the more active IRA fighters, explained that he would not recognise the authority of either the new minister for defence, Mulcahy, or Eoin O’Duffy, who succeeded Mulcahy as chief of staff. O’Malley’s remarks were a blatant repudiation of de Valera’s statement a few weeks earlier that the army owed full allegiance to the Dáil through the minister for defence.

De Valera was opposed to the holding of the army convention and conveyed this to Rory O’Connor personally, but O’Connor made it clear at the army meeting on 18 January that he had no time for the Long Fellow.3 ‘It doesn’t matter to me what he said,’ O’Connor explained. ‘Some of us are no more prepared to stand for de Valera than for the Treaty.’4

Collins appealed to the anti-Treaty officers to hold the line for the time being, because the British could not be expected to hand over facilities to the IRA if the latter withdrew its allegiance to the Dáil. For the next six months Collins played a double game. Publicly he supported the Treaty, while privately he tried to convince republican militants that he was as determined as ever to rid the country of the British, only now he was attempting to do so by peaceful means. Once the British had withdrawn, he indicated to his militant friends, it would be a lot easier to change the obnoxious aspects of the Treaty unilaterally. ‘My idea is that if we can get our own army we can tell the British to go to hell.’5

In reality he was acting in much the same way he had conducted himself throughout the Black and Tan period. When in a tight situation in the past he would go up to the enemy and talk with them as if he were a sympathiser. Playing this double game came quite naturally to him, but now he seemed to be playing it with everyone – at times possibly even with himself. He wanted republicans to trust him, but Jim O’Donovan, the director of chemicals, sparked an unseemly row at the meeting of IRA leaders on 18 January.

‘You are a traitor,’ O’Donovan snapped at Collins, ‘and you should have been court-martialled long since for treason.’

Collins jumped up in indignation. Even many of the anti-Treaty people present were incensed. There were shouts of ‘apologise’ and ‘withdraw’.

‘I will not withdraw the word,’ O’Donovan insisted. ‘It is true.’6

Most of the anti-Treaty people present wished to set up their own independent headquarters, but Liam Lynch, the commander of the 1st Southern Division of the IRA and a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB, would not hear of this, and Frank Aiken, the commander of the 4th Northern Division of the IRA, supported Lynch. Eventually it was decided that a full convention of the IRA would be held in two months’ time. The meeting agreed that in the interim four men, two from each side of the Treaty divide, would ‘act as a watchdog committee’ under the chief of staff with a power of veto in order to ‘guarantee that republican aims shall not be prejudiced’.7 Mulcahy, who was to preside over the committee, did not like the arrangement, but he agreed to it in order to buy time. The committee, which was to meet the headquarters staff every Tuesday afternoon, never really amounted to much anyway, because Ernie O’Malley, one of the pair selected to represent the anti-Treaty side, was so determined to break away from the Dáil that he did not attend any of the meetings.

3

CHAIRMAN OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

At thirty-one years of age Michael Collins was confronted with the mammoth task of essentially reorganising the whole system of government. To make matters worse, he was obviously troubled by the growing rift between himself and his former colleagues.

‘I am more sorry than you are that the president and Harry are on the other side from myself,’ he wrote to a friend of Harry Boland. ‘I believe they have missed the tide, for, were it not for taking the bold course I am certain this country would have been split by contending factions, whether we liked it or not. If there be but good will on all sides I am convinced we may still bring the whole thing to final success. In any case, we are going forward, the English are evacuating this country, and surely no one will claim that we can possibly be worse off when that evacuation is complete.’1

The Big Fellow was playing his double game on both the political and military fronts. He met General Sir Nevil Macready for forty-five minutes in his office at City Hall on 30 January 1922. The general came in mufti. Macready was already urging the British government to withdraw the troops as quickly as possible. Collins, for his part, was trying to get the British to believe that he was only stringing along the more militant republican elements until he could get the people to ratify the Treaty.

‘Among the various Sinn Féiners with whom from time to time I came in touch, Michael Collins struck me as the easiest to deal with,’ Macready later wrote. ‘He had what few of his countrymen possess, a sense of humour, and, above all, the gift during a conversation of sticking to essentials. On several occasions, after the creation of the Provisional Government during discussion with him and his colleagues, he would call one of his friends who had wandered into the realms quite foreign to the matter under discussion to order, and complete the discussion with the least possible waste of time.’2

Macready added that Collins was, ‘Tall, dark, strong but loosely built, with an apparent indifference to personal appearance, a bon vivant, an admirer of the other sex, and from all accounts a cheery companion when free from the cares of office.’3

One of the Big Fellow’s tasks was to draw up a new constitution. He established a committee to do the work and wanted to appoint James Douglas as chairman. Although a Quaker from County Tyrone, Douglas was an ardent nationalist who had managed the Irish White Cross, established in February 1921 to distribute funds raised by the American Committee for Relief in Ireland for victims of the War of Independence. ‘I said I would be glad to serve on the committee,’ Douglas recalled, ‘but I was quite unfitted to be chairman.’

Arthur Griffith tried to insist on the appointment as chairman of his writer friend Darrell Figgis, who had been national secretary of Sinn Féin. But Collins, who had been instrumental in ousting Figgis as national secretary in April 1919, balked at this idea. The Big Fellow appointed himself as chairman, instead, with Figgis as vice-chairman and the sole paid member of the drafting committee. Douglas reported that Collins told him ‘that he might not be able to attend very often and wished me to report to him regularly what occurred at meetings when he was absent’.4

Collins did preside at the committee’s first meeting at the Shelbourne Hotel. ‘You are not to be bound by legal formalities but to put up a constitution of a Free State and then bring it to the Provisional Government who will fight for the carrying of it through,’ Collins told them. ‘It is a question of status and we want definitely to define and produce a true democratic constitution. You are to bear in mind not the legalities of the past but the practicalities of the future.’5 In addition to Figgis and Douglas, the committee included lawyers Hugh Kennedy, James Murnahan, Kevin O’Shiel and John O’Byrne, along with the academic Professor Alfred O’Rahilly and the former civil servant James MacNeill, a brother of Eoin MacNeill, the initial leader of the Irish Volunteers. Collins delivered ‘a short speech in which he said he would attend as often as possible,’ Douglas recalled. ‘In fact, he did not attend again as far as I can recollect, but I saw him once or twice a week for the purpose of consideration.’6

The committee undertook the detailed drafting of a constitution. In notes to Douglas, Collins indicated that he wanted one that would be short, simple and easy to alter as the final stages of complete freedom were achieved. He desired that it contain only what was necessary to establish a constitutional machinery to govern Ireland, and he suggested the committee omit everything already covered in the Treaty, such as the oath and the clauses dealing with the governor-general. He also asked that the authority of the constitution should be derived solely from the Irish people, and that no phrase was to appear which vested executive powers in the British monarch. In short, he was asking the committee to draw up a republican document that would be acceptable to the British, but this was essentially an impossible task.

Although Collins did not intend that the actual constitution should be ready before June, he asked that a rough draft be prepared by the end of February. He apparently intended to use this draft constitution to placate the republican opponents of the Treaty and then, once the people ratified the Treaty at the polls in April, the constitution would be completed. ‘If they did not have an election till after the constitution was drafted,’ Collins told the British on 5 February, ‘the Treaty would be beaten in Ireland.’7

Collins was aiming to have an election in mid-April and follow this with the constitution in June, but he ran into difficulties when de Valera and the anti-Treaty side demanded that the electoral registers should be updated. W. T. Cosgrave was given the task of arranging the update, but he found that this could not be done before May, so it was decided to let the old registers stand.8

In late January Collins also set out to establish the new police force. Following the transfer of power to the Provisional Government, the British had promptly agreed to demobilise the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and to transfer the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) to the control of the Provisional Government. The Auxiliaries, the force of former army officers set up to assist the RIC, began withdrawing immediately after the handover. The last of the force were gone by 1 February, when their former headquarters at Beggars Bush Barracks, Dublin, was handed over to the forces of the Provisional Government.

At the first meeting of the Provisional Government it had been decided that the force would be put in the hands of a ‘trained police or military officer’. Collins informed his colleagues on 28 January that a police organising committee was being formed. A meeting was called for the Gresham Hotel on 9 February. Collins attended and nominated Richard Mulcahy, minister for defence, to chair the meeting and Michael Staines to chair the police organising committee, with Patrick Walsh, a district inspector of the disbanding RIC, as its vice-chairman. Walsh was clearly the ‘trained police … officer’ who was being asked to organise the force. He had served in the RIC throughout the country – from Cork to Donegal.

The following day Staines was able to announce subcommittees to supervise organisation, recruiting, training and conditions of service. These included former policemen such as District Inspector John A. Kearney of Boyle, Sergeant Matthias McCarthy of Belfast, Constable Thomas Neary of Dublin and Sergeant Éamonn Broy of the DMP. All these had provided invaluable service to the IRA intelligence service run by Collins during the War of Independence. The following week the organising committee reported with a blueprint for the ‘People’s Guard’, which would comprise 4,300 policemen. The nascent force set up a recruiting and training base at the Royal Dublin Society, which would provide its facilities at Ballsbridge until the Spring Show in May. The Provisional Government decided on 27 February that the new force would be called the Civic Guard, which was loosely translated as Garda Síochána.

The anti-Treaty republicans sought to frustrate the formation of the new force. Austin Stack was bitterly critical of the role of former District Inspector John A. Kearney, who had been head constable in Tralee at the time of the arrest of Roger Casement. The same day the RIC had arrested Stack. ‘This man Kearney was, from my experience of him, one of the most vigilant servants the enemy had in this country, and he did his best – by open means and underhand – to beat us,’ Stack said.9

This was grossly unfair. There was no doubt that Kearney had been helpful to Casement. He had called a local doctor, Mikey Shanahan, to treat him and left him alone with the doctor, who was known to have Sinn Féin sympathies. Afterwards Kearney showed Shanahan a newspaper photograph of Casement with a beard and identified him as the clean-shaven prisoner. He was not looking for information from Shanahan but informing him that the RIC already suspected the identity of the prisoner, so it was necessary to rescue him from the police station. Kearney warned his wife to keep the children upstairs as he felt the barracks would be raided. When Shanahan told Stack that Casement was being held, Stack pretended to believe the prisoner was a Norwegian sailor, but he already knew it was Casement, because he had talked to Robert Monteith, who had landed with Casement from the submarine that morning. Monteith actually told him that Casement was anxious to get word to Dublin to call off the Rising, which was planned for Sunday, because they were not going to get sufficient German help.

Kearney also sent a message to Stack to visit Con Collins, who had been arrested earlier in the day. Was this an invitation to Stack to come and rescue Casement? Patrick Pearse had informed Stack of the plans for the Rising some weeks earlier, and instructed him to do nothing that would rouse suspicions before the day. In the circumstances his decision not to rescue Casement might have been understandable, but when he went to the RIC station, he was carrying ‘a large number of letters, i.e. fully 20 or 30 letters I imagine’, according to Stack himself. These included letters from James Connolly, Bulmer Hobson and Patrick Pearse. The Hobson letter included a circular from Eoin MacNeill urging the Volunteers to resist forcefully any attempt by the crown authorities to suppress or disarm them. One must ask why Stack went to the barracks carrying such letters. When he was searched the letters were found. With the plans for the Rising so obviously going wrong, was he carrying the letters so that he would be arrested?10

Stack should have been explaining his own erratic behaviour rather than snidely questioning the conduct of Kearney, who had tried to help Casement and subsequently helped the IRA while he was a district inspector of the RIC in Roscommon. But in the aftermath of Stack’s scurrilous allegation, Kearney, who had a large young family, found it necessary to emigrate to England for all their sakes in April 1922.

Collins resented efforts to depict as Black and Tans those policemen who had helped his intelligence service. ‘The “Black and Tans” we have organising our civic guard are the men who remained in the RIC and DMP at the daily risk of their lives,’ he told a dinner in Naas at the height of the controversy. ‘Many of the greatest successes we gained were gained entirely by true men who stood for us in the enemy service.’ The men who were helping to organise the Civic Guard were ‘those men who stood with us always,’ he said. ‘We are not one bit ashamed of it. Not only are we not going to apologise, but we are very proud to have them, and very glad to have them.’11

4

‘COERCION-OF-ULSTER IS UNTHINKABLE’

Back in 1917 and 1918, when the various Irish parties met in the Irish Convention to try to address the changed political conditions in Ireland after 1916, growing nationalism and the call for independence, Sinn Féin refused to take part. De Valera accused the British of undermining the process by assuring Ulster unionists that they would not be coerced into a republic. Bolstered by the assurance, unionists insisted on having their own way and, when the nationalists balked, the convention inevitably ended in failure. ‘It was evident to us,’ de Valera wrote before the convention reported, that ‘with the “coercion-of-Ulster is unthinkable” guarantee, the unionists would solidly maintain their original position.’1

Thus de Valera must have known that partition would form part of any Anglo-Irish settlement when he gave a similar guarantee in writing to Lloyd George on 10 August 1921. ‘We agree with you,’ de Valera wrote, ‘that no common action can be secured by force.’ If the British stood aside, the Irish factions would settle partition among themselves without resorting to force.2 ‘The minority in Ulster had a right to have their sentiments considered to the utmost limit,’ de Valera explained to a private session of the Dáil on 22 August 1921, according to the official record. If the Republic were recognised he would be in favour of giving each county power to vote itself out of it if it so wished. Everyone knew what he meant: Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, which had Catholic nationalist majorities, should have the right to opt out of Northern Ireland. If this were agreed, nationalist Ireland would have to accept partition or coerce the remainder of Northern Ireland. He was opposed to such coercion.3

The Treaty was concluded with the Irish delegation on behalf of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, even though the majority in Northern Ireland were not even consulted, but provisions were included in the Treaty to protect their interests. They were given the right to withdraw from the united Ireland within a month of the ratification of the Treaty, but in that event a boundary commission would be set up to redraw the border ‘in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions’.4

The Treaty’s provisions in relation to partition had the potential to be even more favourable than the county-option that de Valera had advocated the previous August, because in addition to Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, the boundary commission could also transfer other contiguous areas such as the city of Derry, and considerable territory in southern parts of Counties Armagh and Down. Shorn of so much territory, Collins argued, the remainder of Northern Ireland would become an unviable economic entity, and hence he believed that the Treaty contained the means to end partition.

Lloyd George sent one of his secretaries, Geoffrey Shakespeare, to Belfast with a copy of the Treaty and instructions to tell Sir James Craig, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, that ‘the boundary commission is for the whole nine counties [of Ulster] and not for the six counties, if option is exercised’.5 Shakespeare understood this to mean that parts of Counties Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal could be transferred to Northern Ireland as well as parts of the other six counties of Ulster being transferred to the Irish Free State.

‘We protest against the declared intention of your government to place Northern Ireland automatically in the Irish Free State,’ Craig wrote to Lloyd George. ‘It is true that Ulster is given the right to contract out, but she can only do so after automatic inclusion in the Irish Free State.’6 On 9 December 1921, three days after the Treaty was signed, Lloyd George had told Craig that the boundary commission was little more than a technical matter. ‘You explained that it was intended only to make a slight readjustment of our boundary line, so as to bring into Northern Ireland loyalists who are now just outside our area, and to transfer, correspondingly, an equivalent number of those having Sinn Féin sympathies to the area of the Irish Free State,’ Craig reminded Lloyd George the following week.7

During the Treaty debate in the House of Commons on 14 December, however, Lloyd George indicated that the boundary commission would likely transfer Fermanagh and Tyrone to the Irish Free State. The British, in trying to convince Craig, said privately that the boundary commission would merely re-draw the border to provide for pockets of Protestants in Counties Monaghan and Donegal to be included in the north, in return for similarly sized pockets of Roman Catholics in the six counties, so that the overall size of Northern Ireland would remain essentially the same. It was hardly surprising that Craig could ‘place no reliance on the personal assurance’ that only minor adjustments were contemplated. ‘The Ulster cabinet will refuse to take part in the boundary commission and will proceed to any lengths necessary.’8

‘For the unionists the language of treason and confrontation had become a habit,’ according to historian Paul Canning. ‘They found it difficult to speak otherwise.’9 Craig had ironically been a vocal proponent of a boundary commission before partition was introduced in 1920. The British cabinet was told in December 1919, for instance, that he strongly favoured ‘a boundary commission to examine the distribution of population along the borders of the whole of the six counties, and to take a vote in those districts on either side of and immediately adjoining that boundary in which there was a doubt as to whether they would prefer to be included in the northern or the southern parliamentary area’.10

The northern unionists were more bitterly opposed to the Treaty than de Valera. They saw it as a betrayal. As a result the unionist press seemed to be more favourable to the Long Fellow than to Collins, who was variously described in the Orange press as a ‘gun man’, a ‘dishonourable politician’, as well as a ‘conjuror’, who was ‘bereft of all honour’, and was prepared ‘to break his oath on the slightest pretext’. By contrast de Valera was described as honest and sincere in his ideals. ‘One can admire the attitude of Mr de Valera, who is out for an Irish Republic or nothing,’ one Orange journal noted. ‘These Orange journals are keenly desirous of seeing Mr de Valera’s policy prevailing,’ The Freeman’s Journal noted. ‘If Ireland would only reject Mick Collins along with the Treaty, Carsonia [a derogatory republican term for the six counties] would rejoice.’11

This attitude was somewhat surprising. Collins had challenged de Valera to present his alternative to the Treaty during the Dáil debate and de Valera proposed what became known as Document No. 2. This included the six partition clauses of the Treaty verbatim. The only difference was a declaration to the effect that ‘the right of any part of Ireland to be excluded from the supreme authority of the national parliament and government’ was not being recognised, but for the sake of internal peace and in order to divorce the Ulster question from the overall Anglo-Irish dispute, de Valera said he was ready to accept the partition clauses of the Treaty, even though they provided ‘an explicit recognition of the right on the part of Irishmen to secede from Ireland’. In other words, the unionists of Northern Ireland did not have a right to partition, but the rest of the island was willing to accept partition anyway. ‘We will take the same things as agreed on there,’ de Valera told the Dáil. ‘Let us not start to fight with Ulster.’12

Although Craig stated publicly that he suspected that Lloyd George had given Collins a secret assurance in relation to the boundary commission, the Big Fellow publicly denied receiving any kind of guarantee from the British prime minister. Nevertheless he intimated privately that he had received assurances from members of the British delegation. Seán MacEoin, who had seconded Griffith’s motion proposing the Treaty in the Dáil, stated that Collins did actually get a commitment in writing from Lord Birkenhead. ‘If the six counties opted out of the all-Ireland parliament, the British government agreed that instead of one representative on the boundary commission they would accept Collins’ nomination of their man and this gave the Free State two members instead of one,’ Birkenhead wrote to Collins, according to MacEoin. ‘This would rectify the situation in Ireland’s favour.’

‘Collins gave me that letter to read,’ MacEoin explained. But the letter vanished after Collins’ death.13 It seems strange that nobody else ever mentioned seeing it.

Ernest Blythe rather contemptuously dismissed MacEoin’s story. As a northern Protestant and a member of both Griffith’s cabinet and the Provisional Government, Blythe had a deep personal interest in the Ulster situation, but he dismissed the suggestion that Griffith and Collins had ever been given such an assurance. Blythe later wrote:

If you knew Seán MacEoin even fairly well, you would know that he inclines to give play to his imagination and his sense of the dramatic when he is talking about other people and wants to make his story sound a little sensational. I venture to say that no one knowing him even fairly well would attach any importance to testimony from him which on a matter not directly concerning himself, was intrinsically unlikely. Birkenhead may, like all men, have been foolish in some respects, but he certainly was not enough of a blithering idiot to write a letter of the kind suggested. Whatever he may have done during negotiations by way of innuendo or private hint to suggest vaguely the possibility of substantial transfers to the Free State we can be sure that he did not speak as suggested by MacEoin.14