I Signed My Death Warrant (9 page)

Five of the seven members of the British delegation were lawyers, as were George Gavan Duffy and Eamonn Duggan on the Irish delegation. Collins got on with Duggan, who was totally in his control. The one lawyer with whom Collins would develop a surprising rapport was Lord Birkenhead, the lord chancellor, who had the reputation of being the staunchest unionist on the British side. As Frederick E. Smith, he had been one of Sir Edward Carson's staunchest unionist supporters. If there were to be a settlement, they would be seen as the people who compromised most. Hence they understood each other.

‘When Michael Collins found that the hated Birkenhead was a human being and an adventurous spirit like himself, suspicion and hatred gave way to confidence and trust,' according to Geoffrey Shakespeare. ‘Thereafter Birkenhead played an increasingly important part.'

‘If all the British delegation had his capacity for clear thinking, capacity for work and getting ahead, things would be much easier,' Collins wrote. Describing the lord chancellor as ‘a good man', he summed him up as a ‘lawyer, but with a great difference. Concise.'

Austen Chamberlain, an older half-brother of future prime minister Neville Chamberlain, was the leader of the Conservative Party. He was a political heavyweight who was in his thirtieth years in parliament and had been chancellor of the exchequer as early as 1903. Collins did not like him because he considered him a difficult person. He was too formal, the kind of politician who played safe, staying in the middle of the road rather than standing by any convictions. Time would prove Collins was unfair. Chamberlain sacrificed his own chances of becoming prime minister in the coming months by loyally supporting Lloyd George, while his party revolted and brought down the coalition government and Andrew Bonar Law became prime minister. But all that was to happen the following year. As of the autumn of 1921 Collins thought Chamberlain was the type of person who ‘says one thing and apparently means another'. He compared him with Gavan Duffy on the Irish side. The big difference was that Chamberlain had real clout within the British delegation.

Chamberlain, on the other hand, has his own reservations about Collins. ‘He had his own code of honour, and to it he was true, but it was not mine, and between him and me there could be no real sympathy and perhaps only partial understanding,' Chamberlain explained.

Winston Churchill, the secretary for the colonies, was first elected to parliament as a Conservative more than twenty years earlier, but he then bolted the party that his father had once led. He joined the Liberal Party and supported David Lloyd George in the heave to oust Herbert H. Asquith as prime minister in 1916. Lloyd George included Churchill in the British negotiating delegation, because he was too dangerous to leave out. In the eyes of many people Churchill was coming to the end of his political career because he had backed the wrong political horse in deserting the Conservative Party. Nobody on his own side really trusted him, so it was hardly surprising that Collins should have reservations. He believed Churchill's only goal was political advancement. ‘Will sacrifice all for political gain,' Collins wrote. ‘Inclined to be bombastic. Full of ex-officer jingo or similar outlook. Don't actually trust him.'

There could be little rapport between Collins and the chief secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood, who was seen as the chief defender of the Black and Tans. He was a Canadian lawyer in his early fifties. Collins considered him a bombastic and over–riding individual. ‘A man who earns my personal detestation,' he wrote, adding that these feelings were reciprocated.

The attorney general Sir Gordon Hewart was another lawyer in his fifties. Collins described him as ‘a difficult man to deal with', because he ‘never relaxes'. The final member of the British delegation was the new secretary of war, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, who had only been appointed to the position earlier in the year.

‘This is a real nest of singing birds,' Collins wrote of the British delegation during the second week of the conference. ‘They chirrup mightily one to another – and there's the falseness of it all, because not one trusts the other.'

From the outset the British were insisting on their July proposals, which offered a form of dominion status that was limited by trade and defence restriction. The Irish delegation was effectively seeking the
de facto
independence of the dominions. In countering the British proposal, the Irish delegation argued that even though they were looking for more, the British offer did not even amount to dominion status, because unprecedented defence and trade concessions were being demanded of Ireland.

Collins argued, for instance, that the dominions were free to withdraw from the British commonwealth, but the right was being denied to Ireland. ‘Bonar Law said that the Dominions could vote themselves out of the British Empire,' Collins said

‘All that means is that we might not undertake military operations against the Dominions which did so,' Lloyd George replied. In other words, British could undertake measures against Ireland, that they would not employ against the other dominions because they were so far away. This was precisely why de Valera believed that Ireland needed something more than dominion status to ensure the country enjoyed the same freedom as Canada or the other dominions.

Unprecedented naval concessions were being demanded from Ireland,' Collins argued. ‘You are asking more from us than from them in this naval business.'

Lloyd George suggested the conference set up a sub com­mittee to examine the defence question.

‘We would like that very much,' Collins replied.

Three different subcommittees were established to consider defence, finance and issues relating to violations of the Truce. Collins was the only Irish plenipotentiary on all three subcommittees. He attended all eight meetings of the three subcommittees, as did Childers, while Barton and Duggan joined them at the five meetings of the Committee for the Observance of the Truce.

The first of the Truce subcommittee meetings on 12 October brought Collins, Barton and Duggan face to face with secretary of war Sir Laming Worthington-Evans and the chief secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood, as well as under–secretary of state Sir John Anderson, and assistant under–secretary Andy Cope, along with Major-General Henry Tudor, head of the Black and Tans and crown police in Ireland, and General Sir Neville Macready, the general office in charge of British forces in Ireland.

‘As it was the first time I had come face to face with Collins,' Macready wrote, ‘I naturally was interested in a man who was in fact the principal figure in the rebellion.' He found the Big Fellow a very interesting character. ‘Tall, dark, strongly though loosely built, with an apparent indifference to personal appearance,' Macready wrote, ‘he exhibited the Irish characteristics in a marked degree, being when the occasion offered, a
bon vivant
, an admirer of the other sex, and from all accounts a cheery companion when free from the cares of office. Fearless he certainly was, to which he added a degree of cunning which stood him in good stead in many a tight corner.'

‘Among the various Sinn Féiners with whom from time to time I came in touch,' Macready continued, ‘Michael Collins struck me as being the easiest to deal with. Of a type common in Ireland, his like can be seen by the score on any Irish race­course, but he had, what few of his countrymen possess, a sense of humour, and, above all, the gift during a conversation of sticking to essentials.' When colleagues drifted off the subject under the discussion, he would call them back to order, ‘and complete the business with the least possible waste of time.'

The high-powered team that the British assembled to discuss the Truce may have temporarily intimidated Collins. Macready privately explained, for example, that Collins initially came across badly because he sought to get out of difficult positions by making ‘poor jokes in bad taste'. Collins wrote next day that it looked for a time that the conference might collapse over Truce violations. He explained that he ‘never felt so ashamed' as when the British produced a photograph of some IRA volunteers with a machine gun and handkerchiefs over their faces. This was ‘cheap bravado,' and he felt ‘let down'. They could continue drilling at the camp if they just discontin­ued the publicity, which was ‘the real grievance', because they had not been seeking such publicity before the Truce.

Another issue of contention was the publicity being given to republican courts. Those had been given practically no pub­licity prior to the Truce, so Childers wrote to de Valera that ‘it would be absurd that the negotiations should break on such an issue when serious issues were at stake.' De Valera responded that the British should be told that ‘the publicity given in Dublin and some other places was not authorised by our Headquarters, and we shall continue to discourage publicity. We cannot go beyond that.'

‘We cannot give way an inch on this question of civil func­tioning, but it is certainly too bad that the other side should have got the opportunity which the blaze of publicity gave them,' de Valera wrote to Griffith on 14 October. ‘I would advise if the discussion is continued, that you call over the Minister of Home Affairs.'

Stack had refused to go to London as one of the pleni­po­tentiaries, yet de Valera was now suggesting that he should be allowed to deal with matters relating to his own department. Before this letter reached London, however, the issue had been resolved by agreeing to stop the publicity. ‘It is agreed on both sides that no courts shall be held in Ireland otherwise than as before the Truce,' Childers informed de Valera, who concurred but stressed ‘the courts would go on in secret'. If there was any publicity, he contended, this would be the result of ‘the increased freedom of the newspapers during the Truce and not from any deliberate act of ours.'

Many of the Truce violations were minor matters. With the British raising issues like the republican courts and IRA training camp, Collins complained that a British agent had followed him to mass at Maiden Lane on 16 October, and that a British officer name Tully was circulating photographs of him in the Athlone area, while a British colonel had issued instructions on 1 October for the British army to be ready to hunt down the rebels once the peace collapsed, when they should be given ‘no peace' until ‘all important leaders have been arrested or satisfactorily accounted for.' Collins added that he had seen many other similar orders since the Truce. ‘Such documents were bound to lead not merely to individual breaches of the Truce but to a general disregard of it,' he warned.

‘For the moment I don't know that it was issued,' Worthing­ton-Evans replied.

‘We know,' the Big Fellow insisted. ‘You can't issue these docu­­ments without my knowledge.'

On the third day of the conference there was a report that Collins spotted a rifle in the hallway of 10 Downing Street. ‘What is the meaning of this provocative display?' he asked in a jocose manner.

The prime minister laughed and picked up the rifle, explain­ing that it was the first American rifle made for the First World War. Collins thereupon suggested that he should sit in a chair with the rifle in his hands and Lloyd George should call the
Morning Post
to send over a photographer. Everybody re­portedly laughed.

Next day Collins celebrated his thirty-first birthday with a small private party. ‘It was a lovely party,' he wrote to Kitty, ‘but it was unpleasant as I have too many things to carry at the present moment. It is not right for me to inflict myself on people.' The pressure of the negotiations was obviously wearing on him. ‘I don't like gramophone effects,' he continued. ‘I like the people to say what they themselves think and mean.'

The finance sub-committee only met once and its deliberations were inconclusive, while the other two sub-committees were more important. On those Collins was helped by some of his own men like Emmet Dalton, J. J. O'Connell, Eoin O'Duffy, and Diarmuid O'Hegarty, together with Erskine Childers, who soon proved to be a particularly unhappy choice, because he was ‘altogether too radical and impractical' in the estimation of Collins.

Childers was not shy about pushing his own strong views. On the third day of the conference, he was with Collins when they met Churchill and the first sea lord, Admiral David Beatty, who was about to leave for the Washington naval conference.

‘Ireland, an island with a maritime frontier, is to be denied responsibility for her own naval defence' just because she happened to be sixty-one miles from Britain, Childers argued.

‘Now, gentlemen, I mean to demonstrate that Ireland is not only no source of danger to England, but from the military standpoint, is virtually useless.'

‘This announcement staggered me probably more than it did the other two,' Collins recalled. ‘It was ridiculous balderdash. I felt like wanting to get out of the room, but I naturally realised that I must make the pretence of standing by my colleague. Churchill and Beatty exchanged glance, and then gave Childers their attention again.'

‘Take the matter of Irish bases for English submarine chasers,' Childers continued. ‘From the viewpoint of naval expediency Plymouth is a far better base than any port on the Irish coast.'

‘You really think so?' Beatty asked.

Childers insisted this was the case. ‘For instance,' he added, ‘supposing Ireland were not there at all?'

‘Ah,' said the admiral with a smile, ‘but Ireland is there.'

‘And how many times have we wished she were not!' inter­jected Churchill.

While the hypothetical approach adopted by Childers would have been appreciated by the more theoretical mind of a mathematician like de Valera, it had no appeal for the practically minded Collins, who did not even bother to relate the details of the hypothetical argument.

Using a map marking the locations of ships sunk by U-boats during the Great War, Beatty argued that in some situations certain Irish ports would obviously be more strategic than Plymouth for anti-submarine warfare. Childers had no real answer, much to the chagrin of Collins, who noted that he ‘never felt more a fool' in his life.

‘I had an idea,' Collins continued. Pointing to the French coast, he suggested that Le Harve would make ‘an excellent base for British forces engaged in hunting submarines.'

‘Quite so,' replied the admiral with another smile, ‘but we can't take the French port!'

‘If that constitutes duress,' Collins later explained, ‘I'll admit that we were under duress. But to my way of thinking it is plain talk, right talk, and the kind of talk I prefer my opponents to use.'

Of course, Collins could not have known that Beatty did not attach a great deal of importance to Irish bases. It was Churchill who thought the bases were important, and he was thinking of air bases, naval bases and recruiting stations.

Beatty and the other admirals thought naval bases in Ireland were of ‘little importance' when Churchill discussed the matter with them before the sub-conference meeting. ‘Our position is,' he insisted on behalf of the government, ‘we must have free use of the Irish coasts in peace or war for Imperial defence.'

After the meeting Collins again wrote to Kitty Kiernan that he preferred people to be open. ‘I would like people to say what they themselves think and mean,' he wrote. Yet even at that early stage of the conference he had found himself having to support arguments in which he did not really believe.

The meeting with Admiral Beatty was considered an in­formal one to facilitate Admiral Beatty before he left for the Washington naval conference. The first sub–committee meeting on defence was four days later. Some of the arguments would later be of particular historical interest during the Second World War, especially when Churchill as first lord of the admiralty would dispute Ireland's right to remain neutral. ‘Legally,' he wrote in 1939, ‘I believe they are “at war but skulking”. Some of the arguments of 17 October 1921 would be tested under real conditions, so in view of the subsequent historical import, it is worth considering the sub–committee deliberations between Churchill and Collins in particular depth.

‘At the outset,' Churchill explained, ‘I want to make it quite clear that the British government do not want any facilities, naval, air or military, from Ireland for the purpose of interfering with the internal forces of Ireland. The only facilities we want are those necessary to enable us to discharge our responsibilities of self-guarding the British Empire in peace and war, of protecting our commerce and maintaining our food supplies.' He then read a formula covering Britain's needs from the naval perspective:

The Irish government confides the responsibility for the naval defence of Irish interests on the high seas to the Royal Navy and for this purpose as well as for those of general Imperial defence places its posts, harbours, and inlets unreservedly at the disposal of the Imperial Government in peace or war.

‘The suggestion that we should bind ourselves to place ports and inlets at your disposal puts us in the position of servants,' Collins argued.

On considering the number of facilities that Admiral Beatty had requested, Churchill said he was surprised there were so few. The royal navy desired Berehaven ‘so that they might have a station from which they could convoy their food ships, attack hostile submarines and generally protect them in case of war.'

Collins said that he could see no necessity for such demands. ‘You have force and therefore you have security,' he said.

‘You cannot realise that in England there would be a certain feeling against handing over at once these fortified ports to Ireland,' Churchill contended. ‘We cannot object of course to your having full dominion development and we would be glad when the opportunity came to enable you to take responsibility for these defences.'

‘Where were the facilities they desired?' Childers asked.

‘What we want is naval places of strategic importance,' Wort­­hington-Evans said.

‘This document appears to mean that you are at liberty to take over any site in any part of Ireland,' said Collins.

‘Certainly, if these sites were necessary for the defence of the Empire,' Vice Admiral Osmond Brock interjected.

‘Of course we can do this in Australia,' Churchill added.

‘As a practical man,' Collins asked Churchill, ‘do you think that we are going to build a big navy?“

‘Honestly, I do not,' replied Churchill, ‘and why then should we get into these depths? Why should these questions be raised?'

‘It is we really who are dealing with this in a practical manner,' said Collins.

‘We must deal with realities, ‘Churchill insisted.

‘Quite so,' Collins agreed. ‘Why then put in references to matters which are not real, and which are offensive to our susceptibilities? Take for example the proposal of taking over any of our property. That looks very much like free-booting.'

‘At present it is our undoubted right to take over these place,' Churchill insisted.

‘That is not conceded. You take them by force,' Collins argued.

‘But we want to substitute law for force,' Churchill said.

‘Why not let these matters rest upon the basis of common interest?' asked Collins.

‘I am afraid we could not do that,' Churchill replied. ‘We could not justify ourselves before Parliament. No British Government could afford to take such a course.'