Ireland’s Decade of Conflict, 1913-23 (III)

Abstract

Ireland’s Decade of Conflict, 1913-23 (III) Sean Brophy The Anglo-Irish War (1919-21) In the British general election of 1918, Sinn Féin, vigorously opposing the extension of military conscription to Ireland, won a huge majority of the seats in the south. They withdrew from Westminster and established an Irish parliament – or Dáil – in Dublin, essentially ignoring Britain and proceeding to govern themselves. The British administration remained in place, as did the army and the national police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary. All the conditions for anAnglo-Irish war existed as, by means of political agitation and violence, Sinn Féin and the IRAproceeded to render the country ungovernable. The Irish government, through its armed wing, the IRA, fought a guerrilla war from 1919 to the middle of 1921. Through the IRA’s activities and the reactions and reprisals of the British military, and the auxiliary police they drafted in (the so-called ‘Black and Tans’and Auxiliaries), the loss of life and destruction to property was huge. Both sides fought to a standstill, neither one yielding on the principle of whether Ireland was to become a thirty-two county republic or a dominion of the British Empire, with home rule under the crown and no coercion of Ulster to become part of a united country. Westminster passed the Government of Ireland Act in 1920, giving home rule along the lines of the original 1914 measure to two parliaments, one in Dublin for twenty-six counties, the other in Belfast for the six counties of Ulster, thus partitioning the country. King George V opened the Belfast parliament at Stormont Castle in 1921. Sinn Féin declared the act illegal and refused to accept a Dublin parliament on such lines: they had their own freely-elected parliament of a thirty-two county Irish republic, their own army and its supporters. In July 1921, representatives of the Dáil were invited to London to agree a truce and the basis on which negotiations for home rule could proceed. Following in the footsteps of successive British governments, since Robert Peel faced Daniel O’Connell in the early nineteenth century, Lloyd George was unequivocal: no settlement would be acceptable that threatened the integrity of the British Empire and fidelity to the crown or that coerced Ulster. Studies • volume 106 • number 421 95 Ireland’s Decade of Conflict, 1913-23 (III) These principles would be defended by total war. De Valera tried to teach Lloyd George the same lessons of Irish-British history as Daniel O’Connell had done when he wrote to Queen Victoria in 1843, with no greater success. He argued that the British Empire was finished and that it was in British interests to have it transform itself into an association of former British colonies, including the United States of America. Ireland would join such an association and accept the king as the head of those associated states. But, for his interlocutor, this was too big an imaginative leap and too formidable a task. Even so, the truce held and subsequent negotiations culminated in a treaty agreement in December 1921. De Valera himself did not attend the negotiations. Was he reserving the right, as head of state, to decide on the treaty before it was signed? He knew from his truce negotiations with Lloyd George that conceding a thirty-two county republic was impossible for the British and that dominion status was all that could be achieved. Did he position himself to not be identified with the failure to vindicate the republic and thus secure his political base in Ireland? Did the negotiators discourage him from participating because they knew they could not get agreement with the British if he were present? Civil War (1922-23) The plenipotentiaries of the Dáil, led by Arthur Griffith, signed the treaty without De Valera’s presence or approval. In the Dáil, where the debates revealed the rancour between deputies on either side, it was passed by a vote of sixty-four to fifty-seven. In the general election that followed, the protreaty party won a majority of seats and claimed the support of the people and their acceptance of...