The Irish War of Independence

The Definitive Account of the Anglo Irish War of 1919 - 1921

Micahel Hopkinson

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780717161973
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Within months of first publication, Michael Hopkinson's study of the Irish War of Independence established itself as by far most comprehensive and evocative account of the role played by the conflict in shaping modern Ireland. It has been welcomed both by scholars and the general public alike, and gone further than perhaps any other recent publication in recasting our understanding of Ireland's decisive confrontation with the military might of the British Empire.

PART I

GATHERING STORM

1

BRITISH RULE IN IRELAND

‘The present conflict between the opposing forces in Ireland has its roots in the failure of English statecraft and administration to rule Ireland.’

G.C. Cockerill, Memorandum on Ireland 1919–20.¹

At the time of the Third Home Rule Bill’s introduction in 1912, a measure of self-government for Ireland appeared to be on the brink of being achieved. The House of Lords veto had been removed, seemingly ensuring passage of the legislation. Optimism was shattered by the strength and effectiveness of Ulster Unionist resistance supported by an opportunistic Conservative Party; by 1914 the whole basis of internal security was threatened and the Liberal government’s dithering underlined their lack of conviction over the issue. The beginning of the First World War allowed the Bill to be passed, but with its operation suspended until a time not later than the end of the conflict, and with the further caveat that an amending Bill would make special provision for all or part of Ulster.

It is doubtful if this limited measure of devolution could have produced a longterm settlement.² What is clear, however, is that the Ulster Crisis brought the gun back into Irish politics and together with the First World War undermined constitutional nationalism. Catholic nationalists of all shades viewed the failure to stand up to Ulster and to force the passage of Home Rule as the ultimate British betrayal. Vast numbers of moderates became radicals almost overnight. From then on any appeal to a so-called middle ground was hopeless. In this wide context the Easter Rising should be seen as the consequence of the revolutionary developments of the preceding four years. Long before the end of the War, a settlement along Home Rule lines was inconceivable and the Irish Parliamentary Party’s leader, John Redmond’s hopes for Anglo-Irish rapprochement devastated.³ The British government, however, did not choose to recognise these realities.

While the Easter Rising in the long term revived militant, advanced nationalism, in the short term it placed a higher premium than ever on the need for a speedy Home Rule settlement. Lloyd George’s initiative of the summer of 1916, which attempted to achieve immediate implementation of Home Rule, together with the exclusion of the six north-eastern counties, foundered on Cabinet disunity and Southern Unionist resistance.⁴

Recourse was then made to the delaying action of the Irish Convention of 1917–18, which was motivated by the desire to appease international, particularly American, opinion.⁵ Lloyd George then commented: ‘In six months the war will be lost . . . the Irish-American vote will go over to the German side. They will break our blockade and force an ignominious peace on us, unless something is done . . . to satisfy America.’⁶ By this time, the transformed Sinn Féin Party had achieved a dominant position in Irish politics against the background of British prevarication, delay and pinpricking coercion. The conscription crisis of the spring and summer of 1918 sounded the final death knell of Home Rule hopes and with them of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

The British administration of Ireland in its final years demonstrated in a dramatic and concentrated manner all the vices which had existed within it for hundreds of years. The system was in its death throes before the reorganisation of the Irish Volunteers and the formation of the Dáil government between 1917 and 1919.

The failure of British administration in Ireland owed much to structural and institutional weaknesses. A separate government, based in Dublin Castle, survived the Act of Union of 1800–1801 and changed little in form during the course of the following one hundred and twenty-one years. It consisted of a multitude of Departments and Boards, some autonomous from London, some overlapping with each other. The Castle was meant to run the country as well as to advise the British government on policy, and became a watchword for unaccountable and inefficient rule, criticised on every front for its top-heavy bureaucracy. The French observer Louis Paul-Dubois described it as ‘A world in itself, a city within a city. It is at once the palace of the viceroy, a military barrack, the seat of administration, and the office of the secret police . . . omnipotent and omniscient.’ The Liberal politician John Morley saw it as: ‘the best machine that has ever been invented for governing a country against its will’.⁷ The evolution of accountable parliamentary government in Britain during the course of the nineteenth century found no parallel in Ireland.

The vestiges of an archaic colonial administration remained. The office of Lord Lieutenant, the representative of the Crown in Ireland, survived, his relationship to the Chief Secretary problematic. One commentator likened that office to a ‘useless and idle pageant’ and the historian Kieran Flanagan concluded that the Viceroy ‘symbolised the incomplete nature of the Act of Union and the notion of Ireland as a separate nation’.⁸ Increasingly the holders of the post became like constitutional monarchs, associated with symbolism and ritual, while the Chief Secretary became more powerful, largely because of his role in the Cabinet and in the Commons.

Long-term improvements in communications meant that the Chief Secretary’s frequent visits to London contrasted with the Viceroy’s permanent residence in Dublin. The Chief Secretary became dependent on Westminster and on the Prime Minister’s patronage. The position was usually given to a junior politician as a sinecure rather than for any perceived knowledge of or ability in Irish affairs. Time in the office averaged two years.

Some sympathy is due to the Chief Secretaries because of the range of skills required — headship of the bureaucracy and representative of Irish affairs in Westminster and Whitehall, administrator and trouble-shooter, constantly travelling back and forth across the Irish Sea. At various times the balance between Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary changed, dependent on the political weight and the personalities involved. In the running of Dublin Castle the office of Under-Secretary was usually the most important one: he became a full-time civil servant, permanently stationed in Dublin.⁹

The system was full of potential for disharmony both within Dublin Castle and between Dublin and Westminster. At sundry times British politicians talked of modernising it but little change occurred. Lord John Russell wrote in 1847: ‘A separate government — a separate court — and an administration of a mixed nature, partly English and partly Irish, is not of itself a convenient arrangement. The separate government within fifteen hours of London appears unnecessary — the separate court a mockery — the mixed administration the cause of confusion and delay.’ At another time Russell declared that he ‘found the relationship between the Irish and the United Kingdom administrations clumsy, and even absurd’.¹⁰

The preservation of the status quo was in part due to the fact that the administration acted as a career route and boosted status, particularly for the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. In an open letter to the Lord Lieutenant in 1905, the writer R. Barry O’Brien commented: ‘It is notorious that the highest positions in the Government of Ireland have been and are filled by Protestants, almost wholly to the exclusion of those who professed the religion of the nation . . . It has well been said that the government of a country must partake of the character of the people.’¹¹ Any change was seen by the Unionists as a step to undermining the whole Union, while Home Rule supporters saw reform as insufficient and as a barrier to self-government. Nobody within Ireland argued for the preservation of Dublin Castle on the grounds of its effectiveness or efficiency.

A major consequence of the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill was that self-government was seen as inevitable. During the time of Augustine Birrell’s Chief Secretaryship, 1907–16, Catholics took an increasing proportion of administrative posts. The Easter Rising, however, destroyed any hope of a smooth transition from colony to devolution. During the ensuing martial law period, Prime Minister Asquith talked of abolishing the positions of both Viceroy and Chief Secretary and making a single Cabinet Minister responsible for Irish government.¹² After the collapse of Lloyd George’s attempt to produce immediate Home Rule in the summer of 1916, the old system was restored, with the recall of Lord Wimborne as Viceroy and the appointment of the obscure lawyer H.E. Duke as Chief Secretary. From that time the existence of a Coalition government with a Tory majority meant the reversal of what has been called ‘the greening of Dublin Castle’,¹³ although some Catholics held on to important jobs.

Patricia Jalland has sought to re-establish Birrell’s historical reputation, and George Boyce together with Cameron Hazelhurst has made a case for the usually poorly-regarded Duke. In response, Eunan O’Halpin has pointed to Birrell’s inept administration of security, Duke’s inability to take policy initiatives and his frequent recourse to Whitehall on trivial matters.¹⁴ Such debate, however, should be put in a wider context. Second-rate politicians like Duke, Ian Macpherson and Hamar Greenwood were chosen because major figures declined the job. Lloyd George refused the supremo position in 1916 and from 1917 Walter Long preferred a liaison role to that of returning to the Chief Secretaryship. H.A.L. Fisher looked the other way when asked about his availability for the office in 1920.¹⁵

While various Chief Secretaries have received much of the blame for the shortcomings of British rule in Ireland, the primary responsibility should rest with Westminster. Up to 1912, Birrell was the longest-serving and, in terms of legislative accomplishments, among the most successful of Chief Secretaries: he even relished living in Ireland and read widely in Irish history and literature. Following the Ulster Crisis and the Easter Rising, it was not Asquith’s reputation but Birrell’s, and that of Matthew Nathan the hardworking and sympathetic Under-Secretary, which suffered.¹⁶

The structural and institutional weaknesses were the consequence of unsympathetic and ill-thought out British policy towards Ireland. There had been no debate about the system of government at the time that the Union was implemented. The abolition of the Irish parliament had been motivated by defence considerations and passed in a manner calculated to deepen an Irish sense of grievance. Sir James Dougherty, Under-Secretary 1908–14, declared: ‘We have a quasi-separate government, and . . . the people of Ireland look to what they call “the Castle” despised as it is by many, for advice and guidance, and, above all, they make it the repository of their complaints.’¹⁷

The Union proved a disastrous halfway house with few of the virtues of either a centralised or a devolved government, thus enabling all Irish grievances and problems to be blamed on it. Under the Act, Irish considerations were all too frequently subjugated to British political demands: there was an unwillingness to relate British political philosophy to Irish needs, most dramatically demonstrated during the Great Famine. Beginning with Catholic emancipation, necessary reforms were reluctantly made and badly delayed.

Irish policy was often determined by British party political considerations: reforms were adopted because of the value of Irish votes at Westminster or opposed because it suited electoral needs. For all his talk of morality in politics and of a mission to pacify Ireland, Gladstone had strong political reasons for introducing the First Home Rule Bill.¹⁸ The vicissitudes of British rule encouraged the growth of Catholic nationalism. When constructive measures were passed — the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869; the sundry Land Acts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the eventual founding of a Catholic university; the democratisation of local government in the last years of the nineteenth century and the introduction of Home Rule legislation — it was a matter of too little, too late, and was not the product of any coherent underlying philosophy.

These changes served only to heighten demands for self-government and to bring about the birth of Northern Unionism. Arguably if the various strands of constructive Unionism had been used to tackle Irish grievances in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, wide elements of Irish opinion could have become reconciled to the Union. It may be true also that Ulster’s resistance to a separate Dublin parliament could have been overridden in the late nineteenth century, before its two political parties became organised under the one banner of Ulster Unionism. This would have required, however, a sustained and empathetic approach to Irish affairs which was never exhibited by any British government. The traditional British skill of compromise leading to consensus could not be made to apply to Ireland where a radical reassessment was called for in government, society and economy.

Underlying all was a fundamental lack of sympathy for the Catholic Irish, often amounting to racism. Many of the leading figures responsible for British administration in Ireland in the period of the War of Independence expressed contempt for the Irish. Walter Long, who led Southern Unionist opinion and had an Irish wife, in arguing for strong government commented: ‘It is the only form of government which the Irish understand. They are very quick, and when they see that disloyalty not only goes unpunished but is sometimes even rewarded they naturally do not hesitate to indulge in their own tastes.’ Harold Spender reported Lloyd George as saying that ‘Ireland had hated England and always would. He could easily govern Ireland with the sword; he was far more concerned about the Bolsheviks at home.’¹⁹

In the spring of 1920, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife of a ‘diabolical strain’ in the Irish character and continued: ‘I expect it is that treacherous, assassinating, conspiring trait which has done them in in the bygone ages of history and prevented them from being a great responsible nation with stability and prosperity.’ In the midst of detailed consideration of Irish policy in January 1921, Bonar Law declared the Irish to be ‘an inferior race’; when commiserating with Ian Macpherson on his appointment as Chief Secretary in January 1919, General Macready commented: ‘I cannot say I envy you for I loathe the country you are going to and its people with a depth deeper than the sea and more violent than that I feel against the Boche.’²⁰

In the political context the importance of the fact that a Coalition government, dominated increasingly by Conservatives, existed from 1915 cannot be overstressed. The problem with reconciling Tory and Liberal views within the administration meant that it served no-one’s political interest to raise the Irish Question unless it was absolutely necessary. Throug...