Ireland in 1921

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The First Three Months - - 1

II. — The Government's Case 28

Chapter I

To the student of Irish affairs, the year 1921 offers a most fascinating field for investigation. It was essentially a year of contrast; the first six months of it witnessed the culmination of the guerrilla warfare proclaimed against the British forces by the Irish Republicans, the last six months saw a treaty negotiated between the contending parties. Men who in the earlier part of the year were murderers hiding from justice with a price upon their heads were later received as the chosen leaders of the Irish people; their followers, once rebels whose extermination was the objective of sixty thousand British troops, became officers of the Irish Government forces, and co-operated with those who had hunted them in the maintenance of law and order. It was a year of contrasts and contradictions, of grave political errors and of brilliant feats of statesmanship, of unexpected unity and still more unexpected dissension. And of this annus mirabilis the present book will endeavour to give a brief account.

It will first be necessary to recall the state of Irish affairs at the opening of the year. The

B

Government of Ireland Act, which provided for the establishment of two separate Parliaments for Northern and Southern Ireland, had become law on December 23rd, 1920. In Ireland, the Act had few if any friends. The North, limited by it to six counties, contemptuously styled ' ' Carsonia ' ' by the Southern Nationalists, had accepted it without enthusiasm as the only alternative to inclusion in an all-Ireland Parliament with its seat in Dublin. Lord Carson, then the recognised leader of Ulster opinion, had publicly stated the intention of his followers to co-operate loyally in carrying out its provisions, while at the same time voicing their preference for the long established Union. The South, on the other hand, unanimous in this as in nothing else, condemned it root and branch. The extreme Sinn Fein party refused to consider it; to their mind it sought to impose upon them a form of British domination, differing from that imposed by the Union in form only and not in degree. The Nationalists, in which term may for convenience be included the remainder of the Southern population, terrorised into sympathy with the extremists, but longing for any measure which would restore peace to their distracted country, hated the partition of Ireland into North and South, and saw in the Act no promise of finality or of the welding of Ireland into one nation as the result of its provisions. The Southern Loyalists, who had throughout pinned their faith on securing protection from the strong arm of British law, enforced by British authority, felt their cause abandoned and their position in the country rendered untenable.

But at the beginning of the year the Act was nothing more than a name. It had received the force of law, but from its very intention it was obvious that before its enforcement could even be begun some time must elapse. The whole machinery of government and administration of a country cannot be divided and transferred to other powers in a week, especially when one of those powers is non-existent and the people of the territory it is to represent are in open rebellion against the transfer. Since the Union, the whole of the services of government had been concentrated in Dublin Castle, rightly or wrongly a byword in Ireland as the very birth-place of circumlocution and ' red tape. ' This administrative web had to be unravelled, and its various threads split between Dublin and Belfast. It must be remembered that the proportion of British officials in the Irish Government has always been infinitesimal. Viceroy, Chief Secretary, and Under Secretary have usually been of British birth, and these were the officials who directed the main lines of policy. But the men who carried out this policy were practically Irish to a man, and in this fact lay a difficulty. It was obvious that the policies of the Governments of Northern and Southern Ireland would be widely divergent, yet that men must be found from the existing services to staff the offices in Dublin and Belfast. This was merely an example of the difficulties underlying the preliminaries of the Act. Even when the administrative services had been prepared for the use of the new Governments, the setting up of one of those Governments, at least, was a task of superhuman effort.

The state of Southern Ireland was actually, though the fact was never acknowledged in so many words, one of open rebellion against British authority. The Extremist leaders, who had opened a campaign of ambush against the police in January, 1919, had, during the two intervening years, developed that campaign into a moderately successful guerrilla warfare against the British forces in general. The only effective reply to such warfare, from the purely military point of view, is a sharp punitive campaign which must necessarily involve the whole population of the country. Such a campaign the military authorities were quite prepared for, their plans were drawn up and their dispositions laid. But the politicians would not sanction it. The cause of Ireland looked too much like the cause of other small nations striving for that strange new birth of the Great War, self-determination, and they feared that declared and open war would blacken the face of England before the world. Apart from this was the question of expense. A campaign on a scale large enough to stamp out rebellion throughout the South of Ireland was an undertaking whose limits no man might foresee, and although the estimates of its cost given at the time by men whose interest it was to dissuade the British public from demanding war were excessive, England, recovering from the effects of the greatest war in history was in no position to embark upon fresh military expeditions.

A compromise was therefore in operation, which displayed to perfection all the disadvantages of repression by force of arms with none of the advantages of success. To the ambushes and shootings of the Republicans were opposed a policy of reprisal, official and unofficial, and of the internment of men against whom rebellious tendencies could be proved. Reprisal is an impossible policy, it has none of the forms of law, and lays itself open to attack by even the dullest propagandists. But, as affairs stood, it was the only safety-valve. Men composing a military force, however well disciplined they may be, will not stand by and see their comrades and their officers brutally murdered without being allowed to lift a hand in revenge. In proclaimed warfare vengeance is afforded in the opportunities of engagement with an open enemy. In Ireland there was no definite enemy, there being no war, and consequently the opportunity for engagements with him were limited to the occasions on which he took the offensive, and could be identified with arms in his hands. Reprisals though ineffective were unavoidable, and as a matter of fact were inspired by rough and ready justice. The men who carried them out, whether acting under the orders of the authorities or upon their own responsibility, almost invariably knew the victims they selected, knew that they were guilty although their knowledge would not convict in a court of justice.

If reprisals were ineffective and harmful to the British cause, internment was almost equally so. In the internment camps were gradually collected the most extreme of the republicans, the majority of whom had never known such luxury in their lives. Freed from the necessity of earning their own living, they set themselves to educating one another in the Republican code of ethics, and the camps became the finest schools of the Irish Republican Army. That this statement is no exaggeration can be proved by reference to letters written by internees, of which an enormous number passed through the hands of the authorities. Such phrases as " our drill is improving every day, we shall be a crack company when we get out " and " tell mother we get plenty of spuds to our dinner and plenty of beef too, so we don't want anything except an odd cake for supper as we only get three meals a day ' ' occur throughout these letters, and their general tenor is one of thankfulness, tempered with some fear lest their comrades at large should eventually accuse them of getting arrested on purpose to avoid the discomforts of the field. There is also evidence that the agitation started by the Eepublicans for the purpose of calling attention to the " horrors of the prison camps ' had no support from the internees themselves.

But at the beginning of 1921 it was evident that these measures alone would never restore order to Ireland. In December, 1920, four counties of the South had been proclaimed as being subject to martial law, namely, Cork, Tipperary, Kerry and Limerick, and to these were added on January 4th Clare, Water ford, Wexford and Kilkenny. Thus the whole south-west was brought under the orders of Military Governors, whose power was theoretically absolute. But in practice these powers were rarely exercised, and conditions were no different in the Martial Law Area than they were in other disturbed counties. The Government still withheld the executive hand from the imposition of decisive measures, and the instructions to the Military Governors strictly limited their powers. The programme of ambush and assassination continued, and was countered as before by a defensive

POLICE.

SOLDIERS.

Killed

Wounded

Fired at

Killed

Wounded Fired at

... 25

19 12

... 34

15 17

... 25

50 20

... 27

29 23

... 56

24 23

... 32

48 28

... 24

25 17 policy and the half-hearted offensive of reprisals. The outrage statistics for the first few months of the year will give some idea of the state of the country.

Januaiy

February

March

April

May

June

July

Murders became so frequent that it would be practically impossible to enumerate them all, and in the course of this book reference will only be made to such as have a particular significance. But the condition of the country is best described by the statement that the horrors of the past year were being repeated daily upon an ever increasing scale, and were at their height when the conclusion of the truce imposed a sudden reduction upon them.

The delay in the enforcement of the Government of Ireland Act and in the concerting of effective military measures to deal with the situation becomes still further explicable in the light of an event practically unnoticed at the time, but, as it proved, of supreme importance. During the night of December 30th-31st, 1920, Mr. de Valera landed in Ireland, and the possibilities of securing peace in Ireland by negotiation became more tangible. Not that de Valera himself had arrived for the purpose of making advances. His mission to the United States was over, and he returned to the country of which he was self-styled ' president ' in the natural course of affairs. His first letter, dated January 1st, is worth quoting. It is addressed to Harry

Boland, the representative whom he had left behind in America, and is as follows : —

" Arrived safe after a little excitement. Am setting to work to establish an Irish White Cross; this name will avoid international complications, an American Branch can be established and we can look later to have it recognised by Geneva as a Red Cross."

The letter continues to enumerate by name the people to be approached in the matter, " as well as prominent people in the Society of Friends, etc., so as to tone down the strong political color that our own names will give." The letter concludes : —

" Don't let the peace talk influence you in any of your statements. Deal with it as a trick of LI. G. to mislead the people here and elsewhere. The people will not be fooled. He talks of peace whilst secretly he plots to murder, destroy the lives and property of the Irish people. . . ."

The whole story of the negotiations between the British authorities and the leaders of Sinn Fein will be dealt with in a subsequent chapter. It is only necessary to draw attention to the effect of de Valera's landing upon the situation in the country at large. From the evidence available, it appears that this influence was very small. During his absence abler hands than his had built up the various departments of the Republican system of government, and although these departments could only carry out the outlines of administration in the face of British suppression, the event proved that their duties were already allocated, and that the President could do little more than issue general instructions to them. He seems to have confined himself to evolving fresh schemes for the liberation of the Republic, schemes which met with varying degrees of approval among his colleagues. Even at this early date there are signs of disagreement between the various Sinn Fein leaders, and of a lack of co-ordination among them. De Valera seems to have been living in a world of dreams, and to have taken no heed of the warnings of those who were in touch with the realities of the situation. His first words addressed to the men with whom he came in contact on his return were in the form of encouragements to continue the struggle for the establishment of the Republic. The reason for this blindness seems to have been that during his stay in America he had never been in touch with the true spirit of that nation. Surrounded only by those who, for their own purposes, desired the success of his policy and who flattered him with tales of the vast and increasing volume of sympathy that the Irish cause was inspiring, he would listen to no advice, even from those whose ideals of Irish Republicanism were as fervid as his own, and their experience of the trend of opinion in the United States far riper. Such men as John Devoy and Judge Cohalan had pointed out to him the most promising means of securing support in America, but he, impatient of advice and restraint, had disagreed with them and precipitated a split in the ranks of the Irish- Americans which promised disaster to the cause. De Valera, fresh from the plaudits of the sycophants, returned to Ireland a dreamer and a visionary, enthusiastically followed by those whose Celtic imagination outran their sense of possibilities, and causing grave concern to the men who in his absence had learnt that the continuation of the struggle against England was hopeless, should England at last determine to put forth her strength.

The mass of the people were heartily sick of the state into which Ireland had been thrust. Apart altogether from the danger to life and limb, the operations of the contending forces interfered in every way with the prosperity of the country. It is probable that the majority of the country people would have welcomed any solution which would have freed them from the presence of the Irish Republican Army, whose operations brought nothing but disaster to them. Their produce was levied to support the Republican troops, their houses must be available to shelter them when " on the run," their barns and outhouses were impressed as hiding-places for illicit arms. It was becoming abundantly clear to them that they were suffering far more from the Irish forces than from ' ' the enemy, ' ' as the Republicans styled the British throughout.

De Valera's ' Presidential Message to the Farmers of Ireland ' sets out to combat the feeling of weariness which was already finding expression in mutter ings of discontent : —

" You are suffering- with dignity and patience the most appalling persecution, the most atrocious infamies, at the hands of a barbarous and uncivilized enemy. . . . Tour homesteads have been burnt, your crops and stock destroyed, your sons and daughters flung into prison . . . and many of them cruelly and callously murdered. Everything that demons incarnate could do has been done to make you forsake your principles and surrender to the forces of unrighteousness. . . . England will be remembered only by the crimes and atrocities of her licensed and Stateprotected freebooters.

" The policy of England is to destroy for ever the Irish Nation. She hopes by the systematic burnings of farms and farm produce, by the destruction of mills, factories, and creameries, by the levelling of great centres of industry and by the robbery of public monies for compensating the malicious injuries caused by her minions to create a state of unemployment so general and so grave that the vigorous youth of the nation, whom she so much dreads, must leave in thousands the Land of their Fathers. . . ."

And so on. But even de Valera himself does not venture to hold out to these men the hope that if they continue the struggle they will drive the hated English into the sea. England has always been the market for Irish produce, and it was very largely the fear of the loss of this market which made the Irish farmer mistrustful of the policy of the extremists.

For the Sinn Fein leaders had already made dangerous experiments in the direction of tampering with the natural flow of commerce. Ulster was loyal to the Union, and therefore Ulster was in alliance with the enemy. Further than this Ulster was a very awkward object lesson on the Republican flank. The world was apt to ask why, if one section of Ireland was content to live and prosper under British rule, another section should not do likewise ? As neither entreaty nor the shooting of innocent citizens in the streets of Belfast seemed capable of persuading Ulster that her true interest lay in throwing in her lot with the Republicans of the South, the latter determined upon a more subtle method of argument. Ulster is an industrial district, the South is almost entirely agricultural.

It follows that there is a constant stream of manufactured goods flowing from North to South, and this stream is unbalanced by a counter current of agricultural produce from South to North, the agricultural districts of Ulster being able to supply the demand of her cities. These circumstances seemed to offer an admirable opportunity for striking a blow at Ulster. A boycott was proclaimed, under which it was forbidden to the Southern people to purchase Ulster goods or to expose them for sale in their shops. In pursuance of this boycott, raids were made upon stores and trains, and Ulster goods destroyed in stock and in transit. Ulster banks were entered and robbed at the point of the revolver, and those suspected of dealing in any way with the proscribed Province were ill-treated and in some cases murdered.

The net result was to intensify the feeling of bitterness between the two sections of the country, and so to perpetuate the hated partition. The damage done to Ulster's trade was inconsiderable, the loss, as might have been expected, fell mostly upon the small shop-keepers of the South, who were debarred from selling their goods, and were unable to replace those of Northern manufacture by others produced elsewhere, owing to the lack of facilities for their purchase. Undeterred by this experience, the Republicans proceeded to extend the scope of their experiment. By a series of decrees, Dail Eireann, the Parliament of the Republic, imposed a similar ban on goods manufactured in Great Britain, beginning with articles such as soap and tobacco which are produced in the South. Again the effect was felt more by the Irish consumer than by the

English producer, and the ban, though widely advertised, was never seriously enforced.

Another weapon brought into action by the Republicans to intimidate England was incendiarism. Certain of the extremists professed to believe that if Englishmen were attacked in their own country they would be the more willing to concede the demands of Ireland. An epidemic of farm and factory fires broke out throughout the country, the work of agents of the Irish malcontents. None of these fires had any very serious results; the tactics of the incendiaries being to select the scene of their operations with the primary regard for safety for their own flight rather than for the value of the damage they were likely to inflict. In some cases definite objectives were attacked, as when attempts were made to discover the addresses of the relatives of men serving in the Crown Forces in Ireland. In a few cases attacks were made upon the persons or property of such relatives. As might have been expected, the net result was to intensify the growing feeling in England that sterner measures must be taken by the Government to deal with the rebels.

When Parliament opened on February 16th, the Prime Minister took the opportunity of making a statement on the condition of Irish affairs, which reflected the policy of the Government at the time. He dealt with the negotiations of the previous year, carried on through the mediation of Archbishop Clune of Perth, Western Australia, and explained that these negotiations had proved abortive owing to the insistence of the Government that no truce could be concluded with the rebels until the latter had laid down their arms, as had the truce failed to result in a final settlement, the rebels would have been able to utilise the intervening period for the purpose of perfecting their organisation. It is interesting to compare this official statement of Government policy with the events of five months later. The Prime Minister continued by expressing his opinion that the rebels had not yet abandoned the hope of winning independence by force of arms, but eulogised the efforts of the Crown Forces during the past few months. He stated that the boycott was at an end, that Sinn Fein Courts and police patrols were at an end, that resignations from the R.I.C. had been stopped and recruiting for this Force resumed in Ireland, and that nearly everyone in Ireland was now anxious for the break up of the reign of terror. As events proved, this statement was too optimistic, but it was based upon the reports of those Government officials in Ireland whose business it was to keep the Chief Secretary informed of the state of affairs in the country.

Meanwhile Ulster was loyally preparing to carry out the provisions of the Act, and, indeed, showing some impatience at the delay in bringing it into force. Ulster felt that the passing of the Act had destroyed the Union and that the sooner the new regime was inaugurated, the sooner could she take the necessary measures for her protection from the Republican agents who were endeavouring to stir up dissension in her capital and elsewhere. From the first she realised that her task would be no easy one. The Ulster of the Act had been reduced to six counties, in two of which the Protestant and Catholic populations were approximately equally balanced. The ancient boundaries of the counties had been determined by the limits of the baronies, which for the most part depended upon no definite physical features, but merely upon the extent of the land owned by the large proprietors. As a result of this, the frontier of Northern Ireland was an impossible one, from the standpoint of either politics or strategy. It meandered from Carlingford Lough, dividing the counties of Louth and Down, in the East, to Lough Melvin, dividing the counties of Lei trim and Fermanagh, in the West. Then, in order to include Donegal in Southern Ireland, it turned back once more in a north-easterly direction and after many windings reached Lough Foyle in the North. Even within this boundary there were many sources of discontent. The Nationalists of Tyrone, whose active sympathy was with the Republicans of the South, were isolated in the centre of a preponderatingly Unionist population; a considerable district of Unionist Fermanagh was completely cut off from the remainder of Northern Ireland by the natural obstacle formed by the river and lake of Erne.

Any attempt to close such a frontier against the incursion of Republican marauders was of course impossible. The border Unionists were perpetually liable to attacks, in the course of which their farms were burnt and their families ill-treated. In Belfast and Derry, the sedition which in the previous year had broken out in open rioting was by no means overcome. The old religious problem had merged itself into the political quarrel. As a rule, the Protestant was a Unionist, a term which survived the passing of the Act destroying the Union and came to be synonymous with Loyalist, as defining a man faithful to the British Crown and opposed to the aims of the Sinn Feiners. The Catholic, on the other hand, was usually a Nationalist, closely allied with Sinn Fein, the Ancient Order of Hibernians having, by one means or another, become identified with Sinn Fein. Where the two parties lived in close proximity, as in Belfast, trouble was bound to arise, usually on a scale which defied the efforts of the police, and called for military intervention.

Hence the eagerness of the Northern Unionists to set the Act in operation. During the interim they had no Government of their own with which to deal with disorder, and were entirely dependent upon the British authorities, whom they shrewdly suspected of being willing to sacrifice the interests of Ulster in the attempt to find a solution for the problems of chaos in the South. The men of the North fully realised that so long as the provisions of the Act remained unfulfilled, the danger remained of some bargain being struck with the rebels above their heads which would nullify th^ safeguards of the Act. They had accepted the Act, under protest, but as a sincere contribution to the peace of the country. But they were not prepared for the British Government to trade upon this acceptance to extort from them further concessions.

Their first step was to choose a leader under whose guidance they could embark upon the stormy political voyage which lay before them. Sir Edward Carson, as he then was, had already expressed his decision not to accept the post should it be offered to him, on the score of age. The Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council met at the Constitutional Club in London on January 26th, under the presidency of Sir Edward, and passed a unanimous resolution inviting Sir James Craig, M.P., at that time Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, to submit himself for appointment to the position. On February 4th the full Council met in Belfast, and Sir James was unanimously elected. Sir Edward Carson's words on this occasion are worthy of record. " Ulster may be won by argument, " he said, referring to the attempts then being made by the Republicans to coerce the North, " Ulster may be won by a sincere profession of the same ideals of loyalty and attachment to the Throne and Constitution, and Ulster may be won by a pride in Empire and an acceptance of the glorious principles which have made our country great throughout the world. But Ulster will never be coerced." It was at a subsequent luncheon that Sir James Craig made the first suggestion of a royal opening of the first Northern Parliament. He assured His Majesty the King or in his stead the Prince of Wales of a hearty welcome from the people of Ulster should he come to Belfast for such a purpose.

The first move in the direction of putting the Act into operation was at a meeting of the Privy Council on March 24th, when an Order was made fixing ' appointed days ' for the purpose. The term ' appointed day ' has always been rather loosely used in this connection. The original Act was drawn up when Ireland was in a state of rebellion, and it was impossible to foresee when it would be feasible to enforce any particular provision of the Act. Again, the Act was of so revolutionary a nature, changing as it did the whole constitution of Ireland, that it could not taL3 effect as a whole upon

c any given date, but must be introduced gradually as the process of transfer proceeded. Hence the Act was drawn up in such a way that it empowered the Privy Council to make Orders bringing successive provisions into operation as convenient. The dates appointed under these Orders in Council were known as ' appointed days, ' and were necessarily numerous. But so far none of the administrative provisions of the Act were in operation. It was therefore necessary to appoint a day upon which the clause giving power to issue Orders in Council should take effect. April 19th was chosen as this date. A further date, May 3rd, was appointed for bringing the general provisions of the Act into operation, but it was explained that there were still several matters upon which the new Governments of Northern and Southern Ireland would have to be consulted as soon as they were set up, which matters were excluded and for which other ' appointed days ' would be fixed. One important provision which became operative on April 19th concerned the office of Lord Lieutenant. In the past this office had been a political one, and its holder was debarred from professing the Roman Catholic faith. From this date the religious disqualification was removed, and the office became non-political, its tenure being fixed at six years, irrespective of change of Ministry.

From the time of the first symptom that the Government really intended to persevere with the Act, the Unionists of the South had brought every available means of pressure to bear upon it to delay the holding of elections in the South. They represented that with the country in the state it then was, it would be more than a man's life would be worth to vote for any other than an official Sinn Fein candidate. An election held under these conditions, they argued, would result in the return of a Southern Parliament unanimously rebellious, and the resulting state of affairs would be no better than the present. The Government refused to listen. In the House of Commons on April 28th both the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary reiterated their determination. They would be parties to no surrender to the argument of murder, and they intended to put the Act into operation at once, both in the North and in the South of Ireland.