SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, in a chilly room in 10 Downing Street, Arthur Griffith, leader of the Irish delegation charged with the responsibility of negotiating an Anglo-Irish settlement, told Lloyd George, leader of the British delegation: "Mr Prime, Minister, I will sign".

By agreeing to sign what became known as the Treaty, Griffith ushered in not only Irish independence but the beginning of the dismemberment of the British Empire.

What exactly happened on the last day of the conference in London is not clear. Frank Pakenham's Peace by Ordeal made much of Griffith's having been outmanoeuvred by Lloyd George. According to this version, Griffith gave Lloyd George a promise on November 12th that if the British proceeded with the boundary commission proposal, he would not openly repudiate them.

This promise was put into memorandum form and shown to Griffith on November 13th, and he assented to it.

When Griffith still tried to insist on "essential unity" on December 5th, this memorandum was produced, like a rabbit from a magician's hat, and Griffith was accused by Lloyd George of breaking his pledge, a charge he rejected "with staggering emphasis".

However, it still took the concession of fiscal autonomy to Ireland, and the threat of quickly resumed and much-intensified war, before Griffith agreed to sign, according toe Pakenham.

None of the written accounts of December 5th mentioned Griffith's heated reaction to the prime minister's slight on his honour. Significantly, Robert Barton's version (written the following day) had Griffith agreeing to sign after the prime minister's concession of full fiscal freedom but before his war threat. It is difficult to understand why so much store has been set by Lloyd George's supposedly getting the better of Griffith.

After all, at the December 3rd Dublin meetings (when the delegates returned to discuss the final British offer with the rest of the Dail cabinet), Griffith had made it clear he, was happy with the terms as they then stood. With the important changes in the oath, concessions on defence and, most of all, the offer of full Irish control over finances - all occurring on the last two days of the conference - surely Griffith must have been much more inclined to sign than he had been two days before?

Why was Griffith the first Irish delegate to decide to sign? Before he went to London he had made it clear that he would not break on the Crown. Concerned with effective sovereignty, the link with the Crown did not bother him. The substance of freedom, and not its form, wash" what always had mattered to him.

He had recommended the dual monarchy framework from as far back as 1902, regarding it as the only way to achieve effective freedom while still retaining some hope of unity. In fact, the Treaty mercilessly exposed the old fissures within Sinn Fein, between republicans and dual monarchists, which had not been dealt with in 1907 or 1917.

The Treaty settlement gave Ireland dominion status, but constitutionally what it gave was actually very close to a dual monarchy. This was especially the case in relation to the oath contained in the Treaty. In every other dominion, the oath was simply to the Crown in Ireland it was first of all to the constitution of the new State, and only then to the King; in other words, the monarch was the common, nominal link between two separate states.

To Griffith economic independence had always been as vital as its' political counterpart. Real freedom necessitated control over the purse strings and the ability to impose protective tariffs. So the British concession of full fiscal autonomy was the realisation of one of his longest-held and most cherished aims. The freedom of his country to proceed with the construction of a strong independent economy meant much more to Griffith than the Crown's role.

There can be no doubt that Griffith regarded the Treaty as enabling Ireland to develop peacefully to greater independence. He was well aware of the evolutionary potential, inherent in the Austro-Hungarian dual-monarchy arrangement. Further, he was too well versed in history not to know how the other British dominions had expanded on their freedoms.

The Treaty granted Ireland the same status as Canada, which was the most advanced in independence of the dominions. Griffith realised the measure the British were offering was the limit of their concession for the moment, but that more could be gradually, and peacefully, secured.

To what extent was Griffith induced to sign by Lloyd George's war ultimatum? No doubt it was a consideration. If the Irish refused to accept the British offer, the war would inevitably have been resumed at some stage, and it would most likely have been much more intensive than what had occurred between 1919 and 1921.

The only realistic alternative to a settlement was a war of certain defeat. On the other hand, it is important to remember that Griffith had agreed to sign before the war threat was issued. He believed the British, offer a good one, and was convinced that the Dail and the people should have their say, and that the decision was much too important to be taken by so small a body as the cabinet. (The British offer of July 1921 was turned down by the Dail cabinet, and the Dail itself was called simply, to ratify that decision.)

The Dail Treaty debate was depressing. It dragged on for some three weeks. Each of the 122 TDs spoke, some at extreme and tedious length. Instead of discussing the document on its merits, there was an initial unseemly wrangle over the status of the delegates. Then there was a four-day private session where the merits of the agreement were again ignored and, after further needless altercation, de Valera's proposed alternative to the Treaty ("Document No 2") was discussed.

This was basically "external association" restated, something which the delegates had tried hard in London to get the British to accept, but which had been repeatedly turned down. There was an air off unreality about the Dail spending so much time debating something that would be rejected again.

Once the principals on each side had spoken, the speeches which followed were repetitive. Some unfortunate attacks on personalities were made. Collins was the main target of abuse for anti-Treatyites, but Griffith, too, was accused of treachery and betrayal. What is most remarkable is how little attention the question of partition was given in the debate. Allegiance was the over-riding concern.

Griffith's closing speech was probably the finest of that prolonged and tortuous debate. Passionately extolling the opportunities the Treaty contained, he begged that their generation, not the dead past or the prophetic future, be given the chance to rebuild the Irish nation destroyed at the Battle of Kinsale.

He also vigorously defended democracy, arguing that it was the duty of public representatives to voice the opinion of their constituents. The inclusive nature of his nationalism was seen where he declared that all sections, including the former ascendancy, must have fair play, if a truly representative Irish nation was to be created.

To him the republic was not something sacrosanct or metaphysical. He understood his oath to it, as de Valera said he interpreted his, as a pledge to do his best for Ireland. He felt he had done his best, and it was up to the people to decide whether he had or had not. He, would abide by the popular will, because it was with the ordinary, people of Ireland that his primary allegiance lay.

THE Dail voted 64 to 57 in favour of the Treaty but some refused to accept that democratic decision. Had the agreement found widespread acceptance and led to unity and good government in the South, it might, in time, have had an impact on the North. The Council of Ireland it provided for might have been the basis for co-operation on matters of mutual concern, and thus an avenue to practical unity.

But the growing anarchy in the South, and above all the Civil War, with its attacks on Southern Protestants, must have confirmed Northern Protestants' worst fears. The damage done to the prospect of unity, or at least of good relations between the two parts of Ireland, must, in the last analysis, be the most tragic consequence of the Treaty split.

Arthur Griffith will be dead 75 years next August. The split and the Civil War which followed cost him his life. But he willingly made the sacrifice to achieve Irish freedom. It remains the case that every change that has occurred in its policy since an Irish state was established had been made possible by the terms of the Treaty to which he was the first "Irish signatory.