IN London this time 75 years ago began what were probably the most important negotiations in the entire troubled history of Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty resulted, which launched this State on its independent course.
The Irish plenipotentiaries were led by Arthur Griffith, and with him were Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Eamon Duggan and George Gavan Duffy. This relatively young and totally inexperienced group faced such formidable British political talent as Lloyd George (the prime minister), Austen Chamberlain, Lord Birkenhead and Winston Churchill.
The Irish team was sent to London untrained and badly supplied. They had no clear instructions or guidance, did not know what their fundamentals were, and had no agreed counter-proposals prepared. Nor were they a united team. Nowhere is this more evident than in the letter Eamon de Valera wrote to his friend in America, Joe McGarrity, three weeks after the London conference ended. De Valera's letter showed the balancing act he was trying to achieve in the delegation's composition.
Duggan and Duffy, who were lawyers, were mere "legal padding". Barton and Erskine Childers (who was not a delegate), as staunch republicans, were meant to counterbalance Griffith and Collins. The cabinet members in Dublin were to keep a tight hold on the delegates in London until, in the final struggle, de Valera's "external association" was to be the compromise which would resolve all difficulties.
This strategy seems extraordinarily risky and is very difficult to understand. It also seems to have built division into the delegation from the outset. It is hardly surprising that under the intense strain of the discussions in London the divisions became much worse.
Griffith's interaction with Lloyd George was crucial to the whole outcome of the conference. Pro-Treaty authors have told the story of an honest and honourable man taken advantage of by the wily "Welsh Wizard". Those of the anti-Treaty persuasion have depicted him as an amateur diplomat outwitted by a devious expert. But the reality was more complex than either of these versions allowed.
Tide influence of Frank Pakenham's version of the Treaty negotiations, Peace by Ordeal (first published in 1935), on subsequent authors cannot be overstated. Pakenham's interpretation was that Griffith made a series of concessions to Lloyd George, who told him he needed them to prevent a diehard Unionist backlash in the Conservative Party. This would destroy the conference and George's coalition government, and replace it with a militarist, anti-Irish Conservative administration.
So, on November 2nd, Griffith gave the prime minister a written promise that he would recommend recognition of the British crown if satisfied on all other issues. A week later he entertained George's suggestion. made through Tom Jones (assistant-secretary to the cabinet), of a boundary commission. if Northern Ireland refused to accept subordination to an all-Ireland parliament.
He thought he was accepting a boundary commission as a tactic only, which the prime minister intended for use against Sir James Craig and his backers among the Conservatives, but George refused to proceed with the tactic unless Griffith gave him definite assurances that he would not publicly repudiate it. Four days later, Griffith gave such an undertaking. On the final day of the conference, he could be persuaded that this pledge was binding.
The cornerstone of the whole Irish approach was to ensure that, if the talks collapsed, they would do so over the issue of Irish unity and not over the crown. Pakenham later admitted that over the years he frequently changed his mind about whether this strategy could have worked. Although he still believed Griffith was outsmarted, his mature and sober conclusion was that Ireland in 1921 could not have achieved a greater measure of independence than that secured under the Treaty, without "further heavy sacrifices and further grave suffering". And, unfortunately, he had no opinion to offer on the unity dilemma.
Some anti-Treaty, authors, who followed Pakenham faithfully, were much harsher on Griffith than he, who was anxious to shield the Irish, leader from any suggestion of impropriety. So Griffith was portrayed as conspiring with the two Welshmen, George and Jones (with whom he had an affinity because of his Welsh-sounding name!), while the rest of the delegates in London, and the cabinet in Dublin remained blissfully unaware.
Many pro-Treaty authors depicted Griffith as an innocent abroad, enmeshed in, the coils of the scheming prime minister and his Welsh benchman.
The publication of Jones's diary in 1971 threw new and revealing light on the Griffith-George interaction. This showed Griffith enabling his opposite number to make progress in difficult circumstances, assured of Irish goodwill. The two men that George most wanted to bring along with him were the former staunch Unionist supporters, Birkenhead and Chamberlain. Griffith's assurances enabled him to do this to such an extent that the two Conservatives opposed the extremists in their own ranks, and persuaded the vast majority of their art to back the Irish talks.
Jones's diary disclosed that the British were genuine in their desire to achieve effective unity in Ireland. At first they thought they could get Craig to accept the Sinn Fein idea of six-county autonomy subject to an all-Ireland parliament. They then hoped that the threat of a boundary commission, combined with, higher taxation, would cause Craig to yield some ground.
Some Conservative ministers felt uneasy about this approach but eventually accepted that "moral pressure" could be exerted on the Unionists.
But Craig was in a very strong position. He was prime minister of Northern Ireland, with a government already firmly established, and he knew that, in the last analysis, he could depend on sufficient British Conservative support. George had to tread warily with him, because in the background was the Conservative leader, Bonar Law, who would have sprung to Ulster's defence and effectively destroyed any chances of a settlement. What this ultimately meant was that Craig was able to stymie the solution preferred by both Dublin and London.
But it was not only Unionist extremists who made Griffith's task so difficult. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the Irish, should have been adamant about unity, and made whatever concessions necessary on the British crown to achieve it. An over-sensitivity to a minority of hardline republicans in the cabinet prevent this happening. It is the avenue Griffith would have preferred to pursue, but the confusing of the unity and allegiance issues meant that neither was served in the end.
However, Griffith suffered from the common nationalist blindspot in his belief that the Unionists would dance to the British tune. The British Government had been unable to bend them to its will in 1914, 1916 or 1917, and this was even less likely to happen in 1921 with a government established in Belfast, and when there was still substantial Conservative support for Unionist Ulster.
This being so, should Griffith as Pakenham contended, have ignored the illusory alternative of an aggressively anti-Irish regime under Law, and held, George fast to his promise to resign if he could not deliver unity? It seems most likely that had George been forced by Griffith to resign, his place would have been taken by a Tory government which might well have resumed coercion in Ireland. Modern historians are in little doubt on this point, because it is very much borne out by Jones's diary.
GRIFFITH kept de Valera fully informed by letter of the course of the negotiations. When the boundary commission idea was first mooted on November 8th, he wrote to de Valera that he thought it would remove all of two counties, and parts of others, from Northern Ireland. He also felt the conference might end within a week and, if so, it, would be because of Unionist intransigence, exactly what the Irish strategy aimed at De Valera expressed himself content with such a prospect, but warned against any concessions on the allegiance issue. Interestingly, he did not rule out concessions on the unity question. There is no indication that there was any discontent in Dublin with the way the conference was developing.
Griffith firmly believed the boundary commission would eventually bang about a united Ireland. No doubt he wanted to believe this, so, to that extent,, the belief was self-induced. But there is also little doubt that the British encouraged him to think in this way. They could not do so openly for fear of a Tory revolt, so the message was conveyed indirectly. In early November, Lloyd George told his cabinet that if Northern Ireland remained outside the jurisdiction of an all-Ireland parliament, it could not retain Fermanagh and Tyrone.
After the Treaty was signed, Birkenhead and Chamberlain stated openly that these two counties preferred to be united with the rest of Ireland. This seemed to be signalling some changes in the six-county area. But the fulfilment of British promises hinged mainly on the reception of the Treaty in the 26 counties. Had it been quickly ratified by the Dail and the new government established, the boundary commission could then have met immediately, in an atmosphere of goodwill between the two islands.
The net result probably would not have been unity, and the reduced Northern Ireland might have been strengthened by being more homogeneous, but the transfer of largely nationalist areas to the South would have made partition much fairer. Sadly, this was not what happened.