Collins had certainly done a credible job in persuading Lloyd George that the twenty-six counties had a legitimate grievance against the north. Even though Churchill was personally critical of Craig’s behaviour, especially in his dealings with Craig himself, the colonial secretary seemed ever ready to excuse that behaviour in discussions with his own cabinet colleagues. He told the cabinet on 30 May, for instance, that ‘Craig had made a great effort to help, but after the de Valera–Collins pact he had gone over to this other side. Sir James Craig had been willing to go to great lengths and while he could not stand for unity he would resign rather than stand in its way.’. 1..
This would have been absurd in the eyes of Collins, because Craig had done very little to implement either of their two agreements. No Catholics had been re-hired at the dockyards, even though those ousted included over 1,000 Catholics who had served in the British army during the First World War. No convicted IRA prisoners had been released, and Craig had refused to hold any investigation into the killing of Catholics in Belfast during the hours after the second agreement was signed. Moreover, when internment without trial was introduced on 23 May, the overwhelming majority of those rounded up were Catholic nationalists, even though loyalists had committed a clear majority of the murders. The whole thing made a mockery of any sense of justice.
. ‘Had Collins taken strong steps and turned the Irregulars out of their Dublin strongholds the whole situation in Belfast would have improved,’ Churchill argued, ‘but having joined hands with avowed republicans we could hardly wonder that the north had gone back to its extreme and violent position. I think we have to give them assurances of help.’. 2.. The die-hard element in the north believed, of course, that Collins was behind the republican campaign there. They were right, but Churchill did not seem to suspect that the Big Fellow was so involved – not at this stage at any rate. It did not matter anyway, because he was siding with the loyalists.
Collins had, however, been able to mollify Churchill’s attitude towards the election pact, or at least to persuade him to adopt a more understanding attitude towards the circumstances in which the pact was concluded. It ‘would not be right’ to say that an election held under the pact ‘would be worthless’, Churchill told the British cabinet afterwards. ‘Some Labour and Independent candidates might be elected.’. 3..
The Irish had presented the British with the Irish Free State’s draft constitution on 27 May. Lionel Curtis provided the British government with a detailed critique of the document two days later, and Lloyd George sent Tom Jones to talk to Griffith and Collins on 30 May. ‘Collins was in the most pugnacious mood,’ Jones reported. ‘This gulf is unbridgeable,’ Collins reportedly said. He then ‘talked on at a great rate in a picturesque way about going back to fight with his comrades’. Collins accused the British of being ‘bent on war’, because they were doing nothing about the situation in Belfast. Jones also noted that Collins went ‘on and on at great length about the Ulster situation’.. 4.. Throughout the . meeting Griffith said very little and Jones suspected that he had not seen the whole constitution.
Later Lloyd George and Austen Chamberlain discussed the constitution with Griffith and Collins for one and a half hours. The draft was an attempt to implement the External Relations idea in accordance with which Ireland would be associated with the British commonwealth but independent in theory as well as practice.
That night Churchill received an alarming telegram from Craig about a ‘very grave incident which has occurred on the frontiers of Ulster. We are informed that the townships of Belleek and Pettigo have been seized and occupied by the Irish republican forces.’. 5.. This was supposedly a prelude to an attack on the city of Derry. Six days earlier Craig had sent a similar telegram. ‘This is S.O.S on behalf of Derry City, which is in grave danger,’ Craig warned Churchill on 24 May. ‘I have reliable information that a force is mobilizing in Donegal to launch an attack when word is given from high authority.’. 6.. Churchill took both warnings very seriously. After the first telegram he ordered that Royal Navy ships be dispatched to Derry, and after the second he confronted Collins and his colleagues in London.
‘We invited the representatives of the Irish Provisional Government, who were here in London, to visit us at Downing Street,’ Churchill told parliament next day. ‘We asked them, assuming that this was correct, had these forces any authority from them or were they in any degree responsible? They immediately gave us the most unqualified assurance that they were in no way responsible, that they repudiated the action of these forces in the strongest possible manner, and, of course, that they had no information.’. 7..
. Griffith, Collins and W. T. Cosgrave were sitting in the Distinguished Strangers Gallery while Churchill was speaking on 31 May. Speaking for about fifty minutes, he delivered a powerful address, which attracted considerable press attention. John H. Whitley, the speaker of the House of Commons, described Churchill’s speech as the best he had ever heard. Collins, who was never the most patient of listeners, changed his position frequently. ‘Sometimes he sat with folded arms, then he rested his head on his right hand. A few moments later his head was projected over the railings,’ according to the correspondent of The Freeman’s Journal.. 8..
In the speech Churchill was very critical of the election pact between Collins and de Valera, because it denied the Irish electorate the opportunity to approve the Treaty. If a proper election was held, the Irish people would ‘have been free to reject or accept our offer with their eyes open,’ he said. ‘Had they rejected it and returned a parliament pledged to set up a republic, an issue would immediately have been raised comparable to that which arose in the American Civil War between the States of the American Union and the seceding Confederate States.’. 9.. That conflict was not fought to end slavery, but to preserve the union, and Churchill was clearly indicating that the United Kingdom would go to war with Ireland on the same grounds, if the Irish people rejected the Treaty. His distorted concept of national freedom was blinded by his own imperialism.
If de Valera and his colleagues were included in a coalition government in line with the election pact, they would have to subscribe to the Treaty formally, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty itself. ‘If they become members of the government without signing that declaration,’ Churchill said, ‘the Treaty is . broken by that very fact at that very moment.’ At that point the imperial government could reclaim all the powers transferred, or reoccupy the twenty-six counties. ‘I must make it clear to the House,’ he added, ‘that we shall not in any circumstances agree to deviate from the Treaty either in the strict letter or the honest spirit.’. 10..
If the pact led to a cessation of attacks on former servants of the crown and Protestants in the twenty-six counties, as well as the ending of incursions across the border into the six counties, those advantages could ‘be set off against the disadvantages of increased delay in ascertaining the free will of the Irish people in respect of the Treaty’, Churchill told parliament. ‘If we are wrong, if we are deceived, the essential strength of the imperial position will in no wise be diminished, while the honour and the reputation of Ireland will be fatally aspersed … Let us on our part be very careful that we do all we have to do in scrupulous and meticulous good faith … By so doing we may yet succeed. But if we fail in spite of all our efforts and forbearance, then by these efforts and that very forbearance we shall have placed ourselves upon the strongest ground, and in the strongest position, and with the largest moral resources both throughout the Empire and throughout the world, to encounter whatever events may be coming towards us.’. 11..
‘The conditions in southern Ireland were degenerating so rapidly, that they had not got the power to hold a freely contested election,’ Churchill contended. There would have been sporadic fighting, ballot boxes would have been burned, candidates would have been intimidated, and ‘no coherent expression of the national will would have resulted from an election held in . these circumstances’. Yet bad as things were in the south, he went on to admit that they were even worse in Northern Ireland. ‘Far fewer persons have been killed and wounded throughout the whole of Southern Ireland in any given month since the Treaty was made than in the City of Belfast alone,’ he said. The disturbances and the warfare between Catholics and Protestants ‘have undoubtedly played their part in making the position of the Provisional Government in Ireland difficult, in exasperating the Catholic majority throughout Southern Ireland, and increasing the supporters of Mr de Valera and the extremists who follow him.’. 12..
Churchill equated what was happening in Ireland with the events in Bolshevik Russia. ‘Will the lesson be learned in time, and will the remedies be applied before it is too late? Or will Ireland, amid the stony indifference of the world – for that is what it would be – have to wander down those chasms which have already engulfed the great Russian people?’ he asked. ‘This is the question which the next few months will answer. Already there is a trickle – only a trickle – but it may broaden into a stream, from Ireland to this country, of refugees from the Loyalist or Unionist population.’. 13..
Afterwards some of the unionists were highly critical. ‘I never heard anything so pathetically hopeless as the statement of the Colonial Secretary this morning,’ Colonel John Gretton said.. 14.. Churchill had said that Collins had nothing to do with the troops massing on the Donegal border with Derry. ‘But I gravely doubt that,’ Charles Craig said. ‘I do not believe that all the people who are operating in Ulster are doing so against the express wishes and commands of Mr Collins. But, whoever is doing it, the fact . remains that a most determined campaign is being pursued in Ulster, the object of which is to make the Government of Northern Ireland impossible.’ Field Marshal Wilson suggested Churchill’s speech was an admission from beginning to end ‘that every single element of the Irish problem has been miscalculated’.. 15..
During his speech Churchill had quoted a letter from the Provisional Government accepting ‘financial liability’ in the case of law-abiding Protestants who had been forced to leave Ireland.. 16.. Collins mentioned this to the press immediately afterwards. ‘Although I think it was quite proper for him to quote what he did quote’, Collins thought it would have been better if Churchill had read the full letter, because the Provisional Government had also raised the plight of those victims of Orange pogroms who ‘had to flee from Belfast and other portions of Carsonia into the twenty-six counties, where they were maintained’. He added that the British government was financially responsible ‘for the condition of affairs’ in Northern Ireland.. 17..
‘My government feels assured that upon Mr Churchill’s representation His Majesty’s Government will accept financial liability for the provision of relief to the Catholic inhabitants of an area for the government of which the imperial government is immediately responsible and will allocate the necessary sum for this purpose,’ Diarmuid O’Hegarty wrote on behalf of the Provisional Government. ‘It is also the earnest hope of the Provisional Government that His Majesty’s Government will take immediate steps to ensure that adequate protection is afforded to the Catholic inhabitants of that area, and that it will arrange for the speedy return of their homes and property to those refugees who have been driven therefrom.’ Collins released a copy of this . letter and The Irish Times – possibly still smarting over his earlier criticism – published it in full the following day.. 18..
Afterwards Collins visited Churchill in his office. ‘I mentioned to him amicably that if any part of the Irish Republican Army, either pro-Treaty or anti-Treaty, invaded northern soil, we would throw them out,’ Churchill noted. ‘He took it quite coolly, and seemed much more interested in the debate.’
‘I am glad to have seen it,’ Collins said, ‘and how it is all done over here. I do not quarrel with your speech; we have got to make good or go under.’. 19..
The extensive coverage of Churchill’s speech in the British press was indicative of a political crisis. It was noted that Bonar Law was sitting directly behind Field Marshal Wilson in the House of Commons. Bonar Law had not only been close to the unionists in Northern Ireland, but he was already being seen as a real alternative to Lloyd George, whom he would actually replace later that year.
‘Great Britain is in the presence of one of the gravest crises in her history. She is faced with an anarchic movement,’ The Times of London declared in an editorial the next day. ‘It threatens to hold the great part of Ireland in its grip, to promote internecine war between North and South, and, perhaps to involve this wearied and overburdened land in yet another struggle for the maintenance of its pledged honour and the basic principles of civilisation.’. 20..
‘There were certain verbal phrases in Mr Churchill’s Irish pronouncement which he would have been well advised to omit,’ the Westminster Gazette observed in an editorial. ‘His reference to Russia invites the obvious retort that, just as the calamities in which Russia has been plunged are largely due to the stimulus . given by himself to her civil wars, so those that threatened Ireland are in great part the legacy of a disastrous past, for which he and his colleagues, far more than any Irishmen, were responsible. This announcement that we may in certain circumstances “re-occupy” Ireland is even more objectionable.’. 21.. While questions may be asked about Churchill’s early involvement in matters relating to Russia, it was ironic because he had talked, rather recklessly, during the early days of the Black and Tans in May 1920 about adopting Bolshevik policies in Ireland.
When the Black and Tans engaged in unofficial reprisals, Field Marshal Wilson had denounced these as being bad for moral discipline among British forces. He was opposed to the idea of the men being allowed to take the law into their own hands and said that Lloyd George’s government should take responsibility for reprisals, that they should ‘collect the names of Sinn Féiners by districts: proclaim them on church doors all over the country; and whenever a policeman is murdered, pick five by lot and shoot them!’. 22.. One could hardly imagine anything more likely to provoke the indignation of Irish people than defiling their churches in such a way. ‘Somehow or other terror must be met by greater terror,’ Wilson argued, according to the cabinet secretary.. 23..
‘You have been right all along,’ Churchill had written to the field marshal in October 1920, ‘the government must shoulder the responsibility for reprisals.’. 24.. By June 1922, however, Churchill seemed to be questioning Wilson’s judgement, which, of course, questioned his own earlier judgement. On the day after the latest meeting with Collins, the colonial secretary told three Belfast Catholics who called on him that the election pact between Collins and de Valera had doubled the power of radicals like Wilson. ‘You . are being tortured by Wilson and de Valera,’ Churchill told his visitors.. 25..
If Dublin decided to violate the Treaty, Churchill argued, Britain should seize Irish ports and exert economic and financial pressure on the Provisional Government while leaving it in control of the Irish countryside. Lloyd George drew the colonial secretary out ‘into the most vivid details, apparently in complete sympathy’, according to Tom Jones.. 26..
While Churchill was advocating that the British army clear republican forces out of Pettigo on 3 June, Collins was persuading his colleagues ‘that a policy of peaceful obstruction should be adopted towards the Belfast government and that no troops from the twenty-six counties, either those under official control or attached to the Executive, should be permitted to invade the six-counties’.. 27.. In other words the offensive was being called off in favour of a more passive approach.
Collins obviously realised that the British suspected the Provisional Government’s involvement in the Northern Offensive. It is not clear at what point Churchill suspected that Collins was involved, but Craig’s people were eventually able to convince him with captured documents that the local IRA operations were being orchestrated from the south. Craig was thus able to persuade Churchill to act in relation to Pettigo, which was on the Donegal side of the border, while Belleek was in Northern Ireland.. 28..
When British Intelligence investigated the alarmist warnings about republican troops supposedly massing on the Donegal borders for assaults on Derry city and Strabane, they realised that they were grossly exaggerated. ‘Many of these scares are started and kept up by the Ulster Press in order to deliberately affect . public opinion at home,’ Intelligence warned its officers on 6 June. ‘Others owe their origin to “windy individuals”, sometimes the police, sometimes prominent civilians with no military knowledge.’. 29.. But in the interim Churchill’s impetuosity had led to British forces invading Pettigo in what was undoubtedly the most serious incident between the armies of the British and Irish governments since the Truce of 1921. Strangely the incident has been largely overlooked by history.