The British Government has rarely cared about the effects its treaties have on the internal affairs of foreign nations. The Treaty of Nanking was a peace treaty that ended the First Opium War (1839–42) between Britain and China. It was the first of what the Chinese later called the ‘unequal treaties’, because they were not negotiated by nations treating each other as equals but were imposed on China after a war.
The British Empire often left trouble in its wake. The Balfour Declaration, which saw the creation of a Zionist homeland for Jewish people in Palestine, contributed in turn to the creation of an apartheid state in Israel today. The division of India and Pakistan in 1947 certainly stands as a constant reminder of the British Empire’s inability to leave peace in the wake of her departure.
Similarly, the Anglo–Irish Treaty, as signed in 1921, was an unfair imposition on Ireland. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill suffered little as a result of the Treaty they so skilfully foisted upon Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. When Lord Birkenhead proclaimed that he had signed his political death warrant when he signed the Treaty, Michael Collins presciently retorted that he had signed his ‘actual death warrant’. The British had forced his hand into signing a document that split the Irish nation and divided the IRA along pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty lines. Initially the split was purely political. But gradually it became violent.
On 14 April 1922, the anti-Treaty IRA under Rory O’Connor, Ernie O’Malley and Oscar Traynor, occupied the Four Courts, a building synonymous with the 1916 Rising, hoping to provoke a war with the British forces, who were still numerous in Dublin. They hoped that if trouble started, both sides of the IRA would unite and recommence the fight against the British, for an Irish Republic.
On 22 June 1922, two London IRA men, Reggie Dunne, O/C London IRA, and IRA Volunteer Joseph O’Sullivan, assassinated Sir Henry Wilson on his doorstep in London. Henry Wilson was an advisor on security to the new Northern State. He had advised stepping up recruitment for the Special Police, and many nationalists held him responsible for the harsh measures and violence directed at Catholics in the Six Counties. Joseph O’Sullivan, having lost a leg in the war, was unable to run from the scene, and was captured by a crowd of people in the area. Dunne attempted to assist his comrade by returning to help but he too was captured.
Sir Henry Wilson was a Field Marshal, the highest rank in the British Army. Two men in England were beside themselves with rage, namely Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. All evidence suggests that the person who ordered the shooting was Michael Collins, who had called Wilson ‘a violent Orange partisan’. It should be remembered that Collins had ordered the shooting of Captain Percival Lea-Wilson in 1920, in retaliation for his abuse of Tom Clarke in 1916 (see Chapter Five). It seems clear that in this instance Collins was exacting revenge on Field Marshal Henry Wilson. It was a message of defiance to the British establishment, but also part of the continuing IRA campaign in the Six Counties.
Collins sent his Squad man Joe Dolan over to London to meet Sam Maguire (who had sworn Collins into the IRB), to see if they could affect the rescue of Dunne and O’Sullivan.1 If the order to shoot Wilson had come from the Four Courts, why did Collins bother attempting to rescue those who had pulled the trigger on behalf of the anti-Treaty IRA? The most logical conclusion would seem to be that Collins gave the order for Wilson to be shot. However, it is not possible to date when that order was made, and it might have been before the Truce. In any case, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan were hanged in Wandsworth Prison, London, on 10 August 1922.
London pointed the finger of blame for the shooting of Wilson at the IRA in the Four Courts. Churchill threatened that unless the Four Courts Garrison were removed, the British would consider the Treaty ‘as having been formally violated’ and that they ‘shall resume full liberty of action’. Essentially Churchill was saying that the British would remove the IRA from the Four Courts. Collins had a choice here. If he chose to let the British take on the Four Courts, that could have two consequences. In an ideal world, the IRA would re-unite against the old enemy, Britain. But in reality, even if Collins himself walked into the Four Courts and joined forces with the IRA, the Provisional Government or Free State troops would join with the British against their old IRA comrades. And that is essentially what happened. Churchill loaned the Free State Army two 18-pounder guns, the same machinery used by the British to bombard the Republicans in the 1916 Rising. General Nevil Macready, head of the British Army in Ireland, was still in Dublin when British artillery, this time in Irish hands, bombarded the IRA, thus starting the Irish Civil War.
It was a brutal civil war, and the violence of 1919–21 paled in comparison. The Free State forces formally executed seventy-seven Republicans. There were also 150 extra-judicial executions carried out by the Free State forces against their former comrades. Erskine Childers, the Englishman who had imported into Howth weapons that were used in the 1916 Rising, was one of those executed by the Free State. Liam Mellows, who had led the Galway men and women during the 1916 Rising, was another. Michael Collins himself was killed in an ambush by the IRA at Béal na mBláth on 22 August 1922. When the Civil War ‘ended’ in May 1923, the country was divided — physically by the imposition of the border at the Six Counties, and politically by the Civil War itself.
It is easy to hold Éamon de Valera or Michael Collins responsible for the violence that resulted after the War of 1919–21. However, the blame for the Irish Civil War might more fairly be placed on a different pair of culprits: David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.
1. See Joe Dolan’s Witness Statement number 900 with the Bureau of Military Archives. Dolan was a Free State supporter and had nothing to gain by laying the blame for the assassination with Michael Collins, his comrade.