David McCullough, the radio journalist, was the chief speaker at the Béal na Bláth celebration of Michael Collins’ War against opponents of the 1921 ‘Treaty’ this year.  However, according to the Irish Times report (24 August), he did not actually mention that War.  But that was the one big thing for which Collins had definite and exclusive responsibility.

McCullough praised Collins for being “a pragmatist”, and for having made “three compromises” on the ground of pragmatism.  These were that:  “he agreed to a truce”;  that he agreed “to engage with talks with the British”, and that he signed “the Anglo-Irish Treaty”.

The facts are otherwise!

Collins was not particularly responsible for the Truce or the Talks, neither of which can be meaningfully described as a compromise on the part of the Republic.   

If somebody bent a principle by engaging in them—which is what I understand as the meaning of pragmatism—it was the British.  They negotiated a Truce with a body which they had hitherto denounced as a murder gang, thereby recognising it as an effectively constituted Army.  They even made a Truce with it without recognising it as the Army of a State.  In other words, they made a Truce with it as if it was a free-standing Army, acting on its own authority.

The IRA was, by most accounts, in desperate circumstances when the British offered it a Truce.  What bending of principle was there in its acceptance of the offer of a Truce?

The Talks were proposed by the British.  They had failed to undermine the Irish Government by means of a two-year terror campaign against the nationalist electorate.

That fact was driven home by the result of the special election which the British, as the Occupying Power, arranged to be held in Ireland in May 1921.  Nobody, except the Trinity College Unionists, was willing to contest seats against Sinn Fein.  

With the electorate not being frightened by Black And Tan and Auxiliary methods, and the British Army not being ready for a full-scale war of conquest, the British put out feelers for talks with members of the Dáil—which in British law was a criminal conspiracy of the “godfathers” of the ‘murder gang’.  

It tried at first to get an acknowledgement of Constitutional inferiority from the President of the Dáil and, when that failed, it agreed to a Conference without any preconditions.  It did not acknowledge in the Conference that the Irish group that it was negotiating with were the delegate representatives of the Government of the Irish Republic and, since the Irish Government issued them with credentials as its delegates—which the British Government could not accept and which could therefore not be shown to them, the Irish group that turned up at the door in Downing Street were nobody in particular, and were let in without a How do you do?

But the British Opposition knew, and the world knew, that the British—having failed to crush the Irish Republic by terror, was negotiating with it sub rosa.  And that fact of itself changed the terms of the relationship between Ireland and Britain in such a way that there could be no return by Britain to the status quo ante.  It might launch a war of conquest on the Irish state, but it could never return to ‘police action against a murder gang’!

Collins’s third compromise, the “signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty”, was certainly that was done by Collins especially.  The only question is whether it was a compromise.

He was a senior member of the Irish Government.  Collins undertook to act as one of its delegates, and act in accordance with the set of Instructions given to the delegates by the Irish Government, telling them what they may do and what they must not do.  What they must not do was collapse the negotiations, or sign any agreement with the British, without the explicit authority of their Government.

He presumably took part, as a member of the Cabinet, in drawing up these instructions.  It is not recorded, in any of the Cabinet meetings in which he took part while he was a delegate, that he indicated the he disagreed with the Instructions and wanted them changed.

What he did by “signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty” was not establish Treaty relations between the Irish and British Governments, but pledge himself to the British Government to act for it in destroying the Government that appointed him.  Article 17:

“By way of provisional arrangement for the administration of Southern Ireland…  steps shall be taken forthwith for summoning a meeting of members of Parliament elected for constituencies in Southern Ireland since the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and for constituting a provisional Government, shall take the steps necessary to transfer to such provisional Government the powers and machinery requisite for the discharge of its duties, provided that every member of such provisional Government shall have signified in writing his or her acceptance of this instrument.”

Article 18 commits the Irish signatories to summon a meeting of members elected to the Parliament Of Southern Ireland to ratify the Agreement.  What this meant in practice was that Collins and his associates would persuade members of the Republican Dail to meet as a Parliament under the Crown in a sufficient number to form a quorum, and enable a British Provisional Government of the 26 Counties to be set up in opposition to the Dail Republic.

This Provisional Government, empowered by Britain, would then, under British direction, construct a Free State Dominion of 26 Counties with which Britain may then establish Treaty relations.  [At the time Dominions were Commonwealth entities, under the Crown, ed.]

It might be thought that this was the sensible thing—the pragmatic thing?—to do under the circumstances.  But was it pragmatic to do it in the way that Collins did it?  He did not indicate to his Government before doing it that he had it in mind to do it.  He made no preparation for the move.  He sprang it on his Government by signing the British document in breach of explicit negotiating Instructions—Instructions which he, as a senior Cabinet Member of the Government of the Republic, must have taken part in drafting.

The first his Government knew about it was from the British newspapers!  That was bad.  What was worse was that it became known that it was done in response of a British threat of “immediate and terrible war” if the delegates did not sign the British document, without consulting their Government—within six or seven hours of the British war ultimatum being issued.  And what was even worse than that was Collins’ denial that he did so in response to the British threat of war!

McCullagh speaks of Collins—

“transitioning from a ‘military organiser, intelligence chief and financial mastermind into Collins the diplomat, intelligence chief and financial mastermind into Collins the diplomat, the negotiator and the constitution maker!”

It would be hard to imagine a more undiplomatic way of making that “transition” than the way Collins did it!.  He maximised opposition to what he did by the way he did it.

McCullogh says that, far from being the “simple soldier”, without any understanding of politics and diplomacy, which he affected to be, “in reality he was intensely political with little concern for forms and symbols”.

What kind of politics is it that has no concern with politics and symbols, and deals only with matter of fact things?  The politics of absolute monarchs or charismatic dictators, come closest to it, I suggest.  Democracies, where government is the business of the miscellaneous mass of the populace, and the mass cannot govern as a mass, the formation of functional political bodies relies largely on images and symbols.

If Collins gave any warning of what he intended to do—if in fact he had that intention before he did it—it was not to the elected Government that he gave it.  He may have given to the conspiracy which he led, the IRB [Irish Republican Brotherhood].  But we know nothing for certain about that, as the conspiracy aborted itself under Treatyite pressure, and destroyed its records, a few years after Collins, the Commander in Chief, was killed when he stopped his convoy in order to engage in a futile shooting match with a small ambush.

At the outset of the Dail ‘Treaty’ debate, Griffith described Collins as “the man who won the war”.  One wold expect the man who wins a war to carry the army with him in the post-War settlement!  Collins seems to have expected the Army to be with him because, at the start of the Dáil ‘Treaty’ debate, he proposed that the Constitutional forms and symbols established since January 1919 should be set aside, and things should be taken in hand by a Committee of Public Safety, for which he would undertake to do the dirty work.  That had a Napoleonic ring to it.

This proposal was opposed by Cathal Brugha, Minister of Defence, who had been leader of the Volunteers before thee was any Ministry of Defence in existence.  The War had been fought by the Volunteers—who came to be known as the IRA—while Collins engaged in Intelligence gathering and assassination in support of them.

The Volunteers were the democracy in the situation.  They had pledged themselves to the Republic.  When Collins and Griffith won a majority in the Dail in support of the deal they had made with the British;  and more than half of the Dail met under Royal Command as the Parliament of Southern Ireland;  and a Provisional Government chaired by Collins and empowered by Britain was set up;  and it became clear that Griffith as President of the Republic—following the defeat of De Valera—had subordinated the Dail Government to the Provisional Government, the State to which the IRA declared loyalty ceased to exist.

The Volunteers were restored to the position they held between the suppression of the 1916 Insurrection and the formation of the Republican Government after the 1918 Election.

Collins was effectively a dictator acting on British authority by this time.  The Parliament of Southern Ireland to which he was responsible never again met after setting up the Provisional Government.

Collins had enacted a coup d’état against De Valera’s Government but, in the course of doing so, he had lost the Republican Army and was given a different kind of Army by the British.

War between these two Armies was implicit in the situation.  Griffith was eager to get it over with.  Collins tried to war it off.

The ‘Treaty’ required that an election be held.  Griffith, as President of the Dail, brought in a Treatyite Election Bill on 28th April 1922.  The following day he was ordered by Collins to scrap that Bill and bring in a different kind of Bill.

Collins had made a Deal with De Valera to hold a bipartisan coupon election—as the British Unionists and Lloyd George Liberals did in 1918, with the end of the Great War. 

Under the Collins proposal, the two sides would collaborate for the purpose of setting aside the Treaty without rejecting it, and returning a ail as far as possible identical with the make-up of the outgoing Dail, and forming a Coalition Government consisting of the two sides.

Collins was then summoned to Whitehall and given a severe reprimand.  In his own defence he complained that the British were making it too obvious that they were pulling his strings.  Tim Pat Coogan, his great admirer, describes him in that situation behaving like a wild animal suddenly finding itself in a cage.

Collins returned on the eve of the Election and made a muffled repudiation of arrangements he had made for a Pact Election, and that had been confirmed by a Dail resolution.

The Dáil returned by that Election—the Third Dáil—never met.  Collins, as head of the Provisional Government, was obliged to do the business required of him by the Treaty—make war on the IRA.  They were not going to make any deal with an Irish Government whose Army would be the one that fought them to the Conference table.

The Dáil or Parliament that met in September 1922, when the War on the republicans launched by the Provisional Government was going strong, did not quite know what it was, and was irritated when asked to say what it was!

Brendan Clifford