I Signed My Death Warrant (6 page)

‘When we argued the matter further with Collins,' Ó Muirthile noted that they were unable to convince him.

‘Let them make a scapegoat or anything they wish of me,' Collins said. ‘We have accepted the situation as it is, and someone must go.'

‘It was a job that had to be done by somebody,' he ex­plained later. In the past he had not shirked responsibility and now was no different, even though he was warned by several people not to trust de Valera. On the other hand, however, the president had courageously confronted the Dáil hard-liners by emphasising his unwillingness to exclude the possibility of any kind of settlement.

On 7 September Lloyd George wrote to de Valera ‘for a definite reply as to whether you are prepared to enter a conference to ascertain how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire can best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.' The British proposed that the conference should begin in Inverness, Scotland, on 20 September 1921.

The Dáil cabinet selected the delegation for the negotiations on 9 September. Although de Valera had told his colleagues a couple of weeks earlier that he was not going to be part of the delegation, Griffith insisted that the president should go and the cabinet debated the issue at length. De Valera gave several reasons for not going. If Lloyd George tried the strong-arm tactics he used in July, the delegation could, he said, always use the necessity of consulting him as an excuse to prevent it being rushed into any hasty decisions. There were, however, much broader considerations.

‘There seemed, in fact, at the time to be no good reason why I should be on the delegation,' he later wrote. ‘There was, on the other hand, a host of good reasons why I should remain at home. One had, above all, to look ahead and provide for the outcome of the negotiations. They would end either in a “make” or “break” - in a settlement based on the accepted cabinet policy of External Association, or in a failure of the negotiations with a probable renewal of war. In either case I could best serve the national interest by remaining at home.

‘If the outcome were to be the settlement we had envisaged, that based on External Association,' he continued, ‘it was almost certain that it would be no easy task to get that settlement accepted wholeheartedly by the Dáil and by the Army.' He had already got a taste of the kind of bitterness such a proposal could generate, not only from Brugha's vitriolic outburst at the cabinet meeting on 25 July, but also in the United States during a controversy that erupted following an interview he gave the
Westminster Gazette
in January 1920. External Association was essentially a more developed version of the ideas he first propounded in that controversial interview.

By not taking part in the negotiations, de Valera argued he would be in a better position to influence radical republicans to accept a compromise agreement. ‘My influence,' he said, ‘would be vastly more effective if I myself were not a member of the nego­­tiating team, and so completely free of any suggestion that I had been affected by the “London atmosphere”.'

Those negotiating would inevitably have to compromise, but even this might not be good enough in the last analysis. Consequently, by staying at home, he would be in a position to rally both moderates and radicals to fight for an absolute claim, instead of a less appealing compromise. ‘Were there to be a “break” with any substantial section of our people discontented and restless, the national position would be dangerously weakened when the war resumed. I was providing for this contingency much better by remaining at home than by leading the delegation.'

Throughout the struggle his primary role within the movement at home was as a unifying figure. He had tried to be all things - a moderate among moderates and a radical among militants. He wished to maintain that role, so it made good sense not to get too involved in the nitty-gritty of the negotiations. Moreover, if the negotiations collapsed, de Valera would also be in a better position to initiate further contacts with the British, if he had not been involved in the conference. In the last analysis his decision to stay in Dublin was based on sound, though selfish, political grounds. He knew that those who went were likely to become scapegoats – with the radicals if they compromised, and with the moderates if they did not.

‘We must have scapegoats,' de Valera told his cabinet.

Later in trying to justify his decision, he sought to rationalise his selfish considerations by cloaking them in the national interest. In the process he seemed to protest the merits of his own position a little too much. He contended, for instance, that by staying at home he could play his part ‘in keeping public opinion firm' and also ‘in doing everything possible to have the Army well organised and strong.'

‘Feeling ran pretty high here, the Black and Tans and Auxi­liaries were still amongst us,' Barton noted. ‘The Republicans forces had to be kept together and consolidated, someone had to stay and keep the home fires burning and yet prevent them blazing up the chimneys. We felt de Valera was best fitted to do this.' That may have convinced Barton, who had been in jail throughout the worst of the troubles, but it sounded rather hollow to Collins, seeing that de Valera had spent most of the Black and Tan period in the United States.

‘Collins was determined that Dev should go,' according to Barton. A vote was eventually taken with each of the members of the cabinet being asked whether the president should go to London. Griffith said, “Yes”; Brugha “No”, Stack “No”, Cosgrave “Yes”, Collins “Yes”, and Barton “No”. The vote was therefore tied at three for going and three for staying, leaving de Valera to exclude himself with his own vote.'

Thus it was Barton who provided the crucial vote that allowed de Valera to remain at home. ‘I voted against Dev going for purely tactical reasons,' Barton later explained. ‘He was undoubtedly our best negotiator and the most difficult antagonist the British had to meet but he was also our President and the National pivot. If Dev went on the delegation and the negotiations failed we had a reserve. We could never discuss and return to Ireland except to commence war. If Dev remained in Ireland we could always break off negotiations and threaten war and still have Dev in the background to come in at the last and find some way of carrying on if the Army was not ready. If Dev went on the delegation then our last word must be said in London. If he remained in Dublin the scene of negotiations must return there before the final rupture.' It should be remembered that Barton had helped to negotiate the Truce ‘mainly to enable the volunteers to rearm and equip'. Hence he felt that this aim could be furthered by de Valera staying in Dublin.

The president proposed that Griffith should be chairman of the delegation. ‘All agreed that Arthur Griffith must act as chairman,' Barton noted. De Valera then proposed Collins as vice-chairman, even though he knew that Griffith and Collins were more amenable to the British terms than any other members of the cabinet. He was using them. Three months later, for instance, he wrote to Joe McGarrity in the United States that he selected them because he thought they would be ‘better bait for Lloyd George - leading him on and on, further in our direction.'

‘That Griffith would accept the Crown under pressure I had no doubt,' he explained. ‘From the preliminary work which M.C. [Collins] was doing with the IRB, of which I had heard something, and from my own weighing up of him I felt certain that he too was contemplating accepting the Crown.'

Stack made ‘a weak kind of objection', according to himself. He complained that ‘both gentlemen had been in favour of the July proposals.'

‘Collins then took up my objections to himself, and denied that he would accept the proposals,' Stack noted. ‘I reminded him of what he had said at Blackrock. He protested he said nothing of the kind.'

Well, Stack explained, he got the impression that Griffith only wanted some modifications.

‘Yes,' said Griffith, ‘some modifications.'

‘Cathal and the President then assured me I had misunderstood Mick at Blackrock,' Stack noted. ‘I accepted this and said no more.'

Collins still protested his reluctance. ‘We all realised that the delegation would not be representative if he was not included,' Barton noted. The Big Fellow's reluctance to go was prompted by a number of reasons, some selfish. ‘Of course,' he later wrote, ‘we all knew that whatever the outcome of the negotiations, we could never hope to bring back all that Ireland wanted and deserved to have, and we therefore knew that more or less opprobrium would be the best we could hope to win.' Nobody could be expected willingly to court such infamy, and Collins was no exception. ‘I had got a certain name, whether I deserved it or not,' he later told the Dáil, ‘and I knew what I was going over there that I was being placed in a position that I could not reconcile, and that could not in the public mind be reconciled with what they thought I stood for, no matter what we brought back.'

‘For my own part,' Collins explained on another occasion, ‘I anticipated the loss of the position I held in the hearts of the Irish people as a result of my share in what was bound to be an unsatisfactory bargain. And to have and to hold the regard of one's fellow countrymen is surely a boon not to be lost, while there is a way to avoid it.'

Instead of arguing on those lines in cabinet, however, Collins actually made many of the same points in favour of his own exclusion that de Valera had already made for not going. He could be of use to the delegation if he were ‘kept in the background (against all eventualities) to be offered in a crisis as a final sacrifice with which to win our way to freedom.'

‘It is not a question of individuals now,' the president told Collins in an obvious appeal to his vanity. ‘It is a question of the nation and you and I and the cabinet know that the British will not make their best offer in your absence.'

‘I had no choice,' Collins explained afterwards. ‘I had to go.' But he made it clear to everyone that he was going against his better judgment.

‘Brugha was next proposed and flatly refused to have his name considered,' according to Barton. ‘His business he said was Minister of Defence, and with the Army he would stay. As far as I remember none urged him to change his mind for all realised that negotiations were not likely to last more than a first session if Cathal was present.'

‘Cathal is the honestest and finest soul in the world, but he is a bit slow at seeing fine differences and rather stubborn, and the others would not seek to convince him, but would rather try to out-manoeuvre him, and there would be trouble,' de Valera explained afterwards. ‘If I were going myself,' he added, ‘I would certainly have taken him with me.'

Collins suggested Stack, ‘but he too definitely refused saying he was not fitted for such work and would not consent to go in any circumstances,' Barton recalled. ‘I then proposed that Gavan Duffy should go as the inclusion of a man with knowledge of law and legal terms was essential. Collins proposed [Eamonn] Duggan as a more suitable legal man. Duggan was approved. I then suggested Mulcahy, but Brugha refused his consent. Collins proposed “either Barton or Childers or preferably both should go.” Dev stated that he was anxious that Childers should be secretary, and this was agreed to without demur. Stack supported my selection and it was agreed. Personally I was opposed to going, feeling I had not the necessary knowledge or ability, but after so many had made objections I felt diffident about refusing, especially as I had made a strong appeal to Collins to sink his objections in the national interest. Dev finally proposed Gavan Duffy and the team was complete.' It was significant that nobody suggested the one remaining member of the cabinet, W. T. Cosgrave.

The final three were selected ‘to work in well' with Griffith and Collins, according to de Valera, who described Duggan and Gavan Duffy as ‘mere legal padding'. Although born in Cheshire, England, George Gavan Duffy had a sound nationalist pedigree. He was the fourteenth of seventeen children of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the founders of the Young Ireland movement in 1840s. Charles Gavan Duffy emigrated to Australia in the 1850s and became prime minister of Victoria in the 1870s. George was born after his father returned to Europe in 1882. Brought up in Nice, George spoke French and Italian fluently. He returned to England in his teens to study at Stonyhurst, and he was a member of Roger Casement's legal team at his trial in 1916. Elected to the First Dáil in 1918 Gavan Duffy was sent as an envoy of the Irish Republic to Paris and later to Rome.

Gavan Duffy, Barton, and a young rather volatile Collins had served together on a delegation that went to London in December 1918 to try to enlist the help of President Woodrow Wilson, who was in Britain on his way to the Paris Peace Con­ference. Gavan Duffy drew up the petition, but it was ignored by Wilson, much to the annoyance of Collins, who suggested they kidnap the president to make him listen to them. Now the three of them were selected to go back to London under very different circumstances.

Throughout the remainder of his life, de Valera went to great pains to justify his decision to exclude himself from the delegation. While the reasons he gave to the cabinet were un­doubtedly factors, there were other reasons that he was only prepared to elaborate on privately. In December 1921 he explained these in some detail in a letter to Joe McGarrity, and again to Lord Longford more than forty years later.

He admitted that he was using Griffith and Collins as mere bait. ‘I felt convinced on the other hand that as matters came to a close we would be able to hold them from this side from crossing the line.'

Following the selection by the cabinet, the Dáil met in private session on 14 September to ratify the delegation. W. T. Cosgrave moved that the president should head the delegation. But his own assistant, Kevin O'Higgins, promptly undermined Cosgrave by endorsing de Valera's decision. ‘It was a matter of tactics,' O'Higgins argued, according to the official report. ‘They had to safeguard the Republic and the symbol of the Republic and to face the unpleasant fact that the plenipotentiaries might have to discuss other proposals than the sovereign independence of Ireland and it was not right the President should discuss such proposals.'

Griffith was then ratified as chairman, but when Collins' name was submitted for formal ratification, he explained that he ‘would very much prefer not to be chosen'. He said that he believed de Valera should head the delegation.

If he was not president and, as such a symbol of the republic, de Valera said, he would go himself. As this was out of the question, he argued, ‘It was absolutely necessary that the Minister for Finance should be a member' because he ‘was absolutely vital to the delegation.'

‘To me the task is a loathsome one,' Collins told colleagues. ‘If I go, I go in the spirit of a soldier who acts against his better judgment at the orders of a superior officer.'

After Collins relented, the Dáil and promptly approved his nomination, and the other names were approved without any discussion. But Gavan Duffy did object to members of the dele­­gation being categorised as plenipotentiaries. He thought they were being given too much power. De Valera – who had twice previously threatened to resign if full and unfettered plenipotentiary powers were denied to the delegation – was insistent. He wished to use the term plenipotentiaries ‘to give to the world the impression that they are sent over with full powers – to do the best they could to reconcile the Irish position with the British position. They should have full powers because if they go over they needed to have the moral feeling of support of the position to do the best they could for Ireland.'

‘Remember what you are asking them to do,' the president said. ‘You are asking them to secure by negotiations what we are totally unable to secure by force of arms.'

Afterwards Collins was still uneasy about his ap­point­­ment.

‘I should not have been asked to go,' he told his friend Batt O'Connor afterwards as he paced about the room. ‘I pleaded strongly against my selection.'

‘You will get betters terms for us than anyone else,' O'Connor argued.

‘It is a mistake to send me. De Valera should go. Who ever heard of the soldiers who fought the enemy in the field being sent to negotiate the peace,' he said. ‘I am being put in an impossible position.'

‘Sit down man,' O'Connor pleaded. ‘He did not seem to hear me, but continued to stride up and down the floor.'

‘I fought hard against my selection,' he blurted out again. ‘De Valera pressed me. For no other man living would I have consented.'

He should have been allowed to remain a hidden force behind the scene, and his name used during the negotiations to extract the maximum terms from the other side, he argued. ‘Peace must mean of necessity some adjustment of the extreme demands on both sides – on our side as well as theirs,' he said. ‘It is not the soldiers who fought on either side who should settle the adjustment. Who is to direct the fight if we have to go back to war, which is only too likely?'

For months Collins had an uneasy feeling about the hostility mounting towards him within the movement. Having been the most wanted man in Ireland over the past couple of years, it would have been understandable if he was becoming somewhat paranoid, but there were some people out to get him. He was being warned not to trust de Valera, and while he clearly had reservations, he still had not come down on the side of distrust. But the hostility of Brugha and Stack were something else.

Collins admired Brugha's bravery and respected his sincerity but this respect was not mutual. Brugha was not among the brightest people. De Valera considered him dull witted, while Richard Mulcahy considered him ‘as brave and as brainless as a bull'. Brugha had been mercilessly questioning the manner in which Collins had handled some of the finances. Collins had not been able to explain all the money used for arms purchases. He had used money as if it had been his own to pay some of the men working for him, much to the annoyance of Brugha, a dedicated and selfless fanatic. There was no question of Collins misappropriating money for his own use, but he was prepared to be generous with those he thought deserved the few extra pounds. Brugha resented this and needled Collins to account for every pound spent, if not every penny.

Another matter began to surface when it became apparent that a young man connected with the Yost typewriter firm had been ordered to leave the country on insufficient information in the course of hostilities. Brugha and Mulcahy agreed that the young man should be allowed to return, but the intelligence branch under Collins, which had been involved in the original mistake, was slow to act. Brugha was incensed and he wrote a stinging letter to the adjutant general on 30 July.

Mulcahy believed that Brugha really wished to break the hold that Collins had on the army, and that he was trying to insert Stack as deputy chief of staff as a means to that end. Mulcahy appointed Eoin O'Duffy as his deputy chief of staff on 1 August, and he took particular exception to the tone of Brugha's letter to the adjutant general. It was not conducive to discipline to have the minister for defence undercutting the chief of staff by going behind his back and dealing directly with one of his officers, especially in an abusive manner. ‘Unless something can be done to eliminate the tendency to revert to this tone when differences arise,' Mulcahy wrote on 2 September, ‘I cannot be responsible for retaining harmony and discipline among the Staff.'

‘Before you are very much older, my friend,' Brugha wrote four days later, ‘I shall show you that I have as little intention of taking dictation from you as to how I should reprove in­efficiency or negligence on the part of yourself or the D/I
1
as I have of allowing you to appoint a deputy chief of staff of you own choosing.

‘In regard to your inability to maintain harmony and discipline among the Staff, it was scarcely necessary to remind me of the fact, as your shortcoming in that respect – so far at least as con­trolling the particular member already mentioned is concerned – have been quite apparent for a considerable time.'

The following week Brugha gave Mulcahy an ultimatum to furnish him with details of the Yost case within twenty-four hours, and when this was not done, he suspended the chief of staff and ordered him to ‘hand over to the Deputy Chief of Staff all monies, papers, and books, and other property of the Department in your possession.' In short, Mulcahy was being ordered to hand over his command to Stack.