I Signed My Death Warrant (8 page)

The two pilots were on standby to fly Collins home. The plan was to cross the Bristol Channel to the Wexford coast and then fly north to Dublin. They would land on Leopardstown Racecourse, where a landing strip would be marked out while the aircraft was in flight. None of this became necessary, so the aircraft later became part of the nucleus of the Irish Army Air Corps and was named “the Big Fella”.'

Most of the Irish delegation arrived in London on the evening of 8 October. The first party consisted of all of the plenipotentiaries with the exception of Collins. There were also the four secretaries, and four typists – Lily O'Brennan, who was a confidential typist for Childers, and the other three were Kathleen McKenna, and the sisters Ellie and Alice Lyons. In addition, there was propaganda minister Desmond Fitzgerald, journalist Mike Knightley, and David Robinson whose duties were never quite clear, along with the wives of Eamonn Duggan and Fionán Lynch, who acted as chaperons. The women stayed at Hans Place, though some of them worked in the house in Cadogan Gardens.

Collins was behind the selection of a Miss O'Donoghue as housekeeper along with Tom as headwaiter in Hans Place, and Eddie the headwaiter at Cadogan Gardens. All three were from the Gresham Hotel. It was his way of replaying their loyalty. He also brought along a veritable entourage of bodyguards, whose functions were never quite clear. But it was obvious that some British people were deeply resentful of the Irish republicans. On the Sunday night the word ‘MURDERERS' was painted on the footpath outside 22 Hans Place in large one-foot-square letters in red.

Collins set out the following day. ‘Goodness knows I have a heavy heart this moment,' he wrote to Kitty Kiernan, but there is work to be done and I must not complain.' His entourage – which included Liam Tobin, Emmet Dalton, Tom Cullen, Joe Guilfoyle, Joe Dolan, Ned Broy and Seán MacBride – left Dun Laoghaire quietly on the Sunday. They ‘were there really in order to supervise safety and intelligence arrangements for Collins,' according to MacBride. He was particularly critical of the amount of drinking by those in Cadogan Gardens, including Collins. Although he liked to depict himself as some kind of confidant of Collins, there was a big age gap between him and the seventeen-year-old MacBride, who was brought essentially as a messenger boy. He did not know what they were actually doing. ‘They may have been drinking when they went out,' he admitted, ‘but I didn't go out with them.'

‘I wouldn't say there was much justification for the charge that members of the staff of the Irish Delegation were having too good a time,' Robert Barton said. ‘We worked very hard. There were occasional evenings of relaxation when we went to the theatre, but I don't think there was anything to give rise to any suggestion that we were in any way dissipated.'

Collins did contribute to the rumours by going to Wormwood Scrubs prison with two colleagues to visit Neil Kerr, who had been his agent in Liverpool for spiriting people across the Atlantic and across the Irish Sea. ‘He had evidently been drink­ing heavily,' the prison Governor wrote to Lloyd George. ‘He said his two companions would also be present. I replied that I had only instructions to admit him, Michael Collins. He then assumed a bullying demeanour.'

‘Mr Lloyd George won't thank you for being discourteous to me.' Collins said. ‘He had become truculent and announced his intention of seeing all the prisoners.' When he met Kerr he was caught trying to slip him some tobacco.

‘You go sit down, you did not ought to be here at all,' Collins told the warder.

‘I consider Mr Michael Collins was not in a fit condition to visit prisoners, as in my opinion he appeared to be under the influence of drink,' the warder reported.

The Big Fellow reportedly spent over three hours in the prison, making himself thoroughly obnoxious in the eyes of the prison authorities by ‘boasting about all the loyal people he has shot.' Eventually he was persuaded to go.

‘There might have been a certain amount of reason for criticism in some ways but, on the whole, I should say it was a very quiet and respectable and well-behaved delegation,' Barton continued. ‘There was a lot of visiting by people who had not seen the leaders and wanted to see them.' An important American banker invited them to dinner at the Savoy Hotel. ‘We could not accept as we had little spare time but, since he was an influential USA citizen and sympathetic, we did not like to refuse,' Barton said. ‘We all went to breakfast with him.'

‘Most of my time was taken up running dispatches from Lon­don to Dublin,' MacBride recalled. ‘Many of these I de­livered directly to de Valera or Kathleen O'Connell,' he added. ‘I knew that a lot of the dispatches were written by Erskine Childers who was secretary of the delegation. Collins wrote private letters to people such as Seán Ó Muirthile who was the IRB man. My function was to bring all letters backwards and forward.'

Collins invited various people to join him in London, some as a kind reward for past services, and others to advise him, such as Joseph Brennan, a civil servant involved in finance, and J. J. O'Connell of IRA headquarters staff to advise on military matters. Collins did not do Brugha the courtesy of even informing, much less consulting him, about the selection of defence advisers, much to Brugha's indignation.

Collins, Desmond Fitzgerald and Diarmuid O'Hegarty had their offices in Cadogan Gardens, and Kathleen McKenna and Alice Lyons worked there during the day. Collins was first spotted in London by the media on 10 October. ‘Coming swiftly from Cadogan Gardens, he sprang nimbly into a wait­ing car in an attempt to evade the ambush of reporters and photographers lying in wait,' Kathleen McKenna recalled. ‘He was in splendid form – smiling, active, boyish, restless. He gave me the impression of a young colt set free in a field of lush grass.'

Next morning the
Daily Express
had a purported interview with him in which he was asked how he got to Hans Place without being seen by the press. ‘Why it was the easiest thing in the world,' Collins reportedly replied. ‘I adopted the same principle that enabled me to conceal my whereabouts so long in Ireland. I always watch the other fellow instead of letting him watch me. I made a point of keeping the other fellow on the run, instead of being on the run myself.'

He said he travelled to Euston under an assumed name and slipped into a taxi unnoticed with a friend. He was good humoured but his face became stern as he said the
Daily Express
had called him a murderer.

‘We had neither the desire not the intention to be unfair either to you or the Irish cause,' the reporter explained.

‘Well, perhaps, not,' Collins supposedly said as the cloud passed from his face. ‘I don't think that the
Daily Express
was more unfair that others, but you know, none of your English newspapers really understands us. You don't see things from our point of view.'

‘I never said any such thing,' Collins wrote to Kitty Kiernan next day. ‘Newspaper men are inventions of the devil.'

‘We held a long conference that night and decided that we should let the English do the talking and make proposals before we attempted to explain to them our scheme for External Association,' Barton recalled. Childers and Chartres met the secretaries of the English delegation and made the final arrangements for the conference to start next morning.

The conference was due to begin at 11 a.m. on 11 October 1921. The Irish delegation set out from Hans Place in their fleet of Rolls Royce cars. The bulk of the delegation was in the first car, with Collins in the second car, along with Liam Tobin, Emmet Dalton, Tom Cullen, Joe Guilfoyle and Joe Dolan.

The precincts of Downing Street presented an extraordinary spectacle, ‘Men women and children knelt in prayer across the thoroughfares; paths lined with our supporters, including nuns and clergymen, reciting the rosary, singing hymns, crying words of encouragement pouring blessings on the under­taking,' Kathleen McKenna noted. ‘They were tricolours, banners, flags, lengths of cloth and cardboard on which slogans and wishes in Gaelic and English appeared.'

Collins bolted from the car into 10 Downing Street, as if try­ing to avoid the cameras. There was a certain amount of re­sent­ment that the government was negotiating with Irish rebels who had killed many British servicemen. A wreath was specially placed at the nearby cenotaph that day: ‘In memory of the 586 members of his Majesty's naval, military and pol­ice forces murdered in Ireland.'

There was an ugly incident in Downing Street involving an artist named Harry Chance. He was arrested for causing a scene. He snatched a tricolour from a London-based Irish woman, spat on the flag and wiped his feet on it.

‘When I spat on the flag,' Chance told the court next day, ‘I did not do so out of disrespect for the Irish people, but because I have the utmost contempt for Michael Collins and the other people who were being tolerated in Downing Street. I have had friends and relatives killed by those people in Ireland in a most cowardly manner. By tolerating these people in England it is throwing mud in the faces of all decent people, including the men who served in the war. All this occurred right under the memorial to the men who fell in the war. Michael Collins ought to have been hung, drawn, and quartered years ago.'

Chance promised not to re-offend and he was just bound to the peace. But Kathleen McKenna noted that ‘threatening letters to Michael Collins poured in daily.' Some of the men were worried about the Big Fellow's safety.

‘One morning, I opened an envelop addressed to him con­taining a piece of cloth, and a letter enclosed stated that the cloth contained disease germs which the writer hoped would kill Collins and everyone near him,' Broy recalled. ‘I immediately threw the lot into the nearest fire and suffered no ill effects from handling the missive. I did not know if there were really germs in the enclosure and considered its immediate destruction more prudent than investigation. Collins was not present when this letter arrived and when I told him about it he started pulling my leg, saying that all letters received by a good secretary should be carefully filed and indexed and asked me what precedent I had for destroying official correspondence. He said he would have to ask the Dáil to add an analyst to the team of experts attached to the Delegation.'

Collins was somewhat morose about the talks from the outset. ‘Either way it will be wrong. Wrong because of what has come to pass. You might say the trap is sprung,' he wrote to his friend and aide, Joe O'Reilly, on the first day of the conference. ‘I have come to call a spade a spade,' he added. ‘It is the only name I know it by.'

Art O'Brien, the designated Irish ambassador to Britain asked to be introduced to the British delegation, so that he could introduce their Irish counterparts, but Tom Jones was instructed to lead the Irish delegation to the cabinet room. Jones led the way followed by O'Brien, Griffith, Collins and the others in single file.

‘Lloyd George received us,' Barton recalled. ‘He shook each of us warmly by the hand and introduced us to his colleagues who were standing behind him.' Only Lloyd George shook hands with the Irish delegates. The others just acknowledged each other across the table. This procedure had been followed to avoid a possible scene, as the prime minister was afraid the Irish might balk at shaking hands with Hamar Greenwood, the chief secretary for Ireland, and some of the British were obviously not enamoured with the possibility of shaking hands with Collins, the man they considered the head of the murder gang.

Greenwood was seated at the end of the British side of the table with Laming Worthington-Evans, the secretary of war, next to him. At the other end of the same side sat Gor­­don Hewart, the attorney general, with colonial secretary Winston Churchill next to him, followed by Lord Birkenhead, the lord chancellor. Lloyd George took up his place in the centre on Birkenhead's right, and two secretaries Tom Jones and Lionel Curtis, sat on either side of the prime minister in chairs that were slightly withdrawn from the table. Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Conservative leader, would normally sit on his right, but he was absent from the opening conference due to a backache.

‘It was clear from the start that English interest was centred on Michael Collins,' according to Barton. ‘We Irishmen were nervous and ill at ease it was our first introduction to diplomacy. The English were at home and confident in surroundings where they had met and out-manoeuvred or intimidated their opponents in a hundred similar struggles.' Of course, the British were not nearly so experienced, but Barton's account was indicative of his tendency to be overawed not only by the British but even by his own colleagues. ‘As it was Griffith and Collins were far more influential than the other members,' Barton wrote. ‘Duggan was a cipher being an echo to Collins. Gavan Duffy had been away since early in 1919 as ambassador in France and Rome. I was quite a newcomer and had spent the last seventeen months in English Gaols entirely cut off from all communication.'

In all there were seven plenary sessions during the next two weeks of the conference. Collins said very little at any of the four sessions during the first week, which was taken up with general discussions on the July proposals.

From the outset the British took the offensive by insisting that those proposals would have to form the basis of any agree­­ment. The Irish representatives, on the other hand, were trying to get External Association, even though they had not worked it out in any detail. Initially therefore they tried to follow de Valera's line in trying ‘to hold back on the question of the Crown', until they knew what they were ‘going to get in exchange for some accommodation regarding it'.

Collins was clearly ill-suited to this type of negotiating. He had little time for the endless beating around the bush. But, of course he soon found it impolitic to be as candid as he would have liked. As a result the first day with its two plenary sessions was particularly trying. ‘I never felt so relieved at the end of any day, and I need hardly say I am not looking forward with any pleasure to resumption' he wrote to de Valera. ‘Such a crowd I never met.'

He was obviously deeply troubled. He had a reputation for being anti-clerical ever since his emigrant days in London when he called for the extermination of the Roman Catholic clergy, or in the GPO during the Easter Rebellion when he mocked volunteers who sought a priest to make what they feared might be their last confession. It may well have been indicative of the weight upon his mind that he actually went to early morning mass and communion each day of the negotiations.

One parish priest, Fr T. Maguire, wrote advising Collins to avoid all British hospitality, to stay indoors, and to go to daily mass and communion. ‘I know full the English methods in these matter,' Collins replied. ‘The other part of your advice is being attended to also – though not – for essential reasons – quite fully.'

Broy was in the next room to Collins at Cadogan Gardens, and heard him get up around seven o'clock a few mornings. One morning Broy got up, expecting to find Collins having breakfast, but one of the orderlies told him that the Big Fellow went out alone each morning. ‘I was alarmed at this, as there was still very strong anti-Irish feeling in London, particularly against Collins,' Broy explained. ‘Next morning when Collins left Cadogan Gardens, I decided to follow him at some distance in case some enemy had noticed his habit of going out early and planned some hostile action. I kept a good distance behind and saw him enter the Church of St Mary (Cadogan Place). I entered and stayed at the back of the church and saw Michael at Mass in a most devout manner. When Mass had ended he remained on his knees, then got up and lit a candle, knelt again, and then lit another candle. When he moved to leave the Church, he saw me and at first frowned and then laughed.'

Broy was making no apologies for following him, because of the real danger that somebody might attack him. ‘I said that unless somebody else accompanied him to early Mass, I would do so, and to do anything else would be gross neglect on my part,' Broy added. ‘He agreed that I was right and that I could come with him each morning to Mass, if I desired. So from then on we went together. Sometimes we went to St Mary's and sometimes to Brompton Oratory.'

‘On his return from morning Mass his surplus energy was expanded at the expense of sluggards and late-risers,' according to Kathleen McKenna. ‘The least they received from Mick on their pleasant dreams was a jug of cold water.'

‘From the moment of Collins' arrival at 15 Cadogan Gar­­dens until the end of the negotiations, he was occupied night, noon and morning in one form of activity or another and at night pressure all the time dealing with the most various problems and everything was dealt with the utmost precision and efficiency, whether a military question arising in Ireland, or a complicated financial or economic subject,' Ned Broy recalled. ‘The result was that he hardly ever got to bed before 1 a.m. and yet always arose about seven in the morning and always looked as fresh as if he had just taken a cold plunge.

‘He duly pulled us all out of bed in the morning whether we complained of fatigue or not, and repeated the process when going to bed in the small hours, unless one had taken the precaution of locking the bedroom door,' Broy added. The feet of some of the beds were hinged and Collins would bend those back during the night so that some of the men awoke to find them sleeping at an angle to the floor.

‘I remember looking into Emmet Dalton's bedroom one night and seeing him in his bed with the bed making an angle of thirty degrees with the floor,' Broy noted. ‘As Collins had not yet come in I asked Emmet what happened to his bed. He said Collins would come in to bend the legs later on, and to save him the bother, Emmet had bent them up himself.'

Collins ‘was brusque, violent, boisterous, fond of good-humoured horse-play, and quick-tempered,' according to Kathleen McKenna. One night when they were having a banquet at Hans Place, Collins arrived during the meal with Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Emmet Dalton, Joe Guilfoyle and Joe Dolan. ‘They were a happy, boisterous group who preferred horse-play to formalities,' she recalled. ‘I do not know how it came about but first of all they began throwing cushions at one another, then the tangerine oranges, apples and nuts from the table. We all knew Collins' exuberant character.'

On another night he took a central part in a battle on the top floor at Cadogan Place, where some furniture was broken. Joe McGrath, in his capacity as the delegation's accountant, came from Hans Place to inspect the damage.

‘Well, the pack of dirty idiots! Look what all that will cost now for repairs!' McGrath exclaimed.

As minister for finance, Collins authorised payment for the damage done.

The task confronting the relatively inexperienced Irish negotiators was a formidable one, especially for Collins. At thirty he was by far the youngest of the delegates on either side of the conference table. All the others were in their forties or fifties.

Nevertheless he was soon to find himself in the unenviable position of sharing much of the leadership responsibility over a divided delegation that obviously lacked the full confidence of the cabinet at home. Yet he had to face a determined British delegation consisting of an experienced and seasoned team of negotiators, headed by Lloyd George, backed up by the most powerful men in the Conservative Party as well as his own wing of the Liberal Party.

Collins was uneasy with the British representatives because he disliked most of them with a varying intensity. Of course all of them were professional politicians, and most were lawyers - two types of people for whom Collins had a distinct aversion. He was convinced the genial Lloyd George - whom he found ‘particularly obnoxious' - and Winston Churchill, the prime minister's erstwhile Liberal colleague, were both unprincipled individuals who would do anything for political gain.

‘Churchill was a rude as could be', according to Barton, who noted that the future British leader sat through the conference making paper boats and looking quite hostile. ‘He always looked at us as if he would be glad to cut our throats, a very different attitude from Lloyd George, who was so affable.'

Collins considered Lloyd George, who was a trained lawyer, crafty and shrewd, because he behaved in a paternalistic way, apparently trusting that his benevolent air would surmount all obstacles. ‘Lloyd George's attitude I find particular obnoxious,' Collins wrote during the second week of the conference. “He is all comradely – all craft and wiliness – all arm around the shoulder – all the old friends act. Not long ago he would joy­fully have had me at the rope end. He thinks that the past is all washed out now – but that's to my face. What he thinks be­hind my back makes me sick.' Collins believed the aptly nick­­named ‘Welsh Wizard' desperately needed to boost to his flagging reputation and that ‘would sell his nearest and dearest for political prestige.'

‘I hate demonstrative indications of feeling,' he would later write to Kitty Kiernan during the talks. ‘They stand somehow in my mind for a kind of insincerity.' He added that ‘it really means that I'm on the side of people who do things, not on the side of people who say things.'