The war of independence has to be understood in the context of a number of other factors. The general election that had returned so many Sinn Feiners from Ireland constituted a massive triumph for the Conservative-Unionist alliance in Britain as a whole, with the Liberal Party dwindling to a small fraction of its previous size and the new Labour Party still relatively small. The wartime prime minister Lloyd George continued in office, this time leading a coalition consisting of a handful of Liberals still loyal to him and the massive Conservative-Unionist majority. Britain had emerged triumphant from a destructive war and, within months, as a consequence of the peace settlement at Versailles, would be master, admittedly as a trustee for the League of Nations, over vast new areas that had been part of the prewar German and Turkish Empires. While restive noises on behalf of self-rule were being made in India, it was scarcely a moment when Britain would be temperamentally disposed to begin the dismantlement of its empire, as Irish republicans hoped. On the other hand, Britain was committed to the implementation of Home Rule for Ireland if it could get around the dilemma of unionist opposition in the northeast of the island.
It was not as clear from the beginning that either the Sinn Fein mandate or the goal of the Dail fiireann was to support a violent insurrection. De Valera had escaped from prison in February. The following month the remainder of the Sinn Fein detainees were released. Dail fiireann was able to meet unimpeded in Dublin, where it elected de Valera as its president on April 1. A significant campaign undertaken by Dail fiireann was to secure world recognition of its claim that it constituted the government of Ireland. A mission to the Versailles Peace Conference obtained no audience. De Valera himself left Ireland in June for America, where he would remain for a year and a half, seeking financial support from the Irish-American community and recognition from the major American political parties, the U. S. Congress, and the government. He was extremely successful in the first objective, but not in the latter goals, in which he alienated the leading Irish-American supporters, Devoy and Coha-lan, who saw his role as distracting and impractical. They suspected him of being likely to compromise on the issue of an independent Irish republic and they disliked his sympathy for the League of Nations, which they feared would be dominated by Britain. They wished to utilize all the resources and energies of the Irish-American community to oppose American membership in the international body.
A very successful move by the Dail fiireann was its call in June 1919 for the establishment of "arbitration courts" to which the people could turn as an alternative to the existing judicial system in Ireland. In a very short time, these bodies would prevail over most of Ireland, aside from the unionist areas of Ulster, and even opponents of Sein Fein would utilize them for settling legal grievances. In August, to insure the subordination of military factions, the Dail insisted that all its members and all the Irish Volunteers (whom it considered the Army of the Irish Republic, and later the Irish Republican Army [IRA]) swear allegiance to the republic and the Dail. By now the authorities became less tolerant of this movement's proclaiming itself an alternative government for Ireland. Repressive proclamations were issued in certain localities outlawing groups such as Sinn Fein, the Gaelic League, and the Irish Volunteers, and, on September 12, the Dail fiireann itself was declared illegal.
On the military front, the Irish Volunteers began a campaign against the Royal Irish Constabulary, most of whose rank and file were Irish Catholics. It had the expected consequence of causing a substantial numbers of resignations from the force and an abandonment of remote barracks, leaving more and more of the countryside open to Irish Volunteer domination. The resignations were so many that the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was forced to recruit thousands from Britain, especially demobilized soldiers, to fill its ranks. Because of a shortage of regular uniforms, the newcomers were given army tans and black RIC hats, earning them the nickname of "Black and Tans." They would soon gain an unpleasant reputation for brutality in taking retaliatory actions against communities from which Irish Volunteers had come. The Irish Volunteers also began making attacks on the British military itself in Ireland.
Still convinced that Sinn Fein success in the 1918 general election was a freak occurrence and not a true indication of popular sentiment, the government called for local government elections in 1920 in anticipation that the old Parliamentary Party forces, as well as independents and some unionists, would continue to hold the ascendancy. In these elections, held in January for urban bodies and in June for rural bodies, Sinn Fein enjoyed great success, controlling, with support from nationalists and labour, 172 of 206 urban councils, and being similarly successful in the rural council elections.
One of the most remarkable achievements of the Dail fiireann government was the ability of its Ministry of Local Government, headed by William T. Cos-grave and assisted by Kevin O'Higgins, to direct the local government bodies in carefully harboring their resources. This was essential after the British designated Local Government Authority began to withhold grants to the local bodies because of their noncompliance with specific orders and after many property owners became reluctant to pay their rates. The local bodies were instructed to use hidden (or laundered) bank accounts to avoid seizure of their funds by either the courts or the government authorities. They also relied to some degree on funds advanced by the Dail fiireann government itself. The gaining of the allegiance of these local bodies, both the success in the elections to them, and their subsequent acceptance of the Dail fiireann authority against the official Local Government Authority, was possibly the clearest manifestation to the world that the Dail fiireann had won the consensus of the Irish people.
Violence on both sides was intensified in 1920. The British passed a Restoration of Order in Ireland Act giving the authorities extraordinary powers of arrest and detention and to conduct military tribunals. Ex-officers of the British army were employed as an auxiliary division to the RIC. Even the military commanders had reservations about the conduct of this group in combating the IRA. Among the most brutal days in that year was November 21, "Bloody Sunday," when members of Michael Collins's (minister of the treasury in the Bail fiireann government, but also director of intelligence and president of the IRB) elite "squad" killed 14 suspected British agents, for which the Black and Tans retaliated by firing on a crowd at a football match in Croke Park in Dublin, killing a dozen. The following Sunday, an IRA brigade ambushed 18 auxiliaries at Kilmichael in Cork. Two weeks later the Black and Tans and the auxiliaries sacked the city of Cork, destroying City Hall and the Corn Exchange, and causing millions of pounds in damage. In March of the same year the Sinn Fein lord mayor of the city, Tomas MacCurtain, was murdered by the RIC.
But the same year would also see the passage of the Government of Ireland Act, an attempt to cut the Gordian knot of the Home Rule question by separating the island into two components, a six-county Ireland in the North and a twenty-six-county Ireland in the South. Elections were called for Home Rule parliaments for each section. This division of the island also constituted a division of the province of Ulster, as three of its counties—Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan—were included in southern Ireland. Had they remained in the northern part of Ireland, Catholics would have constituted the majority or near majority in the province, which would have contradicted the very reason for partition: to prevent the Protestants in Northern Ireland from coming under the domination of Catholics. Unfortunately, it meant that a substantial number of Catholics in Northern Ireland found themselves under the domination of Protestants. Elections to both parliaments were held in May 1921. The Unionists received 40 of the seats in the northern body, with Sinn Fein and the nationalists winning six each. All candidates for the southern parliament were returned unopposed: 124 Sein Feiners and four independents who represented Trinity College.
De Valera returned to Ireland from the United States just before Christmas of 1920. His return intensified certain divisions within the Bail fiireann government as to the proper approach in the struggle with Britain. One wing, headed by Michael Collins and supported by the chief of staff of the IRA, Richard Mulcahy, was deeply involved in the IRB. Their opponents suggested their loyalty was more to the IRB than to the Bail fiireann. Collins's revolutionary genius had been his ability to direct a guerrilla campaign against the British and their agents, whether local police, civil servants, and even bankers, rather than by direct military confrontation. The other wing, led particularly by Cathal Brugha, the minister for defense, and Austin Stack, the minister for home affairs, were critical of the notoriety Collins had been receiving. Their strategy for waging the struggle would have entailed a traditional manning of barricades, full-fledged assaults on important posts, and carrying the struggle to Britain by high-profile assassinations. De Valera tended to side with them, consenting to a futile attack on the Dublin Custom House on May 25, the virtual eve of the issuance of peace feelers. In the attack nearly 100 of the IRA members were captured and important local government and other public documents were destroyed.
The next month, following a peace overture made by King George V at the opening of the parliament of Northern Ireland, there were meetings with inter-
Mediaries such as the South African leader, General Jan Smuts. Finally, on July 11, a truce was agreed to whereby both the British and the IRA ceased military operations and negotiations began as to the agenda for a peace conference. Meetings and exchanges of letters between de Valera and Lloyd George through the summer sought to reconcile their diverse purposes: the Irish aspiration for complete independence and the recognition of the Bail fiireann as its government and the British wish that Ireland remain a dominion within the Commonwealth. A letter from Lloyd George to de Valera in September inviting him to send an Irish delegation to London to ascertain "how the association of Ireland and the community of nations known as the British Empire may best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations" enabled the conference to convene the following month.
De Valera did not join the delegation, insisting that his position as president required that he not be part of any negotiations that might involve a solution that produced less than an independent Irish republic. Instead, cabinet members Collins, Griffith, and Robert Barton, and attorneys Gavan Duffy and fiamonn Duggan attended. Lloyd George and such senior figures as Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, and Lord Birkenhead represented the British side. Collins and Griffith played the major role for the Irish. The most they were able to obtain in the negotiations was dominion status, which de Valera rejected in a cabinet meeting in Dublin in the first weekend in December, preferring a construct of his own for Anglo-Irish relations that he called "external association." The negotiators were unable to win the British acceptance of de Valera's alternative when they returned to London, and, faced with the prospects of a resumption of hostilities, they signed the treaty on December 6, 1921.
World History
