Gretchen Friemann, your recent book, The Treaty, dealt with the negotiations for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. As an Australian though living in Dublin, why did you want to write about them?
The idea for the book came from a chance encounter in an archive.
A few years ago, when I was studying for a Masters in International History at Trinity College Dublin, I was set a paper on the Irish Civil War, and for various reasons, my research focused on Erskine Childers, the doomed Mayfair-born author of the The Riddle of the Sands.
By the time the Treaty talks began in October 1921, he had become a hardline republican and close confidant of the separatist movement’s leader, Éamon de Valera, who appointed him chief secretary to the Irish delegation.
Throughout the negotiations, Childers kept a diary, and it was this document, with its terse sketches of life in 22 Hans Place, the South Kensington townhouse where most of the Sinn Fein delegation were based, that brought home to me, more than any other account had up until then, the intense drama of the Treaty talks.
I knew the rough outline of the conference. I was familiar with its final, fraught days when Prime Minister David Lloyd George threatened ‘war within three days’ unless all five Irish plenipotentiaries signed the settlement on the evening of December 5th, but I had little understanding of the dramatic processes that had led up to that point.
Childers’ diary lays bare the tensions and bitterness within the Irish camp, and as with the published diaries of Tom Jones (assistant secretary to the cabinet), which provide the insider’s perspective from the British side, it made me realise the extent to which the decision-makers had lurched from one crisis to another.
In the spring of 2019, when divisions over Brexit were tightening the political screws on Theresa May’s administration, these discoveries felt like a revelation. How the British and Irish delegations, had, against the odds, reached an agreement, seemed to me every bit as interesting a story as the post-settlement slide towards civil war.
I finished my paper on that conflict, then threw myself into a dissertation centred on Anglo-Russian relations in the wake of the First World War.
Although I never let go of the thought that the Treaty talks were ripe for the retelling, it seemed a project beyond my capacity. In early 2020, I approached a publisher with an alternative book proposal. We met for coffee; he told me my idea was a non-starter, and asked whether I had any others. Without thinking, I blurted out that it was surely time for a fresh account of the Treaty talks, and months later, entirely unexpectedly, I found myself in possession of my first book contract.
So my nationality didn’t come into it. The more important factor, for all concerned, was the fast approaching centenary of the Treaty’s signing!
There are so many strong characters involved in the negotiations, not least David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Michael Collins, but the Irish side was not as well prepared as it could have been. With Civil War resulting, were the British the winners?
Yes, the Treaty talks involved a profusion of colourful, larger-than-life characters. To me, that was a large part of the appeal.
I’m not sure I would equate the civil war in Ireland with a British victory in the Treaty talks. By the autumn of 1921, persuading the Republican movement to agree to any diplomatic compromise was always going to be difficult, if not impossible.
A related question would be whether the British achieved by diplomacy what they failed to achieve by force?
Lloyd George’s administration adopted a coercive policy to the unrest in Ireland yet by July 1921 was willing to advance a settlement far in advance of anything offered before.
Part of the problem was that the British military and the Conservatives were intent on pacifying Ireland and wanted the Irish Volunteers, or the IRA as they came to be known, to surrender their arms.
Lloyd George’s bungling attempts at peace were also unhelpful. His deviousness and inconsistencies deepened distrust between the two sides and arguably helped prolong the war. But then he was a premier without a party and so his position was always precarious.
What underpinned his success during the Treaty talks was his ability to unite his cabinet behind a clearly defined proposal and sideline the Tory diehards.
The Irish, by contrast, were unclear about what success looked like, short of an offer to formalise the revolutionary republic. When the talks opened de Valera was still working on his far-sighted, compromise solution of External Association, which envisioned Ireland acting in concert with the British empire on matters of common concern, such as defence and international relations.
To the British this was a dressed-up demand for a republic, and they never seriously entertained it. The reaction in the Dail cabinet was also lukewarm, while the Irish delegates were uncertain about whether the proposal represented de Valera’s final word.
During your research, how did archival records compare between the Republic of Ireland the United Kingdom? Did the pandemic exacerbate any differences?
The pandemic was a major hinderance unfortunately, but thankfully, a number of archivists took pity on me and emailed me vital documents during lockdown.
The official British and Irish records relating to the negotiations are available online, as are Ireland’s Bureau of Military History statements and the Military Service Pension files. The digitisation of these important newer sources has been transformational to the research of the Irish revolution.
But you need to cast the net wider to gain a fuller picture. Other important sources include the papers of the key actors, military records and intelligence files.
Collins famously said, on signing the treaty, ‘I have signed my death warrant’. Was he outmanoeuvred by Eamon de Valera in being the prominent Irish plenipotentiary?
Collins was certainly resentful at de Valera’s decision to remain in Dublin and his supporters and biographers later cast it as an it as an attempt to scapegoat him.
But it has to be remembered that Collins’ inclusion was essential not only because he was the de facto leader of the IRA, as well as head of its intelligence arm, and president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a clandestine organisation which dominated the army’s centralised elite at GHQ, he was also the self-proclaimed Republic’s Minister of Finance.
No deal could have been agreed without his consent.
There has been perhaps too much focus on the Collins-de Valera rivalry. There were certainly tensions between the two men, partly because de Valera’s grip on the republican movement had weakened following a long publicity trip to America during the War of Independence.
After he returned to Ireland, it was clear Collins was de Valera’s most powerful rival in the republican movement.
A not unrelated but more important difficulty was the battle for control of the army, which deepened rifts in the cabinet at a critical moment in the treaty negotiations.
Gretchen, your recent book, The Treaty, dealt with the negotiations for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. As an Australian though living in Dublin, why did you want to write about them?
The idea for the book came from a chance encounter in an archive.
A few years ago, when I was studying for a Masters in International History at Trinity College Dublin, I was set a paper on the Irish Civil War, and for various reasons, my research focused on Erskine Childers, the doomed Mayfair-born author of the The Riddle of the Sands.
By the time the Treaty talks began in October 1921, he had become a hardline republican and close confidant of the separatist movement’s leader, Éamon de Valera, who appointed him chief secretary to the Irish delegation.
Throughout the negotiations, Childers kept a diary, and it was this document, with its terse sketches of life in 22 Hans Place, the South Kensington townhouse where most of the Sinn Féin delegation were based, that brought home to me, more than any other account had up until then, the intense drama of the Treaty talks.
I knew the rough outline of the conference. I was familiar with its final, fraught days when Prime Minister David Lloyd George threatened ‘war within three days’ unless all five Irish plenipotentiaries signed the settlement on the evening of December 5th, but I had little understanding of the dramatic processes that had led up to that point.
Michael Collins in London for the negotiations in 1921
Childers’ diary lays bare the tensions and bitterness within the Irish camp, and as with the published diaries of Tom Jones (assistant secretary to the cabinet), which provide the insider’s perspective from the British side, it made me realise the extent to which the decision-makers had lurched from one crisis to another.
In the spring of 2019, when divisions over Brexit were tightening the political screws on Theresa May’s administration, these discoveries felt like a revelation. How the British and Irish delegations, had, against the odds, reached an agreement, seemed to me every bit as interesting a story as the post-settlement slide towards civil war.
I finished my paper on that conflict, then threw myself into a dissertation centred on Anglo-Russian relations in the wake of the First World War.
Although I never let go of the thought that the Treaty talks were ripe for the retelling, it seemed a project beyond my capacity. In early 2020, I approached a publisher with an alternative book proposal. We met for coffee; he told me my idea was a non-starter, and asked whether I had any others. Without thinking, I blurted out that it was surely time for a fresh account of the Treaty talks, and months later, entirely unexpectedly, I found myself in possession of my first book contract.
So my nationality didn’t come into it. The more important factor, for all concerned, was the fast approaching centenary of the Treaty’s signing!
There are so many strong characters involved in the negotiations, not least David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Michael Collins, but the Irish side was not as well prepared as it could have been. With Civil War resulting, were the British the winners?
Yes, the Treaty talks involved a profusion of colourful, larger-than-life characters. To me, that was a large part of the appeal.
I’m not sure I would equate the civil war in Ireland with a British victory in the Treaty talks. By the autumn of 1921, there was little chance of the Republican movement uniting behind a compromise deal. In fact, you could argue that a civil war of sorts was already underway when the negotiations began.
Disagreements within the Irish delegation were evident from the beginning, and widened as the talks progressed. From the outset, the main difficulty was a lack of clarity about what success looked like, for it was clear, by virtue of the fact that they entered negotiations in the first place, that absolute sovereignty was off the table. There was no agreement however on what constituted ‘substantial’ independence.
When the talks opened, Éamon de Valera, President of the Republic, was still working on his compromise solution of External Association. This envisioned Ireland acting in concert with the British empire on matters of common concern, such as defence and international relations.
Although rightly praised as a far-sighted constitutional concept, the British regarded it as a dressed-up demand for a republic and never seriously entertained it. Nor was there any enthusiasm from the Dáil cabinet, where it met with a degree of distaste and confusion. Crucially, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, the two most important negotiators, were unsure whether it represented de Valera’s final word.
The Treaty left Ireland subordinate to Britain, and when its terms were revealed, many separatists saw it as a humiliation. Not only did it disestablish the Republic, it cemented partition and imposed Dominion rule on the remaining twenty-six counties.
By the same token, plenty of Unionists and imperialists thought the settlement an abomination. To them, it was a genuflection to traitors and murderers, and a betrayal of Ulster.
Yet the Treaty also entrenched a decisive shift in the power relations between Ireland and the UK. Never again would the British dominate their neighbour in the way they had in the past. Dominion status and virtual internal autonomy opened the path to full independence, which Ireland won eventually, not by further negotiations but by constitutional changes.
Collins then was vindicated in his famous assertion that the Treaty provided the Irish with the ‘freedom to achieve freedom’.
During your research, how did archival records compare between the Republic of Ireland the United Kingdom? Did the pandemic exacerbate any differences?
The pandemic was a major challenge and hinderance, but fortunately I encountered some very sympathetic archivists who emailed me vital documents during lockdown.
As regards the official British and Irish records of the negotiations, these are available online. So too are the Bureau of Military History statements and the Military Service Pension files. The digitisation of these important newer sources has been transformational to the research of the Irish revolution.
A fuller picture of the Treaty talks can be gleaned from the papers of the principal actors, as well as military records and intelligence files.
Collins famously said, on signing the treaty, ‘I have signed my death warrant’. Was he outmanoeuvred by Éamon de Valera in being the prominent Irish plenipotentiary?
Collins was certainly resentful at de Valera’s decision not to attend the talks, seeing it as an attempt to scapegoat himself and Griffith, and over the decades, writers favourable to this view have tended to cast the row over who should go to London as a set-piece contest between Collins’ patriotism and de Valera’s treachery.
Neil Jordan framed the story in this way in his nineties film, ‘Michael Collins’, casting de Valera as a Machiavellian figure bent on destroying his younger, more charismatic rival.
Éamon de Valera
These days, historians are at pains to emphasise Collins’ credentials for the talks, and are quick to scotch the notion that he was no more than a ‘simple soldier’. While he lacked negotiating experience, he was a skilled administrator and remarkably quick on the uptake. In fact, it would have been senseless for de Valera to exclude him from the delegation. Collins was de facto leader of the IRA, head of its intelligence arm, president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which controlled GHQ, a member of Sinn Féin’s executive, and the Republic’s Minister of Finance, one of the most important positions in the Dáil cabinet. In short, no deal could have been agreed without his consent.
That said, de Valera’s actions at this time remain suspect. Clearly there was an element of rivalry and power-play at work. He appeared to anticipate divisions within the delegation and hoped to avoid charges of apostasy by remaining in Ireland.
In so far as one can be definitive at all about de Valera’s motives during this period, it appears he staked everything, as J.J. Lee observed, on ‘preserving unity’. He calculated that by staying at home he could hold his government together, and when the talks collapsed, as he anticipated they would — indeed his absence increased the pressure on the Irish delegates — he would swoop in with his own compromise; one that would achieve a consensus in the cabinet, Dáil, party and army, and shunt republican doctrinaires to the sidelines.
He badly miscalculated, and the upshot was that Collins — de Valera’s greatest rival — emerged as the most powerful leader of the republican movement, and it was his chosen compromise, not de Valera’s, that prevailed.
The subtitle is: The Gripping Story of the Negotiations that brought about Irish Independence and led to the Civil War. What was the key issue from the treaty that led to the Civil War?
Sovereignty and the position of the Crown in Irish affairs was the most divisive aspect of the treaty. Having fought for an independent Ireland, many republicans were unable to reconcile themselves to Dominion status, and felt morally obliged to reject a settlement that left them within the British Empire and which forced them to swear an oath to the King.
The wider public were more enthusiastic, but no-one celebrated the treaty. People yearned for an end to the suffering and disruption of war, and in this context the terms were seen, especially among more affluent sections of society, as the best that could be expected.
The anti-treatyites, on the other hand, saw the deal as illegitimate. As Liam Mellows complained during the Dáil debates — the revolutionary parliament voted for the treaty by a narrow majority — ‘the delegates had no power to sign away the rights of Ireland and the Irish Republic.’
Remarkably, Northern Ireland drew relatively little attention in the Treaty debates, partly because TDs accepted the Boundary Commission clause in the settlement, which postponed the issue, and partly because, even during the negotiations, ‘Ulster’, as Lord Longford observed, ‘was not the main issue’.
Dominion status was a position enjoyed by other countries, not least Australia. Why was it an anathema to so many on the Irish side, when it provided, as Collins himself said, ‘the freedom to achieve freedom’.
Well, the Dominions, with the exception of South Africa, which was a more complicated case, were British settler nations; they had a cultural affinity with the ‘Mother Country’, and at that time, the risk of a secession from those states was remote.
Ireland’s relationship with the British Empire was, by contrast, far more problematic. Although Home Rulers dominated the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the situation changed irrevocably after the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. Not only were republicans no longer a tiny minority, many remained committed to the 1916 Rebellion’s promise of a republic for all Ireland and vowed to continue the struggle until they had achieved complete separation from Britain.
The distinction between Ireland and Australia, New Zealand and Canada is that these nations embraced displays of loyalty, whereas in Ireland the imperial bond underpinned nationalism and the revolt against the Empire.
It took an armed uprising and a guerrilla war to achieve Dominion status, but it was a compromise that came, as Deirdre McMahon emphasised, ‘by revolution not evolution’.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on a biography of a female politician and writer and hope to reveal more soon!
Gretchen Friemann is a journalist and historian and the author of The Treaty: The Gripping Story of the Negotiations that brought about Irish Independence and led to the Civil War.
