Republicans and imperialists : Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s 9780300030716, 0300030711

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The John Rylands University Library of Manchester

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Republicans and Imperialists Anglo-Irish Relations in the 1930s DEIRDRE McMAHON

Yale University Press New Haven and London 1984

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Copyright © 1984 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Caroline Williamson. Set in Compugraphic Times by Red Lion Setters, Holborn, London. Printed in Hong Kong by Bookbuilders Ltd. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-51121

ISBN 0 300 03071 1

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To my mother and to the memory of my aunt, Carmel Weafer

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Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

1. A New Government 2. The British Reaction 3. A Visit to Dublin 4. The Propaganda War 5. The Financial Conference 6. ‘The Next Move’ 7. Drift 8. An Irish Commonwealth 9. Malcolm MacDonald 10. The Dominions are Consulted 11. The 1938 Negotiations 12. The Negotiations Resume Epilogue Conclusion

4 28

55 72

88 108 136 153 165 202 237 258 285 287

Appendix 1

294

Appendix 2

296

Appendix 3

302

Abbreviations

304

References

305

Bibliography

323

Index

331

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the following institutions for their unfailing co-operation; Archives Department, University College, Dublin; Birmingham University Library; Bodleian Library, Oxford; British Library; British Library of Political and Economic Science; Cambridge University Library; Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge; Institute of Historical Research, University of London; Kent Archives Office; National Archives, Washington; National Library of Ireland; National Library of Scotland; New¬ castle University Library; Public Record Office, London; Public Record Office, Northern Ireland; Rhodes House Library, Oxford; Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park; Royal Commonwealth Society Library, London; Seeley Historical Library, Cambridge; State Paper Office, Dublin; University of London Library. Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office, London, is quoted by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Other copy¬ right material in the Ramsay MacDonald Papers is quoted by permission of the Keeper of the Public Records. Material from the Public Record Office, North¬ ern Ireland, is quoted by permission of the Keeper. Permission to publish extracts from the Department of the Taoiseach S files and cabinet conclusions is acknowledged to the Keeper of the State Papers. I would also like to thank the Master and Fellows of Churchill College; the University of Birmingham; Kent County Council; Lord Harlech; Mrs M. Godfrey and Mr Sean MacBride, for permission to quote from other copyright material. My grateful thanks are also extended to the trustees of the Robert Gardiner Foundation who awarded me a scholarship to Churchill College, Cambridge, and to the trustees of the Smuts Fund and to the British Academy who gave me grants to carry out research in British and American archives. The late Captain Stephen Roskill took a generous interest in the writing of this book and gave me the benefit of his encyclopaedic knowledge and research; Professor Geoffrey Hand advised me on aspects of constitutional law; Horst Dickl gave me much illuminating information about German foreign policy. I am also grateful to Breda Howard and Dr Patrick Buckland for permission to quote from their researches on Northern Ireland. Last, but by no means least, I have enjoyed many stimulating and profitable conversations with Dr John Bowman. I am also deeply grateful to those who ransacked their memories on my

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REPUBLICANS AND IMPERIALISTS

behalf: the late Sir Harry Batterbee; Dr F.H. Boland; Colonel Dan Bryan; Mr Robert Childers; Lord Garner; Mr George Gilmore; Sir Gilmour Jenkins; Sean MacBride; the late Malcolm MacDonald; Mr Sean MacEntee; Dr Maurice Moynihan and Sir Neil Pritchard. I owe an enormous debt to Professor Robin Dudley Edwards, Professor Desmond Williams and Dr Ronan Fanning of University College, Dublin, to Pro¬ fessor David Harkness of the Queen’s University, Belfast, and to Professor Nicholas Mansergh of St John’s College, Cambridge, who guided this book through its various phases of research. Ronan Fanning, Nicholas Mansergh and Dr Roy Foster of Birkbeck College (who also suggested the title) read the manu¬ script and made many valuable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank John Nicoll and Caroline Williamson of Yale University Press for their patient support and advice. The exigencies of research often proved hectic, not to say chaotic, and I would not have succeeded in writing this book without the help and encourage¬ ment of: Charles and Joanna Hawthorne Amick; Celia and Richard Beadle; Tanya and Simon Cocheme; Michael Darvell; Judith Devlin; Donal Dunne; Ruth Dudley Edwards; Roy and Aisling Foster; Matthew Grant; Robert Greskovic; David and Hilary Harkness; Seamus Helferty; Kerry Holland; Kenneth Hurren; Felix Larkin; Vanessa McErlean; Fiona Martin; John Mattock; Bawn and Elaine O’Beirne Ranelagh; Jennifer O’Reilly; Ann and Robert Porter. In America I enjoyed the hospitality of Jan and Charles Amick; Mindy and Marty Cohen; Murray Gibson; Sir William and Lady Hawthorne; Ellen Sung; David Miller and John Taft. Special thanks are due to John and Elizabeth O’Beirne Ranelagh for their unstinting help and kindness over the years, and also to Sean and Rosemarie Mulcahy, generous landlords of Clara Hall. No words can express the debt I owe to my long-suffering family. The dedica¬ tion is a small recompense to the two to whom I owe the most. For one who did so much to set me on the path of research, it came, alas, too late.

Deirdre McMahon Clara

Introduction

In December 1928 Lionel Curtis was advising his friend Winston Churchill about the forthcoming volume of his memoirs, The Aftermath. Looking back at that turbulent decade after 1914, Curtis wrote: ‘The making of the Irish Treaty in 1921 was one of the greatest achievements in the history of the Empire. But the steps by which effect was given to its provisions was an even greater achievement, so great that one is almost tempted to believe in the inter¬ vention of a special providence. One gets the feeling that the curse which bedev¬ illed Anglo-Irish relations for 700 years was deliberately lifted.’1 The creden¬ tials of both men for indulging in such optimism seemed impeccable, for they had been intimately involved in the negotiations which had led to the signing of the 1921 Treaty: Churchill had been one of the signatories and Curtis had been secretary to the British delegation. Four years later Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fail came to power in Ireland and the mutual congratulation of Curtis and Churchill turned suddenly and swiftly to alarm. For ten years the Treaty had been regarded as a magnanimous gesture of Brit¬ ish statesmanship. It had granted long-awaited independence to twenty-six counties of Ireland, now called the Irish Free State, which also became a selfgoverning dominion within the British Commonwealth. The six predominantly unionist counties of North-East Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom, but with their own parliament. The ‘Irish Question’, saturated with decades of bitter party warfare, finally began to drift away from the tides and swells of British politics. In 1932 British ministers could look back on ten years of comparative harmony with the government of W.T. Cosgrave. But even as Curtis was writing to Churchill in 1928 the foundations of the Treaty settlement were beginning to rock, for only the year before the leading opponents of the Treaty settlement, Eamon de Valera and his new Fianna Fail party, had decided to enter the parliamentary arena. It was a decision which was to have moment¬ ous implications not just for the future of the new state, but also for the AngloIrish relationship so laboriously constructed in 1921. Though successive British governments congratulated themselves on the benefits of the 1921 settlement, in Ireland independence, as enshrined in the Treaty, proved incomplete and tragically divisive. Though the Irish delegates had accepted dominion status, it had never been their ultimate goal, and the symbols of that status, among them the oath of allegiance to the King and the appointment of a Governor-General, aroused fierce hostility from the Treaty’s

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REPUBLICANS AND IMPERIALISTS

opponents, while exciting no particular enthusiasm from its supporters either. Though its impact was by no means clear at the time, the partition of Ireland was another potentially destructive force undermining the 1921 settlement. The Treaty, followed so soon by a bloody civil war, was not so much a cause for congratulation in Ireland as a poison seeping through Irish political life. The government of W.T. Cosgrave achieved only a precarious stability. Its achieve¬ ments on the international stage, particularly in the shaping of the Common¬ wealth, were distinguished but fatally lacked public appeal. The reality of inde¬ pendence possessed by the new state was disputed by a sizeable minority of its citizens, and when de Valera re-entered politics in 1927 the fundamental ques¬ tion posed in 1921 surfaced once again: what was the relationship with Britain to be? This book examines the way in which both governments struggled to estab¬ lish a new basis for their relations with one another following de Valera’s acces¬ sion to power. It also examines the conflicting images of that relationship as perceived in Dublin and London after de Valera initiated his assaults on the Treaty. This process began in 1932 with the abolition of the oath of allegiance and the retention of the land annuities. It resulted in a bitter six-year dispute with Britain, which was altogether more complex than first appeared to many observers. The dispute has been called the ‘economic war’, but this is something of a misnomer. The oath and the annuities were but symbols of more funda¬ mental problems in Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s, and both governments were soon asking themselves a number of searching questions. What was the Free State’s constitutional relationship with Britain and the rest of the Com¬ monwealth? What would be the effects of the retaliatory duties imposed by both governments in 1932? How would the British government respond to de Valera’s demands for the return of the ports which had been reserved to Britain uO X

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