Meeting
of Griffith, Barton and Gavan Duffy with Llyod
George, Chamberlain, Birkenhead and Horne
Introduction from Chronology
Barton, Gavan Duffy and Childers, back in London, work on amendments to
the Proposed Articles of Association. Griffith, Collins and Duggan were
not keen on making amendments but, after some discussion, they did agree to
some changes. A key change was changing the word Association to
Associated States in the Oath as, without this (they said), the Oath could be
interpreted as the accepting the King as head of the Irish state. The
amendments are given as Appendix 20 in Macardle
(1999).
They Irish side made no suggested changes to the clauses on Ulster (as
the Irish delegates had no specific instructions to do so). Therefore, when
they met later, the British assumed that, since there were no suggested
changes, the Irish side were satisfied with these clauses.
After the amendments were made, Collins and Duggan refused to go to
Downing St so Griffith, Barton and Gavan Duffy went to push them on the
British. This was to turn into a dramatic meeting.
More Detail
Griffith, Barton and Gavan Duffy meet with Llyod George, Chamberlain,
Birkenhead and Horne at 5.00pm. The British side read the amendments and
rejected them. Griffith tried to bring out Craig’s refusal of an
All-Ireland Parliament as the dominant factor but the British said that their
proposals stood with or without Craig’s approval.
When Gavan Duffy came to speak he said “our
difficulty is to come inside the Empire, looking to all that has happened in
the past …”. One of the British negotiators said “in that case, it is
war”. With that the British delegation
jumped to their feet and said the conference was at an end. They said
they would send word to Craig that the negotiations had broken down.
Kenny says that “He [Gavan Duffy] had given them their chance to break
[on Crown and Empire rather than Ulster]” (Kenny (2021), pg
94).
Writing later to de Valera about this meeting, Griffith said “They [the
British] asked what was the difficulty about going in like Canada in the
Empire? Gavan Duffy said that we should be closely associated with them as the
Dominion [such as Canada] in the large matters, and more so in the matter of
defence but our difficulty is coming within the Empire. They jumped at this and
the conversation came to a close, we undertaking to send in a formal rejection
tomorrow. They would, they said, inform
Craig tomorrow that the negotiations were broken down. We then parted.” (Kenny
(2021), pg 92).
However, later that night Thomas Jones told Collins that Llyod George
wished to see him in the morning. (However, Fanning says that it was Griffith
who wanted Collins to see Llyod George but he told Collins that Llyod George
wanted to see him. Fanning has a lot of detail on what happened this
night. See also Kenny (2021), pgs 95-96)
Llyod George had learned of who
was on each side in the Irish cabinet (and presumably that there was a 4 to 3
majority for signing the Treaty).