The Critical 3pm Meeting of December 5th
Introduction from Chronology
At 3.00pm, an Irish delegation of
Griffith, Collins and Barton meet a British delegation of Llyod George,
Chamberlain, Birkenhead and (for part of the time) Churchill in Downing
St. This was an historical meeting and has had much written about it.
Llyod George presented the Irish
delegation with an ultimatum to either sign the Treaty or negotiations would
come to an end. He said that if they
refused to sign then the delegates would have to take responsibility for the
war that would follow.
More Detail
There are a number of different
accounts of this meeting written by participants. On the British side, there are accounts from
Llyod George, Churchill, Chamberlain and Birkenhead. On the Irish side, there are accounts from
Barton (written at Griffith’s request the following day), Collins and a short
account from Griffith. Barton also gave
an account during the Dáil debates on the Treaty – see Dec-19-21/1.) According to Pakenham “on essentials the various
accounts harmonise remarkedly, and on the only point which has given arise to
serious controversy, whether or not Llyod George threatened Ireland with
immediate war, they display agreeable unanimity.” (Pakenham goes on to say in a
footnote “Chamberlain and Churchill describe the threat of war at some
length. Llyod George does not mention it
directly, but his account hardly makes sense except on the supposition that it
was delivered.”)
Llyod George confronted Griffith and
said that he had agreed to the Ulster clauses in the proposed Treaty and
produced Tom Jones’s memorandum of their meeting on November 12th – see
Nov-12-21/3. (It would seem that Collins and Barton did not know about this
agreement between Llyod George and Griffith.)
Griffith said that “it was not unreasonable for us to require that Craig
should reply before we refused or accepted the proposals”. However, he also said “If you stand by the
Boundary Commission, I stand by you” and continued “I said I would not let you
down on that, and I won’t”.
There was then discussion on the oath,
with the British accepting a slightly revised version which was embodied in the
Treaty. There were also small
concessions to the Irish side on defence and then Llyod George made a major
concession by abandoning free trade and to “agree provisionally that there
should be freedom on both sides to impose any tariffs either liked” subject to
the acceptance of the document as a whole.
(This would have especially appealed to Griffith as the author of Sinn
Féin’s protectionist policies.)
When the topic under discussion
returned to Ulster, Griffith made, what Fanning has described as, a monumental
mistake. He agreed that he personally
would sign the Treaty whether Craig accepted or not. Assured of Griffith’s signature, Llyod George
put an ultimatum to the Irish delegation that either they signed the Treaty
that day by 10pm and promised to recommend the Treaty to the Dáil or there
would be no agreement. He said that it was now a matter of peace or war. He also said that any delegate who refused to
sign was taking responsibility for the war - an “immediate and terrible war”
that would follow “within three days” unless the agreement was signed by all of
the Irish delegates.
This ultimatum was given in the form of
two letters he would send to Craig. The first was a covering letter to go with
the Treaty saying that the Irish delegates had signed the Treaty and were
recommending its acceptance to Dáil Éireann; the
second said that the negotiations had collapsed. Llyod George continued that “If I send this [second]
letter it is war, and war within three days”.
In the letter saying that the Irish
delegation were recommending the Treaty, Llyod George confirmed Northern
Ireland’s right to opt out but also said that the price of such a decision
would be that Northern Ireland had to “share in the rights and obligations of
Great Britain”.
There was one last concession – the
British agreed to reduce the time in which Northern Ireland would opt in or opt
out of the Irish Free State from twelve months to one month.
The Irish delegation said that they
needed time to discuss this ultimatum and they retired to Hans Place.