4th plenary session
Introduction from Chronology
This session took place in the British PM’s office in Downing St, London starting at 11.00am.
The discussions centred mostly on ‘Ulster’ - a boundary commission and
local opts-out were discussed. Griffith
was playing for time as he did not yet have de Valera’s proposal on Northern
Ireland (see Oct-13-21/1).
More Detail
Griffith plays for time by giving an extended critique of the
“unnaturalness of partition”. He gives
statistics on the nationalist population of NI (about one-third). He also gives examples of jerrymandering
which took place to maximise the unionist representation in the NI Parliament. He says that sectarianism was being used to
divert the average Ulsterman from the bread and butter issues that dominate
politics elsewhere. He claims that if
the artificial religious divide was absent then Ireland’s politics would
develop along the same lines as any other modern European state.
Llyod George gives an extended, and typically, slippery reply (which is
given in full in Fanning). In it Llyod
George said to the Irish that “You had to ask the British to use force to put
Ulster out of one combination in which she had been for generations into
another combination which she professed to abhor and did abhor … We could not
do it. If we tried, the instrument would have broken in our hands.” He went on
to say, however “But we promise you, to stand aside and any efforts to induce
Ulster to unite with the rest of Ireland will have our benevolent
neutrality”. See below Comment on Llyod
George’s stance during the negotiaitons.
Griffith replied quoting de Valera’s letter to Llyod George of August 10th – see Aug-10-21/1.
The conference ended with Chamberlain pointing out the political risks the conference entailed for the British delegates. In a letter to de Valera, Griffith did acknowledge that, while they did exaggerate them, these risks were real because of the ‘Morning Post’ party (i.e. the Die-Hards within the British Conservative Party who held extreme imperialistic views).
Griffith wrote to de Valera later in the day saying that the
British were “remarkably ignorant of the facts – this is not play-acting though
they tried this also. Their knowledge geographically and statistically of
the province is very poor.” Pakenham also states that “It was pleasant for the
Irish to find their opponents so thoroughly disliking Partition, so obviously anxious
to collaborate in bringing it to an end”.
Pakenham goes on to quote from Griffith’s letter of this day to de
Valera saying “They are I think willing to go any distance short of using force
against Ulster. They want to save face” (Pakenham (1967), pg 131). However, Griffith was mistaken. The rest of
the negotiations were to show that the British were not willing to go any
distance to put pressure on Craig to bring partition to an end.
On same day, de Valera wrote to Griffith with his proposal on Ulster.
Basically, it put forward an opt-out based on existing constituencies to
Northern Ireland Parliament but with the over-riding powers reserved to
Westminster in the Government of Ireland Act being transferred to Dublin.
Safeguards for the remaining part of NI to be arrived by agreement with the
South. Full text of clause in this proposal regarding government of ‘North-East
Ulster’ given in pages 543-544 of Macardle.
Fanning says the provisions of de Valera’s ‘Ulster clause’ were tortuous
(Fanning (2013), pg 282). This is a
strange statement for Fanning to make as any neutral reading of his proposals
(as given in Macardle) would suggest that they were a good opening gambit for
further discussion on ‘Ulster’ by the negotiators.
However, more importantly, as Pakenham points out, de Valera’s proposals
“threw no light on the manner in which the terms should be put up to Ulster, or
by what declaration of British policy they should be accompanied; nor on what
steps should be taken in the last resort if Ulster rejected the terms”
(Pakenham (1967), pg 132).
Comment on Llyod George’s Strategy during the Negotiaitons
There are a number of problems with Llyod George’s arguments on ‘Ulster’
as they were stated above.
One, the British state had tried to prepare to use force after the Unionists had armed themselves in 1914 and the instrument had broken in their hands in the form of a mutiny by the British army in the Curragh. In other words, Llyod George was saying that the British Cabinet’s failure to get the army (nominally under its control!) to obey its commands was now somehow a problem for Irish nationalists and not a very serious undermining of British Government’s authority.
Two, throughout his lengthy reply, Llyod George kept referring to Ulster rather than the six counties of Northern Ireland (as set up in Llyod George’s own Government of Ireland Bill). Of course, Llyod George knew that the British case on Fermanagh and Tyrone was very weak – see Sep-07-21/1 - and was therefore obscuring the issue by conflating Ulster and the six counties. As will be seen, at the 5th Plenary session on October 17th, the Irish delegation were arguing that, if nationalist Ireland could not come to an agreement with the Unionists, the six counties must be allowed to decide on its future by local option. As Curran noted, none of the Irish delegates insisted on the hard-core Unionist areas being brought into the Irish state against their will.
Three, perhaps most importantly, Llyod George was acting as if his government had nothing to do with the creation of Northern Ireland. His words seemed to suggest that Northern Ireland, with a parliament of its own in Belfast, in the six north-eastern counties had emerged Venus-like as a fully grown political entity. However, as has been seen in this chronology on a number of occasions (see, for example, Nov-11-19/1, Dec-22-19/1, Feb-24-20/1, Mar-10-20/3) the fact that the parliament in Belfast was given control of six counties was because the British cabinet acquiesced (capitulated?) to Unionist demands despite knowing that two of the six counties had nationalist majorities and that substantial parts of three of the other four counties (Derry City, south Armagh and parts of south Down) also had nationalist majorities.
Fanning goes on to make the following strange statement “The Irish
delegates might have discounted Llyod George’s impassioned defence of his
Ulster policy …. If they did, they were wrong.
Although political expediency dovetailed with intellectual conviction,
Llyod George meant every word he said”. (Fanning (2013), pg 281). He may have very well meant every word he
said but, not for the last time in the negotiations, he was also being
intellectually dishonest.
Fanning gives a better insight into Llyod George’s thinking when he quotes him as saying to Griffith at this meeting “The politician who thinks that he can deal out abstract justice without reference to forces around him cannot govern”. Fanning goes on to quote Beatrice Webb who wrote in her diary on December 7th 1921 “The amazing skill with which Llyod George has carried through the negotiations with his own Cabinet and with Sinn Féin has revolutionised the situation. … No other leader could have whipped the Tories to heel and compelled them to recognise the inevitability of Irish independence”. Furthermore, he quotes Roy Hattersley as saying that Llyod George had set about the task of finding an Irish settlement “uninhibited by either prejudice or principle. He was neither a Unionist or a Home Ruler. All he wanted was a deal – any deal which, at least for a time, removed Ireland from the [British] political agenda. He had succeeded … where Pitt, Peel and Gladstone had failed. They had struggled to achieve what they thought was right. He had achieved what he judged to be possible.” Fanning concludes, in his 2013 book, by saying “David Llyod George solved the Irish question in the form in which it had bedevilled British politics since 1886”. In other words, it was Llyod George’s strategy to get the Irish question out of British politics “uninhibited by … principle”. In purely pragmatic terms, he succeeded – for almost fifty years.
However, two comments may be made on Llyod George strategy in the
negotiations. Firstly, he may not have
been racially prejudiced against the nationalist Irish (like current and former
members of his cabinet such as Long, Law, Balfour, Churchill and Birkenhead),
but he was also an imperialist and anti-democratic. (Llyod George is sometimes referred as a
liberal imperialist but the term liberal imperialist is an oxymoron – see
(Satia (2020).) Llyod George insisted
that Ireland (even the south) remain within the Empire and refused to give the
Irish people the democratic right to decide their own form of government. He even threatened war on the Irish people if
they did not accept his demands. Secondly, not acting on ‘abstract’ principles
of justice often has deadly consequences.
An unjust agreement might remove issues from the political agenda for
‘at least some time’ but the injustices implicit in such an agreement often
come back to the surface. More
generally, trying to achieve just resolutions to political problems is what
statesmen do while insisting on forcing unjust agreements on weaker countries
is what imperialist politicians do.