I Signed My Death Warrant (14 page)

That weekend Collins, Barton, Duggan and Childers returned to Dublin. Childers made another futile effort to persuade de Valera to intervene to stop the sub-conference set up. The president again refused, as he has rejected the entreaties from Gavan Duffy earlier. Barton also tried to persuade him.

‘I pressed de Valera to return with us to London on the score that it would be impossible for us to get the maximum terms without his being present and that it was unfair to expect us to get the best terms without his assistance,' Barton noted. ‘He was, however, unwilling to move from his decision.

‘If negotiations should break down when he was with us, that would be the end, but, if they broke down without him, there was always a last recourse to him.' Barton had accepted that argument initially but thought it should have been reversed as the conference went on.

Thus de Valera had already turned down private requests from Collins, Gavan Duffy, Childers and Barton to return with them to London. He was obviously content with the way things were going, and he basically got the cabinet to endorse this.

While Collins, Barton, Duggan and Childers were in Dublin, Griffith met Lloyd George at the home of Sir Philip Sassoon in Park Lane on the night of 12 November. The prime minister read him the letter he had written to Craig two days earlier. In it he explained that Northern Ireland had a choice of joining with the rest of Ireland as a dominion, with all the existing safeguards provided for the local autonomy and such other safeguards that might be agreed, or remaining within the United Kingdom subject to contributing to the country's war debt and the imposition of a customs barrier with the rest of Ireland. He invited Craig and his ministers to London to discuss the extra safeguards, but Craig replied that the people of Ulster had accepted the partition parliament as the ‘supreme sacrifice in the interest of peace', and they would not consider or discuss the matter ‘unless His Majesty's Ministers consent to the withdrawal of the proposal for an All-Ireland Parliament.' If the rest of the island were being offered dominion status, however, he suggested than Northern Ireland should be accorded the same rights.

Having read his letter to Craig, and the latter's reply, Lloyd George explained that he was sending a further letter ‘refusing their dominion proposal, but offering to create an all-Ireland Parliament, Ulster to have the right to vote itself out within twelve months; but if it did, a Boundary Commission to be set up to delimit the area, and the part that remained after the Commission had acted to be subject to equal burdens with England.'

‘Lloyd George intimated that this would be their last word to Ulster,' Griffith reported. ‘If Ulster refused, as he believed she would, he would fight, summon Parliament, appeal to it against Ulster, dissolve, or pass an Act establishing the all-Ireland Parliament.'

‘I told him it was his proposal, not ours,' Griffith added. ‘He agreed, but he said that when he was fighting next Thursday with the Diehards and “Ulster” in front, they were lost if we cut the ground away behind them by repudiating the proposal.

‘I said we would not do that, if he meant that he thought we would come out in public decrying it. It was his own proposal. If the Ulstermen accept it, we would have to discuss with him in the privacy of the conference. I could not guarantee acceptance, as, of course, my colleagues knew nothing of it yet. But I would guarantee that while he was fighting the “Ulster” crowd we would not help them by repudiating him.

‘This satisfied him. They are to send this letter on Monday. Birkenhead, Chamberlain, and Derby will go to the Liverpool unionist conference and if the Ulstermen refuse, start it on Ulster. Until after that there is not likely to be much de­velopment. Before I left I told him that as I was helping him over the “Ulster” difficulty, he should help us over the “Crown and Empire,” when they arose.'

To make sure there was no confusion on the point, Lloyd George had Jones outline the Boundary Commission idea in a memorandum. When this was shown to Griffith at the Grosvenor Hotel on the Monday, he confirmed that it was what he had agreed.

Griffith had already reported fully on his private meeting with Lloyd George the previous day. In fact, it was his longest report of the whole conference, but he did not subsequently mention that he nonchalantly approved the memorandum shown to him by Jones. It only confirmed what he had already reported, so he possibly attached no significance to the document. He never even mentioned it to Collins, who had not yet returned from Dublin. In the light of subsequent events, it would seem that efforts to ensure that Griffith would not repudiate the whole thing were necessary, because Barton and Gavan Duffy wanted Griffith to denounced the prime minister's letter of 10 November to Craig.

‘A rupture very nearly resulted,' according to Barton. They argued that that the letter ‘should immediately be repudiated', because Lloyd George suggested that a settlement with the Irish delegation was attainable ‘based upon the proposals' of 20 July. Moreover, he added that ‘Ireland would give her allegiance to the Throne, and would take her place in the partnership of Free States comprised in the British Empire.'

Barton and Gavan Duffy objected strongly to Griffith's tactics. ‘He was, as we considered, permitting the English to delude the Ulster men with the idea that there was a possibility of our agreeing to a settlement, which brought Ireland within the Empire, whilst he was really well aware that no such settlement was possible,' Barton wrote. ‘I even went so far as to tell AG that his tactics were “dirty tactics” and must lead to failure. We were however always in a minority.'

‘Whilst the utmost co-operation should exist between Dublin and London the plenipotentiaries should have a perfectly free hand but should follow original instruction re important decisions,' de Valera told the cabinet on 13 November. After a lengthy discussion on the situation, he ‘gave as his opinion that it would be advisable to come to concrete proposals as soon as possible.' He thought the delegation should present alter­native proposals in the form of a draft treaty. If this looked like leading to the break up of the conference, he suggested that ‘Ulster would be the best question on which to break.'

Collins and Barton were present at that meeting, as were Duggan and Childers, who had been invited to sit in as observers. During the meeting Brugha asked who was responsible for bringing one of the defence advisers to London. This was part of his needling of Collins. Nobody had to ask that question, as everybody knew that Collins was responsible. Colm Ó Murchada, the acting cabinet secretary in the absence of Diarmuid O'He­garty in London, noted that de Valera ‘expressed the opinion that all business should be transacted regularly thro[ugh] responsible ministers.' This was a clear rebuke for Collins.

When questioned by Brugha at one point during the meeting, Collins made a firm statement ‘that there could be no settlement on the lines of Dominion Home Rule'. Barton found this reassuring.

Next day Childers called on de Valera at the Mansion House, but he did not get much chance to speak to him privately as Desmond Fitzgerald was present. Childers noted that he just got ‘a bare five minutes alone with the President'. He complained about the sub-conference set up and the dissension within the delegation, but de Valera's refused to act. If he had been interested in doing anything, he would obviously have made more time for Childers. As a result those in London felt powerless to stop Griffith. ‘We could do nothing except try our best to induce our colleagues to run a straight course and adopt a stronger attitude,' Barton added.

Although de Valera was refusing to interfere with was happening in London, Collins was uneasy because he did not know exactly what was happening in Dublin. While he was away de Valera and Brugha were trying to reorganise the IRA to undermine his influence. At the time of the Truce the IRA was only about 3,000 strong, according to chief of staff Richard Mulcahy, but since then there had been a massive influx of what some derisively called Trucileers – the fair weather volunteers who joined after the fighting had ceased. As a result IRA numbers swelled to 72,363 by the beginning of November. Efforts were still being made to impose Stack as deputy chief of staff to undermine the stranglehold that Collins had with the general headquarters staff.

‘Dublin is the real problem,' Collins wrote on 15 November. ‘They know what we are doing, but I don't know exactly the state of their activities.'

Collins got together that day in Dublin with Mark Sturgis, an assistant under-secretary of state for Ireland. ‘Meeting him for the first time there is certainly nothing impressive about him,' Sturgis noted. ‘He is certainly as Macready says much too quick to make jokes of everything and often bad ones.' But in the course of their meeting, which lasted over two hours, Sturgis changed his opinion, because the Big Fellow's style of negotiating seemed so open.

‘Collins certainly gave it to me as his own opinion that there was an element of bluff in the Ulster position and that a modus vivendi would be found. He was equally frank when he spoke of the stupid things sections of his people had done and were quite capable of doing now unless firmly handled, and it was at that stage that my opinion of him as a big force began to improve. I certainly thought more of him at the end of the interview than the beginning. He was quick to see and to admit the growing difficulties of a jerry built truce and made no sort of attempt to score or make points against me.'

It was ironic that Collins was actually more open with the enemy than with the dissident element within the delegation. The latter were really stuck in the middle, being ignored by the cabinet in Dublin and their colleagues in London. Next day in London Childers tried to get the delegation to discuss a draft treaty in line with de Valera's suggestion. ‘We point out we don't know enough of what is going on and ask for a delegates meeting tonight,' Childers noted in his diary. Griffith seemed resentful, he refused to discuss it that night and he reminded Barton about his complaint about ‘dirty politics'. Barton replied that it was their fault, as they were not being told enough.

Barton's uneasiness was understandable. While Griffith was not responsible for what Lloyd George wrote to Craig, he effectively accepted it by not objecting when he was shown the letter. By not clarifying the situation, at least, he was to an extent endorsing Lloyd George's assertion that the Irish delegation would accept allegiance to the crown and membership of the British empire. Unable to interest the delegation in drawing up proposals in the form of a draft treaty, Childers began drafting one himself, while Collins exhibited his indifference by sitting for a portrait.

Although Griffith seemed to think that Lloyd George was about to confront Craig with the Boundary Commission proposal, it was never likely that he would play that card before the Unionist Party Conference, which was due to begin in Liverpool on 17 November. Such a threat would likely incite the already volatile diehard group. Even though Colonel John Gretton's censure motion was routed in the House of Commons at the end of October, he went ahead and proposed that the party conference call on the unionists to withdraw their support from the coalition.

Birkenhead was so worried about the challenge that he had a private meeting with Sir Archibald Salvidge, whom Lloyd George considered ‘the nearest to a Tammany boss we have in this country.' Salvidge was reputed to be wavering and his support was considered crucial. Birkhenhead urged him to support the coalition actively as there was a real chance of peace. He said that Collins and Churchill had become ‘bosom friends', but this conversation should be viewed within the context in which took place.

He exaggerated Churchill's role in suggesting that Winston was winning over Collins. Conservatives despised Churchill as a political adventurer. The son of a former Conservative leader, he had deserted the Tories to join the Liberals. That he would get on with Collins might not surprise a unionist, but it would have been something altogether different if Birkenhead admitted that he himself was getting on so well with Collins. This might have alarmed Salvidge to the possibility that it was Collins who was winning over Birkenhead and not the other way around. Unionists were already deeply suspicious of Lloyd George and Churchill, so news that Birkenhead might be going soft on Irish nationalists would have further fuelled their uneasiness.

Birkenhead was the member of the delegation with whom Collins got on best. ‘I prefer Birkenhead to anyone else,' Collins wrote during the conference. ‘He understands and has real in­sight into our problems – the Dublin one as much as any other.'

It was a strange relationship, because Collins generally disliked lawyers. He felt that lawyers like Gavan Duffy were so enamoured with the sound of their own voices that they talked too much and over elaborated just to hear themselves. Collins did not have the patience to listen to that kind of thing, with the result that he was pleasantly surprised to find that Birkenhead was a very different type of person.

Birkenhead had been one of Sir Edward Carson's staunchest backers in the fight against Home Rule and had led the prosecution team at the trial of Sir Roger Casement in 1916. The Casement case came up in conversation, and Birkenhead arranged for Collins and Duggan to see the notorious ‘black diaries', in which Casement recorded details of some of his homosexual activities. When a public clamour was raised to save him from the gallows following his trial, the British leaked extracts of the diaries to discredit Casement and stop the humanitarian campaign on his behalf. Nationalists subsequently accused the British of forging the diaries, but Collins had no doubts about their authenticity after he saw them.

At the Liverpool conference Gretton proposed a resolution, ‘That, in the opinion of this Conference, some features of the Coalition policy are unworthy of unionist support.' The spectre of Bonar Law's return seem to pervade the debate, while the spirit of Lloyd George seemed to haunt it. Bonar Law had written a letter to the editor of
The Scotsman
the previous weekend emphasising that Ulster was as much a part of Britain as Scotland and he would resist any attempt by the British government to coerce the area.

Lloyd George believed what was going on in Liverpool was really a play for the leadership by Bonar Law, but the prime minister was confident of winning because he thought Bonar Law lacked the political courage necessary to win. He had been afraid to move for it in 1916 when he could have had it, and even now he decided to attend a war commemoration instead of the Liverpool meeting. ‘If you are going to lead a revolt you must go all out for it,' Lloyd George said.

The conference cheered the mere mention of Bonar Law and some of the government ministers, but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm the one and only time that Lloyd George's name was mentioned. Salvidge came out strongly in favour of the coalition by proposing an amendment:

That the Conference expresses its earnest hope that consistently with the supremacy of the Crown, the security of the Empire, and the pledges given to Ulster, and the safeguards of the interests of the minority in the South of Ireland, a solution of the Irish difficulties may be found in the Conference now in progress, which will bring peace to Great Britain and Ireland, and strength to the Empire.

Worthington-Evans was among those who spoke strongly in favour of the amendment, giving an assurance that there would not be any settlement that conflicted with it. ‘I will not agree to any settlement of the Irish question which does not preserve the supremacy of the Crown,' he told the conference. ‘I will not agree to any settlement which does not keep Ireland within the Empire. I will not agree to any settlement which does not leave the British Navy the sole guardian of the shore and the sea of Great Britain and Ireland and I will not agree to any settlement which does not make Ireland pay a fair share of the debt and of the pensions. Nor will I agree to any settlement which requires the coercion of Ulster to assent to it.'

The overwhelming majority at the unionist conference carried Salvidge's amendment, much to the delight of Lloyd George, but Tom Jones noted that it quickly became apparent, even though the diehards had again been routed, that the result ‘was far from being a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister'.

The Big Fellow had begun sitting for a portrait by the Irish painter Sir John Lavery. This led to speculation that he had an affair with the painter's wife, Lady Hazel Lavery, and that she somehow played a significant role in the negotiations. Hazel was a society flirt, a strikingly good-looking American woman who was much younger than her husband, but she was ten years older than Collins. She had become enchanted with the Irish cause some years earlier and had sought a meeting with Collins by persuading her husband to ask him to sit for a portrait.

Hazel passed on the invitation through Michael's sister Hannie, but it was not until 16 November that Collins went to Lavery's studio at Cromwell Place. ‘He walked into my studio, a tall young Hercules with a pasty face, sparkling eyes and a fascinating smile,' Lavery wrote. ‘I helped him off with a heavy coat to which he clung.'

‘There is a gun in the pocket,' Collins said excusing himself casually.

Lavery noted that Collins sat uneasily, always facing the door. That night Michael described the sitting in a letter to Kitty Kiernan. It was ‘absolute torture,' he wrote, ‘as I was expected to sit still, and this, as you know, is a thing I cannot do.'

Hazel took a fancy to Collins and figuratively threw herself at him. It is not unreasonable to assume that, notwithstanding his denials, the virile thirty-one-year-old availed of her sexual favours, but this does not mean she influenced his views on the negotiations.

History is replete with peripheral figures who believed that they had a vital input in critical events in which their in­volvement was actually little more than token. Hazel's biographer Sinéad McCoole wrote that ‘the Lavery's friends believed Hazel played a central diplomatic role during the Treaty negotiations, particularly as an influence on Collins', but Collins had already indicated the kind of settlement he was seeking and the most her influence could have done was merely reinforce his convictions.

In the video,
The Shadow of Béal na Blath
, Colm Connolly contended that Hazel Lavery played a vital role in getting Churchill and Collins together, but this is absurd because Collins and Churchill only attended three sub-conference meetings together. The first of those, at Churchill's home, was almost three weeks before Michael even met Hazel Lavery, and the other two were on the final day of the negotiations.

Sinéad McCoole contended that ‘Collins was a welcome guest at the Laverys' and would often stay late into the night reading books from their shelves.' But there were in fact only eighteen nights from the time he first went to Cromwell place and the signing of the Treaty and Collins spent each of the three weekends in Dublin and at least ten night there or travelling to and from London. It seems much more likely therefore that while this friendship began towards the end of the negotiations, the relationship could have developed afterwards. If those Cromwell Place dinner parties that McCoole believed Collins attended actually took place, they were probably during the visits that Collins made to London after the signing of the Treaty.

Following the death of Collins great efforts were made to protect his reputation. It would not have done to portray such an iconic figure as a womaniser and even an adulterer. His first biographer Piaras Beaslaí, who knew him during his immigrant days in London, stated that Collins showed little interest in the opposite sex. ‘The society of girls had apparently no attraction for him,' Beaslaí wrote. ‘He preferred the company of young men, and never paid any attention to the girls belonging to the Branch, not even to the sisters and friends of his male companions.' He also added, ‘the usual philanderings and flirtations of young men of his age had little interest or attraction for him.' Instead he was deeply involved in Gaelic Football and was a very active member of the Geraldines Club in London, as well as being active in the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, which were exclusively male organisations.