Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race by Nelson Bruce;

Author:Nelson, Bruce;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

reinforced by the destruction of farms, the devastation of crops, and the formation of vast concentration camps . . . apparently succeeded, [but] actually failed. For South Africa, now publicly acknowledged by the British Government to have “absolute freedom to secede from the Empire[,]” is, in all but abstract theory, as free as air. To learn wisdom from these military failures is my last word to my English readers. You cannot govern Ireland. The Irish people can, and the island, I beg you to remember[,] is theirs not yours.76

Some Irish nationalists—notably, Arthur Griffith—were uncomfortable that an “Englishman” had become so central a spokesman for the Irish Republic. But others, including Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, respected Childers’s skills and admired his effectiveness. In May 1921 his credentials as an Irishman received a major boost when he was elected to the Dáil by the same West Wicklow constituents who earlier had chosen the imprisoned Robert Barton to represent them.77

In July 1921, soon after the beginning of the military truce that Smuts had helped to broker, British prime minister David Lloyd George offered Ireland dominion status as an integral part of a proposed peace settlement. The offer came with an insistence on the indefinite partition of Ireland; and even apart from partition, it was so hedged with qualifications, so obviously structured to safeguard Britain’s geopolitical interests, that de Valera declared it driven by a “principle of sheer militarism” that could portend only an “end to liberty.” Under such conditions, he asked, “can any small nation claim a right to a separate sovereign existence”?78

Nonetheless, face-to-face negotiations were a necessity, and at de Valera’s insistence, Childers was named chief secretary of the Irish delegation that included Collins, Griffith, his cousin Robert Barton, E. J. Duggan, and George Gavan Duffy. During this time he drew even closer to “The President” and played an important role in shaping his alternative perspective on Ireland’s constitutional relationship to the British Empire, known then, and since, as External Association. In parrying Lloyd George’s offer of dominion status, de Valera and the Irish delegates proposed that Great Britain and the Dominions recognize Ireland as a “sovereign independent state.” In return, Ireland would become an “External Associate” of the British Empire-Commonwealth. In that case, Ireland would not have been a Dominion; it would not have been “within the Empire”; and “there would have been no allegiance to the Crown.” In the face of British refusal to countenance this proposal, the Irish delegation softened its position, allowing that Ireland would agree “to be associated with the British Commonwealth on all matters of common concern” and would agree also “to recognise the Crown as head of that association.” But the British stood firm, insisting on dominion status and a modified oath of allegiance to the Crown; the Irish delegates became increasingly divided, with Collins and Griffith advocating compromise and Childers taking the lead in resisting Britain’s demands. In the process, Lloyd George came to the conclusion that even as a nonvoting member

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