The Treaty one hundred years on

It was not a negotiation between equals.

On one side of the table were the representatives of the first genuinely transglobal imperium, which ruled over hundreds of millions of colonial subjects.

Facing them was a young fella from West Cork who had fashioned a new form of warfare on their doorstep.

In the early hours of December 6^th  1921, the Irish delegation believed British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he threatened “immediate and terrible war” if they did not sign the document in front of them.

He had produced two envelopes. He claimed that one contained a letter confirming that the Irish had signed a Treaty. The other, he said, was a letter confirming talks were over.

Moreover, he stated that one of them would leave London by 10 pm that night.

The crucial point was that the Irish side believed he was serious about waging an all-out war on the Irish civilian population.

A century on this island is still living with the outworking of that pressurised compliance.

The reality was that the British military had told His Majesty’s Government in the summer of 1921 that finally defeating the IRA would be a costly venture.

Even at that, it was most likely to end failure.

All that Lloyd George could hope for was that the prospect of a Cromwellian approach would make the Irish plenipotentiaries blink.

They did.

Winston Churchill famously described how Collins reacted to this ultimatum.

“Michael Collins rose looking as though he were going to shoot someone, preferably himself. In all my life, I have never seen so much pain and suffering in restraint”.

At that point, the man who had fought in the GPO and had re-imagined a new campaign when he was interned in Frongoch had less than a year to live.

It is worth noting that the horror that was the Irish Civil War only properly got underway after his death at Béal na Bláth in his native county.

To this day, the decision of Eamonn De Valera to stay at home in Ireland and not take part in the negotiations has perplexed historians.

By not being at the negotiations, he could denounce it as a sell-out of the Republic.

Collins stated that what had been achieved was “the freedom to achieve freedom”.

Ironically the party formed by Éamon de Valera did exactly that throughout the 1930s and the 40s and essentially unpicked the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The point of contention in the negotiating room and back home in Ireland was the relationship with the new state and the British Emp[ire.

Indeed, during the talks, the Irish delegation used the term “commonwealth of nations” instead of the word “empire”.

They got their way, and the former was put into the Treaty.

The British side stated that the new polity would have the same status within the Empire as South Africa. However, the comparison with Canada was favoured by Collins and his colleagues.

The terms used for these countries, which included  Australia and New Zealand, were “the white dominions”.

Anyone who doesn’t think that racism was not woven into the DNA of the British Empire really has some catching up to do.

As part of the Treaty negotiations, the Brits had some, in their eyes, legitimate concerns about the strategic defence of these islands.

Consequently, they wanted continued naval access to what became known as the “Treaty Ports”.

Interestingly there was four of them, including Belfast.

The three within the new state’s territory were Berehaven, Spike Island and, just down the road from me here, Lough Swilly.

However, it wasn’t set in stone.

The government led by Éamon de Valera negotiated their handover in 1938, which rather proved the point made by Mick Collins in 1921.

In the century since the signing of the Treaty, the British state has lost power and influence on the global stage as well as their Empire.

I believe that the awareness of that was particularly important for the generation that remembered the humiliation of the Suez Crisis in 1956.

Indeed, I think that it was one of the reasons for the vote in 2016.

Your humble correspondent has been rather amused to see this period in the history of these islands recently referenced by the English nationalists of Brexit.

They seek to compare their current difficulties with the EU apropos the Withdraw Agreement with what Mick Collins and Arthur Griffiths faced a century ago.

Of course, at no point in the negotiations did Michel Barnier threaten them with military action targeting their civilian population!

However, when Prime Minister Theresa May wanted Brussels to sign off on Phase One of the Withdrawal Agreement talks, she was told Dublin would have the final say on that.

Dear reader, for the first time in the history of these islands, a polity on this part of the archipelago held sway over Britain.

Something about “Gallant allies in Europe” comes to mind.

That long journey started in London one hundred years ago today.