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—Mao Zedong 2 страница
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Whereas the Proclamation of an Irish Republic, Easter 1916, and the supreme courage and glorious sacrifices of the men who gave their lives to maintain it, have united the people of Ireland under the flag of the Irish Republic, be it
Resolved that we, the delegated representatives of the Irish People, in convention assembled, hereby declare the following to be the Constitution of Sinn Fé in.
The name of the organisation shall be Sinn Fé in.
Sinn Fé in aims at securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic. Having achieved that status, the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of government;
This object shall be attained through the Sinn Fé in Organisation which shall, in the name of the Irish People:
Deny the right and oppose the will of the British Parliament and British Crown or any other foreign government to legislate for Ireland;
Make use of any and every means available to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection by military force or otherwise. 33
De Valera devised the following formula to satisfy the various views at the
Ard-Fheis: ‘Sinn Fé in aims at securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic. Having achieved that status the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of government. ’ He subsequently closed the Ard-Fheis by declaring, ‘We are not doctrinaire Republicans’. 34
In October 1917 another meeting was held in Gaelic League Headquarters in Rutland Square (now Parnell Square) to establish a National Executive of Ó glaigh na hÉ ireann (Volunteers/IRA). It was decided to have the meeting at the same time as the Sinn Fé in Ard-Fheis, which met on 25 October. Among the leaders present were Brugha, Collins, de Valera, Diarmuid Lynch, 35 Richard Mulcahy, Diarmuid O’Hegarty and Michael Staines. 36 The IRB was well represented with Collins, Lynch, O’Hegarty and Seá n Ó Muirthuile. 37
Dr Risteard Mulcahy gave four reasons for the success of theVolunteer Convention:
• The unity of spirit and purpose, which developed amongst the prisoners at Frongoch and the other British prisons, and the great boost their return and the reception they received gave to the former prisoners.
• Some of those left behind in Ireland stimulated a revival of interest in the IRB with the object of its reorganisation.
• Ó Muirthuile and O’Hegarty acquainted Brugha with their plans, and he encouraged them to make all possible contact with the Volunteers with the object of reorganisation.
• Thomas Ashe’s death in September and funeral played an important part in quickening the reorganisation. 38
The Volunteer Convention provided a formal control structure and leadership of the army through the election of É amon deValera as president and a National Executive with representatives from the four provinces. In addition, the fact that de Valera was elected as president of both Sinn Fé in and theVolunteers ended theVolunteers’ apolitical role. Although there were disagreements (and some personal animosity between the members of the executives of Sinn Fé in and the Volunteers continued throughout the War of Independence), for the most part these conventions ended the conflict
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between the two organisations. Although the National Executive functioned in name at least through to 1920, real power over the army had passed by March 1918 to the GHQ Staff and then to the Ministry for Defence when Dá il É ireann was proclaimed in January 1919. Nevertheless, Collins and Mulcahy remained in effective command of the army as well as intelligence throughout the war. Finally, the Volunteer Convention ended John Redmond’s National Volunteers.
It must be said that it was greatly due to de Valera that Sinn Fé in and the Volunteers were reconciled. After these conventions, there was a clear and persuasive political objective.
É amon de Valera brought, and only É amon de Valera could have brought, Sinn Fé in and the Volunteers together, giving resurgent Ireland a single forceful organisation, the institution and the consensus Griffith had looked forward to. 39
In April 1918 Westminster passed a compulsory Conscription Act to be applied in Ireland, a move that greatly solidified Irish public opinion against Britain. 40 Fear of conscription was never far from the minds of the Irish. Indeed, Collins and many others who were living in Britain might not have returned to Ireland well in advance of the Rising had not conscription been imposed in Britain on 15 January 1916—the very day Collins returned to Dublin. The 1918 conscription issue united in spirit, if only temporarily, the two strands of nationalism, militant and moderate. The proposed application of conscription to Ireland produced the kind of revolutionary situation that leaders can exploit in order to inflame smouldering popular discontent and provide the heat necessary for open insurgence. The issue dominated Irish life and roused the country to support more militant tactics. Nothing could have been better calculated to stiffen Sinn Fé in and move its moderates aside in favour of the physical-force advocates. The Volunteers pledged themselves to resist by force any imposition of conscription. Thousands of people now joined the Irish Volunteers to resist any forcible call-up. 41 The reaction was nationwide; in the West Riding of County Cork when conscription was announced there was a serious outbreak of raiding of private homes for arms. 42 Although no Irishman was in fact conscripted during the war, the threat was such that a
multi-party conference was convened as a protest against its possibility and issued the following pronouncement: ‘The attempt to enforce conscription will be unwarrantable aggression which we call upon all true Irishmen to resist by the most effective means at their disposal’. 43 As always in the period, women were in the forefront and they had their own protest, pledging ‘We will not fill the places of men deprived of their work through refusing the enforcement of military service’. The Catholic hierarchy concurred with this sentiment at their annual meeting at Maynooth, declaring in their own manifesto:
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An attempt is being made to force Conscription on Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in defiance of the protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider that Conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish people have a right to resist by every means that are constant with God. 44
By now even the opinion of the Church was moving closer to the emerging spirit of nationalism. 45
In the anti-conscription campaign, Irish Labour occupied a pivotal position with Sinn Fé in. The trade union movement followed objections by all parties and a 24-hour general strike was called for 23 April. Except in Belfast, the strike was solid throughout Ireland. (In some places employers paid their employees for the day off, and there was no resistance from employers. Still, it was an impressive display, indicating the importance of workers to the functioning of society. )46 It was clear that southern Ireland had no intention of standing patiently by in the remote hope that conscription would be accompanied by Home Rule. Thus the threat to introduce conscription in Ireland led to widespread support for independence and greatly fuelled support for the Republican separatist movement and Sinn Fé in. The lasting effect of the conscription scare was to turn the Volunteers from a political minority into a national army.
It must be noted that there was not unanimous agreement in the British Cabinet on the conscription policy. 47 On 3 June conscription for Ireland was at least temporarily abandoned and replaced by an alternative
plan seeking a voluntary recruitment of 50, 000 men from ten specially created districts. The level of concerted opposition in Ireland was doubtless a factor in this decision, but it was outweighed by the fact that by June there was a general improvement in the British military position in Europe in World War I. Yet another consideration was revealed by the internal debate within the Cabinet following the decision to extend conscription to Ireland: a serious concern that the inclusion of Irish conscripts within British ranks might be counter-productive to the British effort, and that would give the Irish another propaganda coup. 48 Similarly, the burgeoning unrest in Ireland that was likely to accompany conscription could have required the placement of additional British regiments in Ireland. Lionel Curtis, a key legal adviser to the Cabinet and an architect of the Commonwealth system, wrote that the decision to abandon conscription was ‘due no doubt partly to the conviction that they could not spare the necessary troops and also to evidence that the Irish conscripts would not be trustworthy’. 49
The conscription threat was second only to the execution of the Rising leaders in creating a substantial backing for Sinn Fé in among the Irish. A heavy-handed attempt by the British viceroy, Lord Lieutenant John French, to quell this reaction to conscription claimed that there was evidence of a treasonable ‘German Plot’ between Sinn Fé in and the German military. 50 On 17–19 May 1918, Sinn Fé in leaders and others were arrested because of the bogus ‘German Plot’, which put most of the Sinn Fé in ‘moderates’ in prison. 51 The pretext for this ‘Plot’ was the capture of Joseph Dowling, a member of Roger Casement’s ill-fated ‘Irish Brigade’, on an island off the coast of Galway on 12 April. (On the day of Dowling’s capture, Collins was still in Sligo jail. He was incarcerated until 18 April, when he returned to Dublin. Dowling, who was arrested immediately on landing, had been a lance-corporal in the Connaught Rangers. Captured by the Germans on the Western Front, he joined Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade in 1915 while a prisoner of war in Germany. Two years after Easter Week 1916, he was sent to Ireland by the German general staff to report on the prospects for another Irish rising. Since this was wholly a German idea, it was hardly evidence of a plot involving Sinn Fé in and the Volunteers. Dowling was court-martialled, sentenced to penal servitude for life and held in jail in England until February 1924 despite resolutions by the Irish Free State. 52) The Germans landed Dowling from a submarine on their own
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initiative, and no one from Sinn Fé in had ever contacted him, though Collins and some of the other GHQ staff were aware of the approach. Only the most specious evidence was offered by the British authorities to support French’s contention that Sinn Fé in leaders were engaged in treasonable contact with Germany. That evidence consisted largely of previously published contacts between the Germans and Sinn Fé in leaders such as the late Roger Casement in 1914. Furthermore, for the better part of a year following the Easter Rising, the vast majority of the Sinn Fé iners arrested during 17–19 May 1918 had been in English prisons and were unable to make contact with the Germans even had they wanted to. Acquisition of the information that raids were planned, and the Irish to be captured, was an example of the efficiency of Collins’s network and how he seemed to have had information even before the Castle told the police. That series of raids on 17–19 May rounded up many, and these arrests were what brought Collins fully into the intelligence effort, especially since so many who were arrested were Sinn Fé in moderates, leaving more ‘physical-force’ activists like Collins, Brugha and Harry Boland in charge. Seventy-three prisoners were deported to England immediately, followed by others later.
The winter of 1918/19 saw a ’flu pandemic that killed millions of people across the globe. In December, in Usk Prison, Wales, republican prisoner Richard Coleman of Dublin contracted the virus and died. In February the ’flu struck the prisoners in Gloucester, including Pierce McCann (Piaras Mac Canna), a Tipperary TD. A strong constitution and general good health were no defence against the virus, which quickly turned to pneumonia and took McCann’s life. Following his death, the British government released the remaining Irish internees from English jails, and this tragic incident gave the Irish yet another propaganda coup.
The unfolding conscription issue allowed Sinn Fé in to rise to the undisputed position of national leadership, a role that it would convert into overwhelming electoral success in the election later in 1918. In this case Collins took advantage of another opportunity handed to him by the British, as he was able to grow in importance in Sinn Fé in affairs, as well as becoming an important figure in the Irish propaganda effort. It is striking that, in seeking to exploit the anti-war/anti-conscription sentiment, Sinn Fé in was very careful not to be seen to dishonour the 200, 000 Irish soldiers who had already fought in World War I and the tens of thousands who had died in British uniform.
In March 1918 a General Headquarters (GHQ) of theVolunteers was established. In his papers Richard Mulcahy referred to the excellent spirit that existed among the GHQ staff. He claimed that there was never the slightest disagreement and that the work ‘dovetailed and interlocked in a satisfactory way—no suspicions, no withdrawings, no waste of time’. 53 In particular, he wrote about the close relationship between himself and Collins:
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I opened and kept open for him all the doors and pathways that he wanted to travel—our relations were always harmonious and frank and we didn’t exchange unnecessary information. We each knew what the other was at, and in particular in his domain of intelligence—I had no occasion to be questioning him. Over many matters we exercised a constructive and practical Cistercian silence.
…
… Collins dealt particularly with the aggressive activities of urgent and spot intelligence in relation to enemy activity. 54
More than once Mulcahy refers to Collins’s enormous capacity for work, his genius for organisation and his ability to motivate others. As regards work outside Dublin, Mulcahy wrote that there was the closest consultation between himself and Collins.
Joe Good recorded that in April 1918 Brugha and Mulcahy chaired a meeting at which it was decided to send Volunteers to London to attempt to assassinate the British Cabinet. 55 Brugha led the team to London in May and it stayed there until August, but he never received approval for the assassinations. Those on the team included Tom Craven, Joe Good, Matt Furlong, Martin Gleeson, James ‘Ginger’ McNamara, James Mooney, Peter Murtagh, Sam Reilly and William (Bill) Whelan. 56 Collins disagreed with this course of action, along with several of Brugha’s later, similar schemes. Collins said: ‘Do you think the British can have only one cabinet? ’ Brugha, the Minister for Defence, was responsible for some of the most bloodthirsty proposals throughout the war and pursued them ardently and independently. He once proposed the bombing and machine-gunning of crowds in theatres and cinemas. At a Cabinet meeting Collins threw up his
hands in horror and said, ‘Ye’ll get none of my men for that’. Brugha answered, ‘I want none of your men, Mr Collins’. The Cabinet rejected the plans without question, but afterwards Brugha pursued Collins with unrelenting hatred, and was usually seconded by Austin Stack. The later Cabinet meetings began to degenerate into quarrels between Brugha and Stack on one side and Collins on the other. 57
At times it seemed that Brugha’s solution for everything was a campaign against the British Cabinet. He moved to London to oversee the massacre of the government’s front bench by members of the Dublin IRA should conscription be enforced in Ireland, playing billiards and looking after his baby daughter while he waited. This phony war had two sides, as British police forces and intelligence services worked to ward off the attacks that never came. Reports and rumours of assassins being sent from Ireland frequently reached the British Cabinet and individual MPs, often through Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police. Bodyguards were assigned to fifty people in London, and policemen were stationed behind newly erected barricades in Westminster and Whitehall. Collins thought it an embarrassment and a waste of resources. 58 Brugha continued to advocate sending men to Britain, and even sent several in November 1921 to raid for arms. (As the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations were already under way at that time, their arrest and imprisonment created a ‘delicate’ atmosphere for the negotiators. ) Despite the ‘cracks’ in Republicanism, the Dá il and the Cabinet, the Irish were to hold their political aims together until the final split over the Treaty, enabling them to conduct their guerrilla war with some control from Dublin and the necessary political connection to a legitimate Irish government in the Dá il. When given a chance to show the world their intent, Sinn Fé in election tactics were also thought out in terms of providing the country with an entire system of government alternative to the British. And while Sinn Fé in was clearly on the rise before the late 1918 election, that rise was not without setbacks: after winning three by-elections in a row in 1917, the new party lost three in a row in early 1918. Thus, while the Irish Parliamentary Party was expected to lose seats in the election called immediately after the end of World War I, it wasn’t clear to voters just how overwhelming the Sinn Fé in tide would turn out to be. In the December 1918 election the more obvious revolutionary election strategy might have been to boycott the polls, thereby
showing that the Irish took no interest in the electoral activities of the British. Instead, Sinn Fé in put up candidates in every constituency. The strength of Sinn Fé in and its claim to represent the political feeling of the Irish people were plain to the world. A blow far heavier than a boycott of the polling booths had been struck against the British administration. 59
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It is thought that Harry Boland and Collins collaborated during the nomination process for the election to be held on 14 December, and ruthlessly went through each nomination, culling anyone they felt would disagree with them in the future. The candidates they chose were all staunch Republicans and had proved themselves unwilling to compromise. Collins felt it vital that the bloc to be elected was completely and unquestionably Republican to demonstrate a united front to the British. He left no room for political moderation or vacillation. The hotter the candidates talked, the more Boland and Collins liked them. (Ultimately, this was to Collins’s disadvantage in the Treaty debates of 1921–2, when many were still not capable of seeing the value of compromise. 60) It is not certain that Boland and Collins were so conspiratorially involved as to make a farce of the election, but many did believe that ‘the two friends went on to rig the process for candidates’. 61
In this election women had the vote for the first time and other restrictions on the universal right to vote had been removed; the widening of democracy helped to ensure a stunning victory for Sinn Fé in on a Republican platform. 62 In August 1918 the electoral register had been revised to take account of the widened franchise. Women over thirty could vote and remaining property qualifications for men over twenty-one were removed. This meant that the number of people in Ireland entitled to vote in the general election grew enormously, from 683, 767 in 1910 to 1, 926, 274 in 1918. Alone of the parties, Sinn Fé in supported women’s right to full franchise.
The election was a test of electoral strength between the moderate Home Rule Irish Parliamentary Party and the new revolutionary Sinn Fé in with its aim of an Irish republic, independent of and separated from Great Britain and the British Crown. The swing to Sinn Fé in was not only because of the executions and mass imprisonments after the 1916 Rising; there had also been growing opposition to Ireland’s involvement in the war and its cost in lives, the inclusion in the British Cabinet of Tory Unionists who vehemently opposed any form of Home Rule, the threat of Partition and
the ineffectiveness at Westminster of John Redmond’s Irish Party, increasingly seen as collaborators with British imperialism, as well as ongoing repression and press censorship.
The Sinn Fé in election manifesto reflected the republican position adopted by the Ard Fheis a year previously, stating that the party ‘gives Ireland the opportunity of vindicating her honour and pursuing with renewed confidence the path of national salvation by rallying to the flag of the Irish Republic’. The party was committed to establishing the Irish Republic by withdrawing Irish representation from Westminster, using ‘any and every means available’ to make British rule impossible, establishing a constituent assembly and appealing to the post-war Peace Conference to recognise Ireland as an independent nation. It roundly condemned the role of the Irish Party in collaborating with the British government and attempting to ‘harness the Irish people to England’s war chariot’. The manifesto endorsed the 1916 Proclamation, ‘guaranteeing within the independent Nation equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens’. From the outset, Sinn Fé in presented itself as a viable alternative to the Irish Parliamentary Party in every way, including the pledge to abstain from attending Parliament at Westminster. The manifesto was aimed at placing Sinn Fé in at the fore of the movement from then on:
Sinn Fé in aims at securing the establishment of the Irish Republic …
That goal would be accomplished by
the withdrawal of Irish representatives from Westminster and by denying the right and opposing the will of the British Government.
…
Sinn Fé in will establish a separate constituent assembly which would act in the name of the Irish people and to develop Ireland’s social, political and industrial life for the welfare of the whole of Ireland.
The manifesto flatly stated that the voters had a choice between an
independent nation state or
‘remaining in the shadow of a base imperialism’.
It supported the use of every means available to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection by military force or otherwise.
The British authorities censored the manifesto when it appeared in the newspapers but the full version was widely circulated. The establishing of an independent Irish Republic was an overriding issue, and the manifesto was a clear attempt to bring Ireland’s case as a republic to the Peace Conference in Paris.
Newspapers were split in their predictions. The Freeman’s Journal, the newspaper most loyal to the IPP to the very end of its existence in 1924, blamed Sinn Fé in for playing into the hands of the Unionists and Lloyd George in a way that ‘will enable him utterly to defeat the cause of National Self-Government’. 63 The election would decide ‘whether Ireland has the intelligence to penetrate the hot air rhetoric of Sinn Fé in’ or endure the consequences of as great a mistake as ‘ever disgraced the history of a nation’. On the other hand, the Irish Independent was blisteringly critical of the Irish Parliamentary Party that day. ‘The poor old tottering Irish Party do not know what exactly they want’, the newspaper declared in its editorial. ‘No independent Nationalist will be sorry if at last the Irish people rid themselves of the Party which, by blundering and stupidity, lost every opportunity presented to them and earned contempt not only for themselves but for the country. ’64
Further, the Cork Examiner declared in its election-day editorial:
The Irish people, on the one hand, are invited to support a practical policy of Dominion Self-Government, which is the country’s one chance of national salvation, and on the other, they are asked to seek a mirage Republic. Today they will be called upon to make their choice in the polling booths, and to say whether they prefer a policy of rainbow-chasing, or one which offers practical tangible advantages in the present and will ultimately secure for them the liberty that they so earnestly desire! 65
Following the election, The Times reported that the election ‘was treated by all as a plebiscite’. 66
The general election of 1918 had possibly the most profound impact on Irish politics of any general election. For decades Irish politics had been driven largely by nationalist constitutional policies, but these were suddenly discarded in 1918. 67 ‘The one predictable outcome of the General Election’, the Irish Times proclaimed, ‘is the triumph of Sinn Fé in in most of the Nationalist constituencies. ’68 Of course, this was not a prospect that the Irish Times welcomed, as it had always been seen as a Unionist newspaper.
In overwhelmingly replacing the Irish Parliamentary Party with revolutionary republicans, this was the most significant general election in twentieth-century Ireland, providing Sinn Fé in with a democratic mandate both to establish Dá il É ireann and to proclaim a republic. Sinn Fé in won 73 out of 105 seats, but this was more than an electoral landslide. It was an act of largely peaceful secession. The successful Sinn Fé in candidates would not be MPs; each would be called a Teachta Dá la or TD. They had asked to be elected, in effect, to a parliament that did not exist: an Irish parliament which they intended to establish in Dublin. This was, above all, an imaginative and constructive act—it proposed to call into being a new democracy, using the methods of democracy itself.
One must acknowledge the central place of the 1918 election in determining the future course of Irish history: as one looks down the names of successful candidates, the governments of Ireland for the next thirty or forty years emerge. This is what the election of 1918 did:
It declared to the British that they had no claim to Ireland that was not rendered null and void by the Irish people’s repudiation of such claim, and that the only just and constitutional government in Ireland was the Government of Dá il É ireann, which was elected by the people and represented the people. There is no gesture in Irish history quite so magnificent, quite so proud as that; and nothing that has happened can take away from it... It brought the people to the point that they gave their allegiance to Dá il É ireann, obeyed it and recognized it, and helped it, suffered British government but did not recognize it and did not help it. 69
A victorious Sinn Fé in immediately claimed that they had democratically won the right, through an overwhelming national endorsement from the Irish electorate, to officially declare and establish an Irish Republic. The results of the election demonstrated the greatest single shift in Irish parliamentary representation and also foreshadowed divisions that would deepen on the island until the Treaty debates in late 1921 and thereafter.
Collins was one of the members of that first Dá il, representing the Cork South constituency, and he would represent that same constituency until his death in 1922. He became one of the most successful of the politicians and administrators elected at that time. It was Collins’s multiplicity of roles—in politics, in the Volunteers and in the IRB—that makes his performance extraordinary. ‘Unlike the otherVolunteers-turned- politicians, Collins kept one foot firmly in “the army”, as it was increasingly called. So he not only ran the most important Dá il department [Finance], and ran it well, he was also waging a secret war against the men who were trying to catch him. ’70
Though the Irish clergy had endorsed the anti-conscription campaign earlier in 1918, the majority of the clergy still criticised Sinn Fé in and not all were pleased with the results of this election. Catholic criticism of the party had become more muted, but even after this there were still occasional outbursts of criticism from the clergy. Fr Walter McDonald, a maverick Maynooth professor, wrote disapprovingly shortly after the 1918 election:
Great numbers of the junior clergy, and a considerable body of their seniors, with some even of the bishops, supported the Sinn Fé in candidates, or voted for them. Some of this, I know, was bluff—asking, as I have heard one man put it, for more than they had hoped to get. Others voted Sinn Fé in as for the less of two evils. But many of the priests, and perhaps some of the bishops, seem to have acted on the conviction that Ireland is de jure a fully independent nation. Is this really their teaching? 71
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