 |
—Mao Zedong 5 страница
|
|
|
|
Reaction to the 11 July 1921 Truce leading to the Treaty negotiations was mixed. On the British side, Alison Phillips wrote that ‘where all the
science and all the massed battalions of the Central Powers had failed, the methods of Sinn Fé in succeeded. They did so because they reduced, not the British Army, but the British Government and the British people, to that mood of surrender which is the essence of defeat. ’165 Katharine Chorley went further: ‘the treaty terms, even though they embodied a compromise, were in reality little less than a surrender’. 166 Lord Edward Carson told the House of Commons that ‘they [the Treaty terms] were passed with a revolver pointed at your head and you know it … You know it and you know you passed them because you were beaten, because you failed, and the Sinn Fé in army in Ireland had beaten you. ’167
On the Irish side, many felt that the British had been defeated, that since the British had ‘agreed to’ a truce they had been fairly beaten, and that the treaty negotiations to follow would involve a victorious Irish and a supplicant British delegation. Those same people felt that the British had been humiliated when their officers were compelled to confer with Irish politicians and IRA officers.
However much the British commanders and politicians dismissed the Truce, or however some of the Irish viewed their position as victors, the essential truth of the situation was that the IRA fought the conflict until British politicians were ready to negotiate with them. By the middle of 1921 it had become clear that the British could only win the war militarily and that this would require the use of methods that the British politicians (and their voters) could not accept. The British public would no longer ‘tolerate’ their politicians’ pursuit of, and acceptance of, the casualties, and the opinion of Britain throughout the world was unpalatable to them. Nevertheless, it is by no means clear that the Irish ‘won’ the war—it would be more accurate to say that they incurred successes rather than victory. 168 Even so, right to the end, Greenwood and some of the British military leaders remained sceptical of the need for negotiation or the ability to negotiate a political end to the war. 169 Some of them continued to think and assert that ‘victory could be in sight’ if they deployed more troops,
increased executions and imprisoned more Irish. Macready disagreed:
There are of course one or two wild people about who still hold the absurd idea that if you go on killing long enough, peace will ensue. I do not believe it for one moment but I do believe that
the more people are killed, the more difficult a final solution becomes. 170
In the May 1919 election Sinn Fé in had scored an almost unanimous victory that convinced even General Macready that the British position in Ireland was untenable:
In all constituents [sic] in Southern Ireland, except Dublin University, Sinn Fé in has had a complete ‘walk-over’, not one single Unionist, nationalist or Labour Candidate being even nominated for any of the remaining 124 seats. There are only two conclusions to be drawn from these results. Either the people of Southern Ireland are solidly republican and support and approve of the Dá il É ireann’s policy of murder, outrage and boycott, or the gunmen have so terrorized their fellow countrymen that no one dare nominate or support an individual whose views are other than republican. Sinn Fé in would have the world believe that the former is the correct conclusion, and that Southern Ireland is unanimously republican. This is not the case, though it is probable that Sinn Fé in would have obtained a substantial majority had the Elections been contested. 171
|
|
|
It was becoming clear, to Macready at least, that a truce was necessary.
As many military men seem to do, both sides would later argue that they had been ‘sold out’ and betrayed by their politicians, but British and Irish politicians could be forgiven for having lost faith in any positive assessments offered by the military men. 172 Moreover, the British political leaders realised that their support had collapsed and that they were fighting an enemy that would never give up. Macready ultimately supported Cope’s efforts to secure a Truce and, on the same day that he acquiesced, South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts arrived in Dublin to throw his weight behind the proposal. Smuts primarily wrote King George V’s speech given at Belfast City Hall on 22 June 1921, appealing for Anglo-Irish and North– South reconciliation, and was intimately aware of the internal views of the British Cabinet and government. 173
The war had developed in phases, and the balance of effectiveness had
swung from side to side. Both the Irish and the British responded to political as well as military advances and pressures. There was no simple ‘triumph’ for either side. Just as the British had difficulty recognising that they could not give the military or police a free hand and that that would hurt their war effort, it took some time for the British politicians to realise that they were going to have to negotiate with those with whom they had said they never would. Neither side could bring the conflict to an end, as both lacked either the military or the coercive capacity. The political will on the part of the British to effect the necessary military escalation was simply not there. 174 By forcing the British to resort to heavy-handed, politically damaging reprisals and by merely surviving, the Irish emerged with an ultimate ‘success’. At the Truce, the Irish side had won ‘acceptance’ by the British as the valid spokespersons for Irish legitimate interests. 175 The British military disdain for the Truce, or for its need, continued after July, however, and was most succinctly expressed in the notes to the Truce document written by General Sir H. S. Jeudwine, GOC of the 5th Division. Considering it inappropriate because he never recognised the IRA as legitimate opponents representing the Irish people, he proscribed the use of the word ‘truce’ in all correspondence regarding it:
The word ‘truce’ has been applied to this Agreement and the situation which follows from it. This word is generally understood as applicable to an armistice between recognised belligerents. It is preferable, therefore, that it should not be used by us in this instance, but that the statement of terms should be referred to as the ‘Agreement’ and its effects as a ‘suspension of activities’. 176
|
|
|
Collins’s views of the need for a truce and a treaty were published in his book The Path to Freedom:
The National instinct was sound—that the essence of our struggle was to secure freedom to order our own life, without attaching undue importance to the formulas under which that freedom would be expressed. The people knew that our government could and would be moulded by the nation itself to its needs. The nation would make the government, not the government the nation. 177
By spring 1921 Collins recognised that the Irish military efforts could not continue, and he endorsed more aggressive political efforts. 178 A political result demanded of British and Irish politicians patience, intelligence, planning, compromise, creativity and the acceptance of personal moral responsibility for the consequences of what was done and not done, as well as what could be done or not done. The military on both sides were nudged into the political solution. With the provisions of a truce made in principal, a political end to the war was in sight. On 11 July the Truce came into effect.
From 1919 the British had deployed over 50, 000 troops (including regular army, Black and Tans, Auxiliaries and RIC)179 against an Irish rebel force that never reached 5, 000 active combatants at any one time. 180 However many men the IRA could call upon by the middle of 1921, they were extremely short of equipment, and Tom Barry described a desperate situation:
They were practically unarmed. Even in the middle of 1920, the whole Brigade armament was only 35 serviceable rifles, 20 automatics or revolvers, about 30 rounds of ammunition per rifle, and 10 rounds for each revolver or automatic. TheVolunteers had no transport, signalling equipment or engineering material, machine-guns or any other weapon whatsoever, except a small supply of explosives and some shot-guns. They had no money and were an unpaid Volunteer force. 181
Collins knew the great advantages that the British military had, as well as the resources that they could call on to increase their military presence in Ireland. He knew that the Irish could not compete in that battle:
If this citing of our ability to outwit our enemies seems to place me in the category of those who imagine that in time we could have routed them out of the country, let me dissipate that idea quickly. I hold no such opinion. English power rests on military might and economic control. Such military resistance as we were able to offer was unimportant, had England chosen to go at the task of conquering us in real earnestness. There were good reasons for her not doing so. 182
While the IRA were not winning the war in May and June 1921, neither were they losing outright. They had not been defeated by midsummer 1921, but it is hard to see how they could have withstood the planned British infusion of additional forces. The British would have been able to counter almost every Irish action, but it is also unclear whether Macready’s plans could ever have received the full support that would have been necessary. In summer 1921 Collins and the other realists were seriously deterred from continuing the military campaign.
By the time of the Truce in July 1921, the British had imprisoned or interned almost 5, 000 leaders and otherVolunteers in Ballykinlar, Spike Island, Bere Island, the Curragh and other camps. 183 The British military effort was not enough, although some army personnel estimated that if they had tens of thousands more troops for an extended period of time they might be able to pacify Ireland. 184 That was more than a country‘tired to death of war’could bear. 185 The British public would not support the level of military involvement that some military—and militant—leaders (as well as some politicians) would have preferred. 186 Nor would it tolerate the terrorist violence that resulted when the British military committed atrocities and reprisals. 187 There was a gradual change in British political and military attitudes, leading to the realisation that coercion, alone, was impossible and that they would now have to revert to a political solution. The military and political realities of 1921 compelled the British government to make concessions that would have been unthinkable in 1916.
|
|
|
The Irish War of Independence shows that the most successful terrorist campaigns are waged for causes, usually nationalist, that are accepted broadly by the public and supported by a major political effort. Fringe groups seeking radical social change have little chance of success. Everything in life boils down to incentives. Unless the people in charge are properly motivated to change, they will happily maintain the status quo forever.
One of the finest summations of the sea-change in Irish politics comes from a historian who opposed the period of revolution, W. Alison Phillips, who was strongly against Irish Home Rule and once declared that ‘Ireland is not a nation, but two peoples separated by a deeper gulf than that dividing Ireland from Great Britain’. His book The Revolution in Ireland was criticised for leaning towards the Unionist point of view, yet he wrote:
The Sinn Fé in organisation of which [Griffith] was the founder and inspirer, consisted [in 1904] of a handful of young teachers, poets and journalists, scarcely known outside their own circle, and utterly without political influence; and so they remained for 12 years longer. In 1921 these same men had made themselves the de facto rulers of the greater part of Ireland, had worn down the resistance of the British Government and people, and were in a position to dictate terms to the ministers of a power which had just been victorious in a great war. History records no more amazing overturn. 188
The press was overwhelmingly in favour of the Truce, as were most of the people of both Ireland and Britain. Ireland celebrated the first signs of peace—but not all of Ireland. Many of the IRA rank-and-file were desperately opposed, and the stage was set for the censorious Treaty debates and the terrible Irish Civil War that followed. Politics, of course, is the art of the possible, balancing competing interests and accepting that sometimes political expediency is necessary. But if it wasn't for idealists and visionaries, nothing would ever change.
Collins, too, celebrated at his old ‘hang-out’, Vaughan’s Hotel.
Following the Truce in July 1921 there was a celebratory gathering:
Shortly after the Truce there was a great gathering in Vaughan’s Hotel of all the men who were ’round Mick Collins. It was a farewell party given to Harry Boland before proceeding to America. Apart from Mick Collins and Harry Boland there were also present, Gearó id O’Sullivan, Diarmuid O’Hegarty, Liam Mellows, Liam Tobin, Rory O’Connor, Frank Thornton, Colonel Broy, the late Detective-Sergeant McNamara who was working for Mick Collins, Seá n Etchingham of Wexford and many others. It was a joyous occasion and Mick Collins recited, ‘Kelly, Burke and Shea’, and Liam Mellows sang ‘McDonnell of the Glens’— an old Scottish song.
Little did we think that night of the events that were in store before another year had passed.
It is well for mortal man that he cannot see into the future. 189
|
|
|
