COLLINS AND ADAMS, LG AND BLAIR
Research by Paul Bew uncovers the
continuity between Washington's 1921 Irish policy and now
PRESIDENT CLINTON has come to London to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair, and his Cabinet. It was widely assumed that the Irish 'peace process' was being discussed. In Washington last Fri- day, Dr Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, urged the United States to continue its efforts to per- suade the IRA to renew its ceasefire in order to allow Sinn Fein to enter an all- party talks process, designed to lead to a constitutional settlement. She seemed anx- ious to encourage a renewed American involvement in the 'peace process'.
Yet American influence in the Irish question is not new; we have been here before, precisely 75 years ago. 'The United States was both the rose and the thorn of the Irish problem.' These words — which adapt one of Hegel's most famous formu- lations — flowed from the pen of Carl Ackerman, an American journalist, in the Atlantic Monthly in the summer of 1922. Ackerman's three lengthy articles had one theme; he wished to stress the 'secret' role played by American diplomats, politicians and journalists in the resolution of the `Anglo-Irish war' by the 'Treaty settlement' of 1921. Ackerman first visited London and Dublin on behalf of a major American news agency in early 1920 as the military conflict in Ireland, already a year old, was beginning to intensify. Almost immediate- ly he was taken aside and told by senior civil servants and leading members of the intelligence services to disregard bellicose and hardline statements by members of the British Cabinet, including the prime minister, David Lloyd George. At the For- eign Office, one British official, C.J. Phillips, chief assistant to the foreign sec- retary, Lord Curzon, in Irish affairs, pre- dicted — accurately, as it happened that 'within three years Ireland would be a republic in everything but name and in less time than that all the British troops would be out of Ireland'. Curzon was arguing the same line with some vigour within the Cabinet. Ackerman's role, along with John Steele, another American journalist, was to seek out the leaders of the Sinn Fein movement — most notably, of course, the warlord Michael Collins to ascertain their willingness to reach a settlement; perhaps along the lines of dominion status. Sir John Anderson, who dominated the British administration in Dublin Castle, told him, too, that 'he per- sonally never agreed with the government policy of singling out Michael Collins as a "murderer", for it was evident that the British would have to talk peace with him'. Sir Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard was of exactly the same mind, as was Anderson's chief assistant, Andy (later Sir Andrew) Cope, who had regular contact with Collins even while hostilities continued.
The contours of the problem were clear; British public opinion would not indefinite- ly sustain a repressive policy in Ireland. But in the area which is now independent Ire- land the revolutionary republican Sinn Fein movement was the only possible alternative force of government, having destroyed the middle ground by initiating a process of polarisation since 1916. Yet British public opinion also did not want to concede an Irish Republic submit to the coercion of Ulster's unionists. It was Ackerman's task to find out if Collins would settle for less than an all-Ireland republic; even while he published interviews with Collins suggest- ing the Irish leader's undying determina- tion to win such a republic, Ackerman was reporting to Sir Basil Thomson that, in pri- vate, Collins was considerably more flexi- ble. Of course, the process suffered setbacks: in Ackerman's view, Lloyd George torpedoed one peace initiative in December 1920 by insisting on a surrender of IRA arms. A similar British hankering after a military victory is, of course, regard- ed by many critics, not necessarily well- informed ones, as the principal reason for the failure of the 1993-96 peace process. In such a context Ackerman saw two process- es as necessary: one was the 'American education of Michael Collins', the other was the American education of Lloyd George. The 'American education of Michael Collins' consisted of informing Collins that the decisive American injec- tion of support for his cause — which he had been promised by his comrades in arms Eamon De Valera and Harry Boland — would never materialise. A key figure here was the Dublin US Consul, Frederick Dumont, who had been lucky not to lose his life on Bloody Sunday in November 1920 — he had been playing cards with some British intelligence officers just before Collins's death squad struck at them. President Clinton's vigorous rejec- tion of IRA violence on his Northern Irish trip of November 1995 was part of the later American education of Gerry Adams — lost on those IRA men already plan- ning the Canary Wharf bombing.
The American education of Lloyd George was a rather more complex affair. It took more time and more effort. Lloyd George was, for example, reluctant to abandon the view that he could deal with Sinn Fein 'moderates' rather than its well- known 'gunmen'. The key figure who changed his mind was Martin Glynn of Albany, a Democratic politician and news- paper editor — the man who gave the Democratic party the slogan, 'He kept us out of war', which re-elected Woodrow Wilson.
On 4 May 1921 Sir Basil Thomson attempted to arrange a meeting between the prime minister and Glynn; the prime minister said no, but Sir Basil refused to give up. On 5 May Philip Kerr — a rela- tive of Michael Ancram, recently minister of political development at the Northern Ireland Office — set up an 'accidental' meeting between the two men at the House of Commons and an intense three- hour discussion ensued. Glynn impressed upon the prime minister the seriousness and earnestness of the Irish, the power of the Irish movement in America, and the importance of Anglo-Irish peace as the basis for an Anglo-American understand- ing. The prime minister responded by ask- ing Glynn to convey an invitation to the Sinn Fein leadership to attend a peace conference in London. A symbol: as this conference successfully ended, Collins picked up an American rifle, the first man- ufactured in the United States for the world war, a gift to the prime minister from the president, and sat down in the prime minister's chair, saying, 'Now the prime minister can take a photograph of a gunman.' Is history repeating itself before our eyes? The superficial similarities are strik- ing — we are certainly watching the `American education' of Mr Blair and Mr Adams. Mr Clinton is pressing Mr Blair to bring Mr Adams into talks, while Senator Mitchel's message is to stress the need for strong cross-community consent for any new settlement and parallel decommission- ing of arms, as opposed to the republican movement's favoured formula, as expressed by the influential activist, Brian Keenan: 'The only thing the republican movement will accept is decommissioning of the British state in this country.' But there is one great difference which defines the current crisis: in 1922 Sinn Fein, or some dominant faction within it, hideous warts and all, was the only possible demo- cratic governing force in most of Ireland. Seventy-five years later, Sinn Fein com- mands at the very outside the support of 17 per cent in Northern Ireland. Nor do they alone have the capacity to switch off vio- lence — that capacity is shared with the loyalist paramilitaries. Sinn Fein is not an alternative source of government, still less a democratic government.
Today Sinn Fein is being offered — in the words of a senior Irish official — 'an honourable way out', not substantive victo- ry. This simple fact, combined with the Irish state's need for stability and support for the principle of consent, explains Mr Blair's recent 'pro-unionist' speech in Belfast. Creatively, he asked the Ulster unionists to abandon a fetished view of the union in favour of one where the union with Britain would continue to exist but would be based on governance structures that reflect the competing national aspira- tions of Northern Ireland's inhabitants. Mr Blair could do this because he made clear that the Framework Document of 1995 was not a transitional programme leading to Irish unity. Much will depend on the intelli- gence of the Ulster unionists' response, but much also on Sinn Fein's ability to realise that 1997 is not 1922.
The author is Professor of Irish Politics at the Queen's University, Belfast.
`Simply tap it and unwrap it.'
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