Pod Insights The Rest Is History 579. The Irish War of Independence: Showdown in London (Part 4) About this episode What were the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, following negotiations between the UK and Sinn Féin? How was it received by the Irish people? What was the process by which it was agreed between Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Michael Collins, and Arthur Griffith? Why did Éamon de Valera object to the treaty, and how did this sow the seeds of civil war? Had the Irish beaten the British militarily up to this point? And, what would be the consequences of this controversial treaty for the future of Ireland, and Anglo-Irish relations?
Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the totemic Anglo-Irish Treaty - one of the most controversial moments in Irish political history, which would transform the fate of Ireland forever…
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Transcript 12,578 words · 6 speakers
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1:54 Tom Holland? This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.
2:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realises, or rather, everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?
2:36 Tom Holland? So they asked over 100,000 people, and what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.
2:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Ask yours at claude.ai/RestIsHistory and keep thinking.
3:06 Tom Holland? I have never seen David so excited as he was before de Valera arrived. He had a big map of the British Empire hung up on the wall in the Cabinet Room, with great blotches of red all over it. This was to impress de Valera. In fact, David says that the aim of these talks is to impress upon de Valera the greatness of the empire and to get him to recognise it, and the king. David said to de Valera, "The British Empire is a sisterhood of nations, the greatest in the world. Look at this table. There sits Africa, English and Burgh. There sits Canada, French, Scotch and English.
3:48 Tom Holland? There sits Australia, representing many races, even Maoris. There sits India. There sit the representatives of England, Scotland and Wales. All we ask you to do is to take your place in this sisterhood of free nations. It is an invitation, Mr. de Valera. We invite you here." So that was the diary of Frances Stevenson, who was personal secretary to David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Britain. And it's her entry for the 14th of July, 1921. And Dominic, you wanted me to read that in a Cockney accent. But Frances Stevenson went to school in Clapham.
4:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
4:32 Tom Holland? And as someone who lives in Brixton, I know that everyone in Clapham speaks like that. So yet again, my mastery of accent comes to the rescue.
4:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, very good.
4:41 Tom Holland? And she is describing there the first meeting between the Chief Minister of the British Empire and the self-declared soi-disant president of the Irish Republic. And what I can't help noticing there is that even though she's been to a very good school in Clapham, she seems to think that Maoris live in Australia. So what's going on there?
5:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, I saw that. Also, there sits Africa, English and Burr.
5:05 Tom Holland? Yeah.
5:06 Dominic Sandbrook? I saw there are other people in Africa, but no one remembers who they were.
5:10 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's nice to mention the Zulus.
5:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
5:12 Tom Holland? So this meeting between Lloyd George and De Valera, is it a success? I mean, does this go down well with De Valera, this rhetoric?
5:20 Dominic Sandbrook? It's not a tremendous success. And we'll come back to this meeting a little bit later. Lloyd George afterwards said to Frances Stevenson that De Valera was, and I quote, "the man with the most limited vocabulary he'd ever met." So that's slightly ominous. Frances Stevenson, by the way, she wasn't just his personal secretary, Lloyd George.
5:35 Tom Holland? Oh, no. This is David Lloyd George we're talking about.
5:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. She had been his mistress for almost a decade, and she ended up marrying him after his wife died. So that's classic David Lloyd George behaviour. And there'll be a lot of him in this episode.
5:50 Tom Holland? And Dominic, generally, David Lloyd George, you view as a very bad man. You've repeatedly gone on record as saying you don't like him. But I can't help looking at this episode.
6:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
6:00 Tom Holland? There seems to be a sneaking degree of admiration for him.
6:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, we shall see. I've said he's a bad man, a morally bad man.
6:07 Tom Holland? Right.
6:08 Dominic Sandbrook? But listeners to this podcast since the beginning will know that quite a lot of morally bad men score quite highly, in my estimation.
6:15 Tom Holland? Yeah, so a bad man, but a good negotiator.
6:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, we will see. So, Tom, we've returned, haven't we, from Ireland? We were in Ireland for the last three episodes with friend of the show, Paul Rouse. And we got to the summer of nineteen twenty one with Paul, didn't we? So we've been through two and a half years of guerrilla warfare. And the British and the Irish have agreed a truce. But excitingly, the real drama is only just beginning. Because this episode is about one of the most gripping intrigues in modern political history. It's about the deal that created two entities on the island of Ireland. So on the one hand, you have a Protestant dominated Northern Ireland. And you have a Catholic dominated Irish free state, which eventually becomes the Republic of Ireland. This episode also has a tremendous cast of characters. Who's your favourite?
7:02 Tom Holland? I think my favourite is the guy who was Churchill's great friend, who's the swell. Who likes oysters and champagne and got.
7:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Lord Birkenhead.
7:12 Tom Holland? Yeah, Dr Crippen's mistress off, didn't he?
7:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, Effie Smith.
7:16 Tom Holland? Effie Smith, Dan Jackson's great hero.
7:18 Dominic Sandbrook? He's a tremendous man. Yeah, he'll play a big part. So this episode, you've got him, you've got De Valera, you've got Lloyd George, you've got Winston Churchill, you have Michael Collins. A galaxy of stars. It's very exciting. It's like an ITV light entertainment programme from the nineteen eighties. But the guy who really dominates is not an Irishman or an Englishman. It's a Welshman. We don't have enough Welshmen on the rest of history, so it's great to get them in. So this is really Lloyd George's story, and he's one of the great characters in British history. So just to give people, especially our overseas listeners, a sense of him. He's from an evangelical family in North Wales. He did lose his faith, but he's very, very intensely shaped by this kind of intensely religious, nonconformist background. Also, an interesting thing, he was brought up speaking Welsh, not English.
8:03 Tom Holland? And that's interesting, isn't it? Because he's dealing here with a lot of Irish negotiators who are all frantically trying to learn Irish. But have English as their native tongue.
8:12 Dominic Sandbrook? No, you're absolutely right, Tom, and he will often, he will slightly tease the Irish negotiators about this. And in fact, he'll speak in Welsh to one of his colleagues, as we'll discover, a great ally of his called Tom Jones.
8:22 Tom Holland? Which is magnificent, isn't it?
8:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
8:24 Tom Holland? A Welsh character called Tom Jones.
8:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. So Lloyd George, his Welshness is massively important to him. He joined the Liberal Party as a populist outsider. He always sort of sees himself as an anti-establishment figure, even when he's Prime Minister. And his career is a really extraordinary story. So he's rhetorically brilliant, this sort of aggressive oratory. He becomes a progressive chancellor of Exchequer under Herbert Henry Asquith, one of the architects of the welfare state. On the other hand, he's very corrupt, he's a massive womanizer, and he is totally and utterly untrustworthy. So in 1916, he had stabbed Asquith, his former patron, in the back with Conservative support to become Prime Minister. And by 1921, he is the acknowledged master of British
9:10 Dominic Sandbrook? politics. He's leading a coalition which is totally dependent on the support of the Conservatives. So if he ever loses that, he is out.
9:20 Tom Holland? And so effectively, this great radical, the godfather of the British welfare state, is now, I mean, Lord Beaverbrook said he was a prime minister without a party. Effectively, he's in danger of being engulfed by the Conservatives, his great ancestral enemies.
9:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. That's exactly right. It's a really unusual situation in British political history, where you have somebody who is seen as so charismatic, so dominating, that he almost has started to float free from party politics and to lead this kind of national coalition government purely on the basis of his personality, rather than, you know, policies or anything like that.
9:55 Tom Holland? And so what's his take on Ireland?
9:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, two important points here. One, his non-conformist background means that he absolutely despises Catholicism. "I hate a priest wherever I can find him," he once said to one of his Welsh friends. "He has no time for popery at all."
10:11 Tom Holland? And does the fact that he's from a Celtic background mean that he's more sympathetic to Irish dreams of home rule?
10:17 Dominic Sandbrook? No, counter-intuitively, the opposite. So because he's a Celt and because his Welshness is so important to him, he just thinks, what's wrong with the Irish? You see, he thinks Welshness is perfectly reconcilable with the ideal of Britain and British unity in the United Kingdom. And if we, the Welsh, are happy with it, what's wrong with the Irish? Why are they so troublesome? Why are they so difficult? Of course, you know, lots of people listen to this podcast will say, they've got very different histories. But for Lloyd George, there is always a sense that he doesn't perhaps have the slight embarrassment that some English people have with the Irish. You know, he just thinks, come on, crack on, knuckle down, what are you whinging about?
10:59 Tom Holland? Yeah.
10:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Which a lot of English people are less likely, I think, to do because they feel a bit embarrassed about the history, about the famine and all of that kind of stuff.
11:07 Tom Holland? Yeah.
11:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, another really important point, I think, sometimes overlooked in accounts of the treaty negotiations. Imagine if you were Lloyd George in early 1921, you're running the British Empire. The world looks like it's in total chaos. You've had revolution and civil war in Russia, you've got massive unemployment in Britain and indeed across Europe, you've got war in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey, you have anti-colonial uprisings in India and Egypt, and at home you're under massive pressure. Britain has come very close in 1921 to a general strike. Within the Tory party, a lot of people are saying, come on, Lloyd George is really corrupt and horrible, let's get rid of him. And two of your closest allies, Winston Churchill and this guy Lord Birkenhead, who you like.
11:51 Tom Holland? So Lord Birkenhead is a Tory, but Winston Churchill at this point is still a Liberal.
11:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And these are two colossal, charismatic, dominating figures who are basically plotting openly against Lloyd George. So what he doesn't need is a massive embarrassment and a drain on his political capital, and that's what he thinks Ireland is. He thinks it's yet another element of instability and I want to fix it. And he doesn't care how he fixes it, but he has two red lines. Red line number one, he thinks any settlement must preserve the unity of the British Empire. Basically, the last thing we want to do is to encourage nationalists in Egypt and India. It's really interesting, actually, how Ireland for Lloyd George and for the British generally is not just an issue in and of itself. What they're really worried about is that it would be an inspiration to people in India
12:40 Dominic Sandbrook? and in Egypt.
12:41 Tom Holland? I mean, what that suggests is that they are associating Ireland with the non-white colonial possessions. Do you think that's fair?
12:48 Dominic Sandbrook? No, I don't necessarily think that is fair. I think what they're doing is they want Ireland to become like one of the dominions, like Canada or Australia. That ends up effectively being their Solution, what they don't want is to have any precedent for any country to break away completely.
13:02 Tom Holland? Right.
13:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Because that will inspire people in what they see as their strategically vital possessions, which are Egypt and India. So that's red line number one. Red line number two is purely domestic for Lloyd George, and that is any settlement in Ireland must be acceptable to the Conservatives because otherwise they will pull the plug on his coalition. Now, people who've been listening to the rest of history for a long time will remember all through this business, the Conservatives have been completely committed to supporting the Protestants in the north east of Ireland, in the province of Ulster, and keeping them out of a Catholic dominated Irish Parliament covering the whole of the island.
13:40 Tom Holland? And so does that mean in effect that Lloyd George, by needing to keep the Tories on board, is giving the Ulster Unionists a veto over anything he arrives at?
13:51 Dominic Sandbrook? A little bit, yes. It's slightly more complicated than that, but yes, basically, he can never really afford to completely alienate the Ulster Unionists because that would alienate the Tories and it would be the end of him. By the way, if Lloyd George falls, the alternative is a Conservative government that would be more hardline on Ireland. So Lloyd George's argument is always like, I am the best that any Irish negotiating team will ever get. If you don't do a deal with me, the Tories definitely aren't going to do a deal with you. So in the first half of 1921, Lloyd George actually had taken quite a hard line on Ireland. He had told his colleagues again and again, he said, come on, we can sort this out, we can just let the army fight it out. But the violence had steadily got worse, as we heard from Paul last time. So in the first six months of 1921, the British had lost 93 soldiers and 223 members of the
14:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Royal Irish Constabulary. Now, a point worth making, those numbers are actually really small.
14:43 Tom Holland? Yeah, I mean, it's not the Battle of the Somme, is it?
14:45 Dominic Sandbrook? No, this is such an interesting thing, and I think a point really worth stressing. It's sometimes said that the British were defeated militarily in Ireland in the 1920s. That's just not right. Even the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, didn't think that they had beaten the British militarily. Because if you think about it, you know, just a few years ago, the British were losing on a quiet day on the Western Front, they were losing easily more men. Then they lost in the whole of the conflict in Ireland, all those years put together. But they have the manpower, they have the resources to fight in Ireland forever if they want to. It's no problem at all. But it's a really good example of how wars are
15:26 Dominic Sandbrook? political events as much as they are military ones. The issue for the British is that they just don't have the political space to keep fighting forever because the publicity from what's going on in Ireland is terrible. A really good example of this is all the publicity that's given to something we heard about from Paul, which is the reprisals of the auxiliaries and the black and tans. Even Churchill, who's very hardline, told his Cabinet colleagues, "We are getting an odious reputation." And they don't want an odious reputation. Some of the Dominion leaders, people like South Africa's Jan Smuts, are telling Lloyd George, "Come on, we need to fix this." Smuts says, "Ireland is a chronic wound and it is poisoning our relations with the rest of the world."
16:06 Tom Holland? And Dominic, also, the key relationship presumably is with America, which is now Britain's creditor.
16:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
16:15 Tom Holland? And that must diminish Britain's ability to ignore global opinion because effectively it's American opinion.
16:23 Dominic Sandbrook? You're totally right, Tom. American opinion is really important and it is also important because Lloyd George wants to conclude a naval treaty with the Americans about limiting naval spending.
16:33 Tom Holland? So that's in Washington, isn't it?
16:34 Dominic Sandbrook? That's in Washington and that is massively important to him. So basically, not upsetting the Americans really matters. Now, what makes this even more urgent is the clock is ticking because of one of Lloyd George's own earlier attempts at a solution. So in 1920, he had passed the Government of Ireland Act, and that was designed to fix the Irish issue by giving it two home rule parliaments. So one would be in Belfast, and this would be the Parliament of Northern Ireland to govern six counties in the north east of the island. This had been designed effectively by the Unionists themselves, by their leader, Sir James Craig. They didn't want the whole of the province of Ulster because they thought
17:18 Dominic Sandbrook? there were too many Catholics in it. What they wanted was just six counties because that's the maximum possible area that they can have while still having a two-thirds Protestant majority.
17:29 Tom Holland? So it's kind of geopolitical gerrymandering.
17:31 Dominic Sandbrook? A little bit, yes. So this is what becomes Northern Ireland. Now, the other Home Rule Parliament would be in Dublin, and that would represent the other 26 counties of Ireland, and it would be called the Parliament of Southern Ireland. And obviously, this would have, everyone knows, an overwhelming Catholic majority, not Protestant. So the elections for this happened in May 1921, and they're big wins, north and south, for what you might call the sort of more extreme partisan parties. In other words, the Ulster Unionists in the north and Sinn Féin in the south. But Sinn Féin have won in the south, say, obviously, we're not going to take up our seats. We're not going to sit in a southern parliament under British rule. That's not what we're about. But the problem is that the rubric of the Act says, if this parliament
18:14 Dominic Sandbrook? doesn't sit by the 12th of July, then Southern Ireland will revert to a crown colony under martial law, meaning loads of troops. So by June 1921, Lloyd George's cabinet have agreed plans for a massive troop surge in Ireland and martial law across the 26 southern counties. But the British commander in Dublin, who we heard a little bit about with Paul, General McCready.
18:42 Tom Holland? Magnificently pessimistic about Britain's prospects.
18:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Totally pessimistic, very gloomy. And he actually tells Miss Stevenson, who you quoted with your Clapham accent at the beginning of the show, he says, please, will you tell Lloyd George he must ditch the, quote, "The absurd idea that if you go on killing long enough, peace will ensue. I don't believe it for one moment, but I do believe that the more people that are killed, the more difficult will be the final solution."
19:07 Tom Holland? And Dominic, also, he's very contemptuous, isn't he, McCready, of the readiness of British politicians to soak up the opprobrium that would come were the army to go in and impose martial law.
19:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
19:18 Tom Holland? He says, will they begin to howl when they hear of our shooting 100 men in one week?
19:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly.
19:23 Tom Holland? I mean, and he knows his men, doesn't he? He knows that this is not something that the British government is prepared to put up with.
19:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So eventually Lloyd George gets the message and he writes to De Valera and to the Prime Minister of the New Parliament in Belfast in the North, which has started to meet, and he's called Sir James Craig, and he says, look, it's time to have a settlement. And this opens the door to a truce and that goes into effect on Monday, the 11th of July. And actually, the fighting went on right to the last minute. So that morning, 10 people were killed before midday that day before the truce came into effect. And actually, the threat of bloodshed, the threat of more fighting hangs over this whole process from start to finish. So you don't understand how it ends without realising that everybody basically is expecting the shooting to start again. Now, another crucial point, it is always
20:14 Dominic Sandbrook? the British who control this process and Lloyd George who controls the agenda. So that meeting that we began with on the 14th of July, it's Lloyd George who sets the tone. He does that whole business with the map of the British Empire and Lloyd George is a great games player. He's what Theo would call a wind-up merchant. He loves all this. He's always loved toying with people and unsettling them. And so right from the start, when De Valera comes in, Lloyd George has this huge performance about all the dominions. He says, the Australians sit here, New Zealand sits here, Canada, and then he rests his hand on an empty chair and he says to De Valera, and this, Mr. De Valera, is where you will sit when you become a dominion, you know, at the top table.
20:56 Tom Holland? But De Valera is not going to go full for that, is he?
20:58 Dominic Sandbrook? De Valera doesn't fall for it. So Lloyd George just smiles and he plays his next card. He says, "The British Empire is getting rid of its difficulties and we shall soon be able to withdraw our troops from other parts of the world. Oh, I hesitate to think of the horror if the war breaks out again in Ireland." And De Valera says, "Oh, that's a threat. You're threatening me." Lloyd George says, "No, no, no, I'm not threatening you. I'm simply forecasting what will inevitably happen if these conversations fail and if you refuse our invitation to join us." And this sort of shameless games playing, I have to say, I do think Lloyd George is a bad man, but there's a sneaking admiration, I think it's fair to say.
21:36 Tom Holland? Yeah.
21:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, the thing is that De Valera... Doesn't want a dominion, he doesn't want to be a dominion, he wants to be a republic.
21:45 Tom Holland? And this is the famous thing that Lloyd George has pointed out, isn't it? That there is no Irish or Welsh word for republic and he knows this because he's a fellow Celt.
21:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. So De Valera wants a republic. They've talked a lot about the republic, the ideals of the republic ever since 1916. But De Valera, I think, must know, because he's a very shrewd man, he must know that there is clearly going to be some kind of compromise. The IRA cannot win the war militarily. They can make Ireland ungovernable, they can win a political victory because, you know, they can embarrass the British and force them to talks. But they know that if it actually did come to a full-scale war, the British would flood the island with troops and they could kill everybody, right? I mean, it's doable. Also, De Valera knows that he is not going to get the North East because the six counties already have a parliament up and running
22:39 Dominic Sandbrook? and Lloyd George is never going to shut that down and scrap it. That's just not realistic. Anyway. On the 20th of July, so just under a week later, the British make their formal offer. They say, "Southern Ireland can be a dominion, it can be like Canada. We, the Royal Navy, will control your coasts because it's so important for Britain's security. You can't have tariffs between Ireland and Britain." What an irony, the Irish want tariffs, the British don't want tariffs. And the six Ulster counties of the North East can do their own thing, have their own parliament. Lloyd George's chief aide, Thomas Jones, we mentioned him, he's another Welshman. We'll come to him in the second half. He says, "This is the most generous offer in our history."
23:21 Dominic Sandbrook? And obviously, De Valera says, "No, we want to be a republic, we don't want to be a dominion." So after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, Lloyd George says, "Fine. Why don't you come to London and we'll have a conference to discuss how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire can be reconciled with Irish national aspirations."
23:43 Dominic Sandbrook? And now there's a big twist. De Valera says, fine, let's have these talks, but I'm not coming. I will stay at home and I will send a negotiating team. And then they can come back with terms and I will recommend to the revolutionary Sinn Féin Assembly, the parliament, the Doyle, I will recommend whether or not we should accept the terms that my team have brought back. Now, this is a massive decision. It's probably the single most controversial decision in Irish political history that De Valera is not going to go to the talks himself because as we'll see, him not going basically means they're going to have a civil war. Why doesn't he go? Historians have argued about this, different theories.
24:27 Dominic Sandbrook? First theory is that he thinks it's beneath him. He's president of the republic. It's beneath him to go and negotiate with a mere prime minister like Lloyd George. Number two, that he thinks the talks will produce a compromise. He knows they will and he doesn't want to be tainted by it. He wants to maintain his purity. Number three, some people think he's frightened of Lloyd George. He's met Lloyd George. He knows Lloyd George is, you know, the world's greatest, most supple and cunning negotiator.
24:56 Tom Holland? The Welsh wizard.
24:57 Dominic Sandbrook? The Welsh wizard. He doesn't want to be humiliated by him. And number four, which I think is actually very likely, De Valera thinks the talks won't produce a deal and that then with everything on the brink of disaster, he can ride in as the kind of white knight and agree a deal and he will be the hero of the hour.
25:16 Tom Holland? I think it's number two. I think he knows there's going to have to be a compromise and he doesn't want to have the moral taint of it.
25:22 Dominic Sandbrook? I think there's an element of all of these things, actually. I agree with you. He must know because he's not an idiot that they're not going to get what they want and he doesn't want to be tainted. So he picks an alternative team. There's a guy called Robert Barton, who's from the Anglo Irish Protestant elite, a very good example of how complicated nationalism is.
25:39 Tom Holland? Yeah.
25:39 Dominic Sandbrook? That he's from the Protestant classes. There's a guy called Eamon Duggan, who's a lawyer who had fought in the East Rising. There's a guy called George Gaffan Duffy, who's another lawyer and a Sinn Féin MP. And then there's three more well-known figures. As the secretary of the delegation, he picks a man called Erskine Childers. He's a fascinating guy. Born in Mayfair in London, went to Halybury, like Clement Attlee, went to Cambridge, fought as a volunteer in the Burr War, became a British civil servant. He wrote the spy novel, The Riddle of the Sands, predicting the kind of First World War. But then he has this conversion experience in the 1910s, becomes a fierce critic of the empire, and basically converts to being an Irish nationalist.
26:24 Dominic Sandbrook? And he is Sinn Fein's head of publicity, so Childers is going. A man called Arthur Griffith, who we've heard a lot about, is going. He's the founder of Sinn Fein. He's this sort of short, stocky journalist, and he's a nationalist icon, although he's slightly been losing ground since the East Rising.
26:41 Tom Holland? So Dominic, people may remember who listened to our first series on this, that Arthur Griffith was the head of Sinn Fein and was a great fan of a dual monarchy.
26:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
26:50 Tom Holland? The idea of the British king also being king of Ireland in the way that the emperor in the Habsburg Empire was king of both Hungary and Austria. So is there a sense that he is more open to this idea of becoming a dominion?
27:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Not at first. I don't think people think he's soft on this at first at all. I think none of them want to be a dominion when they all go.
27:09 Tom Holland? So Griffith has left the dual monarchy option behind now.
27:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
27:13 Tom Holland? That's history.
27:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And the final person, somebody we've heard a lot about, the head of IRA Intelligence, the revolutionary finance minister, Michael Collins. People sometimes say, oh, what a weird thing to send Collins when Collins is a fighting man. But actually Collins hasn't done a lot of fighting. He's a strategist. He's a planner. He is a good person to choose, I think. And as you will see, the British end up really respecting him and thinking that he's a serious player, a serious negotiator. But at the heart of all this, there is a massive ambiguity. De Valera says, these people, he describes them explicitly as plenipotenteries. So a plenipotentiary, for people who don't know, you send them to negotiate a deal and they can negotiate whatever they want.
27:58 Dominic Sandbrook? They do the best job they can and they don't have to come back to you to clear it with you. But in the next breath, De Valera says, you're plenty pretentious. However, any really big questions, you must refer home before signing up to them. So any deal that you do is subject to approval, but it's not really clear whether that approval will be by him and his cabinet or by the whole of the Doyle, the whole of the kind of Sinn Féin dominated parliament. So they leave with very, very unclear instructions. Do they have a free hand to negotiate whatever they want or not? Are they just doing De Valera's bidding? Do they have to keep going to him for his approval? They don't really know themselves.
28:40 Dominic Sandbrook? And what makes this so toxic is that the republican movement in Ireland is already fracturing a bit. So previously, they've been united by their opposition to Britain and their fidelity to this misty ideal of the republic. But nobody's ever really spelled out precisely what this means. And so they are basically sending a very inexperienced team, people who have never really done any international negotiating at all, with no clear plan about really what they want. And actually, I mean, if you think I'm being harsh, Ronan Fanning, professor of history at University College Dublin, wrote a brilliant book on all this called Fatal Path. He's unbelievably scathing about the team.
29:21 Dominic Sandbrook? He says this was a result of, and I quote, "the primitive and one dimensional politics of Doyle Aaron, which was little more than a forum where the representatives of Sinn Féin could talk to themselves." In other words, they haven't had the kind of political training, the preparation that would enable them to have a really good team and to know what they want.
29:41 Tom Holland? But isn't it profounder than that? That the notion of revolutionary violence has been sanctified over the course of the revolution? And therefore, the very notion of negotiating is seen as demeaning for people who, you know, are the embodiments of the historic will of the Irish people.
29:59 Dominic Sandbrook? I can tell what books you've been reading, Tom, because I think that's exactly right. Ronan Fanning makes that argument, doesn't he?
30:04 Tom Holland? I couldn't remember, Dominic. Who knows?
30:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, that basically, if you've been fighting a revolutionary war for a sort of, dare I say, a sacral ideal, the idea of sitting down around the table with your opponents and doing a deal where you do a lot of fudging and mudging kind of thing. Of course, the two things are in conflict with each other. So I absolutely agree with you. Yes, I think it's it's very hard for them to even contemplate the idea of a deal, I would say.
30:33 Tom Holland? Well, they have turned their back on the kind of parliamentary democratic politics that Westminster represented. And of course, they are now going into the heart of Westminster to reengage. But it's like they're, you know, they're off to play a sport that they haven't been in training for for 10 years or something.
30:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison. Now, by contrast, of course, the British have been doing loads of negotiating recently, the Treaty of Versailles and all the associated treaties. And their team are like a massive big hitters.
31:01 Tom Holland? Galacticos.
31:02 Dominic Sandbrook? So Lloyd George, Churchill, the Conservative leader, Austin Chamberlain, the son of Joseph Chamberlain, who'd been a great foe of Irish Home Rule, and somebody you mentioned, Lord Birkenhead. I mean, he's one of the biggest beasts of all. He's forgotten now, I think, by and large, formerly Effie Smith. But at the time, he is seen as the most brilliant man in London.
31:24 Tom Holland? Yeah.
31:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Arrogant, hard drinking.
31:27 Tom Holland? A wit.
31:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, a great wit. My favorite one is when he's a young barrister and he's speaking to a judge. He's given this huge thing and the judge says, Mr. Smith, I am none the wiser. And Effie Smith says, No, my lord, but you're much better informed now. Anyway, Lloyd George has picked this team. The thing is, the teams are divided among themselves. Lloyd George really needs his team to stay loyal, and he needs Birkenhead in particular because Birkenhead is the sort of, he's the keeper of the Tory flame, the Unionist flame. If he deserts Lloyd George, Lloyd George's coalition falls apart. So he's essential to shield Lloyd George from criticism from what are called the Tory diehards. So this is true of the Irish as well, because they also have their own pressures and their own
32:12 Dominic Sandbrook? rivalries. Now, Collins is a really good example. Collins's base with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Army is a bit fragile. He has opponents. He has people who hate him. He has rivals. And so he's conscious about that. And also Collins goes to London with his personal life in massive turmoil. He's just proposed to a woman called Kitty Keenan.
32:33 Tom Holland? Julia Roberts.
32:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Julia Roberts, exactly. So he's got Julia Roberts on the go. The 8th of October, the Irish team arrive at Euston Station. They've gone by boat to Holyhead and then by train. Huge crowds of supporters there. Of course, a big Irish community in London. People waving flags and cheering and stuff. The one man who's not there very tellingly is Collins. That is very exciting for the British press because they see him as the kind of Scarlet Pimpernel of Ireland.
32:57 Tom Holland? Yeah.
32:57 Dominic Sandbrook? The most wanted man in the world. All of this kind of thing. Now, he has insisted on travelling separately because he's a star. He's staying in separate lodgings from everybody else. He's got his own aides and he's got his own bodyguards. So all the others are staying in Knightsbridge behind Harrods at a place called Twenty Two Hands Place. But he is staying in Chelsea at Fifteen Caddigan Gardens.
33:19 Dominic Sandbrook? So, the stage is set. And on the morning of Tuesday, the 11th of October, the Irish cars come into Downing Street. Griffith leads the way and Collins is right behind him. And there's a huge crowd having to be held back by the police. Everyone's very excited. The black door number 10 opens and inside Lloyd George is waiting to shake their hands. "You're gentlemen, nice to see you." Blah, blah, blah. Just after 11 o'clock, they take their places around the cabinet table. William Gladstone, the first British Prime Minister to try to "solve" in inverted commas, the Irish question. That was his table, so they're sitting around the table. Lloyd George, very smiley, all business, he says, "Gentlemen, the time has come to end the tragic story of misunderstanding and war." And with that, Tom, the real drama begins.
34:04 Tom Holland? Well, we will be back after a break to hear how things go.
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34:51 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by TikTok. We obviously love history here. It's always a treat to make a new discovery, especially in unexpected ways.
35:01 Tom Holland? Which is exactly what happens on TikTok. Like, you know coffee? You make it, add milk, drink it. Nothing more, except...
35:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Except, when you hop on TikTok, you don't just learn how to make an authentic cappuccino. You can also discover videos about how in the 1700s, people would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it.
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37:26 Tom Holland? Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in Downing Street on the morning of the 11th of October, 1921. And David Lloyd George, the Welsh wizard, his moustache bristling, his eyes twinkling, is holding court.
37:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
37:42 Tom Holland? Dominic, what is he saying?
37:43 Dominic Sandbrook? So he says, look, we can end the cycle of violence, he says, but we have to hurry. There are forces at work in this country which think the government has gone too far already. In other words, there's an element of a threat there right from the beginning.
37:56 Tom Holland? So these are the Tory diehards.
37:58 Dominic Sandbrook? These are the Tory diehards. Now, the next person to speak is Arthur Griffith, who's the sort of head of the Irish delegation. And he says, you know, you've treated us badly since the days of William Pitt, and I hope that we will now put that all behind us. But in a sort of nicely symbolic moment, Griffith speaks so quietly that many of the British can't actually hear what he's saying. And Gretchen Freeman, who's written an actually incredibly readable book on the treaty, you wouldn't think that this is a very readable subject, but she does brilliantly, this sort of popular narrative. She says it was as though a lion had given way to a mouse when Griffith is speaking. And this sort of sets the tone, because almost every historian, British or Irish who's written
38:41 Dominic Sandbrook? about this, says the Irish at the beginning, they seemed very nervous and very unprepared. And the difference is the British are, you know, they're bulldozers. They know exactly what they want to get and how to get it.
38:51 Tom Holland? And anyone, Dominic, who has lived through the Brexit negotiations will find echoes of that process throughout this.
38:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, absolutely.
38:59 Tom Holland? And the Irish are playing the part of the British negotiators, and the British are in the position of the EU. They Hold the cards, they're familiar.
39:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's exactly that. When I was reading about this, I was thinking about it at every turn. You know, one side knows exactly what they want and what their red lines are. And the others are divided among themselves and don't really know exactly what they want. So a good example is at this very first meeting, Griffith says, we're thinking that maybe Ireland will be neutral. And Lloyd George just says, I'm going to shut that down right now. You're never going to be neutral. We will never accept this. We want you to be like Canada and Canada definitely isn't neutral. The next thing. In these first meetings, Griffith and Collins in particular spent a lot of time talking about a united Ireland. How are we going to get this six counties back? But almost every historian who's written about this says, this is a complete waste of time. Partition is irreversible.
39:53 Dominic Sandbrook? It's arguably partition has been on the cards for about 12 years. Well, certainly since 1912, let's say. There's no way that Lloyd George is going to shut down the parliament in Belfast because it would inflame the Tories and destroy his government. So they are wasting their time going on about this unless they're using it in a cunning way as a bargaining chip to get something else, which is we'll see they're not really. Anyway, the talks drag on and quite soon the British say, look, we've run out of patience. So on Friday, the 21st of October, Lloyd George says, okay, enough. I want answers on three things. Allegiance to the crown, you have to still acknowledge the king. You have to still be members of the empire and we want naval defence guarantees, i.e. we will basically be in charge of your security.
40:38 Dominic Sandbrook? And if you don't give us the answer by Monday, the talks are over and we're back to the war. So the following Monday, at long last, the Irish team come up with a counter offer. And this has been drafted by De Valera himself. And this is an idea called external association. So Ireland will be a neutral republic, they're still going with that. But it'll be associated with the British Empire, won't be a member of the British Empire, but it'll be associated with it.
41:04 Tom Holland? You've put in your notes, all very reminiscent of Brexit negotiations, endless hair splitting about tiny constitutional details that matter enormously to quite small numbers of people. I mean, that's exactly what it's like, isn't it?
41:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it is, exactly. I don't think that the average person in Ireland.
41:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Is really excited about whether it's a dominion or external association or those things. But if you're a nationalist.
41:27 Tom Holland? Of course.
41:28 Dominic Sandbrook? And if you fought and if you've lost people in the war, you know, of course it matters, just as if you were, you know, somebody who'd been in the leave campaign in 2016, you know, you really care about the outcome of the Brexit talks.
41:41 Tom Holland? Yeah, of course.
41:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Lloyd George treats the idea of external association with utter contempt. And actually, again, most historians think the British are never going to go for this. There's an Irish historian called Bill Kissane. The British didn't win the First World War to contemplate humiliation in their own backyard. Again, the First World War comparison. And what is more, what's really interesting and will surprise people? The other dominions will not accept it either. So Canada and Australia, for example, have made it very clear to London. They expect Ireland to remain within the empire. They will not be happy if the Irish go their own way as a neutral republic. So, you know, the empire is so fragile. It's at its largest ever extent in the early 1920s.
42:26 Dominic Sandbrook? But it seems so delicately poised. And Lloyd George is always thinking about this. Anyway, they have this meeting on the Monday. And afterwards Lloyd George says to Collins and Griffiths, could you two stay behind, please, for a private chat? Now, if the Irish team had been more sensible, they would never have had private chats with Lloyd George. They would never have allowed themselves to be seduced into this. Because what it does is it splinters their team. And Lloyd George is brilliant in small meetings. He's a manipulator. He can play on people and stuff. And as time goes on, he has more and more of these private chats. He identifies Griffith and Collins as the people that, you know, he likes and he can do business with. And they both start to warm to the British, the one thing that you would never have expected.
43:11 Dominic Sandbrook? So Griffith actually writes to De Valera at one point and he says, you know, I think if we show a little bit more goodwill to the British, they'll give us a great deal. Which you would think, that's mad, you've just drunk the British Kool-Aid. The really remarkable thing is that Collins, the IRA's head of intelligence, he also starts to warm to the British. And you know, the person he really like gets somewhere with Lord Birkenhead.
43:33 Tom Holland? Effie Smith.
43:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. He thinks, because they're men's men, they're alpha males, they like bullying people, they like drinking, they like eating oysters or whatever.
43:43 Tom Holland? Yeah.
43:44 Dominic Sandbrook? They like bants. And actually, Collins starts getting to the meetings a little bit early, so they can have a bit of banter with Lord Birkenhead. I love this. That's your dream dinner party, right? Michael Collins and Effie Smith.
43:58 Tom Holland? Yeah.
43:58 Dominic Sandbrook? So, the other person who's really important in this change in the mood, we mentioned him briefly, it's this guy Tom Jones, this Welshman. Now, nobody knows about him today, but in the 1920s, he was the ultimate operator. One newspaper called him one of the six most powerful people in Europe, which is a big claim.
44:17 Tom Holland? I'd love to know who the other five were.
44:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. He's working class, he's also Welsh speaking, he's a former evangelical preacher, and he's now become the Deputy Cabinet Secretary, and he is Lloyd George's right-hand man, basically.
44:29 Tom Holland? Doesn't Lloyd George chat to him in Welsh?
44:31 Dominic Sandbrook? They're talking Welsh in front of other people.
44:33 Tom Holland? Kind of very ostentatiously.
44:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Ostentatiously to annoy. This is another thing that actually I secretly really admire about Lloyd George, because I would, if I could speak Welsh, I would do that all the time. So, Tom Jones, everybody likes him, he's very likable, and the Irish team really like him. And Lloyd George uses him as a key go-between. And he sends Tom Jones to the Grosvenor Hotel for another of these little meetings with Collins and Griffith. And Jones says, look, you going on about United Ireland is going to destroy these talks, because the government will never abandon the Ulster Unionists. But there is an answer, he says, there's an answer that could fix this. Now, redrawing borders is all the rage in the 1920s. There has been a big dispute, which is totally forgotten today, but has dominated the headlines all through 1921,
45:19 Dominic Sandbrook? between Germany and Poland in Upper Silesia. And Jones says, why don't we do what they did in Silesia? They had a boundary commission that drew a new border. You know, if we had a boundary commission. I reckon that Boundary Commission would give you loads of territory. You would get the bits of the six counties that are very Catholic and Tyrone and Fermanagh and stuff. Why don't you do that? And Griffith says, oh yeah, that's actually quite a good idea. I love that idea.
45:46 Tom Holland? Who would be on this Boundary Commission? Who would run it?
45:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, this is the thing, it's not defined. Lloyd George is so cunning with all this. I mean, spoiler alert, the Boundary Commission idea flies, but never really produces anything. And this is because Lloyd George has really thought this through. And this promise, oh, the Boundary Commission could give you loads of new territory. It's hanging there, but there is also another possibility. The Boundary Commission could take territory from you. And this is never really discussed. Now, when Griffith says, oh yeah, we could do that. This is a really important moment. For the first time, he's going against his instructions from De Valera in Dublin. He's using his own initiative, which I think De Valera never expected him to do.
46:32 Dominic Sandbrook? And then the next day, he has a meeting with Lloyd George and Lloyd George is at his most serpentine. He says, the Tory press are giving me such a hard time, the Tory diehards. I think my coalition might break up actually. And I really need your help. I need to persuade the Ulster Unionists about this Boundary Commission idea. So please, don't dismiss it publicly. Don't attack it. Just pretend that you like it and live with it for the time being. And Griffith says to him, okay, fine, I understand. You know, I'm not agreeing to it now, but I won't slack it off. Lloyd George, he says, yeah, brilliant. And the next day, he sends this guy Jones and Jones says, the Prime Minister's asked me to draw up a document describing yesterday's meeting about the Boundary Commission.
47:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Do you mind just agreeing to it? And Griffith glances at this document and he says, um, yeah, fine, looks good, looks good. Now, this is a key moment. When Jones gets back and says, yes, he's fine with it. Lloyd George is delighted and Frances Stevenson says, that night, I have never seen him so excited about anything before.
47:37 Tom Holland? And she must have seen him excited about quite a lot of things, I would think.
47:40 Dominic Sandbrook? She certainly has seen him excited. Yes.
47:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Because this document has done two things. Number one, Lloyd George has shored up his flank against the Tory diehards. He can go to them and say, look, I've persuaded this bloke from Sinn Féin to agree to the Boundary Commission. So effectively to agree to partition. But also, he plans to store this document away and to use it against Griffith later, as we shall see. So, the British produce a draft treaty. This is very much along the lines that they'd already discussed. Ireland becomes a dominion, Northern Ireland does its own thing, and there's this Boundary Commission. When the Irish team see this draft treaty, some of them go absolutely ballistic. What? Ireland's still in the Empire? Still under the Crown? No way are we having this. But Collins has already begun to change
48:30 Dominic Sandbrook? his mind. He's been doing loads of reading on the dominions. And one thing he realizes, and I think he's quite right, is that being a dominion, like Canada or like Australia, is not an end point. It's a process. So in other words, he realizes that Canada, for example, is going to become a completely independent country. And then it's on a sort of conveyor belt that is leading it inexorably towards that status. And he says, look, that's clearly going to happen to Canada and Australia, so that would happen to us too, if we get on this conveyor belt. We won't get what we want straight away, but we'll get it eventually.
49:02 Tom Holland? Delayed gratification.
49:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Delayed gratification. Now, the Irish team are arguing bitterly about this long into the night, which of course means they're knackered the next day when they turn up for the full meetings. And all the time Lloyd George is piling on the pressure. He's saying, come on, we need to decision quickly. I don't want to restart the war, but I will if I have to. Hurry up, hurry up. And he keeps saying to them, you must accept the status of a dominion in the Empire, and you must accept the King. And that means the Irish MPs, or TDs as they've become, would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the
49:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Constitution and to His Majesty.
49:38 Tom Holland? And again, it's so Brexit, isn't it? It's so Brexit. It's exactly like the kind of ideological determination on the part of the hardline Brexit negotiators not to have anything to do with EU frameworks of justice or supervisory controls or anything like that. And more a point of principle than of politics.
49:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course, but principle matters.
49:58 Tom Holland? Of course, yeah.
49:59 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, principle matters enormously to people. Now, the interesting thing is Lloyd George says, look, if you don't like this, we will smash you. We will reintroduce troops and we will kill you all. Is he bluffing? I don't think he is bluffing, actually. Some historians think he was, but I think, I mean, Lloyd George is a man who was sat there quite happily in government as Prime Minister during the bloodiest days of the First World War. He's perfectly capable of sending thousands of troops to fight and die and to kill in Ireland, I think. And as we will see, Griffith and Collins both completely believe that he would restart the war if he had to. So let's move towards the first week in December, which is the deadline that Lloyd George has set. So we're on the first Saturday of December, the third. The Irish team are back in Dublin.
50:43 Dominic Sandbrook? They've gone to meet De Valera and his cabinet. They get there very late. Their boat collided with a schooner in the Irish Sea, so they're knackered.
50:53 Tom Holland? That's very riddle of the sands, isn't it?
50:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Very riddle of the sands. They'd been bickering all the way. Griffith says, look, this is the best we're going to get. Everybody wants peace. We just have to suck up the crown and the empire and the oath. Barton and Gavin Duffy say, no, that's rubbish. The British are bluffing. They'll never start the war again. Collins is a bit ambiguous. He says, I don't like the oath. I'm not happy about the deal, but, and I quote, England could arrange a war in Ireland within a week. De Valera, of course, has still not set foot in London during this process, says this, and I think you should go back to London. Why don't you try pushing my external association idea again? You can imagine like, oh, God, come on. And he says, crucially, this is really important to explain what happens in the next couple of episodes that we'll do.
51:38 Dominic Sandbrook? De Valera says, please keep me and my cabinet in the loop. Do not sign anything without agreeing it with me.
51:47 Dominic Sandbrook? And Robert Barton, at this point, says to him, why will you not come with us? Come with us to London. And De Valera says, no, no, I'm actually fine here. I'm quite happy here.
51:57 Tom Holland? Because it seems to me that what De Valera doesn't want to compromise with more than anything is his own sense of his own virtue. And there's an amazing comment that Rowan Fanning quotes in his book, and he quotes Lionel Curtis, who is a British official involved in the negotiations. And Curtis has said of the British, "The greatest strength of the British people lies in their inveterate belief that whatever else happens, they and their leaders will blunder horribly." And then he says, "The greatest weakness of the Sinn Féin government is that it is almost void of any admission to the world of themselves that they can either think what is wrong or do what is wrong."
52:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
52:32 Tom Holland? And that seems to me, actually, to map very well on to the kind of the governing principles in the negotiations. And actually, I mean, it also maps on quite well on to the Brexit negotiations as well.
52:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Isn't it the difference between one team that are motivated largely by pragmatism?
52:49 Tom Holland? Yeah.
52:50 Dominic Sandbrook? And they have no sense that this is a process in which morality plays any path at all, and another team who genuinely believe that they're on the side of rights and virtue and freedom and independence and all of those kinds of things. So any compromise is going to be very difficult.
53:02 Tom Holland? Yeah.
53:03 Dominic Sandbrook? I think that must be a huge part of it. Anyway, by the Sunday evening, they're back in London. That's the 4th of December. They go back to Downing Street yet again, for about the 5,000th time, they have an argument about the partition of Ireland and the oath to the Crown. And Lloyd George now is just in pure kind of performative, melodramatic mood. He kind of says, we're going to have to have a private meeting, me and my team. They go out and they have a private meeting. And then he comes back in. I mean, they're probably just going out for a smoke or something. And then they come back in and Lloyd George says to the Irish, listen, if you won't enter the empire, if you won't accept the common bond of the Crown, then I'm afraid this means war. You know, that's how it is. And is he bluffing? I don't think he is. The next morning, Monday the 5th, his team prepare a draft statement on the collapse of
53:47 Dominic Sandbrook? the talks, they put all the blame on Sinn Féin, and they send a coded message to the army in Ireland saying, prepare for hostilities within days. Later that morning, Lloyd George asks to see Collins alone. And they don't decide anything, but Lloyd George, by doing that, is clearly sending Collins, I think, a message. You are a serious person like me. Come on, we can fix this. Help me to fix it. Bring the others this afternoon and we'll have one last meeting and we'll have one last go. So that afternoon, three o'clock, the Irish delegates return to Downing Street for this last meeting. It's a very tense mood. This time, there are no cheering crowds with flags or anything like that. They've run out of money, so the first time they ever arrived, they arrived in multiple cars. This time, they all have to cram into one car.
54:29 Tom Holland? All sitting on each other's laps.
54:30 Dominic Sandbrook? It's a very indecorous arrival. And the British have slimmed down their teams, so there's just four people facing them at the table. There's Lloyd George, there is Churchill, there's Lord Birkenhead, and there's Austin Chamberlain, the Conservative leader. Churchill said afterwards, death stood at our elbow. Yeah, because they do think, you know, the war could be on tomorrow. And what happens now is the supreme exhibition of Lloyd George's cunning. He starts off by talking about this business of partition of Northern Ireland. The Irish say, we hate it. If you scrapped it, if you scrapped the Belfast Parliament and gave us Ulster, maybe we'd accept your dominion status. And of that, Lloyd George pretends to have a massive temper tantrum.
55:15 Dominic Sandbrook? As Barton says, Lloyd George got excited. He shook his papers in the air, declared that we were deliberately trying to bring about a break on Ulster because our people in Ireland had refused to come within the empire. And now Lloyd George plays his card. He points at Griffith and he says, you have lied to me. You've let me down. You promised me that you would accept my boundary commission. And he pulls out this piece of paper, and it's the document that Griffith had approved without properly reading it a month earlier. And the other Irishmen are shocked. What's this? What's all this? And nobody is more shocked than Griffith himself. The blood drains from his features, he's completely thrown by it. There's this dreadful silence, and then he says.
56:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I said I wouldn't let you down and I won't. I will sign the treaty. He crumbles.
56:06 Tom Holland? He's like the guy who who ticks the box on something on the internet, discovers that he's giving away all his money to somebody in Russia or something.
56:14 Dominic Sandbrook? He hasn't read the small print.
56:16 Tom Holland? Yeah.
56:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, as soon as he says that, Lloyd George is sort of, great, right, well, let's move on to these other little minor things. The seas, the coast, we'll do a compromise. By the way, you can have your own tariffs. We'll let you have that. And he says, why don't you have a new version of the oath that we all like, which Michael Collins has drafted? So now, it's very complicated. This is pure Brexit negotiation, kind of arcane hairspitting. Irish MPs will swear allegiance to the King, and I quote, "in virtue of the common citizenship of Ireland with Great Britain and her adherence to and membership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth of Nations." So they're kind of still swearing the oath.
56:53 Tom Holland? Yeah.
56:54 Dominic Sandbrook? After this, they have a break and Lloyd George says, all right, you need to make it your minds now. He says, this is now a matter of peace or war. And by the way, I require that all of you sign. It has to be unanimous. And now the supreme bit of Lloyd George melodrama. He gets at two envelopes and he puts them on the table. And he says, this first envelope is a statement that you've accepted the terms. And he says, the other one is an announcement that the talks have failed. And that means, and I quote, war within three days. He says, I have standing ready a special train and a destroyer to take one of these letters
57:34 Dominic Sandbrook? to Northern Ireland's Prime Minister, Sir James Craig in Belfast. Which of the two letters am I to send? I want your answer by 10 o'clock tonight.
57:44 Tom Holland? He really is a wizard, isn't he?
57:45 Dominic Sandbrook? That's great stuff. It's brilliant performative politics. You know, it's very Hollywood. Lloyd George is great at it.
57:52 Tom Holland? It's like kind of pulling two rabbits out of a hat.
57:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So the Irish go back to Knightsbridge and they are absolutely stunned. Gretchen Freeman describes them being in a state of profound anger, despair and panic. Griffiths says, fine, I'll sign. Colin says, I'll sign. This guy, Duggan, says he'll sign. Barton says, there's no way I'm signing. Gavin Duffy says, there's no way.
58:12 Tom Holland? What about Childers?
58:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Childers is the secretary.
58:15 Tom Holland? He doesn't get a signature?
58:16 Dominic Sandbrook? He doesn't get a say, but he's sort of, he's fuming on the margins, basically, the whole time.
58:21 Tom Holland? He's not in favor?
58:22 Dominic Sandbrook? He's not in favor at all. Then what follows, there's a huge row, a massive row. Barton described it later. He said that Collins and Griffith called us murderers. They stated we'd be hanged from lampposts, that we'd destroy all they fought for. Basically, Collins and Griffith wear the other blokes down, and they say, fine, we'll sign it. So they go back to Downing Street. They're told they had to be back by 10, but they'd been arguing so long they didn't get there till about 11. When they arrived, the British actually expected that they wouldn't do it. And so Griffith says, fine, we're all agreed, we'll sign it. Lloyd George and his team are absolutely delighted. There's a bit of faffing around over the small print, and at 10 past 2 in the morning of the 6th of December, they sign the treaty.
59:05 Dominic Sandbrook? The Irish delegates go out into the fog. It's a very folky day, of course. It's the 1920s. It's London. There's bound to be loads of fog. They are silenced. They are exhausted. They don't speak to the press. They just get straight into their car, all of them piling into this one car.
59:19 Tom Holland? Yeah. One of them getting in the boot.
59:22 Dominic Sandbrook? And they go home. And a few minutes later, Lord Birkenhead and Churchill come out with these massive cigars, smoking them on the steps of Downing Street.
59:30 Tom Holland? Looking like huge, great capitalist imperialists.
59:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And Churchill, it's Churchill, of course, inevitably, who announces the deal to the world. So effectively, what you have is you're going to have two entities on the island of Ireland, the two entities that are there to this day, Northern Ireland with its six counties, and the other 26, which become what's then called the Irish Free State, which is a literal translation of the Irish term seastort eran, which is a term that De Valera had sometimes used himself to describe the republic. So in other words, the British have got the deal they always wanted. And I think there were two obvious winners. One is Lloyd George. He's, in inverted commas, solved the Irish question, and he's kept his coalition in power with himself at the top. And the other big winners, of
1:00:17 Dominic Sandbrook? course, are the Ulster Unionists. They have their six-county, two-thirds Protestant-majority state, which is what they wanted. And there were two obvious groups of losers. So one of them is unionists and Protestants in the south of Ireland. So actually, people like Sir Edward Carson, who was the original leader of the unionists. So they find themselves now in a nationalist Catholic dominated southern Ireland, going to the Irish Free State, which is the one thing they'd always dreaded. And then the really big losers, the half a million Catholics who live in a Protestant dominated northern Ireland. And as we will see in a future series that we'll do on the troubles,
1:00:58 Dominic Sandbrook? they find themselves treated as second class citizens in everything from politics to housing. As David Trimble, the unionist leader in the 1990s said, it was a cold house for Catholics. Now, in Britain, people are delighted by the treaty. Lloyd George, when he briefs his cabinet, he says, I mean, this will surprise, I think, a lot of listeners to this show. He says, this is one of the greatest days in the history of the British Empire. We've fixed this problem and Ireland is still part of our family. The king sends him a telegram of congratulations, the stock market booms, all is sweetness and light. But in Dublin, it is a very, very different story. When De Valera was told the deal had been signed, he said, what?
1:01:43 Dominic Sandbrook? They haven't checked with me. They're meant to have checked with me. What's going on? And someone hands him the text and he can't bring himself to read it. He is so appalled. And the problem with the deal for him and for his fellow hardliners is not the partition, I think. I mean, I think all the Irish historians would agree with this. They don't like a partition, but they never really expected they would get the whole island. That ship had sailed. The real issue is this key issue of principle, which is the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. So Michael Collins says, come on, these are just words. Who cares? Doesn't matter. But to a lot of Republicans, they say, we're subordinate to the British monarch, really?
1:02:23 Dominic Sandbrook? And betraying everything that our comrades fought for, the ideal of independence? Come on. So two days later, the delegates get back and the Irish cabinet meets and the atmosphere is unbelievably toxic. De Valera rips into Griffith and Collins, "You should never have signed this without consulting me." And Griffith snaps back at him, he says, "You didn't go to London, you refused to come, and this is the consequence." Now, the thing is, Griffith had broken his promise. He had said he wouldn't sign, and he did sign it. But on the other hand, I think, for me, I think De Valera was deranged to think that he could control the negotiations from Dublin.
1:03:01 Tom Holland? Or is he just playing a very, very long game?
1:03:03 Dominic Sandbrook? So Tom, by a long game, you mean, does he think there will be a civil war, he will lose it, and then he will somehow get back into politics eventually?
1:03:09 Tom Holland? I don't think he thinks he'll lose it. I think maybe he thinks that the negotiations will happen, he will stand on the right side of history, the negotiators will fail, the British will have signed the treaty, and so they won't have any appetite for war, and he can just step in and be the hero.
1:03:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I think he does think that. I think he thinks he will ride in at the end as the hero of the hour. And he has been denied that opportunity because they have signed this treaty. There'll be some listeners who are more sympathetic to De Valera, who say, you know, he was betrayed by his negotiators or whatever. Ronan Fanning, who's his biographer, accuses him of a gross evasion of the responsibilities of leadership. And I think, I mean, obvious difference between Lloyd George and De Valera is Lloyd George takes personal control of the negotiations, they are his baby from start to finish, he runs them masterfully. De Valera washes his hands of them and refuses to get involved. And if you're a leader, you have to get involved, I would say.
1:04:01 Tom Holland? But just to stick up for De Valera, I mean, had the negotiations been happening in Dublin, then he might have turned up.
1:04:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe. There is no parallel universe, by the way in which those negotiations happen in Dublin.
1:04:12 Tom Holland? I know.
1:04:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, by the end of that day, Irish politics is already irretrievably divided. The cabinet voted by four to three, the Irish cabinet, to back the deal. And De Valera was furious, and he issued a statement straight away. He said, "The deal is in violent conflict with the wishes of the majority of this nation," which is not actually, as it turns out, true. There's then an incredibly bitter debate in the doyle which dragged on into January. On the one hand, you have the anti-treaty people who say, "You betrayed the ideal of the republic, you betrayed all our friends who died." And on the other hand, you have, most famously, Collins. Collins really puts himself on the line defending this. He says, "This is the best deal we could get. We're never going to win a war against the British.
1:04:54 Dominic Sandbrook? We've made the biggest step towards independence in Ireland's history." And he says, "It doesn't give us everything we want, but," famous quotation, "it gives us the freedom to achieve it." The Doyle voted on the 7th of January and they voted by 64 votes to 57 to back the treaty. De Valera led his supporters out of the chamber the next day and Collins shouts at them as they go out and he calls them deserters and his parting shot as De Valera and Erskine Childers go out of the chamber, he goes for the worst insult in the Irish political lexicon. He says foreigners, Americans, English.
1:05:34 Tom Holland? Yeah, because De Valera had been born in America and Childers, of course, was English.
1:05:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. So in the next few weeks, the republican movement tears itself apart, even the IRA splits into competing factions. And on the 14th of April 1922, about 150 armed IRA fighters anti-treaty faction occupy one of the biggest buildings in Dublin, which is the Four Courts Legal Complex. And they are doing this as a deliberate provocation to the new pro-treaty government of Griffith and Collins and indeed to the British. For the next few weeks, they are still there in this building and everybody is waiting and the tension is rising. And then on the 22nd of June, news arrives from London of an assassination on the streets
1:06:19 Dominic Sandbrook? of London in broad daylight that shocks the world and will change everything.
1:06:24 Tom Holland? Brilliant, Dominic. Thanks ever so much. So we will continue this story on Monday when we will be returning to Dublin and we'll be exploring the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in the very place where it begins, in the heart of the Irish capital, in the Four Courts Complex. And we will be joined there by the brilliant Ronan McGreevy. And if you want to get both those episodes on Monday, then you can do so by joining our very own elite negotiating team, The Rest is History Club at therestishistory.com. Thank you, Dominic. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye-bye.
1:07:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Bye-bye.
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Previous 578. The Irish War of Independence: Bloody Sunday (Part 3) Next 580. The Irish Civil War: The Assassination of Sir Henry Wilson (Part 1) Page updated November 2, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
