Kevin Matthews. Fatal Influence: The Impact of Ireland on British Politics, 1920-1925. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004. xvi + 317 pp. $90.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-904558-06-4; $45.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-904558-05-7.
Reviewed by Daniel C. Williamson (Hillyer College, University of Hartford)
Published on H-Albion (May, 2006)
Historians of Ireland correctly see the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 as a major factor in the development of that country's history during the twentieth century. "The Treaty" (as it is generally known) not only created the independent Irish Free State and partitioned the island, but it also led to the Irish Civil War and laid the framework for domestic politics on both sides of the border for decades to come. Kevin Matthews's book, Fatal Influence: The Impact of Ireland on British Politics, 1920-1925, examines the under-appreciated importance that the Treaty had on political life on the other side of the Irish Sea. While Matthews does focus most of the book on British domestic politics, his work is also very informative about what was happening in Dublin and Belfast at the same time. Indeed, the subtitle of this book could easily have been reversed to The Impact of British Politics on Ireland.
Matthews begins by looking at the premiership of David Lloyd George (1916-1922). Ireland had a major impact on the political fortunes of Lloyd George's government. As the head of a Liberal-Conservative coalition born during the First World War, Lloyd George was bound to view Ireland as a delicate subject. Before the war, the "Irish Question" was one of the major issues dividing Britain's two main parties, with the Conservatives as staunch supporters of the Unionists and the Liberal Party pledged to Home Rule. The coalition government survived the end of the Great War, but the reverberations of the Easter Rising, including the rise of Sinn Fein and the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War, put Ireland front and center in British postwar politics. This placed great strain on one of the natural fissures of the Liberal-Conservative alliance.
According to Matthews, Lloyd George had no strong personal feelings about Ireland. His overriding concern was to settle the Irish situation and thus remove it from British politics. The Government of Ireland Act of 1920 was a failed attempt to come to a peaceful agreement in Ireland. Essentially a re-working of the pre-war Home Rule legislation, the act would have established two parliaments in Ireland; one in Dublin for the Nationalist/Catholic majority, and one in Belfast for the Unionist/Protestant dominated northeast. The act called for the creation of a Council of Ireland linking both parliaments to coordinate issues of joint north-south concern, and theoretically lead to re-unification. Ulster's Unionists accepted the legislation after some debate about the extent of territory they should claim for the new province of Northern Ireland. Abandoning hope of holding onto all nine Ulster counties, the Unionists settled their claim on the six northeastern counties. This partition was fraught with difficulties, as there was a significant Catholic population in the area, with local Catholic majorities in cities like Derry, as well as the two entire counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. In the south, Dail Eireann simply ignored the act, as it fought to achieve a republic for all of Ireland.
With the IRA's guerilla campaign in full swing throughout Ireland, Lloyd George was pulled in opposite directions by the two elements of his coalition. The Conservatives wanted the IRA crushed by a full-scale military onslaught. Liberals, on the other hand, were upset with the increasingly ruthless, albeit unsuccessful, nature of the "police action" waged by the Black and Tan and Auxiliary units of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In July 1921, Lloyd George reversed his no-negotiation strategy and called for talks with Dail Eireann's president, Eamon de Valera. Matthews argues that Lloyd George's determination to end the Anglo-Irish War arose from the continued strength shown by Sinn Fein in the Irish election of 1921, the fact that the security forces seemed unable to defeat the IRA, and, perhaps most importantly, from the need to keep his own coalition in one piece. The prime minister hoped that by bringing peace and stability to long-troubled Ireland, he would be able to meld his fractious coalition into a new political entity, the Centre Party, which would cement his hold on power in Great Britain.
The basic story of the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty is as Well known as it is controversial. (De Valera's refusal to participate in the talks and his dispatch of the reluctant Michael Collins to lead the Irish delegation; the intense debates over Dominion status verses an Irish Republic and the issue of partition; and the reluctant acceptance of the Treaty by the Irish after Lloyd George all threatened to end the truce and launch full-scale war, and ultimately split Sinn Fein.) Matthews does an admirable job of recounting the narrative, but Fatal Influence breaks new ground by examining the negotiations through the lens of British politics. While Lloyd George was a duplicitous negotiator, it was not Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith who were his chief victims. The author contends that in his desire to get the Irish republicans to accept the Treaty, Lloyd George crafted a document that was meant to force Northern Ireland to seek reunification with the south while still appearing to give the Unionists what they wanted. Although the Treaty allowed Northern Ireland to stay within the United Kingdom by opting out of the Irish Free State, the province would be under serious economic constraints if it chose that option. As a Dominion, the Free State would be financially independent: its only obligation would be to the pre-existing U.K. debt. Northern Ireland, under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, would not only have to pay its own local expenses from its own local taxes, it would also have to make an "imperial contribution" to Great Britain. Northern Ireland would be further undermined by Article XII of the Treaty, which called for a Boundary Commission to adjust the inter-Irish border by taking account of the wishes of local populations and economic conditions. While Northern Ireland's prime minister, Sir James Craig, denounced the Treaty, most of his Conservative allies in the coalition supported the agreement.
However, Lloyd George's triumph was short-lived, for, as Matthews makes clear, the Treaty was in fact the political undoing of the coalition. The pro-Unionist "Die-hards" in the Conservative Party would not be reconciled to an agreement that they saw as a sell-out to Sinn Fein and a threat to Northern Ireland. Unfortunately for the pro-Treaty politicians in Britain, the Irish Civil War, which broke out in the summer of 1922, made it seem that the Treaty had not created a stable Irish settlement. Andrew Bonar Law renounced his earlier support of the Treaty and led the Conservatives out of the coalition and into a victory in the next general election. Lloyd George would never again be the resident of Number 10 Downing Street.
While Bonar Law did not attempt to rescind the Treaty, Matthews shows that he did dramatically change the implementation of the Treaty in order to protect the six-county statelet of Northern Ireland. Bonar Law facilitated James Craig's attempts to escape from the financial trap laid by the Treaty. Craig had been demanding, with limited success, British funding for the Special Constables of the RUC, a reduction in the imperial contribution, and assistance in paying Northern Ireland's unemployment claims since before Bonar Law replaced Lloyd George. Matthews concludes that under the new prime minister, "the Treaty's Ulster clauses, especially those designed to bring about economic pressure on Northern Ireland, had largely been rendered impotent. This change marked a blow for the prospects of Irish unity, a change that might never have taken place but for the return of Bonar Law to politics" (p.110).
Bonar Law resigned in May 1923 due to ill health and was succeeded by Stanley Baldwin. As a Conservative member of the Lloyd George coalition, Baldwin had backed the Treaty. Politically, Ireland was an issue that he would have liked to ignore as he attempted to reconcile the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of the party. However, the Free State government of William Cosgrave was putting pressure on London to start the work of the Boundary Commission. Baldwin successfully stalled Cosgrave, and before the Conservatives had to come to grips with Article XII, they lost the general election of 1923 and Labour formed a new government with Liberal Party backing.
Matthews demonstrates how this temporary setback turned out to be a serendipitous long-term win for the Conservatives, as Labour tackled the Irish Question for them. As the first Labour Party prime minister, James Ramsay MacDonald had other issues besides Ireland on his agenda, but he felt compelled to honor the Treaty. Matthews contends that the personally anti-Irish Catholic MacDonald moved forward not out of sympathy with the Free State, but to demonstrate that the Labour Party could govern in a responsible manner and meet Britain's legal commitments. The major stumbling block to Article XII was that Craig refused to name Northern Ireland's member to the three-person commission specified by the Treaty. MacDonald forged ahead by calling for special legislation by Parliament to enable the British government to name Belfast's commissioner itself, and thus begin the process of assessing the border.
Labour's fortitude in the face of Ulster's intransigence put the Conservative Party in a dangerous position. The "Die-hard," pro-Unionist faction of the party wanted to fight the legislation to eliminate the danger of Northern Ireland losing any territory. This prospect frightened Stanley Baldwin, who feared a re-opening of old wounds in his party. He particularly dreaded the prospect that the "Die-hards" would turn to the House of Lords to delay or amend the bill. This would give Labour, which was struggling with the pubic perception that it was in league with the Bolsheviks, a chance to call a general election and run as the party of the common people versus the party of aristocratic privilege. Baldwin pulled off a neat balancing act by getting the majority of Conservatives to support the bill, while announcing that his party would fight any transfer of territory that was unacceptable to Ulster. With Ireland safely removed as a campaign issue, the Conservative Party won a smashing victory in the 1924 general election, the results of which also destroyed the Liberal Party as a major player in British politics. For Ireland, the election results meant that a powerful Conservative government would launch the Boundary Commission.
In December 1924, the Boundary Commission began its work with predictable results. In September 1925, the British-named chairman, Richard Feetham, informed the hapless Irish delegate, Eoin MacNeill, that he did not believe that Article XII empowered the Commission to make any whole-sale transfer of territory and that the Free State might be called upon to give land to Northern Ireland. When the final report of the Commission, which called for only minor adjustments on both sides of the border, was leaked to the press it caused Dublin to ask that the official report be quelled, as it would play into the hands of Cosgrave's republican opponents. In a rare example of cooperation between the two Irish governments, Craig and Cosgrave suggested that, as a salve to the Free State's political wound, Article V of the Treaty be negated. This section of the document called for the Free State to pay a share of the United Kingdom's existing national debt. For Cosgrave, this concession would save his cash-strapped government money and provide it with some badly needed nationalist credentials, by cutting another tie between the Free State and Britain. Craig believed that any action that changed the financial elements of the Treaty could only help his own claims on the British Treasury. In addition, Craig and Cosgrave agreed to replace the Council of Ireland provision of the Treaty with informal meetings between the two Irish cabinets. Baldwin agreed, happy to be rid of the troublesome "Irish Question." The Commission report and related documents were sealed up with a note from a trusted civil servant: "S.B. asked me to keep these from his sight--and from everyone else's" (p. 240).
Despite hopes to the contrary, Matthew's concludes that "the settlement fashioned between 1920 and 1925 did not resolve the Irish Question so much as sweep it to one side" (p. 242). The inherently unstable Unionist/Nationalist mixture in Northern Ireland exploded into the modern "Troubles" in 1969, dragging a new generation of British politicians into the Irish thicket.
Matthews's main focus in the book is British politics, but he also examines the performance of the major Irish leaders, both Unionist and Nationalist. Fatal Influence credits Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith with not only achieving the best deal that could have been had in 1921, but also with having a real concern for Irish unity. As they understood the Treaty, the financial burden on Ulster and a realistic redrawing of the border would have made Northern Ireland an untenable entity. As direct participants in the negotiations, they could have been credible critics of the readjusting of the spirit of the Treaty after 1922. Of course both men died in 1922, although Matthew's admits that there is no guarantee that their survival would have changed the course of the history of partition.
The Free State government of William T. Cosgrave comes in for much more criticism. While Matthews sees Cosgrave as having been on the right side of the Treaty debate in Ireland, he was not an effective advocate for the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland or a real champion of re-unification. More interested in demonstrating that the Free State was a sovereign government than in re-unification, Cosgrave's concern for the north was mainly sparked by a desire not to be politically outflanked by de Valera and the Sinn Fein. The apparent permanence of partition after 1925 was not a real concern in Dublin as the government could concentrate on creating a Gaelic-Catholic state without the awkward presence of a million Protestants. Cosgrave never even made an attempt to convene the type of north-south cabinet meeting that Craig had tacitly agreed to in 1925.
Even more than Cosgrave, Matthews lambastes Eamon de Valera. He claims that the republican leader, to a greater extent than his Free State opponents, cynically exploited public concern for northern Nationalists while never having any intention of working for re-unification. De Valera found partition a convenient rhetorical issue to win support for the creation of Fianna Fail and attack Cosgrave, but in practice he too concentrated on forging a fully sovereign, Catholic confessional state in the southern twenty-six counties.
The most successful Irish leader in Fatal Influence is Northern Ireland's premier Sir James Craig. Although Matthew's points out that the Unionist mini-state that Craig did so much to defend was bound to disintegrate, as it did in 1972, he achieved all of his short-term goals in the 1920s. Northern Ireland kept all six of its counties and Belfast, with the connivance of the Conservative Party, wriggled out of the financial trap set by the Treaty.
On the whole, Fatal Influence provides students of both British and Irish history with a valuable and original analysis of the negotiation and implementation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Supported by impressive archival research, Matthews admirably succeeds in proving his main thesis, namely that Irish issues were still of vital importance in domestic British politics even after 1921. His take on the negotiation of the Treaty is also insightful, in that he clearly shows how Lloyd George's actions were motivated more by his ultimately doomed plan to create a new political party and less with the nature of Ireland's relations with Britain. The collapse of the Liberal-Conservative coalition and the subsequent destruction of the Liberal party were not only monumental events in British political history, but also profoundly affected Ireland. The Conservative Party under Bonar Law and Baldwin, anxious to make amends for ever having supported the Treaty, insured that the components of the Treaty meant to promote re-unification were nullified. Partition became the new reality in Ireland: celebrated and grimly defended in Belfast, impotently (and perhaps disingenuously) denounced in Dublin, and ignored in London, until the outbreak of the Troubles began to reshape that reality.
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Citation:
Daniel C. Williamson. Review of Matthews, Kevin, Fatal Influence: The Impact of Ireland on British Politics, 1920-1925.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11815
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