Valuable insights into Britain’s real attitude towards the Irish Revolution

Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922

British politicians had no real interest in Ireland; some sought to exploit the Irish situation for their own political ends. In a sense the book is not about Ireland at all, but the cynical British abuse of the Irish question. Although the study covers a period a great political violence and turmoil in this country, the author, Ronan Fanning, who was Professor of Modern Irish History at University College, Dublin, emphasises that he “neither sympathises nor identifies with the political uses of violence, then or now”.

“Fear of Ulster Unionist violence so paralysed British policy from 1912 to 1914 that it prevented the implementation of Home Rule and corroded the faith of Ireland’s constitutional nationalists in parliamentary democracy,” the author explains at the outset.

Maybe William Gladstone desired to introduce Home Rule for Ireland, but his efforts were frustrated by cynical Tory politicians and blocked by the House of Lords. When the Liberals returned to power in the early 1900s, Gladstone’s successor, Herbert H Asquith, had no interest in Ireland and made no effort to do anything about Home Rule until the House of Lords rejected his government’s budget in 1909.

The Liberals then turned to the Irish Parliamentary Party for backing to emasculate the House of Lords. The price of that support was Home Rule for all of Ireland. Although Asquith publicly went along with the demands of John Redmond, their relationship was one of “mutual distrust”.

Asquith, whose premiership was marked by indolence, pretended that he was ready to confront the Loyalist element in Ulster, but he was never really prepared to do so. Instead, the author notes, “Asquith temperamentally favoured masterly inactivity.”

Redmond was unwilling to give in to loyalist demands for any form of partition, so Asquith humoured him as part of his policy of temporisation. Redmond, and other later Irish leaders, such as Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins, never emerge from the shadows in this book.

“I have always thought (and said) that, in the end, we should probably have to make some sort of bargain about Ulster as the price of Home Rule,” Asquith told Winston Churchill. Of course, he did not tell that to Redmond.

The Liberal government never intended that the Home Rule Bill would be enacted as introduced. The eruption of the Great War allowed Asquith to do what he really wished to do about Ireland, which was nothing at all. The enactment of Home Rule was tabled by the Suspension Bill, which passed through all stages of parliament in just seven minutes.

Asquith formed a wartime coalition with the Tories under the leadership of Bonar Law. This government let the military handle not only the suppression of the Easter Rebellion but also its immediate aftermath, which was politically disastrous. Asquith was eventually undermined by an alliance between his Liberal colleagues, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, and the Conservative leader Bonar Law, who was a committed supporter of Ulster Unionism.

“I like Lloyd George,” Bonar Law explained. “He is a nice man, but the most dangerous little man that ever lived.”

History may have recorded that the new coalition headed by Lloyd George made concessions to the Irish, such as releasing those interned or jailed for involvement in the Easter Rebellion. All were freed within little more than a year. But those concessions had essentially nothing to do with Ireland; they were designed to impress President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, whose assistance was vital in the world war.

“If America goes wrong we are lost,” Lloyd George warned Bonar Law. They did not care about Ireland. From January 1917 to March 1918 when Sinn Féin won four by-elections in Ireland, the British cabinet only discussed Ireland once. This study reflects that indifference by largely ignoring what was happening in Ireland.

We are not told what was said to Redmond, or later to Michael Collins during the Treaty negotiations when he was somehow convinced that the proposed Boundary Commission would hand over contiguous nationalist areas of Northern Ireland to the Irish Free State.

Collins may well have been extravagantly optimistic about the transfer of territory, but the author overlooks the fact that Lloyd George indicated to the House of Commons that substantial areas would likely be handed over, especially counties Fermanagh and Tyrone.

“The majority in these two counties prefer to be with their Southern neighbours,” he explained in supporting the Treaty. “If Ulster is to remain a separate community, you can only by means of coercion keep them there, and although I am against the coercion of Ulster, I do not believe in Ulster coercing other units.”

This book provides valuable insights into the British government’s attitude towards the Irish Revolution, but it is ultimately only part of the story.

- Ryle Dwyer is the author of “I Signed My Death Warrant”: Michael Collins & the Treaty, published by Mercier Press.

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