Ireland 1916, 6: Framing The Story

The whole ‘miserable business’ (this dismissive phrase was first used by The Times on 26 April, 1916 ) that was the uprising in Dublin, could hardly have broken at a worst moment for prime minister Asquith’s Cabinet. With increased German naval activity around the east coast of England causing outrage in that area, it was the proposed introduction of compulsory conscription which was proving disturbingly contentious. Ironically perhaps, with their attention focused elsewhere, the disruption in Ireland caught them unaware. Parliament met in secret session on the night of 25 April to give vent to its anger at government proposals on conscription which many MPs thought unfair. [1] Important though it was, that anger hardly registered on the scale of incandescence which exploded from the Conservative and Unionist ranks over the following weeks on the subject dear to their hearts… Ireland.

The government was adept at managing the news through censorship. The British propaganda machine (which had been established at Wellington House in London from August 1914) ensured that journalists and newspapers across the world had strictly controlled access to the uprising in Ireland. News of the initial attacks in central Dublin at noon on Monday 24 April did not reach the London press in time for the morning editions on Tuesday 25th. But a war of words had already been declared. With a prescience which may even suggest pre-planning, The Times carried an Admiralty announcement about a German attempt to land guns and ammunition on the south coast of Ireland sometime between 20-21 April. Events in Ireland were also being monitored by other interested parties. Lord Midleton, a friend and close associate of Alfred Milner [2] and nominal leader of the Irish Unionist Party, was always one step ahead of the government. He was the first to question Lord Crewe in the House of Lords about ‘the grave disturbances in Dublin yesterday’ and was assured that the situation was ‘now well in hand’ [3] It was not. Midleton’s sources were far more reliable than the government’s and he, and those he represented, had their own deep-rooted agenda. They were passionately determined to have the Home Rule Act of 1914 permanently scrapped. [4]

One day later, on 26 April, newspaper headlines screamed ‘Rebel Irish Rising’ and ‘Serious Disturbances’ linked to a ‘concentrated German plan’. [5] Reporters, removed as they were from first hand accounts, so dependent on government propaganda, stated that the Germans had always counted on insurrection in Ireland and events in Dublin followed a carefully concealed plot between ‘Irish traitors and their German confederates.’ [6] Reference was made to Sir Roger Casement’s involvement as ‘mere opera bouffe’, an insult, likening his involvement to a farcical French comic-opera. It was a theme soon picked up by an embarrassed John Redmond who alleged that ‘Germany plotted it, Germany paid for it … it is a German invasion of Ireland.’ [7]

The second British tactic to manipulate the truth behind the events in Dublin, was to ignore the various political alliances which had coalesced in the rebellion, and dub the fighting as ‘The Sinn Fein Rising.’ [8] There was an immediate and determined effort to deny the integrity of those who had masterminded and executed the rebellion. Lord Wimborne, Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, gave a typically patronising account to The Times on 1 May. He declared that he had seen the prisoners, ‘ all of whom seemed to belong to the so-called labouring classes.’ Of course. It would never have suited had the rebels been portrayed as educated men of some standing. His Lordship continued his condescending view, claiming that ‘the Proclamation indicates by its text that they rely on foreign aid and is signed by Jim Connolly, Jim Larkin’s lieutenant, J.T. Clarke, and old Fenian and ticket-of-leave man [ex-convict] who kept a tobacconist’s shop, a schoolmaster named Pearse, another man named McDermott and three others.’ [9] Wimborne was unlikely to approve of James Connolly as General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union or Patrick Pearce as a University educated lawyer who established an independent Irish-speaking school in Dublin or admit that Thomas Clarke was a naturalised American…though he was a dedicated and wily old Fenian. It was all part of the dismissive put-down with which the authorities wanted to minimise the impact of the rebel effrontery in daring to attack the authority of the Empire.

Managing how these events were translated to America was one of the triumphs of the British propaganda machine. John Masefield, the English poet, had been sent on a lecture tour of America in 1915 sponsored by Wellington House. [10] He recommended that ‘some authoritative loyal Irish member [of Parliament], preferably a Catholic, should go over as soon as may be possible… to silence the Irish-American party, who exude poison from every pore.’ [11] Consequently, John Redmond and ‘ other Loyal Irishmen’ were persuaded to give interviews and write articles in defence of British reaction to the rebellion in the hope of tempering the virulence of the opposition from Irish-Americans. [12]

Redmond’s subsequent statement to the Associated Press, which was carried in full by the New York Times, was an unqualified condemnation of the uprising. He talked about his horror, discouragement, almost despair at the ‘insane movement’ and asked ‘whether Ireland, as so often before in her tragic history, was to dash the cup of liberty from her lips’ at the behest of an anti-patriotic cabal. He lambasted those responsible for trying to make Ireland a cats-paw of Germany. What’s more he took it very personally: ‘In all our long and successful struggle to obtain home rule, we have been thwarted and opposed by that same section. We have won home rule not through them, but in spite of them. This wicked move of theirs was their last blow at home rule. It was not held as much treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of home rule.’ [13] So desperate was he to achieve his life-time ambition, that Redmond was blind to the fact that Home Rule was thwarted not by the men who took part in the Easter Rising, but the men in London to whom he was pandering. It was their criminal war and they were playing him for a fool at every turn.

Redmond’s sentiments were reproduced in the Irish Independent. Under the banner ‘Criminal Madness’ the newspaper denounced ‘the insane and criminal rising’ and lamented that it would take ‘us many years to recover’. But the Irish Independent hailed as a shining light ‘the outpouring of Irish blood …. as expiation for the acts of unfilial ingrates who have besmirched the honour of their native land.’ With no sense of irony or reflection on the purpose of the Easter Rising, the article continued: ‘Were it not for the glory which has irradiated the Irish arms win the fields where the battle for human freedom is being fought, our heads might now hang low in shame for the misdeed of those who have been the willing dupes of Prussian intrigue.’ [14] In fairness, the article went on to allocate indirect responsibility for all that took place to Sir Edward Carson’s Ulster movement and the Chief Secretary to Ireland, Augustine Birrell, whom they blamed ‘for the state of affairs which led up to the events of last week.’ [15]

This new found acknowledgement of the glories of the fighting Irishmen might have come as a surprise to those who previously noted the singular absence of such expression. Indeed on 1 May under the title ‘The Gallant Irish Division’ The Times applauded the bravery of the Inniskillings and the Dublin Fusiliers at a point on the western Front ‘near Hulluch’, commenting that the Germans, believing that their ‘treasonable medicine’ was working in Ireland, probably thought it a good time to teach the loyal Irish a lesson. ‘If so, they are probably sorry now.’ The propaganda assault was not particularly subtle. Within days of the uprising, the British press suddenly became fulsome in their praise of Irish soldiers at the Front, while the ‘treasonable medicine’, a clearly pointed barb suggesting German intrigue, aimed to deflect attention away from the internal dissatisfaction with Britain’s treatment of Irish citizens. Around the same time, the Chicago Herald noted that it had received a book on ‘The Irish At The Front’ with an introduction by Mr John Redmond, forwarded from Wellington House. [16]

Once the rebellion had been put down in Dublin, journalists had greater scope to write their version of the truth. And it was a sombre story. The battle between British troops and British subjects was reported as ragged, intermittent, unequal but always deadly. ‘The Traitors’ had paid dearly for their ‘mad enterprise’ but behind the pejorative phrases lay a description which must have chilled the Empire. There was an implied warning that rebellion would be dealt with severely no matter where it took place. ‘Yesterday, a gun boat lying in the river … poured shell after shell into a large building a thousand yards away, over which flew the green flag of the rebels. Field guns hurled death and destruction into the broadest and proudest street in the city.’ [17] Three months later, the observation made at Westminster was that the ‘best part of Dublin looked like Liege or Ypres.’ [18] For those of us old enough to remember Hungary in 1956, it is particularly chilling to remember the feeling of helplessness when a city-centre is blown apart by a brutal military force.

Notice how the story was framed. Initially the Easter Rising was depicted as a German plot, an ingenious interpretation which placed the rebel Irishmen as traitors to the cause of civilisation and freedom and friends and allies of ‘Prussianism’. Not only did this relegate the rebellion from its national cause to an alien-inspired act of treachery, but it deflected attention away from more worrying sympathies like socialism, neutrality and the political machinations of the die-hard Unionists. In other words, the instigators who wanted to serve neither King nor Kaiser were mad, insane, wicked and selfish while the slaughter of Irishmen on the European field of battle for the freedom of small nations was deemed to have saved  Ireland’s reputation.

[1] House of Lords Debate, 25 April 1916 vol 21 cc811-8. On occasion during the war, parliament could use its procedure to dismiss all observers and have a debate that could not be reported to the enemy. The general public were served up an account of what transpired by the government itself. While the Secret Debate in the house of Lords is currently available online, there is no equivalent report from the House of Commons. However a communique was issued by the government and printed in The Times, April 26 1916, p. 7.
[2] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 8, 12, 24
[3] Hansard House of Lords Debate 25 April 1916 vol 21 c810.
[4] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 433.
[5] The Times 26 April, 1916, p. 6.
[6] Ibid., p. 7.
[7] New York Times, 29 April, 1916.
[8] The Times 28 April, 1916, p. 7.
[9] The Times 1 May, 1916, p. 10.
[10] George Robb, British Culture and the First World War, p. 121.
[11] H.C. Peterson, Propaganda For War, p. 241.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Redmond Assails Rebels; New York Times, 29 April 1916.
[14] Irish Independent, 4 May 1916 can be viewed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/newspapers/na02a.shtml
[15] Ibid, p. 3.
[16] Peterson, Propaganda For War, p. 242.
[17] The Times 1 May, 1916, p. 10.
[18] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 31 July 1916,vol. 84 cc2116-231.

Ireland 1916, 5: The Uprising – But Who To Blame?

Encapsulated in a bubble from which the air of democracy had been systematically sucked, the voice of protest in Ireland held little sway. Even the Catholic Church remained muted in its objection to war and recruitment. Redmond included an appeal to religion in his Woodenbridge address [1] and the Nationalist press made much of the burning of Louvain and the allegations of German atrocities in the rape of ‘Catholic’ Belgium. [2] The conference of Catholic Bishops at Maynooth in October 1914 gave great consideration to the need for Catholic chaplains, [3] but they had no power to appoint them to the British Army. There was no sense of episcopal unanimity. Though most Bishops approved of Redmond’s actions, neither Cardinal Logue in Armagh or Archbishop Walsh in Dublin were wholeheartedly supportive. [4] Indeed, the Archbishop objected to Redmond’s recruitment campaign citing it as the inevitable product of his subservience to the Liberal Party. [5] That said, no religious objection was expressed against Catholics in Ireland taking arms against Catholics in Germany. The Church offered little solace to the voice of protest.

Yet it was there in small pockets. Amongst socialist and trade unionists, some Gaelic League branch members, the leadership of the secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the Irish Citizen Army, created by the radical socialist, James Connolly and some nationalists, dismayed by Redmond’s capitulation to an imperial war, common ground was found, based on complete mistrust of ‘England’s’ intentions. [6] The Irish Neutrality League, which was active between September and early December 1914, tried to gather together influential opponents to the war at an open public meeting in Dublin on 12 October. Its purpose was to ‘define Ireland’s present attitude towards the Anglo-German War as one of neutrality’ in order to protect Irish interests and prevent employers from coercing men to enlist. The Neutrality League sought to promote the view that true patriotism required Irishmen to stay at home, taking steps to preserve the food supplies for the people of Ireland. [7] By any measure of optimism, success in opposing recruitment was limited. Redmond’s colleague, John Dillon had pontificated that ‘ the man who calls himself a neutral is either an enemy or a coward’. [8] The great danger of such sophistry is that it can backfire. Ultimately, many from this disparate collection of idealists mutated into a hard core of revolutionaries determined to make a stance against British rule in Ireland.

The event itself, the rising, was dramatic and bloody, and appeared to take the British State completely by surprise. That convenient assertion will be considered more fully later.

Briefly.

During the Dublin Lock-Out of 1913, a Citizen Army had been formed by the Trades Unionists under James Connolly to defend and protect strikers from the police. [9] The 130 men, boys and a handful of women were allowed to parade in public as were the Ulster Volunteers in the North. At the outbreak of war, a second different group, the Irish Volunteers, split into two unequal sections, the majority of whom stayed true to John Redmond and over 30,000 joined the British Army. The remaining 13,000 Irish volunteers, remained committed to the vow that they would stand firm until Home Rule was fully enacted. The Citizen Army and National Volunteers together represented a minimal armed militia compared with the forces of the Empire, and no action was taken to stop their ‘activities’.

The rising was planned in secret by a coterie of senior members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) who formed a Military Council to plan and oversee the rebellion. Their names, now legends in Ireland, were, Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamon Ceannt and James Connolly from the Citizen Army. The details were kept secret for fear of disclosure by a loose tongue or well-placed police spies. Even high-ranking members of the Volunteers, including its leader, Eoin MacNeill, did not know what they planned to achieve that weekend. [10]

Through negotiations led by Sir Roger Casement, [11] a large cache of weapons was to have been landed from Germany on Good Friday April 21st, to arm the rebels. Thanks to the British Admiralty Intelligence, the ship was tracked by the Royal Navy, arrested off the coast of Kerry and was scuttled off Queenstown. Some say it was deliberately sunk. There would be no arms to support a sizeable rising. At the last minute, the plans were revealed to Eoin MacNeill who issued a ‘countermanding order’, to call off the ‘manoeuvres’ for Easter 1916. Though he approved an armed insurrection, he withdrew his agreement when he heard that the weapons had been captured and Casement arrested. ‘I’ll stop this damned nonsense’ he vowed and posted an instruction to all Irish Volunteers in the Sunday Independent, rescinding parades, marches and movements planned for Easter Sunday. [12]

Too late. The organisers had gone too far to contemplate a stand-down, and on Easter Monday, the assault on Dublin began in earnest. The Rebels marched through the streets into the centre of Dublin and occupied the General Post Office (GPO), the Four Courts, the South Dublin Union, Boland’s Mill, Stephen’s Green and Jacobs’ biscuit factory. Their targets then  strategic are now iconic; their message proclaimed a Republic with Patrick Pearse as President and Commander in Chief. [13]

Over the following week, mayhem ensued in central Dublin. The British state eventually deployed over 16,000 troops, artillery and a naval gunboat on the River Liffey to suppress the rising. In that week of bitter fighting, around 450 people were killed and over 2,000 wounded. Bare in mind, we are talking about insurrection in one of the great capital cities of Great Britain and Ireland  at the heart of the Empire.

The fiercest battles took place around Mount Street Bridge. Early on Wednesday April 26th 1916, the newly arrived British troops assembled on the quayside in Kingstown. Some of these regiments comprised young men from Nottingham and Derbyshire, known as the Sherwood Foresters. They were inexperienced soldiers who had only had six weeks of basic training. Many had never fired a rifle. Official British casualties amounted to four officers and 216 other ranks killed or wounded during the Mount Street engagement. Around twenty civilians were killed or wounded as they attempted to assist the stricken Foresters on the bridge. In truth, there were more civilian casualties in the 1916 Rising than there were military casualties. [14]

The rebels’ headquarters at the GPO was bombarded into eventual surrender on 28 April on the instructions of Patrick Pearse. The Rebellion of Easter 1916 came to an inglorious end in Dublin, but the consequences extended beyond all expectations.

Who was most at fault for this exceptional rejection of the Empire’s war, apart, that is, from the rebels who planned and executed the uprising? Looker deeper and further than the named participants.

You may want to accuse Sir Edward Carson for the eventual Rising in Dublin over Easter Week 1916. He after all epitomised the virtues of illegality over the democratic process, though as we have shown, he was more of a figure-head-agent of the Secret Elite than independent leader. He is quoted at the end of his days as realising too late that he had been used, as Ireland had been used, to protect the imperialist dream; ‘I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster and so was Ireland, in the political game to get the Conservative Party into power.’ [15]

Their ambition extended well beyond the limitations of one political party, but the Secret Elite most certainly viewed Ireland as a second-class colony to be exploited as required. How had Lord Milner expressed his disdain in 1913? He saw it as their mission to protect a ‘white settler colony of superior British stock [Ulster] from submersion in a sea of inferior Celts [by which he meant nationalist Ireland.’ [16] Inside that kernel of arrogance the British establishment assumed that Ireland was still their colonial property. Their careful manipulation of the parliamentary process had succeeded. By May 1915 an internal coup of enormous historical significance had effectively replaced the elected majority government of 1910, supported by Liberal – Home Rule MPs. Asquith’s new Coalition cabinet was an entirely different administration, deeply hostile to an all-Ireland government. [17]

You might blame John Redmond and his puppy-dog roll-over to support the British Imperial ambitions in their war against Germany and blame his naivety. By urging the Irish Volunteers to enlist in the British Army and throw themselves against Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Turks, he committed the Irish nation to a course of action against which there could be no democratic protest. [18] But Redmond probably acted in good faith, encouraged by the Asquiths and the promises of a Home Rule Act that lay in a coma on the Statute Book. If Redmond thought himself prime minister of Ireland-in-waiting he had taken several steps beyond a presumption of authority. He was, more than Carson, a puppet. That neither saw themselves as such at the time, underlines the secrecy and deception of those who controlled the direction of British foreign policy during the war.

What of Sir Rodger Casement? He was the Dublin-born Anglo-Irish diplomat who exposed the atrocities in the Congo, where he clashed with Emile Francqui, later the head of the Society Generale, the immensely powerful bank in Belgium. [19] His reports on the inhumane treatment of the native population of Putumayo Indians in Peru [20] earned him international recognition as a human-rights activist long before the term had been coined. Casement’s disillusion with British imperialism grew from 1904 onwards, and he withdrew from the British consular service in 1913. He was a moving spirit in the founding of the Volunteers, and helped organise gun-running for them in July 1914. [21]

Roger Casement had tried to use his international standing to influence American opinion, but like his effort to recruit Irish prisoners in Germany to fight for the liberation of Ireland in 1915, he met with little success. [22] He tried to persuade the Germans that an Irish uprising backed by their support in terms of men and munitions would successfully destabilise the Empire, [23] but in 1916, Casement was arrested after he landed from a German U-boat in County Kerry.   How convenient for the British State.

You might argue that without Casement’s  promise that a large shipment of German arms would be landed at Limerick, later changed to Fenit, greater caution might have been taken. The expectation was that a provincial Rising spurred on by success in Dublin would create a national reaction against British rule. [24] Even when defeat stared the Rebel leaders in the face towards the end of Easter Week, the hope that the Germans would send help, lingered. What they did not know was that Casement’s relations with the Germans had deteriorated to the extent that he ‘was filled with almost paranoid suspicion’ that he and Ireland was being used to his host’s selfish ends. He knew that a rebellion without military assistance would be hopeless. [25] He was essentially correct on both counts and, as we will later show, that was the very reason he returned to Ireland.

It is not our purpose to give great detail on the events of Easter Week 1916 or expand on the backgrounds and qualities of the men who defied the British Army and led what has become known as the Easter Rising. [26] Their actions speak for themselves. They defied the Empire and paid with their lives. What else could the British Imperialists have allowed? These men were traitors to the crown, friends of Germany, from whom they were supplied with weapons, military protagonists and anti-democratic interventionists. So far that might describe Ulster from 1912-1914; an irony that was never acknowledged. In 1916, the difference was that the Empire was at war, as were hundreds of thousands of fellow Irishmen, and the State they sought to overthrow had already begun to back-track on Home Rule.

In the muddied waters of imperialist history, official blame for the Easter Rising in 1916 has been pinned on the Dublin executive which had been considerably relaxed about armed volunteers, on Sir Edward Carson and his Unionist cabal for giving leadership to a private armed force in Ulster, on John Redmond for his blind acceptance of Asquith’s promises on Home Rule, on Sir Roger Casement for his agitation against the Crown by attempting to involve Germany directly in an armed uprising, and on the treasonous rebels who attempted to overthrown the rightful government. Officially, the Secrete Elite found it convenient to centre blame on The Chief Secretary for Ireland, and by association, prime minister Asquith.

But as we will reveal in the weeks to come, there were darker forces close to the heart of the Secret Elite who knew what was about to happen, and chose not to stop it.

[1] K Jeffries, Ireland and the Great War, p.13.
[2] Church of Ireland Gazette, 18 September 1914. Cited in John Martin Brennan’s thesis, Irish Chaplains in the First World War, p. 11. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/3413/1/Brennan12MPhil.pdf
[3] Liam Kenny, Maynooth Goes to War, http://www.kildare.ie/ehistory/index.php/maynooth-goes-to-war/
[4] John Martin Brennan’s thesis, Irish Chaplains in the First World War, p.11.
[5] Ibid., pp 11-12.
[6] Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 1.
[7] Roger Cole et al, The Irish Neutrality League and the Imperialist War 1914-1918, p. 7.
[8] Stephen Lucius Gwynn, John Redmond’s Last Years, p.165. http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/John_Redmonds_Last_Years_1000438731/171
[9] Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, p. 444.
[10] John Dorney, The Easter Rising – A Brief Overview, http://www.theirishstory.com/2011/04/22/the-easter-rising-–-a-brief-overview/#.Vn-9RITPyi4
[11] Sir Roger Casement played a pivotal role before and during the war in outspoken attacks against British Imperialism. He had first hand experience of the vulgarity and inhumanity of European imperialism in his roles with the diplomatic and colonial service before disavowing it all in his books The Crime against Europe and The Crime Against Ireland. Casement worked to promote Irish independence in America and travelled to Germany in an attempt to garner German support in the form of men and arms for an uprising in Ireland. His role will be explained more fully in future blogs.
[12] Bardon, A History, p. 444.
[13] Foy and Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 195.
[14] Paul O’Brien, The Battle of Mount Street Bridge. http://www.paulobrienauthor.ie/the-battle-of-mount-street-bridge-1916/
[15] Brian P Murphy, Patrick Pearse and the Lost Republican Ideal, p. 61.
[16] Milner letter to Carson, 9 December 1913, Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 183.
[17] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-1918, p. 27.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Fintan O’Toole, The Multiple Hero, in New Republic, 2 August 2012.
[20] HMSO, Cmnd. 6266, July 1912.
[21] Brendan Clifford, Roger Casement: The Crime Against Europe with The Crime Against Ireland and other writings, p. 5.
[22] Foy and Barton,The Easter Rising, p. 21.
[23] The Ireland Report by Casement and Plunkett was a 32 page document NLI MS5244.
[24] Foy and Barton,The Easter Rising, p. 39.
[25] Ibid., p. 64.
[26] There are several current books covering the Easter Rising, but the one which we would recommend for its combination of clear analysis, good writing and thorough research is Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising. (first published 1999.)

Ireland 1916, 4: Towards the Rising; No Justice for the ‘Rebels in Sheep’s Clothing’

Consider this. While John Redmond and his Irish Parliamentary Party colleagues paraded the length of Ireland to recruit soldiers for an ‘Irish Brigade’ of the British Army in the belief that Home Rule had already been guaranteed, the Secret Elite, who controlled Asquith’s government and the upper echelons of the British Army [1] had determined that neither would happen. [2]

Their influence over senior appointments in the British Army was virtually absolute and inside that special coterie of military commanders, Anglo-Irishmen were dominant. Field Marshal Lord Frederick Roberts, whose father was a native of county Waterford, had nominally retired from office in 1905 but in reality his imposing influence over military appointments continued unabated. [3]  He was also President of the National Service League which advocated four years of compulsory military training for every man aged between 18 and 30. [4]

Fellow members included his personal friend, Lord Alfred Milner with whom he frequently shared platforms. Sir Henry Wilson, Commandant of the Staff College at Camberley and Director of Military Operations from 1911 onwards was another very influential Irishman. [5]  He was born in Longford and his family claimed to have come to Ireland with William of Orange. Sir John French, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force was of Anglo-Irish descent and Kitchener himself, resplendent as Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War, was raised in Ballylongford in County Kerry. They wore their ‘Irishness’ as it suited their purpose, but every one considered the Irish National Volunteers with deep suspicion. Kitchener is said to have regarded them as ‘rebels in sheep’s clothing’. [6] These senior commanders had colluded with Lord  Milner, Sir Edward Carson and Andrew Bonar Law to protect the Ulster cause from 1912 -1914. [7] When it came to Ireland, they were not impartial guardians of the nation.

Desperate to impress the British Establishment that Ireland would play her part loyally in defence of Belgium, and concerned that she would be dishonoured if the Nationalists did not support the war against Germany, Redmond went to meet Kitchener at the War Office as early as 6 August, 1914. [8] His reception was cold and friendless. [9] No-one took up Redmond’s generous offer that his Volunteers should defend the island’s coasts and the first of many opportunities to treat Ireland with a new found confidence and respect was rejected. [10] Much more was to follow. The preferential treatment which the Ulstermen had always enjoyed from the British State continued to manifest itself, especially in the army.

Prime minister Asquith appeared to promise a new approach when he addressed a great rally at the Mansion House in Dublin on 25 September. His speech was recorded over two pages of The Times, and the impression he gave promised that there would soon be an Irish Division in the South to match the Ulster Division in the North. He declared: ‘We all want to see an Irish Brigade or better still an Irish Army Corps…Don’t be afraid that by joining the colours they will lose their identity and become absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or, what is perhaps equally repugnant, be artificially distributed into units which have no nation cohesion or character’. [11] Clearly he had not discussed this matter with Kitchener who was prejudiced against Home Rule and would not countenance a distinctive Irish division with its own badge and colours, based on the Irish Volunteers.

Indeed Irishmen enlisting in mainland Britain who wanted their identity to be acknowledged in some tangible way were snubbed in like vein. [12] Despite this, Irishmen flocked to the standard in places like Tyneside where four Irish  ‘pals’ battalions were raised as part of the Northumberland Fusiliers. [13] An official request from Redmond that at least one of these battalions be trained in Ireland to encourage recruitment and pride, was summarily refused. [14] Kitchener believed, as did the Secret Elite cabal which had pushed for his appointment, [15] that if the Volunteers were trained, armed and kept together in coherent units, there would be civil war once the crusade against Germany was over, with no advantage to Ulster.

These same arguments were not applied to Carson’s Ulster Volunteers. They were treated with distinct preference and in consequence the Ulster Volunteers metamorphosed into the 36th (Ulster) Division with their own distinctive uniform and badges. Not since Cromwell’s ironsides had a military force been united by such political unity and religious fervour. [16] It was the status quo default, just one more injustice piled upon centuries of injustice.

And herein lay the reason why those few Irishmen who were not duped by the lure of London promises and spoke out against war, whose numbers grew slowly but inexorably through 1915, began to realise that the British Establishment had no intention of delivering a united Ireland once war was ended. Ireland (excluding Ulster) was being played as a fool, led by the nose with false promise and spurious argument. What was the point of fighting for Catholic Belgium when Catholic Ireland was still part and parcel of the British Empire? Why were Irishmen fighting for the rights of small nations, while the rights of the common man in the South were considered inferior to his counterpart in the North?

After the doubt came the hurt. Ireland had a strong military tradition stretching back beyond the sixteenth century. When Great Britain went to war there were approximately 20,000 Irishmen serving in the regular British Army and another 30,000 in the first line of defence. About 80,000 enlisted in Ireland in the first year of the war, around half of whom came from Ulster. Emigrant Irishmen enlisted in the armies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. [17]  The Irish went to war in huge numbers on behalf of the British Empire in the belief that they were fighting for civilisation and a just cause – and, in the South, that the Home Rule was part of that just cause. Irish regiments fought as vital components of the British Expeditionary Force. Spread across all the major regiments of note, Irish loyalty to King and Empire was consequently ignored by contemporary historians. Only the 36th (Ulster) Division retained its identity; the sacrifice of the soldiers from the South was intentionally suppressed.

The calamitous Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 has been dissected in previous blogs. Everyone who was sacrificed in the disgraceful, half-hearted and callous attack on the Dardanelles that was deliberately set up to fail, [18] deserves to be recognised as a victim of disingenuous British foreign policy. However, the court historians have focused their attention and approbation on the Anzacs – the unbloodied troops from Australia and New Zealand – with scant mention of the many Irishmen who fought and died there. The 1st Battalion of the Royal Dublin, Munster and Inniskilling Fusiliers suffered enormous casualties at the initial landings at Cape Helles in April. In the second major assault at Suvla Bay the new service battalions of the Irish regiments were sacrificed to no advantage with appalling loss. [19] That their artillery had been sent to France and the men arrived without maps or coherent orders was, sadly, par-for-the-course from the second-rate British commanders sent to oversee the disaster. [20]

The studied down-playing of the thousands of Irishmen slain or maimed in the horror of Gallipoli was truly ignorant and inexcusable. Basically they were taken for granted, as were all the troops condemned to a horrendous fate. Despite their immense loss, the British State ignored the extent of the Irish contribution in Gallipoli. A letter to The Times in April 1916 complained that Commander in Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton’s despatches (London Gazette no. 29429) were unaccountably misprinted such that the contributions of the 5&6 Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 6 Royal Irish Fusiliers and the 6&7 Royal Dublin Fusiliers were omitted. [21] Sad, and unkind as that ‘mistake’ was, it paled into insignificance when the vital contributions made by the Irish (and other British) divisions were all but ignored at the special service held in Westminster Abbey to hail the magnificent contribution from the Australian and New Zealand troops, the Anzacs in ‘the high cause of Freedom and honour’.

In the presence of the King and Queen and the most senior members of the Secret Elite including Lord Milner, Andrew Bonar Law and A.J. Balfour, every Anzac division and brigade was named individually and the imperial stamp of absolute approval was cemented by the Dean of Westminster with the words ‘In future the sons of our Empire will seek to emulate the imperishable renown of their daring and bravery.’ [22]

What of the ‘imperishable renown’ of the 10th Dublins, yet another ‘Pals battalion’ sacrificed at Gallipoli. Within two days of their landing, seventy-five percent of that gallant regiment was destroyed. [23] How did the widows of Dublin feel when everything that might arouse pride in Ireland was ignored or suppressed? Their dead were little more than spent cannon-fodder.

And still John Redmond and his Home Rulers clung to the belief that this time Asquith’s Liberals would not let Ireland down. Had they not placed Ireland firmly inside the British Empire? But Asquith’s grip on parliament was beginning to unravel. A Coalition Government was announced in May 1915 and its membership should have sounded a shrill alarm to the Home Rulers. British newspapers hailed the new non-party Cabinet for its inclusive strength, though John Redmond decided not to accept Asquith’s offer of a minor post. Given the prominent inclusion of leading figures from the Ulster campaign to oppose Home Rule, men who had openly defied the law and threatened a breakaway government in Belfast, he had no option. How could the appointment of Sir Edward Carson to the post of Attorney-General, of F.E. Smith to Solicitor-General and James Henry Campbell, a member of Carson’s provisional government, to the post of Attorney-General of Ireland [24] spell anything other than the bending of Westminster’s knee to Ulster? How ironic that British justice was placed in the hands of men who had been openly prepared to defy that rule of law [25] by raising and arming an illegal private army in Ulster [26] and taking Britain to the brink of civil war.

Others too should have given cause for concern. Andrew Bonar Law, Leader of the Conservatives and staunch defender of the Ulster cause, was promoted to Secretary of the Colonies, and several key associates of the Secret Elite were also given high office. Walter Long, the man who had passed on the cheque to facilitate the purchase of UVF guns, became President of the Local Government Board. [27]  A.J. Balfour, who claimed to have ‘made’ Carson, in that he raised him from ‘a simple Dublin barrister’ in 1887 to Solicitor General in his own government of 1900-1906, [28] took over at the Admiralty while Lord Milner’s friend, Lord Selborne, became President of the Board of Agriculture. Men who had stood at Ulster’s right hand, Lords Landsdowne and Curzon, walked into this new government. In lesser but still important posts, Milner’s proteges, Lord Robert Cecil and Arthur Steel-Maitland, were appointed Under-Secretaries at the Foreign Office and Colonial Office. [29] Asquith’s coalition government had assumed the mantle of a pro-unionist cabal dominated by the imperialist ant-Irish Secret Elite. Effectively, it was a bloodless coup.

Can you wonder at the doubt that grew in the hearts of that small minority of Irishmen who could not accept the road down which John Redmond had led the nation? The impressive propaganda of an Empire fighting for the rights of small nations rang hollow. Even from within the ranks of the conservative Catholic Church in Ireland, voices publicly expressed these doubts. Something had to give. Who would take a stand?

[1] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 194-202.
[2] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-18, p. 22.
[3] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 195-197.
[4] Mathew C Hendley, Organised Patriotism and the Crucible of War, p. 12.
[5] Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, A Political Soldier,  pp. 74-76.
[6] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 272.
[7] Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, pp. 118-9.
[8] Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916, pp. 113-4.
[9] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 272.
[10] Freeman’s Journal, 2 September 1914.
[11] The Times, p.10, 26 September 1914.
[12] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 272.
[13] Matt Brosnan, The Pals Battalions of the First World War, Imperial War Museum at http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-pals-battalions-of-the-first-world-war.
[14] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 18 October 1916, vol. 86 cc581-696.
[15] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 240.
[16] Howard Green, Kitchener’s Army, Army Quarterly, April 1966, vol LXXXXII, no.1, p. 93.
[17] http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Historical_Information/1916_Commemorations/Irish_Soldiers_in_the_First_World_War.html
[18] Gallipoli 1, The Enduring Myth, blog posted on this site on 11 February 2015.
[19] taoiseach.gov.ie/ …/Irish_Soldiers_in_the_First_World_War
[20] Gallipoli 17, The Blame Game Begins, blog posted on this site on 17 April 2015.
[21] Everard Wyrall, author of ‘Europe in Arms’, letter to the Times, 22 April 1916, p. 3.
[22] The Times 26 April, 1916 page 2.
[23] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 18 October 1916, vol. 86 cc581-696.
[24] Diarmaid Coffey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32265,
[25] Brian P. Murphy, Patrick Pearse and the Lost Republican Ideal, p. 45.
[26] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-18, p. 25.
[27] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, p. 311.
[28] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 176.
[29] Ibid., p. 141.

Ireland 1916, 3: 1914-1916, Miracle or Mirage?

If the decision to advocate a suspension of the Home Rule Act came as a surprise to political Ireland, that was nothing compared with John Redmond’s pro-war-and-empire commitment given in the House of Commons at the end of Sir Edward Grey’s epoch-ending speech on 3 August 1914. [1] The unanswered question is why did Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary, or Home Rule Party, spring to his feet and commit Ireland to the Imperialist war? Some commentators have praised his spontaneity. [2] Forget that. It was preplanned, for sure. In a letter to  prime minister Asquith’s wife Margot the day before Sir Edward Grey’s warmongering speech, Redmond indicated that he hoped to speak with Asquith ‘before the House meets if only for a few moments, and I hope I may be able to follow your advice?’ [3] It transpired that Margot had written to him advising that ‘he had the opportunity of his life of setting an unforgettable example to the Carsonites in the House of Commons and in a great speech, offer all his soldiers to the Government’. [4] And indeed he did. Do you imagine that this took place without the Secret Elite’s prior approval? Next day, The Times saluted Redmond’s ‘singularly happy and weighty words’. [5] They would.

Redmond was an Empire loyalist who at times, seemed to have more in common with Sir Edward Carson than he did with the mass of Irishmen he presumed to represent. Sinn Fein, the minority nationalist movement formed in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, accused him and his party of being subservient to English considerations detrimental to the best interests of Ireland. [6] He maintained great faith in the British Empire and steadfastly refused to recognise its capacity for brutality. [7] Happy to play the parliamentary game, constrain radicalism and acknowledge the king emperor, Redmond danced to a Secret Elite air. [8] But let’s not forget that Redmond’s pledge that the government in London should leave the defence of Ireland’s shores to the Irish National and Ulster Volunteers, came in response to an amazing claim by Sir Edward Grey.

The Secretary for Foreign Affairs declared in his afore-mentioned statement that: ‘the one bright spot in the whole of this terrible situation is Ireland. The general feeling throughout Ireland – and I would like this to be clearly understood abroad – does not make the Irish question a consideration which we feel we have now to take into account.’ [9] From which sources had he conjured this concept? Sir Edward Carson? Certainly not. Ulster had not been consulted. Carson suspected that Redmond’s contribution was ‘calculated to humbug and deceive.’ [10] Indeed Redmond’s own party knew nothing about his intentions. Those who might have cautioned a more considered response were absent on that fateful day; John Dillon was in Dublin for the inquest on the murders at Batchelor’s Walk, and Joe Devlin, another Home Rule leader, in his constituency in Belfast. Fortuitously, perhaps? It was a pledge that changed Irish history; a pledge which historians have too readily accepted at face value.

The Munster Express [11] claimed that Redmond’s speech had wrought a miracle in changing Irish attitudes’. Understandably optimistic, perhaps, but that claim was published five days after the event and in the wanton euphoria that attends many a declaration of war. But there was no miracle change. War in Europe did not bring a complete end to the factions inside the British Parliament over the future of Ireland. Writing confidentially to the love of his life, Venetia Stanley, an exasperated prime minister Asquith declared on 31 August: ‘The Irish (both sets) are giving me a lot of trouble, just at a difficult moment. I sometimes wish we could submerge the whole lot of them and their island, for say 10 years, under the waves of the Atlantic’. [12]

Both John Redmond and Sir Edward Carson, wanted guarantees which stood poles apart. Asquith introduced a moratorium and suspended the Home Rule Act until the war was ended, just as The Times, ever an organ of the Secret Elite, had advocated. In a most acrimonious Commons meeting the bile of bitter mistrust focused on the fact that an Amending Bill which would have dealt with the future of Ulster separate from independent Ireland, had been dropped. [13]  At the end of his speech, the Conservative opposition walked out en masse behind their leader, Andrew Bonar Law. If it was supposed to be dramatic, it leaned more towards the pantomime that is Westminster.

To the Irishmen in the South, nothing was resolved. How much more damage had been inflicted on Irish hopes? Was this simply an interim solution to push Home Rule off centre-stage? [14] Was Redmond corrupt, deluded or just downright naive? [15] Flushed by his success in having the Home Rule Act steered through parliament, did he honestly think that by throwing the Irish Volunteers into the Empire’s war, he would reap a joyous reward for the nation? Had his head been turned by the Asquiths who seemed to make a habit of keeping him secretly informed as it suited, putting ideas into his head when they wanted him to follow their direction and, when he himself came forward with proposals, agreeing with him without delivering on their promises? Was he flattered by their attention to a degree which blinded him from the obvious – he was being used – the Home Rule party was being used.

The charge of corruption holds no water save in the sense that he was so comfortable amongst parliamentarians and gullible when it came to the Asquiths, that he believed the imperialist promise. He hoped for, indeed, expected a quick military victory in Europe, a reconciliation between Ulster and the South based on their common ‘blood sacrifice’ in the field of battle and the final reward of a devolved Irish parliament from a grateful British Empire. Why, if it all worked out, Ireland might even end the war with an army trained and equipped by the imperial government. [16] He also wanted to convince the Ulstermen that their acceptance of Home Rule did not mean that they had to abandon  their loyalty to Britain. Surely they would see Irish Nationalism in a different light if Nationalists stood shoulder to shoulder with them to defend Belgian neutrality and the rights of small nations? [17]

To that end, Redmond willingly became a recruiting agent for the British army and urged the Irish Volunteers to join up. At a well publicised address to the East Wicklow Brigade of the Irish Volunteers at Woodenbridge on 20 September 1914 he stated:
‘The interests of Ireland – of the whole of Ireland – are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken in defence of of the highest principles of religion and morality and right and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country if young Ireland were shirking from the duty of proving on the fields of battle that gallantry and courage which has distinguished our race all through its history… account for yourselves as men, not only for Ireland itself, but wherever the fighting line extends in the defence of right, of freedom and religion in this war.’ [18] How many later contemplated the value of their ‘rights, freedom and religion’ in Ireland?

Incredibly, the vast majority of the Irish Volunteers, like well intentioned men throughout the land, swallowed the propaganda. The initial response to recruitment in Ireland was equal to anything seen in the whole of Great Britain.

With hindsight it is easy to ridicule Redmond as an establishment lackey. If he was, the following four years disabused him of the notion that a ‘miracle change’ had taken place in the attitude and behaviour of the British ruling-class. He was not alone in his misplaced faith. John Dillon, his colleague in the Irish Parliamentary party, reconciled his anti-war instincts and made what was considered the pragmatic decision to stand with Redmond in the belief that it would pay to be on the winning side when the war ended. If Ireland stood against the rest of the Empire, as it had in the Boer War, the cause of Home Rule would be fatally undermined. [19] He was probably right.

We should remember that though the Home Rule Act had been passed, it remained suspended, and thus was unfinished business dangling like a golden carrot before Irish eyes. Ireland had been wounded many times before, but its resilience in 1914 was boosted by an injection of hope, an expectation of justice and a naïve belief in political honesty.

Early in December 1914 four Dublin newspapers were suppressed by the military authorities under the Defence of the Realm Act. All available copies of Irish Freedom, Sinn Fein, Ireland and The Irish Worker were seized by police and newsagents were warned neither to sell the offering papers nor exhibit placards displaying their headlines. Manuscripts and other documents were seized and the printing type and sections of the printing plant were removed to Dublin Castle. Steps were also taken by the postal service to prevent the circulation and sale of the Gaelic American newspaper. [20] There were dissenting voices. Unlike mainland Britain, where the press blindly supported the war, some Irish newspapers continued to attack the war and Ireland’s involvement in it.

British Intelligence Officers compiled the names and particulars of those who spoke out against recruiting, [21] including twenty-four catholic priests in various parts of the country. There was to be no miracle change in Irish attitudes – that was a self- serving mirage. A small but vocal minority opposed the sending young Irishmen to serve as cannon fodder for the army of their hereditary enemy. They saw through the warmongering, the empty promises and the British government’s intentions. They looked around at the continuation of injustice in Ireland and took stock of their nation’s future. They determined that only direct action could bring about permanent change and set themselves the objective of gaining full independence for Ireland, by force if necessary.

[1] Statement by Sir Edward Grey, Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 3 August 1914, vol. 65, cc1809-32.
[2] Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United, Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War, p. 178.
[3] Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith, p. 164.
[4] Ibid., p. 163.
[5] The Times, 4 August, 1914, p. 5.
[6] Warre B. Wells, John Redmond: A Biography, p 122.
[7] Diarmid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000, p. 125.
[8] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 312.
[9] Statement by Sir Edward Grey, Hansard, House of Commons Debate , 3 August 1914 vol 65 cc1809-32.
[10] The Irish Times, 7 Dec 2015 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/one-hundred-years-since-john-redmond-committed-ireland-to-the-first-world-war-1.1885199
[11] The Munster Express, 8 August 1914.
[12] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 209.
[13] Suspensory Bill, Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 15 September 1914 vol 66 cc881-920.
[14] Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, p. 442.
[15] Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 129.
[16] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-1918, p. 21.
[17] John Bruton, September 1914: John Redmond at Woodenbridge, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 101, No 402 (Summer 2012) p. 240.
[18] Charles James O’Donnell and Brendan Clifford, Ireland in The Great War, p. 41.
[19] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-1918, p. 19.
[20] http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/three-irish-newspapers-suppressed-by-british-government
[21] Dublin Metropolitan Police Report, 13 December, 1914, signed by Patrick McCarthy. National Archives of Ireland, CSO RP 1914.

Ireland 1916, 2: The Context For War – More Than a Smokescreen

In order to set the outbreak of the war in context of our thesis on Ireland, this blog gives a resume of the chapter on Ireland from our book Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War

The official British histories of the First World War record that in early August 1914, Great Britain suddenly and unexpectedly found itself at war with Germany. While that was true of the ordinary man and woman on the streets of a nation relaxing in the mid-summer heat of a Bank-holiday weekend, it most certainly wasn’t for the Secret Elite who had engineered the steps to war. [1] In an era where historians who have reflected on the causes of that terrible war cautiously part company with the insistent propaganda which blamed the Kaiser, [2] there is still a reluctance to accept the fact that a small coterie of powerful men planned and executed the war to crush Germany. The major protagonists were not ‘sleepwalkers’. [3] The system of alliances were not tectonic plates which would inevitably clash. But the people in Britain were duped – ambushed into war and their attention was deliberately drawn from the build up in Europe by the strong possibility of civil war in Ireland.

Following the assassination of Archduke Frans Ferdinand and his wife on 28 June 1914, the deepening European crisis was deliberately played down by the mainstream press in Britain. To all intents and purposes the dispute between Austria and Serbia in July 1914, as Truth remarked, was one in which ‘we had no more concern than in a quarrel between the inhabitants of Saturn.’ [4]

In sharp contrast, the crisis in Ireland had been carefully nurtured over the previous two years by the wilful promotion of fear and distrust between the Protestant Unionist majority in the north and the Catholic Nationalist south. It was at boiling point in July 1914 when the outbreak of civil war appeared to be only a matter of time. Tensions ran high, not just in Ireland but across the whole of mainland Britain. This was what pre-occupied the populous. When the Fifth Battalion, the Black Watch was mustered on 31 July 1914 the men assumed they were on their way to Ireland, but were thoroughly disappointed to be tasked with protecting the Tay Bridge from an unnamed invasion force. ‘We thought we were going to Ulster when we got orders last night …there would have been some excitement there’. [5] Look carefully at how the orders of the day were received. These Scottish soldiers were so far removed from any understanding of european politics that they could not name the enemy against whom the Tay Bridge had to be guarded.

Why, with the Franco-Russian war against Germany imminent, a war aimed to crush their greatest rivals, was the Secret Elite so intrinsically involved in denying home rule to Ireland by forcing the issue of the separation of Ulster? What possible reason could they have for fomenting the spectre of a bloody civil war in Ireland at that exact point in time when they knew every member of the British forces would be needed to face the German army in Belgium?

The Secret Elite and the Committee for Imperial Defence had been preparing for war against Germany for ten years, but when Armageddon arrived it had to come as a complete surprise to the British people and, above all, it had to appear that Germany was to blame. Otherwise, the British public would never have countenanced war. With public attention focused on the tension in Ireland, the Secret Elite provided a very convenient smokescreen behind which they prepared for action on the continent.

Germany’s defensive plan (the Schlieffen Plan) which anticipated a simultaneous attack from Russia in the East and France in the West, had long been known. The majority of her forces would have to deal first with the French assault before doubling back to confront the Russians. The well-advertised plan entailed German troops rapidly traversing Belgium to capture Paris. This assault on ‘neutral’ Belgium, for Belgium was never neutral, [6] was to be the British government’s casus belli, the event that would be used to win over opposition in the House of Commons, rouse the support of the general public and justify Britain’s declaration of war.

The Secret Elite were aware that even the best of strategies do not always go according to plan. What if Germany responded by throwing all her forces against France on the Franco-German border, and not through Belgium? What possible excuse would they have for joining the war? As always, the Secret Elite had a back-up plan, and an outbreak of civil war in Ireland would have served that purpose. Full-blown civil war in Ireland was never the intention, but the appearance of one had to be real. Here the Secret Elite wielded sufficient power and influence to take matters as far as they deemed necessary.

Consider the following. German arms suppliers, in the full knowledge and acquiescence of the British government, sold weapons to both sides of the Irish divide. Major Fred Crawford, director of ordnance for the Ulster Volunteer Force, a man who had served in the British army under the Secret Elite’s Lord Roberts, procured twenty-four thousand modern rifles and three million rounds of ammunition in Germany with funds provided by Secret Elite members. [7] Throughout the night of 24–25 April 1914 the armaments were landed in Ulster with no opposition whatsoever from the customs or the army. The carefully engineered ‘crisis’ in Ireland presented coincidental bonuses. A large paramilitary force in the north, the UVF, marched, drilled and trained with rifles for months before the outbreak of war under the instruction of former senior British Army officers. [8]

Arming of the South was conducted by Erskine Childers, yet another who was closely associated with the Secret Elite. [9] Childers used his yacht, Asgard, to carry weapons  from Germany to the south, despite the presence of the entire British Grand Fleet in the Channel.  Guns and ammunition for both sides were therefore provided from  the same source in Hamburg, surely a remarkable co-incidence. Imagine the outcry if a cowardly explosion in a Belfast orange lodge or a Dublin pub had slain dozens of innocents in early August 1914, or a rogue gunman had slaughtered unarmed civilians in the name of either cause? That is all it would have taken for Civil War to erupt. The Secret Elite and their agents in government would have immediately focused international attention on the fall guy who had allegedly allowed the illicit weapons to be sold to both parties in Ireland: Kaiser Wilhelm. At a stroke, Germany would have been blamed for providing the armaments that enabled the civil war. This was their back-up casus belli, their plan B, their excuse for taking Britain to war against Germany if the invasion of Belgium failed to materialise. [10]

Lest the reader think that such a tactic is fanciful, we would draw attention to the advice given to Alfred Milner as he sought to find reason for a war against the Boers in South Africa. In the run-up to that disastrous war, Milner’s Balliol College friend and member of the Secret Elite’s inner core, Philip Lyttelton Gell, wrote to him advising that if the British public realised that the arms and ammunition sold to the Boers came from Germany ‘to be used against British citizens’, the cause for war ‘would be popular and obvious’.  [11] The ploy was identical in August 1914.

As events unfolded it was not required. Immediately German troops entered Belgium the Secret Elite had their excuse. The tension in Ireland was de-escalated. A secret telegram was sent to Sir Edward Carson to stand down his private army of 100,000 men, which was not much smaller than the British Expeditionary Force.

Professor Carroll Quigley revealed that the Ulster Unionist leader, and agent of the Secret Elite, prepared a coded telegram to be dispatched to the Ulster Volunteer Force to seize control of Belfast at his given signal, and thus begin the civil war. He was on his way to the telegraph station when he received a message from the prime minister that war was about to be declared on Germany. ‘Accordingly, the Ulster revolt was cancelled and the Home Rule Act suspended until six months after the peace with Germany.’ [12] Consider Quigley’s astounding words: ‘Accordingly, the Ulster revolt was cancelled.’ Germany had invaded Belgium, the Secret Elite had their cases belli. The arrangement concocted  with Carson to set Ulster alight was not required. Plan B was abandoned.

In the South, Erskine Childers was immediately recalled from his involvement with the Irish Volunteer movement to his post in Intelligence at the Admiralty in London. [13]

The Times newspaper provided an acceptable solution to the problem of Ulster; acceptable, that is, to the Secret Elite and the English ruling class.:’Our suggestion is that the government should at once exclude Tyrone and Fermanagh from the operation of the Home Rule Bill on the distinct understanding that such an arrangement is devised to meet temporary exigencies. Thus the six counties of Ulster would be left outside the scope of the Home Rule Bill.’ [14] Here was the solution that would defuse the situation, at least for the duration of the war, and keep Ulster safely inside the Empire. Protestants formed a majority in the province, but only a small majority, accounting for 56.33 per cent of the whole population in 1911. [15] The Times made no reference to the majority of the Irish people and their elected representatives who supported a united Ireland. The population of Ireland in mid-1914 stood at 4,381,398, of whom roughly 74 per cent were Roman Catholics. [16]

Ulster was indeed to be rescued from The Home Rule Act which was indeed postponed by a Suspensory Act of Parliament until 18 September 1915; if the war was still under way at that time, the Government was empowered to push the suspension further back. [17] The very fact that the Act failed to come into being despite having passed every democratic and legal stage in parliament was  a bad omen. At a stroke, a horse and cart was driven sideways through the Irish Home Rule Act  as agreed in Parliament. Powerful establishment voices were in the ascendency. Rather than create a united entity, their Ireland was to be partitioned into a predominantly Protestant North and Catholic South. To those who intrinsically feared British duplicity, the ‘temporary’ nature of this suspension was instantly suspicious.

[1] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 12.
[2] Peace Treaty of Versailles, Part VIII, Reparation, Section 1, Article 231.
[3] Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went To War in 1914.
[4] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 10.
[5] Dundee Courier, 31 July 1914, p. 5.
[6] Albert J Knock, The Myth of a Guilty Nation, p. 37.
[7] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 188 and footnote.
[8] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 307-8.
[9] We believe that all the evidence points to Childers’ playing a role of British double agent.
[10] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp 301-319
[11] Milner Papers, Gell to Milner, 12  Jiuly 1899, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Hist. c686.
[12] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, p. 174.
[13] Andrew Boyle, The Riddle of Erskine Childers, p.196.
[14] The Times, Wednesday 29 August 1914, p. 9.
[15] L.P. Curtis, Ireland in 1914. Oxford Scholarship Online http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583744.001.0001/acprof-9780199583744-chapter-7
[16] Statistical abstract for the United Kingdom … 1900 to 1914, p. 381 [Cd 8128], House of Commons. 1914–16, lxxvi, 855. The percentage of Roman Catholics is based on the census of 1911.
[17] On 14 September 1915 an Order in Council made under the Suspensory Act suspended the Government of Ireland Act for a further six months (i.e. until 18 March 1916).  A subsequent series of Orders in Council, dated 29 February 1916, 7 September 1916, 13 March 1917, 22 August 1917, 27 February 1918, 4 September 1918, 12 March 1919, 18 August 1919, 2 March 1920, and 13 August 1920 suspended the Irish Act in further blocks of six months until the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (passed 23 December 1920) repealed the 1914 Home Rule Act.

Ireland 1916, 1: Towards the Easter Rising

In his address to the Ulster loyalists at the Balmoral show-ground near Belfast on Easter Tuesday, 1912,  Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party at Westminster, roused the attendant crowds with the rallying cry, ‘You have saved yourselves by your exertions and you will save the Empire by your example. [1]  He was perfectly serious, and his words reflected the innermost fears of the Secret Elite.  If Ireland was allowed to cede from Great Britain the consequences for the Empire would be staggering, if not altogether fatal. To defend Ulster was to defend the Empire. The deadlocked second election of December, 1910 had resulted in a Liberal government dependent on the support of the Irish Home Rule Party, and the cost of that support was a promise of Home Rule with an Irish Parliament and Irish Executive in Dublin.

This was an issue which divided both Ireland and the political classes in Britain on the rigid lines of religion and  heritage with a prejudice so deep that those with vested interests were blinded to fair judgement. By 1912, John Redmond, the Home Rule leader in the House of Commons knew that the Tories (Conservatives) were helpless in the face of democratic decision-making. The Liberal-Irish Home Rule majority was overwhelming. (346 – 272) [2] Thus, in accordance with Parliamentary democracy, the Government of Ireland Bill was introduced to the House of Commons by the Prime Minister himself on 11 April, 1912 ‘with power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland.’ [3] In what foreboded things to come, Asquith was interrupted several times by Sir Edward Carson and Captain James Craig, (later Viscount Craigavon) anxious as they were to interfere with the democratic procedure as soon as possible.

Though it was essentially a modest Bill, the like of which determined the government in several of the Empire’s colonies, [4]  the opposition to Home Rule in Ulster was resolute. Initially, the choice opponents faced was either to accept the inevitable or protest vehemently and galvanise public opinion against the Bill. That, of course, could not alter the parliamentary arithmetic. They chose the latter, but when that was stymied by parliamentary procedure more radical action was taken. Of all the domestic issues between 1910-1914, the future of Home Rule for Ireland consumed the English upper classes, related and connected as they were to the Protestant landowners in the South of Ireland. For the upper echelons of the Secret Elite, led as it was by Lord Alfred Milner, [5] Irish Home Rule was tantamount to the first step towards the disintegration of the British Empire and the end of the great Imperial vision to which he had dedicated his life. [6]

To the ruling elites, Ireland, especially Southern Ireland was a disloyal colony peopled by a lesser species. Take a minute to examine the cartoons in Punch magazine in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The images frequently represent Irish men and women as pigs, monkeys, apes and, on at least one occasion, a gorilla. Frankenstein is a popular caricature.

Drunken country bumpkins abound, in sharp contrast to Noble Britannia or the regal Empire lion. De-humanising the common folk is a tactic of oppression, [7] and Catholic Ireland was oppressed. Rebellions in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867 were put down with great severity. [8] Yet a whole generation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the ‘bold Fenian men’ celebrated in ballads, preceded the explosive events of 1916. The British establishment could not grasp the fact that in demeaning the culture of independence in Ireland, its language and literature, they were playing a dangerous game, much resented by ordinary Irishmen.

Contrary to the rabid anti-Irish propaganda which was sustained for so long in the British press, the problem facing Ireland in the years before the war was not of its own making. The problem was the British presence in Ireland. [9] Writing in 1911, Roger Casement almost caught the true nature of the Secret Elite [10] by declaring that  ‘British interests assume that the future of the world shall be an English-speaking future’. He described the designs of ‘British interests’  in terms of England being the ‘landlord of civilisation, mankind her tenantry and the earth her estate.’ [11] Almost, but not quite. The Secret Elite were already ahead of the game.  Well before 1911, assumptions had crystallised into a plan to wipe out Germany and take control of the civilised world. [12] The ultimate success of this ambition could not be left to the expediency of any political party and behind the scenes, protected by the British establishment, Lord Alfred Milner, the self-styled and unapologetic British ‘race patriot’ took control. [13] You may never have heard of Alfred Milner for the simple reason that his immense contribution to ‘British interests’ in the first quarter of the twentieth century has been carefully airbrushed. His direct involvement in Ireland’s history between 1912-1914 proved decisive.

There were already two Irelands. Ulster, in the more industrialised north, was predominantly Presbyterian Protestant and working class. The men of Ulster had taken no part in anti-British uprisings since the debacle of 1789, and loyalty to the union flag was their mantra. In the other three provinces, Munster, Leinster and Connacht, rural agricultural Ireland was comparatively impoverished … and Catholic … a religion whose loyalty was assumed to the Papacy in Rome. Two tribes  had emerged by the first decade of the twentieth century, unequal and mutually suspicious. The expectation raised by the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in 1912 polarised inbred attitudes; fear and loathing in the North and hope for a more independent future in the South. This was an impasse which could not be solved through democratic means without good-will on all sides. Fear and loathing, propaganda and vested interest was all that was on offer.

Alfred Milner found a cause which wrenched him from his covert preparations for war with Germany. During the seven years between 1905-1912 he had busied himself with Imperial conferences involving Heads of State or the Empire’s press [14]; in associating himself closely with the retired Army Chief of Staff, Lord Roberts, and the cause of national service; in supporting the Navy League and visiting Canada and Egypt [15] to extol the virtues of the British Empire. Though always an influential voice in the conservative ranks and a member of the House of Lords, it was support for Ulster which propelled him back into direct action. His purpose was to rescue a ‘white settler colony of superior British stock from submersion in a sea of inferior Celts’. [16] Do not for a moment let that insult to the Celtic majority in Ireland pass without considering its depth of feeling. For Milner and his loyal Secret Elite associates, this was a struggle between the superior and the inferior, for the right to keep Ireland lashed to the Empire or break away from all that they valued.

With Asquith’s Home Rule Bill progressing inexorably through Parliament, it became apparent that it would become law before the end of 1914 unless something truly extraordinary happened. Sir Edward Carson, a lawyer and Unionist MP for Trinity College in Dublin, was chosen by the Secret Elite to stir Ulster. He owed his political fortune to Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister and member of the cabal’s inner-circle, [17] who was ever proud to boast that ‘he had made Carson’. [18] Though Edward Carson fronted a Solemn League and Covenant in 1912 to defeat by all means necessary ‘the present conspiracy to set up a Home rule parliament in Dublin’ [19] which was signed by hundreds of thousands in Ulster, it was Milner and his Secret Elite acolyte, Leo Amery, [20] who devised a United Kingdom pledge to extend the support into mainland Britain. Before this agitation lost its urgency in the weeks preceding the war, nearly two million people had signed the British Covenant. [21] Milner was determined to galvanise support and create a diversion which would make it impossible  for the government  ‘to concentrate its attention on the suppression of Ulster’. [22] In January 1913 an illegal private army, the Ulster Volunteer Force was recruited exclusively from signatories from the Covenant.

Action descended from dissent to interference bordering on treason. Alfred Milner raised massive funds to support Carson’s provisional government from his innermost circle of friends including £30,000 (around £2,500,000 at current prices)  from Lord Astor and sums of £10,000 each from Lord Rothschild, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Iveagh of the Guinness family. Many other contributions touched £1,000. [23] This secret slush fund was exclusively created to defend Ulster from the imposition of Home Rule by every means possible. It helped pay for the gun-running which armed the UVF with German weapons in April 1914. [24]

Milner nullified the Government’s military authority in Ireland by promising Sir Henry Wilson, the Director of Military Operations that if any officers resigned rather than take arms against a protestant revolt in Ulster against Home Rule, ‘they would be reinstated when the conservatives came to power.’ [25]  Thus he paralysed the government’s arm in Ulster and abetted the army mutiny at the Curragh. [26] He tried to convince Bonar Law that the Army Annual Bill, the constitutional basis for raising an army, could be revoked and thus create a dangerous parliamentary crisis. In the end Lord Alfred Milner overstepped the bounds of legal propriety in a manner which, had an Irishman taken such action, an arrest for sedition or treason would have followed. Indubitably, the Secret Elite’s most senior members were determined to wreck the Home Rule Bill.

Every action causes a reaction, and the sight of Ulster bristling with arms which pointed in the direction of Dublin and the south, galvanised the Irish Volunteers, a movement of some 170,000 men. Though resolute in their cause, they significantly lacked weapons, military experience and a united leadership. They too attempted to arm themselves but had little funds or rich and ennobled backers. The narrative of Erskine Childers’ attempt to help the Volunteers redress the imbalance has been written and commented upon by many sources. In our book Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, we dedicate a chapter to explain how, had the Germans failed to attack France through Belgium, the arming of both sides in Ulster could have become a casus belli for the war-makers in Britain. [27]

The inequitable reaction from English conservative politicians and newspapers to what transpired in Ireland was often ridiculous. While their view was that the raising of a private army in Ulster was a necessary consequence of the imposition Home Rule, they regarded the Irish National Volunteers in a completely different light. On 17 June 1914, Milner’s great friend, Leo Amery, asked the Secretary of State for Ireland why an aide de camp to the Lord Lieutenant had inspected and addressed a meeting of Volunteers, exhorting them to ensure the triumph of Home Rule. (Bear in mind the fact that Home Rule was official government policy.) Despite which, faced with the orchestrated outrage of his detractors, the perpetrator, a Captain Bellingham, was obliged to confess an error of judgement on his part. Shame on him! When Irish MP John Dillon  asked why no such action was taken against the Marquis of Londonderry and Lord Lord Kilmorey, the King’s aide de camps, when they inspected the Ulster Volunteers, the question was greeted with laughter. The Belfast Nationalist MP Joe Devlin responded by asking if there was one law for the rich and one for the poor? Opposition Conservatives jeered at him. Prime Minister Asquith intervened to state that there ought to be absolute equality. [28] Ah yes, there “ought to have been” absolute equality, but in a myriad of different ways, there was no equality in Ireland.

The manner in which gun-running was permitted to operate demonstrated the partiality of the British Elite and the British army. The events at Larne in April took place without the intervention of the police, customs or the military. Ulster was thus fully armed with not a harsh word exchanged. Guns to arm the Irish Volunteers in July 1914 were an altogether different matter. Though the cargo of older weapons and ammunition landed at Howth near Dublin was but a fraction of that already in the North, the army directly confronted the Volunteers marching back to the capital, [29] and a bayonet charge left several wounded. Later that day, goaded by Dubliners on Batchelor’s Walk, the soldiers fired on the crowd, leaving four dead and thirty-eight wounded. [30] Ordinary citizens were gunned down on the streets of Dublin. Imagine had that happened in Belfast, Glasgow or Liverpool? On mainland Britain, it would have caused a political furore… but this was in Ireland … and there was other business in Europe.

Addressing the House of Commons on 27 July, John Redmond stated that the troops had marched through the streets of Dublin with loaded guns… an unheard of situation. He demanded that the regiment be withdrawn immediately from Ireland and a full judicial and military inquiry set up. [31] War intervened. The dead were buried, as was the need for an enquiry. The impact of these events frayed hope in the minds of ordinary Irishmen and women. The legacy of the army’s clear partiality in the Curragh ‘revolt’ and the open relaxation of the law in the North compared with the harassment in the South, exasperated those waiting patiently for Home Rule. Citizens in the South lost faith in the British army. Who would defend them if Ulster exploded? John Redmond ended his speech with the words: ‘Let the House clearly understand that four fifths of the Irish people will not submit any longer to be bullied, or punished or penalised or shot for conduct which is permitted to go scot-free in the open light of day in every county in Ulster by other sections of their fellow countrymen‘. [32] Bold words indeed. Yet eight days later he committed Ireland to an imperialist war. Strange.

What the Secret Elite had sown in well-fertilised fields of bitterness was soon to reap its own whirlwind.

[1] The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) INF/7A/2/8.
[2] General Election, 3rd-10th December 1910. http://www.election.demon.co.uk/geresults.html
[3] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 11 April 1912 vol 36 cc1408-10.
[4] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p.181.
[5] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 32.
[6] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 179.
[7] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/
[8] Micheal Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 2.
[9] A.J.P. Taylor, Essays in English History, p. 217.
[10] Quigley refers to them as the Milner Group, but they were more powerful and more expansive than just that. Milner was the most influential leader, but the Elite extended into many other powerful areas including banking and finance. All were elites in their own field.
[11] Roger Casement, The Crime Against Europe, p. 79.
[12] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 58-60.
[13] Lord Milner’s Credo, The Times, 27 July 1925.
[14] J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p.169.
[15] Ibid., p. 292.
[16] Milner letter to Carson, 9 December 1913, Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 183.
[17] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[18] Ibid., p. 176.
[19] PRONI INF/7/A/2/51.
[20] Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 296.
[21] Walter Long, Memories, p. 203.
[22] Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 296.
[23] Gollin, Proconsul pp. 187-8.
[24] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 310-311.
[25] Sir Henry Wilson, Diaries, p. 132.
[26] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 188.
[27] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, pp. 301-318.
[28] The Times, 18 June 1914, page 12.
[29] In contrast to the open-door approach taken by the authorities in Belfast to the illegal landings at Larne, between 160 and 180 troops, from the Scottish Borderers were rushed by tram cars from their barracks to confront the Volunteers marching back from Howth.
[30] Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, p. 438.
[31] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 27 July, 1914, Vol. 65 cc1022-66.
[32] Ibid.