Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 10: The Final Reckoning

The previous nine blogs have presented the reasons why the men of secret power wanted rid of Herbert Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War from 1914-1916 … but were unable to manoeuvre him from office. He had threatened the smooth running of Trans-Atlantic finance, had interfered with, and apparently delayed, the enormous growth in armaments and munitions, and did not agree that the war would be won by the nation which fired most shells across the barren pot-holes of the Western Front. His phenomenal contribution to voluntary recruitment could not go on forever. Its initial success in the early months of the war was unsustainable. Conscription had to be introduced in March 1916 when the Military Service Act came into force [1] just as the parliamentarians had wanted, and Kitchener did not trust politicians. He was justified in his mistrust of gossiping Cabinet colleagues. Prime Minister Asquith, for example, shared secret confidential information with his paramour [2] Venetia Stanley on a daily basis. [3] He famously stated that he would give Cabinet ministers all they information they sought ‘if they would only divorce their wives.’ [4] In this, as in many of his other beliefs, Kitchener was absolutely right. London society was a hotbed of unbridled war-gossip especially in the first two years of the conflict.

What Kitchener failed to understand was that neither he, nor the British Cabinet, called the tune. The elite Bankers and financiers, the owners of the military-industrial complex, the manipulators of power and influence, the newspaper moguls and the academic guardians of historical record, the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic had ordained the war to crush Germany and amass even greater fortunes in the process. The Secret Elite whom we have identified by name in Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, [5] and further expanded in previous blogs, [6] held this as their sole objective.

An early end to the war was not to be contemplated. Nor was the notion of a just and fair peace about which Kitchener had been talking. What use was a compromise which would have allowed German commerce and industry to remain intact with all of the advantages through which modern business practice thrived? It was inconceivable that they would allow the war to end before the American government joined the conflict. The United States had to be drawn into the war in order to offload the enormous private loans and debts accrued by the Morgan/Rothschild/Rockefeller empires through their monopolies on arms, munitions and international loans. Had Kitchener influenced a move for peace in 1916, the burden of debt would not have been shouldered by US taxpayers, and likewise, British and French tax-payers, but by the financial institutions. An honourable peace would have left Germany strong and independent. Germany had to be made to pay for a war they had never wanted. Lord Kitchener’s threatened intervention imperilled every aspect of the Secret Elite’s aim.

He knew he had enemies, clearly.

Though he himself was a very loyal servant to King and Country, Herbert Kitchener had to struggle against professional jealousy and disloyalty from his senior staff. Sir Henry Wilson, the Principal Liaison Officer between the allied forces in France, was a regular correspondent with Lord Alfred Milner, the acknowledged leader of the Secret Elite, and acted as a high level informant behind the backs of Kitchener and Asquith. The Prime Minister wrote that both he and Kitchener considered Wilson a constantly intriguing serpent [7] so there was little love lost on either side.

The Secretary of State’s enemies amongst the press included editors of the Morning Post and the National Review, but his loudest critic was Lord Northcliffe at The Times and The Mail. Ever close to the Secret Elite, The Times, through their privileged correspondent Charles Repington, had tried to bring Kitchener into public disrepute by fanning the flames of the so-called munitions crisis in 1915. [8] Far from weakening Lord Kitchener, their accusations against him damaged their reputation and underlined the strength of public support he continued to enjoy. [9] Thus Horatio Kitchener was a man with many enemies, not in the trenches, the workplace or the ordinary home, but inside the core of the Establishment. That he understood. What he could not grasp was the grand plan which had been constructed above the realm of public politics.

Asquith was obliged to shake-up his Cabinet in May 1915 and the net impact of the reorganisation was to bring more members of the Secret Elite into public office. Professor Carroll Quigley [10] identified eleven members of Asquith’s ‘coalition’ Cabinet as members of this cabal including Lords Lansdowne and Curzon, Andrew Bonar Law, the Conservative Party leader, Sir Edward Carson, F.E. Smith, Walter Long, the Earl of Selborne, Robert Cecil and most importantly, Arthur J. Balfour, former Prime Minister, as First Lord of the Admiralty. The man whom they dearly wanted removed, Lord Kitchener, stood firm. Though in private they all wanted rid of him, in public he could not be criticised.

For as long as they could find reason to tolerate him, especially once his powers over munitions had been shifted wholesale into Lloyd Geoge’s court, Kitchener remained an asset both as the international figure-head for the British military and as a buffer between the Prime Minister and his detractors. However, once he began to speak privately about his role as a peace-maker at the end of the war, and share his ideals with leading figures in both the military and the government, [11] Kitchener’s days were numbered. The asset had become a liability. But how could they get rid of him? You might construct a long list of possibilities – ‘heart-attack’, ‘suicide’, a full range of ‘natural causes’ might have been actioned. Any public suggestion of his alleged homosexuality would certainly have ruined him but what possible good would have come from trashing the name and reputation of the hero of the Empire? None. Though the military and political agents of the Secret Elite schemed behind his back, it was in the interests of all to protect Kitchener’s public reputation. He had to be removed with a subtlety which brooked no backlash. What were the odds against Herbert Kitchener dying in a naval tragedy, lost at sea? No-one could have anticipated such a scenario or possibly suspect unlawful practice. Surely?

Before anyone rushes to close the account with the dismissive and entirely unfair claim that this is simply another conspiracy, re-read the volume of evidence, actual and circumstantial, which we have already presented. [12]

We have clearly established that there was no immediate need for Herbert Kitchener to visit Russia. Knowing that the Somme offensive would begin in July, he threatened to pull out of the venture as late as 2 June 1916 rather than have it postponed. [13] The central Secret Elite place-man at the Czar’s court in Petrograd (St Petersburg) was Sir John Hanbury-Williams, a close friend and associate of Alfred Milner. [14] Williams’s position as Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia from 1914-1917 was consolidated by ancestral diplomatic connections with the Empress Catherine the Great, which granted him a special place in the Czar’s more intimate circles. [15]

The Secret Elite network spun a spider’s web of influence across the globe. Hanbury-Williams had conjured the Grand Duke’s supposed appeal to the British to attack the Dardanelles [16] in 1915, and it was he who co-ordinated Kitchener’s visit to Russia in 1916. His diary shows that the Czar ‘talked over the proposed visit of Lord Kitchener with the greatest keenest and interest’ before Hanbury-Williams organised the details with the British Ambassador and the military attache, Sir Alfred Knox. [17] The plan to send Kitchener to Russia emanated from Britain, not Russia. Indeed Hanbury-Williams’s published record omitted detailed reference to the background preparations for what was transformed into ‘Kitchener’s’ visit. Allegedly, when Lord Kitchener insisted that any postponement of his visit would result in its cancellation, Hanbury-Williams took immediate steps to stress Czar Nicholas’s personal wish that the visit go ahead. [18] The plans devised by Hanbury-Williams were transposed into the Czar’s wishes. So ran the web of deceit.

Everyone personally connected with the Secret Elite whose name had been associated with the ‘mission’ to Russian withdrew. To add to this co-incidence, their reaction to the news of Kitchener’s death on HMS Hampshire was in its own right, suspicious. Lloyd George claimed that he heard the ‘startling’ news on his way to a War Council in Downing Street on 6 June. When he entered the Cabinet Room he described ‘the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Mr Balfour and Sir Maurice Hankey sitting at a table all looking stunned’. This was indeed an inner circle of powerful men who understood what had happened, yet they were unable to talk about the consequences? Remarkably, given the enormity of what had just taken place, ‘Sir Maurice and I quite forgot for the moment that had it not been for the Irish negotiations, we would have shared the same fate.’ [19] That is untrue. From the outset Hankey said he would not go, and Lloyd George’s refusal had nothing to do with Ireland. [20] How many people would have reacted with such sang-froid? He and Hankey ‘quite forgot’ that they should have been on that same ill fated ship? [21] It defied human nature.

Indeed, without breaking step or pausing for a moment to contemplate the many contributions of the now deceased Secretary of State for War, Lloyd George knew that ‘the passing of Lord Kitchener left an empty place at the War Office. I realised that this place might be offered to me.’ [22] This man of many plots, of endless carping behind the backs of others, who briefed the press, especially Northcliffe, against Kitchener, displayed an almost callous cynicism. Lloyd George did indeed accept that office on 4 July, but not before ensuring that all the powers that had been systematically stripped from Kitchener were reinvested in the new Secretary of State for War.

On hearing of Kitchener’s death, Northcliffe is reported to have burst into his sister’s drawing room declaring, ‘Providence is on the side of the British Empire’ [23] Fawning tributes dripped from the mouths of the guilty. Admiral Jellicoe solemnly declared that the navy’s grief for ‘a soldier’ whose loss ‘we deplore so deeply. It was our privilege to see him last; he died with many of our comrades’. [24] No mention was made of Admiralty culpability or unswept channels.

Look again at the depth of that culpability. HMS Hampshire was barely fit for service and its loss added little to the Navy’s post-Jutland woes. Jellicoe and his masters at the Admiralty approved the ship’s route into a known minefield. Naval intelligence at Room 40 had carefully monitored all U-Boat activity. References to the minefield and the sinking of the trawler, Laurel Rose were removed or altered to suit the cover-up ‘explanation’ when difficult questions were raised about the fate of the Hampshire. The official report was kept secret. Key documents have still never seen the light of day.

Kitchener’s murder was covered with dripping platitudes and cynically penned obituaries. In the House of Lords, Lansdowne proclaimed that Kitchener’s death ‘was a great and dignified exit from the stage upon which he had played so prominent a part during the long years of his life.’ [25] The two-faced Asquith lamented ‘his career has been cut short while still in the full tide of unexhausted powers and possibilities.’ [26] The Secret Elite’s John Buchan ordained that ‘in a sense his work was finished’ and ‘his death was a fitting conclusion to the drama of his life.’ [27] ‘Bollocks’ may not be a recognised historical assessment, but ‘bollocks’ it remains. They peddled lies as fraudsters do.

The full panoply of State and Church gathered at St Paul’s Cathedral on 13 June to hold a service of remembrance for Lord Kitchener and his staff. The King and Queen accompanied by Queen Alexandra, the Lord Mayor in his black and gold robes, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and assorted Aldermen and Sheriffs all gathered to pay their final respects to the former Secretary of State for War and champion of the Empire. They sang ‘Abide with me’, recited the ‘De Profundis’, read from the liturgy, said Prayers for the Country at War and thanked God for a brave and courageous life. The service ended with all three verses of God Save the King. [28] Thus with a great sense of theatre, Kitchener’s memory was consigned to the annals of received history. How quintessentially British.

No-one has ever been held to account for the murder of Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener and over 700 other men.

[1] Conscription: the First World War – UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private…/conscription/
[2] Asquith’s complex relationship with the much younger Venetia Stanley has intrigued commentators over the century. Whether or not they were lovers remains unproven.
[3] Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock, H.H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, Oxford University Press, 1982.
[4] Viscount Hankey, The Supreme Command, Vol. 1, p. 221.
[5] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream, 2013 pp. 12-16 onwards, Appendix 1, p. 362 and Appendix 2, pp. 363-9.
[6] Secret Elite, Blogs 1-3, posted June 15-17, 2014.
[7] Brock and Brock, H.H. Asquith, Letters, p. 342, (Asquith to Venetia Stanley 28 Dec 1914.)
[8] see blog; Munitions 6: Crisis, What Crisis? posted 8 July 2015.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Professor Carroll Quigley, author of The Anglo-American Establishment, initially identified and named the secret cabal who controlled British foreign policy from the early years of the twentieth century.
[11] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, pp. 209-10.
[12] previous blogs posted from 4 May, 2016 – 29 June 2016.
[13] George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, Volume 3, pp. 350-1.
[14] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 56.
[15] John Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, as I knew him, p. 1.
[16] See blog, Gallipoli 9, posted 20 March 2015.
[17] Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, p. 94.
[18] Ibid., pp. 98-9.
[19] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol.1, p. 456.
[20] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. I, p. 269.
[21] Hankey Diary 6 June 1916, quoted in Roskill, Hankey Vol 1, pp. 279-80.
[22] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 456.
[23] J Lee Thomson, Politicians, the Press and Propaganda, Lord Northcliffe & The Great War, 1914-1919, p. 101.
[24] The Times, 14 June 1914.
[25] Lord Lansdowne , Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 June 1916 vol 22 cc315-22.
[26] House of Commons Debate, 21 June 1916 vol 83 cc145-51.
[27] John Buchan, Episodes of the Great War, pp. 246-7.
[28] The Times 14 June 1914.

Ireland 1916, 10: The Legacy Of Easter 1916

With the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising fast approaching (24-29 April 2016), the events of that awesome week will be celebrated throughout Ireland with parades, bunting and speeches with an emphasis on those who gave their lives in the cause of liberty. Politicians will, as ever, line up to be photographed and, by association, linked to the men who fell. 1916 was a year of atrocious bloodletting across the battlefields of Europe, but there is an essential difference between those millions sacrificed to an Empire’s war in a determined drive to crush Germany and those who took part in the uprising in the expectation that they would sacrifice their lives for Ireland. Indeed the Proclamation which Patrick Pearse read out in front of the General Post Office in Dublin invoked the readiness of Ireland’s children ‘to sacrifice themselves for the common good’. [1] It was an overt choice, a clear decision pledged to Ireland’s freedom from the British imperialist yoke. The consequent loss of life in Ireland cannot be compared to the horrendous carnage in the battles of attrition over the Somme from July 1916, [2] but its significance was to prove far greater than contemporary British historians and commentators have recorded.

The Secret Elite and their imperial guard in the press, the foreign and the colonial offices, the war office and the great money houses in London and New York, made every effort to downplay the actions taken by James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Sean Mac Diarmada, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett and the men and women who fought by their side. Because he represented an intellectual and dangerous challenge to the Empire, they promoted a devastating tirade against Roger Casement based on allegedly sexually explicit diaries which were circulated secretly to influence pro-Irish Americans.

Whatever the early success the anti-rebellion propaganda enjoyed, the rising was not a naive proposition to be dismissed by ‘Empire Loyalists’ as folly. [3] Nor was it simply the sixth in line in a series of rebellions against British domination over the previous three hundred years. It was not an aberration or a theatrically staged protest. It was a statement of intent from a small minority group which refused to follow Redmond and Dillon blindly into a war they knew was wrong and which they deeply resented. And their numbers grew, slowly at first, as men and women who initially acted in good faith to support the Empire came to terms with the unpalatable fact that yet again the British government was using them as dupes.

Though derided for their refusal to join the British army and labelled ‘cowards’, they were not. They saw the reality of the evil Empire ranged against Germany and refused to bend the knee. They were not to be fooled by false promises of Home Rule once the war was over. From an unforgiving courtroom Roger Casement caught the moment: ‘we are told that if Irishmen go by the thousands to die not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand in Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they were winning self-government for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country.’ [4] Casement analysed it perfectly. The sacrifice of these men who joined up in 1914 did not win self-government for Ireland once the war had ended.

Just before he was executed, an unrepentant James Connolly wrote to his sister, ‘We went out to break the connection between this Country and the British Empire and to establish an Irish Republic. We believe that the call we thus issued to the people of Ireland was a nobler call in a holier cause than any call issued to them during this war…’ [5] Both men, and those who shared their conviction, acted not from narrow self-serving considerations but from a revulsion against Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. They sought no association with the barbaric war. Theirs was an act of faith whose realisation they never saw. From it came a political reawakening, fuelled by the intransigence and arrogance of the Secret Elite. Casement, Connolly, Pearce and all who sacrificed themselves for Irish independence, were the spark that lit the flame.
It need not have come to that.

Had there been a genuine will to accommodate the aspirations of the Irish people, it would have been so different. Had the Secret Elite addressed the issue of Home Rule in Ireland with a more enlightened touch, the rebellion might never have had any impact at all. In stirring Ulster for their own purposes, the Secret Elite promoted an absolute determination in the Northern Province to detach itself from any Dublin-centred national government. As we have seen in previous blogs, their parliamentary agents in the Conservative party derided the advocates of Home Rule, wallowed in the overt injustices and inequalities between the different communities and armed and trained a private army to defend Ulster. Had the Secret Elite ordained that Asquith’s coalition government, formed in December 1915, should acknowledge the great value of Ireland as part of the Empire’s war effort, Irish citizens might have felt valued. Had the War Office listened to John Redmond and his pleas for the establishment of an Irish Army Corps, which Asquith endorsed in a speech in Dublin in September 1915, but failed to deliver, there would have been a greater sense of identity with the Empire’s struggle. [6] Such pious advocacy is empty talk for the men of real power, the money power, the financiers and policy makers who acted behind the democratic front, the Secret Elite, had no intention of placating Ireland.

For the Secret Elite had caused the war, deliberately. Their purpose was to crush Germany and take control of the civilised world. They cared not a jot for the working people and the impoverished underclasses. They had no time to concern themselves about injustice in Ireland. And that is why the British establishment stuck to the mantra that Ireland could not be trusted. The irony was, it was they who could not be trusted.

Instead, the War Office engaged in ‘a systematic suppression of recognition of the gallantry of the Irish troops at the front.’ Redmond stated in parliament that: ‘I do not think that there was any single incident that did more harm to our efforts [to encourage enlistment] at that time than the suppression in the official dispatches of all recognition, even of the names being mentioned, of the gallantry of the Dublin Fusiliers and the Munster Fusiliers in the landing at V Beach at Gallipoli.’ [7] Such blatant discrimination by those in real power was indefensibly racist and counter-productive, but it represented their mind-set. Ordinary people did not matter and ordinary Irish men and women did not matter absolutely.

This suppression of national identity, this deliberate disassociation of a people with the valour and sacrifice of its fighting men because of their ethnicity and religion was a repression which rebounded and destroyed trust in Britain. How many historic prejudices were wrapped around the fact that ‘up to the time that the 16th went to the front, with the exception of two or three subalterns, there was not a Catholic officer in the Division’. [8] The final blow for many Irishmen in the South – and the biggest threat – came with the announcement of the coalition cabinet in December 1915. From that moment, recruitment to the British Army plummeted and support for the Irish Volunteers and independence, grew steadily. Home Rule was dead and buried, and a reborn Protestant ascendancy within the British government destroyed any lingering confidence in the impartiality of British rule.

Distrust and suspicion spread all over the South with the spectacle of Edward Carson taking a seat in the Cabinet as chief Law Officer. In the minds of large masses of the people, this meant that in the end, they would be betrayed. [9] The offer that was extended to John Redmond to join the Cabinet deceived nobody. While representatives of the small Unionist party in Ireland were given high office in the Coalition Government and in the Executive of Ireland, Redmond, who represented the majority of the Irish people, was offered minor post of no particular importance. It was a calculated insult.

The Secret Elite and their political agents believed that Ireland in 1916 was still a backward, ill-educated society, unable to comprehend what was happening all around its shores. Not so. People could clearly see that a Unionist executive had been installed in Dublin Castle, with a Unionist Chief-Secretary and a Unionist Attorney General. These bitter opponents of Home Rule imposed a system of universal martial law encompassing hundreds of untried prisoners, many of whom did not even know the charges of which they were accused. The political system which had apparently agreed a great measure of home rule for Ireland in 1914, was transformed into a military dictatorship. The unelected minority were in charge. Again.

Everything the London government did was unjust. Everything the War Office ordered, threatened the identity of the Irish soldier. Whether it was meant as a punishment or determined through fear, injured and recuperating Irishmen at Boulogne were sent back to the front to serve in English divisions. It was estimated that there were twenty times more Irishmen in English, Scottish and Welsh battalions than there were Englishmen, Scots or Welshmen in Irish regiments. There was no justice. There was no equality. Redmond told parliament that he had received ‘scores and scores of letters’ from Irishmen seeking transfer from their appointed regiment into the Connaught Rangers, but ‘never succeeded in a single case.’ [10]

The malignant aggression of Secret Elite imperialist ambitions used every obstacle to prevent Irishmen from being credited for the successful prosecution of the war. After 1916, young Irishmen, suppressed by a Dublin executive severely out of touch with its own populace, preached a new gospel; one in which Home Rule representatives were no longer entitled to their support. Redmond, Dillon, ‘wee’ Joe Devlin and the Irish Parliamentary Party had failed. They had failed because they stood by a government which patently failed the people. Unable to grasp the truth that stared them down, the old order in Irish politics blamed ‘prejudiced stupidity’ inside the British government for the return to pre-1910 attitudes. No, it ran much deeper than mere prejudice. The guiding force behind both Asquith’s and later in 1916, Lloyd George’s governments, unelected and full of place-men, was the Secret Elite, for whom Ireland was a mere side-show; an inconvenience which would be ironed-out in their good time. For the men and women of the Rising, an Irish Rubicon had been crossed.

The burning question is why John Redmond and virtually all of the Home Rule (Irish Parliamentary) Party, continued to stay loyal to the Empire? Was it, as Shakespeare put it, that they were stepped in blood so far, that ‘returning was as tedious as go’er.’ [11] They had never belonged to the political class of the Oxford Elite from whose staunchest ranks many in the Secret Elite were drawn. Redmond had been duped by the Asquiths into believing that loyalty to the Empire would be reflected in loyalty from the Imperial Parliament in London. He appeared to hold to the belief that in the end, even although time and again the Unionist-dominated cabinet thwarted his every good intention, he would be able to guide Ireland through the political turmoil. But his time had passed.

John Redmond continued to front parliamentary opposition to the British cabinet’s designs on Ulster though his political mandate became a thing of the past. His brother, 52 year old Major Willie Redmond, MP for East Clare, was killed in action at Messines in June 1917, a hard blow for a parliamentarian who knew he stood on shifting sands. Major Redmond’s parliamentary seat  was taken by Eamonn de Valera, whose death sentence in 1916 had been remitted solely because he was an American citizen. De Valera was adopted as the Sinn Fein candidate in East Clare and won with an enormous 70 per cent share of the vote. [12] John Redmond died broken hearted in London on 6 March 1918. [13]

The tectonic plates of political confidence in Irish politics in the South clashed absolutely. The old order shook and fell. Like an avalanche, Sinn Fein, which had been but a doctrinaire idea held by a very small number in the community, developed a giant’s strength. In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Sinn Fein reaped a reward that many later claimed was undeserved. Be clear, Sinn Fein did not make the rising, but the rising made Sinn Fein. [14] They held no association with Britain. They had consistently rejected war. The British press repeatedly accused ‘Sinn Feiners’ of plotting the Easter Rising as if it was a mark of infamy. This badge of dishonour in British eyes became the standard for the honourable rebel. Their ranks were swollen both by participants in the rising and wrongfully deported sympathisers, freed from internment and prison in England. To paraphrase Yeats, in the aftermath of Easter 1916, ‘a terrible beauty was born.’ [15]

By 1918 Ireland was no longer the ‘one bright spot’ which had lit up Sir Edward Grey’s statement in 1914. [16] It had been transformed into one of the most doubtful and difficult spots that ever coloured the Empire. [17] Attempts by the British parliament to introduce conscription to Ireland later in the war only made matters worse. With 47% of the votes cast in the December 1918 General Election, Sinn Fein rose like a political colossus towering over Ireland. In 1910 they had no representatives; in 1918, they held 73 seats. The Irish Parliamentary (Home Rule) Party was destroyed. In 1910 it held 67 seats; in 1918, only six of their representatives were elected to Parliament. [18]

It was a disaster for the Secret Elite determination to bind Ireland to the Empire. In truth, their obduracy had blinded them to the consequences of democratic accountability.  Much like the Scottish Labour Party in 2015, an inability to divest itself from association with an English party opened the way to a nationalist revival and cast the Irish Parliamentary Party into the political abyss. And this was the legacy of Patrick Pearse and the men who signed the Proclamation of 1916; a legacy predicated upon the Secret Elite’s inability to accept that in a changing world – republicanism in Ireland had replaced the softer notion of Home Rule under the British flag. They had tried, and continued to try, to repress an idea which had found its time.

Yet questions remain unanswered about the tumultuous events of Easter 1916. Given that the evidence we have previously presented proves without doubt that key members of the British establishment’s most powerful political, naval and military decision-makers knew in advance that the uprising was scheduled, why was no action taken to forewarn Dublin Castle and the Irish Executive?

Given the fact that many documents pertaining to Easter 1916 remain classified, probably hidden amongst the thousands condemned to the government’s secret repository at the high security communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire, [19] has the time not come for outright honesty? What better gesture to continue the process of truth and reconciliation than the release of every single remaining document covering Easter 1916? The memory of all Irishmen who were sacrificed for the Empire and those killed during the uprising, and afterwards, deserves that truth.

Perhaps we are being overly idealistic. Sad to say, the old lies persist; old propaganda continues to populate the pages of contemporary newspapers in Ireland. Incredibly, an article in the Irish Times of 2014 [20] began with this ridiculous statement: ‘The war began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914 and ended on Armistice Day, November 11th, 1918.’ Still the myth-peddlers stick to pro-war propaganda without a blush of shame. The First World War began on 4 August 1914 when the British Empire declared war on Germany. Prior to that, it was a European war involving France and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The conflict officially ended only after the Versailles Peace settlement was signed in 1919. Between November 1918 and June 1919, hundreds of thousands of Germany citizens were starved to death as the miserable food blockade continued unchecked. They apparently didn’t matter then, so they won’t matter now.

Bad though that is, we wonder why Ireland’s leaders today stand literally shoulder to shoulder with their British counterparts at war centenary commemorations in solemn unquestioning agreement which perpetuates the great lie that tens of millions died for freedom and civilization. In doing so they tarnish not only the memory of all Irishmen killed or wounded in Europe and on Gallipoli, but the Irishmen who were branded cowards because they refused to take part.

The memorable words of David Starret from the 9th Royal Irish Rifles have been carved in stone at the Irish Peace Park near Messines. He wrote home lamenting ‘the innocent slaughtered for the guilty, the poor man for the sake of the greed of the already rich, the man of no authority made victim of the man who gathered importance and wishes to keep it.’

His poignant observation describes the Secret Elite in all of their conceit.

The Irish government has to take more care lest its message infers that war was popular in Ireland and that those who stood against it acted dishonourably. They did not. Pearse, Connolly, Casement and all whom they urged into action, chose to sacrifice themselves for their country. As John Dorney pointed out ‘It is entirely appropriate for families and localities to remember their dead. But to suggest that the war for the Empire was popular in Ireland and only discredited by a malevolent plan by nationalists to ‘airbrush it from history’ is simply to twist the facts. [21]

How much more honourable to recognise that Ireland was committed to a war by politicians who believed that in the end Britain would reward the nation with Home Rule. In that, they were mightily deceived. Freedom is not a reward to be bestowed; it is a right that has to be fought for and defended. Thanks to those who sacrificed themselves for Ireland in 1916, Ireland in the 21st Century is an independent nation.

They were the few.

Do not forget those who were sacrificed and those who sacrificed themselves.

[1] Patrick Pearse’s proclamation can be viewed at goireland.about.com/od/…/Proclamation-of-the-Irish-Republic-1916.htm
[2] W. Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century, pp. 81-86.
[3] Liam O’Ruaire, The Global-Historical Significance of the 1916 Rising https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/?s=the+global-historical
[4] Sir Roger Casement, Speech From The Dock, from The Crime Against Europe with The Crime Against Ireland, introduced by Brendan Clifford p. 167.
[5] Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising,  p. 355.
[6] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 18 October 1916 vol 86 cc581-696.
[7] Ibid., cc586-7.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., cc587-8.
[10] Ibid., cc593-4.
[11] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, III. iv. 1136.
[12] Fidelma McDonnell, Riches of Clare: 1917 Rising of an Irish Political Colossus http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/claremuseum/news_events/1917_rising.htm
[13] Michael MacDonagh, The Life of William O’Brien, the Irish Nationalist, p.232.
[14] Warrre B. Wells, John Redmond; A Biography, p. 185.
[15] W.B. Yeats, Easter 1916.
[16] hansard.millbanksystems.com/…/1914/aug/03/statement-by-sir-edward-g…HC Debate, 3 August 1914 vol 65 cc1809-32.
[17] Matthew Keating, House of Commons Debate, 9 April 1918 vol 104 cc1412-13.
[18] http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/h1918.htm
[19] Ian Cobain, The Guardian, 18 October 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/18/foreign-office-historic-files-secret-archive
[20] Ronan McGreevy, The Irish Times, 2 January 2014.
[21] http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/11/12/opinion-remembering-world-war-i-in-ireland/#.VrjGn4R8Gi4

Ireland 1916, 9: A Scandalous Report

Let’s cut to the chase. When the powers that oversee and direct government set up a Royal Commission or Board of Enquiry, they do so under terms that normally come to the conclusion they seek. To ensure this, they place one or more of their trusted agents as chairman or prosecutor and then set the parameters within which the so-called enquiry must operate. That done, the findings will be exactly as they require. For example, they chose Viscount Bryce, the former (and popular) Ambassador to America, to chair the report on Alleged German Outrages [1] in December 1914, and set a remit which barred the members of the committee from interviewing witnesses. They had access only to the depositions taken by barristers and despite protests, second-hand accounts were as close as the committee members came to hard fact. [2] In like vein for the Enquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania, (issued July 1915) they chose Sir Edward Carson and his associate, F E Smith, both trusted agents of the Secret Elite, as the prosecutors of Commander William Turner in order to blacken his name and divert attention away from the lies the Admiralty had concocted to explain the sinking of the Titanic. [3] So it was with the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland.

Given the outrage expressed in Unionist quarters, Asquith had no option but to announce a Royal Commission [4] to ‘enquire into the causes’ of the ‘recent outbreak of rebellion in Ireland.’ There was a second part to the remit entrusted to the King’s chosen Commissioners, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, Sir Montague Shearman and Sir Mackenzie Chalmers. [5] These men were charged to examine the conduct and degree of responsibility of the civil and military executive for the events over Easter Weekend. In other words the focus was centred on the presumed failure of British officials to take action which would have stopped the uprising, rather than the causes of the rising itself.

Typical of a Secret Elite-led pre-determined investigation, these men represented the British Establishment with Hardinge, a career diplomat and close personal friend and advisor to King Edward VII. He had accompanied the king on all of his foreign tours and was very influential in the creation of the 1904 Entente Cordiale and the secret convention with Russia in 1907. [6] Be assured, Hardinge was a central figure in preparing the war against Germany. Later Hardinge was appointed Viceroy of India. Shearman was a King’s Bench judge who had long-standing interest in Amateur Athletics. He was also the ‘unofficial standing counsel to leading moneylender’s firms’ and according to his biographer, was ‘not a profound jurist’. [7] His colleague, Mackenzie Chalmers, was a legal civil servant with a life-long love of cricket. Both were former Oxford men with no previous experience of Ireland, and their appointments were uncontroversial. That was just was well since the terms of the Royal Commission limited their investigation to the acts of omission for which the Ulster Unionists, including their Secret Elite associates, blamed everyone except themselves.

Poor Birrell. Though he had resigned his position as Chief Secretary for Ireland on 1 May 1916, the knives had been drawn by his Unionist critics immediately word of the uprising reached London. Lord Midleton leaped into the fray on 26 April blaming the Chief Secretary and his administration for refusing to act quickly and decisively against the enemies of the Crown in Ireland. ‘Nothing has been left undone by interview or memoranda, or the giving of evidence so far as it was necessary, to induce the Irish Government to act.

Yet they allowed parades of the Sinn Feiners to continue Sunday after Sunday; they allowed these [Republican] newspapers to circulate; they allowed posters of the most seditious character, especially directed against recruiting, to be broadcast in a number of districts in Ireland. As recently as last week all these matters were brought before the Irish Government, with an intimation that if they did not deal with them quickly the opportunity might come too late.’ [8] With only minor variations, these words could have been lifted from Hansard and inserted into Hardinge’s eventual Report. What transpired was an exercise in providing a pre-determined conclusion.

The Report duly followed Midleton’s litany of liberal blame, though it acknowledged that in Ireland, ’there is always a section of opinion bitterly opposed to the British connection’ and ‘in times of excitement this section can impose its sentiments on largely increased numbers of the people’ [9] Birrell himself commented on the ‘old hatred and distrust of the British connection, always noticeable in all classes, and in all places, varying in degree, and finding different ways of expression, but always there as the background of Irish politics and character.’ [10] No attempt was made to explain why this might be. The Report stated that the creation of a Citizen Army in 1913 during the industrial unrest in Dublin, and the criticism voiced by organisers like James Connolly should, like other examples of lawlessness and disorder, have been nipped in the bud

It was the old story. Inherent racism and disparagement of the Irish was never far from the English pen. They accepted the view that ‘Irish people are easily led’ [11] and argued that the government’s failure to take prompt action meant that ‘strong repressive measures became necessary, and much hardship is imposed on the misled, but perhaps comparatively inoffensive people’. These words could have been mouthed by a nineteenth-century slave-owner. Note the implied difference between the King’s subjects in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland. Irish people were easily led. Not quite up to the mark of the stout Englishman or the trusty Scot.

While the landing of arms and ammunition at Howth in July 1914 was examined in a twenty-line paragraph, the only reference to gun-running in Ulster was reduced to a ten-word aside. [12] Great attention was given to the alliance between the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army and their practice of drilling and ‘seditious’ practices. Without any concrete evidence it was asserted that ‘a considerable number of the younger members of the priesthood in certain districts joined in the movement and schoolmasters who were followers of the Sinn Fein movement disseminated treason amongst younger people through the medium of the Irish language’. And there you have it; the fault could be traced to young educated catholics, teachers, clergymen and Gaels.

Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party was also blamed for its negative attitude towards suppression and the deportation of agitators. [13] Examine, please, the following statement: ‘Irishmen no doubt appreciate the maintenance of order, but they appear to have an inveterate prejudice against punishment of disorder’. Was the Scotsman, the Welshman or the Englishman, for that matter, any different? Apparently so.

The Commission was given sight of letters confiscated by the Censor, confidential reports from the Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and notes on speeches recorded by police spies at the first Annual Convention of the Irish Volunteers in October 1914. These had been duly submitted to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, ‘but he wrote no comment on their content and no proceedings were taken.’ Here lay the principal accusation filed against Asquith’s representative in Ireland.

His enemies unearthed evidence of reports from Tyrone, from County Wexford, letters from Clan-na-Gael in America [14] and more indicating ‘disloyal and anti-British’ sedition in various parts of the country… and in their eyes, he did nothing. It was as if Birrell’s chief fault was that he tried to retain a balance in his approach to both sides in Ireland, a heinous crime to those of unionist persuasion.

Lord Midleton had attended an interview with Chief Secretary Birrell in November 1915 in which he strongly urged the disarming of the Irish Volunteers (but not the remaining Ulster Volunteers) and the prosecution of those responsible for seditious talk. Just how that would have been achieved or the impact it would have had on the Irishmen who had enlisted in their thousands, is not considered. However, ‘his warnings were entirely neglected.’ Indeed Lord Midleton, active at the very heart of the Secret Elite, sent regular warnings of dire consequences if the prime minister and his cabinet continued to adopt a cautious approach to dissent in Ireland.

Every Unionist prejudice was aired. The government was accused of knowing that various parts of the country were lawless; that the Irish volunteers had stolen arms and high explosives; that trial by jury was a failure and magistrates could not be entrusted to enforce the law. The Army Intelligence Department sought to close down and impound newspapers and suppress ‘seditious’ books but the civil authorities would not listen. [15] Sir Matthew Nathan submitted a list of ‘seditious newspapers’ in circulation in February 1916 to the Royal Commission, The aggregate circulation was at best around 24,000 copies (averaging 2,400 copies per paper) and these were not all daily publications. [16]

Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March 1916 was watched very carefully by the intelligence services and the consequent report from the Inspector-General of the RIC stated that; ‘there can be no doubt that the Irish Volunteer leaders are a pack of rebels who would declare their independence in the event of any favourable opportunity, but with their present resources and without substantial reinforcements it is difficult to imagine that they will make even a brief stand against a small body of troops.’ [17] On the morning of 24 April 1916, the authorities in Dublin Castle, concerned that some action needed to be taken, proposed to intern and deport to England all known ‘hostile leaders’, but, before any further steps could be taken, the ‘insurrection’ broke out. [18]

Had they been in possession of the secret information divulged by Roger Casement to his interrogators in London [See Ireland 1916, Blog 7] even as late as Easter Sunday, everything would have been different. But it clearly did not suit the hidden powers to stop the planned insurrection. Their’s was a different agenda.

The report’s conclusion was exactly as Lord Midleton had pronounced. It determined that the main cause of the Uprising was the ‘lawlessness’ which was allowed to grow unchecked in a country which had been administered for the past several years ‘on the principle that it was safer and more expedient to leave law in abeyance if collision with any faction of the Irish people could thereby be avoided.’ [19] No mention was made of injustices; of one law for the south and another in the north. It was the fault of the Irish Government (by that they specifically meant Augustine Birrell) in not suppressing and prosecuting those flagrantly breaking the law … though no reference was made in any part of the report to activities like drilling and bearing arms in public in Ulster. ‘We are of the opinion that the Chief Secretary as the administrative head of Your Majesty’s Government in Ireland is primarily responsible for the situation that was allowed to arise and the outbreak that occurred. [20] Just as Midleton had pronounced in Parliament in April 1916.

But there was more. It was, they also determined, the fault of the Irish Home Rule Party which was accused of promoting the belief that the government would take no action against sedition. According to the report, ‘this led to a rapid increase of preparations for insurrection and was the immediate cause of the recent outbreak.’

What? The Home Rule Party was to blame for the uprising? What balanced examination of evidence elicited that conclusion? Not one member of the Home Rule Party had been invited to contribute to the Royal Commission. Such arrogant, politically motivated invention was completely out of order. But there it stood in black and white. Tellingly, the Report was not debated in parliament, but an outraged John Dillon condemned its findings in a later speech on Irish matters: ‘It is in my opinion a scandalous Report; it is one-sided, full of misrepresentations, but our main objection is as regards the personal character of its evidence and the method of its procedure, … what sense of justice or fair play is there in a body of men who hold up myself and the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond) as responsible for the government of Ireland and never give us an opportunity of appearing before the Commission?’ [21]

Poor Dillon; all of his hopes and expectations for Ireland crumbled before his eyes. Asquith’s promises, the very will of parliament itself, took a different shape after the introduction of the Coalition Government in 1915. Ulster’s men were in the ascendency once more. The Home Rule Party was undermined at every turn and as the months progressed, the Irish people felt increasingly betrayed by those who had promised, and apparently guaranteed, a Dublin government. The Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland was part of the charade in which Ireland’s future had become embroiled.

[1] Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, published, 12 May, 1915, https://archive.org/details/reportofcommitte00grea
[2] See our blog of 10 September 2014, The Bryce Report, Whatever Happened to the Evidence?
[3 See our blog, Lusitania 6: Lord Mersey’s Whitewash.
[4] Although announced beforehand by the prime minister, the formal notice of the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland was issued on 10 May, 1916.
[5] Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, p. 2. see http://www.garda.ie/Documents/User/Royal%20Commission%20on%20the%20Rebellion%20in%20Ireland%201916.pdf
[6] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 24-5.
[7] Theobald Mathew, revised by G R Rubin, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Lord Hardinge.
[8] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 26 April 1916 vol 21 cc819-22.
[9] Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, p.5.
[10] Ibid., Causes of the Outbreak.
[11] Ibid., evidence of Sir David Harrel, p.5.
[12] Ibid., p. 6.
[13] Ibid., p. 7.
[14] Set up by Irish emigrants in America, Clan na Gael supported an independent Ireland. The Clan was prepared to enter into alliances with any nation ranged against the British which meant Germany on the outbreak of war. It was the largest single financier for the Easter Rising.
[15] Specific mention was made of the series of pamphlets, ‘Tracts for Our Times’, produced by Irish Volunteer Supporters, Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, p. 10.
16] These included the Irish Volunteer, Nationality, The Irishman, The Hibernian, The Spark, The Gael, New Ireland and The Worker’s Republic, – Sir Matthew Nathan’s list of newspaper circulation, Royal Commission Report, Minutes of Evidence, p. 118.
[17] Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, p. 10-11.
[18] Ibid., p. 12.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., p. 13.
[21] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 31 July 1916 vol 84 cc2127.

Ireland 1916, 7: Who Knew What … and When?

The Rising of 1916 did not take everyone by surprise. According to The Times, ‘those who knew how to read the signs’ believed that it was imminent. [1] Within the Unionist minority in Dublin, voices had complained that for months the rebels were flaunting their ‘arms and accoutrements’ in the streets and proclaimed to the world their disregard for law and order. [2] At a localised level such post-hoc observations might be expected in most situations of serious disorder. In this instance foreknowledge appears sufficiently extensive to obligate a deeper analysis. Other than the insurgents, who knew the Easter Rising was about to happen? What, if anything did they do about it?

The British Secret Services knew. Naval Intelligence had been in possession of German secret codes from mid-October 1914 [3] to the extent that virtually any wireless signal made by the German Navy could be intercepted by a select and very secretive group. [4] It was established at the Admiralty in London, in Room 40, under Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Reginald Hall. Possession of these priceless codes was a strategic coup of the highest order and proved invaluable in guiding the Lusitania towards U-20’s location in 1915. [5] The story of how these codes fell into the Admiralty’s hands stretches credibility [6] but further ‘good fortune’ also delivered the German diplomatic codes to the same people in March 1915. [7] Whether or not the codes originated from the sources stated in official histories is immaterial to the fact that in 1916, British Intelligence monitored Roger Casement’s activities while he was in America and Germany and knew of his intentions to return to Ireland. Room 40 decrypted at least thirty-two cables from the German Embassy in Washington to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin dealing with German support for Irish nationalism. [8] Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador at Washington, cabled Berlin that an armed uprising was planned for 23 April, Easter Sunday, and requested that rifles, machine-guns and field artillery be provided to support it. Naval Intelligence knew that arms were to be sent in the small steamer Aud, knew the codewords to be broadcast and had more than enough information to closely follow its progress. [9]

Casements’ activities in America and Germany were also betrayed by his manservant and alleged lover, Adler Christensen, to the British minister in Oslo, who passed this to the Foreign Office in London. Sir Edward Grey forwarded the report to the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, the chief secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, and to Lord Kitchener at the War Office. [10] Casement’s letters to the Irish Volunteer’s chief of staff Eoin MacNeill were intercepted en route to Ireland [11] and when he eventually stepped on to Irish soil in Tralee Bay, he was arrested within hours. From the moment he landed back, Roger Casement repeatedly stated that his sole purpose was to stop the rising which he knew to be a ‘fatal mistake’ [12] He had not returned to lead the rebellion but to stop it.

Roger Casement was promptly whisked off to London to be jointly interrogated by Sir Basil Thomson, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, Reginald Hall from the Admiralty and Major, later Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hall (no relation), MI5’s resident Irish Expert. All three were pro-Empire loyalist who followed the Secret Elite agenda with ruthless determination.

What Casement did not know was that Frank Hall had been military secretary to the UVF in Ulster, served on the 12-man committee on gun-running and was a signatory to the Solemn League and Covenant.  It was Frank Hall who, as secretary of the Unionist Clubs of Ireland [13] and senior staff officer in the UVF, had forwarded Sir Edward Carson’s letter asking all Ulster Clubs and Orange Lodges to help in the ‘immediate organisation of the UVF’, in August 1913. [14] The British Intelligence Service, and even Churchill himself, relied on Frank Hall’s assumed ‘expertise’ on matters pertaining to Ireland. And he despised Casement. Indeed all of his interrogators treated Roger Casement with contempt.

Was this why Casement’s request to be allowed to appeal publicly to the Irish Volunteers to call off the proposed Easter Rising and stop the useless bloodshed, was refused? Records in the National Archives at Kew confirm Casement’s requests. [15] Sir Ernley Blackwell, legal adviser to the Home Office cited an internal document [16] which recorded that Casement ‘begged to be allowed to communicate with the leaders to try and stop the rising but he was not allowed.’ This request was made before his interrogation at Scotland Yard. Blackwell’s appeal for more information about Casement’s interrogation added ‘On Easter Sunday at Scotland Yard, he implored again to be allowed to communicate or send a message, but they (Thomson and both Halls) refused, saying ‘It’s a festering sore, it’s much better it should come to a head.’ [17] Sir Ernley Blackwell specifically asked Inspector Edward Parker of Special Branch if this claim was true because he had ‘several similar statements from different sources’ which he was anxious to answer. Pertinently, the Home Office legal adviser had to hand ‘several similar’ claims that the interrogators wanted the rebellion to go ahead. [18] And it did.

Consider the awful implications of this admission. The most senior men in British Intelligence knew that the uprising was about to erupt, but refused  to make any effort to prevent it. Indeed, the inference is that they welcomed it. Basil Thomson replied by letter that same day, quoting first from Special Branch shorthand notes. Here Casement stated that: ‘The rising would take place on 23 April whether arms came or not…’ [19] At this point, the Assistant Chief Commissioner wrote that ‘after the shorthand writer left on Easter Sunday, Casement said, ‘I hope you will announce my arrest. I said Why? He said, because if they know that I am taken, nothing will happen, they will know that the game is up. I am positive that he did not ask to send a message, nor did anyone say, ‘It is a festering sore…’ Thomson ended his reply by stating that Casement said he felt it his duty to come and warn the rebels when he learned that the Germans had refused to send men. [20]

Thus according the Home Office records, Roger Casement made at least two requests to be allowed to communicate with Dublin to stop the Rising, the last on Easter Sunday. We know that Sir Ernley Blackwell had knowledge of ‘several similar’ statements that the Scotland Yard interrogators had expressed a comment about the need to let the festering sore come to a head. Who else was party to such a momentous decision? To have permitted an uprising against the Crown was treason itself. Yet the colouration of what did and did not constitute treason against the Crown changed hue dependent on whether one’s loyalties were to Ulster or not. Was Frank Hall under instruction? He had nailed his convictions to the union flag in August 1913, when he wrote that [Clubs] ‘must be kept going and encouraged by them in view of the possibility of a general election before the actual passage of the Home Rule Bill, and the consequent outbreak of hostilities.’ [21] Carson’s man had no love for the anti-war rebels in the South. What cannot be denied is that before a shot had been fired, a covert decision been taken to let the Easter Rising go ahead.

Other key members of the Secret Elite had foreknowledge of the outbreak in Dublin. Arthur Balfour, then in charge at the Admiralty, ‘knew beforehand that the rebellion in Ireland would start on Easter Monday 1916 and made naval preparations in advance.’ [22] Furthermore it was Admiralty staff who informed Downing Street about the outbreak of hostilities in Dublin. Balfour had instructed the Duty Officer at the Admiralty to stay constantly in touch with the Post Office in London to monitor the flow of telegrams to and from  Dublin. Immediately the line was blocked, Downing Street was told that that the rebellion had started. [23]

Herbert Asquith and his secretary, Maurice Hankey, another inner-core Secret Elite member [24] were ‘out of town’ and, according to Hankey’s diaries, arrived back in London late that Monday evening (12.30 am.) to be told that the Easter Rebellion had begun. Asquith’s reaction does not appear to include any surprise at all. According to Hankey, ‘Asquith merely said ‘well, that’s really something, and went to bed.’ [25]  Out of town? Merely went to bed? In the midst of a vicious war the prime minister could not be contacted about a rebellion in Ireland? How odd. Why did he not react immediately or ask why he had not been informed earlier or send for up-to-the-moment information, or contact Birrell or react with more concern? Why indeed?

On the morning of Holy Saturday, 1916, the British authorities in Dublin confidently believed that there was no danger of disruption in the city. They had been deliberately kept in the dark. With the capture and sinking of the Aud and consequent loss of arms and ammunition, the military commander in Ireland, Major-General Sir Lovick Friend retired to London for the Easter weekend. Similarly, Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, was in London to attend a cabinet meeting on the impending and contentious conscription bill. Kept in ignorance of Casement’s statements or requests, Birrell decided to stay there for Easter. His under-secretary in Dublin, Sir Matthew Nathan was so confident that any danger of a rising had passed that he wrote an upbeat assessment for Birrell, though hard liners like Lord Wimborne still pressed for the arrest and internment of the Volunteer leaders. [26] Why had no-one told them what Casement had said? What Casement had offered? Regretfully, we can only surmise that for reasons that were never openly expressed, no warnings were issued through British Intelligence. The given excuse is that intelligence was in its infancy and not properly co-ordinated. How convenient.

The Admiralty Statement to the press that weekend made reference only to the German naval activity around the south coast of Ireland, linked to arms and ammunition. [27] Casement’s arrest and plea to be allowed to stop the Easter Rising was suppressed. Instead the events that transpired were predicated by news of German activity in and around Ireland. This is the context within which the general public learned about the rising.

On the following day, the first man into the breach in parliament was Lord Midleton, otherwise known as William St John Brodrick, an intimate member of the Secret Elite [28] and previously Secretary of State for War during the Boer War. As leader of the Unionist Association and Irish landowner, Midleton was primed for battle. He opened the attack with a simple question in the House of Lords, seeking information on the grave disturbances in Dublin [29] before anyone else had grasped the extent of the ‘disturbances’. Next day he was scathing in his attack on Asquith’s government. He dubbed the rebels ‘an organised body of Sinn Feiners’ and this label was stamped across the uprising by the British propagandists, even though Sinn Fein as a political movement had no place in the revolt. His typically partisan analysis criticised the regular Sunday ‘Sinn Feiner’ parades (no mention was made of the Irish Republican Brotherhood or Connolly’s Citizen Army) which, in his view, should have been put down months, if not years before. Similar restrictions were not envisaged in Ulster. Of course, the Gaelic name Sinn Fein sounded foreign to the English ear – why – it looked like German on the printed page.

Midleton’s account of unheeded warnings obligated Lord Lansdowne, at this point a member of the Cabinet, to admit that ‘my noble friend has access to information to which I have not access.’ [30] We should ponder this; these men were pro-unionist allies and friends; both were Secret Elite insiders. Allegedly, Midleton was better informed than the cabinet minister. It was a charade. Asquith’s coalition Cabinet was replete with Unionists in 1916, and since Cabinet Ministers could not offer public criticism of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the old-fashioned Liberal, Augustine Birrell, the attack was spearheaded by Midleton in the House of Lords. At this juncture, Parliament was first made aware of the arrest of Sir Roger Casement, [31] though the association between Germany and the uprising had been repeated in the press for days.

What can be fairly deduced is that those to whom the leading officers in British Intelligence were responsible, who knew that the Easter Rising was about to happen did not alert the appropriate government officials in Ireland. Was a decision taken at the highest level to ‘let the festering sore come to a head’? Such a vital decision could never had been taken by Thomson or the Halls. Naval command at Queenstown, led by Admiral Lewis Bayly, had been given explicit instructions to prevent German weapons reaching the Irish mainland, and they did. Knowledge about this and the German connection was shared with Lord Kitchener, Field Marshal French, Commander of the British Home Forces and Major-General Friend in command of the armed forces in Ireland. Yet the army was not put on high alert. Indeed no action was taken which might have forewarned the leaders of the rebellion that the authorities had wind of their intentions. [32]

Usually, the given excuse for not sharing critical information was that military sources were too sensitive or valuable to risk exposure. In this instance the burning question must be, who decided that it was in the best interest of Britain or Ireland or Ulster to let the rebellion take place? There is a worrying conflict between the belief that the rebel Military Council gained an outstanding success in concealing its intentions and the fact that the British military and naval commanders knew about the impending uprising, knew that Casement wanted to call it off, knew that without the guns, ammunition  and men from Germany  it could never succeed.

Consider for a moment the benefits of permitting the rising to go ahead. The damage to the Cabinet Liberals was bound to be extensive, and many within the Secret Elite wanted Asquith out of government. [33] The Ulster Unionists had predicted that the Irish Volunteers could not be trusted. Here was the ultimate vindication of their case. Furthermore, Redmond and Dillon, indeed, everyone inside the Home Rule Party was compromised. What future the Home Rule Act which Unionists wanted to kill in its suspended state? Additionally, it allowed the British government to ruthlessly crush anyone who opposed war in Ireland and sought independence from the Crown; the socialists, the Irish Volunteers, the Citizen Army, trades-unionists and republicans, those who advocated neutrality or were conscientious objectors, the writers and orators, the organisers and sympathisers, all fell victims to suppression.

Whatever else, there were serious winners and losers.

[1] The Times 1 May 1916, p. 10.
[2] Ibid.
[3] see Blog, Lusitania 1: The Tale Of The Secret Miracles.
[4] Patrick Beesley, Room 40, British Naval Intelligence 1914-1918, p. 7.
[5] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, p. 115.
[6] see Blog, Lusitania 1: The Tale Of The Secret Miracles.
[7] Beesley, Room 40, pp. 129-132.
[8] Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of M15, p. 87.
[9] Beesley, Room 40, pp. 186-7.
[10] These documents still remain classified one hundred years later.
[11] Roger Sawyer, Casement: The Flawed Hero, p. 119.
[12] National Archives, Home Office Records, HO 311643/51.
[13] Timothy Bowman, Carson’s Army, The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910-22, pp. 22-3.
[14] PRONI D.1518/3/8, Circular Letter from Captain Frank Hall to Unionist Clubs.
[15] National Archives, Papers of the Metropolitan police, 2/10664.
[16] National Archives, Home Office Records HO 311643/51.
[17] National Archives Home Office, MEPO 21/10664.
[18] Letter from Inspector Edward Parker to the Assistant Chief Commissioner, 18/07/1916. NA file MEPO21/10664/C/701389.
[19] Confidential reply, Thomson to Blackwell, 18 July, 1916, page 1. MEPO 21/10664.
[20] Ibid., p. 2.
[21] Bowman, Carson’s Army, pp. 22-3.
[22] Recollections, Vols 1,2, Memoirs of Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Henry Oliver, (unpublished), National Maritime Museum, OLV 12 , p. 165. Cited in G. Sloan, (2013) The British state and the Irish rebellion of 1916: an intelligence failure or an failure of response. Intelligence and National Security, 28 (4). pp. 453-494. ISSN 1743-9019 doi: 10.1080/02684527.2012.735079  http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/25318/
[23] Ibid.
[24] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[25] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, Vol 1, 1877-1918, p. 265.
[26] Michael Foy and Brian Barton, The Easter Rising, p. 79.
[27] The Times, 25 April, 1916, p. 4.
[28] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 9 et seu.
[29] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 25 April 1916 vol 21 c810.
[30] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 26 April 1916 vol 21 cc827-8.
[31] Ibid., cc826-7.
[32] Foy and Barton,The Easter Rising, p. 65.
[33] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 324.

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.