The exact moment UK ‘lost Ireland’ was 100 years ago this month
EASTER has a special significance in Irish life, as the 1916 Rising set a large part of the island on the path to independence. And on an Easter weekend 20 years ago, we were celebrating a new dawn of hope with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
This Easter 2018, the so-called ‘Decade of Commemoration’ continues in a more low-key fashion. In popular memory, 1918 does not really have the oomph of 1913 and the Dublin Lockout; nor of 1916 and its Easter Rising; nor even 1919, which saw the War of Independence start and the first Dáil being founded.
There are, however, strong arguments that 1918 should be remembered a century later as the most important year in that tumultuous decade 1913-1923. That is not just because of the landmark general election in December 1918, which consigned the Irish Parliamentary Party to history, and catapulted Sinn Féin centre stage.
Claims for 1918 relate to things which happened in April of that iconic year, when Irish people successfully resisted the imposition of conscription to the British army against all odds. It is notable that the celebrated English historian AJP Taylor rated this as the decisive moment at which Britain “lost Ireland”.
“If the capacity to conscript its citizens at a time of national emergency is the hallmark of an effective state, the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland failed that test in 1918.” That is how the historian Pauric Travers, writing in the splendid ‘Atlas of the Irish Revolution’, sums up Taylor’s assessment, which he delivered back in 1965.
In spring of 1918, nobody knew what we now call World War I would end a few months later. The reality was things were going badly.
The early fervour of ‘pals’ battalions’ which comprised neighbours, work colleagues, or sports teammates marching ostentatiously together to join the British army, was now a faded memory. Compulsory military service applied in Britain from January 1916 for unmarried men aged between 18 and 41. But the measure did not extend to Ireland as warnings from the Dublin Castle administrators tilted the scales against British Conservative demands to conscript Irish men.
The Ludendorff Offensive, named for German General Erich Ludendorff, in late March 1918, was a last throw of the dice by Germany to end the stalemate of the trenches, and smash the British and French forces, before large numbers of troops arrived from the US. The offensive’s initial impact, causing horrific loss of life, caused a rethink on conscription in Ireland.
British Conservative Party arguments that the Irish troops were badly needed, reinforced by dreary claims that the experience would boost “discipline and order” in Ireland, carried the day. The compulsory age limit in Britain had already been raised to 51 years.
Dublin Castle was not even consulted and its later arguments to postpone or mitigate conscription plans were disregarded. The move was among the later nails driven into the coffin of the Irish Parliamentary Party, whose stalwarts were left politically isolated and particularly toothless.
BUT a signal event in modern Irish history happened on April 18, 1918, when all shades of national political opinion came together under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Laurence O’Neill, to organise mass opposition to conscription. The group met at the Mansion House, and then went into recess while representatives, including a certain Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin, travelled to Maynooth where they successfully got the support of the Catholic bishops.
The Anti-Conscription Pledge, in which those who took it committed to resist conscription “by the most effective means at our disposal”, won nationwide support. A separate anti-conscription organisation pulled together a shaky alliance of Sinn Féin, the Irish Party and the Catholic clergy.
It soon became clear the British authorities would first have to restore order and then forcibly impose conscription. There were notable increases in recruitment to the Volunteers and police reported a 23pc increase in Sinn Féin membership between March and May 1918.
The Mansion House Conference was proclaimed a self-styled “de facto national cabinet”. It presaged the rise of Sinn Féin and the annihilation of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which was suffering a host of other problems, not least a delayed backlash against its earlier strong support for British army recruitment. The continued influence of the Catholic bishops in Irish life into the new state was also copper-fastened.
By August 1918, the threat of conscription had passed. But its longer-term legacies, which emerged from the tumult of April 1918, were already apparent and the die was cast for the December 1918 watershed general election.
The offensive’s impact, with horrific loss of life, caused a rethink on conscription