4 A truce is agreed
The government and nationalists negotiate to end a stalemate
At the time of the elections, the A military situation had been rather finely balanced. The IRA, especially in Dublin, was reeling from a series of major arms seizures in the preceding months. And in May 1921, the British commander-in-chief in Ireland, General Nevil Macready, produced a pessimistic report warning that his troops were at the end of their endurance and that, unless the situation had been wrapped up by October, the entire garrison would have to be replaced. As the British government knew, this was impossible, due to the speed of postwar demobilisation.
On the republican side, there were also doubts: though the most active armed units in the south-east thought they could keep the field indefinitely, the Dublin command – notably Michael Collins – was more conscious of the limits of arms supply and the wide variations in the effectiveness of the IRA nationally. Following the king’s speech in June, the British government proposed a conference to discuss a truce.
As late as 6 July, the British cabinet had not decided whether a truce – if there were to be one – should be formal or, as the police commander wanted, “tacit”. Macready, not an admirer of the police, favoured the former. On 8 July 1921, Dawson Street was thronged with Dubliners who had got wind of a big event: the British prime minister’s intermediary, the Earl of Midleton, was meeting Sinn Féin leaders Arthur Griffith and Éamon de Valera at the Mansion House in Dublin for negotiations. Then Macready arrived, a pistol bulging conspicuously in his tunic pocket; to his surprise, the crowd went wild with delight. After a few hours, a suspension of hostilities was agreed.
Though the truce was signed, and came into effect on 11 July, there was never an agreed published version of its terms; instead it was a fudge, with each side understanding its terms somewhat differently. Its net effect, though, was that while the British army halted all its operations, on which its limited control of the country depended, the IRA continued to import weapons and stepped up recruitment and training.
The army’s sense of betrayal by the government was important in setting the tone for the extended Anglo-Irish talks that followed, pointing up the military pessimism that inclined Britain to compromise. The talks took weeks to get going, and then stuttered on for months – but both sides had a lot to lose if they failed.
There was never an agreed published version of the terms of the truce – instead, it was a fudge