whitehall diaryby thomas jones

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

Whitehall Diary by Thomas JonesReview by: F. S. L. LyonsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 18, No. 70 (Sep., 1972), pp. 279-286Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005624 .

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REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 279 by contact with a different atmosphere, and, in consequence, be obliged to learn more about their own religious faith. In this matter he did obtain some support from a few members of the hierarchy, but little or none from the majority of catholic lay people, then arguably more clericalist than the clergy.

In his later years McDonald, who in 1905-6 had been instrumental in founding the Irish Theological Quarterly, began to feel increasingly isolated. He realized that, with some exceptions, he was distrusted in episcopal quarters. Also, after having given support to various elements in 'the national movement', he drew back after 1916, an action which took him in the opposite direction from that towards which many clerics were then moving, and for which he was widely attacked and abused.

Much of his bitterness was poured into the pages of his Reminis- cences, and at times their tone becomes perhaps a little too strident. Yet there is also much of value in them. The present edition unfortunately presents only about half of the original text. Admittedly the most important sections-those concerning Maynooth itself-have been retained. Yet historians will of necessity have to have occasional recourse to the first edition. In four appendices we are also here given the texts of a number of essays and lectures by McDonald, including that in which he defended cattle driving as a legitimate reply to eviction, a view he was later to retract.

Despite its occasional harshness of tone this book is therefore a rare document. Through it we enter a world commonly closed to the out- sider. Historians must concern themselves with atmosphere and flavour as well as with structure and development. In both respects Walter McDonald serves us well.

K. THEODORE HOPPEN

WHITEHALL DIARY. By Thomas Jones. Volume iii: Ireland, i918-1925. Edited by Keith Middlemass. Pp xxvii, 268. London: Oxford University Press. 1971. £4-75-

WHEN it was announced some time ago that the Irish material in Thomas Jones's Whitehall diary was so rich and so important as to justify publish- ing it in a separate volume, a tremor of excitement ran through the historical world, or at least that section of it which concerns itself not just with Ireland, but with Britain and the Commonwealth. Now that the long-awaited volume has appeared, it can be said without any exaggeration that the great expectations thus aroused have been amply fulfilled. The last few years have seen the publication of a great deal of new information about Anglo-Irish relations in the critical period 1910-22, but nothing that has recently emerged can quite compare with the documents here collected and edited by Mr Keith Middlemass. One says the documents, for although the greater part of what we are given consists of the ipsissima verba of Tom Jones's own diaries, there are



280 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

included also letters and memoranda by the various participants in the unfolding drama-nearly all of them of the utmost interest.

In his foreword to the volume Professor Mansergh makes the point that it can be divided both chronologically and according to content, but in practice Mr Middlemass's chief preoccupation has been with the development of the crisis in time. The book therefore falls logically into three parts. The first of these relates essentially to the Anglo-Irish war and takes the story up to the conclusion of the truce in July 1921. The second and main section begins with Mr de Valera's visit to London, continues with the long and involved correspondence between him and Lloyd George in the succeeding months, and reaches its enthralling climax with the day to day-and sometimes hour to hour--description of the treaty negotiations themselves between October and December 1921. The last part-which lacks something of the dramatic unity of the earlier scenes-deals with the civil war and the boundary commission; to the casual reader these final pages may seem tantalisingly fragmentary, but it is difficult to read them without being impressed by their almost frightening relevance to the events of our own day.

Although it might be tempting to regard the first part of the Diary as in the nature of an hors d'oeuvre to be briefly sampled before the main dish, that would be quite wrong. The great value of this brief intro- ductory section (only eighty-seven pages long) is that it allows us to witness at close quarters the reactions of the British government to the disastrous situation evolving in Ireland between i919 and 1921. Some- thing of this, indeed, we already know from other sources, notably the official cabinet records and the recently published diaries of C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian. But these, albeit for very different reasons, are both defective-the cabinet records because they are necessarily brief and impersonal, Scott's diaries because they depend so heavily upon what Lloyd George chose to tell him, and there can be few kinds of evidence in modern British history more unreliable than Lloyd George's 'revel- ations' to journalists.

But how far does Jones's account of those two crucial years take us nearer to the true history of what really happened? This question could only be properly answered at inordinate length, here there is space to make no more than a few points. One is that Jones, being present at the discussions in his capacity of member of the cabinet secretariat, was in a position to observe and note down not just the final decisions ultimately arrived at, but the backings and fillings, the tackings and veerings, which almost invariably had to be gone through before decisions of any kind could emerge. We get, inevitably and rightly, an overwhelming impression of confusion, but also of men-some competent, others decidedly less so-groping sincerely enough for the way out of a dilemma which, it is only too plain, could on several occasions have broken up the coalition government. From these deliberations we begin to have a clearer sense than before of the characters and characteristics of the ministers chiefly involved. We see Austen Chamberlain, nervous and fussy, but at bottom honest; Birkenhead, also honest and with the courage to risk his reputation in order to carry the conservative party



REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 281

towards a settlement; Churchill, contradictory as always, but curiously re-enacting with Irish nationalists in 1920 the attitude he had taken towards Ulster unionists in 1914--eager for a settlement if it could be honourably had, but vehement for bloody war if not; and above all, Lloyd George, secretive, subtle, flexible, almost openly contemptuous of some of his colleagues, but infinitely various in resource and irresistibly formidable in negotiation.

Yet it is fascinating to see how far even that most inventive of political men had still to go in I919 or 1920 towards comprehending Irish realities. Thus, although it is clear that dominion status was actually beginning to be discussed at cabinet level in the summer of 1920 -and this at the very moment when the much less generous Govern- ment of Ireland Bill was going through parliament and when the cabinet was seriously debating whether or not to intensify its repressive measures -Lloyd George was not prepared to avow himself anything more than 'a Gladstonian home ruler' and reacted to the suggested grant of customs autonomy to the new Ireland as violently as if he had been Austen Chamberlain's father.

It is clear from the Diary that what the British government was really looking for in at least the latter part of 1920 was some individual or group with power to negotiate for Sinn Fein in order to bring about a truce if not a settlement. Lloyd George, however, seems to have been as much in the dark as anyone else as to who the responsible Sinn Fein leader might turn out to be. It could, he thought in December 192o, have been Arthur Griffith, if the military had not had 'the impertinence' to arrest him. Turning to Balfour (this was at a cabinet meeting on 20 December 1920), Lloyd George asked. 'Is it conceivable that the military would have arrested Parnell or even Tim Healy without con- sulting you? They have done the same with John MacNeill who might be compared to John Dillon.' Leaving aside the oddity of the compar- ison between MacNeill and Dillon, which would not have appealed to either man, the comment is interesting because it shows that Lloyd George was genuinely at a loss as to where the centre of authority lay among the Irish insurgents. Even with de Valera's reappearance on the scene at the end of the year, he did not immediately grasp that this was the man with whom he would have to deal, and as late as April I92a he was still apparently under the impression that if de Valera came forward to negotiate Collins would have him shot. Nor was he helped towards a clearer vision by General Smuts, valuable though the latter's efforts were in bringing both sides closer together. The general, in addition to his contribution to George V's famous appeal at the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament, had also tried to persuade the Sinn Fein leaders to adopt a realistic attitude in their demands upon Britain. His report to the cabinet on 6 July 1921, less than a week before de Valera arrived in London for discussions, is so revealing as to be worth quoting at some length:

I said ultimately-what do you think would be a settlement? What would satisfy you? De Valera throughout was the principal spokesman. Duggan and Barton




said practically nothing. Arthur Griffith joined in several times and I gathered he rather took my view. All through De Valera spoke like a visionary. He spoke continually of generations of oppression and seemed to live in a world of dreams, visions and shadows. They are all small men, rather like sporadic leaders thrown up in a labour strike. De Valera's reply was: we want a free choice. Not a choice where the alternative is force. The choice is between a republic and dominion status.

Unfortunately, the Diary does not throw much light on the momentous meeting between de Valera and Lloyd George which follows. Jones did not record their interviews in detail and all we are given here is the brief memorandum he drew up for Churchill's use when the latter was writing his memoirs. It is true that it contains the famous story of de Valera and colleagues groping, in English, for an Irish word for republic and doing no better than 'SaorstAt ', while Lloyd George and Tom Jones agreed, in Welsh, that the Celts were never republicans and conse- quently had no word for that status. This picturesque tale has, however, been put in its proper perspective by Lord Longford and T. P. O'Neill in their biography of de Valera, where they point out-as, in the light of I916 we should certainly have expected-that 'Poblacht' entered into the argument as well as SaorstAt.

The incident was, and still seems, trivial enough, but there are two reasons for recalling it. One is that it shows how little understanding there was between the two principals. De Valera seemed then a man of words to Lloyd George, and he remained, in the critical months that lay ahead, a kind of abstraction ultimately far less real-and therefore less worth trying to reach-than Griffith and Collins when their turn came to sit across the table. This was a tragic miscalculation, but it was matched by another. That Lloyd George and Jones himself, deeply sympathetic as the latter was to Irish nationalism in its less outre forms, should have regarded de Valera's attempt to encapsulate the republican demand in a single word or phrase as something almost laughable augured ill for the vital negotiations later, when the formula de Valera eventually found-external association-needed all the intelligent and percipient analysis it could get.

With the opening of those negotiations in October we are of course on familiar territory which has been ably traversed twice by Lord Longford (with interesting variations of emphasis) in Peace by ordeal and in the biography of de Valera produced jointly with Mr O'Neill. I think it may be said that the Diary does not seriously conflict with Lord Longford's earlier study, though it certainly adds much new information about attitudes and motives. Lloyd George himself appeals here as just as adamant as his unionist colleagues-possibly more adamant than some of them-for the clear and definite retention of the new Irish state within the empire. As he observed in September I920, when he dragged a protesting cabinet to Inverness to determine whether to persist with a truce or go for all out war against Sinn Fein, it was essential from the British point of view that the imperial connection should be the breaking-point, not some statistical question as to what




part of Ulster should be allowed to opt out of an Irish parliament. 'De Valera', he warned his colleagues, 'will talk Tyrone and Fermanagh and the break will come on forcing these two counties against their will. Men will die for the throne and empire. I do not know who will die for Tyrone and Fermanagh.'

In this emphasis he showed a shrewd prescience for, as we know, the Irish delegation was determined that if a break had to come it should be precisely on Ulster and not on 'throne and empire'. The debate on the oath of allegiance was, however, vigorous, and despite all the subsequent recrimination there seems no reason to doubt that the battle for external association was fought as hard as circumstances permitted. In the light of subsequent commonwealth evolution it may seem strange that the Irish notion of accepting the crown for external purposes only should have appeared so subversive, but the British resistance to it has to be seen in the light not only of the contemporary imperial situation -and especially the growth of Indian nationalism-but also of the suspicion in English minds, deep-seated at least from the days of Parnell, that unless Ireland was explicitly tied to the British connection she might become a base for Britain's enemies in some future war. It was of course this last anxiety which prompted the British pressure to retain naval facilities along the Irish coast. It is interesting to observe from the Diary that the admiralty was at first remarkably casual about these facilities -until sharply recalled to its duty by Churchill-and also that the Irish themselves seem not seriously to have questioned the validity, or at any rate the reasonableness, of the British claim. It is not entirely clear, however, from the evidence presented here, whether they fully grasped the possible effect of the grant of naval facilities upon the policy of neutrality which was, or should have been, central to the concept of independence. It is striking that in the subsequent treaty debates in the Dail only Erskine Childers-who, of course, had had extensive naval experience--brought out the full implications of such a concession. During the actual negotiations Collins tried indeed to argue that Irish neutrality unhampered by obligations of this kind would be a much better safeguard for British interests, but the only effect of this was to bring upon him a magisterial rebuke from Churchill which strikingly anticipated the conditions which were to exist in reality in the second world war after the ports had been returned to Irish keeping. 'A completely honest neutrality by Ireland in the last war ', said Churchill, 'would have been worse for us. Ireland's control of her neutrality might be ineffective . . . we could only know what ships were being sunk in the neighbourhood of the Irish shore. We would make representations to the neutral Irish government. A long correspondence would ensue and meanwhile our ships would be sunk and the food supply endan- gered . . .'.

Yet all this, though in the future it would become a matter of literal life and death, seemed at the time less intractable and less vital than the hideously contorted and tormented question of Ulster. Thomas Jones did indeed record here and there in his diary moments of sweet reasonableness on the part of Sir James Craig, the Northern Ireland prime




minister, but these occurred after 1922 when his position had become virtually unassailable. While the settlement was still in the balance it was Ulster which undoubtedly constituted the most critical and con- tentious question. For the Irish it was just conceivably possible to close with the British position on 'throne and empire' (though Irishmen did not regard these as necesarily linked concepts), provided the 'essential unity' of Ireland was retained. But how was this to be achieved in the face of Ulster unionist resistance and in opposition to a British government in which conservatives were dominant and over which hung the menacing shadow of Bonar Law who, despite his serious illness at this time, still constituted the most serious threat to Lloyd George?

As is now generally realised, the Irish flank was ultimately turned by the 'promise' of a boundary commission to be used if Ulster proved obdurate. Griffith was the first of the Irish delegates to be inveigled into not opposing this proposition and the Diary underlines, what Peace by ordeal had indicated a generation ago, that Jones himself played a major part in persuading the Irish leader to adopt the attitude of acquiescence which was later to be used against him to such devastating effect. On the other hand-and this is important new information-we learn that it was Lloyd George himself who suggested the boundary commission and that he only did so when he was at the end of his tether. Once the idea was floated it proved relatively easy-we may still feel mysteriously easy-to sell it also to Collins, who, however, seems to have understood that any frontier rectification which might result would be to the advantage of the south. Given the preoccupation of the Irish delegation with the isolation of their Ulster fellow-nationalists at that time, and given also the delicately-poised political balance in such areas as Fermanagh and Tyrone, this may after all have been a more justifiable assumption than would now appear. Moreover, the Diary gives us clear indications that Griffith and his colleagues were possessed by the idea that Ulster was an Irish problem which could quite readily be solved if only Britain ceased to 'stand behind' Craig and his unionists. By any reckoning this over-simplification, shared as it was and has been by so many nationalists before and since, must rank as one of the most tragic elements in a tragic situation.

The boundary commission itself collapsed in due course and was buried in 1925 at a series of meetings in London which are well described in the Diary, though this section is markedly more disconnected than the rest of the book. What chiefly emerges is the striking, if fleeting, spirit of co-operation shown by Craig on the one hand and by William Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins on the other. But not too much should be made of this apparent meeting of minds. Cosgrave and O'Higgins were primarily concerned with building the Irish Free State on the still glowing embers of the civil war and a fresh outbreak of north-south hostility was the last thing they wanted. As for Craig, anyone who had lived up to the motto 'not an inch' as successfully as he had done could afford to be complacent. Nevertheless, even though the conference of 1925 merely registered a solution-the status quo-which was no solution, it is hard not to regret that the precedent of a meeting between




the northern and southern heads of government should have been left to moulder unrepeated for another forty years.

Viewed in the round the Diary certainly establishes itself as an historical document of the first magnitude. It has been edited with care and propriety, though not without blemishes. The 'chronology of events' at the beginning cuts some corners rather oddly and the select bibliography is too select by half. It omits, for example, Calton Younger's Civil war in Ireland which, though scarcely a scholarly work, did at least make pioneer use of the formal cabinet records to which the Diary is an unofficial supplement. It is strange also that Trevor Wilson's edition of C. P. Scott's Diaries, though cited in the introduction, should be absent from the bibliography. And at this time of the day it is hardly good enough to cite James Carty's Bibliography of Irish history, 1912-

1921, as the best available guide to the printed material; it was, after all, published in 1936, little more than a decade after the last events noted in Jones's Diary.

There are in addition a few errors of fact which should be noted. Soloheadbeg is mis-spelt Solsheadbeg; the Ulster Special Constabulary is wrongly identified with the 'B' Specials; it is surely incorrect to say (pp 14-15) that Sinn Fein 'began the conflict' on 4 April 192o with an atack on tax-offices, and certainly incorrect to state that the raising of the Black and Tans followed that event when in fact recruiting had begun at least as early as the new year; General Tudor was 'police adviser to the Lord Lieutenant', not 'policy adviser to the R.I.C.'; also, the force of 8,ooo men referred to in the text (p. 22) was not, as Dr Middlemass seems to assume, the nucleus of the Black and Tans who by that time (May i92o) had already been in service for some months. The chronology of events on pp xxv-vi is also somewhat astray. The 'Spencer Coercion Act' should be dated 1882, not 1834; the 'Forster Act' of I88I was the Protection of Person and Property Act, not, as implied here, the Compensation for Disturbance of Property Bill which, apart from being an abortive land measure and not a coercion act, was introduced and rejected in i88o, not 1881; the Balfour Act of 1887 referred to in the text (p. 20) finds no place at all in the chronology of events, though, as a 'perpetual' coercion act, it was one of the most important of all these legislative endeavours to control the Irish situation.

A final reflection inspired by this exceedingly important book relates both to the diarist and to the superb civil service of which he was so distinguished a member. Jones himself, though the Diary is self-effacing, comes to life as an intelligent and sympathetic personality, with enor- mous powers of work and seemingly inexhaustible tenacity. Most remarkable of all, he appears to have been able to preserve an almost perfect balance between loyalty and affection for his chief and fellow- Welshman and his intense anxiety for an Irish settlement, augmented as this was during the negotiations by a growing regard for Griffith and Collins and also, to a lesser extent, for Duggan. Towards Childers, his attitude, like that of so many who were to take the pro-treaty side in the grim days to come, was one of distaste, bordering on revulsion. Jones, to be sure, was but one of a team-Alfred Cope in Dublin and




Lionel Curtis in London are only two of the most prominent among the many British officials who pass in and out of these pages-that served the British ministers with admirable speed and precision. One is left reflecting upon how unevenly the scales were balanced in those grinding weeks between October and December 1921. Without doubt the Irish delegates were well served by their officials also, but these were few in number and as innocent of the ways of Whitehall as their masters were of those of Downing Street. This does not detract from the achieve- ment of Griffith and his colleagues. On the contrary, it magnifies it. But it leaves us with the feeling that something else besides diplomatic skill or administrative experience went towards the winning of what, despite the laments of the die-hard republicans, was still the greatest concession ever won by Irishmen from Britain in the seven hundred years during which the history of the two countries had been so darkly interwoven. In the last analysis, what sustained the delegates in their long ordeal was the fact that, whereas their British counterparts found it supremely difficult to move beyond a colonial view of Ireland, they themselves remained intensely conscious that their country really was different from England and that it could only find fulfilment in the formal recognition of that difference by the men whom they faced across the table. The recognition they got was not the recognition they had sought, but that it reached even as far as it did owed more than a little to Lloyd George's intuitive understanding of what made them so distinct from the Englishmen by whom they were confronted. When in I922 Austen Chamberlain commented acidly that 'the Irish were fortunate in having a Celt in the cabinet to put their case against England', he intended merely to be sarcastic, but in sober fact he may have spoken more truly than he knew.

F. S. L. LYONS

THE REIGN OF STEPHEN, II35-54: ANARCHY IN ENGLAND. By H. A. Cronne. Pp xiii, 313. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1970 £3.50. (Studies in Medieval History, edited by R. H. Hilton)

THIS is a delightful book. It consists of the mature reflections of an eminent scholar on a period of which he is an acknowledged master; yet though it contains much close examination of sources and shirks none of the difficult problems, it is written with an enviable lightness of touch in a style which is intimate, even conversational. What it lacks in elegance is more than made up for by readability and an engaging directness. It is as if we have been privileged to overhear an excellent teacher conducting tutorials with a group of gifted pupils-pondering, suggesting, recalling the remark of a chronicler or a phrase from a charter, drawing upon ideas long meditated and transforming information into understanding.

We are teased with unfamiliar evidence. Here is Geoffrey de Mandeville, not the evil Geoffrey we know so well, but the Geoffrey de Mandeville remembered with sympathy and praise in the chronicle of Holy Cross, Waltham. Do we wonder that barons notorious as violators



whitehall diaryby thomas jones

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