the postgraduate history journal

The

Postgraduate History Journal

volume I

•

A collection of essays presented at the TCD-UCD Postgraduate

History Conference 2009

The

Postgraduate History Journal

v olume I

•

A collection of essays presented at the TCD-UCD Postgraduate

History Conference 2009

Published by the Trinity College Dublin Organising Committee of the UCD–TCD Postgraduate History Conference.

4

Postgr aduate History journal

editorial review& selec tion c ommit tee

Sarah Crider ArndtJoey Facer

Kelly Thompson

C onference & UCD Chair

Ashling Smith, UCD

TCD ChairKelly Thompson, TCD

Organising C ommit teeSarah Campbell, UCD

Sarah Crider Arndt, TCDJoey Facer, TCD

Conor Tobin, UCD

T YPE SET BYGearóid O’Rourke of 50RSt

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Table of C on ten t s

PrefaceKelly Thompson 7

The Nativity of the Balfour Formula: Evolution from 09Within or Revolution from Without?Dennis Doolan

‘An Act of Divergence?’: Ireland and the Immediate 21Consequences of the Act of Union, 1800-1806Sean O’Reilly

Behind the Scenes in 1919: From Covert Operations 35to Open Conflict in the Irish War For IndependenceKatie Drake

Divided Neutrality- Swiss Press Reaction to the 45Invasion of Belgium August 1914Caoimhe Gallagher

Seán Ó Faoláin and Graham Greene: Exploring the 69 Construction of Self and the Narrative of National Degeneration During the Inter-War PeriodMuireann Leech

Irish-America and the Northern Ireland Peace 79Process: Cultural Transformation of Identity in Response to CrisisMartin Russell

The philosophy of the bomb- dynamite 89and the fear in late Victorian Britain Shane Kenna

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Preface

It is with great pleasure and immense excitement that we publish the first annual Postgraduate History Journal. The selected papers rep-resent a cross-section of a conference that has grown in the past four years to an international interdisciplinary conference covering a

broad range of the most fascinating and innovative research being con-ducted in their fields today. The Journal is the product of research and ini-tiative entirely on the postgraduate level with contributors and the edito-rial review board consisting of entirely postgraduates allowing a forum for us whilst ensuring that it maintains a high level of quality.

I would like to thank the members of the editorial and selection com-mittee for all their hard work in the creation and maintenance of this jour-nal. I would like to give a special thanks to Gearoid O’Rourke for all of his support in the creation of our online material throughout the production of this Journal and in the lead up to the conference itself. I would also like to express our gratitude to the members of the conference organising com-mittees at both UCD and TCD for their forward thinking ideas on how to expand this conference to the next level and thus to allow for the publica-tion of such a fascinating journal. Special thanks to the Department of His-tory, School of Histories and Humanities, TCD and the School of History and Archives, UCD for their support, both in the creation of this conference as well as financially, Dr Anne Dolan and Dr Susannah Riordan for help-ing in the initial organisational steps and for guidance throughout. We are particularly grateful to the Vice Provost Patrick Prendergast for the great honour of launching this journal for us.

Kelly Thompson24 July 2009

9

The nativity of the Balfour Formula: Evolution

from within or revolution from without?

DENNIS DOOLAN

Preface

To ascribe, as some authorities have seemed to do, the principal result of the Imperial Conference of 1926 to the forces of Dominion “national-ism” under the determined leadership of Hertzog, Mackenzie King and the Irish is to leave Hamlet out of the play. 1

This conference paper will seek to examine the circumstances sur-rounding the promulgation of the Balfour Formula of 1926, with its articulation of a new theory of Empire based upon a full, ex-plicit recognition of the Dominions as autonomous, equal nations

of an Imperial Commonwealth. Focusing on the period 1924-1926, when preparations for the impending Imperial Conference of 1926 assumed an

1 H. Duncan Hall, ‘The Genesis of the Balfour Declaration of 1926,’ in Journal of common-wealth political studies I (1961-1963) p.187.

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ever greater importance, I hope to argue that the subsequent depiction by Leo Amery, the British Colonial Secretary, of the Balfour Formula as an ex-ample of mere Imperial continuity is somewhat disingenuous; it was in fact a concession ceded in deference to a buoyant Dominion nationalism. Iden-tifying the growing unity of purpose emerging between the Union of South Africa and the nascent Irish Free State, I contend that confronted by such a unified Dominion desire for a delineation of status, Stanley Baldwin and his Conservative administration were compelled to embrace the apparent paradox of granting Dominion liberty to ensure imperial unity.

Introduction

The Great War and the Paris Peace Conference marked the close of one era in the history of the Empire, that of Britain’s ascendancy, and the beginning of another era, that of Dominion equality.2 Such was the

contribution of the Empire to the war effort, and the accompanying grati-tude it engendered in the United Kingdom that the British Premier David Lloyd George was moved to proclaim: ‘they had all won their right, long before 1917, to an honoured seat at the War Council of Empire.’3 No long-er content to remain voiceless on the great issues of high policy, the Do-minions used the opportunities afforded by the War Council to enunciate their right to ‘an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations.’4 It was not Lloyd George’s intention to confine formal consultations to the War alone, and as such an Imperial War Conference was convened in 1917, providing a forum in which any question pertaining to Imperial relations should be examined. Emboldened by their growing consciousness of a dis-tinctive national life, the previously acquiescent Dominion states now de-termined ‘that the rights and claims of that national life should be fully recognised.’5 While deferring any decision on the possible readjustment of the constitutional relations of the Empire to a post-war Imperial Confer-ence, the Dominions still articulated a new theory of Empire depicting an

2 W.K. Hancock Survey of British commonwealth affairs, vol. I: problems of nationality 1918-1936 (Oxford, 1937) p. 51.3 David Lloyd George, War memoirs of David Lloyd George, vol. 1 (London, 1938) p. 1025.4 Imperial War Conference, 1917. Extracts from minutes and proceedings and papers laid before the conference (Cd. 8566) p. 5.5 Address by Amery to Colonial Institute, 22 May 1926 (CAC Cam. AMEL 1/4/12).

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entity based ‘upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous na-tions of an Imperial Commonwealth,’ and desirous of continuous consul-tation in all the important matters of common Imperial concern.6 With the transfer of the Imperial War Cabinet to Paris, in the guise of the British Em-pire delegation for the post-Armistice Peace Conference, the Dominions exploited ‘all the security, all the power, all the influence of the great com-bination called the British Commonwealth’,7 to achieve ‘the recognition of an international status equal to that of any other sovereign state.’8 The difficulty now encountered by Imperial ideologues was to ascertain if this Dominion advance heralded the inevitable loosening of ‘all the ties which used to keep the Empire united.’9

Accepting Professor W.K. Hancock’s thesis that the internal convulsions of the British Empire in 1917 were an ‘exceptional response to the challenge of an emergency,’10 surely then with the end of such an emergency the true realities pertaining to inter-Imperial relations would resume, an idea per-haps confirmed by David Harkness’s assertion that ‘in 1921 the British Em-pire lay shrouded in constitutional mists.’11 Within five years however, with the formulation of the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the advocates of Domin-ion nationality had secured ‘the fundamental and now completely accept-ed constitutional principle of absolute co-equality.’12 Between 1917 and 1926 the ‘white Dominions had made, in constitutional theory, an exceptionally rapid progress from autonomy to equality.’13 Writing in 1971, F.S.L. Lyons, acknowledged the difficulty ‘even at this distance of time to be sure how to distribute the responsibility for achieving this advance.’14 Was the Bal-four Declaration therefore the result of a continuing evolution of Dominion status,facilitated by a prophetic and sympathetic Colonial Secretary in Leo

6 Imperial war conference, 1917. Extracts from minutes and proceedings and papers laid before the conference (Cd. 8566) p. 5.7 Address by Amery to Colonial Institute, 22 May 1926 (CAC Cam. AMEL 1/4/12).8 Memorandum by Leo Amery, ‘Influence of the War and the Paris Conference on the Imperial Position,’ undated (CAC Cam. AMEL 2/1/3).9 Ibid.10 Hancock, Survey p. 51.11 D.W. Harkness, The restless dominion: the Irish Free State and the British Commonwealth of Nations 1921-31 (London, 1969) p. 254.12 Dáil Debates, 15 December 1926, Volume 17, Col. 711.13 John Darwin, ‘The Dominion idea in imperial politics’, in The Oxford history of the British Empire: Vol. IV, the twentieth century, ed. Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (Oxford, 1999) p. 69.14 F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971) p. 508.

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Amery, or rather was it a response to external pressures exerted on the Em-pire and Amery by a resurgent centrifugal nationalism?

I. Dominion Sensibilities

With the accession to power of the Conservative Party in Novem-ber 1924, there was never any doubt that Leo Amery would go to the Colonial Office.15 Portrayed by A.J.P. Taylor as ‘the Empire’s

theoretician,’16 Amery’s imperialism was imbued with the belief that ‘it is only by equality in the Empire that we can progress,’17 an ideological re-tort to a nascent Dominion separatism. Despite his delight at the prospect of reigning ‘at the Colonial Office at last,’18 any acceptance of the post was conditional on the stipulation that he ‘be allowed to create a new and en-tirely separate office to deal with the Dominions.’19 Encouraged by Bald-win’s sympathetic hearing to his proposals for the reorganisation of the Colonial Office, Amery promptly undertook the implementation of what Hancock has labelled as the ‘Smuts-Amery plan for separating the Domin-ions Office from the Colonial Office,’20 as a starting point in his quest to ‘place the Dominions on the basis of equality with Britain.21

Recognising the continued role of the Colonial Office in inter-Imperial communications as a symbolic relic of the now defunct sovereign-subor-dinate relationship, the Prime Minister of South Africa, General Jan Chris-tian Smuts, had pressed for the removal of such anachronisms, attacking them as ‘the last vestiges of the old inequality.’22 His subsequent memoran-dum for the Imperial Conference of 1921, ‘The Constitution of the British Commonwealth,’ would later serve as a ‘basis for the thinking and prepa-rations of the Dominions Office under Amery.’23 It was to Amery that Smuts

15 L.S. Amery, The Leo Amery diaries, vol. I: 1896-1929, eds John Barnes and David Nicholson (London, 1980) p. 380.16 William Roger Louis, ‘Introduction’ in The Oxford history of the British Empire, Vol. IV p. 19.17 L.S. Amery, My political life, volume three: the unforgiving years 1929-1940 (London, 1955) p. 407.18 Guardian, 17 September 1955.19 L.S. Amery, My political life, volume two: war and peace 1914-1929 (London, 1953) p. 335.20 W.K. Hancock, Smuts: the fields of force 1919-1950 (Cambridge, 1968) p. 200.21 William Roger Louis, In the name of God go: Leo Amery and the British Empire in the age of Churchill (London, 1992) p. 89.22 Hancock, Smuts p. 41.23 H.D. Hall, ‘The Genesis of the Balfour Declaration of 1926’ in Journal of Commonwealth

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had sent his memorandum for comment and the subsequent exchange of ideas between these two individuals would help formulate something in the nature of a blueprint for the evolution of the British Commonwealth of Nations.24 Smuts posited that there existed much that was still obscure or anomalous in the status of the Dominions and that practice ‘had to be brought into harmony with theory.’25 Guided by the principle of equality operating within unity, Smuts sought to forestall separatist sentiments in the Commonwealth ‘by the most generous satisfaction of the Dominion sense of nationhood and statehood.’26

In his Cabinet memorandum, entitled ‘The Dominions and the Coloni-al Office: Proposals for Reorganisation’, Amery promulgated what he con-sidered as being the essential condition of Imperial unity, namely the ‘full recognition of the demand of the Dominions to be treated as equal in sta-tus – if not in stature – with ourselves as partner nations in the British Empire.’27 In private correspondence with the then Chancellor of the Ex-chequer, Winston Churchill, he admitted that ‘just now the question of sta-tus is almost an obsession’ among the Dominions,28 and cautioned that if such passion for equality was thwarted ‘it might have shattered the unity of the British Commonwealth.’29 While the establishment of the Dominions Office was considered by Amery as only the outward completion of a proc-ess which had long been maturing,30 of perhaps more considerable import to the Dominions was a further policy decision ‘apparently adumbrated and accepted when the Dominions Office was founded.’31 It was agreed in-ternally that at future Imperial Conferences ‘no critical comment of the policy of the Dominions should be voiced by the British representatives.’32 Primarily intended to ensure that Commonwealth debate did not descend into unsightly rancour, this strategy also emphasised the eagerness on the British side to appear conciliatory to the Dominions. It was now hoped that

political studies I (1961-1963) p. 173.24 Ibid.25 Ibid, p. 174.26 Constitutional Relations in the Empire, confidential memorandum submitted by General Smuts to Imperial Conference 1921 (PRO DO 117/33).27 The dominions and the Colonial Office: proposals for reorganisation, 9 March 1925 (PRO DO 121/1). 28 Letter from Amery to Churchill, 5 December 1924 (PRO DO 121/1).29 Hancock, Survey p. 264.30 The Times, 12 June 1925.31 Stephen Roskill, Hankey, man of secrets: vol. II 1919-1931 (London, 1972) p. 429.32 Ibid.

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the Dominions, ‘instead of knocking at an open door, they will come in and make use of their opportunities.’33

II. A New Constellation of Commonwealth Leadership

Surveying the British Empire in 1924, Amery was very much aware that the immediate post-war high tide of Imperial sentiment was in abey-ance. He lamented that in South Africa Smuts was to be succeeded by

General J.B.M. Hertzog, an avowed republican.34 Achieving power in June 1924, Hertzog and his National Party sought the immediate transforma-tion of an Empire into a Commonwealth, a call perhaps inevitable given the pervading fervour of Afrikaner nationalism.35 Nationalist exuberance was tempered however by their reliance upon the South African Labour Party to maintain a parliamentary majority, the latter a party which strongly op-posed secession. In a reversal of Nationalist policy, Hertzog now stated that he had ‘not the slightest intention of recommending secession,’ thus com-pelling him ‘to discover a way of securing independence for South Africa without secession.’36 A certain irony perhaps exists in the realisation that the Nationalists, who in opposition were want to dismiss Dominion Sta-tus as ‘merely a slim trick of Smuts,’ had now seemingly ‘come complete-ly round to the Smuts position.’37 Hertzog advanced the thesis ‘that a free association under the crown with the sister nations of the British Com-monwealth would satisfy the aspirations of his people,’ contingent upon a general affirmation that ‘they possessed equality of status within the Com-monwealth and in the wider society of nations.’38 Amery readily under-stood what was being sought of him; it was no longer enough ‘for the Do-minions to be free: they must be seen to be free.’39

While pursuing the papers and minutes connected with previous Impe-rial Conferences, Hertzog was to discover a file containing both the Smuts

33 The Times, 12 June 1925.34 Amery, Thoughts on the constitution (London, 1953) p. 125.35 Hancock, Survey p. 268.36 Hall, Genesis of the Balfour Declaration p. 183.37 Letter from the Editor of The Cape Times to Amery, 9 December 1924 (CAC Cam. AMEL 2/1/9).38 Hancock, Smuts p. 199.39 Harkness, The restless dominion p. 84.

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memorandum of 1921 and Amery’s subsequent reply, a correspondence which ‘anticipated almost every demand’, which Hertzog was proposing to make at the forthcoming Imperial Conference.40 Though Hertzog’s elucida-tion of his position to Amery was couched in the language of diplomatic ni-ceties, for the consumption of his domestic audience his rhetoric was of a more forthright nature. In an address at Stellenbosch in April 1926, he stat-ed that ‘each Dominion, by virtue of the self Government granted it, would be on the same footing with Great Britain as a sovereign free international State,’ a status which would ‘have to be formally communicated by them to the outside world.’41 If, however, such a declaration was not produced then ‘each Dominion will have to take such independent action as may be nec-essary to clarify the position.’42 The threat implicit here was if Dominion equality with Britain was not recognised explicitly then Hertzog would in-deed ‘set the veldt on fire with a campaign for republican independence.’43 Such candour could not be ignored by the British Government, who foresaw South African secession from the Commonwealth as delivering a ‘serious, perhaps fatal, blow to its prestige and pretentions.’44

Presently, what Amery would identify as the centrifugal wing in the Com-monwealth was ‘reinforced by the advent of the Irish Free State.’45 In his au-thoritative proposition of 1937, R.T.E. Latham argued, ‘in 1921 the immersion of a foreign body, the Irish Free State, disturbed the quiet waters of the con-ventional Commonwealth.’46 Aware of the inherent ambiguity pertaining to the status of the Dominions, the Cumann na nGaedheal administration of William T. Cosgrave began to reveal their Commonwealth policy of con-structive reinterpretation endeavouring to ‘refashion the Commonwealth in closer accord with Irish interests and aspirations.’47 In the absence of a formal interpretation of the nature of the Commonwealth, they determined to ‘press the implications of this fact as far as they could be pressed.’48

40 Hancock, Smuts p. 200.41 Dominion Office memorandum, ‘Status of the Union of South Africa’, 27 July 1926 (PRO DO 117/32).42 Oswald Pirow, J.B.M Hertzog (Cape Town, 1958) p. 111.43 Nicholas Mansergh, Nationalism and independence: selected Irish papers (Cork, 1997) p. 110.44 Nicholas Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth affairs: problems of external policy 1931-1939 (Oxford, 1952) p. 10.45 Amery, Thoughts on the constitution pp 125-126.46 Hancock, Survey p. 501.47 Mansergh, Nationalism and independence p. 110.48 Lyons, Ireland since the Famine p. 507.

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British hostility towards the Irish Free State was aroused by a series of initiatives launched by the Irish government in pursuit of an extra-Imperial identity. Noting that in 1921 the Canadian Premier, Robert Borden, had se-cured from the British Government acceptance of the principle that Cana-da might be represented at Washington by a Minister Plenipotentiary, the Irish Free State now informed London of the ‘urgent necessity of appointing an Irish Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extra-ordinary to the United States of America.’49 Buoyed by the support of Canada and South Africa, the Irish Free State succeeded, after long delays, in persuading the British Gov-ernment to accept its proposal that the Irish Minister in Washington, T.A. Smiddy, should be ‘the official channel of communication with the United States Government for dealing with matters exclusively affecting the Free State.’50

On the 17 April 1923, the Irish Minister for External Relations, Desmond Fitzgerald, submitted a formal request that the Irish Free State may be ad-mitted as a member of the League of Nations,51 a decision in keeping with the desire to exercise on the international stage the powers of state sovereignty. If certain unease among British imperialists did exist, it was in relation to the possibility of the Anglo-Irish Treaty being registered with the League, a document ‘not, in their view, an instrument proper to be registered under Article 18 of the Covenant.’52 These fears proved prescient as the Treaty was formally registered at the League of Nations in July 1921. The refusal of the British Government to recognise the legitimacy of the Irish action at Ge-neva was decried by Joe Walshe, The Acting Secretary at the Department of External Affairs, as a ‘most barefaced explicit denial of equality.’ As the Im-perial Conference approached, the Irish were now ‘ready to lead the march towards equality.’53

49 T.M. Healy to J.H. Thomas, 3 March 1924 (NAI DT S1983. Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II: 1922-26, document no. 203. ff 277-78).50 Extracts from a letter from Desmond Fitzgerald to Senator N.A. Belcourt, 13 August 1924 (UCDA P.80/424. Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II: 1922-26, document no. 264. ff 335-337).51 Desmond Fitzgerald to Sir Eric Drummond, 17 April 1923 ( NAI DFA 26/102 Docu-ments on Irish Foreign Policy, Vol. II: 1922-26, document no. 61. f. 85). 52 Memorandum by Joseph P. Walshe to Desmond Fitzgerald on the registration of the Anglo-Irish Treaty at the League of Nations, 1 December 1924 (NAI DFA 417/105. Docu-ments on Irish Foreign Policy, Vol. II: 1922-26, document no. 290. ff 376-378). 53 Hancock, Survey p. 268.

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III. The Imperial Conference 1926.

British Imperial sensibilities, aware of the adage that ‘there is always some Dominion that gives trouble at an Imperial Conference,’54 were now assailed by a trinity of discontent. Hertzog, as distinct from

Smuts, was ‘not concerned to forestall the demands of South African na-tionalism, but to fulfil them.’55 Nationalism in this attacking phase was also discernible in the agenda pursued by the Irish Free State, determined to ex-hibit, as proclaimed by Kevin O’Higgins, that ‘this is no vassal state.’56 A.J.P. Taylor has argued that the growing resolve of the South African and Irish delegations to confer on the push for co-equality of status with Britain was borne of their anticipation of the advantages to themselves which would accrue from the ending of Imperial sovereignty. With the achievement of absolute equality, ‘the entrenched clauses of the Union Act 1910 probably and the Irish Constitution undoubtedly could be changed unilaterally.’57 The developing rapport between Hertzog and Cosgrave had come to the attention of Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey, who spoke of both men ‘colloguing secretly in the West Country.’58 Buttressing this bur-geoning alliance was the Canadian Premier, William Lyon Mackenzie King, also smarting from a perceived breach of constitutional convention at home, and resolved to remove the last vestiges of subordination. Indeed, such was the closeness of the relationship between the Irish and Canadian delegations at the Imperial Conference, it gave rise to the suspicion that ‘many of the balls fired at the Conference by the Canadians, were unknown to the other delegations, manufactured by the Irish.’59 Thus, for the more delicate issues of inter-Imperial relations, and indeed the status of the Do-minions, Amery resolved that they be entrusted to a separate committee composed exclusively of Prime Ministers or heads of delegations, together with Austen Chamberlain and himself. He articulated the fear that ‘discus-sion in full Conference, before preliminary agreement had been reached, might accentuate existing differences of opinion both within our own

54 Roskill, Hankey p. 429.55 Mansergh, Survey p. 11.56 The Times, 16 October 1926.57 A.J.P. Taylor, English history, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965) p. 253.58 Thomas Jones, Whitehall diary, Vol. II 1926-1930 (Oxford, 1969) p. 92.59 Terence de Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins (London, 1948) p. 222.

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Cabinet and also between the Dominions.’60 This Inter-Imperial Relations Committee was to be placed under the chair of Arthur Balfour, Lord Presi-dent of the Privy Council, whose conception of Commonwealth equality, Amery remarked, ‘entirely coincided with mine.’61 Amery’s advocacy of Bal-four was also derived from the belief that his ‘immense personal authority would not only hold the Committee together, but commend its conclusions to the British Cabinet where, I felt, the greatest difficulty might have to be encountered.’62

Convening proceedings of the Committee on Inter-Imperial Relations on 27 October 1926, Balfour was to be immediately assailed by Hertzog’s preliminary disquisition, laboriously headed ‘Importance of Dominion re-lations in the Empire being known both to the Empire Communities them-selves and to the world at large.’ Recycling Smuts’ warning that ‘delay in the publication of Dominion status is fraught with grave dangers,’ Hert-zog implored his audience ‘that the equal freedom and independence of all its members, shall be authoritatively declared to the world,’ and that ‘what should have been done in 1921, shall now no longer be delayed.’63 This lengthy paper drew an immediate and negative response from Amery, thereby exposing the fallacy in the assertion that Hertzog was not exposed to suspicion or opposition.64 On the idea of a general declaration of rights, Amery speculated on whether the ‘authority of the Imperial Conference was sufficient to reach a decision on that declaration.’65 Austen Chamber-lain interceded with his recollections on Smuts’ decision to withdraw his proposals in 1921, claiming that private discussions had shown the ‘danger of rendering rigid inter-Imperial relations.’66 This trinity of British disquiet was completed by Balfour himself, who ‘would deprecate going into exact nuances of independence.’67

It was to be Lord Birkenhead’s intervention however, with, according

60 Amery, My Political Life, Vol II p. 384.61 Amery, Thoughts on the constitution p. 128.62 Amery, My political life, Vol. II p. 384.63 Imperial Conference 1926, Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, Minutes of the First Meeting of the Committee, 27 October 1926 (PRO CAB 32/56).64 Amery to Smuts, 24 January 1927 (CAC Cam. AMEL 2/2/24).65 Imperial Conference, 27 Oct 1926. Committee on Inter-Imperial Relations, 1st minutes (PRO DO 117/35)66 Ibid.67 Ibid.

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to MacKenzie King, a ‘splendid speech agreeing with the essence of Hert-zog’s speech,’68 that ‘changed the whole atmosphere of the gathering.’69 Ob-serving of Hertzog’s statement that ‘nothing in them had caused him anxi-ety,’ he suggested that perhaps Hertzog should put his ideas into a draft form to facilitate further discussion.70 Relenting to Hertzog’s entreaties, the Committee had now made its major concession, for ‘once discussion began on a definition of the status of the Dominions, the Committee was virtually committed to formulating a definition.’71 The Inter-Imperial Re-lations Committee could no longer focus exclusively on matters of prac-tical inconvenience, as notably detailed in the Irish Free State memoran-dum, ‘Existing Anomalies in the British Commonwealth of Nations;’ it must also satisfy nationalist sentiment. However, attaining a dialectical formula which would be acceptable to each of the delegations was to prove elusive, as ‘phrases approved in one quarter roused unpleasant associa-tions in another.’72 Dominion repudiation of the term British Empire, and its possible exclusion from the wording of any agreed formula, prompted Amery to remind Balfour of Imperial sensibilities, cautioning ‘we must be careful not to alienate the people who really matter in the Empire for the sake of the representatives of the extreme section in South Africa or of the Irish.’73 However, encouraged by Chamberlain and Birkenhead, Amery now conceded to a formula, henceforth known as the ‘Balfour Formula’, which would satisfy Dominion sentiment:

Great Britain and the Dominions are autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to anoth-er in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of nations.74

68 William Lyon Mackenzie King, The diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie- King, 27 October 1926; available from http://king.collectionscanada.ca/EN/default.asp (accessed 25 January 2008).69 Pirow, Hertzog p. 115. 70 Imperial Conference, 27 Oct 1926. Committee on Inter-Imperial Relations, 1st min-utes (PRO DO 117/35).71 H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King: The Lonely Heights 1924-1932 (Toronto, 1963) p. 184. 72 Blanche E.C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour: First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906-1930 (London, 1937) p. 278.73 Amery to Balfour, 1 November 1926 (BL Balfour Papers 49775).74 Imperial Conference, 1926. Summary of Proceedings (Cmd. 2768 f. 14).

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Conclusion

To Amery then, the Balfour Formula and its accompanying practical recommendations contained nothing new, instead merely articulat-ing explicitly that which had been previously enunciated privately.

He had indeed succeeded in retaining the phrase British Empire, but this figment of Imperial unity was exposed by the insertion of the words ‘freely associated.’ Privately, Amery conceded that such was the inherent ambi-guity of the Declaration, that it facilitated future co-operation while also leaving the way equally clear to dissolution.75 He had endeavoured to resist the danger of going too far in an enunciation of the metaphysical nature of the Commonwealth that would satisfy Hertzog,76 but his failure is evident in Hertzog’s boast, ‘I feel the object which I set before me to achieve at the conference has been attained.’77 In contrast to Amery’s emphasis on conti-nuity, the South African Nationalist press rejoiced at Hertzog’s supposed triumph, heralding the beginning of a new era for the Dominions,78 while in Ireland Joe Walshe considered the Balfour Formula as a ‘new dawn in the history of the Saorstat and its sister states.’79 As Churchill later admitted, the British Government had ‘accepted the view of those who wish to state the Imperial obligation and Imperial ties at their minimum.’80 Nationalist aspiration from without, and Imperial realism from within, therefore en-gaged at the Imperial Conference of 1926, resulting in a formula of compro-mise, its plasticity and ambiguity allowing for the enumeration of multiple narratives and interpretations. As Balfour’s niece and biographer, Blanche E. C. Dugdale, observed:the line between evolution and revolution is noto-riously blurred in English history, and events may seem to fall on one side of it or the other, according to the perspective in which they are viewed.81

75 Amery, Thoughts on the constitution p. 131.76 Amery to Balfour, 1 November 1926 (BL Balfour Papers 49775).77 The Times, 23 November 1926.78 Die Volksblad, 23 November 1926 (PRO DO 35/5).79 Memorandum, ‘Work of the Imperial Conference’, with attached letter, from Joe Walshe to Private Secretary to the Minister for Defence, 1 June 1927 (UCDA P 80/594).80 Hansard, House of Commons Debate, vol. 258, col. 1189-1190. 20 November 1931.81 Dugdale, Balfour p. 277.

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‘An Act of Divergence?’: Ireland & the immediate

consequences of the Act of Union, 1800-1806

SEAN O’REILLY

Writing to his younger brother, on 7 April 1809, almost a dec-ade after William Pitt’s ministry forged the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Thomas Grenville venomously stated,

I have heard nothing of the question which you tell me is in agitation respecting Lord Hardwicke. It seems bad enough in itself, and indeed is irretrievably bad if it brings again into sight all the dirty buyings and sellings of Lord Castlereagh’s union. In his hands and by his assistance that measure has been stripped of all public good and national security, and has fraternized us only with the nastiest garbage of the Irish place-market. His shameless defiance of all principal in reference to the Cath-olic question makes me think that his approaching disgraces are but a just judgement upon him.1

1 Thomas Grenville to Lord Grenville, 7 April 1809, Fortescue Ms., 10 Vols., 1892-1927, Histor-ical Manuscript Commission, Vol. VIII, p. 291.

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Grenville’s damning summation of the Hardwicke administration’s role in Irish affairs does not sit well with a number of studies on the period. In what is the seminal work on Hardwicke’s time in Ireland following his ap-pointment to the position of lord lieutenant in March 1801, Michael Mac-Donagh casts a very positive image of a man he considered to have been ‘of common sense, moderate views and practical judgement in affairs.’2 The younger brother was of course Lord Grenville, the erstwhile prime minis-ter of the short lived ‘ministry of all the talents’ in 1806 and 1807, and the nominal leader of the British House of Lords. Grenville had been Pitt’s right hand throughout the 1780s and 1790s, taking on the role of foreign secre-tary in 1791. He was a solid presence in Pitt’s Cabinet, and supported the prime minister’s ideas on Catholic relief, following his leader in resignation when the ministry failed to come through on proposed plans for Catholic emancipation after the Irish Act of Union was passed in 1800.3 In terms of political office and achievement, Thomas Grenville was outshone by his sibling, yet this was probably not something that duly concerned him, the older Grenville having guided the career of his brother during the latter’s early years as a politician.4 He was however, typical of his family and be-lieved that Catholic relief should remain at the forefront of the British polit-ical agenda.5 Indeed, as Sir H. C. Englefield, a prominent English Catholic, stated to Lord Grenville just four days after his brother’s strongly worded announcement, ‘I cannot but feel it a duty to inform our best and firmest friend of our proceedings.’6 The peer responded cordially, ‘It is well known to be my most earnest desire that the Roman Catholics both of England and Ireland should be restored to the full enjoyment of every civil right.’7 Nonetheless, Thomas Grenville’s reference to the corrupt measures that, even by this time, many believed were used to pass the Union and his ad-amant claim that Hardwicke was to blame for the failure of the Union to

2 Michael MacDonagh, The Viceroy’s postbag: correspondence hitherto unpublished of the Earl of Hardwicke first Lord Lieutenant of Ireland after the Union, (London: 1904), p. 8.3 J.P. Jupp, ‘William Wyndham Grenville (1795-1834), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.4 Ibid.5 G. B. Smith and rev. R. W. Davis, ‘Thomas Grenville (1755-1846), Oxford ditionary of na-tional biography.6 [My italics] Sir H[enry] C[harles] Englefield to Lord Grenville, 11 April 1809, Fortescue Ms., Vol. III, p. 298.7 Lord Grenville to Englefield, 12 April 1809, Fortescue Ms., Vol. VIII, p. 301.

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achieve the goals that both the British and Irish administrations envi-sioned, are bold to say the very least. Even if he did, it must be considered that the former lord lieutenant had little in the way of principle when it came to matters concerning the Catholics. Less than ten years after its in-ception the Union was being named as a dead letter by those who had had a hand in its very beginnings. This paper will discuss the reasons behind such attitudes.

Edward Brynn writes, Hardwicke ‘was moderately popular in Ireland’8 during his tenure there. However, it will be argued that Hardwicke’s time as lord lieutenant has, up until now, cast the man, undeservedly, in a very positive light. Granted MacDonagh has had almost a monopoly of influ-ence on how that period in Irish history, and particularly that protagonist, have been perceived by subsequent generations. Yet, through a thorough analysis of Thomas Grenville’s statements, this paper will show that Hard-wicke had neither the capacity, motivation nor the willingness to address the problems that an incomplete Union package had prompted in Ireland. In doing this, a judgement will be made on both the pre- and post-union ad-ministrations in Dublin Castle, questioning both their abilities and review-ing their unique positions within the framework of the empire. The promi-nent theory surrounding the post-Union fallout marks Lords Cornwallis and Castlereagh, as those who steered the Union through the Irish parlia-ment, as the main culprits responsible, not for its short comings, but rather for Dublin Castle’s impossible task of ‘paying back’ those who had helped them successfully return a favourable outcome. It is not that such theory will be directly cast aside in this paper, but it will be argued that those ide-as are too simplistic an answer to very complex questions and that a sub-tle change in the fundamental discourse on the period must be advanced. Furthermore, through a specific study of the period, ranging from the late 1780s to the early 1800s, and leaving aside for the most part, the progres-sion of the act itself, it will be possible to understand where the Union went wrong and why, by 1809, Thomas Grenville wished both disgrace and de-nunciation on the man he believed broke apart the Irish Act of Union.

8 Edward Brynn, Crown and castle: British Rule in Ireland, 1800-1830, (Dublin, 1978), p. 30.

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I

Work on the Act of Union itself has been, to an extent, limited and con-strained. Many studies have contented themselves with addressing the passing of the Union, rather than its implications for the newly united kingdoms of Britain and Ireland. On the other hand works that do indeed engage with this aspect of the history, do so within the scope of a much wider chronological time frame. It would seem that the immediate post-Union period supplies a convenient starting point, but is just a stepping stone to the rise of Daniel O’ Connell in the 1820s, to the Great Famine of the 1840s, the Fenian movement of the 1860s, 70s and 80s and on into the twentieth century. For example, the recent publication of Paul Bew’s Ire-land: the politics of enmity, 1789-2006 and even Oliver MacDonagh’s earli-er Ireland: the Union and its aftermath, are forced to follow this line and simply cannot give the necessary weight to a period of Irish history that so greatly deserves close attention. Of the other school of historians con-cerned with the Union, G. C. Bolton’s founding work in The Irish Act of Un-ion: a study in parliamentary politics and more recently, (yet still ten years old), Patrick Geoghegan’s, The Irish Act of Union: a study in high politics, are clear examples of those concerned solely with the workings of pre-union administrations. Ireland during the immediate post-Union era ex-perienced significant political change. As the French tried, not once but twice9, to take on the massed armies of their continental neighbours in an empire building exercise, it stood, both physically and metaphorically on the periphery. The majority of the population who were of course ‘papists,’ or more correctly, Roman Catholics, still suffered under the remnants of the Penal Laws. While the country’s hard fought battle for legislative inde-pendence, finally achieved in 1782, had by the turn of the century been nul-lified by her own parliament. That same body, of sometimes more wealthy than learned men, then proceeded to vote itself out of existence. In his cele-

9 I would argue here, that the French Revolutionary period, including its international dimensions and conflicts, must be seen as separate to the later Napoleonic wars. Indeed, one could even suggest that Bonaparte’s exile and subsequent escape from Elba, sparking the Hundred Days, offer a further and distinct development in the French imperial quest. See also T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary wars, 1787-1802, (London, 1996), p. xvi. Blanning notes: ‘The revolutionary wars ended in 1802 with France in control of western, south-ern and central Europe...’ Bonaparte’s own particular, and now unrestricted, style of Empire building began after this date.

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brated speech to the house of Commons at College Green in Dublin, Henry Grattan proclaimed on 16 April 1782, that he now ‘addressed a free people’, but had previously ‘found Ireland on her knees.’10 Granted the exact word-ing of Grattan’s address to the Commons on that day is still the subject of some debate, and this version of his speech differs from that recorded in the parliamentary register of the day. Nonetheless, his invocation of Swift and Molyneaux,11 (or his subsequent claim to have invoked them), shows the very real sense of euphoria that accompanied this achievement. How-ever, if Ireland had indeed been on its knees before that victory, some Irish members taking their seats in London as part of an imperial parliament in 1801, certainly felt their country had been cast down even lower than that.

Prime Minister William Pitt had argued in his speech on a possible un-ion, in January 1799 that:

We are at this moment engaged in the most important, most momen-tous conflict in which this Country was ever engaged... Is there a man who does not feel that a measure such as is now proposed, is calculated to augment the strength of the Empire, and thereby to ensure its safety? Would not that alone be a benefit to Ireland...12

Without doubt, the Irish Act of Union stemmed from the United Irish-men Rebellion of 1798 and while some contemporary commentators toyed with the idea of a union before this date, it was the events of 1798 that made the establishment of a united kingdom an almost unavoidable certainty. In May of that year, Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant, embarked on an armed rising intent on creating an independent Irish Republic. Support-ed in their campaign by regulars of the Revolutionary French Army, they did not however, succeed. Brutally crushed in military actions and under-mined by the clandestine operations of intelligence agents, the rebellion would be the last major threat to British dominance in Ireland, until Easter 1916. In terms of direct armed resistance, neither Robert Emmet nor the Fe-nians had the wherewithal to undo the crippling effect the Union had on Irish republican ambitions. Pitt had certainly tried to solve the Irish prob-

10 Henry Grattan, ‘Speech to the Irish House of Commons, 16 April 1782,’ The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Henry Grattan, by Daniel Owen Madden Esq., (Dublin, 1861) p. 70.11 Ibid, p. 70.12 William Pitt, ‘The speech of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt, in the British House of Com-mons, on Thursday, January 31, 1799’ (Dublin, 1799) p. 22.

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lem before this date, most notably with the attempted introduction of the Commercial Propositions of 1785, but the failure to pass a bill in that year meant that Ireland, though never systematically cast aside, became a trou-blesome distraction for the Government by the late 1780s and 1790s. Ge-oghegan argues that Ireland remained if not at the forefront than at least continually in Pitt’s thoughts,13 and indeed the prime minister had kept a close eye on proceedings of the Irish parliament during the regency crisis of 1788-89 and had helped force through the Catholic Relief Act of 1793. Nev-ertheless, Ireland was (and would forever be), that ‘unlucky subject’14 for Pitt. A French landing at Bantry Bay in 1796, thwarted only by questionable seamanship, planning,15 and horrendous weather conditions,16 granted the government an opportunity to assess the threat Ireland posed to the se-curity of the British Isles both from within, in terms of Irish revolutionar-ies and without, in the case of French infiltration. The opportunity was not taken, and a further French landing at Mayo in August 1798, which might have been avoided, was allowed to take place. It was this issue that particu-larly worried Pitt, when he addressed the Commons in 1799 less than a year after the rebellion (as an immediate and significant threat), had been put down. The rising had given the government both the mandate, and indeed sufficient shock, to begin work of inducing a union of both kingdoms. The security of England and of the empire was top of the agenda for the archi-tects of the Union. Yet, by 1809, Thomas Grenville believed that this sup-posed intrinsic characteristic had been eroded away.

13 Patrick Geoghegan, ‘The making of the Union’ in Acts of Union, (eds. Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan) (Dublin, 2001) pp. 34-36. 14 Quoted in John Ehrman, The younger Pitt, 3 Vols., (London, 1969-1996) III, p.163. 15 Speaking from the quarterdeck of the French frigate Indomptable in December 1796, the summation of Theobald Wolfe Tone, of the Bantry Bay expedition, leads one to such conclu-sions. See: Thomas Bartlett (ed.), Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, (Dublin, 1998), esp. ‘Journals, 25-26 December, 1796,’ pp. 667-670. 16 Assessing the French threat four years later in 1800, Charles Cornwallis would state, ‘In 1796 they embarked 16,000 men onboard ships-of-war, a considerable part of which reached the Irish coast in 48 hours from Breast, and the extraordinary circumstances of the whether alone rendered the attempt abortive.’ Charles Cornwallis to Duke of Portland 1 November 1800, Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, ed. Charles Ross, 3 Vols., (London, 1859) III, p.300.

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II

Hardwicke was sworn into to office in England, on, appropriately enough, 17 March 1801 – St. Patrick’s Day.17 If he had been superstitious, the new ruler-by-proxy of Ireland may have seen this as a good omen. What he would not have considered a good omen however, was the letter ominously ‘laid before him’18 by the Duke of Portland, which the latter had received a month previous. Its author, Marquis Cornwallis, Hardwicke’s predeces-sor. Cornwallis opened with the statement that, for MacDonagh at least, sealed the fate of Hardwicke’s lord lieutenancy, before the new viceroy ever set foot in Ireland,

As my continuance in the situation I have the honour to hold, may not be long enough to enable me to fulfil all the engagements I have thought it my duty to contract on the part of His Majesty’s Government...I feel myself peculiarly bound to every tie and obligation at the present mo-ment to draw your Grace’s attention to this subject.19

‘This was the embarrassing heritage which the Viceroy who carried the Union left to his successor’20 and indeed Cornwallis himself felt ‘peculiarly bound’ to those engagements. But it would seem harsh to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a man tasked with generating support for a measure that was distasteful to so many, in a country whose inhabitants had so recently resorted to outright war as a means to vent their displeas-ure. The debate on what Thomas Grenville called the ‘dirty buyings and sellings’ of the Union has been central to both early studies on this subject21 and in more recent work.22 The moral complexities of such measures, used by the government to ensure a favourable outcome, will not be languished upon here. It suffices to say that position was assured to many people, both through patronage and employ, if they promised to support the Union Bill in parliament and elsewhere. The man then tasked to take up the mantle of

17 MacDonagh, Viceroy’s postbag, p. 5.18 Ibid, p. 7.19 Cornwallis to Portland, 19 February 1801, Cornwallis correspondence, III, p. 339. 20 MacDonagh, Viceroys postbag, p. 8.21 Ibid, esp. pp. 40-43. 22 See Geoghegan, ‘An Act of Power and Corruption? The Union Debate,’ in History Ire-land, viii, no. 2 (Summer 2000) pp 22-6.

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viceroyalty after the Union, needed to be one who could cope with these de-mands, either by attempting to see them realised or by having the strength of character to out manoeuvre, in Grenville’s words, the ‘nastiest garbage of the Irish place-market.’ Cornwallis himself discussed the issues with his close friend Major-General Charles Ross,

They have not yet been able to find a Lord-Lieutenant, and the situa-tion at present requires a man of very superior qualities. Unless he will take the Government upon himself, and make himself independent of the influences I resisted, and which ruined the administration of my predecessor, the country will be completely undone.23

Forced to come to terms with the promises made by the previous admin-istration, it is fair to say that Hardwicke was at a distinct disadvantage. Cornwallis, less than a month before Hardwicke’s appointment however believed the man to replace him would be Lord Hobart,24 and the situation in England certainly lead to a period of uncertainty, following the resig-nation of Pitt and most of the Cabinet. Yet, Brynn states that Hardwicke’s ‘reputation has suffered undeservedly because of the “union engagements,” the burden of which he was called upon to carry.’25 But this is precisely the point and such a view is too sympathetic to Hardwicke. He was entrusted with the viceroyalty and that mantle, if not handled correctly, would very quickly become a yoke harnessed to the cumbersome and often gruelling load of the union engagements. Indeed responding to such outright expres-sions of, more often than not, basic greed, would have tried even the most favourably inclined person, but Hardwicke on numerous occasions simply resorted to blaming the long list of engagements as reason enough for not following up so many requests for preferment. Pestered by the claims of Thomas B. Clarke, a Protestant clergy man and political pamphleteer,26 in the summer of 1802, Hardwicke curtly replied,

I am well aware...as I doubt not Cornwallis was, of the services rendered to the cause of the Union by your literary labours;...But when I recol-

23 Cornwallis to Charles Ross, 26 February 1801, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, pp 340-341.24 Ibid, Cornwallis to Ross, 15 February 1801, III, p. 337.25 Brynn, Crown and castle, p. 30.26 MacDonagh, Viceroy’s postbag, p. 29.

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lect that to this hour the heavy mortgage left by my predecessor on the patronage of this country has precluded me from paying attention to any claim, however strong, and whether of a public or private descrip-tion, I am sure you are not surprised at my declining to make any new engagements...27

And again responding to a claim in July 1804 of Rev. Philip Johnson for recognition of his services during the period from 1796 to 1798,28 when the government felt itself embattled against a number of threats, Hardwicke, through his secretary, told Johnson that

though it is not in my power to comply with his request on the account of the number of engagements to which I have been obliged to pay at-tention, I have kept his memorial as a certificate of his publick merits.29

Granted in the case of Johnson, Hardwicke was entirely justified in re-fusing to entertain the grasping opportunism of those who had previously no claim to acknowledgement in post-Union Ireland. However, as lord lieu-tenant appointed to quell the discontent of an unhappy nation, it was sure-ly his obligation to deal with such enquires, particularly, as in the case of Clarke, who was representative of persons who contributed to the Union’s success, in whatever form. Charles Ross, editor of Cornwallis’s correspond-ence and an intimate friend of the previous viceroy, notes,

Lord Hardwicke, when he assumed the Government, recognised the en-gagements made by made by Lord Cornwallis and as far as he was able fulfilled them; but he also resigned before all the claimants had been satisfied, and the Duke of Bedford, who succeeded him, did not consider himself bound by the antecedent promises.30

Yet, even here Ross does not fully endorse Hardwicke’s efforts and he comments upon Bedford’s arrival in Ireland (in February 1806), noting the new viceroy felt he had no reason to worry himself with the outstanding

27 Ibid, p. 36.28 Ibid, pp 24-28.29 Ibid, pp 28-29.30 Ross, Cornwallis correspondence, p. 340

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arrangements of his predecessors. Hardwicke, as lord lieutenant then, did the best he could, but one is left doubting whether that was indeed good enough.

III

The union of the two kingdoms of Ireland and England in 1801 was in no way a new or unprecedented concept. In fact, the 1707 Scottish Union was to deliver the framework upon which an Irish union with Britain could and should be brought about. Writing in 1658 however, the diarist and mem-ber of parliament for Westmorland, Thomas Burton, noted in the House of Commons, that an English union with either Scotland or Ireland would be fundamentally different in the case of each country,

Whatever has been offered as to the right of Scotland is the same for Ire-land, except that of the Act of Union, which is not admitted for a law. If you speak as to the conveniency in relation to England, much more is to be said why they who serve for Scotland should sit here. It is one con-tinent, and elections are easilier determined; but Ireland differs. It is much fitter for them to have Parliaments of their own. That was the old constitution. It will be difficult to change it, and dangerous for Ireland. They are under an impossibility of redress.31

Yet by 1784, the newly appointed lord lieutenant, the Duke of Rutland, believed an English union with Ireland was certainly a necessary meas-ure. In an enlightening letter to Pitt on 16 June, 1784, Rutland addressed a number of points he felt were at issue for the fledgling ministry, not least of all the state of the country he had been sent to govern. Indulging what he called a ‘a distant speculation,’32 he stated that,

without an union Ireland will not be connected to Great Britain in twenty years longer...Ireland is not a land of tranquillity, nor

31 J. T. Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton Esq., 23 March 1658, Vol. IV: March 1658-April 1659, (London, 1828) p. 241.32 Philip Stanhope, Lord Mahon (ed.), Duke of Rutland to William Pitt, 16 June 1784, Correspondence between the Rt. Hon. William Pitt and Charles, Duke of Rutland, (London, 1890) p. 19.

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can government be maintained respectable, unless it be prepared for all contingences.33

In English opinions, Ireland had not been a tranquil place since the late middle ages, and her population had a nasty habit of instigating rebellion at the most inopportune moments for the British administration in both London and Dublin. That tranquillity had been threatened further when Henry VIII turned his back on the pope and adopted Protestantism as the state religion of England. Roman Catholicism had held firm in Ireland however, and by the time of the Act of Union, many in the Cabinet believed that here was an opportunity to finally address Catholic grievances in the country. In 1782, Rutland, it would seem, had a shrewd eye for the future development of not only the Irish question but also the situation in Europe. His close friendship with Pitt ensured that their exchanges left a lasting impression on the young premier and helped shape his opinions on what should be done with Ireland.34 So by the summer of 1798, it is not surpris-ing that a point by point observation, probably written in response to Pitt, by the out-going lord lieutenant, Earl Camden, stated that ‘It certainly will be proper that the great outlines of an union shall be digested and detailed as much as possible before it is attempted.’35 These great outlines undoubt-edly entailed addressing the spectre of the Catholic question.

Recognising the significance of the letter he was about to write and dat-ing it accordingly – ‘Thursday, January 1, 1801’ – the day the Union came into effect, the Irish Chief Secretary Lord Castlereagh wrote to the prime minister,

I represented that the friends of the government, by flattering the hopes of the Catholics, had produced a favorable impression in Cork, Tipper-ary and Galway...his Excellency [Cornwallis] had felt the advantage of this popular support, [but] was anxious...that he was not involving Government in future difficulties with that body, by exposing them to a charge of duplicity; and he was peculiarly desirous of being secure

33 Ibid, Rutland to Pitt, 16 June 1784, p. 19.34 Ibid, Pitt to Rutland, 10 March 1784, p. 7. Note: ‘My Dear Duke – I am more than happy than I can tell you in all the good accounts you have sent us from Ireland.’ 35 Observations by [Lord Camden?] on a paper [not found] about the union. [July/Au-gust 1798?], (Ms. Ref. 60, Act of Union Virtual Library, The Queen’s University, Belfast).

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against such a risk before he personally encouraged the Catholics to come forward, and to afford him that assistance which he felt to be so important to the success of the measure [the Union].36

Castlereagh had, in August and September 1800, been in London to dis-cuss with the Cabinet the possibility of Catholic emancipation being cou-pled with the measure of a union. He had received positive feedback that Pitt and the rest of his ministers were keen to agree with his proposals to introduce the measure37 and he communicated as much to Cornwallis. However, he would write in his letter of 1 January 1801, that Cornwallis was,

the last person in the world who would wish to consider what has passed on the part of the Cabinet as a pledge given to him, though not to the Catholics. You know his feelings are, with disposal of this question, altogether public.38

Indeed, Cornwallis resigned his position as lord lieutenant when it be-came clear that the ministry would be unable to introduce a bill for Cath-olic emaciation in the imperial parliament. Writing to Portland in June, 1800, Cornwallis stated that he had been willing, at all times, to give eve-rything he possessed, that indeed ‘there was no sacrifice’ that he ‘should not have been happy to make’ in service of his king and country, ‘except that’ of his ‘honour.’39 After it became clear that the king would never con-tinence giving his assent to a bill that would emancipate the Catholics, and that the Pitt’s influence as prime minister held little weight when faced with this outright refusal, Cornwallis felt his position to be untenable. The lord lieutenant believed entirely in the need for emancipation to follow the Union. This was not for as high and lofty ideals as fairness and equality, indeed such sentiments would smack of republicanism, but rather such thinking was purely pragmatic. Charles Cornwallis was at heart a soldier, and in that guise had flown the flag of empire in both America and India before coming to Ireland. Sent as both viceroy and commander-in-chief of the royal forces in Ireland, Cornwallis believed that the Irish Catholics

36 Lord Castlereagh to Pitt, 1 January 1801, Memoirs and correspondence of Viscount Cas-tlereagh, ed. Marquis of Londonderry, 12 Vols., (London: 1848-53) IV, pp 9-10.37 William Hague, William Pitt the younger, (London, 2004) p. 467.38 Castlereagh to Pitt, 1 January 1801, Castlereagh Correspondence, IV, p. 12.39 Cornwallis to Portland, 17 June 1800, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, p.264.

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must be granted some degree of representation in the new imperial parlia-ment. Such a move he felt would secure a lasting period of tranquillity in Ireland and thus allow the Union to flourish. The French had shown a cer-tain amount of doggedness in their attempts to invade the island, and the Irish themselves clearly had the means to attempt insurrection. Bringing the Irish Catholics (and thus the majority of the Irish population) securely into the imperial fold, would allow for an unprecedented social and politi-cal rebirth. Failing a favourable outcome to ‘the great point which is now in agitation [the subject of Catholic emancipation]’, he believed would no less threaten ‘the stability of the British empire.’40 Unfortunately, Pitt had in an uncharacteristic political slip, not reckoned on George III’s complete abhorrence to any such plan, and at a royal levée on 25 January, to celebrate the union of both his kingdoms; the monarch very publically denounced the whole process. Asking ‘what is this Catholic Emancipation which this young lord, this Irish Secretary has brought over, that you are going to throw at my Head?,’ he stated that he would ‘look on every Man as my per-sonal Enemy, who proposes that Question to me...’41 The Union passed, the prime minister, lord lieutenant and chief secretary resigned their positions and the Irish Catholics remained as they had done, before the whole idea was ever brought to the table, with emancipation seemingly further from fruition than before.

Keeping all this in mind one is not surprised then to see Thomas Gren-ville’s frustrations taking form in the statements he made to his brother in 1809. As has been shown, for both Grenvilles, the Catholic question was of the utmost prominence. William O’ Connor Morris, writing in 1898, stated that ‘Catholic Ireland was thus induced, for the most part, to pronounce for a Union, on a condition of relief...,’42 and certainly neither Hardwicke, nor indeed the Government formed by Henry Addington after Pitt’s depar-ture, can be blamed for the lack of progress made on that front, given the king’s position. However, Grenville’s comments become more clear when one considers, as Brynn puts it, ‘Hardwicke grew more sympathetic to Catholic’s grievances while viceroy and after returning to England stead-fastly supported Catholic relief.’43 For Grenville, this sway was simply not

40 Ibid, Cornwallis to Ross, 12 January 1801, III, p. 331. 41 Hague, Pitt, p. 468. 42 William O’ Connor Morris, Ireland 1798-1898 (London, 1898) p. 52.43 Brynn, Crown and castle, p. 30.

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enough, and he clearly believed Hardwicke should have done more for the Catholic situation whilst in a position to do so. The reality was however, that Hardwicke arrived in Ireland as a man concerned with the Catholic problem, but clearly not concerned enough, deciding that he would not ag-itate the situation, as Charles Abbot (his first chief secretary), noted in Feb-ruary 1801.44

Theodore Hoppen believes that there was in fact, ‘at first a good deal of uncertain clutching at straws,’45 on both side of the Irish Sea following the enactment of the Union and this certainly hindered Hardwicke’s adminis-tration. Nonetheless, when the Union came into being, it was then a politi-cal and legal reality. The Irish MPs who went to London were at this time and with no official form of allegiance to each other, simply swallowed up by the parliament of the empire and thus opposition to the Union had to take a new turn. Such an event did not happen during the lord lieutenan-cy of the Earl of Hardwicke. The name of Robert Emmet must of course be touched upon here, but Emmet tried nothing new in terms of the funda-mental thinking behind his dire attempt at a rising. Hardwicke’s time in Ireland was a success then, in so far as it saw very little in the way of a direct threat to British rule. Yet, this was down to the fact that the United King-dom was now an entity in itself, and not due to the actions and achieve-ments of Hardwicke working from Dublin Castle. The Union was a success-ful piece of legislation in those early years of its existence, as it did for the ruling country, what it had too - ensure stability and security. It did not however draw the two countries closer together in a sense of imperial gran-deur. Thomas Grenville believed that Hardwicke deserved all the trashing that was due to him. A harsh, but probably fair consideration on a viceroy, who in the words of Charles O’ Mahony had, a ‘policy of doing nothing and doing it well.’46

44 MacDonagh, Viceroy’s postbag, p. 4. 45 K. Theodore Hoppen, ‘An incorporating Union? British politicians and Ireland 1800-1830’pp. 328-350 in English Historical Review, cxxiii, No. 501, (April 2008) p. 329. 46 Charles O’ Mahony, The viceroys of Ireland, (London, 1912) p. 211.

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Behind the scenes in 1919: From covert operations to open conflict in the Irish

War for Independence

KATIE DRAKE

As Dáil Éireann held its inaugural meeting on 21 January 1919, de-claring itself the legitimate government of the Irish Republic, two RIC policemen were shot dead by Volunteers at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. Although most historians recognise that Solo-

headbeg was not stage-managed to punctuate the Dáil’s political state-ments, the accidental timing is still frequently perceived as a convenient starting point for the War for Independence. Yet the Volunteers were de-liberately kept on a defensive footing until the Dáil was suppressed nine months later, and even then organised military offensives were not sanc-tioned until the following January, nearly a year after Soloheadbeg. So 1919 is often seen as a year of preparation, of County Brigades eager for action but denied permission. The evolution of the Volunteers’ strategy might have been gradual and action restrained, but 1919 was crucial for both their development and ensuring that a military offensive would not alienate the public.

Soloheadbeg revealed a growing impatience among the Volunteers, which bred frustration when GHQ condemned the ambush and refused Tipperary’s plan for further action. Why was there such disparity between the Volunteers and GHQ? Was GHQ out of touch with the Counties and

36


making decisions about the entire country based solely on the situation in Dublin? The Tipperary Volunteers certainly thought so.

South Tipperary Brigade O/C Seamus Robinson found his justification for Soloheadbeg in An tÓglach, the official organ of the Volunteers. Written and edited by GHQ staff members, An tÓglach was the voice of GHQ, and their key means of disseminating military policy to the Volunteers prior to the introduction of General Orders in 1920. Three months before Solo-headbeg, the Volunteer journal stated that anything ‘tending to distract the minds of the people from the policy of fierce, ruthless fighting ought to be severely discouraged.’1 Robinson interpreted this very simply as ‘Infer-ence: Ruthless fighting encouraged.’2 On this basis, Robinson authorised the Soloheadbeg Ambush, believing that it was in line with GHQ’s policy. He was so confidant in GHQ’s support that he did not see the need to seek their permission: ‘It might take weeks to get a reply (communications were slow in those early days) [and] we could not legitimately act until a reply came back; … the gelignite might come and be used before a reply could be received.’3 He felt vindicated when the Dáil effectively endorsed GHQ’s poli-cy by announcing to the free nations of the world that a state of war existed between Ireland and England.4

Dan Breen, Robinson’s now infamous subordinate, also saw Solohead-beg as an opportunity to start the ball rolling. ‘The only way of starting a war was to kill someone and we wanted to start a war. So we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the… most important branch of the enemy forces which were holding our country in subjection.’5 Breen was concerned that the Volunteers would go to jail for their country, but were not prepared to fight for it: ‘what use are guns that have been oiled and cleaned but never fired? ... [the Volunteers] never seemed to think of putting the arms to good use rather than suffer imprisonment.’6 For Breen, Soloheadbeg was just as important for Volunteer morale as it was for initi-ating open conflict. Even decades later, neither Breen nor Robinson could understand why GHQ not only refused to sanction the ambush retrospec-tively, but were also quick to entirely condemn their actions.

1 Ernest Blythe, “Ruthless Warfare”; An tÓglach, Vol I.,(14 October 1918):1.2 Seamus Robinson Statement, (National Library of Ireland, Frank Gallagher Papers, Ms 21 265, f. 19).3 Ibid., 69. 4 Dáil Éireann address to the free nations of the world, 21 January 1919.5 Dan Breen Witness Statement, (National Archives Dublin, Bureau of Military History, WS 1739,21).6 Breen, My fight for Irish freedom, (Dublin, 1989) p. 50.

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Robinson expected the worst when he was called to Dublin for discipli-nary action. Volunteer discipline fell under Michael Collins’s purview as Adjutant General, so Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy ordered him to have the four Tipperary gunmen (Seamus Robinson, Séan Treacy, Dan Breen, and Séan Hogan) shipped to America. Collins wanted to meet the now in-famous quartet, and Robinson’s account of their first meeting reveals his true motivation:

‘We don’t want to go to the States or anywhere else.’ ‘Well,’ said Mick ‘a great many people seem to think it is the only

thing to do.’ I began to be afraid that GHQ had begun to give way to Sinn Féin

pacifism, and with a little acerbity I said: ‘Look here, to kill a couple of policemen for the country’s sake and leave it at that by running away would be so wanton as to approximate closely to murder.’

‘Then what do you propose to do?’ ‘Fight it out of course’. Mick Collins, without having shown the slightest emotion during

this short interview, now suddenly closed his notebook with a snap say-ing as he strode off with the faintest of faint smiles on his lips but with a big laugh in his eyes: ‘That’s all right with me.’7

Robinson was surprised at Collins’s approval, and concluded that GHQ’s role was ‘to sit comfortably in their armchairs organising until they can see the daylight ahead. If we can blaze the trail they will then encourage the rest of the country to do the same.’8 He now believed that GHQ would sup-port further action in Tipperary. ‘I was pleased also because it gave us the status I had hoped for – a tacit, yet definite recognition, not condemnation or censure from our legitimate superiors.’9 With such recognition, Robin-son envisaged no problems in authorising the Volunteers reaction when the British targeted South Tipperary’s civilian population in response to Soloheadbeg.

As a visible attempt to support the police in the aftermath of Solohead-

7 Robinson Statement, f. 30. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., f. 71.

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beg, the British government established a Special Military Area in South Tipperary. The prohibition on public meetings extended to markets and fairs, which was designed to harm the market-oriented economy: ‘putting pressure on a whole community was the most economical way of putting pressure on the local extremists.’10 Instead of quelling further rebellion, the government’s punishment of the entire community triggered a militant re-sponse from the extremists they were trying to target. Robinson drafted a proclamation ordering all members of the British military and police to leave South Tipperary, under penalty of death. The proclamation extended to those who helped Britain rule the country and anyone who gave valua-ble information to the military or police. Any of these found in South Tip-perary after 23 February would be ‘deemed to have forfeited his life.’11 Free from timetable constraints, Robinson sent the proclamation to GHQ for ap-proval. Proving him wrong about the response time, GHQ replied within 24 hours, refusing permission in emphatic terms. Robinson met with his Bri-gade, and expressed his disappointment at GHQ’s refusal: ‘I wished GHQ were here for one week even, and they’d probably change their minds.’12 Un-willing to accept GHQ’s decision, Robinson decided to utilise a convenient loophole, telling his men:

‘As HQ has forbidden me to post up this Proclamation I hereby warn you all that if I see anyone pasting up one of these posters on telegraph poles, trunks of trees, walls or on the gable-ends of the RIC barracks or doors or windows, and especially if I see you pinning on to the tail of a Bobby’s coat you will be severely punished!’

They took me literally at my word: I never saw a more enthusiastic scram-ble to get those papers out of my sight. In spite of my warning they were posted all over South Tipperary and a bit farther away too.13

Like Robinson, Breen was disappointed and puzzled at GHQ’s refusal: ‘We could not understand their reluctance, seeing that ours was the only logical position.’14 The Tipperary Volunteers had assessed their local situa-

10 Charles Townshend, The British campaign in Ireland 1919-1921: the development of political and military policies, (Oxford, 1975) p. 23.11 Robinson Statement, f. 35.12 Ibid.13 [Emphasis in the Original] Ibid., ff 37-814 Breen, My fight for Irish freedom, p. 41

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tion and employed their own initiative to address the issues. Most local ini-tiative operations that followed received retrospective authorisation, and yet GHQ was quick to condemn Tipperary’s early actions. To a local Volun-teer, GHQ’s position was certainly not logical.

So why did GHQ condemn Soloheadbeg and refuse to sanction the proc-lamation? The Tipperary Volunteers argued that physical force was the only reasonable policy in the face of British aggression, and believed that GHQ did not understand the situation outside Dublin. What these Volun-teers lacked, however, was the bigger picture. GHQ was not opposed to offensive action, and would soon demonstrate their willingness to order the taking of life where it was necessary and proportionate. However, they were acutely aware that military action must be taken within political con-straints and it was imperative the Volunteers avoid anything that would exceed the public’s ability to withstand the use of force. The responsibil-ity for developing a military policy that would authorise discriminating strikes on the enemy without alienating the public lay with GHQ. As the Volunteers’ military policy transitioned from its defensive roots to a care-fully planned offensive, GHQ had to manage the tension between local ini-tiative and central control by not allowing the ‘spirit of resistance [to] die down,’15 while preventing seemingly unprovoked aggression that would al-ienate public support.

Mulcahy had hoped the inaugural Dáil meeting would pass without inci-dent, but he was not surprised when news of Soloheadbeg filtered through to Dublin. While he believed that such initiative was not unexpected giv-en mounting British aggression, he would later say he was horrified that two policemen had been shot: ‘bloodshed should have been unnecessary in the light of the type of episode it was.’16 Mulcahy’s reaction stems from his understanding that public support was paramount. Valiulis notes that ‘Mulcahy was concerned with preventing injury and loss of life. He under-stood that killing policemen at this stage of the struggle would have an ad-verse effect on public support for the Volunteers.’17 He clearly understood the tension between sanctioning reactions to British aggression and en-suring ‘that the struggle wouldn’t get beyond the power of the people to

15 Richard Mulcahy’s lecture on Collins at Grosvenor Hotel, 29/10/63, (University College Dub-lin Archives (UCDA), Richard Mulcahy Papers (RM), P7/D/66, f. 12).16 Professor Risteárd Mulcahy, Richard Mulcahy (1886-1971): A Family Memoir, (Dublin, 1999) p. 64. 17 Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, Portrait of a Revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State, (Dublin, 1992) p. 38.

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withstand.’18 The Volunteers could not afford to alienate the public. Public support depended largely on the legitimacy of the Volunteers’ ac-

tions, and as the Dáil’s continued existence provided that legitimacy, their safety was of paramount concern to GHQ. Furthermore, maintaining pos-session of Dublin was also crucial for the Dáil’s authority, as established in the Capital, to continue. As the County Brigades resented Dublin’s prior-ity and dominance in the conflict, Mulcahy explained on several occasions why holding Dublin was critical to victory of any description:

This is the first Irish War in which Dublin has been in National hands. This is a factor that may by itself prove decisive if turned to full account, for it places at our disposal all the resources of the capital city. … All these factors taken together make Dublin by far the most important Military Area in Ireland. … If we had to start the present War without initial possession of Dublin where would we be now?19

In order to maintain their control of Dublin, GHQ needed to ensure both the Dáil and the Volunteer leaders remained safe from capture.

In early 1919, Mulcahy saw the Volunteers as a defensive force, and while he believed that conflict was inevitable, he did not yet envisage initiating a military offensive. However, he also held that the Volunteers’ primary fo-cus was the protection of their elected government. ‘It was the prime task of the army to protect the lives of the Government personnel and to es-tablish and secure the arena of the Government’s work and authority.’20 Furthermore, the ‘German Plot’ arrests had made it clear that the British government was willing and able to suppress the Dáil and arrest the dep-uties at any time. With such a clear and present threat Mulcahy was will-ing to consider Collins’s proposed solution. Having gained access to his enemies’ files, Collins provided Mulcahy with evidence of the imminent danger posed by the G-Division. ‘It was only when it was seen that all the leaders could be swept away except for the very close and very important threads of information that Collins was able to gather into his Intelligence system.’21 Aware of the repercussions mass arrests would have for the Re-

18 Mulcahy interview with D.V. Sugrue (training teacher at Birmingham College), [Hereafter Sugrue Interview], (UCDA, RM, P7b/182, f. 8). 19 Memo – the position in Dublin (UCDA, RM, P7/A/47 f. 1).20 Mulcahy, ‘The Irish Volunteers convention 27 October 1917,’ Capuchin Annual (1967), 400-410 (409).21 Mulcahy lecture on Collins to members of the 1916-21 Club, Jury’s Hotel, 20 Feb. 1964 (UCDA,

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publican movement, Mulcahy agreed that a pre-emptive strike should be launched against the G-men and authorised a warning. ‘The G.H.Q. Staff as part of the reaction against aggression, set out to warn the detective force here in Dublin that we were not going to allow them to destroy our politi-cal leadership.’22 Mulcahy shared Collins’s assessment of the G-men as le-gitimate and proportionate targets because selected shootings would have a substantial effect on enemy morale and efficiency without necessitating collateral damage. ‘The detectives who were got rid of in that period were men who could not, from the point of view of police intelligence, and police effectiveness be replaced.’23

In his introduction to the recently published reports on British intelli-gence in this period, Peter Hart argues that the G-men were unarmed, de-moralised, and blatantly following their quarry.24 Collins became a legend for effectively paralysing the G. Division, but Hart contends that in reality Collins was preying on easy targets. Hart’s argument raises a valid point, and if Collins was trying to achieve a military victory, or prove the effec-tiveness of his intelligence network, the current high estimation of his net-work should rightly (?) come down several sizeable notches. However, Col-lins had long realised that military victory was unrealistic and sought a political end-state from the outset; targeting the G. Division was a military means to a political end.

A closer analysis of Collins’s strategy and modus operandi highlights three arguments that infer his end-state was political. First, Collins always warned the detectives to desist from their activities or continue at their peril, in many cases several times. On an individual level this sent more than a ripple of fear through the Division; it dented what little morale they had under already strenuous working conditions, and thrust them from the status of policemen to enemy spies. On a political level, Collins’s warn-ing was aimed at the British Government. Their refusal to desist and with-draw would result in deaths, as threatened; thus it would be the politicians who forced any outbreak of physical violence. While the loss of one, or even several, G-men would not affect an army with enough manpower to re-place them and time to rebuild their knowledge, the political ramifications

RM, P7/D/66, f. 12). 22 Sugrue Interview, f. 9.23 Mulcahy Lecture on Collins to members of the Donegalmen’s Association, 11 Dec. 1964 [Hereafter Donegalmen’s Lecture], (UCDA, RM, P7/D/66, f. 16B).24 Peter Hart, ed., British Intelligence in Ireland 1920-21: the final reports (Cork, 2002) pp 3-5

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were too damaging to be ignored. Disregarding the warning, and the con-sequent use of force, meant that Britain would either be forced to reply in kind, at great risk of international condemnation, or do nothing and allow Collins a tangible victory they could ill-afford.

Second, while the warnings were given to the entire Division, it was a card Collins did not intend to play unless the British forced his hand. He would only continue shooting G-men until he received the desired politi-cal response, or the British escalated the situation by resorting to violence. Finally, Collins anticipated that if the British chose to resort to violence, wider public opinion would swing in favour of the Republicans. Ruthless guerrilla activity risked alienating the population so Collins relied on Brit-ain’s refusal to concede anything and its decision to reply with force. ‘He anticipated that once the detectives were neutralised or eliminated, the British would inevitably react blindly and in the process hit innocent Irish people and thereby drive the great mass of the people into the arms of the republicans.’25 Thus the key to Collins’s campaign lay with Britain’s re-sponse; he engaged the British anticipating their reaction would be indis-criminate violence, knowing this would be the final straw for a large per-centage of the population.

Collins found an ally in Mulcahy. In the aftermath of the Great War, Mulcahy realised Ireland’s hope lay in ‘convincing the Irish people that they were being forced into fighting a justified defensive war against for-eign aggression.’26 He believed Ireland could only turn the tables on her op-pressor if the public united to fight for the same cause. For Mulcahy, target-ing the G-men combined propaganda with protection of the Dáil to great affect. Later reflecting on his strategy, he explained:

The attitude of the British Government at the time of the German Plot arrests showed that both the will and the power to suppress the Dáil and to imprison the deputies was an ever present threat. The lynch-pin in the strength of that threat was … the detective forces operated from Dublin Castle. Before … the atmosphere could change to one in which aggression and reaction could reach the point of suppressing the Dáil with the arrests which would inevitably associated with that, it was

25 T. Ryle Dwyer, The Squad and the Intelligence operations of Michael Collins (Cork, 2005) pp 36-726 Michael T. Foy, Michael Collins’s Intelligence war: the struggle between the British and the IRA, 1919-1921, (Stroud, 2006) p. 24.

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necessary to tackle the detective force, taking a firm initiative against the most important of these.27

At first glance Mulcahy appears to directly contradict himself; while the first two sentences argue the need to protect the Dáil from suppression, the last sentence seems to suggest their campaign against the G-men was intended to goad the British into suppressing the Dáil. However, amidst his increasingly prolix language, lies a subtle nuance, which underlines a distinct and singular strategy. By abstaining from Westminster and form-ing a Parliament in Dublin, the Dáil effectively invited the British to sup-press them; it was simply a matter of time. The ‘German Plot’ demonstrated Britain’s ability to do so, and from mid-May the Viceroy, Lord French, and Chief Secretary for Ireland, Ian Macpherson, had been working to make suppression politically possible.28 To suppress the Dáil effectively they had to use their spy machinery, most notably the G-men, to identify deputies and other key ring-leaders for arrest. So it was essential to attack the G-Di-vision before the British government could authorise the Dáil’s suppression. The subtle nuance lies in the difference between suppression and arrest. Without intervention the latter was an inevitable consequence. However, in targeting the G-men, whose knowledge would make such arrests possi-ble, they could use Britain’s action for their own propaganda while still pro-tecting their parliament. Thus, when the British suppressed the Dáil, the public’s indignation at having their democratically elected representatives suppressed would play into the Republicans’ hands, and the inability to eas-ily identify the ring-leaders before they went underground would protect the parliament. ‘It will be seen that the initiative against the detectives was only begun barely in time … [and it] may be regarded as the … central ac-tivity which stimulated the volunteer military activity … and saved the par-liament as an institution.’29 Had suppression resulted in the Dáil’s inabil-ity to function, continued military operations without that vital legitimacy would have risked alienating the public both in Ireland and internationally. Ultimately, Collins’s intelligence network and its tactical application were a ‘vital and important part of saving us from capture in the city.’30

27 Donegalmen’s Lecture, ff 16A-B.28 Foy, p. 23.29 Donegalmen’s Lecture, f. 16B.30 Question of the Chief of Staff position, (UCDA, RM, P7/D/96, f. 10).

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The suppression of the Dáil on 12 September 1919 was pivotal in the de-velopment of GHQ’s military strategy and would come to mark a water-shed that divided defensive from offensive action. Mulcahy repeatedly em-phasises that Britain’s decision to suppress the Dáil changed everything: ‘it was not continued violence that ‘ultimately let loose the guns of the Volun-teers.’ What turned passive resistance and defensive tactics into an offen-sive, was the suppression of the Dáil as the national assembly in Septem-ber 1919.’31

When GHQ condemned Soloheadbeg and then refused to authorise their proclamation, the South Tipperary Volunteers assumed that GHQ was ei-ther unwilling to use physical force or did not understand the situation outside Dublin. Yet, GHQ soon demonstrated its willingness to order kill-ings where the target was legitimate and proportionate. Furthermore, GHQ’s refusal was based on how the escalation of conflict in Tipperary would affect the rest of the country, and not just the local area. GHQ ob-jected to their timing rather than their plans; even if these plans were ini-tially successful in Tipperary, local initiative employed outside the bounds of political constraints and public support would be counterproductive for the entire country. By protecting the deputies from arrest, GHQ could turn the suppression of the Dáil into a propaganda victory and thus gain public support for a more active military offensive across the country.

31 Richard Mulcahy’s two-part critique of Piaras Béaslaí’s biography on Collins, Part 2, (UCDA, RM, P7/D/66, f. 55).

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Divided Neutrality: Swiss press reaction to

the invasion of Belgium August 1914

CAOIMHE GALLAGHER:

Swiss neutrality, that constitutive feature of the Swiss confederation, became positive law by virtue of the final act of the congress of Vien-na and the second treaty of Paris of 20 November 1815. Through both treaties, the great powers of Europe recognized that, ‘the neutral-

ity and inviolability of Switzerland, and its independence from all foreign influence, [were] in the true political interests of all in Europe,’ thus the country’s permanent neutrality was guaranteed.1 The Hague Convention V respecting the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land and Hague Convention XIII concerning the rights and duties of neutral powers in naval war, of 18 October 1907, further cemented the le-gal status of neutral Switzerland.

When war broke out in August 1914, Switzerland proclaimed its stance of neutrality as it had previously done throughout the wars of the previous century. However, the German Schlieffen-Plan foresaw German armies cir-cumventing French defensive positions along the Franco-German border, disregarding the neutral territory of Belgium, Luxemburg and the Neth-erlands. The Swiss government, aware of Switzerland’s vulnerable posi-tion, reaffirmed the country’s neutrality by mobilizing some 200,000 men

1 Documents diplomatiques, Vol VII, bk. 2, pp 321-22.

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and by parliamentary vote appointed Ulrich Wille commander in chief of the Swiss military. Switzerland deployed six divisions at the northern and western frontiers and occupied the mountain fortresses around the St. Gotthard Pass and at St. Moritz, the latter safeguarding the Maloja, Julier, and Albula passes.

Switzerland’s neutrality was threatened not simply by Germany’s inva-sion of neutral Belgium but also its lack of raw materials and heavy reli-ance on imports. Forty percent of all food consumed was imported.2 While the military controlled its borders the Swiss state provided for the devel-opment of friendly foreign relations externally and internally to safeguard and maintain Swiss independence and neutrality. The Swiss state, military and press could be seen as the three vital players in the battle of Swiss ex-istence played out during the war. The neutrality of the Swiss press was vi-tal if a credible image of Swiss neutrality was to be disseminated abroad. Analysis of the Swiss press (nineteen Swiss newspapers) during the month of August would seem to suggest the invasion of Belgium provoked deep division among the two main Swiss linguistic communities. A compara-tive study of the four main Swiss newspapers: Tribune de Genève, Tagesan-zeiger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Journal de Genève seeks to analyse the nature of this division.

Before discussing press responses to the invasion, it is necessary to un-derstand what this consisted of. In accordance with the Schlieffen Plan, one million soldiers in five armies would sweep through central and south-ern Belgium, envelop the left wing of the French armies and ultimately take Paris, while two armies would stave off French invasion from Alsace-Lorraine in the south. On 4 August 1914, Germany attacked neutral Bel-gium. Anticipating a Belgian force of 9,000, the German army attacked Liège, with 39,000 German troops. However, these 39,000 troops were met with a Belgian force of 32,000. The surprise of such a formidable army, which included a fierce civic guard, galled the German high command. This was to be of influence in the rapid emergence of the German myth of the franc-tireur.

A franc-tireur could be described as a civilian sniper. The German refer-ence to the franc-tireur lies in their use by the French during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. During the invasion and subsequent occupation, the German armies succumbed to a collective delusion of supposed atrocities

2 Statistisches Jahrbuch der Schweiz, 1914, p. 25.

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committed by Belgian franc-tireur soldiers.3 Indeed the franc-tireur rapid-ly became a welcome scapegoat for failure of the Schlieffen Plan. This myth instigated a sense of paranoia among the German troops who saw this sup-posed Volkskrieg as amounting to a war crime which justified severe pun-ishment. Rumour and gossip were reinforced by the press and the authori-ties. This sense of paranoia along with the pressure to maintain a speedy advance led to the vicious reprisals perpetrated by German soldiers on in-nocent Belgian and French civilians.

Despite their bravery, the Belgian force of 32,000 troops simply could not hold out against the reorganised onslaught of German might and siege ar-tillery and by 7 August the town of Liège fell and by 16 August all the forts around Liège had fallen. The most intense phase, in terms of brutality to civilians, was during the second half of August 1914. 6,500 civilians were killed during the invasion of both Belgium and Alsace leading approxi-mately 1million Belgians to flee their country. Whole villages and towns were raised to the ground. 19 August saw the mass execution of 156 civil-ians of Aarschot, many of which were women and children. Andenne on 20 August saw the murder of 262 of its civilians. 22 August saw the first inci-dent of the use of human shields at Tamines. The worst civilian death toll of the invasion came on 23 August, perpetrated by the German third army at Dinant which left 674 dead. Over 20,000 buildings were deliberately de-stroyed throughout the invasion. Perhaps the most notorious of which was the deliberate destruction of the university library of Louvain on 25 Au-gust which destroyed the library’s irreplaceable contents of precious man-uscripts and ancient books.

Such reprisals were illegal under the Hague Convention IV on land war-fare of which all belligerent powers of 1914, including Germany, were signa-tories at the Second Hague Conference of 1907. It was these atrocities and many more which became part of a plan to terrorise and demoralise what became rapidly seen as ‘the enemy’, serving as an exorcism of sorts for Ger-man military failures. The invasion of Belgium served as stark example to other neutral countries in particular Switzerland and the Netherlands as their public looked to the flood of reports of the invasion with a heightened awareness of their strategic positioning in the war and the precarious pro-tection offered by international law.

3 John Horne and Alan Kramer, German atrocities, 1914 : a history of denial, (New Ha-ven, 2001).

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First, I will compare the two most widely read Swiss newspapers among their linguistic communities: the Tribune de Genève and the Tagesan-zeiger. With an approximate circulation in 1914 of 44,000the Tribune de Genève was clearly the biggest selling newspaper in francophone Switzer-land.4 The Tagesanzeiger with a circulation of 84,000 in 1914 was the big-gest selling newspaper in Switzerland itself.5 Both newspapers were similar in their style of analysis, which was populist and report based.

The second analysis will feature a comparative study of the Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. With a general circulation of 20,000 and 52,000 respectively, neither newspaper was as widely read as its com-petitors but each was known for its high quality journalism and each had an international reputation. Both newspapers were comparable in style and placed a greater emphasis on informed editorial analysis. Both aimed to secure sources of independent information in a way that other newspa-pers did not. Crucially both the Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung were the founding members of the L’agence télégraphique suisse (ATS) which was formed in 1895.

Until 1895 each individual Swiss newspaper selectively sourced the ma-jority of its information from the Havas and Wolff press agencies which were respectively the main French and German sources of international news. 6 However, the national bias of these sources played into the linguis-tic allegiance of the Swiss press, resulting in the desire for an independ-ent source of foreign news. The editors of the Journal de Genève, Bund and Neue Zürcher Zeitung saw the creation of an independent Swiss press agency as vital if a neutral Swiss press was to be maintained. Once the agency was created, it occupied itself primarily with the translation into

4 Statistisches Jahrbuch der Schweiz, 191, p. 1575 Ibid.6 Wolff Telegraphisches Bureau (1849-1934), was set up by Bernhard Wolff, a Jewish German media magnate, in 1849. It became one of the first press agencies in Europe and one of the three great European telegraph monopolies until the World War II-era when it closed in 1934; Bureau Havas, was created in 1832 by Charles-Louis Havas, who translated reports from foreign papers and distributed them to Paris and provincial newspapers. In 1835 Bureau Havas became the Agence Havas, the world’s first true news agency. Agence Havas established the first telegraph service in France in 1845. Between 1852 and 1919 the agency worked in close collaboration with an advertising firm, the Correspondance Gen-eral Havas. Staff correspondents for the agency were stationed in many world capitals by the late 1800s and throughout the war.Shrivastava, K. M. News agencies from Pigeon to Internet Sterling Publishers 2007, 156.

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French, German or Italian of foreign press reports but often included anal-ysis of information presented through the Havas, Wolff, Reuters and Stefa-nipress agencies.7 The majority of Swiss articles on the war received their information from the ATS’ ( L’agence télégraphique Suisse) 24-hour ‘desk étranger’ based in Basle. Each article was required to cite the primary ori-gins of its source: Havas, Wolff, Reuters, etc, at the end or beginning of each article. However, after December 1918, among both the French and Ger-man language press, the letters ‘AG’ were used to denote the agence télé-graphique Suisse or Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (as it was known in German speaking Switzerland) regardless of the primary origins of the source.8 Analysis of press reporting for the duration of the first year of the war would seem to suggest that the ATS had failed in its main objective. While in theory the ATS promoted impartial reporting, in practise it would seem both French and German Swiss newspapers continued to source their matter primarily according to linguistic allegiance. Indeed, it could be said the creation of the ATS fuelled the divide by unintentionally flood-ing each side with biased French and German reports. Concerns about the lack of regulation of the ATS were raised by the State during the first year of the war. Its influence on the Swiss divide became a key factor in the re-assertion of State control over the ATS in December 1918 with its removal from Basel and relocation to Bern.

The following graph shows the percentile breakdown of both the Trib-une de Genève and the Tagesanzeiger’s front page coverage of the Ger-man invasion of Belgium, August 1914. On average 14% of the Trib-une de Genève’s daily press coverage during August 1914 was devoted to the invasion of Belgium. The Tagesanzeiger, devoted roughly 6% of its daily coverage to the invasion of Belgium. The overwhelming majority of the Tagesanzeiger’s information was stated to be sourced from the Ger-

7 Italian based press agency.8 December 1918 saw a change in how the ATS was controlled. The desk étranger was moved from Basel to Bern which allowed it to be controlled more successfully by central government. Access to information on Franco- German developments would have been far more immediate given Basle’s strategic position on the fault line of French, German and Swiss territory. The direct control of the State led to a blurring of accuracy where press reports were simply copied or translated verbatim from foreign press agencies were cited inaccurately as coming directly from the ATS itself. Increased regulation hampered the agency’s independence leaving the ATS severely compromised during the Second World War when it came under increasing pressure from Nazi Germany to selectively ex-clude information which was deemed to be inflammatory or divisive.

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man press agency Wolff. This explains not only the bias presented in the Tagesanzeiger’s reports of the invasion but also its scepticism regarding factual French accounts of German atrocities during the invasion present-ed in the Tribune de Genève.

The Tagesanzeiger did not refer to the invasion of Belgium until 8 August when it reported on the fall of Lüttich or Liège to the German armies.9 It is surprising that the invasion of Belgium was not seen as front page news until this date despite widespread accounts of the invasion among the francophone media as early as 5 August.10 The only mention of the invasion was implied through the announcement of the fall of the town of Liège. The seven line front page piece was more of a statement than a report.11 The

9 Tagesanzeiger 8/08/1914, Lüttich gefallen, p. 1.10 Tribune de Genève 5/08/1914, L’armée allemande envahira la Belgique, L’armée belge, nouvelles télégraphiées de Belfort, p. 4.Journal de Genève.11 Tagesanzeiger 8/08/1914, Lüttich gefallen, p. 1.

0%

18%

35%

53%

70%

1st

3rd

5th

7th

9th

11th

13th

15th

17th

19th

21st

23rd

25th

27th

29th

31st

Percentile breakdown of Trib-une de Genève and the Tag-esanzeiger front page coverage of the German invasion of Bel-gium, August 1914.

Percentage of words given in proportion to the total number of words per front page.

Graph compiled by author detailing the percentage of words given in proportion to the total

number of words per front page for the duration of August 1914.

51

source of this information was apparently a private, Swiss telegram sent from Berlin at 7:45 on the evening of 7 August. The information cited in the telegram was confirmed an hour later by the German press agency Wolff. Wolff’s brief description was followed by a description of the ‘Hurrahrüfe’ which followed the Kaiser’s declaration. This short excerpt was followed by a thirteen-line excerpt from the Kölnischer Zeitung which acknowledged some German casualties, in particular, among the 53rd Infantry Regiment.12 It also reported on the many wounded officers who were being treated in Cologne. No analysis follows these reports. It would appear that the com-ments offered on 8 August were simply a regurgitation of German newspa-per reports. The pro-German bias of the Tagesanzeiger’s sources should be noted along with their inaccuracies. For example, the report on the inju-ries suffered by the 53rd Infantry Regiment on 7 August is completely inac-curate given that the 53rd Infantry Regiment was formed during September 1914 and only entered the line in mid-October.13 While such inaccuracies are inevitable in the fog of war, the fact that it was neither questioned nor corrected in later accounts suggests a biased belief on the part of the Tag-esanzeiger towards Germanophone sources.

Unlike the Tagesanzeiger the Tribune de Genève’s coverage of the in-vasion began on 1 August with a detailed description of Belgian military mobilisation.14 The following day featured an article entitled ‘la neutralité belge.’ The article argued Belgium’s legal right to object to the German ulti-matum and to use military force if necessary should German forces obtain use of Belgian territory to invade France.15 Given the Germanophone com-munity’s comfortable majority, it could be suggested, the Germanophone Swiss were more secure in their Swiss identity and therefore more likely to rigidly adhere to the State policy of neutrality.16

On 6 August the Tribune de Genève highlighted the need among Swiss citizens to be sympathetic to the Belgians, alluding to the possibility that Switzerland could have just as easily been invaded.17 This contrasted the Tagesanzeiger, which it would seem, in an attempt to distance itself from

12 Ibid.13 Günter Wegner,. Stellenbesetzung der deutschen Heere 1815-1939, (Osnabrück, 1993), Bd. 1.14 Tribune de Genève 01/08/1914, La Belgique mobilisé, p. 6.15 Tribune de Genève 02-03/08/1914 la neutralité belge, p. 6.16 The Swiss francophone community which made up roughly 20% of the entire popula-tion was a significant minority group.17 Tribune de Genève 06/08/1914 Les neutres, p. 4.

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such an emotive topic, apportioned the Belgians blame for the invasion by not investing in their military and delay in introducing universal conscrip-tion.18 Instead the Tribune de Genève declared : ‘La Belgique ne défend pas seulement l’indépendance européenne, elle est le champion d’honneur.’19

However this is not to say that the Tribune de Genève was entirely pro-French. For example on the 11th of August it admitted that while the Ger-mans had ‘manqué plusieurs fois aux lois de guerre ‘the Belgians motivat-ed by a ‘haine aveugle pour tout ce qui est allemand’ were reported to have murdered some soldiers in cold blood. 20 Throughout, the illusion of press neutrality had to be maintained. Although, officially there was no Swiss press censorship, under press laws along with interpretations of the Swiss state of siege law of Article 2 and 3 of the federal constitution, the Swiss state had the authority to ban any article which was deemed internally di-visive or to have compromised Swiss neutrality abroad. However the par-tiality of each newspaper, to either the Franco/Belgian or German cause remains fairly obvious. On 14 August, the Tribune de Genève reported that the French telegram ministry had complained to the Swiss state regarding biased reports on the Battle of Liège by the Germanophone Swiss press. The Tribune de Genève declared:

‘La presse Suisse est inondée de fausses nouvelles de source allemande. [...] Les journaux suisses citent les articles du même genre de divers journaux allemands ceux-ci font le silence complet sur la résistance de Liège, mais ils négligent d’ajouter que tous les forts sans exception tien-nent toujours. [...] Sans doute, cette admonestation n’a s’adresse pas à la Tribune, qui a fait tout le possible pour renseigner ses lecteurs aussi bien que les circonstances - extraordinairement difficiles – l’ont permis.’21

18 Tagesanzeiger 08/08/1914 Die strategische Bedeutung des Falles von Lüttich, p. 1.19 Trans.: ‘Belgium is not only defending European independence but it is a champion of honour.’ Tribune de Genève 06/08/1914, Les Belges repoussent les allemands, p. 4.20 Trans.: ‘Motivated by a blind hatred of all that is German,’ Ibid; Trans.: ‘Were lacking in adhering to the rules of war.’ Tribune de Genève 11/08/1914, Editor’s letter, p. 4.21 Trans.: ‘The Swiss press has been inundated with false reports from German sources. [...] Certain Swiss newspapers are quoting many different German articles which are com-plete silent on the issue of the resistance at Liège but equally neglect to include that the all the forts [of Liège] without exception have not yet fallen. [...] Without a doubt this criti-cism does not apply to the Tribune [de Genève] which is doing all possible to educate its readers as well as the circumstances, extraordinarily difficult as they are, permit.’ Trib-une de Genève 14/08/1914 Pour la presse Suisse, p. 4.

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However, despite assurances, there are a few occasions where blatantly biased inaccuracies were reported. For example 18 August featured an arti-cle by the Tribune de Genève announcing the death of the German General von Emmich in the battle of Liège, a year before his actual death in Han-nover in 1915.22

In the Tagesanzeiger there was rudimentary commentary of the invasion of Belgium until the 11th of August where the invasion of Belgium would appear to have been completed with the arrest in Liège and transportation to Germany of 4000 Belgian soldiers. This front page article accused the Belgian civilians and Alsace-Lorraine civilians of ‘zahlreiche Greueltäten’ inflicted on the German army.23 The article also cited the ‘sympathetic’ at-titude of the German press towards the ‘neutral powers.’ Such ‘sympathy’ is contrasted with the ‘brutal treatment of neutral foreigners, particular-ly Italians, in France.’ Indeed the information given was quoted as being sourced through the Wolff Bureau. This article was followed with a sum-mary of a report in the Lokal-Anzeiger in Berlin which reports the figure of 22,000 Belgian troops apparently one quarter of the Belgian army, who fought the German army at Liège.24

13 August featured the next mention of the invasion of Belgium with a report of little Swiss relevance which detailed the award of the Iron Cross to Hermann Geher from Stuttgart for his ‘Beteiligung and der Erstürmung Lüttichs.’25 This report was followed with a short piece, the first not regur-gitated from the Wolff press agency, which is titled ‘Gegen die Ausschrei-tungen der Belgier gegen die Deutschen.’26 This short piece featured a sum-mary of a report in the Frankfurter Zeitung which detailed the Belgian government appeal to its citizens to refrain from carrying out revenge at-tacks on German troops. As a result of this declaration, the Tagesanzeiger deemed reports of atrocities committed by the Belgian civilians on Ger-man soldiers to be true.

Such mid-August claims of atrocities committed by Belgian citizens in

22 Tribune de Genève 18/08/1914 La mort du général von Emmich, p. 4.23 Trans.: ‘Numerous atrocities.’ Tagesanzeiger 11/08/1914 Ein energisches Dementi – Belgien im Belagerungszustand, p. 1.24 Ibid.25 Trans.: ‘Participation in the storming of Liège.’ Tagesanzeiger 13/08/1914 Das Eiserne Kreuz für Lüttich, p.1.26 Trans.: ‘Against the Belgian excesses against Germany.’ Tagesanzeiger 13/08/1914 Ge-gen die Ausschreitungen der Belgier gegen die Deutschen, p.1.

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the Tagesanzeiger, were contradicted by the Tribune de Genève’s claims of atrocities committed by German soldiers. On 18 August the Tribune de Genève featured an article titled ‘la répression allemande’ which reported the first eyewitness reports of German atrocities in the Swiss press.27 In-deed the publication of such an article corresponds with the date of other foreign newspaper for example the French newspaper Le Temps featured a similar article of the same title on 18 August. An eyewitness from the French town of Blâmont reported on the murder by German soldiers of three civilians which included one small girl and an old man. This corre-sponds with the account of events at Blâmont presented in German Atroci-ties where the sixth army arrived on 8 August and after several days of ex-treme tension, fuelled by alcohol, killed two civilians on the night of 10/11 August.28 The account identifies three victims: one a German soldier who was mistaken for a franc-tireur, the second a café owner named Foëll and the third a girl ‘tormented with a lance’ by a German Uhlan.29 This is but one example which illustrates higher level of accuracy displayed by the Tribune de Genève in comparison with the Tagesanzeiger.

During the month of August 1914 the invasion of Belgium made up a mere 6% of the Tagesanzeiger’s front page coverage on an average day. There was one exception. 28th August, which saw 63% of its front page devoted to the topic of the invasion of Belgium. The first article entitled ‘Erlebnisse und anders von den Schlachtfelden’ began with the Tagesanzeiger’s criticism of the bias succumbed by some elements of the Dutch media and saw it as a warning to the Swiss press.30 The article criticized an account published in the Dutch Geldersche Courant which featured an account of the inva-sion by eyewitness from Maastricht who travelled across the border to as-sess the situation himself. He described the conduct of the German invad-ers as that of ‘wahre Barbaren.’31 The anonymous eyewitness described how he witnessed unarmed old men being shot at and young girls being ‘strung up.’ The Tagesanzeiger was deeply sceptical of such allegations of German atrocities. The Tagesanzeiger concluded that from the accounts they re-

27 Trans.: ‘German repression.’ Tribune de Genève 18/08/1914 la répression allemande, p. 1.28 Horne and Kramer, German atrocities, 1914, pp 20-22, pp 122-123.29 Ibid.30 Trans.: ‘Eye witness’ and other topics from the battle fields.’ Tagesanzeiger 28/08/1914 Erlebnisse und anders von den Schlachtfelden, p. 1.31 Trans.: ‘True barbarians. ’ Tagesanzeiger 28/08/1918 Die deutsche Kriegführung in Belgien, p. 1.

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ceived the Belgians only have themselves to blame.

‘Als die holländische Abteilung vom Roten Kreuz herankommt,[...] um die verwundeten belgischen Bürger zu verbinden, schiessen viele Bau-ern auf die Männer vom Roten Kreuz!’32

The Tagesanzeiger went on to give examples of eyewitness accounts brought to its attention by a certain ‘informant.’ This informant described the brutal retaliation of the Belgian civilians on the otherwise civilised German troops:

‘Der [Red Cross] Arzt teilte unserem Gemährsmann mit, dass am Samstag Morgen ein zehnjähriges Mädchen gefangen genommen wur-de, als sie einem verwundeten wehrlosen Soldaten die Augen austach: ferner, dass vier Bauern aus Berneau ergriffen wurden, weil sie auf dem Schlachtfeld verwundeten deutschen Soldaten Hände und Füsse abhackten.’33

However the Tagesanzeiger goes on to say that these stories may have gained in the telling but, that none the less the pro Belgian/French bias of the Dutch media must be highlighted. It cited further evidence of the cul-pability of the Belgian citizens in their fate:

‘Das Dorf Argenteau, dessen Bevölkerung sich ruhig verhielt, ist ganz verschont gebliebe. Berneau jedoch, dessen Einwohnerschaft so un-glaublich roh auftrat ist infolgedessen ganz und gar verwüstet.’34

The article went on to describe that since they took Liège, the Germans have managed to get the tram service up and running and have managed

32 Trans.: ‘As the Dutch division of the Red Cross encountered as they were bandaging up injured Belgian citizens many Belgian farmers opened fire on the Red Cross!’ Ibid.33 The Red Cross doctor informed our source that on Saturday morning a ten year old girl was caught as she plucked out the eyes of an unarmed soldier: close by four farmers from Berneau were arrested because they were hacking off the hands and feet of wounded German soldiers on the battlefield. Ibid.34 Trans.: ‘Argenteau was a village of which its citizens reacted peacefully and as a result the Germans left it untouched. However, as a result of its citizens appalling acts, Berneau was raised to the ground.’ Ibid.

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to reopen four factories in the area.35 The Tagesanzeiger 28 August’s front page contained another article

which reported the Corriere della Sera as saying it has found reports of un-fortunate German behaviour to be ‘ziemlich glaubwürdig.’36 However, any further discussion of the validity of German atrocities is abandoned and the subsequent reports feature an overwhelming pro-German bias. Re-Re-ports on the treatment of German citizens resident in Brussels describe their experience of Belgien retaliation ‘Wie die Hunde sind wir aus Antwer-pen gejagt’ another headline read ‘Die schlimmen Folgen der belgischen Lügenberichte’ ‘Was ein kölnischer Junge vertragen kann’ and ‘Bismarcks Enkel als Kriegsfreiwilliger.’ 37 Such reports could well be mistaken for the front page of the Kolnischer, Berliner or Frankfurter Zeitung. Despite the difficulty in accessing accurate information, the Tribune de Genève man-aged to report rather accurately on the dramatic surge of German atroc-ities on 22 August yet, the Tagesanzeiger ignores the topic completely.38 During the remaining days of August the invasion of Belgium was referred to by the Tagesanzeiger as the ‘Franctireur-Krieges,’ evidence of the suc-cess of German propaganda campaign.

In its reports of the atrocities perpetrated by German soldiers during the invasion the Tagesanzeiger was blatantly pro-German. During the final week of August the Tribune de Genève published numerous articles high-lighting what it saw as evidence of German breaches of the Hague conven-tion. 21 August, the Tribune de Genève highlighted a report issued by the General Commander-in-chief of the ‘l’armée de l’Est’ on the 11 of August.

‘Le 10 août des fantassins allemands bavarois ont incendié systémati-

35 Ibid.36 Trans.: ‘Somewhat believable.’ Tagesanzeiger 28/08/1918 Die Deutsche Armee in Belgien, p. 1.37 Trans.: ‘Like dogs were hunted from Antwerp.’ Ibid; Trans.: ‘The negative conse-quences of fabricated Belgian reports, What a young soldier from Cologne can endure, Bismark’s nephew volonteers.’ Tagesanzeiger 28/08/1918, p. 1.38 Most notably Tribune de Genève 28/08/1914; Horne, J. & Kramer, A, German Atroci-ties 1914 A history of denial, (Yale, 2001), p. 78. 10th August the Bavarian division of the German infantry systematically burned the villages in the region of Barbas, Montigny, Montreux, Parux which they came across, during which not a single shot was fired (in retaliation) which would have provoked these (deliberate) burnings. The German troops burn villages, massacre the inhabitants, and make the women and children march in their violation of villages and on the battle fields, especially at Villy during the combat of August 10th.

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quement dans la région de Barbas, Montigny, Montreux, Parux, les vil-lages qu’ils ont traversés, alors que durant l’action aucun tir d’artillerie de part et d’autre n’avait pu provoquer d’incendie. [...] les troupes alle-mandes brûlent les villages, massacrent les habitants, font marcher de-vant elles les femmes et les enfants pour débaucher des villages sur les champs de bataille, notamment à Villy au combat du 10 août.’39

25 August saw further reports in the Tribune de Genève of the German’s use of human shields during the battle of Charleroi.40

There is little sign of neutrality in the Tribune de Genève’s reports of the invasion during the final days of August. 29 August began with a large headline ‘La Belgique dévastée.’41 The article which followed told of the general confusion after the German capture of Louvain. The article de-tailed the horrendous atrocities inflicted on the unarmed Belgian civilians:

‘Les allemands qui gardaient l’entrée de la ville s’imaginant que c’étaient des Belges qui arrivaient tirent feu sur leurs compatriotes qui fuyaient. Par suite les allemands pour couvrir leur erreur prétendirent que c’étaient les habitants qui avaient tiré alors que tous les habitants et la police elle-même avaient été désarmés depuis plus d’une semaine […] Le commandant allemand déclara que la ville serait détruite sur-le-champ. […] Une partie des hommes furent faits prisonniers et les femmes et les enfants furent embarqués dans des trains pour une des-tination inconnue. La ville de Louvain qui comptait 45,000 habitants et qui était la métropole intellectuelle du pays […] n’est plus aujourd’hui qu’un monceau de cendres.’42

39 Trans.: ‘10th August the Bavarian division of the German infantry systematically burned the villages in the region of Barbas, Montigny, Montreux, Parux which they came across, during which not a single shot was fired (in retaliation) which would have pro-voked these (deliberate) burnings. The German troops burn villages, massacre the inhab-itants, and make the women and children march in (order to) conquer villages and on the battle fields, especially at Villy during the combat of August 10th.’ Tribune de Genève 21/08/1914, p. 1.40 Tribune de Genève 25/08/1914, Namur aux allemands – mesures contre la Belgique, p. 6.41 Trans.: ‘Belgium devastated.’ Tribune de Genève 29/08/1914, p. 6.42 Trans.: ‘Germans guarding the entrance to the town were mistakenly fired upon by their own men who mistook them for Belgians. As a result the German, to cover up their error, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fire on them despite the fact that all

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This report was followed by a report on 29 August which quotes a cor-respondent of the Wolff press agency as saying ‘L’attitude de la population méritait des représailles inexorable. C’est ainsi que l’ancienne ville de Lou-C’est ainsi que l’ancienne ville de Lou-vain, riche en oeuvres d’art n’existe plus aujourd’hui.’43

The broad-sheet press with its high international reputation for serious-ness and impartiality approached the same set of events in a similarly bi-ased but distinctly different way. The following graph displays and com-pares the percentile breakdown of both the Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s front page analysis. For the Journal de Genève, the invasion of Belgium was a prominent topic which was consistently fea-tured throughout the month of August 1914. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s comparative lack of engagement or analysis of the invasion of Belgium is significant.

the inhabitants [of the town] and even the police had disarmed more than a week ago. [...] The German commandant declared that the town was to be raised to the ground. [...] Some of the men were taken prisoner and the women and children were put on trains headed towards an unknown destination. Today the town of Louvain which had a popula-tion of 45,000 and was the intellectual hub of the country is nothing more but a mound of ashes.’ Tribune de Genève 29/08/1914, p. 4.43 The attitude of the population warranted these reprisals. It is because of this the old town of Louvain, rich in works of art no longer exists today. Tribune de Genève 29/08/1914, Le destruction de Louvain – les excuses allemandes, p. 4.

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

1st

4th

7th

10th

13th

16th

19th

22nd

25th

28th

31st

Percentile breakdown of Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung front page coverage of the German invasion of Bel-gium, August 1914.

Percentage of words giv-en in proportion to the to-tal number of words per front page

Graph compiled by author detailing the percentage of words given in proportion to the total

number of words per front page for the duration of August 1914.

59

Closer analysis of the articles published during the month of August re-vealed a distinct division of opinion among the Swiss press. Like the Trib-une de Genève and the Tagesanzeiger, the Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s reports on the invasion of Belgium were influenced by the linguistic allegiances of their respective language communities. An argument could be made that, the origins of the Tribune de Genève and the Tagesanzeiger’s bias lies in the fact that both newspapers only sourced information relating to the invasion in their respective native languages. However, this could not be said of both the Journal de Genève and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Both newspapers were committed to obtaining informa-tion from both French and German sources. The Tagesanzeiger, being the most widely read newspaper in Switzerland, would have had the financial means to secure information in a way that the Journal de Genève, for exam-ple, did not. Yet in adhering to its community’s isolationist interpretation of neutrality, the Tagesanzeiger did not capitalise on its resources and re-mained silent in comparison to its francophone counterparts. Yet despite the fog of war, it is remarkable that the Journal de Genève, with its small circulation, provided Swiss citizens with the most up to date and as ac-curate as was possible information on the invasion of Belgium. This could be in part due to its more successful use of ATS resources in its attempt to compare and contrast the information given in both French and German reports of the invasion.

The first item relating to Belgium by the Journal de Genève, during the month of August 1914, was an 11 line report published on 3 August. The report cited the French government’s assurance to come to Belgian aid should Belgian neutrality be disrespected.44 This report was significant as it was the francophone press’ first engagement with Belgium on the eve of invasion. It was also representative of the Swiss press’ initial view of Bel-gian neutrality, which was seen as legal concept, whose existence in Bel-gium depended on the support of external powers.

The next mention of the invasion of Belguim was an article written by the Journal de Genève’s editor-in-chief Albert Bonnard, published 6 Au-gust, which was entitled Le 4 août. In his account of the German invasion of Belgium, Bonnard draws comparison with the Battle of Wissembourg on 4 August 1870 and the beginnings of the Franco-Prussian war. It could

44 ‘La neutralité de la Belgique n’était pas respectée par les autres puissances,’ Journal de Genève 03/08/1914, p. 1.

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be suggested that through such a comparison, Bonnard defined the im-pending war as one primarily between France and Germany. Indeed the majority of the entire Swiss press during August 1914 saw the war not as a world war but as a war between France and Germany and their various allies. Indeed the humanitarian actions of the Red Cross during the Fran-co-Prussian war: the acceptance of refugees, the establishment of an in-ternational agency for aid to wounded millitary personnel in Basel, and repatriation of seriously wounded prisoners, could have been seen as a template for the humanitarian role played by Switzerland during the First World War. While first-hand experience of the Franco-Prussian war was confined to the grandparents of the Journal de Genève’s readers, Bonnard’s comparison was nonetheless of great relevance to its readers.

In his article Le 4 août Bonnard saw Britain and not France as a peace loving nation of high moral integrity. It is Britain, according to Bonnard, and not France, which saw Belgian neutrality as ‘d’intérêt primordial.’45 In this article, Bonnard showed none of the bias towards France the francoph-one media was accused of by the Swiss German journalists. Indeed, he sta-Indeed, he sta-ted in the seventh paragraph: ‘Dans les deux pays [France and Germany], personne n’a élevé la voix contre la guerre.’46 According to Bonnard’s article France was seen as a belligerent power, albeit one provoked by Germany.

In his final paragraph, Bonnard cited what he saw as the anomaly of the Belgian situation: ‘La Belgique a décidé de défendre son territoire: elle est par conséquent en guerre avec l’Allemagne.’47 Such a statement was of im-Such a statement was of im-mense relevance to Swiss defence of its neutrality. Many Swiss reporters, predominantly germanophone, cited the excellence of the Swiss military as the main deterrent to a German or French invasion. Indeed they saw the lack of universal conscription of Belgian soldiers until 1913 as the main rea-son of Belgium’s failure to remain neutral. Bonnard suggested that as a re-sult of Belgium’s use of force in defending its neutrality and independence, it had become a belligerent power. In stating this, Bonnard, it could be said, sought to remain neutral by distancing himself from a sympathetic analy-sis of the invasion of Belgium. Yet the ironic slant of this quote would also seem to allude to the fragility of neutrality as a legal concept in the event

45 Trans.: ‘Of primordial interest.’ Albert Bonard, Journal de Genève 06/08/1914, p. 1.46 Trans.: ‘Within the two countries [France and Germany] no one raised their voice against the war,’ Ibid.47 Trans.: ‘Belgium decided to defend its territory and because of this she is now at war with Germany,’ Ibid.

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of invasion. Thus Bonnard would seem to have questioned Swiss faith in its military as guardians of its neutrality.

The NZZ did not feature the invasion of Belgium as a front page topic until 6 August. Indeed most of the Germanophone newspapers seem to be at least a day behind their francophone counterparts in their reports of the war events in general. Perhaps the sheer volume of information provid-ed by the French Havas press agency in comparison to the German Wolff press agency was a key factor in the immediacy of francophone press’ re-ports.48 However, throughout August 1914, there was a failure on the part of the NZZ to engage with the invasion of Belgium. It is this reluctance rather than the flow of information which perhaps explains the NZZ’s delay in its reporting of the key events of the invasion.

The NZZ was not as overtly biased as other germanophone Swiss news-papers. For example, unlike the Tagesanzeiger, the NZZ sourced its infor-mation from both the French Havas and German Wolff press agencies. However, this is not to say that the NZZ was pro-France. A subtle pro-Ger-man bias becomes apparent on closer reading.

The NZZ’s definition of the invasion of Belgium on 6 August as the ‘Deut-sch-Französischer Kriegschauplatz’ seemed to apportion both France and Germany equal blame in what was undeniably a German invasion.49 Simi-lar to Albert Bonnard’s article Le 4 août parallels are drawn with the open-ing battles of the Franco-Prussian war. ‘Die Neutralität Belgiens spielte bereits in der Geschichte des letzten deutsch-französischen Krieges eine gewisse Rolle.‘50

In his article Bulletin: Les Informations published 8 August Bonnard discussed his experience of the quality of war reporting so far. He began his article: ‘C’est aujourd’hui un art de lire les journaux. […] Les renseigne-[…] Les renseigne-ments s’y pressent en foule, parfois sans ordre et sans controle.’51The prob-lem of outside influence and propaganda was seen to Bonnard as a key fac-tor in the difficulty of obtaining truthful information.

48 As described by the Tribune de Genève on the 14 August, p. 6.49 Trans.: ‘The Franco-German theatre of war,’ NZZ 06/08/1914, Deutsch-Französischer Kriegschauplatz, p. 1.50 Trans.: ‘Belgian Neutrality already played a role in the last Franco-German war,’ Ibid.51 Trans.: ‘Today there is an art in reading newspapers. This flood of information is pre-sented to us often without any order or control,’ Bonnard,. Journal de Genève 08/08/1914 Bulletin: Les Informations, p. 1.

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‘L’origine de toute dépêche a son importance. Il est inévitable qu’elles colorent la vérité dans un sens favorable au pays dont elles émanent.’52

Bonnard accused the Wolff press agency of bombarding the Swiss media with distinctly biased and often false information. Bonnard cites many ex-amples of the influence of ‘l’agence wolff’ on the Swiss German press, one being a particularly inflammatory and inaccurate account of the summa-ry execution of a French doctor who had attempted to lace the fountains of Cologne with ‘des bacilles du cholera.’53 Bonnard goes on to assure his readership that he will do his best to ensure that the Journal de Genève will aim to verify that all of its information shall come from non-partisan sources and each article published will include the sources through which it obtained the information.54

8 August saw an interesting front page article by Swiss Colonel Feyler the Journal de Genève’s chief correspondent on military affairs. Feyler be-Feyler be-gan his analysis simularly acknowleging the difficulties of obtaining cor-rect information : ‘Les nouvelles fausses ou invraisemblables circulent plus nombreuses et rapides que les informations exactes.’55

Similar to Bonnard’s article on 4 August, Feyler also writing in the Jour-nal de Genève draws comparison with the early battles of the Franco-Prus-sian war reminding his readers that 6 August is the anniversary of the bat-tles of Wörth/Froeschwiller and Spicheren/Forbach.56 Given the Prussian army suppressed the French in both battles, Feyler is perhaps alluding to the possibility of German victory over the French in the early battles of what was seen by Feyler to be a Franco-German war. In drawing compari-son with the battle of Spicheren/ Forbach, perhaps Feyler is also alluding to the impulsive and irrational nature of the General Karl von Steinmetz’s attack in 1870 in his description of what he saw as the impulsive nature of the German invasion of Belgium.

Feyler questioned the nature of the German victory at Liège as report-ed by germanophone Swiss press. The germanophone press described the

52 Trans.: ‘The origin of every report is of importance. It is inevitable that they colour the truth in a way favourable to the country from which they emanate,’ Ibid.53 Ibid.54 Ibid.55 Trans.: ‘False and inaccurate news circulates rapidly and are far more numerous than exact information,’ Journal de Genève 08/08/1914, p. 1.56 Ibid.

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fall of Liège as a swift success based on the superiority of German organi-sation. Feyler questioned this: if the reports of the bombardment of Liège are true this would seem to indicate a dramatic change in German tactics and the deployment of heavy artillery which it would seem was not antici-pated in the Schlieffen plan.57 This change of tactics according to Feyler would seem to validate reports of a strong Belgian civilian force. Thus one may conclude that on 6 August, Feyler remarkably anticipates the German Oberste Heeresleitung’s change of tactic on 8 August from heroic frontal infantry to bombardment by heavy artillery. Feyler acknowledged the dif-Feyler acknowledged the dif-ficulties of obtaining information ‘le calcul est difficile à etablir, sur la base de informations actuelles.’58 He also questioned Belgian sources used by his own newspaper Journal de Genève:

‘Les dépêches belges parlent de 7 canons pris et de 600 blessés ramassés sur le champ du combat. Si ce dernier chiffre était exact, on pourrait, en admettant du 68% de perte, supposer que les Allemands ont engagé une division.’59

Indeed according to the revised Schlieffen plan of 1912 one division was deemed sufficient. Feyler described what he refers to as the ‘aberration d’orgueil’of the L’agence Wolff and germanophone reports which fail to ac-knowledge reports that the Germans may have underestimated the Bel-gian civilian force which is fairly accurately reported by Feyler to be in the region of 22,000 men, in fact the Germans were met with a Belgian force of 32,000 at Liège. Feyler accurately explains the strategic importance of Liège to the Germans given its access to the Meuse river and the central plain. 60

The NZZ on 8 August presented its analysis of German military tactics. However this analysis, written by a journalist rather than a military ana-lyst like the Journal de Genève’s Colonel Feyler, lacked the insight and accu-racy of the later. The author stated simply that, for the Germans, the initial

57 Ibid.58 Trans.: ‘The calculations, based on actual information, are difficult to establish,’ Ibid.59 Trans.: ‘The Belgian reports tell of seven canons taken and 600 injured on the battle field. If this last figure was to be exact, it would suggest a loss of 68%, supposing the Ger-mans had engaged an entire division,’ Ibid.60 Trans.: ‘Aberration of arrogance, ’ Ibid.

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invasion was not difficult given that the fortress of Liège is 25 years old and therefore no longer modern.61 The NZZ article offered more puzzlement at than explanation of the Belgian resistance. ‘Es ist so im Grunde eher ver-‘Es ist so im Grunde eher ver-wunderlich, daß sie (the Belgians) trotzdem noch ziemlich hartnäckig Wi-derstand geleistet hat.‘62

Half of the NZZ’s front page of 9 August, sought to explain German ac-tions of the last few weeks. Interestingly, the article expressed understand-ing and sympathy for the German nation’s need to suppress France first before the ‘inevitable’ war with Russia but is puzzled by Germany’s deci-sion to invade neutral Belgium stating that while Germany has gained mil-itary advantage, it has handed its enemies the moral high ground. This is an opinion which is reiterated later on the 25 in an article entitled Holland and the war in Belgium. There the NZZ author stated that ‘wenn Deutsch-land die belgische Neutralität gewahrt hätte’ they would have had the sym-pathy of both Holland and Switzerland.63 9 August’s front page of the NZZ’s Extraausgabe presented the NZZ’s unique version of the invasion:

Allerdings kann man zur Erklärung, wenn auch nicht zur Entschul-digung anführen, dass die Belgier wohl von Westen und Norden einer willkommen englisch-französischen Invasion entgegensahen und nun ganz schwer enttäuscht wurden, als statt dessen plötzlich im Osten deutsche Vorhuten ihre Grenze überschritten bevor sich die erwarteten Engländer und Französen zeigten.64

9 August saw the invasion of Belgium peak in the NZZ’s front page cover-age. After the ninth, the coverage of the invasion of Belgium changed. Ar-ticles relating to the invasion relied more on a regurgitation of Havas and Wolff reports and featured little interpretation or critical analysis of the data provided by these foreign press agencies. This was most evident in ar-

61 NZZ 08/08/1914 Mittagblatt, Deutsch-französischer Kriegsschauplatz, p.2.62 Trans.: ‘It is a wonder the Belgians withstood such hard resistance,’ Ibid.63 Trans.: ‘If Germany had preserved Belgian neutrality.’ NZZ 25/08/1914 Abendblatt, Neutrale Staaten – Holland und der Krieg in Belgien, p. 1.64 Trans.: ‘One comes to the conclusion, without making excuses, that the Belgians expected a welcome British/French invasion from the West and North and were bitterly disappointed when instead suddenly in the east the German vanguard crossed over their border before they could signal to the British and French.’ NZZ 09/08/1914, Extraausgabe, Deutschland, p. 1.

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ticles published on 13, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26 and 31 August. However on closer in-spection indications of a change in the perception of the war can be found.

In the NZZ the invasion of Belgium was referred to as a Franco-German theatre of war, while in the Journal de Genève it was continually referred to as the invasion of Belgium. From 26 August, the NZZ began to refer to the invasion of Belgium as an occupation ‘der besetzten teile Belgiens.’65 Following this, the invasion of Belgium is defined no longer as Franco-Ger-man ‘Kriegschauplatz’ but for the first time on 29 August it was referred to as an ‘Europäische Krieg’. The article of 29 August refrains from the com-parisons drawn with the early battles of the Franco-Prussian war during the first three weeks. Instead what is now referred to as a European war is compared with ‘die Balkangreuel’ of recent memory.66

Rather than engage directly with the invasion of Belgium and its im-plication on the perception of neutrality the NZZ articles from the 9th on-wards approached analysis of the invasion in abstract terms. For example, articles like the main article of 16 August entitled ‘Der Krieg und das Wort Gotte’ or 15 August’s ‘Der Kriegsbeginn’were abstract musings on the inva-sion of Belgium.67 While their abstract nature prevents their author from engaging in opinionated analysis of the invasion, there would appear to be the hint of a cooling of the fever of a certain German bias exerted during the first two weeks of August. In the NZZ’s article, dated 16th August, en-titled ‘Der Krieg und das Wort Gottes,’ it is crucially Descartes who is ad-vocated as the philosopher to whom these extraordinary events are to be reasoned.68 Not a single German philosopher was named, which begs the question, in this article is the NZZ advocating Descartes and French ra-tionalism over the likes of Hegel, for example, and German romanticism? It would appear so.

The front page of the Journal de Genève 20 August, published an anony-mous letter from a Swiss professor at Geneva University to a German col-league. In the letter the Swiss professor is deeply critically of what he de-scribes the ‘Coeur serré’ of Switzerland’s policy of neutrality of which an

65 Trans.: ‘The occupied part of Belgium. ’ NZZ 26/08/1914 Mittagblatt, Deutsch-franzö-sischer Kriegschauplatz p. 1.66 Trans.: ‘The horrors of the Balkan wars.’ NZZ 26/08/1914 Mittagblatt, Der eu-ropäische Krieg p. 1.67 Trans.: ‘The War and the word of God. ’ NZZ 16/08/1914, Zweites Sonntagblatt, Der Krieg und des Wert Gottes p. 1; NZZ 15/08/1914, Der Kriegsbeginn, p. 1.68 NZZ 16/08/1914, Zweites Sonntagblatt, Der Krieg und des Wert Gottes, p. 1.

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illegal state of siege law was invoked to protect.69 The professor describes the events as an age where ‘la fource fait le droit.’70

The freedom of the press was protected under Swiss law by Article 55 of the revised Federal constitution of 1874 ‘La liberté de la presse est ga-rantie’ yet it would seem during the First World War a conflict of interest arose which obliged the Swiss press to submit itself in principle to state control. However, it must be stressed that in practise, no example of state censorship can be found during August 1914. The measures restricting the freedom of the press were justified through an interpretation of Article 2 which read, ‘the aim of the confederation is to ensure the independence of the fatherland against the foreigner [and] to maintain internal tranquil-lity and order’ and Article 3 of the Federal decree of 3rd of August 1914.71 By invoking Article 3, the Swiss Federal Assembly granted the Federal Coun-cil ‘the unlimited power to take all measures necessary to guarantee the security, integrity, and neutrality of Switzerland.’72 This decree seems ex-cessive when one compares the fact that a neutral state granted powers to the executive that were according to Giorgio Agamben ‘vaster and vaguer than those received by the governments of countries directly involved in the war.’73 While there was little evidence during August 1914 among the Tribune de Genève, Tagesanzeiger, Journal de Genève and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, of press censorship, there was, however, acknowledgements of the threat of state control.

During the first week of August, all reports pertaining to the meeting of the Swiss committee of the Swiss Press association, during the last week of July, were referred to exclusively in the French press. To my knowledge, no Swiss German newspaper felt the need to publish these guidelines verba-tim, nor was it presented as front page news. The NZZ’s first comment on the subject of state press restrictions was in an article entitled ‘Zensur vor!’ which was published on 8 August, eight days after the francophone press’ widespread reports on 1 August.74 The article clearly advocates press con-

69 Trans.: ‘Dry heart.’ Journal de Genève, 20/08/1914, La violation de la neutralité belge. Réponse à la lettre d’Allemagne, p. 1.70 Trans.: ‘Force dictates law,’ Ibid.71 ‘Sur les mesures propres à assurer la sécurité du pays et le maintien de sa neutralité,’ 3 August 1914 Recueil Officiel des lois Fédérales, op. cit 1914, p. 347.72 Ibid.73 Agamben, ‘Giorgio State of exception’ trans. Kevin Attell Chicago, Ill. (London, 2005), p. 16.74 Trans.: ‘On with censorship!’ NZZ 08/08/1914 Erstesmorgenblatt, Zensor vor!, p. 1.

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trol seeing if it were put into practise to be both a necessary and positive development:

Unser Publikum will die Wahrheit wissen.[...] Leider ist ein Teil der Pres-se [an example of] wilde, unkontrollierte Nachrichten [which has origi-nated from] Frankreich.75

While the article doesn’t exactly mention the Swiss French press direct-ly, it clearly does not see itself as culpable of the bias cited. No mention of the meeting of the committee of the Swiss press association during the last week of July has been found in the Swiss German press so far. The meet-ing of the committee of the Swiss press association, however, is front page news in the francophone press. The guidelines and minutes, of the meeting, were published verbatim during the first week of August 1914. Perhaps this is revealing of the target press, to which these guidelines were intended. The manner with which the francophone press addressed this issue is odd. Most simply print a statement given by the committee word for word as it is and simply do not comment on it further. For example page 6 of the Trib-une de Genève 1 August 1914 states:

We extend a warm appeal to the entire Swiss press to take the time to understand the situation and to be inspired above all with the best in-terests of their country, especially positive reports on the military solely in the best interests of the country.

The resounding ‘no comment’ of the francophone press, in reaction to this statement, betrays, perhaps, the hidden menace of state interference and control beneath what would, otherwise, seem an understandably pa-triotic and ultimately benign statement. Indeed when reading on through the month of August the question must be asked why does the francophone Swiss press feel the need to refer constantly to its commitment to its role as defined by the Swiss state’s neutral policy and the German Swiss press does not?

75 Trans.: ‘Swiss people want truth not bias presented in some areas [of the press]. Un-fortunately a portion of our press are an example of wild uncontrolled reporting which has its origins in France,’ Ibid.

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The invasion of Belgium provoked deep division among Francoph-one and German-speaking Swiss citizens. Analysis of four main newspa-pers Journal de Genève, Tribune de Genève, Tagesanzeiger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung showed a clear division between the allegiances of each linguis-tic community. The Germanophone press’ resounding silence betrayed a sense of unease with the actions of imperial Germany. The Tagesanzeiger’s reliance on the German press agency Wolff resulted in the promotion of a distinctly pro-German stance regarding the invasion which was often filled with inaccuracies. The Journal de Genève and Tribune de Genève reported the invasion on a daily basis. Towards the end of the month the Tribune de Genève began to highlight the atrocities committed by Ger-man soldiers on Belgian civilians. It is through the French press that we can see how open dialogue relating to the invasion of Belgium began to change Switzerland’s perception of neutrality dividing it for the first time ever along linguistic lines. The francophone press’ remarkable analysis of the invasion of Belgium would seem to be motivated not simply by a tradi-tion of international awareness among the francophone community and linguistic allegiance the First World War provoked. It would seem to have been motivated also by a genuine fear of a similar invasion of Switzerland which in turn inspired sympathy for the Belgian plight. As the editor of the Journal de Genève Georges Wagnière stated on 27 August after the de-struction of Louvain:

Ces faits horrible montrent aussi l’erreur de nos pacifists, de nos anti-militaristes. [...] Quelles catastrophes n’eussions nous pas attiré sur nos têtes si nous les avions écoutés!76

76 Such horrid facts show also the error in judgement of our pacifists and anti-military campaigners. What a catastrophe would we have had in our hands had we listened to them. Georges Wagnière Journal de Genève, 27/08/1914, Bulletin: le mort de la Belgique, p.1.

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Seán O’Faoláin & Graham Greene: exploring the construction of self &

the narrative of national degeneration during the inter-war period

MUIREANN LEECH

This paper will compare the experiences in England and Ireland during the inter-war period by analysing the autobiographies of Graham Greene and Seán O’Faoláin. I am not reading these auto-biographies as historical documents. Instead I am using history

as a way of reading autobiography. What I mean by this is that both writers reflect their social, cultural and political landscape through the narrative of self. Seán O’Faoláin overtly associates his childhood and adolescence with the birth of the new Irish state. He uses the nation as a metaphor for the self. National and international affairs also impact on Graham Greene’s construction of self, but they are less obvious. The turbulent years between 1910 and the early 1920s on an Irish, English and international scale are reflected in both authors’ exploration of their troublesome teenage years.

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Using History as a way of reading Autobiography

We are rooted in the land and in individualism.1

My working definition of a literary autobiography is a narrative that at-tempts to construct the self as an intrinsic essence, rather than a simplis-tic explanation of motives, actions and extrinsic memories. Unlike histori-cal biography, literary autobiographies chart a way of seeing rather than merely recording things seen. Staying true to an authentic self may mean recording a misremembered incident or creating a fiction around events so as to illustrate the complex workings of one’s consciousness. Both autobi-ographies that I am considering, Seán O’Faoláin’s Vive moi! An autobiogra-phy and Graham Greene’s A sort of life, explore the self through various nar-rative techniques: flights of fancy, historical facts, descriptions of dreams, and personal remembrances - all of which are coloured by the perspective of the experienced writer looking back over his life. The autobiographical theorist, John-Paul Eakin, cogently points out that autobiographers: ‘per-form willy-nilly both as artists and historians, negotiating a narrative pas-sage between the freedoms of imaginative creation on the one hand and the constraints of biographical fact on the other.’2 Autobiography can be employed to point out the interconnectedness of the personal and domes-tic spheres with the public and political domain. A sort of life and Vive moi! do not privilege one sphere over another; they interlink both in order to dis-cover anew their inner selves.

O’Faoláin’s Vive moi! is an autobiography that intentionally explores the nation’s growth as a metaphor for the self. Indeed, the title was initial-ly My Ireland. Vive moi, or ‘I live,’ prioritises the living self over and above the landscape – hence the title change. O’Faoláin clearly stated his artis-tic and autobiographical intentions around the time of composing this autobiography:

The theme before me is the discovery of self through the strong ten-sions of environment, i.e. mainly Ireland, with its assumptions about certain idealised modes of life which I gradually found unviable, after long struggles with them. In the end I have found, though I have learned

1 O’Faoláin, Vive moi! An autobiography. p. 1432 Eakin, Fictions in autobiography: Studies in the art of self-invention. p. 3

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much from these struggles, I have mainly learned, deeply into myself, a love for and trust in myself – wherefore I would like to call the book Vive Moi! At sixty I accept not the universe but me. Ireland, England, Ameri-ca and Italy have not ‘made’ me. They and I between us have thrown up on the shore of age a self, an identity that I can recognize and accept.3

As outlined, O’Faoláin does not see himself as a product of the nation, but rather the nation as a product of his own identity. The self is discov-ered through a process of negotiation with the surrounding environment. Although he privileges the self over and above the nation, O’Faoláin never really transcends national concerns: ‘My Ireland’ is still constantly lurking in the background of ‘moi’. Each time O’Faoláin struggled with the oppres-sive forces of his education, upbringing or social milieu; he came closer to knowing himself in a full and rewarding way.

O’Faoláin takes the title of his autobiography from a political slogan on a wall outside his French home which has been overwritten by graffiti de-claring ‘vive moi!’ O’Faoláin imaginatively invokes the graffiti artist: a poor French peasant who drunkenly overwrites the politic declaration in order to announce his authority over his own small domestic sphere. This graf-fiti was done, as O’Faoláin interprets it, as an act of self-realisation and de-fiance against those who oppress him. In this way O’Faoláin is indicating that, for him, the personal and domestic act as a palimpsest on the politi-cal and national. So it is an act of erasure, but the national remains as a trace element in identity: Vive moi does not quite manage to wrestle free of My Ireland.

Graham Greene concedes that politics feature strongly in his writings. He argues that art can effect change just as much as a violent revolution can. In his second (semi)autobiography, Ways of escape, Greene asserts: ‘a writer is not so powerless as he usually feels, a pen, as well as a silver bul-let, can draw blood.’4

Greene, like O’Faoláin, combines the personal with political in order to investigate his personality. Bernard Bergonzi in Reading the thirties: texts and contexts observes that Greene was adept at making the public and pri-vate worlds ‘serve as alternating metaphors for each other.’5 The majority of

3 Harmon, Sean O’Faolain. pp 218-94 p. 270 5 p. 79

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Greene’s autobiography, A sort of life, is taken up by his analysis of his child-hood and adolescent years.6 This is a reflection of Greene’s conviction that the man is a product of the child. His oeuvre explores the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world through focusing on acts of border transgression. Greene’s journeys give him access to another way of life and enable him to understand the underlying malaise of a place, rather than the surface yet newsworthy moments alone:

Sometimes one wonders why one bothers to travel, to come eight thou-sand miles to find only Vientiane at the end of the road, and yet there is a curious satisfaction later, when one reads in England the war commu-niqués and the familiar names start from the page – Nam Dinh, Vien-tiane, Luang Prabang – looking so important temporarily on a newspa-per page as though part of history, to remember them in terms of mauve rice cakes, the rat crossing the restaurant floor as it did tonight until it was chased away behind the bar. Places in history, one learns, are not so important.7

Living with the people and seeing the actual ground conditions allows Greene to go beyond the Western headlines and grasp the place in its en-tirety. This insight leads him to demythologise history.

The individual & ‘his story’ in crisis

Happiness is repetitious, while pain is marked by crises which sear the memory.’8

O’Faoláin’s gradual epiphanies or ‘brimmings’ as he calls them, gave him a sense of growth and direction. His first brimming (which entailed un-derstanding the limits of Catholic dogma) began when he realised that his mother could not manage her household budget. O’Faoláin draws personal crisis into close conversation with public degeneration:

I found that they all led back to my mother’s sighs over her purse. They

6 Approximately 132 of the 216 pages of his autobiography are given over to his early years.7 Greene, Ways of Escape, p. 1718 Greene quoted in Allain, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene. p. 30

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and she included summed up everything: the sighing wind over the Limer-ick plain, her mother sighing by the well at midnight, Uncle Tom Cosgrave with his stooped back and the wen on his neck, Aunt Nan with her wide va-cant laugh and her simple, childless life, all her emigrant sisters, that tiny farm of Loughil out of which so many lives, so many generations had been squeezed in tears and blood, the sudden killing of Tom Boylan. My mother thus became for me Ivan Karamazov’s one innocent child whom God al-lowed to be assaulted, a prime instance of the seeming monstrous and cru-el world He created.9

So, O’Faoláin’s mother sighing over her finances got her son thinking drop by drop about the unfairness of the world, which eventually led to his crisis of faith. The individual experience is applied to familial (Aunt Nan’s childless life), national (emigration due to poverty) and international (Tom Boylan’s death in the trenches during World War One) events in order to make sense of individuality and collectivity.

O’Faoláin pinpoints his birth as an Irishman to the Easter Rising of 1916 when he himself was sixteen years old. Before this break in experience and perspective, he was to all intents and purposes a model English pub-lic school boy with a patriotic duty to the Empire. After the events of 1916 he began to see the underlying story of Ireland: the history of oppression and coercion.

The chapter title ‘The troubles and my trauma’ in O’Faoláin’s autobiog-raphy links national turbulence with his own internal problems. He de-scribes the ‘Troubles’, or the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), as a ‘war of nerves’ but also a time when the whole country acted as one in defiance of British rule.10 O’Faoláin took an active part in this conflict while he was still an immature and inexperienced teenager. It is only after the War of In-dependence ended (and the Civil War began), however, that O’Faoláin be-gan to battle himself and doubt the nationalistic fervour and drive to ac-tion. Adolescence is often a tumultuous and aggressive time in one’s life: O’Faoláin experienced this violence on an internal and national level. In the 1993 revised version of his autobiography, O’Faoláin’s remembered feel-ings of oppression are associated with secondary school and his ‘trauma and the troubles’: ‘even to this late day my two most frequent nightmares bring me back either there [school] or to the period of the Troubles, each

9 p. 8310 p. 142

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always leaving me with an identical, detestable impression of having been helplessly coerced.’11

O’Faoláin diagnoses this nightmarish sense of disillusionment as en-demic across much of 1920s and 1930s literature in The vanishing hero. He asserts that the English writer, Graham Greene, was also a product of a lost society. Greene’s writing conveys a loss of a specific sense of Englishness and the sense of futility at being born too late to participate in the defin-ing ‘Great War.’

Many critics identify the aesthetic of 1930’s English literature as reflect-ing a fragmented world that was on the brink of crisis12. The generation that came of age in the 1930s (born in the first decade of the twentieth century) were disillusioned before they were fully fledged adults or writers. These middle-class writers spent their childhood years in the peace and securi-ty of Edwardian society. Greene had a happy childhood yet he quickly dis-tances himself from this period as he feels that it was not representative of his life – it is an anomaly in an existence of fear and boredom. Greene em-phasises the difference between pre-war Eden and post-war anguish. In ways of escape Greene points out that the character of Richard Hannay in The thirty-Nine Steps is outdated because the type of moralism and patriot-ism that he displays disappeared after World War One and the Depression. The First World War marked a change in the social fabric of England – from certainty and security to confusion and a sense of impending danger. In-deed Richard Johnstone in The will to believe: novelists of the nineteen thir-ties argues that ‘an increasingly mechanized and standardized ‘post-war’ society seemed to deny the value and function of the individual.’13

Greene experienced this alienation from the self and a pressure to con-form to communal needs in his personal life around 1914. His individual ex-perience in the English public school system is analogous to the greater ca-lamity that was happening on an international scale. In his autobiography Greene marks ‘where the misery of life started’14 from the moment he first attended Berkhamsted Junior School at the age of ten. Although Greene

11 p. 96.12 For example, Richard Johnstone, The will to believe: novelist of the nineteen-thirties, Julian Symons, The thirties and the nineties, Bernard Bergonzi, Reading the thirties: texts and contexts and Samuel Hynes, The Auden generation: literature and politics in the 1930s amongst others.13 p. 3.14 p. 12

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claims he was not directly affected by the First World War, his autobiogra-phy, perhaps unconsciously, draws together the nightmare of history and the nightmare of adolescence.

Boarding school drove Green to depression and fearfulness. What dis-turbed him most about the public school system was the total lack of pri-vacy. In a 1934 essay Greene declares: ‘the intense inescapable communal life cannot be good for anyone.’15 Such forced communal life was being lived out daily in much worse circumstances in the trenches in Europe.

In his autobiography Greene describes adolescence as a never-end-ing ‘agonizing crises of boredom.’16 The ultimate crisis point for Greene came in 1920, when he was sixteen years old.17 On the last day of term, af-ter half-heartedly attempting suicide, he decided to run away from board-ing school. This action leads to his temporary salvation, as Green is sent to London for psychoanalysis as a direct result. It is through the cultured am-bience of London life that Greene finds a release from the claustrophobic middle-class, empiric atmosphere of life in provincial England.

Ways of Escape?

Pursuit of the origins of the self, both as entity and idea, has led us not inwards, as one might expect, into some cul-de-sac of solipsism

bualways outward into a social dimension, to other, to culture, to language and literature.’18

As Greene openly admits at the beginning of A sort of a life his motives for writing his autobiography are ‘a desire to reduce the chaos of experience to some sort of order, a hungry curiosity.’19 The challenge to frame a nar-rative around a life in motion is of aesthetic curiosity to him. The main hunger pang that plagues Greene, however, is the desire to re-create/create himself and a world in which he can comfortably live – a means to escape the dull monotony of everyday life. His previously unsatisfactory means of

15 Schwartz p. 119.16 p. 11717 Note that the moment of realisation or crisis occurred for both Greene and O’Faoláin when they were sixteen years old.18 Eakin, p. 209.19 p. 9

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escaping boredom included playing Russian roulette and getting a good tooth extracted in order to experience the temporary relief of unconscious-ness under the dentist’s ether! It is only through writing that Greene find an adequate means of living safely in reality. Greene identifies writing as a form of therapy: ‘I began to write, and the past lost some of its power – I wrote it out of me.’20 His autobiography is merely an extension of this as-suaging of a longed for escape from the past, and from the pain and tedium of life. Indeed he started writing A sort of life as a form of self therapy after his psychoanalyst advised him to record his past in order to overcome feel-ings of helplessness and depression. Greene’s art helps him to escape the world, whilst allowing him to engage with important social and political movements in volatile and revolutionary countries. Greene reiterates this idea of writing as a form of self-analysis, therapy and a self-soothing device in Ways of escape:

‘sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.’21

The price for such relief is the alienation the writer feels from his fellow man. Greene views himself as a detached observer, who accurately records the life around him, without participating in it. He compares himself to a spy, as both writer and spy are required to overhear, seek motives and ana-lyse character – and both, according to Greene, are unscrupulous.22 From the very beginning of his awakening into the evil and meanness of society in school, Greene constructs himself as a kind of double agent – having al-legiances towards his father (the headmaster) and his anti-establishment peers – torn between two worlds but never fully committing to either. Even his escape hatch (writing) is not a complete break: ‘If there are recurrent themes in my novels it is perhaps because there are recurrent themes in my life. Failure seemed to be one of them.’23

The tension between communal action and individual assertion is played out in both autobiographies. Johnstone identifies alienation as a

20 p. 8021 p. 27522 Greene. A Sort of Life. p. 14123 p. 213.

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predominant mode of viewing the world for a 1930s writer:

‘Out of this sense of individual isolation, the thirties novelists give re-peated expression to the desire for communication with someone who shares one’s values and outlook at a profound level, and who therefore understands.’24

O’Faoláin’s 1993 Vive moi! identifies the end point of his life as the mo-ment he finds ‘symbiosis’ – that is reaching an in-depth, almost spiritual, understanding with another being, whether it be human or divine. Greene found this ideal communication with a higher being, through his faith in the Catholic Church. O’Faoláin realises that each one of us relies on a sig-nificant other or others in order to square the circle of free will versus pre-destination. In many of O’Faoláin’s stories the protagonist escapes from a stultifying, cloying atmosphere of a protective and isolationist society through illicit love affairs with foreign women25. Greene’s fiction also ex-plores the possibility of symbiosis. His characters find redemption, or at least a way of regaining faith, in their adulterous love affairs with women.26

But subsuming the individual into the communal is also problemat-ic (especially for an autobiographer)! The blissful lack of individuality O’Faoláin feels in the company of like-minded volunteers preparing to par-ticipate in the War of Independence is only temporary; as man cannot live or govern on ideals alone. It is worth quoting extensively from the section of O’Faoláin’s autobiography where he narrates his initial idealised impres-sions of collective military life:

It was an autumn day of sun and shower, […] a faint, gentle sprinkling rain began to fall on us, and then the sun floated out again and sparked on every leaf and blade of grass as if some invisible presence had passed over us with a lighted taper, binding us together not only in loyalty and in friendship but in something dearer still that I am not ashamed to call love. In that moment life became one with the emotion of Ireland. In that moment I am sure every one [sic] of us ceased to be single or indi-vidual and became part of one another, in unison, almost like coupling

24 p. 28.25 See for example, ‘Vive La France’, Come Back to Erin, and ‘Liars’.26 See for example, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, and The Comedians.

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lovers. It was a supreme experience to know that you may not only ad-mire your fellow men, or respect them, or even like them, but that you can love so much that they have no faults, no weaknesses, so that you will never distrust them even for a second, and will forgive them every slightest minor fault or flaw as they will yours.27

This lovingly evoked scene of loyalty and a potentially full life is placed straight after O’Faoláin’s discussion of the dangers of provincialism. No criticism means no intellectual advancement; no selfhood means no prob-ing questions and no literary engagement. Immersing the self into the communal is life affirming in some ways but dangerous to individual ad-vancement and cultural development. In the end the self and the society, the personal past and historical developments do not teach anything if they are viewed as competing narratives. They are in dialogue with each other and act as potential guides to each other.

27 p. 137.

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Irish-America & the Northern Ireland

Peace Process: Cultural transformation of identity

in response to crisis

MARTIN RUSSELL

The concepts of crisis and continuity suggest a viable tangibility. It may be conceived that crisis offers challenges to and opportuni-ties for continuity. However it also offers comparable opportuni-ties for disjunction and alleviation. History has taught us that. It

just hasn’t taught how this occurs. The challenges for historical interpre-tation remain in the innate ability to provide just that, interpretation. The history of crisis presides distant from the culture of crisis. History records our knowledge; it refrains from providing understanding. In order to offer understanding, history must synthesise cultural and historical perspec-tives. Such concerns and responses are evident in the historical treatment of the Northern Ireland peace process. The conflict preceding the process was distinctively historical. It was based on religious and territorial claims stemming from colonial times. However if one was to view this particu-lar crisis on strictly historical foundations then many threads of the con-flict would remain aloof. Whilst historical, the generational transferrals of such historical antagonisms are primarily cultural. This conceptuali-sation of history as a culture has important implications for our percep-

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tions of crisis and continuity. It in this paradigm that we will see how the two are inextricably present in history, but how history can inform in rela-tion to the defining characteristics of their relationship. The constraints of this paper arguably allows for a single detailed investigation. I will exam-ine how a culturally historical assessment of one aspect of the Northern Ireland peace process enhances historical understanding. This aspect will be the role of society, in particular Irish-America, in the relation to crisis and continuity.

The role of crisis in Northern Ireland can never be understated. However it is in the overcoming of such crises which has impacted greatly on the his-tory of the region. Last year, a decade on from the Good Friday Agreement, the Mitchell Conference was held. The conference, held at Queen’s Universi-ty, served as a reminder of the progress and historical significance of what was achieved in the region. It also served as a forum of debate and discus-sion of how the peace process may serve as a viable learning curve for con-flict resolution. Whilst undoubtedly a poignant and remarkable event in its own right, the conference suggested a few challenging subtexts to North-ern Ireland. The centrality of the political elite as the key indicators of the process represented an undervalued assessment of the actual transforma-tions that occurred due to the Northern Ireland peace process.1 The cul-ture of crisis resulted in a series of societal transformations. Such transfor-mations had important implications far beyond the geographical borders of Northern Ireland. For example, this paper argues that Irish-American identity was culturally transformed due to their role in the Northern Ire-land peace process.

Irish-America has a long historical link with Northern Ireland. The link between the two is one which is often romanticised. A journey of necessity during the famine which culminates in a return of the diaspora in the form of monies aimed at the removal of British presence in Northern Ireland. The role they play in the process represents a transformation of such ro-mantic notions to one of political potency. Irish-America has a central role in the history of Northern Ireland. It has influence in terms of the creation and sustaining of key actors in the crisis. The support from Irish-America,

1 The Mitchell Conference was held at Queen’s University Belfast on 22-3 May 2008. The keynote speakers were Sen. George Mitchell, Former Taoiseach Bertie Aherne and Former British P.M. Tony Blair (video speech), a worthwhile indication of the centrality of the po-litical elite.

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mainly financial, for the republican movement in Northern Ireland is well documented. There was a constant and substantial supports structure for pro-republican causes. Organisations such as NORAID ensured such that Irish-America was a ‘potential pool of sympathy.’2 However whilst histori-cally viable a transformation of Irish-American society ensured that such structures were replaced by ones which promoted conflict resolution and diplomatic tones. While such transformations have been repeatedly debat-ed within historical accounts of the process, few have analysed why such progressions occurred. I argue that crisis and continuity are central to the reasoning behind the cultural transformation of Irish-America. The con-tinuous and consistent nature of the crises in Northern Ireland, coupled with the continuous unilateral mode of action undertaken by Irish-Amer-ica in response to such crises highlighted one aspect. The mode of interac-tion between Irish-America and Northern Ireland, i.e. aid for republican causes, wasn’t working. It did not provide a practicable model for the re-publican goal, a united Ireland. Hence transformation was not only logical but a necessity. However the modus operandi for such transformations was not as clear. The Irish-American perspective on the Northern Ireland peace process had deep rooted individual and collective antagonisms. In light of this the cultural aspect of crisis became central in evolving attitudes and perceptions of the Irish-American society towards Northern Ireland.

Initially, one must be astute to exact boundaries of Irish-American so-ciety. Irish-America was and to a certain degree still is an ‘imagined’ com-munity. The society has no definitive geographical border and it is not gov-erned by its own organised state structure. In its totality, it represents an affiliation to a common culture, which is a shared set of values and as-sumptions. Hence it was theoretically potent, yet historically their influ-ence was broadly ‘over exaggerated.’3 In the frame of ‘imagined’ commu-nity one of the central protagonists in the creation and sustaining of such communities is memory. The role of memory is central as it offers a de-pendable thread from the imagined to the perceived reality of the culture of the community. Hence it is in the frame of memory that we will examine the cultural transformation of Irish-American identity in response to cri-ses in Northern Ireland. The preponderance of pro-republican sentiment in

2 Paul Dixon, ‘Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process on the World Stage’ in Political science quarterly, vol. 121, no. 1 (2006) p. 79.3 Author interview with Conor O’Clery, 23 July 2008.

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Irish-America in the initial interaction with Northern Ireland represents a system of memory largely dependent on a singular interpretation of histo-ry. This process relational aspect of memory needed to be overcome in or-der to understand the role Irish-American ultimately played in the peace process. Early Irish-American involvement in Northern Ireland may be seen as subsidiary of generational identity and transference. It has been argued that memory and memories are passed through generations. Such narratives are structured to maintain and support existing frames of his-tory, in order to act as a ‘crucible of meaning rather than a vessel of truth.’4 In the Northern Ireland case study, the role of Irish-America would high-light such processes. The cultural transferral of ideologies through memo-ry ensured a prolonged emphasis on pro-republican stances. However the continuous evolutions of crises in Northern Ireland challenged such ideol-ogies. The ‘culture of crisis’ provided the opportunity for the re-interpreta-tion of generational memories. Hence history was challenged via culture. This process represents a model of history which challenges historical re-sponsibility; such analysis is often offered in relation to treatment of the Holocaust.5 Acts such as aiding republican interests convey a sense of his-torical responsibility. It has been argued that through processes such as generational memory, concepts like historical responsibility remain root-ed in the collective identity of a group. It is the cultural transformation of Irish-American identity via such processes that we become aware of the evolving nature of the relationship between crisis and continuity.

Furthermore, it is essential to locate and discuss the cultural outlets which facilitated such transformations. One of the most problematic is-sues involved in such transformations is the transcendence of the individ-ual to the collective. The cultural outlets which harboured the transforma-tion needed to be remain logical to their collective audience in order to be sustainable as a paradigm of belief. For example, the innovative diplomatic emphasis of Irish-America in the mid 1990s needed to offer a suitable and preferable context to the Irish-American identity traits of the earlier dec-ades. The most central apparatus for such agendas is primarily the media. With the onset of globalisation and the subsequent compression of time

4 Jeffrey K. Olick, The politics of regret: on collective memory and historical responsibility (London, 2007) p. 97.5 Olick, The politics of regret. Olick argues that the Holocaust offers a definitive example of the relationship between generational identity and historical responsibility.

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and space the fluidity of media reporting proved influential in the transfor-mation. The cultural modes of news production and reception offered fresh discourse on Northern Ireland, especially in the U.S. The centrality of Irish-American newspapers, such as the Irish Voice, gave greater access to the situation in Northern Ireland. It often acted as forum of debate with sev-eral editorials ran in conjunction with events in Northern Ireland. Argu-ably it was in its role as a source of access which was its greatest influence. The Irish-American perspective and agenda for Northern Ireland remained distant prior to such cultural assessment. The issues in Northern Ireland were distant, both geographically and ideologically. They were stemming from issues such as memory and responsibility. However with the pro-duction and supply of constant news, particularly visual discourse, the challenges to such archaic perceptions grew. The impact of this was fur-thered by the frameworks of the crisis, which included death and morality. These characteristics are specifically conditioning to re-conceptualisation and re-evaluation of policies and belief.6 One of the main facets of Irish-American identity, pro-republican, was challenged. Even Northern Ireland couldn’t resist the ‘logic of globalisation.’7 However whilst theoretically log-ical such challenges needed to transcend from individual mindsets to col-lective prominence. This was done through a shift which occurred much earlier than the cultural transformation of Irish-American identity.

The subtle shift in the processes of cultural production which illustrat-ing the weaknesses in the Irish-American perspective on Northern Ireland was matched by a subtle political shift also. Whilst the media and other cultural outlets provided suitable forums for debate and revision, they also needed a formidable platform to base such new conceptualisations. This platform was provided by a shift which occurred decades earlier. Many of the Irish-American sympathisers in Congress had long earlier realigned their ideologies along more nuanced settings. The central figures had de-parted from radical beliefs to the more centred pro-constitutionalist na-tionalist stance.8 The debate over such a move is already well documented in history. Many argue they saw it as a necessity in order to maintain their influence within the political domain as a more subtle agenda rather than

6 Lawrence Taylor, ‘Presentation on moral geography,’ Clinton Institute for American Studies, 15/04/2008.7 Dixon, ‘Performing the Northern Ireland peace process’ p. 61.8 Briand, R.J. ‘Bush, Clinton, Irish-America and the Irish peace process’ in Political quar-terly, Apr-Jun 2002, vol. 73 Issue 2 pp 171-173.

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pro-republican was more likely to bring success. This would seem logical but others see it as a mere focal point to ensure electorate support. After all, Irish-America could be ‘a powerful group.’9 The debate is to some de-gree important but I would argue that the main point to this example of po-litical innovation is not the reasoning behind it but the implications it had. The individualist concerns raised by the cultural interrogation of the Irish-American perspective would arguably have stayed individualistic without a collective platform. This platform was the political alignment with the new perceptions on Northern Ireland. This is one of the many ‘unsung fac-tors’ in the Northern Ireland peace process.10 The centrality of crisis and continuity in this narrative is paramount. It highlights how history offers us a record of the two but not examining why the two interact in the man-ner in which they do. It is clear that Irish-American identity relied greatly on crisis initially as a source of continuity. The conflict remained an ide-ological one which was centrally supported on a singular interpretation. The relationship between crisis and continuity was one of tangible logic; in times of crisis sustain a continuity which would serve a collective ideology. However the cultural reinterpretation of such perspectives drew new em-phasis on Irish-American identity. It relayed a sense of disparity between the crisis and logical continuity. Irish-American ideology evolved with the evolution of the crisis. This offers new discourse on the relationship of crisis and continuity. The coherent framework for the relationship of the two was now one of fluidity. Ultimately, the case of the cultural transformation of Irish-American identity due to crisis offers understanding of the relation-ship between crisis and continuity not just a record of it.

The theoretical underpinning of the analysis offered thus far would ar-guably be undervalued unless it is applied to the course of history of the Northern Ireland peace process. It is in this framework that the lessons that can be learnt from the relationship of crisis and continuity become clear. It also becomes evident their implications in the social and politi-cal arenas. The Irish-American role is the peace process is indeed unsung. It is often treated as an auxiliary focus of the role of the Clinton adminis-tration. Many have argued that U.S. intervention in Northern Ireland was a systematic venture aimed at the temperance of a huge electorate base.

9 Author interview with Mitchell B. Reiss, 17 July 2008.10 Stevenson, Jonathon. ‘Peace in Northern Ireland: why now?’ in Foreign policy, No. 112, Autumn 1998 p. 41.

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Indeed it is noted that the initial discussion on U.S. intervention came at an electorate foundation. Prior to the 1992 elections, a group of Irish-Amer-icans, led by Niall O’Dowd, met with Clinton to discuss the issue. A meet-ing which resulted in the group being ‘very taken’ with Clinton’s ‘in-depth knowledge’ of Northern Ireland.11 However to limit the frame of reasoning for intervention to electorate demands is illogical as there is ‘no empiri-cal evidence to show that Irish-America vote as a bloc on any issue.’12 Pri-marily, the U.S. role in Northern Ireland was a foreign policy intervention. It was part of a wider consensus towards foreign policy. The Clinton ad-ministration pursued a structured foreign policy following the demands of what was labelled the Clinton Doctrine, a doctrine of democratic enlarge-ment through market economies. The interventions undertaken by the ad-ministration were aimed at creating such models. The issue in Northern Ireland catered such beliefs on several findings. The conflict disregarded a harmonious democratic footing and as such arguably infringed on human rights issued. In light of this Northern Ireland represented a viable option for intervention by the U.S. However it was still only an option. The tradi-tional apparatus for deciding intervention in foreign policy remained do-mestic audience cost.13 This argues that successful foreign policy creation is weighed against possible domestic costs in order to establish its possi-bilities of success. Northern Ireland was a ‘win-win’ situation for the Clin-ton administration. Initially, domestic costs were at a minimum. It would not require any placement of troops or significant funding. It was some-what sympathetic to his doctrine and offered a possible legacy for his lack-lustre display on foreign policy, ‘Clinton: the man who brought peace to Northern Ireland.’14 He was regarded much more for his economic traits than foreign policy displays. However, while somewhat of an ideal inter-vention for Clinton it faced one difficult task. It has to be compatible to the concerns of Irish-America. It was arguably the only possible domestic cost. However, somewhat opportunistic, Clinton himself was astutely aware of the cultural transformation of Irish-American identity. It was their align-

11 Author interview with Niall O’Dowd. 20 June 2008.12 Author correspondence with Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.13 Matthew A. Baum, ‘Going private: public opinion, presidential rhetoric, and the domes-private: public opinion, presidential rhetoric, and the domes-tic politics of audience costs in U.S. foreign policy crises’, The journal of conflict resolution, Vol.. 48, 5 (October 2004) p. 606.14 Timothey J. Lynch, Turf war: the Clinton administration and Northern Ireland, (Alder-shot, 2004) p. 55.

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ment with democratic idealism which fitted with his democratic facets. It is in this context that the impact of the crisis and continuity becomes clear. Irish-America transforms from an ‘imagined’ community to one of politi-cal entity in contributing to U.S. intervention in Northern Ireland because of a dynamic interplay of crisis and continuity. As a result it arguably re-defined central concepts in American history. The nature of the American nation and state are redrawn with the successful impact of Irish-America on U.S. foreign policy. These cultural undertones convey the historical sig-nificance and lessons of crisis and continuity.

Such lessons provide several reference points for current climates. In particular U.S. foreign policy faces the midst of crises. The lessons learnt in this episode resonate with current concerns. It is obvious from the nar-rative explored above that crisis and continuity provide a dual purpose. It may be construed that crisis offers a sensible logic to follow a traditional continuity. A prime example of this would be in the aftermath of 9/11 when U.S. society, as a whole, reiterated a nationalistic tone. It was one of ‘uncon-ditional loyalty’ and belief in the American model, epitomised by unwaver-ing support and ‘platforms for heroes’ in the initial foreign policy responses of the Bush administration.15 The subsequent discourse of discontent ex-emplifies the comparable paradigm of the relationship between crisis and continuity. The challenges to later foreign policy shows how crisis may also impact upon the transformation of identity constructs. Such was the al-leviation from continuity in the U.S. that the most memorable aspect of the recent election was Barack Obama’s promise of change. Change itself indicates a movement away from a sense of fluid continuity. It indicates an alternative continuity, usually innovative. Such schools of thought must be located within the Northern Ireland context as they provide a precur-sor to such developments in the U.S. The transformation of Irish-America, primarily cultural, represents the paradox of crisis and continuity. It does not estimate or lay claim to establishing the most effective relationship be-tween crisis and continuity. It does however argue that the relationship be-tween the two must be dynamic and fluid depending on the conditions of the crisis. The suitability of such transformations will undoubtedly be mer-ited upon their longevity and success. The role of Irish-America in North-ern Ireland has yielded significant success.

15 Uriel Rosenthal, ‘September 11: public administration and the study of crisis and cri-sis management’ in Administration and society, Vol. 34, (May, 2003) p. 129.

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The consequences of cultural transformations, such as Irish-American identity, are regularly tested in the aftermath of their conception. North-ern Ireland provided many such tests. In the immediate aftermath of the peace process one of the most devastating events of the Northern Ireland conflict occurred, Omagh was bombed, a horrific terrorist attack which re-sulted in numerous deaths. However the transformed system of ideological beliefs, partly constructed within Irish-America, sustained the framework of democracy and partnership. Whilst the bombing was overwhelmingly met with disdain and condemnation, the relationship of crisis and conti-nuity was challenged. Somewhat inevitably Omagh became the acid crisis for the new ideologies initiated by Irish-America. There could have been re-taliation, there was not. The cultural transformation of identity caused by crisis was challenged by crisis. The remarkable aspect of the response was not that it reaffirmed beliefs but that crisis again dealt continuity. It seems from Omagh that if a change in continuity occurs, as did in this scenario, that such change is afforded challenges. The strong stance in favour of the initial deviation alludes to traditionalist tendencies, similar to the reac-tion post 9/11. However it is traditionalist only in concept. It is continu-ity in practice. Similar to this, there has been a recent explosion in terror-ist activities in Northern Ireland. Tragically two British soldiers have been killed as a result. However it again served as an indication of the success-ful nature of the realignment of the crisis and continuity relationship in Northern Ireland. The attacks were widely condemned. The two episodes described above seem to clarify one defining feature of this debate; con-tinuity will only be tolerated in times of crisis if successful. If not, allevia-tion occurs and subsequently this will be held accountable to subsequent success.

The concepts of crisis and continuity suggest a viable tangibility. History has recorded many terminals in which this is true. However it has limited our understanding to such episodes. It is only in the academic interpreta-tion of such events that we will gain insight into the processes which in-form the relationship. The cultural transformation of Irish-American iden-tity in the Northern Ireland peace process is one such event. The argument here is that the model provided by this case study is not the definitive para-digm for crisis and continuity. It does however suggest significant implica-tions. It shows how the relationship between the two is constantly evolv-ing on many fronts. We are fortunate that the academic realm reflects such evolving frameworks and we can be optimistic that further investigation

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will enhance our understanding of the matter. The history of the North-ern Ireland peace process remains one of elites and success. The history of crisis and continuity remains one of records. However they are both much more than that, something history is slowly learning.

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The philosophy of the bomb: Dynamite & the fear

in late Victorian Britain

SHANE KENNA

Between 1881 and 1885 Britain experienced its first sustained terror-ist assault in what became known as the Fenian dynamite cam-paign. From January 1881 to January 1885, Fenianism would mount a series of explosions on the London underground railway, Lon-

don railway stations, and London city centre, where they destroyed Scot-land Yard the headquarters of the Special Irish Branch, exploded a bomb in the Tower of London and successfully detonated an explosive within the chamber of the House of Commons, in the red letter day of their dyna-mite campaign – Dynamite Saturday. In the course of their campaign they would successfully establish an air of fear and paranoia amongst the Brit-ish public, their choice of targets serving to indicate that a desire to dis-rupt the common experience of daily life by introducing fear into the sim-plest everyday experiences from the boarding of public transport, to going shopping, one now risked the potential of death or injury by dynamite, the psychological effect was immense on public opinion. This campaign was maintained by two groups within Fenianism, the skirmishers and Clan na Gael.

The Skirmishers were a small splinter group of the Clan based around the veteran Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. In the skirmishing strat-egy recruits were instructed how to manufacture dynamite and educated in various techniques of handling and transporting of nitro-glycerine at a dynamite school in Brooklyn, often under a mysterious so-called ‘Russian specialist,’ Professor Mezzerhoff. Upon graduation they were expected to

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leave for Britain, and recruit Irishmen into skirmishing cells for the pur-pose of mounting bombing raids in Britain. Clan na Gael by contrast es-tablished a more familiar mode of guerrilla recruitment: the employment of young, alienated and angry men, inclined to undertake desperate acts of retribution. Such criteria served to dehumanise the enemy and was cal-culated to increase their inclination for desperate acts. Running parallel to the undeniable inclination toward retribution, amongst those selected to carry out explosions lay a powerful bond, a belief that nations as well as governments deserved equal punishment for their misdeeds against their mother country – a staunch belief in the employment of physical force as the only means to bring English attention to their political grievance.

As the dynamite campaign was an aspect of a transatlantic conspira-cy, there was a growing belief amongst British political elites for the es-tablishment of a centralised response at a national level. Such a response needed to be directed by a central figurehead organising an elaborate sys-tem of trans-national intelligence. If such a system was to succeed as an intelligence arm of the State it required by necessity to operate in total se-crecy. By its very nature such a system would automatically be different to any established means of policing, and would employ strategies of sur-veillance and the possible undermining of the established rule of law. This was represented by the establishment of an Assistant Undersecretary of Police and Crime at Dublin Castle, initially under Henry Brackenbury and then Edward George Jenkinson, a Special Irish Branch at Scotland Yard and the reorganisation of Britain’s mode of consular intelligence gather-ing in America, acting as a counter-terrorist response. That this response employed Black operations and public measures to prevent and often in-spire planned outrage, drawing out bombers and spreading a counter-ter-ror within their ranks, using methods counter to the established rule of law cannot be denied.

At 7.50pm on the evening of 30 October 1883 a number of commuters boarded a Metropolitan Railway train at Praed Street station bound for Edg-ware Road.1 As the train began to enter the second tunnel en route, a bomb exploded, injuring seventy-two people. Three train carriages were serious-ly damaged, their windows and woodworks shattered, two rear third class carriages were discovered in a state of ‘complete wreckage.’ Reporting the scene The Pall Mall Gazette held, ‘the line for some half a dozen yards is

1 Now Paddington station.

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scattered with glass, and the broken panel work of the carriages and two or three crumpled carriage lamps also lie about.’2 The Times, assessing the damage, found ‘there was a hole in the brickwork of the tunnel wall reach-ing to a height of perhaps 15 or 18 inches from the ground and about eight or nine inches across.’3 Although the official report lowered The Times’ es-timate to ‘a vertical crater about 12 inches high, 13 inches wide and 4 inches to six inches deep.’4 The force of the explosion was so great that:

‘For a distance of about seven or eight feet the iron gas pipe, of about 2 in. diameter, fixed along the wall at a height of 8in. from the ground and supplying the station was broken off and bent upwards into the shape of one of those hoops which are put across vans to hold a canvass cover, while laterally the force of the explosion had twisted into most fantastic shapes the hollow iron rod by which the points are worked. Further the bundle of telegraph wires carried along the wall with a height of 4ft or 5ft from the ground were torn apart... the windows of the signal box were blown out... 60 or 70 yards from the mouth of the tunnel, the windows of the offices in the direction of the explosion and the large plate glass windows of the re-freshment gallery were completely smashed.’5

The rail network was not yet spared, within minutes a further bomb ex-ploded at Charing Cross Railway station. The bomber throwing the device from a window aboard a Metropolitan Railway carriage as it moved out of the station towards Westminster. Almost immediately the public hoped it was hoped the blast was the result of a gas explosion, but scorn was poured on this theory, and thinking of the first explosion, ‘their contemporaneous-ness, both taking place within fifteen minutes,’ seemed for many to indi-cate mischief – London’s Metropolitan Railways were under attack.6 One of the simplest most common aspects of daily life, public transport, was be-ing targeted for the purpose of causing panic and disruption through the spread of terror in the name of a political grievance.

Under the mandate of the Explosives Act of 1883, established resulting from the actions of an earlier Fenian dynamite cell, operating in London,

2 The Pall Mall Gazette, 31 October 1883. 3 The Times, 31 October 1883. 4 Cundill, Captain J.P & Colonel Vivien Majendie, Report to the Right Honourable the Sec-retary of State for Home Department on the circumstances attending two explosions which oc-curred on the underground railway London on the 30th October 1883 ([C-3856], H.C. 1883 p.4).

5 The Times, 31 October 1883. 6 The Manchester Times, 3 November 1883.

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a commission of inquiry was established under the chairmanship of Colo-nel Majendie, an explosives expert at the Home Office. Majendie’s inquiry discovered beyond doubt the railway explosions were premeditated, the bombers aim ‘to produce explosions on the Inner Circle of the London Un-derground Railway, at points as nearly as possible opposite to one another and, as nearly as might be the same time.’7 Each explosion was calculated to effectively arouse public alarm and disruption, challenging the common experience of daily life, introducing terror into one of the simplest errands, public transport. After close inspection of the destroyed third class rear carriage from Praed Street, Majendie’s assistant Dr. Dupré, found startling evidence, discovering pieces of tin embedded in the underside of the top footboard of the wrecked carriage. These were the remains of a commonly used dynamite detonator, proving the bombers had employed nitro-glyc-erine. The commission next wondered how this dynamite was smuggled into the tunnel. No one had seen anyone entering or leaving the orifice, all witnesses to the explosion confirmed, as far as they were aware no one had entered the tunnel.

The commissioners investigated the theory that dynamite had been thrown from the moving train. This they argued was less likely to put the bomber at risk, allowing ample opportunity to escape during the result-ing panic:

‘The throwing or dropping of the charge from a train appears to recom-mend itself by several considerations... In the first place it was the plan which offered the greatest chance of effecting two explosions at remote points as nearly as possible simultaneously. In the next place, it solves in the simplest possible manner, the difficulty of getting into tunnels. In the third place, it solves in a particularly convenient way the not less important problem of getting out of the tunnel unobserved. Fourthly, it places the operator in a very advantageous position being in a process rapid conveyance from the scene of explosion even before the charge touched the ground. Lastly it gives him the choice of any of the numer-ous Underground Railway from which to effect his exit.’8

7 Cundill, Captain J.P & Colonel Vivien Majendie, Report to the Right Honourable the Sec-retary of State for Home Department on the circumstances attending two explosions which oc-curred on the underground railway London on the 30th October 1883 ([C-3856], H.C. 1883 p. 13).

8 Cundill, Captain J.P & Colonel Vivien Majendie, Report to the Right Honourable the Sec-retary of State for Home Department on the circumstances attending two explosions which oc-

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As 1884 opened, it was incredulous to think the drama of the previous year would not be repeated. The October explosions had been intended to specifically disrupt the common experience of daily life in reply to Britain’s Irish policy. In order to arouse terror the bombers had introduced a degree of fear into one of the simplest methods of daily travel – public transport. Each time a commuter boarded a train, the potential of death by dynamite was introduced into their life, as public transport now become a potential risk to one’s safety, psychologically straining the citizen, unaware of when or where the next explosion would take place.

The public could take little solace. Fenianism had broken through the city’s defences on several occasions despite increased vigilance and protec-tion. They had not only introduced fear into people’s lives, they had sapped the morale and confidence of the city, which was increasingly under lock-down. By February public fear was again appealed to, when a serious se-curity breach took place within the London Rail network. On 25 February, a Clan emissary Harry Burton had placed a time-delayed bomb disguised as a bag within the left luggage cloakroom of London’s Victoria Station. At three minutes past one in the morning Burton’s bomb had exploded. As the public awoke, they were again aghast wondering was the explosion an ac-cident or an attack:

‘Was it by accident or design? There is no saying. As a matter of course, the charge of having perpetrated the diabolical act is laid at the doors of Fenianism. But really it must appear to calm, unprejudiced, dispassion-ate minds that there is no positive proof for the accusation.’9

A thorough investigation revealed that the explosion was in fact by de-sign. The force of the explosion had gutted the inside of the Station and the contents of the cloakroom ripped to shreds and charred. Colonel Majend-ie was immediately summoned, and making his way to Victoria Station, concluded the explosion was beyond doubt the work of dynamite, noting ‘great destruction and ample evidence of the operation of very powerful explosive.’10

curred on the underground railway London on the 30th October 1883 ([C-3856], H.C. 1883 p.14).

9 Reynolds Weekly Newspaper, 2 March 1884. 10 Colonel Pearson to William Vernon Harcourt, 26 February 1884 (TNA HO 144/133/A347707). Many concluded the continuing bombing campaign would change the mode of warfare forever, this was underlined by a strong appraisal of modern scientific develop-

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Waking up to the news of a further explosion, public opinion was justi-fiably terrified, the bombing campaign had again struck the heart of the metropolis, breaking through all defences and vigilance, targeting the simplest of all commuting commodities, public transport. In what was undoubtedly a new form of warfare, the bomber was an invisible adver-sary who could strike at any moment unsuspected and unknown by those around him, hidden and protected by anonymity, on each occasion threat-ening the common experience of daily life in the name of a political griev-ance, unrecognisable and apparently invincible to all. Such was the threat, and feeling of crisis that one newspaper noted, in the wake of the blast, that the spread of terror was becoming universal, and swelling to the di-mensions of a national scare. One newspaper capturing this sense of dread found ‘there is no saying what outrage may take place next, or who will be their next victims,’ wherever the public congregated, city centre streets, shopping emporiums, taverns, clubs and railway stations, they were all po-tential targets.11

While there was no way of predicting the exact location of the next ex-plosion, the Victoria Station blast, while calculated to achieve maximum publicity, was to be followed by further explosions at other railway stations. The Victoria bomber had been working in unison with another bomber as part of a dynamite cell, and had smuggled significant quantities of Ameri-can dynamite into Britain. The other bomber had deposited similar dis-guised dynamite in further Railway Stations. The police working from the principle that other stations may be endangered by similar attacks, imme-diately set about searching cloakrooms at other London termini, franti-cally trying to prevent a similar explosion. Quickly evacuating the stations with the aid of railway staff, police officers discovered comparable packag-es at Charing Cross, Paddington and Ludgate Hill, all of which had failed to explode. At Charing Cross an American cloth bag was discovered in the cloakrooms containing forty-five American dynamite slabs.

ments, ‘a few years ago all expression of dominant physical force was monopolised by gov-ernments. Cannon and muskets were the only means of making war, and only military organisations possessed them, but the recent extensive advances in the chemistry of explo-sives have introduced novel conditions. The causing of those catastrophes which overawe peaceable communities is no longer impossible to small bodies of men or even individuals,’ The New York Tribune, 18 April 1884. 11 The Glasgow Herald, 29 February 1884.

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Conducting a thorough examination of the explosive compounds, Ma-jendie was amazed by the improvisation employed and their time-delayed mechanism encased in a tin box containing a modified alarm clock:

‘The metal back had been removed, and a small nickel-plated vest pock-et pistol was fastened by means of a copper wire to the movement, and the winding hand of the clock had been turned down and so fixed that when the alarm turned down one end of the handle, as it travelled round, would impinge upon the trigger and fire the pistol.’12

Majendie was astounded. For twelve hours the device had been wound, allowing the bomber ample room to manoeuvre and leave the scene of the attack. Its pistol fully loaded and cocked, the small tin box placed in a bag filled with twenty-one pounds of dynamite, some old clothing, and news-papers to disguise the contents even if the locks were forced. The blast of the pistol to ignite the explosive and lead to devastation.

The explosive devices discovered at the London termini were intended to be part of a spectacular explosion, set an hour apart from another. The bombers making ‘a deliberate effort... to cause a wholesale scare and de-struction of railway property,’ ensuring a simultaneous explosion along the Metropolitan Rail network, disrupting daily life the following morning as London awoke in panic, to the vision of an invisible and seemingly invin-cible foe, unrelenting in their desire to inflict terror, holding citizens, as well as their government accountable for Britain’s Irish policy.13 Looking at the explosion in a comparative context, Colonel Majendie agreed conclud-ing the Railway plot was quite similar to the 1883 Underground explosions, holding the Fenian objective was to arouse panic and confusion by means of effecting the explosions.

While the police investigation was continuing, Jenkinson had been co-opted to London by Home Secretary William Harcourt, to counter the Fe-nian threat. As part of his co-option Jenkinson favoured an official posi-

12 Ford, Colonel A. & Colonel Vivien Majendie, Report to the Right Honourable Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the circumstances attending an explosion at the Victoria Railway Station, on 26 February 1884 and the attempted explosions at Charing Cross, Padding-ton and Ludgate Hill railway stations ([C-3972], H.C. 1884 p. 5).13 The Annual Register: a review of public events at home and abroad for the year 1884 (Lon-don, 1885), p. 161.

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tion in the Home Office so as to exercise real authority over the different British police forces. The Spymaster feared that if employed in an unofficial capacity, there was a danger of no continuity in his work. He wanted steps to be taken that ‘no risk should be run of a change of system, or of a break in the chain, which would almost certainly take place in a change of minis-try or even the appointment of a new Secretary of State.’14 Jenkinson argued that only permanency could safeguard counter Fenian activities, giving him the authority to undertake his work and counter the Fenian menace. Despite earlier speculation, the Home Office could not deliver permanency for Jenkinson. Against his better judgement the spymaster was persuaded to work within the ministry in an unofficial capacity within the jurisdic-tion of the Irish Government.

Secrecy was key to Jenkinson’s operations and he concluded ‘if the work of uprooting the secret Fenian organisation, and of defeating the plans of the dynamite conspirators, is to be well and thoroughly done Great Brit-ain and Ireland must be treated as one.’15 If interpreted in such a man-ner, Jenkinson wished to use Irish Police in London for his own operations. Jenkinson specifically wished to use the Irish police force in Britain. While this was not novel and Irish police were stationed at the major British ports in advisory roles and for purposes of surveillance, Jenkinson’s concept of treating Britain and Ireland as one, however, could see the Irish police tak-ing a more proactive role in alien jurisdictions. The spymaster would thus challenge traditional policing methods of picketing employed by Scotland Yard, with a more aggressive style of political policing, interfering if neces-sary with the work of Scotland Yard believing the maturation of dynamite conspiracy was far better than its prevention.

As part of this aggressive political policing, Jenkinson would establish a controversial network of spies, informers and bogus dynamite enthusiasts, alongside a reinforcement of Irish policemen, whom he knew and trusted. Upon arrival he ‘almost immediately set about posting police from the Roy-al Irish Constabulary and London Metropolitan Police at ports all around Britain and on the continent,’ intending to prevent, and supervise if nec-essary, the importation of explosive materials into Britain.16 These police

14 Edward George Jenkinson, Memorandum to the Secretary of State for the Home Office, 22 June 1885 (TNA 144/721/10757). 15 Memorandum to the home office from Edward George Jenkinson, 6 March 1884 (TNA 144/721/10757). 16 Porter, Bernard, Origins of the vigilant state, (London 1987), p. 50, The police were in-

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officers at British ports were to be used to search baggage and note suspi-cious characters for intelligence purposes.17 While this work was carried out by British police, the RIC, theoretically having an advisory role, were secretly instructed by Jenkinson to engage in covert policing, and instruct-ed to share as little information with Scotland Yard as possible.

Relying on a web of espionage, Jenkinson had received information of an imminent dynamite attack sometime in May 1884. His information was proved correct. Clan na Gael bombers were busily organising metropoli-tan bombing raids in the heart of the City and on the night of 30 May, Lon-don was again rattled to the report of simultaneous Fenian bombings, the invisible enemy again bombarding the capital city.

The explosions began at twenty past nine that evening, the first two tar-gets in St. James Square near Pall Mall, where the Junior Carlton Club and the London residence of Sir Watkin Wynn MP were located. The explosive had been placed on a stone floor under the kitchen windows of the club-house. With 22 inside, the clubhouse was completely wrecked and its sta-bility questioned. A scene of panic overwhelmed the kitchens, as it was plunged into darkness in what was described as a scene marked by an alarming tone with a number of servants and employees rushing out of the building screaming and clamouring.

In the following panic, London was again aghast. Within seconds a further explosion was heard at the Member of Parliament Watkin Wynn’s home. The bomb had been placed on a stone windowsill, underneath the window of his ‘morning room.’ While people were inside the room at the time of detonation, no one was killed or seriously injured.18 The house, while receiving little struc-tural damage, was rocked and shattered, its occupants rattled.

structed to watch all Irish Americans, and if necessary check the luggage of suspected in-dividuals arriving at British Ports (TNA MEPO 3); see also Edward George Jenkinson to the Earl Spencer, 3 April 1884 (BL Althorp papers, Add 77033). 17 Edward George Jenkinson to the Earl Spencer, 24 March 1884 (BL Althorp papers, Add 77033). Jenkinson had also received a memorandum of possible measures to prevent dyna-mitard explosions in public places from the former Assistant Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, Thomas Marcus Brownrigg. Brownrigg suggested that such as at Brit-ish ports, ‘careful observation should be made of persons entering public buildings with par-cels or other luggage – for it is highly possible to try an explosion in an interior, which if done would be productive of the most disastrous results.’ Thomas Marcus Brownrigg, former As-sistant Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, to Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Home Department, 31 December 1884 (TNA HO 144/84/A7266). 18 Edward George Jenkinson to the Earl Spencer, 31 May 1884 (BL Althorp papers Add 77033).

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Within minutes a heavily symbolic explosion took place underneath the headquarters of Special Irish Branch at Scotland Yard. Fenian bombers had struck a significant artery of the British government’s war against Fenian-ism. This explosion was spectacular, proving not only to London, but to the world the Fenian bomber could attack the very body committed to its de-feat, investigating, monitoring and ultimately subverting its activities with-in the very epicentre of the State. This explosion alone had won Fenianism intense publicity and audacious notoriety.19 The blast was undoubtedly a sig-nificant propaganda blow against London’s defences, gravely illustrating the States inability to protect its own citizens, against the onslaught of an invis-ible trans-Atlantic menace.

The Special Irish Branch was housed on the first floor of the former sur-geon-generals office, in Great Scotland Yard, a public thoroughfare in Lon-don. Opposite was a public house, The Rising Sun, thus the central organisa-tion committed to countering the Fenian threat was poorly situated in an open public district, frequented by thousands of daily commuters using the thoroughfare. The bombers took advantage of this opportunity, immersing themselves in the faceless crowd, striking and disappearing. Directly be-neath the detective’s office, on the ground floor was a public toilet, and de-spite the security threat, it was openly used. The Scotland Yard bomber had availed of the Achilles’ heel provided by the public toilet, placing the bomb in a urinal, and had audaciously walked past the policeman on duty at the toilet entrance, acknowledging the officer as he entered and left.

Following the blast ‘one policeman was hurt, a few cabmen and horses were bruised and frightened, but there was no loss of life.’ The explosion had blown the policeman against a nearby wall. Receiving serious injuries to the head and concussion of the brain he was removed to hospital.20 The build-ing was dangerously damaged, the explosion causing ‘a gap nearly 20ft. high and 15ft. wide’ while some 524 panes of glass were broken.21 The Rising Sun

19 Jenkinson could not understand how this humiliating explosion could have happened, writing to his confidant The Earl Spencer he lamented, ‘I can’t think how anyone approached the detectives office in Scotland Yard unobserved. The constables can’t have been well post-ed, or can’t have been looking out. I told them a fortnight ago that there could be an explo-sion before the end of the month, and warned them to be on the look out.’ Edward George Jenkinson to the Earl Spencer, 31 May 1884 (BL Althorp Papers Add 77033). 20 William Clarke (Police Officer number A 417), see also The Annual Register: a review of public events at home and abroad for the year 1884 (London, 1885), p. 17. 21 The London Illustrated News, 7 June 1884; Colonel A. Ford and Colonel Vivien Majendie,

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saloon, felt the full force of the blast, being completely destroyed, its plate glass front ‘shattered to atoms.’22 Outside the pub, in an almost apocalyp-tic scene the keeper of a nearby cabman’s shelter, recalled ‘dense masses of smoke which drifted before the wind [making it] impossible to say what had happened. All was horror and confusion.’23 In the resulting confusion a ru-mour quickly spread that people were trapped under the rubble. Police and able-bodied bystanders frantically searched for survivors amongst the de-bris. The rumour, illustrating the panic and fear of public opinion, talking it-self into crisis, proved baseless no one was found.

London was not yet to be spared, and a further attack was intended at the base of Nelson’s Column in Piccadilly Square. A bag had been laid near one of the ornate lions guarding the column, containing 18 slabs of Amer-ican dynamite. They were connected together through a line and one was found to be carrying a fuse. The device had no clockwork mechanism but employed a safety-blasting fuse, which had not been ignited. Had an explo-sion taken place, there presumably would have been a disastrous cost on hu-man life and public perceptions of safety. Trafalgar Square was a popular public space, and was always an area full of people. Had the bomb exploded there was a strong possibility that significant numbers could have been seri-ously injured or killed.

The Metropolitan police reacted with an intense vigour. All leave for offic-ers was cancelled in order to maximise the police response at the height of crisis. Despite such vigour, however, their response was a disorganised and confused, and it was strongly apparent to all that it had been grossly caught off guard. Jenkinson surveying the aftermath recalled:

The whole affair is so idiotic and contemptible that if it were not that such a scare is caused and life endangered one could feel entitled to laugh at it... You cannot imagine what confusion there was at Scotland Yard. There is not a man there with a heard on his shoulders. There was no one to give orders, well no one who even could find a telegram to Sir. W. Harcourt.’24

Report to the right honourable Secretary of State for the Home Department on the circumstanc-es attending three explosions which occurred in Scotland Yard , and St. James Square, on the night of the 30th May 1884, and an attempted explosion in Trafalgar Square, at or about the same time ([C-4077], H.C. 1884 p. 7).

22 The London Illustrated News, 7 June 1884. 23 The Freeman’s Journal, 31 May 1884. 24 Edward George Jenkinson to the Earl Spencer, 31 May 1884 (BL Althorp Papers Add. 77033).

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To conclude, Fenian bombers were undoubtedly the progenitor of mod-ern terrorist strategy, their methods were innovate, their targets designed to spread fear; terrorism as a strategy did not necessarily seek to kill, but to inspire terror. Similar to twentieth century modes of terrorism, the dy-namite campaign sought to prove to the government the impossibility of holding Ireland - spiralling violence and bomb attacks in Britain, com-bined with a costly counter Guerrilla response, proving to the British that they could not hold the island, Ireland becoming a drain on the treasury’s finances and an embarrassment to public sensibilities, the resulting public panic forcing the government to a counter reaction legitimising the guer-rilla aims amongst their grassroots and expected supporters, the cycle of violence intended to bring the government to terms.

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