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‘Stretch out the hand of forbearance’
In January 1921 the Irish War of Independence entered its most terrible
phase. On New Year’s Day British soldiers burned down seven
houses in Midleton, Co Cork. Reprisals of this kind, all too familiar
over the previous six months, now had full Government approval for
the first time. It was a clear admission by Prime Minister David
Lloyd George that he had no remedy other than naked force.
Sinn Féin, representing a clear majority of the Irish people,
contemptuously rejected the 1920 Government Ireland Act. To them
it was a ‘Partition Act’, offering a divided island
and miserably weak devolved powers. The IRA fought on with relentless
ferocity. Nearly 50,000 troops, police, special constables, Black
and Tans and Auxiliaries in turn set pity aside. During the first
six and a half months of 1921, at least 700 civilians died violently.
Some fell caught in the crossfire. The IRA executed more than a
hundred fellow Irish men and women, condemned as ‘spies’.
On a corpse found on the roadside in Co Cork, these words:
Convicted Spy. The penalty for all who associate with Auxiliary
Cadets, Black and Tans and RIC – IRA Beware.
The Crown forces killed even more Irish people in cold blood. Herbert
Asquith, a former Prime Minister, declared from the opposition benches:
Things are being done in Ireland which would disgrace the blackest
annals of the lowest despotism in Europe.
On 25th May 1921 over a hundred IRA volunteers entered the Custom
House in Dublin, Ireland’s finest Georgian building, and set
fire to it. Troops quickly surrounded the men, killed five of them
and captured seventy. The loss of men and arms represented a severe
setback for the IRA. Avoiding roads and railways, troops operated
across country with increasing success. But the government’s
ruthless repression attracted mounting criticism both at home and
abroad. Lloyd George desperately sought a way out.
When George V offered to open the Northern Ireland Parliament, Lloyd
George seized the opportunity to offer an olive branch to Sinn Féin.
The King’s decision to go to Belfast was a brave one –
ferocious sectarian battles raged there every day and night. Civil
servants, Lloyd George and Jan Christian Smuts, the South African
Prime Minister, carefully tweaked the text of the King’s speech.
Lady Cecil Craig, wife of Northern Ireland’s new Prime Minister,
Sir James Craig, recorded in her diary:
June 22nd . The great day…the King and Queen have the most
wonderful reception. …even the little side streets that they
will never be within miles of are draped with bunting and flags,
and the pavement and lampposts painted red, white and blue, really
most touching… trusted men stationed in each house, and on
every roof top…
In Belfast City Hall George addressed only the Unionist MPs, senators
and their wives. Nationalists and Sinn Féiners held to their
pledge ‘not to enter the north-eastern parliament’.
The King intended his speech to reach far beyond the walls of the
City Hall:
I speak from a full heart when I pray that my coming to Ireland
to-day may prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst
her people, whatever their race or creed.
In that hope, I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to forgive and
forget, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation,
and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of
peace, contentment and good will.
Back at the docks the King said to Craig:
I can’t tell you how glad I am I came, but you know my entourage
were very much against it.
George V’s entourage had reason to be anxious. The following
day the IRA blew up the train carrying the King’s cavalry
escort back to Dublin, killing four men and eighty horses. June
had been a violent month: RIC men killed at Swatragh, Co Londonderry;
special constables shot dead in Newry and Belfast; ten Catholics
murdered, apparently in reprisal by Specials; intense intercommunal
warfare and expulsions in Belfast’s York Street, New Lodge
Road and Tiger’s Bay.
But the King’s appeal had been heard. The IRA had had enough.
Michael Collins later told a government minister:
You had us dead beat. We could not have lasted another three weeks.
A truce was agreed on 9th July 1921 to come into force on 11th
July. During those intervening three days the Black and Tans murdered
a Justice of the Peace in Cork; the IRA killed two unarmed Catholic
policemen and three unarmed soldiers in Co Cork; and republicans
executed three fellow Irishmen as spies in the Midlands –
one of them had this label on his body:
Sooner or later we get them. Beware of the IRA.
A truce was one thing. A lasting settlement was quite another.
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