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Michael Collins: “Tell Winston we could never have done anything without him”
- By MICHAEL McMENAMIN
- | June 29, 2023
- Category: Explore Great Contemporaries
Churchill, Collins and the Irish Free State
Michael Collins was killed by Irish Republican Army gunmen on 22 August 1922 during the Irish Civil War, just as his Irish Free State forces had the IRA on the run. Collins was then Commander-in-Chief of of the Irish Free State Army.1 Through a friend, he had recently sent a message to British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill2: “Tell Winston we could never have done anything without him.”3
During the 1919-21 Anglo-Irish War, Churchill and Collins had been adversaries.4 They did not meet until after the 21 July 1921 truce that led to negotiations for a peace treaty. Both were members of their country’s respective delegation. The head of the British delegation was Prime Minister David Lloyd George; the Irish head delegate was Arthur Griffith.
The Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921. Churchill and Collins, now Chairman of the Irish Free State Provisional Government, became directly responsible for implementing the Treaty. Their primary antagonists were Sir Henry Wilson5 for Churchill and Eamon de Valera6 for Collins. Each wanted to kill the Treaty and restart the ruinous Anglo-Irish War.
“At any rate it was a good price…”
Treaty negotiations threw Churchill and Collins closely together. It helped that each of them had a well-developed sense of humor. During their negotiations, Collins complained: “You hunted me night and day. You put a price on my head.”7 Recalling the encounter, Churchill defused the situation with a famous wisecrack:
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You are not the only one.” And I took from my wall the framed copy of the reward offered for my recapture by the Boers. “At any rate it was a good price—£5,000. Look at me—£25 dead or alive. How would you like that?’ (Actually no reward had ever been offered by the British Government, but this I did not know at the time.) He read the paper, and as he took it in he broke into a hearty laugh. All his irritation vanished. We had a really serviceable conversation, and thereafter—though I must admit that deep in my heart there was a certain gulf between us—we never to the best of my belief lost the basis of a common understanding.8
Irish independence
Their “common understanding” was the Irish Free State as a free, self-governing Dominion, the same as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Against them were arrayed the Conservative Party “die-hards,” Wilson and Andrew Bonar Law9; and the anti-Treaty IRA hard-liners. De Valera exhorted the latter to wade through “the blood of some of the members of the Government.”10
Collins’ goal was to establish “law and order in a democratic, independent Irish State” and “secure an intimidation-free election”11. He also hoped to heal the split with his former IRA comrades and avoid a final break with de Valera. The alternative, he knew, would be civil war between pro- and anti-Treaty forces.12 Churchill supported his secondary objective, but was not willing to go as far as Collins in making concessions to accomplish it. In contrast, de Valera famously said, “the majority have no right to do wrong” and went around the country urging the civil war that Collins was trying to avoid.13
Churchill’s contributions
What did Collins mean by saying they’d have done nothing without him? In his memoirs, Churchill wrote that he was “grateful” for the message but did not speculate as to its meaning. Collins didn’t live long enough to explain it in his own memoirs. None of his prominent biographers14 even mention this message. With the exception of Tim Pat Coogan, none give Churchill any credit for bringing the Irish Free State to life. In fact, another Collins biographer, T. Ryle Dwyer, wrote: “It was Ireland’s great misfortune that the man at the helm of Irish affairs in Britain was someone as volatile and tempestuous as Churchill….”15
Seriously? Churchill had been the Liberal Party’s primary spokesman on Ireland for nearly 15 years. He’d been a strong supporter of Irish Home Rule since 1908. The only way Churchill would not have been “the man at the helm of Irish affairs” in 1922 was if the Tories ran the government. In the event, the Lloyd George Coalition government was replaced by a Conservative government in November 1922.16 The Tories had opposed Irish Home Rule since the days of Gladstone in the 19th century. It would have been a far greater misfortune for Ireland had they been in charge earlier.
Dwyer’s unexplained and ill-informed observation does offer a clue as to what Collins meant in his message. He knew Churchill, during the first six months of 1922, had taken actions a Conservative minister with the same authority would almost certainly not have done. Four such courageous actions stand out, absent which the Treaty would have been in jeopardy. Yet by taking them, Churchill imperiled his own future and that of the Coalition government.17
“We’ve been waiting 700 years…”
On 15 January, the Irish Dail approved the Treaty. Churchill promptly ordered that Dublin Castle, the seat of British authority in Ireland, be formally turned over to Collins. That same day, Churchill ordered Sir Henry Wilson, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to begin the withdrawal of British troops from southern Ireland. Less than a month later, Wilson retired from the Army and was promptly elected as a Member of Parliament for North Down in Ulster. In March, as chief military adviser to the Ulster government, he quickly became the biggest Parliamentary thorn in Churchill’s side.
In a formal ceremony on 16 January, the Union Flag was lowered and the Irish tricolor raised over Dublin Castle. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord FitzAlan, reportedly told Collins he was seven minutes late to the ceremony. Collins replied: “We’ve been waiting 700 years; you can have the seven minutes.”18
Tim Pat Coogan explained the importance of this event to the Irish people: “The first major task was to receive the hand-over of Dublin Castle on 16 January, a step of enormous practical and symbolic significance, tangible proof to the man and woman in the street that whatever might be said against the Treaty, it really had changed things.”19
The Free State Bill
Churchill introduced the Irish Free State Bill to implement the Irish Treaty on 16 February. He rushed its three readings through the Commons, securing passage in little more than a month by a vote of 302-60. The Royal Assent was given on 31 March. Compare that to the Home Rule Bill passed in 1914: Introduced in April 1912, its second reading came in August 1913, its third in May 1914. Royal Assent was not given until August 1914.
Coogan wrote: “Whether one agrees or disagrees with the terms of the [1922] Treaty, it has to be conceded that Churchill’s prowess in steering the ratification through his own constitutional and political minefields made a significant contribution to the creation of modern Ireland.”20
Austen Chamberlain reported to King George V that in Churchill’s “handling of the Irish Questions and his general conduct of this Bill, he has shown parliamentary talent of the highest order and greatly strengthened his parliamentary position.”21
The Four Courts
Because Collins wanted to avoid civil war, he was reluctant directly to engage the anti-Treaty IRA. The IRA however showed no such reluctance. In April it seized Free State barracks, commandeered trucks, ambushed Free State troops, killed police and robbed banks. As Collins said on 9 April. “The humiliating fact has been brought home to us that our country is now in a more lawless and chaotic state than it was during the Black and Tan regime.”22
On 13 April, confirming Collins’s observation, lightly armed anti-Treaty IRA forces led by Rory O’Connor23 occupied Dublin’s Four Courts, the center of Ireland’s legal system, proclaiming it the headquarters of the Republican Government of all Ireland.24 Arthur Griffith wanted to retake the Four Courts by force, but Collins was against a confrontation. Churchill supported Collins, writing to Lloyd George on 17 April “There is no doubt a great deal to be said for the Provisional Government waiting its moment.”25 Meanwhile, during April, Churchill continued to provide arms and ammunition for Free State forces throughout Ireland. These, he was assured by the British intermediary in Ireland, Alfred Cope, “were gathering strength and they hold the ascendancy.”26
The Collins-De Valera Pact
Without consulting Griffith or anyone in the Provisional Government, Collins met secretly with de Valera on 17 May for three days of negotiations. Together they decided to attempt to “fix” the June elections to the Dail. Collins promised not to run pro-Treaty candidates in 57 constituencies; de Valera to run no anti-Treaty candidates in 64 constituencies. Their intent was to reflect and preserve the balance in the Dail that prevailed in January when the Treaty was approved by a vote of 64 to 57.27
Arthur Griffith was outraged, and a gulf opened between him and Collins that lasted the rest of their lives. He reluctantly approved the pact, but never again called him “Mick”—only “Mr. Collins.”28 Churchill was also appalled, though unlike Griffith, his intelligence had alerted him to the possibility of such a deal. On 15 May he warned Collins in explicit terms against reaching such an agreement.29 After Collins ignored him, Churchill invited Griffith and Collins to London to discuss the pact.
On 26 May, Churchill met Griffith who indicated he opposed the agreement. Collins arrived on 27 May and the three discussed matters for three days. Eventually, Churchill was persuaded to support the pact. Even Griffith agreed with Collins that an intimidation-free election in Ireland would have been impossible. “Small bands of armed men would have seized and destroyed the ballot boxes,” he said, “and in other ways prevented the free exercise of constitutional rights.”30
Churchill’s key support
Churchill defended the Collins-de Valera pact, first in Cabinet and later in a contentious 31 May session in the House of Commons. There he sparred with a vitriolic Sir Henry Wilson, who had earlier told him nothing could solve the Irish problem “except re-conquest.”31 The Speaker of the House said Churchill’s speech was the best he had ever heard. Austen Chamberlain wrote to the King: “It was a masterly performance—not merely a great personal and oratorical triumph, though it was both of these, but a great act of statesmanship.”32
In the event, Churchill’s faith in Collins was vindicated in the 16 June elections for the Dail. The Irish people overwhelmingly supported the Treaty. De Valera’s Anti-Treaty candidates won only 35 seats, not the 57 of the Collins-de Valera pact. Parties opposing de Valera won 93 seats—Collins’ party 58, Labour 17, Farmers 7, Independents 7, and Dublin University 4.33 The anti-Treaty vote total was 133,864; the pro-Treaty vote 486,419.34 Despite such an overwhelming defeat, Treaty opponents saw civil war as inevitable.
The Irish Civil War
After the election, Rory O’Connor attempted a coup d’état. On 22 June, he reinforced the Four Courts garrison with a large, heavily armed body of IRA troops.35 That same day, two ex-British soldiers of Irish heritage assassinated Sir Henry Wilson in front of his home in London.36 That evening, Churchill drafted a letter for Lloyd George to Collins demanding that the Free State retake the Four Courts. On 26 June, Churchill addressed the House of Commons on the necessity of Collins moving against O’Connor. Afterward, Bonar Law told Churchill: “You have disarmed us today. If you act up to your words, well and good, but if not—!!”37
On 27 June, anti-Treaty forces kidnapped the Assistant Chief-of-Staff of the Free State Army and seized four more symbolic Dublin buildings. It was the last straw, and Collins needed no prompting from Churchill. The next afternoon, he sent an ultimatum to O’Connor, giving him 20 minutes to surrender the Four Courts. No reply was forthcoming and at 4pm, Free State forces opened fire with artillery furnished by Churchill. The Irish Civil War was to last eleven months. It ended with a complete Free State victory, thanks in part to British arms and ammunition.
Postscript: Churchill’s kindness
Michael Collins told Churchill on several occasions he expected to be killed. On 22 August 1922, anti-Treaty IRA forces ambushed him in County Cork, making good his prediction. In London, Collins’ sister Hannie was working as a clerk at the Post Office Savings Bank, where he brother once had worked. Distraught over his death, she went to see the artists John and Hazel Lavery, but they were out of town. She left that evening for the boat train to Ireland. In between, the Laverys’ butler telephoned a Lavery art student and close friend—someone who believed Collins’ grieving sister deserved privacy on her sad journey to bury her brother.38
That someone was Winston Churchill. Having been appraised of Hannie’s distress by the butler, he personally reserved a compartment for her and paid her travelling expenses. At Euston, a newspaper reporter recorded that Miss Collins, dressed head to foot in black, was seen off by a lady friend. “She was a calm but pathetic figure. She travelled alone.”39
The author
Michael McMenamin is the co-author with Curt Zoller of Becoming Winston Churchill, the Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor (2009). He is a contributing editor at Reason magazine and longtime writer of a Finest Hour column “Action This Day,” chronicling Churchill’s life at 25-year intervals.
Further reading and viewing
Michael Collins (Geffren Film Co., 1996) is an exceptional biographic film written and directed by Neil Jordan. It stars Liam Neeson as Collins, Alan Rickman as Eamon de Valera, and Julia Roberts as Collins’ fiancé Kitty Kiernan. It can be found on streaming video including the Roku Channel.
“Great Contemporaries: Eamon de Valera and a Long, Fraught Relationship,” by Charles Lysacht, 2021.
“Rapscallions? What Churchill Actually Said and Thought about the Irish,” by Richard M. Langworth, 2021.
“‘That Neutral Island’: Ireland in World War II,” by Warren F. Kimball, 2019.
“Irish Matters: Churchill’s Final View,” by Richard M. Langworth, 2016.
Endnotes
1 In the 1919-21 Anglo-Irish War, Michael Collins was Minister of Finance for the self-declared Irish Republic, head of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood and IRA Director of Intelligence. In the latter position, he organized and directed a campaign of guerrilla warfare against British agents and officials. It was so successful that it was studied thereafter by the Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung and future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the 1940s Zionist rebellion against the British in Palestine. Tim Pat Coogan, The Man Who Made Ireland, The Life and Death of Michael Collins (Niwot, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart, 1992), xi.
2 After the two elections of 1910, the Liberal government began working in earnest to pass a Home Rule bill, with Churchill as their leading spokesman. This earned him the undying enmity of the Conservatives. The Ulster leader Sir Edward Carson—supported by Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law—threatened a violent insurrection should Home Rule become law. In August 1913, Home Rule had nearly passed, twice approved by Commons and twice rejected by the House of Lords, which could not stop it after a third reading in May 1914. It received Royal Assent on 18 September 1914.
Upon the outbreak of the First World War, Conservatives, Liberals and Irish Nationalists agreed to suspend Home Rule for the duration. During the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21, Churchill was Secretary of State for War and Air and for too long supported the “Black & Tans,” who engaged in a terror campaign that matched, if not exceeded, the atrocities of the IRA. Michael McMenamin and Curt Zoller, Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold story of Young Winston and His American Mentor, (New York: Enigma Books, 2009), 232-38.
3 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), The Aftermath (New York: Scribner, 1929), 348.
4 WSC, Thoughts and Adventures (Wilmington, Del., ISI Books, 2009) 238-39. Lord Birkenhead once claimed that Churchill and Collins were good friends. Even if they weren’t, there is no question that Churchill genuinely liked, admired and respected the IRA leader. He made this clear in a 1924 article (note 7), with a telling passage. Churchill told Collins he was “sure you would much rather have fought properly in the field.”
Collins replied: “I have written a paper on the limitation of our power to conform to the status of belligerents. We had not got even a country in which we could organize a uniformed force.” Churchill then asked what he would do if, after British withdrawal, “the Treaty is broken and the Republic declared?” Collins replied that he would do his best against such a breach. But “if the great majority of Ireland went to war with the British Empire, I could not fight against them. I would give up all authority and would fight as a private soldier on their side till I was killed, which would not be long.”
5 Wilson, a career soldier, was Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1918-22, then a Unionist MP from Ulster. In March 1922 he became the chief military adviser to James Craig, the head of the Ulster government. Ronan McGreevy, Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP (London: Faber & Faber, 2022), 3.
6 De Valera, President of the self-declared Irish Republic, was a duplicitous man who knew, from face-to-face meetings with Prime Minister Lloyd George after the July 1921 truce, that Britain would agree to an independent self-governing dominion but not a republic. Hence he sent Collins and Arthur Griffin to negotiate a Treaty with the British so that he would not be branded a failure when they failed to secure a republic. The Irish Civil War was begun by the anti-Treaty IRA at de Valera’s direct instigation. Coogan, Collins, 223-29, 263-64, 308, et seq.
7 WSC, “The Irish Treaty,” Nash’s Pall Mall, January 1924; reprinted as “The Joke That Helped to Settle the Irish Question” in Cosmopolitan, March 1924; and in Thoughts and Adventures, 240.
8 Ibid, 241.
9 WSC, The Aftermath, 310.
10 Coogan, Collins, 319.
11 WSC, The Aftermath, 310.
12 Coogan, Collins, 311, 323-24.
13 Ibid., 320.
14 Coogan, Collins; T. Ryle Dwyer, Big Fellow, Long Fellow: A Joint Biography of Collins and de Valera (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998); Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins (New York: Viking, 2006); James Mackay, Michael Collins: A Life (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1996).
15 Dwyer, Big Fellow, Long Fellow, 308.
16 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. IV, World in Torment 1916-1922 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2008), 867.
17 Coogan, Collins, 375. The Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government established after the 1918 election kept Lloyd George as prime minister, but at the mercy of the Conservatives, who dominated the Commons with 335 seats to the Coalition Liberals’ 133. The Liberal Party share of the vote had fallen from 50% in December 1910 to 25% in December 1918. Gilbert, 178.
18 Coogan, Collins, 310.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid, 313.
21 Churchill deserved the praise. In one memorable passage during the second reading of the Free State Bill, he said: “If you want to see Ireland degenerate into a meaningless welter of lawless chaos and confusion, delay this bill. If you wish to see increasingly bloodshed all along the borders of Ulster, delay this bill…. If you want to enable dangerous and extreme men, working out schemes of hatred and subterranean secrecy, to undermine and overturn [the Provisional Government], delay this bill…. But…if you wish to see Ireland brought back from the confusion of tyranny to a reign of law…you will not impede, even for a single unnecessary week, the passage of this bill.” Gilbert, World in Torment, 690-91, 696.
22 Coogan, Collins, 315.
23 Ibid.
24 WSC, The Aftermath, 324.
25 Gilbert, World in Torment, 710.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid, 716.
28 Coogan called the pact “a highly dubious arrangement…which cut across the interests of the other parties” and “the whole pact episode and its attendant maneuverings places Collins more in the light of a conspirator than a statesman.” Coogan, Collins, 322-24.
29 WSC, The Aftermath, pages 330-331.
30 Gilbert, World in Torment, 718.
31 Ibid., 689.
32 Again Churchill deserved the praise. He said the Collins-de Valera pact could lead to “a cessation of all attacks on Ulster or outrages from the Irish Republican Army within Ulster, to a cessation of the murders of ex-Servants of the Crown, or to Protestants in the South or of British soldiers.” He did not believe the Provisional Government was working with the Republicans “to betray British confidence and Ireland’s good name. I am sure they are not doing that…and are still trying to do their best.” Later, in response to a question from Wilson, he assured the House that the Government would not tolerate a republic and would begin military operations. Collins and Griffith were present for the debate in the Distinguished Strangers Gallery. Gilbert, World in Torment, 719-22.
33 Ibid., 732.
34 Mackay, Michael Collins, 260.
35 Ibid.
36 Gilbert, World in Torment, 734. There is no historical consensus as to who ordered Wilson assassinated. The British assumed, largely without evidence, that it was the anti-Treaty IRA. The assassins themselves said they did it on their own initiative. Others suggest Collins himself ordered it. Ronan McGreevy’s Great Hatred, 368-83, contains an excellent, extended discussion of the evidence. McGreevy concludes that Collins was responsible, which is plausible and not at all out of character. Collins had good cause, publicly and privately, to despise Wilson.
McGreevy is on much shakier ground when he asserts: “The Irish Civil War would not have happened the way it did without the Wilson shooting.” The Irish Civil War began long before Wilson’s death. De Valera lit the match in March with incendiary speeches about “wading through the blood” of Provisional Government ministers. Rory O’Connor and the anti-Treaty IRA applied the match to the torch with their April campaign of insurrection, terror, robbery and violence against the Provisional Government, of which the occupation of the Four Courts was but a small, albeit symbolic, part.
37 What Churchill said that “disarmed” Bonar Law was this: “The presence in Dublin, in violent occupation of the Four Courts, of a band of men styling themselves the headquarters of the Republican Executive, is a gross breach and defiance of the Treaty. From this nest of anarchy and treason not only to the British Crown, but to the Irish people, murderous outrages are stimulated and encouraged…. If it does not come to an end…and a very speedy end, then it is my duty to say…we shall regard the Treaty as having been formally violated…and that we shall resume full liberty of action in any direction that may seem proper and to any extent that may be necessary to safeguard the interests and the rights that are entrusted to our care.” WSC, The Aftermath, 342-43.
38 Churchill, Thoughts, page 326.
39 Mackay, Michael Collins, 292.