The Anglo-Irish treaty results from a conference held in London from October 11 to December 6 to determine how “Ireland’s association with the community of nations known as the British Empire can be best reconciled with aspirations. Irish nationals â€. The Irish delegation was finalized at a Dáil cabinet meeting on September 4.
Arthur griffith (1871-1922) was chairman of the delegation and, at 50, its oldest member. An advanced nationalist veteran, he had made his mark as an editor, journalist, activist and politician. He had apprenticed as a printer, before becoming a copywriter for publications whose Nation and the Independent Irish Daily. He spent two years as a journalist in South Africa and returned to Ireland in 1898 to become editor of the United irish after that Sinn Féin, Scissors and Dough and Nationality.
In his landmark work, The resurrection of Hungary (1904) Griffith called on Ireland to follow the Hungarian model of parliamentary abstention, whereby MPs would refuse to sit in Westminster and instead create their own parliament at home.
The second pillar of his thought was the dual monarchy, whereby the crown alone would unite Ireland and Great Britain. These two policies became the basis of the foundation of Sinn Féin.
Griffith was elected in Cavan East in the June 1918 by-elections and re-elected in the December 1918 general election.
Several times imprisoned from 1916 to 1921, he was Minister of the Interior from 1919 to 1921, then Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1921 to 1922. He accompanied Éamon de Valera to London for private talks with David Lloyd George.
He advocated passionately in favor of the Anglo-Irish treaty in the Dáil and, after
it was ratified on January 7, 1922, he was elected president of the Dáil and formed a
new government. He died suddenly on
August 12, 1922.
Michael collins (1890-1922) was born in Woodfield, Sam’s Cross, Co Cork. He moved to London to work at 15. He was heavily involved in Irish organizations run by other emigrants, including the GAA, Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers. Most important was his membership in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which placed him at the center of Irish revolutionary networks before Easter 1916.
Collins returned to Ireland in January 1916 and served as Joseph Plunkett’s aide-de-camp at the GPO during the Uprising. He was interned at Frongoch in North Wales until December 1916, where he assumed a leadership role. Once released, he consolidated his power within the IRB and IRA. He was elected to the Sinn Féin Executive Council in 1917. The following year he was appointed Adjutant General of the Irish Volunteers and in December was unopposed as Sinn Féin’s candidate for Cork South. He was appointed Minister of Finance in April 1919, while also serving as Chairman of the IRB Supreme Council and Director of Intelligence for the IRA.
He was appointed by Éamon de Valera to attend the Anglo-Irish conference in London at the end of 1921. While he believed that de Valera set them up for failure, Collins was central to the negotiations and frequently met with British officials. alone. After signing the treaty, he became President of the Provisional Government and continued to serve as Minister of Finance.
At the start of the civil war in June 1922, he took the post of commander-in-chief of the very young Free State army. He was killed on August 22, 1922, in an ambush in Béal na mBláth, Co Cork.
Robert barton (1881-1975) was born in Co Wicklow to a traditionally Unionist Anglo-Irish landowning family. He was an accomplished agronomist and introduced modern farming techniques to his estate and his tenants. He joined the Irish Agricultural Organization Society in 1910.
Barton joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913. In 1914 he took a commission with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and was sent to Dublin during the crackdown on the Easter Rising. Appalled at the treatment of Irish prisoners, he resigned from the army and joined the rebels.
He was elected Sinn Féin MP for Wicklow West in December 1918 and appointed Minister of Agriculture in 1919. He was arrested for sedition and escaped from Mountjoy prison in March 1919 but was again arrested and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. While in the interior, he was elected chairman of Wicklow County Council. He was released in July 1921, re-elected to the Dáil for the constituency of Kildare-Wicklow and appointed Minister of Economic Affairs.
Collins recommended Barton for treaty delegation because of his economic expertise. It took a lot of conviction to sign the treaty and was the last to do so. His unease was such that, although he honored his pledge to vote for him in Dáil, he subsequently took the anti-treaty party.
After Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932, he was appointed director of the Irish press by de Valera and became president of the Agricultural Credit Corporation and president of Bord na Móna.
Éamonn Duggan (1874-1936) was a lawyer and politician from Longwood, Co Meath. In 1914, he became a notary, opened a cabinet in Dublin and enlisted as a private in the Irish Volunteers. He participated in the Easter Rising as a member of Commander Edward Daly’s staff. He was tried by court martial and sentenced to three years in prison. Released on general prisoner amnesty in 1917, he became a senior member of the IRB and was Collins’ predecessor as the IRA’s director of intelligence.
Duggan was elected unopposed in Meath South constituency in 1918. He was again arrested in November 1920 and imprisoned at Mountjoy with Griffith. He was transferred to Brixton Prison and managed to continue his legal work while, in his capacity as a Member of Parliament, occasionally dining in the House of Commons and exploring avenues to Anglo-Irish peace.
His intended role in the treaty delegation was to be the liaison with various British officials, having served as the main Truce Liaison Officer on the Irish side.
After signing the treaty, Duggan remained a supporter of the document and defended it in the Dáil. He remained in politics, serving as TD until 1933. He was an ineffective Home Secretary in the Provisional Government until September 1922, when he became Minister without Portfolio.
George gavan duffy (1882-1951) was the son of the young Irishman Charles Gavan Duffy, who in 1871-2 was Prime Minister of Victoria in Australia. He was raised by three of his half-sisters in Nice after his mother’s death in 1889.
He began his career as a notary in London in 1907 and rose to prominence after defending Roger Casement during his treason trial. The trial had a lasting impact on Duffy. He moved to Ireland and was called to the bar in 1917. He joined Sinn Féin and won the seat of County Dublin South in the December 1918 elections.
He was fluent in French and Italian, which enabled him to travel throughout Europe to promote the Irish cause in different nations.
Duffy was appointed to the treaty negotiation team by Éamon de Valera because of his legal expertise. He felt compelled to sign the treaty when the other men did and he did not fully support it in its final form. During the debates of the Dáil, he declared: “My heart is with those who are against the treaty, but my reason is against them, because I do not see any rational alternative. “
He was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 1922 but resigned in July when the courts of Dáil were dissolved by the government of the Free State after the outbreak of the civil war.
He ran as an independent candidate but failed his re-election to Dáil in 1923 and returned to his legal work. He became a judge in 1929 and was appointed to the High Court in 1936 and president of the High Court in 1946.
Eileen Hogan holds an MA in Public History from UCD. She studies the Gaelic revival and its first organizations.
