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The Truce

A sense of victory

In mid-July 1921 Dublin sweltered in a heatwave that had enveloped the entire island of Ireland for what seemed like months. This warm front was set to the aftermath of a conflict that had raged, simmered and raged again with increasing ferocity and viciousness for over five years.

Along the city's northern quays the wrecked edifice of the magnificent Custom House forlornly overlooked the River Liffey. This building's 125-yard long Portland stone façade had, since completion in 1791, impressed mariners with its elegant dominance of the river's bustling northern quayside. The sixteen-foot Statue of Commerce which sat atop its striking copper dome had signalled Dublin's status; once the British empire's second city, as very much open for business.

The same statue had overseen Gen. Sir John Maxwell's entrance to the city in 1916 to crush the separatist Easter Rising. A huge conflagration of flames had lit the night sky behind it then, but the insurrection had been suppressed and much of the city centre destroyed. Captured revolutionaries - some disconsolate, most defiant - had been marched en masse past the Custom House on their way to deportation in filthy cattle-boats to internment and imprisonment in Britain. More recently, captives from the guerrilla warfare in Dublin and throughout the country had been marched under guard or driven the same route on their way to Dublin's docks to similar destinations which now held over 6,000 within their walls and barbed wire fences.

Half-a-decade on from when the clock of insurrection had first struck in Dublin, the Custom House's devastated grandeur now epitomised the ruins of the British administration in Ireland. Its destruction on 25 May 1921 by a fire that had raged and smouldered for ten days had been the culmination of months of meticulous planning by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The operation's execution - not without cost to the IRA's Dublin Brigade - had shocked the Westminster government, and stunned the world's media with its audacity.

At noon on 11 July, seven weeks after the attack, ships and vessels in the docks and on the Liffey adjacent to the Custom House had sounded their fog-horns and whistles to joyfully mark the cessation of hostilities between the insurgent Republicans and their British police and military enemies. Church bells had chimed in celebratory unison throughout the city. The sun-baked cobbled and tram-lined streets - from the festering slums and red-light alleyways just minutes' walking distance from the Custom House to the more distant fashionable Georgian thoroughfares - teemed with city-dwellers jubilant with the welcome prospect of peace after years of exhausting, costly and bloody conflict. The sense of liberation was overwhelming. Many also felt astonishment and pride at the achievement of what had been deemed impossible: that the British government was now willing to discuss terms to determine Ireland's position in the radically changed post Great War world. The sense of joy and relief was, though, also tinged with poignant reflections about the war's casualties from all walks who had been killed or injured. And among the relief and optimism was concern for the future and whether the truce would hold.

Amongst those who had fought the crown's forces to a standstill in Dublin and elsewhere, relief and elation was tempered with apprehension and mistrust of the enemy. Such wariness would, however, soon apply to some of those on their own side with whom they had fought side-by-side, and their military and political leaders, the latter of whom led the Sinn Féin political party - now operating openly since the truce with public faith and hopes firmly bestowed upon them.

Optimism permeated the IRA's relatively new 1st Southern Division, its morale soaring. Based in Munster, this was the largest of sixteen such regional formations set up recently to mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of General Headquarters (GHQ) falling into enemy hands. Its officers and men expected the enemy to quickly commence withdrawing its array of military and paramilitary forces and the Republic to be cemented without outside interference. Civilians by and large felt the same. So too did the beleaguered Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) which had lost hundreds of its officers to the conflict, a large proportion to the brigades which now formed 1st Southern Division.

Fairs and markets returned, no longer prohibited. Curfews were lifted countrywide as routine trade resumed. Some normality also crept back to the lives of IRA members now at liberty to restart their rural and urban occupations without the threat of arrest, torture or death. Some quickly capitalised on their perceived status as heroic victors and maximised such trappings as complimentary alcohol or the commandeering of motor vehicles. Future discipline would inevitably suffer as a result. Pent up youths, meanwhile, made up for lost time in the glorious sunshine.

Yet, in Belfast, one hundred miles north of Dublin, it was a very different experience. Belfast had endured two years of sporadic and savage sectarian violence, and witnessed few celebrations among its nationalists on or since 11 July. Instead, a short lull in the carnage that had seen twenty-two civilians killed and scores more wounded in the twenty-four-hours preceding the truce had been quickly swept aside. Following similar fresh outbursts enraged nationalists sought revenge against unionist businesses within their reach. They had to be restrained at gunpoint on the city's nationalist Falls Road by members of the IRA's 3rd Northern Division who feared further escalation.

The northern divisions supported the truce, and like all IRA divisions, would see people flock to their colours, believing the enemy defeated. A reference by Dublin Castle's propaganda gazette The Weekly Summary to the IRA constituting 'the Irish Army' on the day of the truce, underscored this broad conviction - further reinforced by the rapid establishment of liaison officers between the Castle's forces and its erstwhile bitter but unvalidated foe.1

Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliaries and British military outside Dublin Castle's Palace Street gate following the July 1921 truce between the IRA and crown forces. (Courtesy of Mercier Archive)

Dublin Castle's administration was now operating in a state of shock, suspecting its time was short. Charles Bay, American vice-consul in Dublin, noticed the truce 'had given the masses a sense of victory'.2 Frederick Dumont, Bay's compatriot, and as consul, a more senior ranked diplomat, had revealed recently to Sinn Féin and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) member Patrick Moylett that he had been acting clandestinely for the Castle, something he confessed would not reflect well with his own superiors. Dumont narrowly escaped a bloodbath in Upper Pembroke Street as he had played cards into the early hours with British intelligence officers the previous November on what subsequently became known as Bloody Sunday. Notably, that infamous day was set to be dwarfed in its ruthless execution by sweeping city-wide IRA operations planned for 8 July 1921 to decimate its enemies which had been called off just minutes before the truce; the peace now being savoured had been a close-run thing.

The truce was immediately followed by talks. On 12 July, a Sinn Féin delegation including four Dáil cabinet members: Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Austin Stack, Robert Barton, and the Dáil's Director of Publicity, Erskine Childers, travelled to London for discussions with the British government.3 This was to establish how negotiations to formally settle matters between Britain and Ireland should proceed. Their arrival prompted great excitement within the same Irish diaspora communities which had flown Tri-colour flags to greet Easter Rising prisoners five years earlier as they had passed through the British capital under guard en route to the Sankey Commission.4 The same communities now harboured the formidable London IRA.

Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith. (Courtesy of Mercier Archive)

Michael Collins, the captivating, dauntless and ruthless thirty-year-old Dáil Minister for Finance, and IRA Director of Intelligence with well-established links to the London IRA, had insisted on being among the delegates. However, this was over-ruled by thirty-eight-year-old Dáil president, Éamon de Valera despite forceful protests from Collins. Collins, denounced as a murderer at the very hub of Ireland's insurrection, had, therefore, been perceived as politically indigestible in Westminster when the conflict was at its height and they had secretly but anxiously sought someone in authority within the enemy camp to parley with. De Valera had been deemed more palatable. He too had strained during the late spring and early summer - the recent war's intensity reaching its zenith - to seek grounds for a truce, the very idea of which had, until recently,...