Welcome to the Irish Revolution! Winston
Churchill:
I really hope I struck a balance with
this video and haven't gone too much
either way. Did he hate the Irish? I'm
almost certain he didn't. Did he
understand Ireland? not very well in my
opinion
Did he make mistakes, sometimes horrific
mistakes? definitely, and that is what
I'll explore with this video. He was
responsible for the Black and Tans and
the Auxiliaries but it's important to
consider his motives.
He was blinkered, absolutely. Frankly at
times he was stupid. I know there'll be
some watching this who will automatically
disagree no matter what I say. There will
be some who think I'm being a West Brit [Irish insult for somebody insufficiently patriotic]
because I'm not heaving with passionate angry intensity
against Churchill at all times. There'll
be others who think I'm some modern-day
Republican terrorist out to besmirch
Britain's greatest leader. I ask you to
keep an open mind for the duration of
this video as I etch out Churchill and
his often complicated relationship
with this island. So, let's start with his
youth. Churchill spent a lot of time in
Ireland as a young man. From 1877 to 1880
Churchill's father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, was an aide to his grandfather
John Churchill, the 7th Duke of Marlborough who was appointed the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland by British prime minister
Disraeli
The two-year-old Winston took up
residence with his parents in Phoenix
Park. Randolph Churchill, who would become
famous in later years for his hardline
stance on the Irish question, seemed to
adopt some progressive ideas for the
time, believing that there was an
imbalance in funding between Catholic
and Protestant education for example. And voted with Irish MPs in a 1878 motion to
establish a Catholic Irish University. I
won't go into the other details of
Winston's early life here, this is not
intended as a biographical video but
more an overview of how he related to
Ireland, and I do think it's
important to bear in mind his early
childhood on the island. So I'm gonna
fast-forward a little bit here, I'm
gonna describe a lot of different terms
that you may or may not be familiar with, if
you're not that familiar with Irish
histories chances are you aren't, that's
why in the description I'm putting
together a glossary of terms
describing what a home ruler is, what a unionist
is a Sinn Féiner and what the b-specials were, what the Black and Tans
are and you know check that there,
I've got plenty of descriptions
down there. Okay.
Despite inheriting his father's anti
home rule position in his early life by
February 1906 Churchill had become a
supporter of home rule. In 1904 he had
already crossed the floor moving from
the Conservative Party to the Liberal
Party, traditionally the party of Irish
Home Rule (willingly or unwillingly so - it's complicated)
Churchill supported a scheme put forward
in 1907 by Augustine Birrell, future
Irish secretary in Dublin Castle, the
bill promised a measure of devolution
far short of Home Rule but Churchill was
seriously disappointed when it failed to
pass and lamented the lack of direction
in the UK government's Irish policy. In
1912, at the height of the hysteria
around the proposals for Irish Home Rule
(have a look at the video I made, the very
first video I made - Easter Rising origins)
with the Curragh mutiny and the threat of
civil war a real possibility, Churchill had
made plans to speak in favour of Home
Rule in Belfast. His own personal safety
was at risk as his father Randolph
Churchill had famously declared in a
previous age that he would 'play
the orange card' in
opposition to the Home Rule bill being
pushed in 1885 by Charles Stewart
Parnell. Winston was seen as making a
great betrayal of the orange unionist
cause and betraying his own father. His
speech, intended as much to be directed
at relcatrinant Ulster Unionists as
to influence English public opinion
concluded with the following quote
 
 
 
 
 
 
Notice that the speech invokes his own
father's unionism and his own famous
speech to Ulster Protestants.
'Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right'
Churchill was trying to persuade but
in the end it was a hopeless cause
Ulster Unionists would never come on
board for home rule. He had to move around
Belfast like a hunted man as crowds of
furious unionists threatened him. Now, time
for another time jump. I'm gonna go to
the war of independence period in
Ireland. Churchill as Secretary of State
for war and later of the colonies played
a very direct role in the war of
independence. It was he who brought in
the infamous Black and Tans and later
the Auxiliaries, they were intended as
substitutes for the exhausted and
demoralized native Irish police who were
being shot at and who were resigning in
huge numbers due to the IRA or the Irish
Volunteers depending on the period of
time we're talking about. They were
former British soldiers and in the words
of Churchill biographer Roy Jenkins
 
Now that is one
of the more polite ways of putting it
I've seen them described by many as
scum and I don't use the word lightly
Scum is what I've heard since childhood,
described by all manner of people. Yeah
they don't have a good reputation in
Ireland! listen to some of the some of
the tunes that have come out over the
years about the Black and Tans. Anyway
that's not really historical that's just
me having a bit of craic with you.
Most rural police stations had been
abandoned due to an IRA campaign and the
countryside was unsafe to patrol in
except in large armed groups. The
Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries would
go on to be ferocious enemies of the IRA
and I was they, not necessarily the British
Army, who fought the war of independence
in Ireland. Perhaps what has stuck in the
Irish mind regarding Churchill and why I
originally wanted to call this 'did
Churchill hate Ireland', you know, for the
whole clickbait value, was his repeated
defense of the reprisal burnings and
killings that so characterized British
policy in Ireland during the War of
Independence, especially the latter part.
Here's a quote that neatly summarizes
his position:
 
 
 
 
In May 1920, as the rate of
killings were on the increase (in many
ways a reaction to the widespread
deployment of the Black and Tans)
Churchill argued for a special tribunal
to try murders saying 'it is
monstrous that we have 200 murders and
no-one hanged' also in May 1920
Churchill argued for the creation of a
special emergency gendarmerie, the
Auxiliaries, and a few months later they
were in the process of being recruited.
The auxiliaries were a better class of
soldier on average than the Black and
Tans
and were mightier adversaries of the IRA.
I'll explore their role in
the war in a later episode. Just as a
side note, Churchill wanted to use
air power in Ireland but nothing much
came from this. In 1920 the British
Cabinet were unanimous in their
opposition to the IRA campaign and
seemed to believe that the Home Rule
bill (which would become known to the
Irish Republican movement as the second
Dáil election) and Churchill was no
different in an article in The
Illustrated Sunday Herald in June 1920
he wrote
 
 
 
It brings up an interesting
point actually as while Ireland was a
thorn in the side of the British Empire
at this time, Churchill and the British
government were arguably dealing with
bigger fish in some ways. To look at just
numbers, according to Paul Bew, Ireland
was costing the Empire 20 million pounds
a year while Mesopotamia cost 56.5 million in 1920-21 alone.
7,000 Empire soldiers 800 of whom were
British died at the same time as the
conflict with Ireland. It's important to
remember that while for the Irish this
time period is huge and enormous and
significant, for the British it's just
another thing happening in their huge
Empire, not even necessarily the most
important crisis then gripping the Empire.
The British point of view is well summed
up by the historian Charles Townshend:
 
Because
Townshend is too much of a pro and a
gentleman and a great historian to say it, I
will.
The British government had no idea what
they were doing in Ireland in 1920 and
by all accounts it often seemed like
they were groping in the dark, always
reacting and rarely formulating anything
Britain was waging a dirty war in
Ireland. Reprisals were occasionally
sanctioned by the state but unofficially
it was going on a lot and Churchill in
his position as Minister for War wasn't
exactly condemning them. For example, the
21st of September the Black and Tans
sacked the North Dublin town of
Balbriggan. It's one of the great reprisals
of the war of independence and it became
international news. Much of the town
was burnt down, many of the men
perpetrating the atrocity, the reprisal
were visibly drunk. Two prisoners were
executed. Henry Wilson, the head of the
army and no peacenick I should add,
wrote in his diary that 'Winston
Churchill saw very little harm in this,
but it horrifies me.' Terence MacSwiney,
the Lord Mayor of Cork went on hunger
strike in 1920 in a campaign that drew
international attention. MacSwiney was
no hardman Republican but a gentle
spirited artistic soul and he became the
perfect Irish Republican martyr, another
one in a long line of them.
Churchill mocked the strategy of hunger
striking saying it took more courage to
fight in a trench than to go on a hunger
strike. Addressing a crowd in Dundee in
October 1920 he said:
 
 
 
According to Paul Bew, the mocking tone of his speech did little to impress British public opinion
or the visiting American journalists.
Terence MacSwiney died four days after
the speech, unleashing a whirlwind of
public sympathy.
Churchill believed in 1920 at any rate
that the British would just have to
arrest a few key Republicans, turn them
and then break up the entire 'murder club'
as he called them in a letter
to his wife. Many of the ministers,
including Churchill of course, seem to
believe or wanted to believe that the
hostility to British rule was not
widespread and was limited to a small
group of 'terrorists'. I don't know if they
really honestly believed this or just
said this in public and believe
something else in private. But if they
really believe this,
then it is a great indication of their
total lack of understanding of facts on
the ground how incredibly, stupifying
ignorant they were. I mean, all they had
to do was visit Ireland, specifically
Cork or one of the hotter places in
Ireland, but to believe what they appeared
to believe is, it's just mind boggingly
stupid. This nonsensical position which,
to be fair to Churchill was typical of
the British political class was revealed
to be absurd with the killings in Dublin
on 24th November 1920, the first Bloody
Sunday when Michael Collins ordered an
IRA operation to wipe out a network of
spies in Dublin. (The Cairo Gang) Later in the day a group
of auxiliaries opened fire and shot at a
defenseless crowd in Croke Park in
Dublin during a Gaelic football match
Whatever hope the government may have
had in restoring the Status Quo in Ireland,
this may well have been the final straw
for the Irish. A week later an IRA
commander in Cork, Tom Barry, launched an
audacious ambush at Kilmichael (Cork)
killing 18 Auxiliaries. While these numbers
could have been easily absorbed by the
might of the British Empire, they did
make a mockery of the claim that the
British were not in a war or that it was
just a few malcontents causing the
problem. Tthe violence continued into 1921.
A truce between the two sides was
originally mooted on the 12th of May
1921 with Churchill part of the cabinet
minority in favour interestingly. The
war was going better for the British in
some ways and he believed that a truce
was no longer a sign of weakness. In fact
it was a sign that Churchill was
prepared to compromise and was not even
among the most hardline in the British
Cabinet despite his fierce reputation, at
least in Ireland. The truce came a little
later and Churchill became in the words
of Bew a dove on the Irish question even
entertaining Michael Collins at his
house in October. Why the apparent change of mind?
Roy Jenkins asserts a certain
responsibility to Churchill's wife who
wrote him a letter in February 1921
asking him to put himself in the place
of the Irish. I don't know if that
explains anything but it is strange how
quickly the British establishment seemed
to change their mind
How in May 1921 they were determined to
'hunt down the murder gang'
and by July looked to have a lasting
reconciliation with the Irish people. I
always find it odd, charming even, that
during the treaty negotiations that a kind
of camaraderie or at least a mutual
respect seemed to have developed between
Churchill and Michael Collins and how in
so many ways they seemed so alike.
Shortly before Collins died he sent a
message to Churchill 'tell Winston we
could never have done anything without
him' So, to conclude - I won't go
into details about Churchill later life
and engagement with Ireland except to
say that he put pressure on Collins to
unlodge the anti-treaty
Republicans from the four courts in
Dublin and threatened to use the
artillery himself to do so, so you could
argue that he hastened the start of the
Irish Civil War. And I won't get into the
whole thing about Churchill during the
Second World War. For whatever reason
and there were obviously many to think of,
Churchill didn't invade Ireland despite
criticising the Irish government for its
neutrality stance but that falls outside
the purview of this channel, which exists
for now at least, to document the Irish
revolutionary period. Plus this damned
video has to end at some point. Thanks so
much for watching! see you soon.
