No meaningful assessment of the significance, achievements and failures of the First Dáil is possible without an appreciation of the historical context in which it operated, and most especially of the scale of the challenges that it faced when in pursuit of its goals. First and foremost of these was the sheer power of the British state from which Irish independence was being sought.
It is possible to argue that no state in history held as dominant a position as Britain did between 1919 and 1921. Many of its historic enemies in Europe and the Middle East – Germany, Austria, Russia, Turkey – were on the losing side of the war and thus unable to offer any meaningful challenge to British supremacy. Other old rivals, such as Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden, were either militarily ill-prepared or experiencing domestic social upheavals, or both. They had no wish to pick a fight with the superpower of the day. Italy was clearly too weak to take on such a role.
Cartoon depicting Prime Minister Lloyd George conferring self-determination on small nations except for Ireland. The character in the balcony comments, “Llied George will explain, I suppose, that the Big War for small Nations was only a competition, and that the Small Nations were the Prizes for the Winners.” / Houses of the Oireachtas Library & Research Service
France ‑ the oldest enemy of all, but recently turned friend ‑ was utterly shattered by the effort expended to win the war, and had neither the strategic self-interest nor will to risk alienating its ally by interfering in what London regarded as an internal matter. Even the United States, which had garnered much kudos from its contribution to the winning of the war without having had to share the debilitating losses of the other allies, was no match. Its internal squabbles dictated an absence from the type of international role that might have precipitated a clash with Britain over the future of Ireland.
Britain, of course, had also lost many young men and had spent a significant part of its budget over the previous four years on non-productive military expenditure. It was, however, very differently situated from its “Great Power” rivals. No part of Britain’s national territory had been occupied during the war. Its human losses, while heavy, were at the lower end of the relative scale. The British navy, for all that it had been embarrassed by the shortcomings revealed during the Battle of Jutland, was bigger, and ruled the world’s waves more securely, than ever. The British Empire was not alone intact but had expanded as a result of the acquisition of some of the choice fruits that had fallen from the German tree. It had also gained the euphemistically entitled “mandated” territories in the Middle East. Finally Britain had a Government that enjoyed a huge majority in Parliament as a result, in the popular mind, of having “won the war”.
Laurence Ginnell was the only TD who had experience serving in a national legislature / George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress
It was against this unprepossessing backdrop that Irish republicans engaged on a plan that certainly had audacity, but little else, to recommend it. They were the inhabitants of the weakest and apparently most backward of the territories of this realm, this “United Kingdom”. Yet they decided that they would, by their own efforts, take their leave of this mighty polity, whether their rulers in London willed it or not. Dáil Éireann was the tip of the spear point launched at the heart of empire.
The leaders of this daring initiative lacked experience of public affairs. Only one ‑ Laurence Ginnell ‑ had experience of serving in a national legislature. On account of his age, arrest and illness, he played a relatively marginal role in the affairs of the First Dáil. None had served as a Government Minister. Even those, such as Cathal Brugha, who had some managerial experience in the business world, found that knowledge of limited relevance in their new roles. Some, like Harry Boland and J.J. Walsh, had a deep familiarity with the affairs of the Gaelic Athletic Association, but this was of limited use given the difference in scale and importance compared to the direction of a national revolution.
There was an upside to this lack of experience. In the absence of established models of behaviour, the leaders were forced to develop their own methods and practices, rooted in the lived experience of the struggle itself. But, of course, it took some time for those involved to make progress up this learning curve, and especially in the early days of the struggle there was a necessarily ad hoc feel to their actions.
So much for the general background. What were the aims of those involved in this endeavour, and to what extent did they succeed in achieving them?
The agenda for the separatist movement as defined on the first day of the Dáil was two-fold. In the short-term, it aimed to achieve international recognition of Ireland’s status as a sovereign, independent republic. In the longer term, it aimed to reorient state and society along the lines indicated by the Democratic Programme. There was a great deal else involved, of course, but these were the fundamentals. So what is there to be said under these two headings?
The lofty ambitions outlined in the Democratic Programme were not realised / Image courtesy of Whytes.com
The lofty ambitions outlined in the Democratic Programme were not realised either during the independence struggle itself or in the post-independence era. This failure was readily understandable during the years 1919-23, when the primary focus was initially on getting Britain to loosen its grip on Ireland, and then on the Civil War. Thereafter the absence of more substantial strides towards these goals was less forgivable. This is true even in light of the contemporary constraints (domestic and foreign, economic, social and political) within which all Governments had to operate. These constraints meant that while they were self-governing, none of them enjoyed anything even remotely close to genuine freedom of action.
The goal of achieving international recognition of Ireland’s status was not achieved either – or, at least, not immediately. The founders of the Dáil desired a united, sovereign, independent Irish republic. However, after 1922 the island was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Six Counties that made up Northern Ireland were subject to the type of home rule arrangements almost universally rejected by nationalists and unionists alike in the 1918 general election The twenty-six county Irish Free State “enjoyed” a restricted form of dominion status which almost no-one within its jurisdiction had positively sought.
But to characterise the First Dáil as a failure is to be too critical. The scale of the task being undertaken and the obstacles in the Dáil’s path were immense. The failure to achieve their ultimate goals should not blind one to the intellectual feat inherent in setting those goals in the first place. There were also practical achievements between 1919 and 1921, the result of which was to force His Majesty’s Government in London to accept ‑ very unwillingly ‑ that it could no longer exercise control over the whole island of Ireland. Indeed, it could control only a relatively small part of it. This was truly a historic development, and the role played by Dáil Éireann in that should be acknowledged.
International recognition, of the type sought by the republicans, was simply impossible after the end of the First World War, given the aforementioned extent of British power. Had that war ended in a truce, with neither the central nor the allied powers victorious, it would be possible to conceive that diplomacy might have had a role to play in settling Ireland’s future. But Britain was clearly on the winning side, and no state of any significance was willing to risk relations with her by offering Irish separatists the type of recognition they craved.
Moreover, given the composition of the British cabinet, there was clearly no prospect of any unilateral action on the part of Downing Street to allow Ireland to abrogate the loyalty it was deemed the Irish owed to the Crown. One should not, however, underestimate the financial and moral gains accruing to republicans as a result of their overseas efforts during the struggle for independence
The Dáil established a counter state that replaced the British administration’s authority / Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
In the face of such rebuffs, those who held true to the republican ideal were forced to improvise, and go down two distinct and novel paths. The first was the campaign of guerrilla warfare. This was a departure from the type of urban insurrection seen in 1916. Nor did it resemble the type of large-scale engagements seen during the “Year of the French” in 1798. In Irish terms it was a new and devastatingly effective form of combat that successfully negated many of the enormous advantages enjoyed by the British forces.
The second was the establishment of a counter-state that acknowledged no other authority than that of Dáil Éireann. This counter-state took control of much of the day-to-day influence enjoyed by the British Government over Irish lives long before the Truce was agreed or the Treaty implemented. It is true that this method had been flagged by Arthur Griffith when setting out Sinn Féin’s original doctrine of self-reliance 15 years previously, but that was a purely theoretical course of action. What happened between 1919 and 1921 was a genuinely new phenomenon. It was the creation of an underground state under the very noses of the British rulers of Ireland.
It has been noted that the republicans had certain advantages in this respect when compared to other national groups who were striving for their freedom, for example, those in central and eastern Europe. There was a tradition of representative government within the United Kingdom, albeit one that represented elites to a disproportionate extent, and the poor not at all. Nevertheless, it had created a variety of administrative bodies, especially within local government structures. Control of the machinery of these administrative bodies could quite readily be transferred from one overarching authority (Dublin Castle) to another (Dáil Éireann).
There was a strong civic sphere evident in the Ireland at that time, which was a reflection of both Roman Catholic and British Victorian values. The emphasis on small government and the provision by the private sphere of socially-engaged organisations and institutions meant that many of those involved in the struggle already had experience of working within the administrative machine that they were aiming to capture.
Cartoon illustrating the US President’s rejection of Prussianism, Dayton Daily News, February 1918 / Caroline and Erwin Swann collection of caricature and cartoon, Library of Congress
The suggestion is sometimes heard that the republicans, in appearing to borrow from the Westminster model when framing aspects of the Dáil’s modus operandi, somehow undermined the logic of the separatist campaign. This surely overstates the case. A number of the procedural matters in question (most notably standing orders) were common to many representative assemblies at that time and were not in any way the preserve of the London parliament. There was prudence and wisdom in using such tried and tested practices where they were available to hand, especially when there was already so much that was novel about the enterprise. This mixture of prudence and daring, ability and imagination, was a winning combination. While the Irish population was clearly was in the mood for change, it was understandably nervous of precipitating type of social catastrophe even then becoming manifest in revolutionary Russia.
The use made by the Dáil of British words and deeds as a means of undermining British rule in Ireland was evident in other ways also. It appropriated the “just war” rhetoric that had been employed by the British Government to justify its actions between 1914 and 1918. This included small nations’ rights to national self-determination, to govern themselves free of interference from Great Powers, and to devise institutions of their own that would reflect native genius rather than protect the interests of neighbours. It also included the sense of progress connoted by the word “democracy”.
In all these respects the Dáil could appeal over the heads of British politicians to the British public, and to foreign governments. The Dáil argued that it, and not Westminster, was the incarnation of the will of the Irish people. To defy that will, particularly by recourse to military force, was framed as the very definition of the “Prussianism” from which Belgium had ostensibly had to be rescued.
There were, of course, Irish people who rejected the separatist ideal as embodied in the Dáil in favour of other political arrangements. The British Government consistently used the existence of such constituencies ‑ notably home rulers and unionists ‑ to deny the legitimacy of the leadership of the Dáil to speak on behalf of the people of Ireland as a whole.
That leadership was not slow to point out the flaw in this argument. The application of the principle of self-determination to the new ‑ or recreated ‑ states that had come into existence as a result of the Great War had, in every case, included groups within the territory of those states who objected to the new dispensation. However there was no suggestion that the rule of these new governments lacked legitimacy. Needless to say the regime in Dublin Castle, and the London administration more generally, was keen to avoid any suggestion that these comparisons were valid.
But even if one accepts this premise, British actions following the creation of the Dáil were open to the same criticisms members of His Majesty’s Government had levelled against the plans of the republicans. London justified the partition of the island under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act on the grounds that “Ulster” (more accurately, swathes of north-east Ulster) objected to the prospect of self-government. This was framed as nothing less than an ethnic division within the population living on the island of Ireland.
The implementation of the Act, however, left a small proportion of the unionist population “south” of the Border, and a large number of nationalists north of it. Nationalists were in a majority pretty well everywhere along both sides of the Border. The line thus drawn did not reflect the purported reality of ethnic division. Furthermore, there was a long history of the entire island being subject to British rule and the Government of Ireland Act contained provisions that allowed for reunification. All this indicates that the British Government itself believed that the religious and other divisions on the island were divisions within the Irish nation rather than divisions between that nation and any another.
In light of these considerations, it is difficult to sustain the argument that the Dáil was responsible for or even directly contributed to partition. Partition was the considered action of the London government. The effects of it are evident to the present day.
It might be argued a little more plausibly that the leadership of the Dáil made little effort to reach out to their counterparts among the unionist community on the island with a view to ascertaining whether some modus vivendi could be worked out between them. Even here, however, there is little evidence that there was any meaningful prospect of reconciliation between two utterly conflicting visions for the island’s future. Once the Border had been created, and a unionist administration formed under James Craig, the prospects for some form of negotiated reunification between North and South were slim to non-existent.
TDs Harry Boland, Art O'Brien, Sean T. O'Kelly and George Gavan Duffy / Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
As with any vibrant national political force of any significance, the membership of First Dáil contained within its ranks individuals who agreed with each other on certain points, and disagreed on others. That membership inevitably had a variety of ideas and priorities as to what the Dáil should seek to do. The divisions were kept well hidden for the most part, and certainly do not correspond in any meaningful way with the Treaty split. One can distinguish two broad lines of division that were implicit from the outset.
The first division was between the membership and leadership of the original Sinn Féin and the much larger number who flocked to the party in 1917-8. The original Sinn Féin members included some who had not always been republicans. The large group who joined later were crucial to the winning of the 1918 general election. The juncture between the two groups had been made possible by the clever wording of the revised party constitution of 1917. The compromise implicit in that wording could not eliminate important differences of opinion, however.
The second distinction can be discerned with the benefit of hindsight. A relatively small group demanded that political action either be prioritised over military endeavour or pursued to the exclusion of it. A much larger group was prepared to accept simultaneous pursuit of political and military action. Overt criticism within the Dáil of the actions of the IRA was rare while the fighting was on-going, and Cabinet unity on the issue was maintained until the Truce. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to believe that all of those involved were of one mind on all aspects of this difficult question.
Arthur Mitchell, author of the best single volume history of the Dáil in its foundational years, notes that the principal weakness of British policy in Ireland during these years “was that it was trying to suppress not a rebellion but the birth of a nation”[1]. This judgement is undoubtedly sound. The republican demand, as expressed in its simplest form, was that the government of Ireland should be composed of the Irish people, conducted by the Irish people and directed for the benefit of the Irish people. It was a pure and an enormously alluring ideal.
The motive force that drove those who articulated this demand and created the Dáil was an idealism that was enhanced and not diminished by a touch of naiveté. If they had known a little more they might have sought, and achieved, far less. The most important achievement of this first, and greatest, Dáil was the manner in which it gave concrete form to intangible values of spirit, of nationality, of history itself. Little wonder, then, that its memory has been, and remains, so cherished and by so many.
[1] Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann, 1919-21 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1995), p. 338.
