‘A drifting policy discussed endlessly in a shipwrecked way.’76
The new IRA Executive occupied the extensive Four Courts complex on the Dublin Quays on 13 April but the decision was criticised by many senior officers, including Tipperary commander Seamus Robinson, who left after one week after ‘a whale of an argument’ with Mellows and O’Connor over the ‘foolishness of the Headquarters of the Army having all its eggs in one basket’.77 IRA officer Alfred White believed that Mellows hoped to consolidate control of the republican forces by establishing a ‘shadow government’ that would take ‘firmer control’ of the IRA; ‘Liam envisaged that the shadow government would be made a target for propaganda and persecution, but that this would keep the issue alive.’78 The occupation of the Four Courts was symbolic rather than tactical, providing republicans with a central point of focus to rival the Free State government. According to Ernie O’Malley, ‘we of the Four Courts were the centre of the armed republican resistance. We had to defend the independence of our country, and whether we made mistakes or not, we were going to make a last attempt to prevent the stampede of the nation.’79 Republican chief of staff, Liam Lynch, remained insulated from the precarious reality of their position and in a letter to his brother shortly after the occupation, he wrote, ‘I am absolutely certain that the Free State was sent to its doom by our action last week.’80
Ernie O’Malley recalled a change in Mellows after the occupation, ‘he seemed gayer, more cheerful now. Perhaps action, such as it was, after the long period of inaction had made him more light hearted.’ For O’Malley and his comrades, the decision to occupy the complex ‘counted for something. We had come out into the open; no more hole and corner work’.81 Senior anti-Treaty officers and their staff now worked, slept and ate in the compound, including typists, cooks and clerical staff. With scant regard for the nation’s heritage, Mellows converted the Records Office that housed priceless manuscripts of Irish civilisation into a munitions factory with explosives, grenades and other machinery. In early April, he drafted a memorandum on behalf of the IRA Executive, outlining the conditions under which the unity of the army might be attained. The IRA executive demanded that the army commit to the following:
1. To maintain the existing Republic.
2. That Dáil Éireann, as the Government of the Republic, be the only government of the country.
3. To maintain the army as the Irish Republican Army, under the control of an elected independent Executive.
4. Disbanding of the Civil Guard, the policing of the country to be carried out by the Irish Republican Army, as decided by the Executive of that Army.
5. All financial liabilities of the army to be discharged, and future requirements met by the Dáil.
6. No elections on the issue at present before the country to be held while the threat of war exists.
Mellows’ memorandum received no official response from the Free State leadership or Dáil Éireann but both the Dáil and the opposing military leaderships established joint committees committed to seeking unity. In early May, it emerged that five senior Munster IRA officers, Dan Breen, Sean O’Hegarty, Sean Moylan, Florence O’Donoghue and Tom Hales, were negotiating with the Free State Army leadership and called publicly for army unification based on ‘the acceptance of the fact, admitted by all sides, that the majority of the people of Ireland are willing to accept the Treaty’, and proposing a non-contested general election and the formation of a coalition government.82 The peace moves were immediately repudiated by the Four Courts IRA Executive and resulted in the resignations of O’Hegarty, O’Donoghue and Hales.
Mellows participated in army re-unification talks led by Liam Lynch and Eoin O’Duffy that brought together senior officers from both sides.83 This new round of talks saw prisoners released and the anti-Treaty forces agreeing to leave several positions it occupied around Dublin. The talks envisaged a unified army launching a joint offensive against the Crown Forces in Northern Ireland, if anti-Treaty republicans were willing to serve under a chief of staff nominated by the Free State Minister for Defence. For the militant faction within the republican executive, however, the offer was seen as tantamount to surrender. Mellows continued to attend meetings of Dáil Éireann until its dissolution in May, speaking on the failed attempts at army unity in two short speeches on 3 and 17 May. On 3 May, he made a short, defiant speech rejecting the terms the Free State Army leadership were offering to secure reunification of the army as ‘plainly another political dodge’:
As I stated here in this House last week, the cause of disunity in the country and in the army was the signing of the Treaty, and so long as that Treaty remains, as long as it is tried to be forced down the throats of people who will not become British subjects, so long you cannot hope for unity either in the army or in the country. This proposal that is put forward now would come very well indeed if it came from people who were acknowledged Free Staters, because it is a Free State document.
What is happening in the country? This threat of civil war, this dissension, is all the result of the political chicanery that is going on and of the attempt to turn this grand national movement, of which we heard some nice words from one of the Deputies a few moments ago, into a game of political humbug – this movement that was an honest movement and a straight movement, a movement of principle, to turn it into the sea of Party politics, to try to get the people of this country who are pledged to a Republic, to desert the Republic on the plea that they may get the Republic sometime, and overthrow the Declaration of Independence upon which Ireland’s claim for a Republic rests.
The blame lies on those who have deserted the Republic, who have betrayed the Republic and who would endeavour to make their comrades betray the Republic as well. Now the Republic exists. It is here still and the army, whether in whole or in part, will still stand by the Republic.
No man is going to die for hypocrisy. No man is going to throw his life away for humbug and if this is what the cause is going to come to, then certainly some of us will not have anything to do with it.84
In the first week of May, the so-called ‘committee of ten’, comprising five TDs from either side of the Treaty split, met to discuss ways of preventing a conflict. Mellows was appointed to the republican panel, alongside Harry Boland, Sean Moylan, Kathleen Clarke and P.J. Ruttledge, with Sean Hales, Pádraic Ó Máille, Joseph McGuinness, Seamus O’Dwyer and Sean MacEoin representing their pro-Treaty counterparts.85 The committee reported back to the Dáil on 10 May, having failed to reach any basis for national unity. Peace proposals were debated in the Dáil again on 17 May, with the so-called pact election agreed two days later, postponing a direct vote on the Treaty and declaring an undertaking on both sides to put forward an agreed panel of candidates to reflect their existing strengths in Dáil Éireann. It was proposed that a new constitution would be produced and a coalition executive formed comprising both pro- and anti-Treaty members. On this occasion, Mellows made another characteristically hard-line speech:
Our idea of a coalition was a coalition formed to save the national honour, a coalition formed to preserve the position of Ireland – the position she entered upon on the 21st January 1919. We went in, if possible to try and save that situation and reconcile it with the present situation we find in the country. We did not go there to make any bargain over seats in this Dáil, which we have no right to bargain about.
Seats mean nothing to us. The Republic meant everything to us. That Declaration of Independence meant everything to us. If it was a question of unity being based upon ten or eleven seats, the manly way for that to be done would be for those of us who are prepared, as I am, to resign in order to let anybody else have that seat, provided the principle is not impugned.
The nation’s honour comes before the nation’s life. Other nations have found themselves in such positions. Some have backed down and have gone the way that such nations deserve. Others have faced it and put their faith where we are prepared to put ours, despite the
