regime did not declare war, though French bitterness about Oran persisted for years to come. The bombardment was less decisive in its strategic achievement than Churchill claimed, because one French battle-cruiser escaped, and a powerful fleet still lay at Toulon under Vichy orders. But actions sometimes have consequences which remain unperceived for long afterwards. This was the case with the attack on Mers-el-Kebir, followed by the failure two months later of a Free French attempt to take over Dakar, the capital of France’s African colony Senegal. When General Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator, submitted to Hitler his shopping list for joining the Axis, it was headed by a demand that Hitler should transfer to Spain French colonies in Africa. Yet Vichy France’s rejection of both British diplomatic advances and military threats, together with the refusal of most of France’s African colonies to ‘rally’ to De Gaulle, persuaded Hitler to hope that Pétain’s nation would soon become his fighting ally. He therefore refused to satisfy Franco at French expense. The attack on Oran, a painful necessity, and Dakar, an apparent fiasco, contributed significantly to keeping Spain out of the war.
One part of the British Commonwealth offered no succour to the ‘mother country’: the Irish Free State, bitterly hostile to Britain since it gained independence in 1922, sustained nominal allegiance by a constitutional quirk under the terms of the island’s partition treaty. Churchill had heaped scorn upon Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 surrender of Britain’s Irish ‘Treaty Ports’ to the Dublin government. As First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 he contemplated military action against Eire, as the southern Irish dominion was known. Amid the desperate circumstances of June 1940, however, he responded cautiously to a suggestion by Chamberlain – of all people – that Ireland should be obliged by force to yield up its harbours, which might play a critical role in keeping open Britain’s Atlantic lifeline. Churchill was moved to oppose this by fear of a hostile reaction in the United States. Instead, the British government urged Lord Craigavon, prime minister of the Protestant north, which remained part of the United Kingdom, to seek a meeting with Irish prime minister Éamon de Valera to discuss the defence of their common island. Craigavon, like most of his fellow Ulstermen, loathed the Catholic southerners. He dismissed this notion out of hand.
Yet in late June, London presented a remarkable and radical secret proposal to Dublin: Britain would make a principled commitment to a post-war united Ireland in return for immediate access to Irish ports and bases. Britain’s ambassador in Dublin reported De Valera’s stony response. The Taoiseach would commit himself only to the neutrality of a united Ireland though he said unconvincingly that he ‘might’ enter the war after the British government made a public declaration of commitment to union.
The British government nonetheless urged Dublin to conduct talks with the Belfast regime about a prospective union endorsed by Britain, in return for Eire’s belligerence. Chamberlain told the cabinet: ‘I do not believe that the Ulster government would refuse to play their part to bring about so favourable a development.’ De Valera again declined to accept deferred payment. MacDonald cabled London, urging Churchill to offer personal assurances. The prime minister wrote in the margin of this message: ‘But all contingent upon Ulster agreeing & S. Ireland coming into the war.’
On 26 June Chamberlain belatedly reported these exchanges to Craigavon, saying: ‘You will observe that the document takes the form of an enquiry only, because we have not felt it right to approach you officially with a request for your assent unless we had first a binding assurance from Eire that they would, if the assent were given, come into the war…If therefore they refuse the plan you are in no way committed, and if they accept you are still free to make your own comments or objections as may think fit.’ The Ulsterman cabled back: ‘Am profoundly shocked and disgusted by your letter making suggestions so far-reaching behind my back and without any preconsultation with me. To such treachery to loyal Ulster I will never be a party.’ Chamberlain, in turn, responded equally angrily to what he perceived as Craigavon’s insufferable parochialism. He concluded: ‘Please remember the serious nature of the situation which requires that every effort be made to meet it.’
The war cabinet, evidently unimpressed by Craigavon’s anger, now strengthened its proposal to Dublin: ‘This declaration would take the form of a solemn undertaking that the Union is to become at an early date an accomplished fact from which there shall be no turning back.’ When Craigavon was informed, he responded: ‘Your telegram only confirms my confidential information and conviction De Valera is under German dictation and far past reasoning with. He may purposely protract negotiations till enemy has landed. Strongly advocate immediate naval occupation of harbours and military advance south.’
Craigavon asserted in a personal letter to Churchill that Ulster would only participate in an All-Ireland Defence Force ‘if British martial law is imposed throughout the island’. The two men met in London on 7 July. There is no record of their conversation. It is reasonable to assume that it was frosty, but by then Churchill could assuage the Ulsterman’s fears. Two days earlier, De Valera had finally rejected the British plan. He, like many Irishmen, was convinced that Britain was doomed to lose the war. He doubted Churchill’s real willingness to coerce Craigavon. If he ever seriously contemplated accepting London’s terms, he also probably feared that once committed to belligerence, Ireland would become a British puppet.
Churchill makes no mention of the Irish negotiation in his war memoirs. Since the British offer to Dublin was sensational, this suggests that recollection of it brought no pleasure to the prime minister. Given De Valera’s implacable hostility, the Irish snub was inevitable. But it represented a massive miscalculation by the Irish leader. Ernest Bevin wrote in confidence to an academic friend who was urging a deal on a united Ireland: ‘There are difficulties which appear at the moment almost insurmountable. You see, De Valera’s policy is, even if we get a united Ireland, he would still remain neutral. On that, he is immovable. Were it not for this attitude, I believe a solution would be easy…You may rest assured that we are watching every possible chance.’ If Ireland had entered the war on the Allied side at any time, even after the US became a belligerent in December 1941 and Allied victory was assured, American cash would have flooded into the country, perhaps advancing Ireland’s economic takeoff by two generations.
The exchanges of July were not quite the end of the story. In December 1940, Churchill suggested in a letter to President Roosevelt that ‘If the Government of Eire would show its solidarity with the democracies of the English-speaking world…a Council Of Defence of all Ireland could be set up out of which the unity of the island would probably in some form or other emerge after the war.’ Here was a suggestion much less explicit than that of the summer, obviously modified by the diminution of British peril. It is impossible to know whether, if De Valera had acceded to the British proposal of June 1940, Churchill would indeed have obliged the recalcitrant Ulster Protestants to accept union with the south. Given his highhanded treatment of other dominions and colonies in the course of the war – not least the surrender of British overseas bases to the United States – it seems by no means impossible. So dire was Britain’s predicament, of such vital significance in the U-boat war were Irish ports and airfields, that it seemed worth almost any price to secure them.
Churchill threw himself into the struggle to prepare his island to resist invasion. He decreed that if the Germans landed, all measures including poison gas were to be employed against them. On 6 July he inspected an exercise in Kent. ‘Winston was in great form,’ Ironside wrote in his diary, ‘and gave us lunch at Chartwell in his cottage. Very wet but nobody minded at all.’ A consignment of 250,000 rifles and 300 old 75mm field guns arrived from America – poor weapons, but desperately welcome. Ironside expected the
