Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [41]
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 July 7. 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 appear132 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 United States 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 Eire133 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 high-handed 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. But the gambit failed, leaving Britain and Ireland alike losers.
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 July 6, he inspected an exercise in Kent. “Winston was in great form,”134 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 German invasion on July 9, and was surprised when it did not come. On July 10, instead, the Luftwaffe launched its first big raid on Britain, by