Curragh incident
The Curragh incident of 20 March 1914, sometimes known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time still formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was scheduled to receive a measure of devolved government, which included Ulster, later in the year. The incident is important in 20th-century Irish history, and is notable for being one of the few occasions since the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly intervened in politics. It is widely thought of as a mutiny, though no orders actually given were disobeyed.
With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the British Cabinet contemplated some kind of military action against the unionist Ulster Volunteers who threatened to rebel against it. Many officers, especially those with Irish Protestant connections, of whom the most prominent was Hubert Gough, threatened to resign or accept dismissal rather than obey orders to conduct military operations against the unionists, and were privately encouraged from London by senior officers including Henry Wilson.
Although the Cabinet issued a document claiming that the issue had been a misunderstanding, Secretary of State for War J. E. B. Seely and Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) Field Marshal Sir John French were forced to resign after amending it to promise that the British Army would not be used against the Ulster loyalists.
The event contributed both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish nationalist movement, convincing Irish nationalists that they could not expect support from the British Army in Ireland.
Background[edit]
In early 1912, the Liberal British government of H. H. Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. Unionists had objected to being under the jurisdiction of the proposed Dublin Parliament, and Ulster Unionists founded the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) paramilitary group in 1912, aided by a number of senior retired British officers, to fight if necessary against the British government and/or against a future Irish Home Rule government as proposed by the bill.
In September 1913, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), John French, had expressed his concerns to the government and to the King (who had also asked Asquith for his views) that the British Army, if ordered to act against the UVF, might split, with some serving officers even siding with the Ulster Unionists, given that many shared the same view of preserving and defending a Protestant British Empire and believed Home Rule for mainly Catholic Ireland would threaten it.[1] Major-General Henry Hughes Wilson, Director of Military Operations, was in regular contact with Opposition leaders (including Bonar Law) and with retired officers who supported the Volunteers.[2][3]
Paget's orders[edit]
To deal with the threat of violence from the UVF should the Home Rule Bill be passed in the British Parliament, Chief of the General Staff (CIGS) Field Marshal Sir John French and Secretary of State for War J. E. B. Seely summoned General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, for talks at the War Office in October 1913. Paget's letter (19 October) suggests that he wanted "partial mobilisation" while Seely wrote to the Prime Minister (24 October) about the potential use of General Nevil Macready, who had experience of crowd control during the Tonypandy riots in 1910, and had been consulted by Birrell about the use of troops in the Belfast riots of 1912. In October 1913, Seely sent Macready to report on the police in Belfast and Dublin.[2]
Intelligence reported that the UVF (now 100,000 strong) might be about to seize the ammunition at Carrickfergus Castle. Political negotiations were deadlocked as John Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party was only willing to offer Ulster an opt-out from Home Rule for up to six years (i.e., until after the next general election), whereas the Ulster Unionists, led by Edward Carson, wanted a permanent opt-out. Asquith set up a five-man Cabinet Committee, chaired by Lord Crewe (who soon fell ill), and consisting of John Simon, Augustine Birrell (Chief Secretary for Ireland), Seely, and Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty). Churchill, who spoke at Bradford (14 March) to say that there were "worse things than bloodshed, even on an extended scale" and "Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof", and Seely appear to have been courting some kind of confrontation with the UVF.[4]
Paget was ordered to prepare to deploy troops to prevent "evil-disposed persons" seizing weapons, and summoned to London for further instructions. Seely obtained French's compliance by repeatedly assuring him of the accuracy of intelligence that the UVF might march on Dublin. The plan was to occupy government buildings, to repel any assaults by the UVF and to guard the armouries at Omagh, Enniskillen, Armagh, Dundalk and Carrickfergus to prevent thefts of weapons. Six different contingencies were discussed, including armed resistance to the troops as they moved to protect the arms depots. Seely also promised Paget reinforcements "... to the last man ..." to uphold the law in Ireland. In the event of a railway strike, or other obstacle, Churchill offered transport of forces by the Royal Navy.[5]
The politicians later claimed that at the meeting when Paget arrived in London, they merely gave verbal amplification to orders which he had already received from the War Office, but Asquith later admitted that this was untrue; at the meeting Paget was also told to send troops to Newry (an old, empty barracks with no stores) and Dundalk, both in Irish nationalist areas and so unlikely to be seized by the UVF, but of strategic importance in any move to bring Ulster under military control. It was later suggested (a claim believed by Sir James Fergusson, Charles Fergusson's son) that the move to deploy troops may have been a "plot" by Churchill and Seely to goad the loyalists into a rebellion which would then be put down, although this view is not universally held.[6]
On the evening of 18 March, Paget wired Major-General Lovick Friend that the troop movements were to be completed by dawn on Sunday 31 March. Paget was summoned to another meeting on 19 March at which Seely declared that the government was pressing ahead with Home Rule and had no intention of allowing civil war to break out, suggesting that the UVF were to be crushed if they attempted to start one. Prince Louis of Battenberg (First Sea Lord) was also at the meeting, as that day the 3rd Battle Squadron was ordered to steam to Lamlash on the Firth of Clyde. The following night Churchill told French that his ships would have Belfast in flames in 24 hours, while other vessels were ready to help deploy troops to Ulster (in case of a strike by loyalist railwaymen). That evening, after Carson had stormed out of a Commons debate and departed for Ulster, where he was expected to declare a provisional government, Asquith, Seely, Churchill, Birrell, Field Marshal French, and General Paget had an emergency meeting at 10 Downing Street where Asquith insisted that extra infantry be sent to defend the artillery at Dundalk, which French wanted to withdraw. Seely claimed that a unionist coup was imminent in Ulster, although no trace of his intelligence survives.[7]
General Fergusson c.1926
Field Marshal John French
General Gough c.1900
Sir Arthur Paget, GOC Irish Command in March 1914
General Henry Wilson
