Robert Erskine Childers - Conversion

Conversion

There was no single incident which was responsible for Childers's conversion from loyal supporter of the British Empire to extreme Irish nationalist: a nationalist so intemperate that his opposition to compromise is sometimes blamed for bringing about the Irish Civil War. Rather, there was a gradual awareness, later turning into a fanatical obsession, that the island of Ireland should have its own government. An early disillusionment with Britain's empire policy was his realisation that, given more patient and skilful negotiation, the Boer War could have been avoided. His friend and biographer Basil Williams noticed his growing doubts about Britain's actions in southern Africa while they were on campaign together: "Both of us, who came out as hide-bound Tories, began to tend towards more liberal ideas, partly from the ... democratic company we were keeping, but chiefly, I think, from our discussions on politics and life generally." Molly Childers, brought up in a family that proudly traced its roots to the Mayflower voyage escaping oppression in England, also influenced her husband's outlook on the right of Britain to rule in other lands. The ground was well prepared, then, when in the summer of 1908 he and his cousin Robert Barton took a holiday motor tour inspecting agricultural co-operatives in the south and west of Ireland. "I have come back," he wrote to Basil Williams, "finally and immutably a convert to Home Rule...though we both grew up steeped in the most irreconcilable sort of Unionism."

In the autumn of 1910 Childers resigned his post as Clerk of Petitions to leave himself free to join the Liberal Party, with its declared commitment to home rule, and in May 1912 he secured for himself the candidature in one of the parliamentary seats in the naval town of Devonport. As the well-known writer of The Riddle of the Sands, with its implied support for an expanded Royal Navy, Childers could hardly fail to win the vote whenever the next election was called. However the Liberal Party, although relying upon Home Rule MPs for its Commons majority, in response to threats from the Ulster Unionists of a civil war, began to entertain the idea of exempting some or all of Ulster from Irish self-government. Childers abandoned his candidacy and left the party.

The threats of revolt were real; disaffection among army officers who might be required to act against any rebellion was revealed by the Curragh incident in March, and the large-scale covert Larne gun-running was made in April 1914. The organisers of the Unionists' gun running were influential men and in the interests of political expediency they were not prosecuted. Their action succeeded in causing the introduction of an Amending Bill, exempting some or all of Ulster from Home Rule. The Liberals' Home Rule Bill, introduced in 1912, would eventually pass into law in 1914, but was immediately - by a separate Act of Parliament - shelved for the duration of the Great War which had just broken out, whilst the Amending Bill to exclude the Six Counties, the duration of whose provisions still remained a matter of debate, was dropped altogether for the time being.

Childers's response to the Larne gun-running was to organise a symbolic arms purchase on behalf of the Irish Volunteers, known as the "Howth gun-running". In May 1914 a committee of idealistic Anglo-Irish "cultural nationalists" was set up to raise the necessary funds, with Alice Stopford Green as treasurer and Molly Childers as secretary. Roger Casement was appointed as the link with the Volunteers' leadership and Darrell Figgis, who was able to offer introductions to various arms dealers, was co-opted at Casement's suggestion. At the end of May, Childers and Figgis travelled to the Hamburg arms firm of Moritz Magnus der Jüngere and bought a consignment of 1,500 Mauser Model 1871 rifles and 49,000 rounds of ammunition, for delivery at sea. On 12 July 1914 off the mouth of the River Scheldt the arms were transferred from a German tugboat to Childers's yacht Asgard and the Kelpie of Conor O'Brien. Childers sailed into Howth shortly after noon on 26 July and the weapons were handed over, in a far from secret operation, to uniformed columns of Irish Volunteers. The movements of Kelpie had become known to the authorities and so, off the coast of Wales, O'Brien transferred his cargo to Sir Thomas Myles in the Chotah. This was landed at Kilcoole, south of Dublin, under cover of darkness on 1 August.

Although Childers may have intended his act as no more than a symbolic gesture, it had all too tangible consequences: the Volunteers were too numerous to allow any official intervention to succeed, but police nonetheless attempted to intercept the weapons as they were being marched towards Dublin. A small detachment from The King's Own Scottish Borderers was called to assist the police, but the Volunteers had dispersed, with most of the weapons. However the troops found themselves at the centre of a hostile demonstration and opened fire on the crowd: three died. Because the imminent declaration of war against Germany, just nine days away, was occupying all of Childers's attention, this ill-targeted official reaction did not, at the time, strengthen his nationalist resolve still further. The same could not be said of Molly, who although having previously viewed her husband's association with Casement (whom she assessed as having "a streak of madness" within him) with suspicion, was now persuaded of Britain's "injustice and cruelty".

Unbeknown to Childers, the Irish Volunteers organiser at Howth, Bulmer Hobson, was a founding member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and at Easter 1916 the Brotherhood used the "Howth Mausers" to mount the historic Easter Rising. Hobson himself did not support the rising and Casement, who had arranged to supply the rebels with a further shipload of arms from the German army, was under arrest with his consignment scuttled. The uprising was crushed in heavy fighting and was followed by a strict imposition of martial law. Childers, on temporary leave in London, was shocked by the harsh and summary punishments (including the execution of sixteen of the leaders of the rising) authorised by General John Maxwell, but as a serving officer he could do little.