Civil War, Independence War IRELAND

7/30/2019 Civil War, Independence War IRELAND

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Civil War

Irish Civil War

The Irish Civil War (28 June 1922 24 May 1923) was a conflict that

accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entityindependent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire.The conflict was waged between two opposing groups of Irish nationalists:the forces of the new Free State, who supported the Anglo-Irish Treatyunder which the state was established, and the Republican opposition, forwhom the Treaty represented a betrayal of the Irish Republic. The war waswon by the Free State forces.The Civil War may have claimed more lives than the War of Independenceagainst Britain that preceded it, and left Irish society divided and embitteredfor decades afterwards. To this day, the two main political parties in theRepublic of Ireland, Fianna Fil and Fine Gael, are the direct descendants of

the opposing sides in the War.

The treaty

The Anglo-Irish Treaty arose from the Irish War of Independence, foughtbetween Irish separatists (organised as the Irish Republic) and the Britishgovernment, from 1919-1921. The treaty provided for a self-governing Irishstate in 26 of Irelands 32 counties, having its own army and police.However, rather than creating the independent republic favoured by mostnationalists, the Irish Free State would be an autonomous dominion of theBritish Empire with the British monarch as head of state, in the samemanner as Canada and Australia. The treaty also stipulated that members ofthe new Irish Oireachtas (parliament) would have to take the following Oathof AllegianceI do solemnly swear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of theIrish Free State as by law established, and that I will be faithful to HisMajesty King George V, his heirs and successors by law in virtue of thecommon citizenship of Ireland with Great Britain and her adherence to andmembership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth ofnations.

This oath was considered highly objectionable by many Irish Republicans.

Furthermore under the treaty, the state was not to be called a republic but afree state and it would be limited to the 26 southern and western countiesof Ireland. The remaining six north-eastern counties, with their Protestantmajority, would opt to remain part of the United Kingdom as NorthernIreland. The partition of Ireland had already been decided by theWestminster parliament in the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and wasconfirmed in the Anglo-Irish treaty. Also, several strategic ports were toremain occupied by the Royal Navy.
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Nonetheless, Michael Collins, the republican leader who had led the Irishnegotiating team, argued that the treaty gave not the ultimate freedomthat all nations aspire and develop, but the freedom to achieve freedom.However, anti-treaty militants in 1922 believed that the treaty would neverdeliver full Irish independence.

Split in the Nationalist movement

The split over the treaty was deeply personal. Many of the leaders on bothsides had been close friends and comrades during the War of Independence.This made their lethal disagreement over the treaty all the more bitter.Michael Collins later said that amon de Valera had sent him asplenipotentiary to negotiate the treaty because he knew that the Britishwould not concede an independent Irish republic and wanted Collins to takethe blame for the compromise settlement. He said he was deeply betrayedwhen de Valera refused to stand by the agreement that the plenipotentiarieshad negotiated with David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. De Valera,for his part, was furious that Collins and Arthur Griffith had signed the treatywithout consulting him or the Irish cabinet as instructed.

Dil ireann (the parliament of the Irish Republic) narrowly passed theAnglo-Irish Treaty by 64 votes to 57 on 7 January 1922. Following theTreatys ratification, a Provisional Government, headed by Michael Collinsand Arthur Griffith, was set up to transfer power from the Britishadministration to the Irish Free State.Upon the treatys ratification, amon de Valera resigned as President of theRepublic and failed to be re-elected by an even closer vote of 60-58. He

challenged the right of the Dil to approve the treaty, saying that itsmembers were breaking their oath to the Irish Republic. De Valera continuedto promote a compromise whereby the new Irish Free State would be inexternal association with the British Commonwealth rather than be amember of it. In early March he formed the Cumann na Poblachta(Republican Association) party while remaining a member of Sinn Fin. On aspeaking tour of the more republican province of Munster, starting on 17March 1922, de Valera made controversial speeches at Carrick on Suir,Lismore, Dungarvan and Waterford, saying that:If the Treaty were accepted, [by the electorate] the fight for freedom wouldstill go on, and the Irish people, instead of fighting foreign soldiers, will haveto fight the Irish soldiers of an Irish government set up by Irishmen. AtThurles, several days later, he repeated this imagery and added that theIRA: would have to wade through the blood of the soldiers of the IrishGovernment, and perhaps through that of some members of the IrishGovernment to get their freedom.


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In a letter to the Irish Independent on 23 March de Valera accepted theaccuracy of their report of his comment about wading through blood, butdeplored that the newspaper had published it.More seriously, the majority of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) officers werealso against the treaty and in March 1922, their ad-hoc Army Convention

repudiated the authority of the Dil to accept the treaty. The Anti-Treaty IRAformed their own Army Executive, which they declared to be the realgovernment of the country, despite the result of the 1921 general election.On 26 April the Minister of Defence, Richard Mulcahy, summarised allegedillegal activities by many IRA men over the previous three months, whom hedescribed as seceding volunteers, including hundreds of robberies. Yet thisfragmenting army was the only police force on the ground following thedisintegration of the Irish Republican Police and the disbanding of the RoyalIrish Constabulary (RIC).By putting ten questions to General Mulcahy on 28 April, Sen McEnteeargued that the Army Executive had acted continuously on its own to createa republic since 1917, had an unaltered constitution, had never fallen underthe control of the Dil, and that: the only body competent to dissolve theVolunteer Executive was a duly convened convention of the Irish RepublicanArmy not the Dil. By accepting the treaty in January and abandoning therepublic, the Dil majority had effectively deserted the Army Executive. Thenin a debate on defence, McEntee suggested that supporting the ArmyExecutive even if it meant the scrapping of the Treaty and terrible andimmediate war with England, would be better than the civil war which weare beginning at present apparently. McEntees supporters added that themany robberies complained of by Mulcahy on 26 April were caused by the

lack of payment and provision by the Dil to the volunteers.

Descent into war

In the months leading up to the outbreak of civil war, there were a numberof armed confrontations between the opposing IRA factions. In March, therewas a major stand-off between up to 700 armed pro- and anti-treatyfighters in Limerick over who would occupy the military barracks beingvacated by departing British troops. The situation was temporarily resolvedin April when, after arbitration, the two sides agreed to occupy two barrackseach. In April, a pro-treaty general, Adamson, was shot dead by anti-treatyites in Athlone. In early May, there was an even more serious clash inKilkenny, when anti-treaty forces occupied the centre of the town and 200pro-treaty troops were sent from Dublin to disperse them. On 3 May, theDil was informed 18 men had been killed in the fighting in Kilkenny. In abid to avoid an all-out civil war, both sides agreed to a truce on 3 May 1922.

Delay until the June election


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Collins established an army re-unification committee to re-unite the IRAand organised an election pact with de Valeras anti-treaty political followersto campaign jointly in the Free States first election in 1922 and form acoalition government afterwards. He also tried to reach a compromise withanti-treaty IRA leaders by agreeing to a republican-type constitution (with

no mention of the British monarchy) for the new state. IRA leaders such asLiam Lynch were prepared to accept this compromise. However, theproposal for a republican constitution was vetoed by the British as beingcontrary to the terms of the treaty and they threatened military interventionin the Free State unless the treaty were fully implemented. Collinsreluctantly agreed. This completely undermined the electoral pact betweenthe pro- and anti-treaty factions, who went into the Irish general election on18 June 1922 as hostile parties, both calling themselves Sinn Fin.The Pro-Treaty Sinn Fin party won the election with 239,193 votes to133,864 for Anti-Treaty Sinn Fin. A further 247,226 people voted for otherparties, most of whom supported the Treaty (although Labours 132,570votes were ambiguous with regard to the Treaty[citation needed]). Theelection showed that a majority of the Irish electorate supported the treatyand the foundation of the Irish Free State, and that the Sinn Fin party didnot represent the opinions of everyone in the new state, but de Valera, hispolitical followers and most of the IRA continued to oppose the treaty. DeValera is quoted as saying, the majority have no right to do wrong. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, thepro-treaty Provisional Government set about establishing the Irish FreeState, and organised the National Army to replace the IRA and a newpolice force. However, since it was envisaged that the new army would be

built around the IRA, Anti-Treaty IRA units were allowed to take over Britishbarracks and take their arms. In practice, this meant that by the summer of1922, the Provisional Government of the Free State controlled only Dublinand some other areas like Longford where the IRA units supported thetreaty. Fighting would ultimately break out when the Provisional Governmenttried to assert its authority over well-armed and intransigent Anti-Treaty IRAunits around the country particularly a hardline group in Dublin.

Dublin fighting

The Four Courts along the River Liffey quayside. The building was occupiedby anti-treaty forces during the Civil War, whom the National Armysubsequently bombarded into surrender. The Irish national archives in thebuildings were destroyed in the subsequent fire. The building was badlydamaged but was fully restored after the war.On 14 April 1922, 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants, led by Rory OConnor,occupied the Four Courts and several other buildings in central Dublin,resulting in a tense stand-off. These anti-treaty Republicans wanted to sparka new armed confrontation with the British, which they hoped would unite


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the two factions of the IRA against their common enemy. However, for thosewho were determined to make the Free State into a viable, self-governingIrish state, this was an act of rebellion that would have to be put down bythem rather than the British. Arthur Griffith was in favour of using forceagainst these men immediately, but Michael Collins, who wanted at all costs

to avoid civil war, left the Four Courts garrison alone until late June 1922. Bythis point the Pro-Treaty Sinn Fin party had secured a large majority in thegeneral election, along with other parties that supported the Treaty. Collinswas also coming under continuing pressure from London to assert hisgovernments authority in his capital.The British lost patience as result of an action secretly ordered by Collins. Hehad Henry Hughes Wilson, a retired British Army field marshal, assassinatedin London on 22 June because of his role in Northern Ireland.Winston Churchill assumed that the Anti-Treaty IRA were responsible for thekilling and warned Collins that he would use British troops to attack the FourCourts unless the Free State took action. In fact the British cabinet actuallyresolved to attack the Four Courts themselves on 25 June, in an operationthat would have involved tanks, howitzers and aeroplanes. However, on theadvice of General Nevil Macready, who commanded the British garrison inDublin, the plan was cancelled at the last minute. Macreadys argument wasthat British involvement would have united Irish Nationalist opinion againstthe treaty and instead Collins was given a last chance to clear the FourCourts himself.The final straw for the Free State government came on 27 June, when theFour Courts republican garrison kidnapped JJ Ginger OConnell, a generalin the new National Army. Collins, after giving the Four Courts garrison a

final ultimatum to leave the building, decided to end the stand-off bybombarding the Four Courts garrison into surrender. The government thenappointed Collins as Commander-in-Chief of the National Army. This attackwas not the opening shots of the war as skirmishes had taken place betweenpro- and anti-treaty IRA factions throughout the country when the Britishwere handing over the barracks. However, this represented the point of noreturn when all-out war was ipso facto declared and the Civil War officiallybegan.Collins had accepted a British offer of artillery for use by the new army ofthe Free State (though General Macready gave just 200 shells of the 10,000

he had in store at Kilmainham barracks). The anti-treaty forces in the FourCourts, who possessed only small arms, surrendered after two days ofbombardment and the storming of the building by Free State troops (June28-30 1922). Shortly before the surrender of the Four Courts, a massiveexplosion destroyed the western wing of the complex including the IrishPublic Record Office, injuring many advancing Free State soldiers anddestroying the records of several centuries of government in Ireland. It wasalleged by government supporters that the building had been deliberately


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mined. Historians dispute whether the PRO was intentionally destroyed bymines laid by the Republicans on their evacuation or if the explosionsoccurred when their ammunition store was accidentally ignited by thebombardment. Pitched battles continued in Dublin until 5 July, as Anti-TreatyIRA units from the Dublin Brigade, led by Oscar Traynor, occupied OConnell

Street provoking a weeks more street fighting. The fighting cost bothsides 65 killed and 280 wounded. Among the dead was Republican leaderCathal Brugha, who made his last stand after exiting the Granville Hotel. Inaddition, the Free State took over 500 Republican prisoners. The civiliancasualties are estimated to have numbered well over 250.When the fighting in Dublin died down, the Free State government was leftfirmly in control of the Irish capital and the anti-treaty forces dispersedaround the country, mainly to the south and west.

The opposing forces

The outbreak of the Civil War forced pro- and anti-treaty supporters tochoose sides. Supporters of the treaty came to be known as pro-treaty orFree State Army, legally the National Army, and were often calledStaters by their opponents. The latter called themselves Republicans andwere also known as anti-treaty forces, or Irregulars, a term preferred bythe Free State side. The Anti-Treaty IRA claimed that it was defending theIrish Republic that had been declared in 1916 during the Easter Rising, thathad been confirmed by the First Dil and that had been invalidly set aside bythose who accepted the compromise of the Free State. amon de Valerastated that he would serve as an ordinary IRA volunteer and left theleadership of the Anti-Treaty Republicans to military leaders such as Liam

Lynch, the IRA Chief of Staff.The Civil War split the IRA. When the Civil War broke out, the Anti-TreatyIRA (concentrated in the south and west) outnumbered the pro-Free Stateforces by roughly 15,000 men to 7,000 or over 2-1. (The paper strength ofthe IRA in early 1922 was over 72,000 men, but most of them wererecruited during the truce with the British and fought in neither the War ofIndependence nor the Civil War). However, the Anti-Treaty IRA lacked aneffective command structure, a clear strategy and sufficient arms. Theystarted the war with only 6,780 rifles and a handful of machine guns. Manyof their fighters were armed only with shotguns. They also took a handful ofarmoured cars from British troops as they were evacuating the country.More important still, they had no artillery of any kind. As a result, they wereforced to adopt a defensive stance throughout the war.By contrast, the Free State government managed to expand its forcesdramatically after the start of the war. Michael Collins and his commanderswere able to build up an army which was able to overwhelm their opponentsin the field. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, armoured cars, machineguns, small arms and ammunition were much help to pro-treaty forces. The


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National Army amounted to 14,000 men by August 1922, was 38,000 strongby the end of 1922 and by the end of the war, it had swollen to 55,000 menand 3,500 officers, far in excess of what the Irish state would need tomaintain in peacetime. Collins most ruthless officers and men wererecruited from the Dublin Active Service Unit (the elite unit of the IRAs

Dublin Brigade), which Collins had commanded in the Irish War ofIndependence and in particular from his assassination unit, The Squad. Inthe new National Army, they were known as the Dublin Guard. Towards theend of the war, they were implicated in some notorious atrocities againstanti-treaty guerrillas. Most of the National Armys officers were Pro-TreatyIRA men, as were a substantial number of their soldiers. However, many ofthe new armys other recruits were unemployed veterans of the First WorldWar, where they had served in the Irish Division of the British Army. FormerBritish Army officers were also recruited for their technical expertise. Anumber of the senior Free State commanders such as Emmet Dalton John T.Prout and W.R.E. Murphy had seen service as officers in World War One,Dalton and Murphy in the British Army and Prout in the US Army. TheRepublicans made much use of this fact in their propaganda claiming thatthe Free State was only a proxy force for Britain itself. However, in fact, themajority of the Free State soldiers were raw recruits without militaryexperience in either the First World War or the subsequent Irish War ofIndependence.

The Free State takes major towns

With Dublin in pro-treaty hands, conflict spread throughout the country. Thewar started with the anti-treaty forces holding Cork, Limerick and Waterford

as part of a self-styled independent Munster Republic. However, since theanti-treaty side were not equipped to wage conventional war, Liam Lynchwas unable to take advantage of the Republicans initial advantage innumbers and territory held. He hoped simply to hold the Munster Republiclong enough to force Britain to re-negotiate the treaty.The large towns in Ireland were all relatively easily taken by the Free Statein August 1922. Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy and Eoin ODuffy planned a nationwide Free State offensive, dispatching columns overland to takeLimerick in the west and Waterford in the south-east and seaborne forces totake counties Cork and Kerry in the south and Mayo in the west. In thesouth, landings occurred at Union Hall in Co. Cork and Fenit, the port ofTralee, in Co. Kerry. Limerick fell on 20 July, Waterford on the same day andCork city on 10 August after a Free State force landed by sea at PassageWest. Another seaborne expedition to Mayo in the west secured governmentcontrol over that part of the country. While in some places the Republicanshad put up determined resistance, nowhere were they able to defeat regularforces armed with artillery and armour. The only real conventional battle


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during the Free State offensive, the Battle of Killmallock, was fought whenFree State troops advanced south from Limerick.

Guerrilla war

Government victories in the major towns inaugurated a period of guerrilla

warfare. After the fall of Cork, Liam Lynch ordered Anti-Treaty IRA units todisperse and form flying columns as they had when fighting the British. Theyheld out in areas such as the western part of counties Cork and Kerry in thesouth, county Wexford in the east and counties Sligo and Mayo in the west.Sporadic fighting also took place around Dundalk, where Frank Aiken andthe Fourth Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army were based andDublin, where small scale but regular attacks were mounted on Free Statetroops.August and September 1922 saw widespread attacks on Free State forces inthe territories they had occupied in the July-August offensive, inflictingheavy casualties on them. In this period, the republicans also managedseveral relatively large-scale attacks on rural towns, involving severalhundred fighters. Dundalk, for example was taken by Frank Aikens Anti-Treaty unit in a raid on 14 August, Kenmare in Kerry in a similar operationon 9 September and Clifden in Galway on 29 October. There were alsounsuccessful assaults on for example Bantry, Cork on 30 August andKillorglin in Kerry on 30 September in which the Republicans took significantcasualties. However as winter set in the republicans found it increasinglydifficult to sustain their campaign and casualty rates among National Armytroops dropped rapidly. For instance, in County Sligo, 54 people died in theconflict of whom all but 8 had been killed by the end of September.

In October 1922, amon de Valera and the anti-treaty Teachta Dla (TDs,Members of Parliament) set up their own Republican government inopposition to the Free State. However, by then the anti-treaty side held nosignificant territory and de Valeras government had no authority over thepopulation. In any case, the IRA leaders paid no attention to it, seeing theRepublican authority as vested in their own military leaders.In the autumn and winter of 1922, Free State forces broke up many of thelarger Republican guerrilla units. In late September, for example, a sweep ofnorthern county Sligo by Free State troops under Sean MacEoin successfullycornered the Anti-Treaty column which had been operating in the north ofthe county. Six of the column were killed and thirty captured, along with anarmoured car. A similar sweep in Connemara in county Mayo in lateNovember captured Anti-Treaty column commander Michael Kilroy and manyof his fighters. December saw the capture of two separate Republicancolumns in the Meath/Kildare area. Intelligence gathered by Free Stateforces also led to the capture on 5 August of over 100 Republican fighters inDublin, who were attempting to destroy bridges leading into the city and on4 November Ernie OMalley, commander of Anti-Treaty forces in Dublin was


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captured when National Army troops discovered his safe house. ElsewhereAnti-Treaty units were forced by lack of supplies and safe-houses to disperseinto smaller groups, typically of nine to ten men.An exception to this general rule was the activities of a column of Cork andTipperary Anti-Treaty IRA fighters led by Tom Barry. In late December 1922,

this group of around 100 men took a string of towns, first in Cork, then inTipperary and finally Carrick on Suir, Thomastown and Mullinavat in countyKilkenny where the Free State troops surrendered and gave up their arms.However, even Barrys force was not capable of holding any of the places ithad taken and by January 1923 it had dispersed due to lack of food andsupplies.Despite these successes for the National Army, it took eight more months ofintermittent warfare before the war was brought to an end. The guerrillaphase of the war was marked by assassinations and executions of leadersformerly allied in the cause of Irish independence. Commander-in-ChiefMichael Collins was killed in an ambush by anti-treaty Republicans at Bal namBlth, near his home in County Cork, in August 1922. Collins deathincreased the bitterness of the Free State leadership towards theRepublicans and probably contributed to the subsequent descent of theconflict into a cycle of atrocities and reprisals. Arthur Griffith, the Free Statepresident had also died of a brain hemorrhage ten days before, leaving theFree State government in the hands of W.T. Cosgrave and the Free Statearmy under the command of General Richard Mulcahy.By late 1922 and early 1923, the Anti Treaty guerrillas campaign had beenreduced largely to acts of sabotage and destruction of public infrastructuresuch as roads and railways. In January 1923 the Great Southern and

Western Railway released a report detailing the damage Anti-Treaty forceshad caused to their property over the previous six months; 375 miles of linedamaged, 42 engines derailed, 51 over-bridges and 207 under-bridgesdestroyed, 83 signal cabins and 13 other buildings destroyed. In the samemonth, Republicans destroyed the railway stations at Sligo, Ballybunnionand Listowel. It was also in this period that the Anti-Treaty IRA beganburning the homes of Free State Senators and of many of the Anglo-Irishlanded class.

End of the war

By early 1923, the offensive capability of the IRA had been seriously erodedand when, in February 1923, Republican leader Liam Deasy was captured byFree State forces, he called on the republicans to end their campaign andreach an accommodation with the Free State. The States executions of Anti-Treaty prisoners, 34 of whom were shot in January 1923, also took its toll onthe Republicans morale.In addition, the National Armys operations in the field were slowly butsteadily breaking up the remaining Republican concentrations. On 18


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February, Anti-Treaty officer Dinny Lacey was killed and his column roundedup at the Glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. Lacey had been the head of the IRAs2nd Southern Division and his death crippled the Republicans cause in theTipperary/Waterford area. A meeting of the Anti-Treaty leadership on 26February was told by their 1st Southern Division that, in a short time we

would not have a man left owing to the great number of arrests andcasualties. The Cork units reported they had suffered 29 killed and anunknown number captured in recent actions and, if five men are arrested ineach area, we are finished.March and April 1923 saw this progressive dismemberment of theRepublican forces continue with the capture and sometimes killing ofguerrilla columns. Among the more well known of these incidents was thewiping out of an Anti-Treaty IRA column under Tim Lyons (known asAeroplane) in a cave near Kerry Head on 18 April. Three anti-treaty IRAmen and two National Army soldiers were killed in the siege of the cave andthe remaining five Republicans were taken prisoner and later executed. ANational Army report of 11 April stated, Events of the last few days point tothe beginning of the end as a far as the irregular campaign is concerned.As the conflict petered out into a de facto victory for the pro-treaty side, deValera asked the IRA leadership to call a ceasefire, but they refused. TheAnti-Treaty IRA executive met on 26 March in county Tipperary to discussthe wars future. Tom Barry proposed a motion to end the war, but it wasdefeated by 6 votes to 5. amon de Valera was allowed to attend, aftersome debate, but was given no voting rights.Liam Lynch, the intransigent Republican leader, was killed in a skirmish inthe Knockmealdown mountains in County Tipperary on 10 April. The National

Army had extracted information from Republican prisoners in Dublin that theIRA Executive was in the area and as well as killing Lynch, they alsocaptured senior Anti-Treaty IRA officers Dan Breen, Todd Andrews, SenGaynor and Frank Barrett in the operation. It is often suggested that thedeath of Lynch allowed the more pragmatic Frank Aiken, who took over asIRA Chief of Staff, to call a halt to what seemed a futile struggle. Aikensaccession to IRA leadership was followed on 30 April by the declaration of aceasefire on behalf of the anti-treaty forces. On 24 May 1923, Aiken followedthis with an order to IRA volunteers to dump arms rather than surrenderthem or continue a fight which they were incapable of winning.

amon de Valera supported the order, issuing a statement to Anti-Treatyfighters on 24 May:Soldiers of the Republic. Legion of the Rearguard: The Republic can nolonger be defended successfully by your arms. Further sacrifice of life wouldnow be in vain and the continuance of the struggle in arms unwise in thenational interest and prejudicial to the future of our cause. Military victorymust be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed theRepublic.


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Thousands of Anti-Treaty IRA members (including amon de Valera on 15August) were arrested by the Free State forces in the weeks and monthsafter the end of the war, when they had dumped their arms and returnedhome.The Free State government had started peace negotiations in early May

which broke down. Without a formal peace, holding 13,000 prisoners andworried that fighting could break out again at any time, it enacted theEmergency Powers Act on 2 July by a vote of 37 13.In October 1923 around 8,000 of the 12,000 Republican prisoners in FreeState gaols went on hunger strike. The strike lasted for forty one days andmet little success. However, most of the women prisoners were releasedshortly thereafter and the hunger strike helped concentrate the Republicanmovement on the prisoners and their associated organisations. In July deValera had recognised the Republican political interests lay with theprisoners and went so far as to say:The whole future of our cause and of the nation depends in my opinionupon the spirit of the prisoners in the camps and in the jails. You are therepositories of the NATIONAL FAITH AND WILL.

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The TreatyThe Republic's delegates to the Treaty Negotiations were accredited by President de Valera and hiscabinet as Plenipotentiaries (ie, negotiators with the legal authority to sign a treaty without referenceback to the cabinet.). However the Treaty proved controversial in so far as it replaced the Republic

(which was unrecognised by any international state) by a dominion of the British Commonwealthwith the King represented by a Governor-General of the Irish Free State. De Valera baulked at theagreement, even though his opponents claimed he had refused to go because he knew what theoutcome would be and didn't want to get the blame. Curiously, he reacted to news of the signing ofthe Treaty not with anger at its contents (which he refused even to read when offered a newspaperreport of its contents) but with anger over the fact that they had not consulted with him, theirpresident, before signing! De Valera and minority of supporters in Sinn Fein left Dil ireann andtried unsuccessfully to set up a republican administration with a republican ministry under himself.Griffith was elected President of Dil ireann in his place. A Crown-appointed administration underMichael Collins was created also.

Civil WarRelations with the new Irish government, which was backed by most of the Dil and the electorate,and the Anti-treatyites under the nominal leadership of deV, now descended into the Irish Civil War(June 1922), in which the pro-treaty Free State forces defeated de Valera's Republicans. Even deValera's most passionate supporters admit his behaviour at that point was the low point in his career.Speeches where he talked of "wading through the blood" of ministers hardly cooled tempers. Thoughnominally head of the Anti-treatyites, de Valera had little influence and spent part of the time inprison. Among the Civil War's many tragedies were the assassination of the Collins, who was the
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head of the Provisional Government, the death through exhaustion of the President of Dil ireann,Arthur Griffith, the execution of one of the treaty signatories, Robert Erskine Childers and thedeliberate booby-trapping and destruction by republicans of the Irish Public Records Office, whichdestroyed one thousand years of Irish state records in an act that even the strongest defenders ofthe anti-treaty cause describe as a "pointless act".

Independence war

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Irish War of Independence

The Irish War of Independence (Irish: Cogadh na Saoirse, also known as theAnglo-Irish War or Tan War) was a guerrilla war mounted against the Britishgovernment in Ireland by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It began inJanuary 1919, following the Irish Republics declaration of independence,and ended with a truce in July 1921. The subsequent negotiations led to theAnglo-Irish Treaty, which ended British rule in most of Ireland andestablished the Irish Free State. However, six northern counties wouldremain under British rule.The IRA that fought in this conflict is often referred to as the Old IRA todistinguish it from later organisations that used the same name.

OriginsThe Home Rule Crisis

Since the 1880s, Irish nationalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) hadbeen demanding Home Rule, or self-government, from Britain. Fringeorganisations, such as Arthur Griffiths Sinn Fin instead argued for some

form of Irish independence, but they were in a small minority at this time.The demand for Home Rule was eventually granted by the BritishGovernment in 1912, immediately prompting a prolonged crisis within theUnited Kingdom as Ulster Unionists formed an armed organisationtheUlster Volunteers to resist this measure of devolution. In turn, Nationalistsformed their own military organisation, the Irish Volunteers.The British Parliament passed the Third Home Rule Act with an amending Billfor the partition of Ireland introduced by Ulster Unionists, but the Actsimplementation was postponed by the outbreak of the First World War inAugust 1914. The majority of Nationalists followed their IPP leaders andJohn Redmonds call to support Britain and the Allied war effort in Irishregiments of the New British Army, the intention being to ensure thecommencement of Home Rule after the war. But a significant minority of theIrish Volunteers opposed Irelands involvement in the war. The Volunteermovement split, a majority leaving to form the National Volunteers underJohn Redmond. The remaining Irish Volunteers, under Eoin MacNeill, heldthat they would maintain their organisation until Home Rule had beengranted. Within this Volunteer movement, another faction, led by the
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separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood, began to prepare for a revoltagainst British rule.

The Easter Rising

The plan for revolt was realised in the Easter Rising of 1916, in which the

Volunteers, now explicitly declaring a republic, launched an insurrectionwhose aim was to end British rule and to found an Irish Republic. The rising,in which over four hundred people died, was almost exclusively confined toDublin and was put down within a week, but the British response, executingthe leaders of the insurrection and arresting thousands of nationalistactivists, galvanized support for the separatist Sinn Fin the party whichthe republicans first adopted and then took over. By now, support for theBritish war effort was on the wane, and Irish public opinion was shocked andoutraged by some of the actions committed by British troops, particularly themurder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and the imposition of wartime martiallaw.Secondly, the British, in the face of the crisis caused by the German SpringOffensive in April 1918, attempted to introduce conscription into Irelandcombined with Home Rule outlined at the Irish Convention. This furtheralienated the Irish electorate and produced mass demonstrations during theConscription Crisis of 1918. By the time of the November 1918 election,alienation from British rule was widespread.To Irish Republicans, the Irish War of Independence had begun with theProclamation of the Irish Republic during the Easter Rising of 1916.Republicans argued that the conflict of 1919-21 (and indeed the subsequentIrish Civil War) was the defence of this Republic against attempts to destroy

it.

The First Dil

In the 1918 general election Irish voters showed their disapproval of Britishpolicy by giving Sinn Fin 70% (73 seats out of 105) of Irish seats, 25 ofthese unopposed. Sinn Fin won 91% of the seats outside of Ulster on46,9% of votes cast, but was in a minority in Ulster, where Unionists were ina majority. Sinn Fin pledged not to sit in the UK Parliament at Westminster,but rather to set up an Irish Parliament. This parliament, known as the FirstDil, and its ministry, called the Aireacht, consisting only of Sinn Finmembers, met at the Mansion House on 21 January 1919. The Dilreaffirmed the 1916 declaration with the Declaration of Independence, andissued a Message to the Free Nations of the World, which stated that therewas an existing state of war, between Ireland and England. The IrishVolunteers were reconstituted as the Irish Republican Army or IRA. The IRAwas perceived by some members of Dil ireann to have a mandate to wagewar on the British administration based at Dublin Castle.


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The years between the Easter Rising of 1916 and the beginning of the Warof Independence in 1919 were not bloodless. Thomas Ashe, one of theVolunteer leaders imprisoned for his role in the 1916 rebellion died onhunger strike, after attempted force-feeding in 1917. In 1918, duringdisturbances arising out of the anti-conscription campaign, six civilians died

in confrontations with the police and British Army and over 1,000 werearrested. Armistice Day was marked by severe rioting in Dublin, which leftover 100 British soldiers injured. There were also raids for arms by theVolunteers, at least one shooting of an Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)policeman and the burning of an RIC barracks in Kerry. However, there wasas yet no co-ordinated armed campaign against the British presence inIreland.Chronology

Initial hostilities

While it was not clear in the beginning of 1919 that the Dil ever intended togain independence by military means, and war was not explicitly threatenedin Sinn Fins 1918 manifesto, an incident occurred on 21 January 1919, thesame day as the First Dil convened. Several IRA members actingindependently at Soloheadbeg, in County Tipperary, led by Sen Treacy andDan Breen, attacked and shot two Royal Irish Constabulary officers whowere escorting explosives. Breen later recalled: we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talkedit over between us. Treacy had stated to me that the only way of starting awar was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended tokill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most

important branch of the enemy forces. The only regret that we had followingthe ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the sixwe had expected.

This is widely regarded as the beginning of the War of Independence, andthe men acted on their own initiative to try to start a war. The Britishgovernment declared South Tipperary a Special Military Area under theDefence of the Realm Act two days later. The war was not formally declaredby the Dil until well into the conflict, however. On 10 April 1919 the Dilwas told:As regards the Republican prisoners, we must always remember that this

country is at war with England and so we must in a sense regard them asnecessary casualties in the great fight.

In January 1921, two years after the war had started, the Dil debatedwhether it was feasible to accept formally a state of war that was beingthrust on them, or not, and decided not to declare war. Then on 11 March,Dil ireann President amon de Valera formally accepted the existence of


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a state of war with England. The delay allowed a balancing of the militaryand political realities.

Violence spreads

Volunteers began to attack British government property, carried out raids for

arms and funds and targeted and killed prominent members of the Britishadministration. The first was Resident Magistrate John C. Milling, who wasshot dead in Westport, County Mayo, for having sent Volunteers to prison forunlawful assembly and drilling. They mimicked the successful tactics of theBoers, fast violent raids without uniform. Although some republican leaders,notably amon de Valera, favoured classic conventional warfare in order tolegitimise the new republic in the eyes of the world, the more practicallyexperienced Michael Collins and the broader IRA leadership opposed thesetactics as they had led to the military dbacle of 1916. Others, notablyArthur Griffith, preferred a campaign of civil disobedience rather than armedstruggle. The violence used was at first deeply unpopular with the Irishpeople and it took the heavy-handed British response to popularise it amongmuch of the population.During the early part of the conflict, roughly from 1919 to the middle of1920, there was a relatively limited amount of violence. Much of thenationalist campaign involved popular mobilisation and the creation of arepublican state within a state in opposition to British rule. Britishjournalist Robert Lynd wrote in the Daily News in July 1920 that:So far as the mass of people are concerned, the policy of the day is notactive but a passive policy. Their policy is not so much to attack theGovernment as to ignore it and to build up a new government by its side.

The IRAs main target throughout the conflict was the mainly Catholic Irishpolice force, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), which were the Britishgovernments eyes and ears in Ireland. Its members and barracks(especially the more isolated ones) were vulnerable, and they were a sourceof much-needed arms. The RIC numbered 9,700 men stationed in 1,500barracks throughout Ireland.A policy of ostracism of RIC men was announced by the Dil on 11 April1919.[26] This proved successful in demoralising the force as the war wenton, as people turned their faces from a force increasingly compromised byassociation with British government repression. The rate of resignation went

up, and recruitment in Ireland dropped off dramatically. Often the RIC werereduced to buying food at gunpoint as shops and other businesses refused todeal with them. Some RIC men cooperated with the IRA through fear orsympathy, supplying the organisation with valuable information. By contrastwith the effectiveness of the widespread public boycott of the police, themilitary actions carried out by the IRA against the RIC at this time wererelatively limited. In 1919, 11 RIC men and 4 Dublin Metropolitan Policewere killed and another 20 RIC wounded.


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Other aspects of mass participation in the conflict included strikes byorganised workers in opposition to the British presence in Ireland. InLimerick in April 1919, a general strike was called by the Limerick Tradesand Labour Council, as a protest against the declaration of a Special MilitaryArea under the Defence of the Realm Act which covered most of Limerick

city and a part of the county. Special permits, to be issued by the RIC, wouldnow be required to enter the city. The Trades Councils special StrikeCommittee controlled the city for fourteen days in an episode that wasnicknamed the Limerick Soviet.Similarly, in May 1920, Dublin dockers refused to handle any war matriel,and were soon joined by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union,who banned railway drivers from carrying British forces. Train drivers werebrought over from England after drivers refused to carry British troops. Thestrike badly hampered British troop movements until December 1920 whenit was called off. The British government managed to bring the situation toan end when they threatened to withhold grants from the railwaycompanies, which would have meant that workers would no longer havebeen paid.Violent attacks by the IRA also steadily increased, however. By early 1920,they were attacking isolated RIC stations in rural areas, causing them to beabandoned as the police retreated to the larger towns.

Collapse of the British administration

In early April 1920, 400 abandoned RIC barracks were burned to the groundto prevent them being used again, along with almost one hundred incometax offices. This had two effects. Firstly the RIC withdrew from much of the

countryside, leaving it in the hands of IRA.[30] In JuneJuly 1920, assizesfailed all across the south and west of Ireland. Trials by jury could not beheld because jurors would not attend. The collapse of the court systemdemoralised the RIC, and many police resigned and retired. The IrishRepublican Police (IRP) was founded between April and June 1920 under theauthority of Dil ireann and the former IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Brugha toreplace the RIC and to enforce the ruling of the Dil Courts, set up under theIrish Republic. By 1920, the IRP had a presence in 21 of Irelands 32counties. The Dil Courts were generally socially conservative, despite theirrevolutionary origins, and halted the attempts of some landless farmers atredistribution of land from wealthier landowners to poorer farmers.Secondly, the Inland Revenue ceased to operate in most of Ireland. Peoplewere instead encouraged to subscribe to Collins National Loan, set up toraise funds for the young government and its army. By the end of the yearthe loan had reached 358,000. It eventually reached 380,000. An evenlarger amount, totalling over $5 million, was raised in the United States byIrish Americans and sent to Ireland to finance the Republic. Rates were stillpaid to local councils, but nine out of eleven of these were controlled by Sinn


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Fin, who naturally refused to pass them on to the British government.Thus, by mid 1920, the Irish Republic was a reality in the lives of manypeople, enforcing its own law, maintaining its own armed forces andcollecting its own taxes. The British Liberal journal, The Nation, wrote inAugust 1920 that the central fact of the present situation in Ireland is that

the Irish Republic exists.The British forces, in trying to re-assert their control over the country, oftenresorted to arbitrary reprisals against republican activists and the civilianpopulation. An unofficial government policy of reprisals began in September1919 in Fermoy, County Cork, when 200 British soldiers looted and burnedthe main businesses of the town, after one of their number had been killedin an arms raid by the local IRA.Arthur Griffith estimated that in the first 18 months of the conflict, Britishforces carried out 38,720 raids on private homes, arrested 4,982 suspects,committed 1,604 armed assaults, carried out 102 indiscriminate shootingsand burning in towns and villages, and killed 77 people including women andchildren.In March 1920, Toms Mac Curtain, the Sinn Fin Lord Mayor of Cork, wasshot dead, in front of his wife at his home, by men with blackened faces whowere later seen returning to the local police barracks. The jury at the inquestinto his death returned a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd George(the British Prime Minister) and District Inspector Swanzy, among others.Swanzy was later tracked down and killed in Lisburn, in County Antrim. Thispattern of killings and reprisals escalated in the second half of 1920 and in1921.

IRA organisation and operationsMichael Collins was the main driving force behind the independencemovement. Nominally the Minister of Finance in the republics government,and IRA Director of Intelligence, he was actively involved in providing fundsand arms to the IRA units that needed them, and in the selection of officers.Collins natural intelligence, organisational capability and sheer drivegalvanised many who came in contact with him. He established what provedan effective network of spies among sympathetic members of the DublinMetropolitan Polices (DMP) G division and other important branches of theBritish administration. The G division men were a relatively small politicaldivision active in subverting the republican movement, and were detested bythe IRA as often they were used to identify volunteers who would have beenunknown to British soldiers or the later Black and Tans. Collins set up theSquad, a group of men whose sole duty was to seek out and kill G-menand other British spies and agents. Collins Squad began killing RICintelligence officers from July 1919 onwards. Many G-men were offered achance to resign or leave Ireland by the IRA, and some chose to leaveIreland.


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The Chief of Staff of the IRA was Richard Mulcahy, who was responsible fororganising and directing IRA units around the country. In theory, bothCollins and Mulcahy were responsible to Cathal Brugha, the Dils Minister ofDefence. However, in practice, Brugha had only a supervisory role,recommending or objecting to specific actions. A great deal also depended

on IRA leaders in local areas (such as Liam Lynch, Tom Barry, Sen Moylan,Sen Mac Eoin and Ernie OMalley) who organised guerrilla activity, largelyon their own initiative. For most of the conflict, IRA activity wasconcentrated in Munster and Dublin, with only isolated active IRA unitselsewhere, such as in County Roscommon, north County Longford andwestern County Mayo.While the paper membership of the IRA, carried over from the IrishVolunteers, was over 100,000 men, Michael Collins estimated that only15,000 men actively served in the IRA during the course of the war, withabout 3,000 on active service at any time. There were also supportorganisations Cumann na mBan (the IRA womens group) and Fiannaireann (youth movement), who carried weapons and intelligence for IRAmen and secured food and lodgings for them.The IRA benefited from the widespread help given to them by the generalIrish population, who generally refused to pass information to the RIC andthe British military and who often provided safe houses and provisions toIRA units on the run. Much of the IRAs popularity arose from theexcessive reaction of the British forces to IRA activity.When amon de Valera returned from the United States, he demanded inthe Dil that the IRA desist from the ambushes and assassinations that wereallowing the British to successfully portray it as a terrorist group, and to take

on the British forces with conventional military methods. The proposal wasimmediately dismissed.

Martial law

The British responded to the escalating violence in Ireland with increasinguse of force. Reluctant to deploy the regular British Army into the country ingreater numbers, they set up two paramilitary police units to aid the RIC.The Black and Tans were set up to bolster the flagging RIC. Seventhousand strong, they were mainly ex-British soldiers demobilised afterWorld War I. First deployed to Ireland in March 1920, most came fromEnglish and Scottish cities. While officially they were part of the RIC, inreality they were a paramilitary force. After their deployment in March 1920,they rapidly gained a reputation for drunkenness and ill discipline that didmore harm to the British governments moral authority in Ireland than anyother group. In response to IRA actions, in the summer of 1920, the Tansburned and sacked numerous small towns throughout Ireland, includingBalbriggan, Trim, Templemore and others.


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In July 1920, another quasi-military police body, the Auxiliaries, consistingof 2,215 former British army officers, arrived in Ireland. The AuxiliaryDivision had a reputation just as bad as the Tans for their mistreatment ofthe civilian population but tended to be more effective and more willing totake on the IRA. The policy of reprisals, which involved public denunciation

or denial and private approval, was famously satirised by Lord Hugh Cecilwhen he said: It seems to be agreed that there is no such thing asreprisals, but they are having a good effect.On 9 August 1920, the British Parliament passed the Restoration of Order inIreland Act, which suspended all coroners courts, because of the largenumber of warrants served on members of the British forces. They werereplaced with military courts of enquiry. In addition, the powers of militarycourt martials were extended to cover the whole population and wereempowered to use the death penalty and internment without trial. Finally,government payments to local governments in Sinn Fin hands weresuspended. This act has been interpreted by historians as a choice by PrimeMinister David Lloyd George to put down the rebellion in Ireland rather thannegotiate with the Republican leadership. As a result, violence escalatedsteadily from that summer, and sharply after November 1920 until July1921.It was in this period that a large-scale mutiny broke out among the IrishConnaught Rangers, stationed in India. Two were killed whilst trying tostorm an armoury and one was later executed.

Escalation, October-December 1920

A number of events dramatically escalated the conflict in late 1920. First the

Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in BrixtonPrison in London in October, while two other IRA prisoners on hunger strike,Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, died in Cork Jail.Then, on 21 November 1920, there was a day of dramatic bloodshed inDublin. In the early morning, Collins IRA Squad attempted to wipe out theBritish Intelligence operatives in the capital. The Squad shot 19 people,killing 14 and wounding 5. They consisted of British Army officers, policeofficers and civilians. The dead included members of the so-called CairoGang and a Courts-martial officer at different places around Dublin.

In response, Auxiliaries drove in trucks into Croke Park (Dublins GAAfootball and hurling ground) during a football match, shooting into thecrowd. Fourteen civilians were killed, including one of the players, MichaelHogan and a further 65 people were wounded. Later that day two republicanprisoners, Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and an unassociated friend, ConorClune who had been arrested with them, were killed in Dublin Castle. Theofficial account was that the three men were shot while trying to escape,


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which was rejected by Irish nationalists who were certain the men had beentortured then murdered. This day became known as Bloody Sunday.On 28 November 1920, only a week after Bloody Sunday in Dublin, the westCork unit of the IRA, under Tom Barry, ambushed a patrol of Auxiliaries atKilmichael in County Cork, killing all but one of the 18-man patrol.

These actions marked a significant escalation of the conflict. In response,counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperaryall in the province ofMunster were put under martial law on 10 December. Shortly afterwards,in January 1921, official reprisals were sanctioned by the British and theybegan with the burning of seven houses in Midleton in Cork.On December 11, the centre of Cork was burnt out by British forces, whothen shot at firefighters trying to tackle the blaze, in reprisal for an IRAambush in the city on 11 December 1920 which killed one Auxiliary andwounded eleven.

Peak of violence, December 1920-July 1921

During the following eight months until the Truce of July 1921, there was aspiralling of the death toll in the conflict, with 1,000 people including the RICpolice, British military, IRA volunteers and civilians, being killed in themonths between January and July 1921 alone. This represents about 70% ofthe total casualties for the entire three-year conflict. In addition, 4,500 IRApersonnel (or suspected sympathisers) were interned in this time. In themiddle of this violence, the Dil formally declared war on Britain in March1921.Between 1 November 1920 and 7 June 1921 twenty four men were executedby the British. The first IRA volunteer to be executed was Kevin Barry, one

of The Forgotten Ten who were buried in unmarked graves in unconsecratedground inside Mountjoy Prison until 2001. On 1 February, the first executionunder martial law of an IRA man took place. Cornelius Murphy of Millstreet,Cork was shot in Cork city. On 28 February, six more were executed, againin Cork.On 19 March 1921, Tom Barrys 100-strong West Cork IRA unit fought alarge-scale action against 1,200 British troops the Crossbarry Ambush.Barrys men narrowly avoided being trapped by converging British columnsand inflicted between ten and thirty killed on the British side. Just two dayslater, on 21 March, the Kerry IRA attacked a train at the Headford junctionnear Killarney. Twenty British soldiers were killed or injured, as well as twoIRA men and three civilians. Most of the actions in the war were on a smallerscale than this, but the IRA did have other significant victories in ambushes,for example at Millstreet in Cork and at Scramogue in Roscommon, also inMarch 1921 and at Tourmakeady and Carowkennedy in Mayo in May andJune. Equally common, however, were failed ambushes, the worst of which,for example at Upton and Clonmult in Cork in February 1921, saw three andtwelve IRA men killed respectively and more captured. The IRA in Mayo


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suffered a comparable reverse at Kilmeena. Fears of informers after suchfailed ambushes often led to a spate of IRA shootings of informers, real andimagined.The biggest single loss for the IRA, however, came in Dublin. On 25 May1921, several hundred IRA men from the Dublin Brigade occupied and

burned the Custom House (the centre of local government in Ireland) inDublin city centre. Symbolically, this was intended to show that British rulein Ireland was untenable. However, from a military point of view, it was acatastrophe in which five IRA men were killed and over eighty werecaptured. This showed the IRA was not well enough equipped or trained totake on British forces in a conventional manner. However, it did not, as issometimes claimed, cripple the IRA in Dublin. The Dublin Brigade carried out107 attacks in the city in May and 93 in June, showing a falloff in activity,but not a dramatic one. However, by July 1921, most IRA units werechronically short of both weapons and ammunition. Also, for all theireffectiveness at guerrilla warfare, they had, as Richard Mulcahy recalled, asyet not been able to drive the enemy [the British] out of anything but afairly good sized police barracks.Still, many military historians have concluded that the IRA fought a largelysuccessful and lethal guerrilla war, which forced the British government toconclude that the IRA could not be defeated militarily. The failure of theBritish efforts to put down the guerrillas was illustrated by the events ofBlack Whitsun on 1315 May 1921. A general election for the parliament ofSouthern Ireland was held on 13 May. Sinn Fin won 124 of the newparliaments 128 seats unopposed, but its elected members refused to taketheir seats. Under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, the Southern

Parliament was dissolved, and Southern Ireland was to be ruled as a crowncolony. Over the next two days (1415 May), the IRA killed fifteenpolicemen. These events marked the complete failure of the British CoalitionGovernments Irish policyboth the failure to enforce a settlement withoutnegotiating with Sinn Fin and a failure to defeat the IRA.By the time of the truce, however, many Republican leaders, includingMichael Collins, were convinced that if the war went on for much longer,there was a chance that the IRA campaign as it was then organised could bebrought to a standstill. Because of this, plans were drawn up to bring thewar to England. The IRA did take the campaign to the streets of Glasgow. It

was decided that key economic targets, such as the Liverpool docks, wouldbe bombed. Nineteen warehouses there had been burned to the ground bythe IRA the previous November. The units charged with these missionswould more easily evade capture because England was not under, andBritish public opinion was unlikely to accept, martial law. These plans wereabandoned because of the truce.


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The north-east

In the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (enacted in December 1920), theBritish government attempted to solve the conflict by creating two HomeRule parliaments in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. WhileDil ireann ignored this, deeming the Irish Republic to be already in

existence, Unionists in the north-east accepted it and prepared to form theirown government. In this part of Ireland, which was predominantlyProtestant and Unionist, there was, as a result, a very different pattern ofviolence from the rest of the country. Whereas in the south and west, theconflict was between the IRA and British forces, in the north-east andparticularly in Belfast, it often developed into a cycle of sectarian killingsbetween Catholics, who were largely Nationalist, and Protestants, who weremostly Unionist.

Summer 1920

While IRA attacks were less common in the north-east than elsewhere, theunionist community saw itself as being besieged by armed Catholicnationalists who seemed to have taken over the rest of Ireland. As a result,they retaliated against the northern Catholic community as a whole. Suchaction was largely condoned by the unionist leadership and abetted by stateforces. James Craig, for instance, wrote in 1920:The Loyalist rank and file have determined to take action they now feel thesituation is so desperate that unless the Government will take immediateaction, it may be advisable for them to see what steps can be taken towardsa system of organised reprisals against the rebels.

The first cycle of attacks and reprisals broke out in the summer of 1920. On19 June a week of inter-sectarian rioting and sniping started in Derry,resulting in 18 deaths. On 17 July 1920, a British Colonel Gerald Smyth wasassassinated by the IRA in the County Club in Cork city in response to aspeech that was made to police officers of Listowel who had refused ordersto move into the more urban areas, in which he stated you may makemistakes occasionally, and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot behelped. No policeman will get in trouble for shooting any man. Smyth camefrom Banbridge, County Down in the north-east and his killing provokedretaliation there against Catholics in Banbridge and Dromore. On 21 July1920, partly in response to the killing of Smyth and partly because of

competition over jobs due to the high unemployment rate, loyalists marchedon the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast and forced over 7,000 Catholicand left-wing Protestant workers from their jobs. Sectarian rioting broke outin response in Belfast and Derry, resulting in about 40 deaths and manyCatholics and Protestants being expelled from their homes. On 22 August1920, RIC Detective Swanzy was shot dead by Cork IRA men while leavingchurch in Lisburn, County Antrim. Swanzy had been blamed by an inquestjury for the killing of Cork Mayor Toms Mac Curtain. In revenge, local


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Loyalists burned Catholic residential areas of Lisburn destroying over 300homes. While several people were later prosecuted for the burnings, noattempt seems to have been made to halt the attacks at the time. MichaelCollins, acting on a suggestion by Sen MacEntee, organised a boycott ofBelfast goods in response to the attacks on the Catholic community. The Dail

approved a partial boycott on 6 August and a more complete one wasimplemented by the end of 1920.

Spring 1921

After a lull in violence in the north over the new year, killings thereintensified again in the spring of 1921. The northern IRA units came underpressure from the leadership in Dublin to step up attacks in line with the restof the country. Predictably, this unleashed loyalist reprisals againstCatholics. For example, in April 1921, the IRA in Belfast shot dead twoAuxiliaries in Donegal Place in Belfast city centre. The same night, twoCatholics were killed on the Falls Road. On 10 July 1921 the IRA ambushedBritish forces in Raglan street in Belfast. In the following week, sixteenCatholics were killed and 216 Catholic homes burned in reprisal. Killings onthe loyalist side were largely carried by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF),allegedly with the aid of the RIC police and especially the auxiliary policeforce, the Ulster Special Constabulary or B-Specials. The SpecialConstabulary (set up in September 1920), was largely recruited from UlsterVolunteer Force and Orange Lodges and, in the words of historian MichaelHopkinson, amounted to an officially approved UVF. In May James Craigcame to Dublin to meet the British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Fitzalan,and was smuggled by the IRA through Dublin to meet Eamon de Valera. The

two leaders discussed the possibility of a truce in Ulster and an amnesty forprisoners. Craig proposed a compromise settlement based on theGovernment of Ireland Act, with limited independence for the South andautonomy for the North within a Home Rule context. However, the talkscame to nothing and violence in the north continued.

The propaganda war, Summer 1921

Another feature of the war was the use of propaganda by both sides. TheBritish tried to portray the IRA as anti-Protestant in order to encourageloyalism in Irish Protestants and win sympathy for their harsh tactics inBritain. For example, in their communiqus they would always mention thereligion of spies or collaborators the IRA had killed if the victim wasProtestant, but not if they were Catholic (which was more often), trying togive the impression, in Ireland and abroad, that the IRA were slaughteringProtestants. They encouraged newspaper editors, often forcefully, to do thesame.[citation needed] In the summer of 1921, a series of articles appearedin a London magazine, entitled Ireland under the New Terror, Living UnderMartial Law. While purporting to be an impartial account of the situation in


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Ireland, it portrayed the IRA in a very unfavourable light when comparedwith the British forces. In reality the author, Ernest Dowdall, was anAuxiliary and the series was one of many articles planted by the DublinCastle Propaganda Department (established in August 1920) to influencepublic opinion in a Britain increasingly dismayed at the behaviour of its

security forces in Ireland.The Catholic Church hierarchy was critical of the violence of both sides, butespecially that of the IRA, continuing a long tradition of condemning militantrepublicanism. The Bishop of Kilmore, Dr. Finnegan, said: Any war to bejust and lawful must be backed by a well grounded hope of success. Whathope of success have you against the mighty forces of the British Empire?None none whatever and if it unlawful as it is, every life taken in pursuanceof it is murder. Thomas Gilmartin, the Archbishop of Tuam, issued a lettersaying that IRA men who took part in ambushes have broken the truce ofGod, they have incurred the guilt of murder.[61] However in May 1921,Pope Benedict XV dismayed the British government when he issued a letterthat exhorted the English as well as Irish to calmly consider . . . somemeans of mutual agreement, as they had been pushing for a condemnationof the rebellion. They declared that his comments put HMG (His MajestysGovernment) and the Irish murder gang on a footing of equality.Desmond FitzGerald and Erskine Childers were active in producing the IrishBulletin, which detailed government atrocities which Irish and Britishnewspapers were unwilling or unable to cover. It was printed secretly anddistributed throughout Ireland, and to international press agencies andAmerican, European and sympathetic British politicians.While the military war made most of Ireland ungovernable from early 1920,

it did not actually remove British forces from any part. But the success ofSinn Fins propaganda campaign did remove the option from the Britishadministration to deepen the conflict. The British cabinet had not sought thewar that had developed since 1919. By 1921 one of its members, WinstonChurchill, reflected:What was the alternative? It was to plunge one small corner of the empireinto an iron repression, which could not be carried out without an admixtureof murder and counter-murder. Only national self-preservation could haveexcused such a policy, and no reasonable man could allege that self-preservation was involved.

Civil War, Independence War IRELAND

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