Irish War of Independence

The Irish War of Independence was fought between the forces of the provisional government of the Irish Republic and the British army, between January 1919 and July 1921. The war was characterised by the guerrilla warfare tactics used by the Irish forces. The war's origins are usually traced to the ambush led by Dan Breen of two Royal Irish Constabulary men escorting a consignment of gelignite to a quarry in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. Although an independent action, the ambush was supported by the First Dáil, which had first convened on that same day - 21st January, 1919. Events soon escalated. It took a few months for the central authority to gain control of the various rebel groups operating independantly throughout the countryand was not helped early in the war by the well known feud between Cathal Brugha, Minister for Defence and Michael Collins, Minister for Intelligence for while Brugha was technically leader of the armed forces, Collins was the de facto commander in chief.

Origins

In the 1880's the Home Rule party agitated for a measure of Home Rule in the British parliament and the Republican element in Irish politics was very much on the fringe of mainstream opinion. Charles Stewart Parnell had almost single-handedly made the Home Rule party (Later known as the Irish Parliamentary Party) a party which dominated politics south of North Eastern Ireland. Several Home Rule bills were introduced but each was blocked in its turn and Parnell's affair with Kitty O'Shea jeopardised the entire party, causing a split that would last a decade until John Redmond reorganised the organisation and returned it to its former place of dominance in Irish politics. Redmond succeeded in introducing three Home Rule bills; the third of which would have passed in 1914 only for the outbreak of World War I which caused it to be delayed until the conclusion of the war.

However, a group of extreme Irish Republicans (Which included the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Citizen Army) organised a small uprising on Easter week, 1916 which aimed to establish and independent Ireland. The Uprising, which was generally denounced by the Irish people, was quickly crushed by the British authorities under General Maxwell and the leaders were executed - fifteen in all. Public opinion began to turn in favour of the rebels however during the executions and the British Government was forced to suspend the rest of the planned executions for fear of causing unrest in Ireland while they were involved in a life or death struggle on the Western Front.

After the Easter Rising the Irish Volunteers had regrouped to form the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which was controlled by the Sinn Féin party. This is not to be confused with the modern Provisional Irish Republican Army active during the Irish Troubles. The IRA who fought in the War of Independence are often called the Old IRA to distinguish the two. After the 1918 General election the Sinn Féin party won a landslide victory within Ireland, gaining 73 seats out of a possible 105 in the country. The fallout of the Easter Rising caused a swell in public support for the Republicans at the expense of the Home Rulers. The 1918 Conscription Crisis also convinced many that the Irish Parliamentary Party could not represent Irish needs in a British parliament. The Sinn Féin party adopted a policy of parliamentary abstention, refusing to recognise the House of Commons as the legitimate governing body of Ireland. As a result, the Sinn Féin leadership established the First Dáil in 1919 in defiance of the fact that many of their elected deputies were in jail.

Irish Tactics

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) - also known more widely at the time as the Irish Republican Brotherhood - sporadically attacked the forces of the British government, with the intention of breaking Britain's will to rule Ireland and thereby forcing them towards full independence, though Éamon de Valera proposed a policy of external association during the Anglo-Irish Treaty. This campaign paralleled the political efforts of Sinn Féin to create an independent Irish Republic by means of the illegally decreed, though democratic, assembly of Dáil Éireann which in practise would 'defeat England by ignoring it'. The war is generally seen as the beginning of modern guerrilla warfare, with the reliance of the IRA on un-uniformed "flying columns", comprised of local men, playing a large part in its success. The Flying Columns operated by mixing into the local countryside and being fed by local sympathists who would feed their group or put them up for the night in a nearby barn or in the main room of the traditional Irish cottage. A column would usually have between eight to fifteen men - anymore would have meant that they could not rely on the element of stealth in combat operations. They would 'hit and run' at their enemy. Sometimes Flying columns would co-operate to attack larger British army convoys. (See Tom Barry for more information)

These tactics have been reproduced in many forms since then in other theatres of battle and they also had precedents going as far back as Spartacus but were also prevalent in the Boer Wars.

Overview of the War

The war was prosecuted ruthlessly by the IRA. The British retaliated in kind, introducing two new irregular forces into Ireland, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division - ostensibly these were designated as supports for the Royal irish Constabulary, the civil police force, but in reality they were armed paramilitary units.

In general, the fighting was conducted on a vicious low-level basis, with regular small bombing and shooting attacks similar to the Irish Troubles. Fewer than 2,000 IRA volunteers at any given time were faced by over 50,000 Crown forces. It was not a nationwide contest: the IRA depended upon energetic local leaders. Where there were none, there was little fighting. Irish attacks were regularly followed by British counter attacks which generally were aimed at residential areas. Due to the fact that the guerillas merged into the local countryside or city, they were notoriously hard to root out and the British forces went to extraordinary - and in some cases repressive - measures to find and apprehend suspected IRA members. Many innocents were severely injured or killed in the course of this, and public dissatisfaction with the British continued to grow. The use of the Black and Tans also led to great resentment, as these were British men who had returned from the trench warfare of World War I and found it difficult to return to civilian life. They often employed very oppressive measures and inspired generations of Irish literature and music dedicated to describing the Black and Tans as rough and cruel thugs. Some historians have argued that the Black and Tans were largely the reason behind the failure of the British to truly kill off the rebellion, as their actions often persuaded young people to take up arms in the name of independance. (The film The Wind that shakes the barley accurately portrays this)

In total, 15,000 volunteers fought in the war, with generally 2-3,000 active at any one time. Their greatest strength lay in the provinces of Connaught and Munster, and the principal areas of conflict were in counties Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Clare, Kerry and Longford. The volunteers were generally aged between 20 and 30, from middle and working class backgrounds, and were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. As the conflict progressed, the membership became younger, more urban-based and more working class. The force fought a limited and successful guerrilla war, pitting broad public support and knowledge of the terrain and people against the British forces' superior weaponry and numbers. Eventually, stalemate was acknowledged by a truce called in July 1921, which began the negotiations leading to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December of that year.

The Treaty and Aftermath

The IRA, following the division in the Dáil, split over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A minority supported and joined the Free State Army, quickly built up by Collins with British government support (the ‘regulars’); the majority of the IRA - perhaps 80 per cent, encompassing the most experienced men from the south, west and Dublin - organised and fought against the new state (the ‘irregulars’) in the Irish Civil War, 1922-23.

The Irish people on the other hand, who largely sympathised and supported the rebels - both materially and in the war effort - were largely supportive of the treaty, with around 75% in favour of peace with the British Commonwealth.

See also

• Easter Rising
• Irish Civil War