Anglo-Irish war (1916-22). This issue of Home Rule, or independence, for Ireland was a persistent factor in late 19th century British politics. Home Rule was welcomed by most of the Catholic majority in Ireland, but strongly opposed by the Protestant minority, mainly concentrated in the north (Ulster). In 1902 the ‘Sinn Fein’ (‘Ourselves Alone’) party was founded to promote Home Rule, closely linked to the militant Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The frequent return of Irish nationalist candidates in elections convinced the British government in 1912 to grant Home Rule for Ireland, to come into force in 1914. The Ulster ‘Unionists’, politically well organized and with sympathizers among senior Army officers, armed themselves to resist Home Rule, the IRB responded, and civil war seemed likely. The outbreak of WW I led to the suspension of Home Rule, leaving the crisis unresolved, although many Irishmen (Catholic and Protestant) volunteered to fight for Britain in the war.
The ‘Easter Rising’ organized by the IRB in Dublin in 1916, was a farcical failure, more important as a later symbol than for its actual result. On Easter Monday, 24 April, and IRB group of about 1, 600 under Padraig Pearse and James Connolly seized locations in central Dublin including the main post office, and declared a republic, expecting a popular uprising, which failed to happen. All were killed or captured by 30 April, largely by Irish troops. The British saw this rebellion as treason, and fifteen of the IRB leaders were shot, a reaction that did much to create wider sympathy for their cause. Among those who survived were Eamon de Valera, an American citizen, Michael Collins, and Constance Countess Markovitz. The British, anxious to placate the United States with its powerful Irish lobby, opened negotiations, unsuccessful at first, for an independent but partitioned Ireland. Lloyd George, British prime minister from December 1916, was also sympathetic to Irish nationalist aspirations.
In October 1917 all republican movements consolidated themselves as the Irish Volunteers under de Valera, who was also declared president of Ireland. The first Volunteer attacks on British military posts began in 1918. More support was gained when the British, who had introduced conscription for the rest of Britain in January 1916, passed legislation extending this to Ireland in April 1918 (although this was not enforced), and about 2, 000 Volunteers were imprisoned without trial as suspect revolutionaries. At the war's end, in the British general election of 14 December 1918, Sinn Fein won 73 out of 105 Irish seats. Refusing to take these up in London, its members convened in Dublin on 21 January 1919 as the ‘Dáil Eireann’, the parliament of an independent Ireland. This amounted to a declaration of civil war.
The symbolic start of the war was the killing by Volunteers of two policemen at Soloheadbeg in Tipperary on 21 January 1919. Led by Michael Collins, about 3, 000 Volunteers--increasingly known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) —kept 80, 000 troops and police at bay. IRA strategy was to attack isolated police and military barracks, sometimes by ‘flying columns’ in vehicles, forcing the police to abandon them and so lose control of the countryside. The IRA also used terror, intimidation and assassination, including in Dublin. The British recruited Auxiliary police from demobilized soldiers, including the notorious ‘Black and Tans’ (for their uniforms), who carried out brutal reprisals in return.
In December 1919 the British proposed a new form of Irish Home Rule with two separate parliaments, one of them responsible for six of the nine counties of Ulster (to be known as ‘Northern Ireland’) ; this became the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. On 11 July 1921 a ceasefire was agreed between the British and Sinn Fein. The elections took place in August, with a separate parliament for Northern Ireland convening in Belfast, dominated by Ulster Unionists, while Sinn Fein assembled in Dublin again as Dáil Eireann. Negotiations headed by Collins led, on 6 December 1921, to the settlement of the Treaty of London, including the recognition by British of an Irish ‘Free State’ (an agreed form of words stopping short of an independent republic) without Northern Ireland. De Valera, leading the ‘Anti-Treaty’ protest against partition, resigned as president. The British withdrawal was followed by a further year of civil war between Irish government forces and ‘Anti-Treaty’ nationalists, in the course of which Collins was killed.
Bibliography
- Coogan, Tim Pat, The IRA (London, 1971).
- Smith, M. L. R., Fighting For Ireland? (London, 1995).
- Townshend, Charles, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921 (Oxford, 1975)
— Stephen Badsey
