In 1920 and the first half of 1921 the British establishment gave the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries free reign in Ireland when they allowed them to terrorise the Irish people. They browbeat, insulted, murdered and maimed civilians as well as the IRA in order to create a climate of despair.
In Ireland For Ever Brigadier General Crozier said, ‘Never before had the RIC been used so ruthlessly and at times surreptitiously, to destroy and create a new note of anguish in the country.’1Not alone did terror fail but public opinion in England disliked what was happening.
Early in April 1921 Lord French gave an interview to the Daily Express in which he admitted that the volunteers were an army ‘properly organised in regiment and brigade, led by disciplined officers.’ Significant also was the fact that their voluntary army had taken the initiative and was confronting the occupation forces with many new, unexpected tactics. The British government discovered that the tactics adopted kept their forces under a perpetual strain. This type of guerrilla warfare was totally at variance with anything that they had previously experienced.
British foreign relations in America and elsewhere were beginning to incur disfavour, therefore their alternative was to use unlimited military force under a reign of martial law or to engage in some form of settlement. General Macready suggested to the British government that, if a solution was not reached by July, martial law would be imposed throughout the entire country with the exception of the Ulster counties. This would mean reinforcing the garrison with an additional nineteen battalions and a strong force of marines. British army strength in Ireland would then be brought to 80,000 men, but he felt 150,000 would be essential if a military regime were to succeed.2Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, the chief of the imperial general staff from 1918 to 1921 wrote:
18 May 1921. I said that directly England was safe, every available man should go to Ireland that even four battalions now serving on the Rhine ought also to go to Ireland. I said that the measures taken up to now had been quite inadequate, that I was terrified at the state of the country, and that in my opinion, unless we crushed out the murder gang this summer we shall lose Ireland and the Empire.3
Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, told the cabinet:
One hundred thousand new special troops must be raised, thousands of motorcars must be armed and equipped; the three southern provinces of Ireland must be closely laced with cordons of blockades and barbed wire: a systematic rummaging and questioning of every individual must be put in force.
But towards the end of June it was obvious to the British that some form of compromise was necessary. The lord chancellor, Lord Birkenhead, speaking in the British House of Lords on 24 June 1921 said:
... if I must speak frankly, I think that the history of the last three months has been the history of the failure of our military method to keep pace with and overcome the military methods which have been taken by our opponents.
C. J. C. Street, imperial activist, intelligence officer and advisor to Lloyd George wrote later:
There were only two alternatives, to come to terms with Sinn Féin or exterminate its armed forces.4
The British forces did not seem to be able to exterminate or to beat the Irish volunteers and a truce was declared.
Liam Lynch was at division HQ at Coolea when official notification of a truce reached him on 10 July 1921. Immediately he issued the necessary order for the cessation of hostilities in his brigade to come into force at 12 noon the next day.
Were it not for this order his former brigade might have pulled off the greatest success in his region. Paddy O’Brien with eighty officers and men from five battalion columns had some days previously marched into West Limerick and, in co-operation with West Limerick units, laid an ambush near Templeglantine. For several days the column had lain in wait without finding a target. But they were prepared to wait.
Upon receipt of notification O’Brien called his section commanders together and asked for their views regarding taking up positions on the morning of 11 July 1921. All were eager to do so, and the column went into position. At 11.35 the column commander instructed the section commanders to withdraw their sections. The truce was to come into being at 12 o’clock. At 12.15 the British convoy arrived on the scene and passed some of the dispersing groups on the road; not a shot was fired. The struggle towards agreement was now in the hands of the diplomats.
During the previous years, many volunteers throughout Ireland had displayed courage and determination, had fought and died for the Republic. But the south had earned a Republic more than any other part of Ireland. In Liam Lynch’s division, 193 officers and men were killed, twice that number wounded and about 2,000 interned or sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In the face of those losses they had, under many other and varied difficulties, continued to strike at the occupation forces so vigorously and persistently that responsible British military commanders were convinced of the necessity for immense reinforcements if their defeat was to be achieved.
In the March 1921, issue of An tÓglach a tribute was paid to the men of the south. ‘The Cork brigades have proved themselves to have reached a level of military efficiency which make them a match for the most highly trained soldiers in the world. An example has been set which every brigade in Ireland should strive to emulate.’5
The first reaction to the truce was one of optimism. Officers and men in Lynch’s division had for the previous eighteen months concentrated their attention and energy upon the fight to such an extent that all other considerations, personal and national, were excluded. In their optimism, the people of the south believed that England had at last decided, in calling a truce, to evacuate her armed forces from the country, and that this would lead to the establishment of a freely functioning Republic.
Men close to Liam Lynch later expressed their opinion that in Lynch’s view the truce came a little too soon; however Lynch expected that the respite would be short and that soon the conflict would be renewed. It was his belief that England was not yet ready for a full settlement and as he continually said he would not contemplate the possibility of any settlement on terms which gave Ireland less than sovereign independence. ‘We are and must be prepared to fight to the last for that,’ he wrote in a letter to his brother, Tom. ‘In justice to the yet unborn as well as to the dead past we have no other authority but to fight on a fight thank God which never for generations seemed more hopeful than now as the Empire is heaving with trouble ...’6
1 Brigadier-General F .P. Crozier, Ireland Forever, p. 91.
2 Sir Nevil Macready, Annals of an Active Life. Vol. 2, pp. 561–2.
3 Diaries of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
4 Major C. J. Street, (I.O.) The Administration of Ireland, 1920.
5 An tÓglach, March 1921.
6 Letter to his brother Tom, 6/9/1921 (Lynch private family papers).