This book is an overview of the period in Ireland known as the War of Independence, 1919–21. It is not a complete encyclopaedia of every battle or every person who fought or died in that conflict, but concentrates mainly on the actions that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) undertook in the guerrilla campaign against British rule in Ireland. There are some accounts within that are disturbing but there are also stories of humanity, such as that of the British soldiers who helped three IRA men escape from prison, or the members of the British Army who mutinied in India when they heard about the reprisals being carried out by the Black and Tans in Ireland.
As a nation, we are, I believe, indebted to the men and women who fought for Irish freedom. We should never forget the powerful strength of the Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who endured a hunger strike to the death, or the composure of medical student Kevin Barry who was only eighteen years of age when he was hanged. These individuals cared nothing for material wealth or possessions and exchanged their lives for the emancipation of their fellow Irishmen and Irishwomen. They fought for an Irish Republic and were Republicans. They established the first Dáil, an Irish parliament, at a time when many of the elected representatives were in British jails. They endured beatings, shootings and torture. Their families suffered in equal measure, living in fear of British raids that saw their homes destroyed and business premises burned down.
The story of the War of Independence does not have a happy ending. The Government of Ireland Act, 1920, also known as the Fourth Home Rule Bill, had established two separate Home Rule institutions on the island of Ireland, namely Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. According to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which brought the War of Independence to an end, Ireland was divided into two separate states, the twenty-six counties of a newly formed Irish Free State to the south, which was set up as a dominion of the British Commonwealth, and the six Ulster counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Derry and Tyrone to the north. Nationalists of what came to be known as the Six Counties were left to fend for themselves in an Orange-dominated province ruled from Stormont, a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant State.
The Irish Free State had a difficult start. The revolutionary Dáil Government and Provisional Government were replaced by an Executive Council, and a Governor-General was appointed as a representative of the King. The legislature, called the Oireachtas, comprised a lower house, Dáil Eireann, and an upper house, Seanad Éireann. Members were required to take an oath of allegiance, which declared fidelity to the British King, and this was anathema to opponents of the Treaty. A devastating civil war followed, between the newly established National Army, representing those who supported the Treaty, and the anti-Treaty IRA, who refused to recognise the new Free State and wished to continue the fight for the Republic.
Following the civil war, which was won by the National Army, the anti-Treaty political party, Sinn Féin, refused to take its seats in the Dáil. Pro-Treaty members formed Cumann na nGaedheal, a forerunner of today’s Fine Gael party, and they ruled until 1932. In 1926, Éamon de Valera resigned from Sinn Féin and founded Fianna Fáil, which entered the Dáil following the 1927 general election and went on to become the governing party after the general election of 1932.
In 1931, the Statute of Westminster saw Britain relinquishing its authority to legislate for its dominions, including the Irish Free State. In 1937, under a Fianna Fáil government, the citizens of the Irish Free State voted in a referendum for an entirely new Constitution of Ireland, which saw the state taking the name ‘Éire’ (Ireland), and a new office of President replacing that of the Governor-General. The state was officially declared a republic in 1949. The 1937 constitution claimed jurisdiction over all of Ireland, while recognising in Articles 2 and 3 that legislation would not apply in the Six Counties (Northern Ireland). These articles were reworded following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 to remove the claim of jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland, replacing it with the words: ‘a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island’.
Throughout the early twentieth century, the twenty-six-county state was dominated by an ultra-Catholic insular élite who paid homage to the 1916 Proclamation of the Republic, but avoided actuating ideals enshrined in that document, such as guaranteeing ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens’ and ‘cherishing all the children of the nation equally’.
A hundred years on, the people of the island of Ireland seem to be more appreciative of the past and some are striving to make Ireland ‘a beacon-light to the oppressed of every land’, as imagined by socialist and republican leader James Connolly in 1897. The hundreds of thousands of people who celebrated the centenary of the 1916 Rising with pride and joy are the same people who will appreciate the story of the Irish Republicans who battled against all odds in the next phase of the fight for Irish freedom, between 1919 and 1921.
The Irish Republican Army is better known by the acronym IRA. The term IRA was first used when the Irish-American Fenian Brotherhood invaded Canada on three successive occasions in the 1860s, fighting under a banner with the letters IRA written on it. The Fenians in the United States also wore a tunic with brass buttons that had IRA engraved on them. In the 1880s during a bombing campaign in Britain, the Fenians regularly left a ‘calling card’ in bombs, a piece of metal with the message IRA emblazoned upon it.
On 24 April 1916, at the start of the Easter Rising, when the Proclamation was read by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office, the Irish Volunteers (Óglaigh na hÉireann), the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan (Women’s Council) and the Fianna Éireann (Warriors of Ireland) all stood under the banner of the Army of the Irish Republic. For the twentieth century, this is the birth of the IRA.
After the Rising, members of the Irish Volunteers who were imprisoned often signed IRA after their names in autograph books passed amongst their fellow internees. However, when referring to themselves, members might also use the term ‘Volunteers’. So sometimes when talking about a certain battle they might say either ‘The Volunteers waited on the road’ or ‘The IRA waited on the road.’
At the beginning of the War of Independence in 1919, the IRA was made up of local Irish Volunteer companies based around parishes, which were collected into battalions over larger areas, and these in turn came under the control of county brigades. In May 1921, the IRA was restructured and the Volunteers in Ireland were divided into sixteen divisions. There were three southern divisions, called First Southern, Second Southern and Third Southern. There were four western divisions, five northern divisions, three eastern divisions and a midlands division.
Each division was split into brigades. For instance, the East Limerick Brigade was in the Second Southern Division. In Ireland there were sixty-seven brigades in July 1921. Brigades were subdivided into battalions, often named after the area they covered. For example, the Fourth (Kilmallock) Battalion, East Limerick Brigade was in the Second Southern Division.
Battalions were further made up of companies, often named after the parish area from which they drew members. There might be ten companies in a battalion, each company named after a letter of the alphabet and the local parish. For example, A Company, Dungloe, First Battalion, First Northern Division.
Companies usually had a captain and a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant. The company captain was called the Officer Commanding or O/C. For instance, Denis Mulchinock was O/C Banteer Company, Fourth Battalion, Cork IV Brigade, First Southern Division.
On 11 July 1921, the IRA had a nominal strength of 115,000. There was a Scottish Brigade with 2,500 IRA members. Liverpool had 398 IRA members and London a much smaller membership of eighty-three, followed by Manchester with fifty-one. There were also twenty-four IRA Volunteers in the United States at the time.
Although nearly 70,000 service medals were issued to IRA veterans in 1942, only 15,000 of them had a ‘comrac’ bar. Comhrac (modern spelling) is an Irish word for ‘fight’ or ‘struggle’ and these medals were intended for those members of the IRA who had engaged the British in a battle.
The IRA was very well structured along the lines of an established army, but at times General Head-Quarters (GHQ), which was in Dublin, found it difficult to control the organisation; it was, after all, an underground army, and it was usually up to local IRA officers to decide upon their individual engagements. However, as a guerrilla army, the IRA was very effective and efficient considering it took on one of the strongest empires in the world at the time.