History. The World History
Veselov I.A.
Francisk Skorina Gomel
State University, Belarus
The IRA in the Irish War of Independence 1919-1921
The Irish radicalism
has a long story and began its origin in the period from the 18th –
till the beginning of the 19th century. In the course if its
formation it acquired different forms of unions: The United Irishmen, The Irish
Republican Brotherhood, The Defenders, The Irish Land League. But the most
famous and outstanding Irish radical union was represented by The Irish
Republican Army (IRA).
The IRA was formed in
1919 as the result of reorganization of The Irish Volunteers-another Irish
radical organization established on the 25 of
November, 1913. It cooperated with The
Irish Citizen Army after the unsuccessful Easter Rising in 1916. The new
organization numbered more than 100000 men and set an aim to support the new
Irish independent state – The Irish Republic, which was established in January,
1919. Michael Collins and Cathal
Brugha were the leaders of the organization and within two years they competed
for influence in the IRA [1, p.78]. The Irish Republican Army was considered to represent national forces,
but soon the new Irish Assembly of Ireland (the Parliament) and the
Cabinet (the Aireacht) felt that the
new military organization rather often went out of control. Some agreement was
badly needed to continue the successful defend of the young state. After
negotiations a new relationship between the Aireacht
and the IRA was set and the decision was published in the form of declaration
in «The Volunteer», an Irish newspaper. The conditions were the following: the
government should regain its power and authority; the government could sanction
the IRA’s activity; the government was given the right to declare war [2,
p.201].
In January, 1919 battles between the
IRA and the British Army began. The whole IRA’s campaign story can be divided
into three phases. In the first phase the IRA was restructured and new soldiers
were formally recruited; formally the organization forces numbered about
100,000 soldiers, but really only 15,000 of them took part in the war. In the
second phase (1919-1920) the IRA used the guerilla tactics, making sudden
onslaughts on British patrols, barracks and defended positions. In this period 16
police barracks were destroyed and 29 were badly damaged [1, p.130]. After such
a negative course of events London decided to strengthen the British army with
new reinforces; exactly from this event on the third phase of the conflict
began. Let’s compare the following
phases of the IRA’s activity: initially the IRA made onslaughts mostly
on British barracks; the main targets of the second phase were the columns of
British soldiers. Finally, the IRA substituted the tactic of onslaughts to the
tactic of ambush in response to the expansion of the British Forces. Also IRA
changed the structure of its units – in the third phase they altered into
«flying columns» - small operational groups, numbering up to 20 rebels [2,
p.215].
The British government tried to take measures against the rebel activity
of the IRA. Arthur Griffith, an Irish politician
and writer, estimated that in the
first 18 months of the conflict, British forces carried out 38,720 raids on
private buildings, arrested 4,982 suspects, committed 1,604 armed assaults,
carried out 102 indiscriminate shootings and burnings in towns and villages,
and killed 77 people including women and children [3].
All the burden of the war was given to
Dublin and the southern province of Munster. The IRA not only fought against
British units (also named «Black and Tans», «Auxiliary division»), but also killed protestants and unionists and set
fire to their houses. The most notorious act of violence was the Belfast’s
Bloody Sunday. Within that day the IRA destroyed factories and commercial
premises. The violence in Belfast alone
continued until October 1922 (long after making peace in the rest of the
country) and took lives of approximately 500 people.
During
the war IRA had a chronic shortage of arms and ammunition. The main sources to
refill the army were the rifles captured from
the British. There was an attempt of buying arms from Italy in 1921, but the
money didn’t reach the dealers – so the attempt failed. To the end of the war
the Thompson submachine guns were bought from the United States, but it was
also of little help: American authorities got hold of 450 guns and the guns
reached the IRA only before peace treaty [4, p. 148].
Many historic buildings in Ireland were destroyed
during the war. According to the IRA’s leader Michael Collins, the destruction
proved to be a pyrrhic victory for the Republic, with many the IRA men killed
or captured. This was also a period of social overturn in Ireland, with
frequent strikes as well as other manifestations of class conflict and the IRA
forces were used occasionally to break the strikes. From this point of view the
IRA played the role of an agent of social control and stability, driven by the
need to keep peace between classes in the process of national struggle.
The biggest single loss for the IRA,
however, came in Dublin. On 25 May 1921, several hundred IRA men from the
Dublin Brigade occupied and burned the Custom
House (the
centre of local government in Ireland) in Dublin city centre. Symbolically,
this was intended to show that British power in Ireland was untenable. However,
from a military point of view, it was a catastrophe for the IRA to have five IRA men killed and over eighty captured. This showed that the IRA was not
equipped or trained well enough to counteract British forces in a conventional
manner. Nevertheless, it did not, as is sometimes claimed, undermine the IRA in
Dublin. The Dublin Brigade carried out 107 attacks in the city in May and in
June, 1921 showing a decrease in activity, but not a dramatic one [2, p.251].
But the time for making peace came. David Lloyd
George, the British Prime Minister, who previously used to call the IRA «the
band of murderers», made his position rather flexible under international
pressure and increased financial problems. In addition to that, George V in his
speech in Belfast (1921) called the parties to make peace. Negotiations about
peaceful regulation of the conflict took place the same year. But the IRA
members mistakenly supposed the cease-fire to be a temporary period and decided
to continue recruiting and training new soldiers. Nevertheless, the peace
agreement was signed in London on the 6 of December, 1921. Under the terms of
agreement the war was put the end to, Northern
Ireland was given the possibility to form a new state, (The Irish Free State),
and the country became a part of the United Kingdom.
In spite of all these political measures,
many IRA ?? members and rank-and-file
Irish people were determined to oppose the agreement and soon the IRA fell into
two parts: the official one, supporting the peace treaty, and the anti-treaty
part. On March,22 Rory O'Connor, the leader of the
anti-treaty IRA declared that the IRA would no
longer obey the Dáil (the lower?? house of the Irish parliament) since
it had violated its oath to support the Irish Republic. From this time on the
IRA began to recruit new volunteers to arrange anti-treaty movements [4,
p.168].
While the Irish Boundary Commission
solved the problem of borders, the IRA’s leader Collins set planning to begin
the guerilla war on the territory of Northern Ireland. Accordingly, he sent the IRA units to the border
areas and supplied arms to the northern units.
This oppositional activity of the
IRA’s leadership started the process of dividing the IRA into 2 types: the Irish
Army (governmental forces), which was formed from the former structure of the
IRA, and the new IRA – a formation of people who were against peace agreement.
Former brethren of arms began fighting against each other.
References:
1 Hart, Peter. The IRA at War 1916-1923 / Peter
Hart. – Oxford: Oxford university press, 2003. – 290 p.
2 English, Richard. Armed
Struggle, a History of the IRA / Richard English. – London: Macmillan
publishers, 2003. – 492 p.
3 Berresford Ellis, Peter. Irish
Self-Determination League of Great Britain, 1919-24
/ Peter Berresford Ellis. – 2007. – Mode of access: http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/isdlgb-1919-24/. – Date
of access: 01.03.13
4
Hopkinson, Michael. The Irish War of Independence / Michael
Hopkinson. – London: Gill & Macmillan Publishers, 2002. – 274 p.