page_title: Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)
section_title: Ideology of the post-Civil War IRA and marginalisation in the Free State
hierarchical_section_title: Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) / Ideology of the post-Civil War IRA and marginalisation in the Free State
caption_attribution_description: Moss Twomey
context_page_description: The original Irish Republican Army fought a guerrilla war against British rule in Ireland in the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, the IRA in the 26 counties that were to become the Irish Free State split between supporters and opponents of the Treaty. The anti-Treatyites, sometimes referred to by Free State forces as Irregulars, continued to use the name Irish Republican Army or in Irish Óglaigh na hÉireann, as did the organisation in Northern Ireland which originally supported the pro-Treaty side. Óglaigh na hÉireann was also adopted as the name of the pro-Treaty National Army, and remains the official legal title of the Irish Defence Forces.
context_section_description: The period immediately following the Irish Civil War saw the IRA swing towards the political left, manifest in the election of Moss Twomey to the position of Chief of Staff. Twomey would go on to hold the position for almost a decade and became the longest-lasting Chief of Staff of this iteration of the IRA. Under his reign, he cautiously opened the IRA up to left-wing influences in order to contrast it against the emerging right-wing stance of the Cumann na nGaedheal government.
  In the summer of 1925, the anti-treaty IRA had sent a delegation led by Pa Murray to the Soviet Union for a personal meeting with Joseph Stalin, in the hopes of gaining Soviet finance and weaponry. A secret pact was agreed, whereby the IRA would spy on the United States and the United Kingdom and pass information to Red Army military intelligence in New York City and London in return for £500 a month. The pact was originally approved by Frank Aiken, who left soon after to co-found Fianna Fáil with De Valera, before being succeeded by Andrew Cooney and Moss Twomey, who kept up the secret IRA-Soviet espionage relationship until around 1930–31.
  While Twomey was not an ideological Marxist-Leninist (although there were some communists in the IRA at this time, such as Peadar O'Donnell); he saw the arrangement as purely utilitarian and regarded the Soviets as "shifty" and "out to exploit us." Some republicans argued that they had lost the Civil War because they had not appealed to the social unrest in the country and had lacked any social or economic programme, which allowed communists to gain influence. Nevertheless, the IRA passed specifications of British "submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks" to the Soviets and the IRA's man in the U.S., "Mr. Jones", passed "reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army" to Red Army intelligence.
  In 1926, after failing to persuade Sinn Féin to participate in the political institutions of the Free State, de Valera formed a new political party, called Fianna Fáil, and many Sinn Féin members left to support him. De Valera would in 1932 become President of the Executive Council, at the head of the first Fianna Fáil government.
  The IRA considered itself to be upholding the Republic that was declared in the 1916 Proclamation and held that the government of the Irish Free State was illegitimate. It maintained that it remained the army of that Republic, in direct continuity with the IRA of the War of Independence period. There were several competing organisations on the radical republican side of Irish politics during this period. In addition to the IRA, these included the hard-line elements of anti-Treaty Sinn Féin, such as Mary MacSwiney, who had not followed de Valera into constitutional politics, and the rump of the anti-Treaty members of the Second Dáil, still proclaiming themselves the only legitimate Irish parliament. For most of this period, the IRA's relations with Sinn Féin were poor (IRA members were even forbidden to join the party), despite the reconciliation attempt represented by the 1929 Comhairle na Poblachta.
  The IRA intervened in a number of strikes during this period, and IRA members campaigned against the payment of land annuities (in respect of the buying-out of landlords by the former British administration), with Peadar O'Donnell establishing the Anti-Tribute League in 1928. Many Communist Party of Ireland members were also members of the IRA at this time. Political initiatives such as Saor Éire, begun in 1931, were promoted by left-wing IRA members such as George Gilmore, Peadar O'Donnell and Frank Ryan. IRA members also helped establish the "Friends of Soviet Russia", from which they later expelled Communist Party members when relations between the two organisations deteriorated.
  In the years after the Civil War, many republicans viewed the Free State, with its censorship of newspapers and extensive coerc
caption: Moss Twomey was Chief of Staff, 1926–36. IRA-Soviet relations began a year earlier with Felix Dzerzhinsky's OGPU.
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