Irish War of Independence

The **Irish War of Independence** was a civil war fought between British loyalists and Irish separatists in British Ireland, and from the last days of the war including Northern Ireland. What resulted was a total Irish victory, in part due to the Cairo War and the subsequent liberation of the entire Irish Island from the British.

## Irish War of Independence

National Army soldiers armed with Lewis machine guns aboard a troop transport in the independence war.

### **Outcome**

Irish rebel victoryExpulsion of British troops

Evacuation of British loyalists

The beginning of the Irish Civil War

## History

### Precursor to the war

Since the 1870s, Irish nationalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) had been demanding Home Rule, or self-government, from Britain. Fringe organisations, such as Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin, instead argued for some form of Irish independence, but they were in a small minority.

The demand for Home Rule was eventually granted by the British Government in 1912, immediately prompting a prolonged crisis within the United Kingdom as Ulster unionists formed an armed organisation – the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) – to resist this measure of devolution, at least in territory they could control. In turn, nationalists formed their own paramilitary organisation, the Irish Volunteers.

The British Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1914, known as the Home Rule Act, on 18 September 1914 with an amending Bill for the partition of Ireland introduced by Ulster Unionist MPs, but the Act's implementation was immediately postponed by the Suspensory Act 1914 due to the outbreak of the First World War in the previous month. The majority of nationalists followed their IPP leaders and John Redmond's call to support Britain and the Allied war effort in Irish regiments of the New British Army, the intention being to ensure the commencement of Home Rule after the war. However, a significant minority of the Irish Volunteers opposed Ireland's involvement in the war. The Volunteer movement split, a majority leaving to form the National Volunteers under Redmond. The remaining Irish Volunteers, under Eoin MacNeill, held that they would maintain their organisation until Home Rule had been granted. Within this Volunteer movement, another faction, led by the separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood, began to prepare for a revolt against British rule in Ireland.

The plan for revolt was realised in the Easter Rising of 1916, in which the Volunteers launched an insurrection whose aim was to end British rule. The insurgents issued the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, proclaiming Ireland's independence as a republic. The Rising, in which over four hundred people died, was almost exclusively confined to Dublin and was put down within a week, but the British response, executing the leaders of the insurrection and arresting thousands of nationalist activists, galvanised support for the separatist Sinn Féin – the party which the republicans first adopted and then took over as well as followers from Countess Markievicz, who was second-in-command of the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising By now, support for the British war effort was waning, and Irish public opinion was shocked and outraged by some of the actions committed by British troops, particularly the murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and the imposition of wartime martial law.

During the 1918 general elections, the Great War was finally over and had been for over 1 year at that point, but it did not mean that Irish-British relations would soften anytime soon. In fact they got gradually worse over the course of the 1910s but the 1918 elections made everything worse for pacifists and anti-war people. During the elections the  Sinn Féin party, a very separatist nationalist party won over 55% of the votes on the island.  Sinn Féin pledged not to sit in the UK Parliament at Westminster, but rather to set up an Irish Parliament. This parliament, known as the First Dáil, and its ministry, called the Aireacht, consisting only of Sinn Féin members, met at the Dublin Mansion House on 21 January 1919. The Dáil reaffirmed the 1916 Proclamation with the Irish Declaration of Independence, and issued a Message to the Free Nations of the World, which stated that there was an "existing state of war, between Ireland and England. The Irish Volunteers were reconstituted as the "Irish Republican Army”.

### Beginning of the war for independence

On the same day that the Dáil first met, two RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary) constables were shot dead by Irish Volunteers under Dan Breen at Soloheadbeg in Tipperary and the explosives they were carrying seized. This is commonly presented as the opening shots of the war but there had been deaths in 1918 and only 17 more people were killed in 1919. In Dublin, Michael Collins the Volunteers or IRA Director of Intelligence formed a ‘Squad’ to assassinate detectives who coordinated the arrest of republican activists. Late in the year his men attempted but failed to kill John French, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Alongside the limited armed campaign there was significant passive resistance including hunger strikes by prisoners and a boycott by railway workers on carrying British troops. There were also significant disturbances in rural areas as small farmers attempted to seize parts of large ‘ranches’.

### The Cairo War and an Irish opportunity

Before the Cairo War took off, Ireland was plagued by internal divisions by the already ongoing civil war but there had been limited violence on both sides, however the Cairo War would change the course of the conflict of independence. The British were able to maintain their dominance on the island which is why the Irish revolutionaries were unable to seize major parts of the country. However, once the Suez Canal had been captured world trade was disrupted and this colossal failure was felt as far away as Dublin. The British Parliament almost unanimously felt that Egypt and the Suez was more important than Ireland and so by late September and onward Ireland saw a slow and grueling British troop pullout but Parliament and David Lloyd George were fierce in their belief that the war of independence will by won by loyalists.

History would prove this claim to be false, as once British troops began to pull out Irish nationalists took up the opportunity to attack. In October the battle of Cork collectively turned the population against the British occupiers. As the British soldiers were leaving they turned bitter about their departure knowing how easy it could be for Irish rebels to seize the island. Since September rumors of intentional atrocities committed by retreating troops across the island. There wasn’t enough proof to prove the Irish side correct until on October 12 that major incident broke out.

### The Incident at Cork

5 days before their scheduled leave for Malta, British troops, many of whom were stubborn supporters for the British occupation of Ireland decided to set fire to various buildings across the city many of whom contained civilians inside who were suspected of supporting the independence war, killing as many as 20 people in 6 hours. Already massive suspension was put on the British garrison in the city, but further eye witness accounts first handingly confirming these feelings released rage into the people’s hearts still shocked from the fires. 4 hours after the last building was set on fire a group of angry protestors impulsively stormed the local barracks where soldier after soldier was assaulted and 3 were killed. But during this violence other troops were able to grab hold of weapons and fired on the crowd, killing 6 while dispersing over 30 people from the barracks. In a fit of anger, British soldiers reicked terror on Cork in the hope of burning the city to the ground. In the course of 4 days the British soldiers massacred over 50 people either directly or indirectly with death from fires included. Much of the city had been damaged but the people who lived in and around Cork grew furious, grabbing whatever weapons they could for the goal of killing or expelling all British loyalists from Cork. In a 5 day battle the soldiers, already thinning in numbers were forced to flee and the city along with neighboring towns fell to a new Irish uprising. Its provisional government threw its support behind Sinn Fein and joined the main rebellion.

### The fall of Ireland, Treaty of Valletta and formal Irish liberation

After the Cork Incident and Battle of Cork the Irish population became more fed up with the loyalists, and as the main British army was retreating much of Ireland was vulnerable to an attack. Beginning on November 2nd, underground Irish men  rose up in the cities of Waterford and Kilkenny as both saw a British evacuation just 4 days earlier. To their luck both cities fell with very little fighting as separatist outposts popped up elsewhere or grew. For the next several months as the British troops were kept at an absolute minimum the Irish War of Independence was a great success for all of the Irish people as mainland Ireland quickly fell to the rebels as any British soldiers still present were kept in large cities, but the battle to take over Northern Ireland would be more difficult.

Northern Ireland was split politically from the rest of Ireland for several reasons and during the 1918 elections it showed as the Ulster Unionist Party, a politically conservative pro-British party was elected with the majority of votes in Northern Ireland. As such during the Irish War of Independence the population put up more resistance to the thought of an independent Ireland and the civilian regions became tougher to placate. Nonetheless two major revolts sprung up in the region but they constantly faced pressure from many people to stop their fighting and accept the British, to which they stubbornly refused.

Shortly before the British surrendered in the Cairo War, an uprising close to Dublin began successfully and before long Dublin was under attack. Dublin had the largest amount of British troops present yet they were not able to defend such as large city with a disgruntled population. The people in Dublin sabotaged the colonial garrisons any way they could which severely hindered the British ability to defend Dublin and after 7 days the city fell to a new Irish uprising. On May 23rd 4 days after the fall of Dublin the British surrendered to every one of its enemies including Ireland, limiting the fighting that occurred on the mainland. Subsequently, Irish delegates were invited into the Treaty of Valletta as was previously promised by the Arabs and Italians a few months earlier. With every other demand the British were in no position to stop them from going through and in every demand the British were unable to struggle and caved into accepting. When it came time for Irish demands, the delegation gave the following terms to the British and Treaty of Valletta:

1. *The British will revoke any claims made on any Irish territory that has historically been a part of Ireland through ethnicity, culture or history.*
2. *With this, all British soldiers must evacuate Ireland in 10 days maximum.*
3. *The British will recognize not only Irish independence but also the Irish annexation of Northern Ireland.*
4. *Any political prisoners, whether in Ireland or mainland Britain must be returned within a 20 day period.*

### Aftermath (WIP)

It was truly a dream come true for the Irish. All of Ireland was to be liberated even including Northern Ireland which had been more pro-British than pro-Irish. However, this divide would only grow in the following months, and thoughts that there wouldn’t be a large effort against Irish nationalists were quickly mistaken as the Irish Civil War between Northern Ireland and mainland Ireland.