IRA - the path to victory

On April 30, 1916, the Easter Rising was suppressed. On the same day, Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Augustine Birrell resigned, his deputy Sir Matthew Nathan resigned on May 3. The rebel leaders were executed, the rank and file were sent to prison, but the problems for the British on the Green Island were only just beginning!

Michael Collins - IRA Commander Father
In May 1918, a man who would go on to win the war against the British Empire was released from an English prison. Michael John Collins was born either on October 16 or 12, 1890, in the town of Sam's Cross, near the town of Clonakilty, County Cork. The boy's father was 59-year-old farmer Michael Collins, who took a young wife, 23-year-old Marian O'Brien. Old Collins did not live long after that, and at the age of 6, Michael was left an orphan. They say that before his death, his father said of him: "One day he will be a great man and do much for Ireland." Perhaps this is a legend, but it suited Collins Jr.'s short and stormy life very well!
The young man had no chance of not becoming a Fenian: his father, the blacksmith James Santry who raised the boy, and the school principal Denis Lyons were members of the IRB or sympathizers... After finishing school, Michael entered King's College London, the third most prestigious college after Oxford and Cambridge. After graduating from college, he got a job as a postman and joined the Gaelic Athletic Association, which promoted various exotic sports like hurling and Gaelic football. However, it is much more important that the Association was a stepping stone to joining the IRB...

Eamon de Valera
Collins was not in the leading roles in the Easter Rising (though not the last one either - he was involved in intelligence and finance), so he was not among those executed in the heat of the moment, but ended up in the camp in Frongoch, which became a forge of revolutionary cadres to replace those executed. In the camp, he became a member of the small and little-known Sinn Fein party. The British press so diligently accused Sinn Fein of the uprising that it gave it excellent publicity; upon his release from prison, the "Big Boy", as Collins was dubbed, joined the party's executive committee and became the head of the "Irish Volunteers". Eamon de Valera, Michael's future friend, comrade and... enemy, became the president of both organizations.
In December 1918, Sinn Fein won the parliamentary elections, but on January 21, 1919, all of its deputies left the British parliament and formed their own - Doyle Eireann, proclaiming (for the umpteenth time!) the independence of Ireland. Almost simultaneously, the "Irish Volunteers" and the "Irish Citizen Army" merged into the IRA - the Irish Republican Army.

Michael Collins' 'Squad' Retires
The IRA's first combat operations were aimed at capturing weapons. On April 16, 1918, during such a raid, John Brown and Robert Lyde were killed - the first fighters to die in the "Irish War of Independence". The IRA formally numbered over 100 thousand people, but in reality only 3 thousand took part in the struggle - there were not enough weapons, and there was no trust in the veterans of the First World War - they fought for the Crown, and this, from the point of view of the Fenians, was not worthy behavior. To wage war, the IRA formed "flying squads" numbering from 20 to 100 people, and Collins created the first Irish special forces unit, modestly called "Squad" (however, due to the number of fighters, it was sometimes also called "12 Apostles"). The Squad had specific tasks - killing police officers and those suspected of working for the police.
The first victims of the IRA were Royal Irish Constabulary constables James McDonnell and Patrick O'Connell. They were escorting a load of explosives and were ambushed by Sean Treacy and Dan Breen on the road between the British Army barracks and the Solohedberg quarry. Initially, the Fenians intended to act, if possible, without shedding blood: ropes and gags were prepared, with which they planned to tie up the escorts. But, as usually happens, everything did not go according to plan...
On January 21, at about midday, a cart carrying 65 kilograms of explosives was spotted, accompanied by two policemen with carbines. Eight Irishmen with revolvers and one automatic rifle were waiting in ambush for the cargo. When the cart drew level with the ambush, the attackers jumped out onto the road shouting "Hands up!" The policemen began to fiddle with their carbines, but were unable to fire - they forgot to remove the safety catches. The Fenians opened fire, both constables were killed, and the rebels ended up with two carbines and explosives.
It is difficult to say whether the murder was planned from the start: the ropes and gags suggest that it was not, but in his memoirs one of the attackers, Dan Breen, wrote:
Perhaps this is bravado in hindsight, especially since the other participants in the attack do not confirm such intentions, but the very fact of an action not coordinated with the leadership, which ended in the death of police officers, shows that there were big problems with discipline in the IRA; in fact, it was a set of guerrilla units that were weakly subordinate to the supreme command.
However, things were no simpler in Irish politics either. Doyle Eren discussed "whether it would be possible to officially recognise the martial law that was being forced upon them or not" in January 1921. The war had been going on for two years by that point... In the end, Eamon de Valera called for recognising the state of war with England, and the parliamentarians voted for the proposal, after which they gave de Valera the right to declare war. But he did not declare it either.

IRA action as imagined by a contemporary artist
And the war was on. Collins drew conclusions from the Easter Rising: his men were not sitting still, did not wear uniforms, and acted on the principle of "hit and run." The first to be sent to his forefathers was Judge John Milling, who had convicted several Fenians. This caused terrible anger in "President" de Valera: he was concerned about international recognition of the Irish Republic, but abroad he was told that the IRA was acting... Not in accordance with the laws of war.
Meanwhile, the violence was not excessive at first: the Irish's main tactic was civil disobedience, only occasionally interrupted by the "Big Boy's" violent actions. Collins remembered how the Easter Rising and the many civilian casualties had caused the Fenians' popularity to fall. So he tried to strike with pinpoint strikes.

Royal Irish Constabulary
The main target of such attacks was the Royal Irish Constabulary. It numbered 9700 people, mostly Irish and Catholics. There were 1500 police stations all over the country. The main blow to the police was not terror, but... boycott. They were not served in shops, not welcomed in public places, local ladies did not pay interested attention to "Bobby". All this led to a drop in morale and mass dismissals from this structure. Many of those who resigned found themselves in the ranks of the IRA. Well, those who continued to remain loyal to the Crown... The conversation with them was short: in 1919, 11 policemen and 4 detectives of the Dublin police department were killed, another 20 were wounded.

Limerick Council Banknote
Well, these actions were supplemented by such traditional measures for our own revolutions as strikes and the creation of councils. Yes, yes, precisely Soviet's - the Russian experience in 1919 was more than relevant. Thus, the city of Limerick and part of the county of the same name were controlled by the local Council for two weeks - from April 14 to 27, 1919. It even managed to print its own money!
By the way, the strikes added a lot of headaches to the British military administration: dockers refused to unload ships with military equipment, and drivers and drivers refused to transport troops and military cargo. Of course, attempts were regularly made to bring in strikebreakers, but Collins's guys conducted "explanatory work" with them.
The pinprick tactics worked: the Royal Irish Constabulary abandoned its rural stations and retreated to the big cities, with the IRA taking over the abandoned areas. Abandoned barracks were burned to discourage recapture. The same fate befell the tax offices: Ireland ceased to bring in revenue for the Crown, but continued to draw money for the ongoing guerrilla war. The courts did not function, as juries refused to take part in them. Civil servants resigned, not wanting to be a target for the Big Boy's soldiers.
At the same time, Irish authorities took the place of English ones. The Irish Republican Police took the place of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which supervised the execution of Irish court decisions. Collins' people came to replace the tax department, "agitating" for people to subscribe to the "national loan". In total, they managed to collect 380 thousand pounds, another 5 million dollars were collected by the Irish in the USA and also spent on the needs of the Republic. In August 1920, the British magazine "The Nation" wrote: "The central fact of the current situation in Ireland is the existence of the Irish Republic."

"Black and Pieds" at the show
Meanwhile, the British were not going to give up without a fight. In 1919, the "Special Reserve of the Royal Irish Constabulary" was created, nicknamed "Black and White" (by analogy with the Irish hound) for their uniform, which was put together on the knee from elements of various army and police uniforms. There were about 7 thousand Black and White volunteers - mostly veterans of the First World War. The royal administration considered it impractical to involve the military in the fight against the IRA (although it had to be resorted to regularly) - it would look like a civil war. Hence the use of auxiliary police units. The "Black and White" were paid not well, but very well - 10 shillings a day, for comparison, the daily salary of an ordinary soldier was slightly more than a shilling.

The football team at whose match "Bloody Sunday" occurred
As a police force, the Black and Tans were ineffective to the point of being "completely" ineffective: they had no experience in search work, no experience in war in the city, but... They compensated for all this with cruelty. The most vivid example of their "work" methods was "Bloody Sunday" in Dublin. On November 21, 1920, the IRA killed 19 army intelligence officers working undercover in the Fenian underground. In response, the Black and Tans moved into Dublin's Croke Park stadium, where a Gaelic football match was taking place, supposedly to search for the wanted men. Instead of conducting a search, they opened fire on the stands and players on the field, killing 14 people (including two children) and wounding more than 60. All witnesses to the action unanimously claimed that the shooting was not provoked by anything. That same evening, after prolonged torture and beatings, Black and Tan guards killed three prisoners in the Dublin Castle prison, two of whom were suspected of sympathizing with the IRA, and the third was simply caught in the heat of the moment. The murder was registered as an “attempt to escape.”

The English army in Ireland
However, the "Tommy Atkinses" did not behave any better in Ireland. On September 8, 1919, 200 soldiers of the King's Own Shorpshire Light Infantry looted and burned the main businesses of the town of Fermoy, after a soldier of this regiment was killed during an IRA raid on a Protestant church parade. It is worth giving credit to the British soldiers - for the first time they encountered a situation where a coroner refused to work at a murder scene, and a jury refused to give a verdict.

Arthur Griffith
To better illustrate what was happening in Ireland at this time, we can cite statistics: Irish journalist Arthur Griffith calculated that in the first 18 months of the conflict, the British carried out 38 raids on private homes, arrested 720 suspects, committed 4982 armed attacks, 1604 indiscriminate shootings and arson attacks, and killed 102 people, including women and children. On March 77, 20, on his 1920th birthday, the Lord Mayor of Cork (and an active participant in the Easter Rising) Thomas McGarden was shot dead in front of his wife and children. In response, the Big Boy's men identified all of his killers and shot them. McGarden's successor as Lord Mayor, the poet Terence MacSweeney, was arrested and died while on hunger strike in Cork Prison.
All this caused a heated response abroad. The US threatened to boycott English goods, four South American countries appealed to the Pope to intervene. There were protests in France, Germany, and Catalonia in Spain. However, it was much worse that parliamentarians in the dominions began to protest: Australian MP Hugh Mahon was expelled from the legislature for “seditious and disloyal statements at a public meeting.”

IRA Flying Squad
The real driving force of the war was Michael Collins, who was formally the finance minister in the Republican government and the IRA's director of intelligence. But it was he who procured weapons and ammunition, formed the "flying squads," appointed officers, and planned operations. And most importantly, it was around him that the disparate guerrilla units that initially made up the army were united.

Richard Mulcahy - IRA Chief of Staff
Richard Mulcahy, another participant in the Easter Rising, became the IRA Chief of Staff. He was responsible for training units across the country. Among the field commanders were famous politicians of independent Ireland: Sean Moylan, Ernie O'Malley, Sean Mac Oin and others. As I said above, the IRA's roster exceeded 100 people, while only 15 were actually active, and the fighting core consisted of 3 people. But it was for the best: the army, which was constantly experiencing problems with weapons and ammunition, could not support the activities of a larger number of fighters, and so the "activists" provided the fighters with safe houses, provisions, and maintained communications.
Collins paid great attention to maintaining the popularity of his army. Its actions were targeted, with a very limited circle of Englishmen and local collaborators serving as targets. When the British reaction to the IRA actions arose, the people's anger was directed at the soldiers, the "black and whites" and the police. At the same time, officials from the English elite publicly denied any repression, which gave Lord Hugh Cecil the opportunity to make a caustic remark: "Everyone seems to agree that repression does not exist, but it has a good effect."
On 9 August 1920, the Restoration of Order Act was passed, replacing the jury system with military courts. On 10 December of that year, martial law was declared in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary, and in January it was extended to the counties of Clare and Waterford in Munster, and Kilkenny and Wexford in Leinster. Military tribunals were given the power to apply the death penalty without trial...
Late 1920 and early 1921 saw an escalation of violence on both sides. In December, the Black and Tans burned down the centre of Cork, targeting firefighters trying to put out the blazes. In response, the IRA began burning down manor houses, or "big houses", destroying 26 in Cork alone. From January to July 1921, over a thousand people died in Ireland, more than 70% of the conflict's total. More than 4500 people identified as IRA sympathisers were sent to concentration camps.

The war is in full swing!
Describing all the twists and turns of the struggle is a futile exercise: small units struck and left. Or did not leave and fell into traps. Ambushes, explosions, murders followed one after another. The president of the virtual Irish Republic, Eamon de Valera, did not like this at all: he demanded direct military clashes in the manner of the Easter Rising, but Collins understood that such tactics would inevitably lead to defeat, and continued to wage guerrilla warfare. And the conviction that it was impossible to win this war began to grow stronger among the British administration. Do you know what was most interesting about this situation? That Collins himself began to grow stronger at that moment! The IRA had enough strength for a week of active military action, after which, in the opinion of the "Big Guy", it would be necessary to wind up the company. But the British broke earlier...
The truce was agreed on 11 July 1921. Shortly before, King George V had given a speech calling on "all Irishmen to pause, to extend the hand of patience and conciliation, to forgive and forget, and to join in bringing into the land they love a new era of peace, contentment and goodwill." Following the speech, Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote to Eamon de Valera proposing a conference to resolve the crisis. Initially, the British Prime Minister demanded that the IRA disarm, but this condition was flatly rejected. Moreover, the Fenians took the truce as a respite and continued to recruit volunteers and replenish their stocks of arms and ammunition. In some places, even under the truce, blood was shed and shots were fired, but in the end...
On December 6, 1921, the Anglo-Irish Peace Treaty was signed, ratified by Dáil Éireann, the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and both houses of the British Parliament. The Irish Free State came into being, with dominion rights. Six counties of Northern Ireland remained part of Great Britain. Michael Collins, who signed the Treaty, said prophetic words: "I have signed not the Treaty, but my virtual death warrant" - for many radicals in Ireland, who dreamed of complete independence, the dominion status seemed a defeat, and Collins, who went on to sign the Treaty, a traitor. He had a different opinion: the Treaty gave Ireland "not the freedom that all nations desire and strive for, but the freedom to achieve it." The revolution had won, and the Civil War lay ahead...
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