Belfast Battalion
“A SUSPENSION OF OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS”: 1922-26
harassed by the enemy and in need of rest
In November 1922 the Belfast I.R.A. was in chaos. By July that year, Ireland had been on a war footing for almost ten years. The importation of German rifles by unionists in 1912 had signaled their intent to violently oppose Home Rule and the outbreak of war between Europe’s imperial powers in 1914 merely delayed the outbreak of conflict in Ireland rather than prevented it. For republicans the short-lived Irish Republic in 1916 became a touchstone. Susequently, republican political aspirations were usually given as the ‘restoration of the republic declared in 1916’. Commemorations for those executed after the 1916 republic was suppressed also joined the tributes for the United Irishmen at Bodenstown (and, in Belfast in the 1920s, on Cavehill) as integral to the annual republican calendar. When a separate Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann) was formed, based on the 1918 election results, the military forces organised to defend it (the Irish Republican Army, the woman’s revolutionary organisation Cumann na mBan and the youth organisation Fianna Éireann) inevitably clashed with the R.I.C., the British Army and the temporary special constabularies created to bolster the R.I.C. (and to carry out reprisals and other counterinsurgency actions). The latter were the Special Reserve (who became known as the Black and Tans), the Auxiliary Division (the ‘Auxies’) and the Ulster Special Constabulary (U.S.C.).1 As the latter incorporated various unionist paramilitary groups intent on violently resisting Home Rule, the reprisals carried out by the Special Reserve and Auxiliary Division paled in comparison with the killings carried out in Belfast. A proposal to temporarily install parliaments in Dublin and Belfast led to an arbitrary partitioning of Ireland from May 1921. This nominally applied the logic that it included counties with unionist majorities, but in reality incorporated the likes of Fermanagh and Tyrone which had nationalist majorities. A Boundary Commission was to review partition and it was generally assumed it’s report would end the partition experiment.
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