The War of Independence, An Introduction

The struggle for Irish independence was a long and tangled one. On the eve of the First World War, it looked as if the British Government had finally found a solution.

The struggle for Irish independence was a long and tangled one. On the eve of the First World War, it looked as if the British Government had finally found a solution, by offering Ireland a degree of self-government known as “Home Rule”. With the outbreak of the war, this measure, which included an Irish Parliament to govern internal Irish affairs, was effectively put on hold. While the war was waged in Europe, a cohort of Irish Republicans staged a rebellion in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916 – the Easter Rising.

The Easter Rising was put down after six days of fighting and one by one the British executed its leaders. The British reaction to the Rising caused a sea-change in public opinion. While a majority of Irish citizens had previously been happy to wait for a devolved, Home Rule Parliament, many now embraced the view of the executed leaders of the Rising, who felt that Ireland should be a completely independent republic.

When the First World War ended, elections were held for Parliament in December 1918. Of the 105 MPs elected in Ireland, 73 were members of Sinn Féin, the political party which then represented those who had staged the Easter Rising. Rather than taking their seats in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Westminster, they instead set up an independent Irish Parliament known as “Dáil Éireann”.

On the day that the first Dáil met, on 21 January 1919, two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were shot dead in an ambush by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This date is taken by many as marking the start of the War of Independence between Britain and Ireland. The war was initially marked by sporadic ambushes carried out by the IRA, targeting the RIC and raiding for arms. At the start of 1920, recruitment began for a force of Temporary Constables to reinforce the RIC, who became better known to history as the “Black and Tans”. This force was augmented in July that year by an elite division of ex-army officers known as the “Auxiliaries”.

Fighting continued to escalate as the war progressed. On 21 November 1920, on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”, the IRA assassinated fourteen men suspected of being members of the British intelligence forces. Later that day, in reprisal, a company of Black and Tans opened fired on a crowd of spectators at a Gaelic football match, killing fourteen civilians. By this stage, the war had become marked by a pattern of guerrilla attack followed by indiscriminate reprisals. In December, the city centre of Cork was deliberately set on fire in one such reprisal.

The intensity of the violence, and the number of deaths, continued to escalate throughout the early months of 1921. Eventually, a truce was called between the opposing forces, on 11 July 1921. Over the course of the following months, a treaty was negotiated between the two sides. It was passed by a vote of the Dáil on 7 January 1922. Nine days later, Dublin Castle was handed over to the Provisional Government of the new Irish State.