Osprey - Essential Histories 065 - The Anglo-Irish War 1913-1922

Introduction 9
Although the RIC offered substantial rewards for the
capture of IRA activists, few were captured as a result of
wanted posters like this one. (Courtesy of the RUC
George Cross Foundation)
with the end of the 'official' civil war in
1923, and arguably not even then. Equally, it
is sometimes difficult to establish when the
Anglo-Irish War actually began. Traditionally
it is seen as beginning when Dan Breen and
members of the Tipperary IRA ambushed
and killed two Irish Catholic policemen -
Constables James McDonnell and Patrick
O'Connell - in a quarry near Soloheadbeg,
Co. Tipperary on 21 January 1919. This is
because this was the first of many incidents
when the IRA deliberately targeted
policemen. Some analysts see the Easter
Rising in 1916 as the start of the war, whilst
others place its roots even earlier in
Anglo-Irish history.
Republican interpretations tend to see
every rebellion from the Anglo-Norman
invasion of 1169 to the present day as part
of a continuous struggle for liberation from
English, or British, rule. However, this is far
too simplistic an interpretation of Anglo-Irish
relations, since the Catholic rebels of the
1640s recognized Charles I's right to be King
of Ireland, as did the Irish Army that fought
for James II. Only the predominantly
Protestant-led United Irishmen fought
for a non-sectarian Republic along
Franco-American lines. Republicanism was
not the central thread of Nationalist resistance
to British domination of Ireland, and even
Sinn Féin was a constitutional monarchist
party when it was founded in 1905.
Although Ireland's many insurrections
were not part of a continuous struggle for
liberation, it would equally be wrong to
say that earlier rebellions did not inspire
or affect those that came after them. If
Republicanism was not a significant feature
of Irish rebellions before 1798, it was to
become the dominant feature of 19thcentury
Irish subversion. Despite financial
and moral support from Irish emigres in the
US, none of the Republican efforts before
1921 were successful in freeing Ireland from
British rule. In fact, from the failure of
the Fenian Rising in 1867 to the period
immediately before the First World War,
Ireland was a relatively peaceful and
prosperous part of the UK. However it
was by no means united, and despite the
high-minded non-sectarian ideals of the
United Irishmen, Ireland was a deeply
divided society. Sectarian violence bubbled
beneath the surface and political allegiances
were often dictated by sectarian tribal
loyalties. In the non-conformist Protestant
heartland of Ulster most of the residents
feared any form of devolved or independent
Dublin-based government, because
they would become a minority in a
Catholic-dominated independent Ireland,
which re-awoke folk memories of the
massacres of Protestants during the 1640s
and the 1798 rebellion.
In response to the rising tide of
constitutional Nationalism, with its goal of
a devolved Irish government in Dublin, the
Protestant North began to mobilize against
the possibility of Irish Home Rule. The year
1913 saw the creation of pro- and anti-Home
Rule paramilitary groups, firstly in the guise
of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and then
in response the National Volunteers; both
promptly began to smuggle arms into the
country. The battle lines of some form of
Irish 'civil war' were being drawn in 1913,
and although hostilities were temporarily
postponed in August 1914 when the UK
declared war on Germany, it was only a
stay of execution that lasted until 1919.
The compromise treaty that ended the
conflict and partitioned Ireland turned out
to be the catalyst for the civil war that
bitterly divided southern Irish society, and
created the political parties that still define
the Republic's politics. Within living
memory, veterans of these events dominated
Irish politics and it is hardly surprising that
they cast a shadow over Anglo-Irish
diplomatic relations and bequeathed a bitter
legacy to both the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) and the Garda Síochána (Garda).
Ultimately, it is only since the deaths of
the likes of Eamon de Valera, who took part