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Paramilitary organisation

The Irish Republican Army (IRA; Óglaigh na hÉireann) was an Irish republican revolutionary paramilitary organisation. The ancestor of many groups also known as the Irish Republican Army, and distinguished from them as the "Old IRA", it was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916. In 1919, the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising was formally established by an elected assembly (Dáil Éireann), and the Irish Volunteers were recognised by Dáil Éireann as its legitimate army. Thereafter, the IRA waged a guerrilla campaign against the British occupation of Ireland in the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence. Following the signing in 1921 of the Anglo Irish Treaty, which ended the War of Independence, a split occurred within the IRA. Members who supported the treaty formed the nucleus of the Irish National Army. However, the majority of the IRA was opposed to the treaty. The anti treaty IRA fought a civil war against the Free State Army in 1922–1923, with the intention of creating a fully independent all Ireland republic. Having lost the civil war, this group remained in existence, with the intention of overthrowing the governments of both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland and achieving the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916.

The Irish Volunteers, founded in 1913, staged the Easter Rising, which aimed at ending British rule in Ireland, in 1916. Following the suppression of the Rising, thousands of Volunteers were imprisoned or interned, leading to the break up of the organisation. It was reorganised in 1917 following the release of first the internees and then the prisoners. At the army convention held in Dublin in October 1917, Éamon de Valera was elected president, Michael Collins Director for Organisation and Cathal Brugha Chairman of the Resident Executive, which in effect made him Chief of Staff. Following the success of Sinn Féin in the general election of 1918 and the setting up of the First Dáil (the legislature of the Irish Republic), Volunteers commenced military action against the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the paramilitary police force in Ireland, and subsequently against the British Army. It began with the Soloheadbeg Ambush, when members of the Third Tipperary Brigade led by Séumas Robinson, Seán Treacy, Dan Breen and Seán Hogan, seized a quantity of gelignite, killing two RIC constables in the process. The Dáil leadership worried that the Volunteers would not accept its authority, given that, under their own constitution, they were bound to obey their own executive and no other body. In August 1919, Brugha proposed to the Dáil that the Volunteers be asked to swear allegiance to the Dáil, but one commentator states that another year passed before the movement took an oath of allegiance to the Irish Republic and its government in "August 1920". In sharp contrast, a contemporary in the struggle for Irish independence notes that by late 1919, the term "Irish Republican Army (IRA)" was replacing "Volunteers" in everyday usage. This change is attributed to the Volunteers, having accepted the authority of the Dáil, being referred to as the "army of the Irish Republic", popularly known as the "Irish Republican Army". Already in September 1917, a group of men from counties Clare and Tipperary charged with illegal drilling were claiming to soldiers of the "Irish Republican Army" and refused to recognise the legitimacy of the court, and insisted they should be treated as prisoners of war. A power struggle continued between Brugha and Collins, both cabinet ministers, over who had the greater influence. Brugha was nominally the superior as Minister for Defence, but Collins's power base came from his position as Director of Organisation of the IRA and from his membership on the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). De Valera resented Collins's clear power and influence, which he saw as coming more from the secretive IRB than from his position as a Teachta Dála (TD) and minister in the Aireacht. Brugha and de Valera both urged the IRA to undertake larger, more conventional military actions for the propaganda effect but were ignored by Collins and Mulcahy. Brugha at one stage proposed the assassination of the entire British cabinet. This was also discounted due to its presumed negative effect on British public opinion. Moreover, many members of the Dáil, notably Arthur Griffith, did not approve of IRA violence and would have preferred a campaign of passive resistance to the British rule. The Dáil belatedly accepted responsibility for IRA actions in April 1921, just three months before the end of the Irish War of Independence. In practice, the IRA was commanded by Collins, with Richard Mulcahy as second in command. These men were able to issue orders and directives to IRA guerrilla units around the country and at times to send arms and organisers to specific areas. However, because of the localised and irregular character of the war, they were only able to exert limited control over local IRA commanders such as Tom Barry, Liam Lynch in Cork and Seán Mac Eoin in Longford. The IRA claimed a total strength of 70,000, but only about 3,000 were actively engaged in fighting against the Crown. The IRA distrusted those Irishmen who had fought in the British Army during the First World War as potential informers, but there were a number of exceptions such as Emmet Dalton, Tom Barry and Martin Doyle. Moreover, almost 5,000 IRA men had been imprisoned or interned and over 500 killed. Collins and Mulcahy estimated that the number of effective guerrilla fighters was down to 2,000–3,000. However, in the summer of 1921, the war was abruptly ended. The British recruited hundreds of World War I veterans into the RIC and sent them to Ireland. Because there was initially a shortage of RIC uniforms, the veterans at first wore a combination of dark green RIC uniforms and khaki British Army uniforms, which inspired the nickname "Black and Tans". The brutality of the Black and Tans is now well known, although the greatest violence attributed to the Crown's forces was often that of the Auxiliary Division of the Constabulary. One of the strongest critics of the Black and Tans was King George V who in May 1921 told Lady Margery Greenwood that "he hated the idea of the Black and Tans." The IRA was also involved in the destruction of many stately homes in Munster. The Church of Ireland Gazette recorded numerous instances of Unionists and Loyalists being shot, burnt or forced from their homes during the early 1920s. In County Cork between 1920 and 1923 the IRA shot over 200 civilians of whom over 70 (or 36%) were Protestants: five times the percentage of Protestants in the civilian population. This was due to the historical inclination of Protestants towards loyalty to the United Kingdom. A convention of Irish Protestant Churches in Dublin in May 1922 signed a resolution placing "on record" that "hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion has been almost, if not wholly, unknown in the twenty six counties in which Protestants are in the minority." Many historic buildings in Ireland were destroyed during the war, most famously the Custom House in Dublin, which was disastrously attacked on de Valera's insistence, to the horror of the more militarily experienced Collins. As he feared, the destruction proved a pyrrhic victory for the Republic, with so many IRA men killed or captured that the IRA in Dublin suffered a severe blow. This was also a period of social upheaval in Ireland, with frequent strikes as well as other manifestations of class conflict. In this regard, the IRA acted to a large degree as an agent of social control and stability, driven by the need to preserve cross class unity in the national struggle, and on occasion being used to break strikes. Assessments of the effectiveness of the IRA's campaign vary. They were never in a position to engage in conventional warfare. The political, military and financial costs of remaining in Ireland were higher than the British government was prepared to pay and this in a sense forced them into negotiations with the Irish political leaders. According to historian Michael Hopkinson, the guerrilla warfare "was often courageous and effective". Historian David Fitzpatrick observes, "The guerrilla fighters were vastly outnumbered by the forces of the Crown The success of the Irish Volunteers in surviving so long is therefore noteworthy."

David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, at the time, found himself under increasing pressure (both internationally and from within the British Isles) to try to salvage something from the situation. This was a complete reversal on his earlier position. He had consistently referred to the IRA as a "murder gang" up until then. An unexpected olive branch came from King George V, who, in a speech in Belfast called for reconciliation on all sides, changed the mood and enabled the British and Irish Republican governments to agree to a truce. The Truce was agreed on 11 July 1921. On 8 July, de Valera met General Nevil Macready, the British commander in chief in Ireland and agreed terms. The IRA was to retain its arms and the British Army was to remain in barracks for the duration of peace negotiations. Many IRA officers interpreted the truce only as a temporary break in fighting. They continued to recruit and train volunteers, with the result that the IRA had increased its number to over 72,000 men by early 1922. Negotiations on an Anglo Irish Treaty took place in late 1921 in London. The Irish delegation was led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. The most contentious areas of the Treaty for the IRA were abolition of the Irish Republic declared in 1919, the status of the Irish Free State as a dominion in the British Commonwealth and the British retention of the so called Treaty Ports on Ireland's south coast. These issues were the cause of a split in the IRA and ultimately, the Irish Civil War. Under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Ireland was partitioned, creating Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Under the terms of the Anglo Irish agreement of 6 December 1921, which ended the war (1919–21), Northern Ireland was given the option of withdrawing from the new state, the Irish Free State, and remaining part of the United Kingdom. The Northern Ireland parliament chose to do that. An Irish Boundary Commission was then set up to review the border. Irish leaders expected that it would so reduce Northern Ireland's size, by transferring nationalist areas to the Irish Free State, as to make it economically unviable. Partition was not by itself the key breaking point between pro and anti Treaty campaigners; both sides expected the Boundary Commission to greatly reduce Northern Ireland. Moreover, Michael Collins was planning a clandestine guerrilla campaign against the Northern state using the IRA. In early 1922, he sent IRA units to the border areas and sent arms to northern units. It was only afterwards, when partition was confirmed, that a united Ireland became the preserve of anti Treaty Republicans.

The IRA leadership was deeply divided over the decision by the Dáil to ratify the Treaty. Despite the fact that Michael Collins – the de facto leader of the IRA – had negotiated the Treaty, many IRA officers were against it. Of the General Headquarters (GHQ) staff, nine members were in favour of the Treaty while four opposed it. The majority of the IRA rank and file were against the Treaty; in January–June 1922, their discontent developed into open defiance of the elected civilian Provisional government of Ireland. Both sides agreed that the IRA's allegiance was to the (elected) Dáil of the Irish Republic, but the anti Treaty side argued that the decision of the Dáil to accept the Treaty (and set aside the Irish Republic) meant that the IRA no longer owed that body its allegiance. They called for the IRA to withdraw from the authority of the Dáil and to entrust the IRA Executive with control over the army. On 16 January, the first IRA division – the 2nd Southern Division led by Ernie O'Malley – repudiated the authority of the GHQ. A month later, on 18 February, Liam Forde, O/C of the IRA Mid Limerick Brigade, issued a proclamation stating that: "We no longer recognise the authority of the present head of the army, and renew our allegiance to the existing Irish Republic". This was the first unit of the IRA to break with the pro Treaty government. On 22 March, Rory O'Connor held what was to become an infamous press conference and declared that the IRA would no longer obey the Dáil as (he said) it had violated its Oath to uphold the Irish Republic. He went on to say that "we repudiate the Dáil We will set up an Executive which will issue orders to the IRA all over the country." In reply to the question on whether this meant they intended to create a military dictatorship, O'Connor said: "You can take it that way if you like." On 28 March, the (anti Treaty) IRA Executive issued statement stating that Minister of Defence (Richard Mulcahy) and the Chief of Staff (Eoin O'Duffy) no longer exercised any control over the IRA. In addition, it ordered an end to the recruitment to the new military and police forces of the Provisional Government. Furthermore, it instructed all IRA units to reaffirm their allegiance to the Irish Republic on 2 April. The stage was set for civil war over the Treaty.

The pro treaty IRA soon became the nucleus of the new (regular) Irish National Army created by Collins and Richard Mulcahy. British pressure, and tensions between the pro and anti Treaty factions of the IRA, led to a bloody civil war, ending in the defeat of the anti Treaty faction. On 24 May 1923, Frank Aiken, the (anti treaty) IRA Chief of Staff, called a cease fire. Many left political activity altogether, but a minority continued to insist that the new Irish Free State, created by the "illegitimate" Treaty, was an illegitimate state. They asserted that their "IRA Army Executive" was the real government of a still existing Irish Republic. The IRA of the Civil War and subsequent organisations that have used the name claim lineage from that group, which is covered in full at Irish Republican Army (1922–1969). For information on later organisations using the name Irish Republican Army, see the table below. For a genealogy of organisations using the name IRA after 1922, see List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army.