The Irish Civil War lasted between 1922 and 1923, it was a conflict between Irish nationalists regarding the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Treaty was the result of building political tension and guerrilla warfare by the Irish Republican movement, organised by Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army between 1918 and 1921. Sinn Féin was the party that won the general election in 1918 on the premise that they would withdraw from the British parliament, declare an Irish Republic and secede from the British Empire.
The truce was arranged between British and Irish republican forces in July 1921 and was signed on 6th December 1921. The Treaty did enable Ireland, now the Irish Free State, a significant amount of independence, as well as the British military garrison withdrawing from the country. However, Irish nationalists and republicans felt this treaty to be a regression as it dissolved the declared Republic (1918) and Irish members of parliament had to swear allegiance to the British monarchy. The settlement was passed in January 1922 by the Dail (the republican government), but the President of the Republic, Eamon de Valera, resigned in protest.
What actually led to the civil war was the splitting of ranks in the Irish Republican Army. Michael Collins began to build a new National Army which was made up of pro-Treaty IRA units from February 1922. The IRA then called a convention in March 1922 where the majority rejected the rights of the Dail to dissolve the Republic. The two sides argued over who would occupy the city of Limerick which almost resulted in an outbreak of violence. Following this, an Anti-Treaty IRA group headed by Rory O’Connor, occupied the centre of the courts system, the Four Courts in open defiance of the Provisional Government and Treaty. Collins was able to temporarily avoid violence by allying himself with de Valera, reuniting Sinn Féin. A similar arrangement was made with the Anti-Treaty IRA which proposed joint operations against Northern Ireland.
The first elections were held in the Free State in June 1922 where Collins’ Sinn Féin won a majority of the seats. However, just before the elections, the pact between the pro and anti-treaty sides had collapsed due to the inclusion of the British monarch in the Free State’s Constitution.
Just over a week later, a series of events led to civil war from the tensions over the Treaty. A retired general was shot by two IRA members, who were later hanged. Britain blamed the IRA in the Four Courts and threatened to attack this body with 6000 British troops who were still in Dublin. Pro-treaty forces also arrested anti-Treaty IRA officer, Leo Henderson, and the Four Courts garrison responded by abducting JJ Ginger O’Connell, a Free State officer.
Collins and the Provisional Government gave the Four Courts a final chance to return O’Connell or else they would invade the Four Courts. The garrison did not, and the pro-Treaty troops opened fire on the Courts with weapons borrowed from the British on June 28, 1922. This resulted in IRA units across the nation to take sides, with most supporting the anti-Treaty side, now led by Liam Lynch. Both sides pushed narratives about the other to ascertain their positions. The pro-Treaty group stated that the Dail had voted for the Treaty which was representative of the population’s views as shown in the election of June 1922. They pushed a pro-democracy stance and those who had gone against them, opposed the will of the people.
The ‘anti-Treatyites’ claimed that the Treaty had been imposed because of the British threat of war, and therefore could not be a free vote with the threat of Britain looming. They also said that the Treaty was not representative of true Irish freedom and the Provisional Government was solely doing Britain’s bidding.
After a week’s fighting, pro-Treaty forces took Dublin amongst other towns previously held by the anti-Treatyites. By the end of August, the pro-Treaty forces had taken all of the anti-Treatyites’ strongholds. The pro-Treaty units had won.
The anti-Treaty IRA launched a guerrilla war campaign against the Free State in response to this and killed Collins in an ambush in August 1922. The campaign resulted in huge losses to the National Army and disrupted the establishment of the new government. The government began to execute captured guerrillas in an attempt to eviscerate the campaign. This resulted in the anti-Treaty units assassinating pro-Treaty member of Parliament, Sean Hales. In return, four IRA leaders were executed; between 77 and 81 republicans were officially executed, with another 100-150 assassinated. The worst instance of this was a bomb that went off in Kerry, killing 5 National Army soldiers. Within a week, 17 prisoners were tied to landmines which were detonated.
By Spring of 1923, the republican attacks mainly consisted of destruction of property, like railway lines and around 12,000 of them had been imprisoned. After Lynch was killed, Frank Aiken took over and called a ceasefire and ordered the remaining troops to “dump arms” and return home in May 1923. A formal end to the war was never negotiated as there was no surrender called.
The result was enormous tension and polarisation between the two sides and most imprisoned republicans were not released until 1924.
By Emma P
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