The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (19 page)

Historians have suggested numerous theories to explain this regional disparity in IRA activity. In the same way that some youths joined the IRA because they came from families with a tradition of political activism, the IRA might have emerged more naturally in parts of the country that had seen radicalism and political violence previously, a good example of which
was the Land War. IRA veterans, such as Florence O’Donogue, also considered it important to have good local leaders – ‘The success of IRA operations depended very largely upon the initiative of local Commanders particularly at brigade and battalion level’ – although more recent historians, in particular David Fitzpatrick, dispute this.

Local socio-economic circumstances also appear to have been influential. Neither the most prosperous areas of the east coast or the richer farming areas of Munster, nor the poorest regions along the western seaboard were among the areas where the IRA was most active, suggesting that a certain level of economic comfort was a prerequisite for involvement in revolutionary activity. Conversely, the better off had too much of a stake in society to seek the overthrow of the status quo.

The guerrilla nature of the conflict also determined activity to some extent. Although Peter Hart is sceptical that physical terrain had much effect on whether or not the IRA was active in certain areas, mountainous terrain in Tipperary, the remoteness of west Cork and the system of small inter-connected fields in Longford made it much easier for the IRA, with the benefit of local knowledge, to move about undetected and plan ambushes of unsuspecting crown forces. Guerrillas also needed guns and the absence of these in the first place is often cited as a reason why some local IRA units remained largely inactive. On the other hand, other IRA units displayed sufficient initiative to raid for arms, thus equipping themselves to carry out further arms seizures and attacks upon their enemies, so a lack of arms might have been an indication of lethargy on the part of IRA units that also affected their performance during the war.

Guns were of little use without a target to shoot at and the presence of an enemy or hostile element was at times a factor instigating IRA violence. The most obvious targets were crown forces. The presence of a large contingent of crown forces in a given area was usually the result of IRA activity to begin with but the arrival of the crown forces often set off cycles of violence whereby the IRA attacked the police, who responded with reprisals that occasioned further attacks by the IRA. However, the presence of the army was often a deterrent towards IRA activity, with so-called garrison towns, whose local economy traditionally depended heavily on the army barracks, showing little enthusiasm for the revolution.

The importance of IRA GHQ in either directing or co-ordinating the war is also openly disputed by both veterans and historians. Two Mayo IRA leaders, Tom Maguire and Tom Heavey, gave completely different interpretations of GHQ's role. According to Maguire ‘the war effort was directed, and well directed by a chain of command from Dublin which centred around Brugha, as Minister for Defence, and Mulcahy, as Chief of Staff of the IRA’, whereas Heavey asserted that ‘Of course there was no such thing as centralised command’.
Tom Garvin has noted that many of the areas where the IRA was most active were characterised by being far away from Dublin, yet the IRA in Longford appears to have benefited from its proximity to Dublin and the close personal links that Michael Collins developed there during the conflict. Many members of IRA GHQ were also in the IRB, and while this organisation does not appear to have permeated the rank and file of the IRA it could be argued to have played an important role in influencing local officers, many of whom were in the brotherhood (Coleman, 2003: 159–78; Fitzpatrick, 1978: 117–18; Garvin, 1981: 123–6; Hart, 2003: 30–61; O’Donoghue, 1954: 72–3).

The IRA was least effective in the province of Ulster. The most active IRA units there were under the command of Frank Aiken in Armagh, south Down and north Louth (which became the Fourth Northern Division when the IRA introduced a divisional structure in 1921) and Eoin O’Duffy in Monaghan (McGarry, 2005: 47–73). Apart from these areas and the city of Belfast, the northern IRA was largely ‘disorganised and inactive’ (Lynch, 2006: 42). Belfast was an exception to this trend. From 1920 to 1922 it was one of the most violent places on the island; in the space of these two years 557 people were killed (Hennessey, 1997: 11). However, the conflict there could be seen as a distinct one from that which was taking place in the rest of Ireland between 1919 and the truce. While the IRA was the protagonist on the nationalist side, its motivation and its enemies were different to those of the southern IRA. The Black and Tans and Auxiliaries had a minimal presence in the city (Leeson, 2011: 26). Instead, the majority of armed confrontations were between the IRA and the third supplementary police force to operate in Ireland during the period, the
Ulster Special Constabulary (USC)
.

Ulster Special Constabulary (USC)
: Special constabulary formed to deal with violence in Ulster in 1920 that contained a large number of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) members and was associated with highprofile sectarian attacks and killings of Catholics.

The increasing violence of the IRA's campaign throughout the island sparked the beginning of serious communal and sectarian violence in Belfast in July 1920 when Catholic shipyard workers were attacked by Protestant vigilantes and expelled from the city's two main shipyards, Harland and Wolff and Workman, Clark and Company. In response the Dáil imposed the
Belfast boycott
, which only intensified anti-Catholic actions. The situation soon spiralled into a tit-for-tat conflict as the IRA responded to a perceived need to protect the city's Catholic population. In an effort to quell the violence the government recruited the new USC, consisting of full-time armed ‘A’ Specials, part-time, armed and paid ‘B’ Specials and an emergency reserve of ‘C’ Specials. By the end of 1920 these categories contained approximately 3,500, 16,000 and 1,000 men respectively. Unlike the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, the Specials were recruited locally and in effect were composed largely of members of the UVF, which only served to heighten the sectarian conflict further as Catholics interpreted this as state-sanctioned targeting of their community, while Protestants viewed the Specials as defending them against the revolutionary violence of the IRA (Hennessey, 1997: 15).

Belfast boycott
: Boycott of Ulster businesses introduced by Dáil éireann in protest at partition and sectarian attacks on Catholics in Ulster.

Sectarian violence also erupted in the predominantly Protestant towns of Lisburn, County Antrim and Banbridge and Dromore, County Down in August 1920 following the IRA's killing of RIC District Inspector Oswald Swanzy, who had been implicated in the shooting dead of the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain, the previous March. Rioting ensued that resulted in considerable damage to property in the Catholic areas of these towns. It then spread to Belfast where it was estimated that 18 people were killed in a single week (Abbott, 2000: 114; Hennessey, 1997: 13).

GUERRILLA WARFARE AND VIOLENCE

During the War of Independence the IRA did not repeat the mistakes of 1916, with the exception of the attack on the Custom House. Rather than setting themselves up as easy targets by occupying buildings which could easily be besieged, IRA members evolved a form of guerrilla warfare that played to their strengths. Based in local areas, where they had a good knowledge of the terrain and a certain level of support from the community, they had the upper hand on the crown forces for much of the conflict. The IRA of 1919–21 exhibited only some of the characteristics of a successful guerrilla movement; there was a wide variation in activity across the country, certain areas of the country were inactive, there was poor co-ordination between brigades and an absence of coherent central control of the conflict from IRA GHQ (Townshend, 1979b).

In many ways the IRA was lucky rather than consciously successful in planning and executing a guerrilla campaign. Training in guerrilla warfare was limited. The Director of Training from November 1920, J. J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell, who was one of the few professional soldiers on the GHQ staff having served briefly in the US Army in the early 1910s, published articles on training in the IRA journal
An tóglach
[
The Volunteer
] and also delivered some lectures on the subject in Dublin that were attended by regional commanders.
An tóglach
also published accounts of successful ambushes to provide examples of actions for other units to follow
[Doc. 20]
.

Occasionally GHQ sent organisers who had military experience to train local units in the use of firearms (Coleman, 2003: 138). Some volunteers, most notably Tom Barry, had fought in the British Army during the First World War, bringing valuable experience to the organisation. However, the fighting in Mesopotamia in 1916 differed radically from that in rural west Cork in 1920 and Barry freely admitted that his unit had a ‘complete ignorance of high explosives’. This often resulted in injuries or fatalities among volunteers as a result of carelessness stemming from simple lack of experience and training in the use of weaponry (Coleman, 2003: 138). The
success of the IRA in holding out against the crown forces for two-and-half years, in light of its inexperience and rudimentary military training, was a significant achievement.

That the IRA managed to survive as long as it did is also surprising in light of the inadequacy of its arsenal. In early 1920 the IRA enjoyed a measure of success in arming itself through raids on RIC barracks to capture its enemies’ weapons. By June 1920 ‘the Bandon Battalion had acquired 29 rifles, 44 revolvers, and 146 shotguns: almost as many weapons as the whole of Cork at the beginning of 1917’ (Hart, 1998: 72). Prior to this the IRA had to content itself with the odd shotgun or hunting rifle pilfered from private homes, often of Protestants or unionists with army, hunting or Ulster Volunteer connections, and guns donated by soldiers home on leave (Hart, 1998: 67). Some high-profile ambushes also resulted in the acquisition of valuable hardware; the Longford IRA captured 18 rifles, 20 revolvers, a Lewis gun and a substantial cache of ammunition from the Auxiliaries at Clonfin in February 1921 (Coleman, 2003: 127).

One of GHQ's most important tasks during the conflict was the importation and distribution of guns. Irish people living in Britain and IRA units based there smuggled various types of weapons into Ireland. Guns were also sourced in Germany and the USA (Augusteijn, 1996: 148). While many of the individual consignments were small, it is estimated that the IRA smuggled 289 handguns, 53 rifles, 24,141 rounds of ammunition and 1,067 pounds of explosives from Liverpool to Dublin within the space of two years (Hart, 2003: 183–4). GHQ's most ambitious effort was the attempted importation of Thompson sub-machine guns (Tommy guns), a new type of rapid-fire machine gun developed in the USA at the end of the First World War. The IRA was the first organisation to place a substantial order for this gun, which was to become ubiquitous in twentieth-century warfare. In May 1921, Harry Boland, an IRB representative in the USA, placed an order for 653 guns, most of the cost of which was borne by wealthy American supporters of the Irish cause. Four hundred and ninety-five of these were seized by US customs officials in New Jersey but the remaining 158 were smuggled to Dublin via Liverpool. The guns arrived in the final two months of the conflict so were not widely used. They were employed, though with disappointing results, by both sides in the Civil War (Hart, 2003: 178–93).

The shortage of ammunition was an even greater problem. The Lewis gun captured by the Longford IRA at Clonfin was never used because there was not enough ammunition for it and Michael Brennan admitted that the IRA in Clare had an average of 30 rounds of ammunition per rifle (Brennan, 1980: 71; Coleman, 2003: 134). In order to avoid running out of ammunition the guerrillas had to ensure that their engagements with the enemy were of relatively short duration. During the defence of Ballinalee in County Longford
in November 1920, the Black and Tans withdrew just as the IRA's guns ran out of ammunition (Coleman, 2003: 124).

Explosives were required to lay ambushes for the crown forces and the IRA's inexperience in handling such dangerous substances was also revealed. An attack on a police barracks in east Clare had to be abandoned because the gelignite had frozen. In west Cork three mines laid for the crown forces failed during one month alone because, as Tom Barry conceded, ‘we were simply incapable of properly making a mine’. Obtaining gelignite does not appear to have been a problem, with county council workers, some of whom were IRA members, often obtaining supplies from local authority stores. Much of the IRA's gelignite appears to have originated in Glasgow and been smuggled through the same channels as guns. Some IRA units displayed ingenuity in manufacturing their own improvised explosive devices (Barry, 1981: 75; Coleman, 2003: 136–8; Kautt, 2010: 162).

Volunteers with expertise in engineering, metalwork and chemicals were a great asset. The Longford IRA leader, Seán MacEoin, who was a blacksmith, manufactured the 56lb mine containing concrete and scrap metal that was used in the successful ambush of Auxiliaries at Clonfin (Coleman, 2003: 137). James O’Donovan, a university chemistry student and successful amateur bomb-maker, invented highly explosive substances known as war flour (which proved to be too unstable) and Irish cheddar (composed of paraffin and potassium chlorate); his experiments led to him blowing off two fingers on his right hand in 1922 (Kautt, 2010: 162–3). Many local IRA units operated make-shift bomb factories, manufacturing improvised and often very volatile explosives and dangerous hand grenades (Breen, 1981: 37–8).

Successful guerrilla campaigns also depended on the support of the surrounding community. IRA men always attested to the support of civilians in regard to the provision of safe houses, contributions to arms funds, participating in the boycott of the RIC and providing useful information about the crown forces. The activities of the crown forces, especially the reprisals carried out by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, made civilians increasingly likely to provide tacit and practical support for the revolutionaries.