IRISH HISTORY
The Catholic Relief Act 1829, allowed British and Irish Catholics to sit in the Parliament. Daniel O'Connell became the first Catholic M.P. to be seated since 1689. As head of the Repeal Association, O'Connell mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of Irish self-government. O'Connell's tactics were largely peaceful, using mass rallies to show the popular support for his campaign. While O'Connell failed to gain repeal of the union, his efforts led to reforms in matters such as local government, and the Poor Laws.
A radical young Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell, turned the home rule movement (the Irish Parliamentary Party, IPP) into a major political force. It came to dominate Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed there. The party's growing electoral strength was first shown in the 1880 general election, when it won 63 seats. Parnell's movement also campaigned for the right of Ireland to govern herself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who had wanted a complete repeal of the Act of Union. A significant minority of Unionists (largely based in Ulster), but principally the revived radical Orange Order opposed home rule, fearing that a Dublin parliament dominated by Catholics and nationalists would discriminate against them and would impose tariffs on trade with Great Britain. (Whilst most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, north-east Ulster was the location of almost all the island's heavy industry and would have been affected by any tariff barriers imposed.) Intense rioting broke out in Belfast in 1886, as the first Home Rule Bill was being debated. In 1889, the scandal surrounding Parnell's divorce proceedings split the Irish party.
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - Stephen attends school at Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College, where the apprehensive, intellectually gifted boy suffers the ridicule of his classmates while he learns the schoolboy codes of behaviour. While he cannot grasp their significance, at a Christmas dinner he is witness to the social, political, and religious tensions in Ireland involving Charles Steward Parnell that drives bitter wedges between members of his family, leaving Stephen with doubts over which social institutions he can place his faith in.
The last obstacle to achieving Home Rule was removed with the Parliament Act 1911, when the House of Lords lost its power to veto legislation and could only delay a bill for two years. In 1912, with the Irish Parliamentary Party at its zenith, a new third Home Rule Bill was introduced by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, passing its first reading in the Imperial House of Commons but again defeated in the House of Lords (as with the bill of 1893). During the following two years in which the bill was delayed, debates in the Commons were largely dominated by questions surrounding Home Rule and Ulster Unionist's determined resistance to it. By 1914 the situation had escalated into militancy on both sides, first unionists then nationalists arming and drilling openly, bringing about a Home Rule crisis.
In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament finally passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland, condemned by the dissident nationalists' All-for-Ireland League party as a "partition deal." The Act was suspended for the duration of the war. In order to ensure the implementation of Home Rule after the war, nationalist leaders and the Irish Parliamentary Party under Redmond supported Ireland's participation with the British war effort and Allied cause. The 10th (Irish) Division, the 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division suffered crippling losses in the trenches on the Western Front, in Gallipoli and the Middle East. Between 35,000 and 50,000 Irishmen (in all armies) are believed to have died in the War. Each side believed that, after the war, Great Britain would favour their respective goals of remaining fully part of the United Kingdom or becoming a self-governing United Ireland within the union with the United Kingdom. Before the war ended, Britain made two concerted efforts to implement Home Rule, one in May 1916 after the Easter Rising and again during 1917–1918, but during the Irish Convention the Irish sides (Nationalist, Unionist) were unable to agree on terms for the temporary or permanent exclusion of Ulster from its provisions. However, the combination of postponement of Home Rule and the involvement of Ireland with Great Britain in the war ("England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" as an old Republican saying went) provoked some on the radical fringes of Irish nationalism to resort to physical force. It was from the former Irish Volunteer ranks that the Irish Republican Brotherhood organised an armed rebellion in 1916.
At Easter 1916, a small band of 1500 republican rebels (Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army) staged a rebellion, called the Easter Rising in Dublin, under Padraig Pearse and James Connolly. The Rising was put down after a week's fighting. Initially their acts were widely condemned by nationalists. However the government's handling of the aftermath, and the execution of rebels and others in stages, ultimately led to widespread public sympathy for the rebels. The government and the Irish media wrongly blamed Sinn Fein for the rebellion, then a small monarchist political party with little popular support - even though in reality it had not been involved. Nonetheless Rising survivors joined the party in great numbers, radicalised its programme and took control of its leadership. The scales were finally tipped in Sinn Féin's favour when as a result of the German Spring Offensive the government, although it had already received large numbers of volunteer soldiers from Ireland, intended to impose conscription on the island linked with implementing Home Rule. An infuriated public turned against Britain during the Conscription Crisis of 1918.
Sinn Fein won the December 1918 general election. Its new MPs refused to sit in the British House of Commons. Instead on 21 January 1919 twenty-seven assembled in the Mansion House in Dublin and established Dail Eireann (a revolutionary Irish parliament) and proclaimed an Irish Republic.
The nationalist leader John Redmond pledged support for the British war effort and many Irishmen served in the British Army, but the war and the frustration of nationalist ambitions regarding Home Rule led to a radicalisation of Irish nationalism. In 1916, a group of IRB activists within the Irish Volunteers led an insurrection aimed at Irish independence in Dublin, known as the Easter Rising. The rebellion did not have popular support and was put down within a week, but the execution of its leaders, and the subsequent wholesale arrest of radical nationalist activists proved very unpopular with the nationalist public. Coming directly after the Rising, a further attempt was made at the Irish Convention to resolve the impasse over Home Rule, but without success. Finally, the British proposal to extend conscription for the war to Ireland provoked widespread resistance, (see Conscription Crisis of 1918) and discredited the Irish Parliamentary Party who had supported the British war effort.[11]
All of these factors led to a swing towards support for Sinn Fein – the party which was led by veterans of the Easter Rising and which stood for an independent Irish Republic. In the Irish general election, 1918, Sinn Féin won the vast majority of seats, many of which were uncontested. Sinn Féin's elected candidates refused to attend the UK Parliament at Westminster and instead assembled in Dublin as a new revolutionary parliament called "Dáil Éireann". They declared the existence of a new state called the "Irish Republic" and established a system of government to rival the institutions of the United Kingdom.
The first meeting of the Dáil coincided with an unauthorised shooting of two RIC men in Tipperary, now regarded as the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence. From 1919 to 1921 the Irish Volunteers (now renamed as the Irish Republican Army, being deemed by the Dáil to be the army of the new Irish Republic) engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British army, the RIC and paramilitary police units known as the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. The violence started out slowly, with only 19 deaths in 1919, but escalated sharply from the second half of 1920 and in the first six months of 1921 alone there were 1,000 deaths on all sides.[12] The principle political leader of the republican movement was Éamon de Valera – the President of the Republic. However he spent much of the conflict in the United States, raising money and support for the Irish cause. In his absence, two young men, Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy rose to prominence as the clandestine leaders of the IRA – respectively Director of Intelligence and Chief of Staff of the guerrilla organisation.
The War of Independence or the Anglo-Irish War: 1919 to 1921, acting largely on its own authority and independently of the Dáil assembly, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the army of the Irish Republic, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British army and paramilitary police units known as the Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division. Both sides engaged in brutal acts; the Black and Tans deliberately burned entire towns and tortured civilians. The IRA killed many civilians it believed to be aiding or giving information to the British (particularly in Munster) and burned historic homes in retaliation for the government policy of destroying the homes of republicans, suspected or actual.
Britain enacted a new Fourth Home Rule Act in 1920, primarily in the interest of Ulster Unionists, granting separate Home Rule to two new institutions, Northern Ireland (the northeastern-most six counties of Ulster) and Southern Ireland (the remaining twenty-six counties), partitioning Ireland into two semi-autonomous regions. The institutions of Southern Ireland, however, were boycotted by nationalists and so never became functional.
In July 1921, a cease-fire was agreed and negotiations between delegations of the Irish and British sides produced the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under the treaty, southern and western Ireland was to be given a form of dominion status, modelled on the Dominion of Canada. The Second Dáil narrowly passed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. Under the leadership of Michael Collins and W. T. Cosgrave, it set about establishing the Irish Free State, with the pro-Treaty IRA becoming part of a fully re-organised new National Army and a new police force, the Civic Guard (quickly renamed as the Garda Síochána), replacing one of Ireland's two police forces, the Royal Irish Constabulary.
However a strong republican minority group led by Éamon de Valera [11] opposed the treaty. De Valera led his supporters out of the Dáil and, after a lapse of six months in which the IRA also split, a bloody civil war between pro- and anti-treaty sides followed, only coming to an end in 1923 accompanied by multiple executions.
The Irish state came into being in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion of the British Commonwealth, having seceded from the United Kingdom under the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It comprises 26 of the island of Ireland's 32 counties. The 1937 constitution renamed the state Ireland. In 1949 it explicitly became a republic, definitively ending its tenuous membership of the British Commonwealth.
From its foundation, the Irish Free State was embroiled in a civil war between nationalists supporting the Treaty and opponents who supported a republic. The pro-Treaty side, organised as Cumann na nGaedheal emerged victorious from the conflict and won subsequent elections. They formed the government of the state until 1932, when they peacefully handed over power to the anti-Treaty faction in Fianna Fáil, who defeated them in an election. From 1937 to 1998, the Irish constitution included a claim on Northern Ireland as a part of the national territory. However, the state also opposed and used its security forces against those armed groups – principally the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who tried to unite Ireland by force. This occurred in the 1950s, throughout the 1970s and 1980s and has continued on a reduced scale.
After further failed talks in December 1920, the guerrilla conflict was brought to an end in July 1921, with a truce agreed between the IRA and the British. Talks were then formally begun in pursuit of a peace settlement.[15]
The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 British-Irish war drama film directed by Ken Loach, set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922) and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). two County Cork brothers, Damien (doctor, becomes socialist) and Teddy O'Donovan (first to join IRA) join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom. ... News comes of a formal ceasefire between Britain and the IRA. But after the Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed, the brigade learns that a partitioned Ireland will only be granted Dominion status within the British Empire. As a result, the brigade divides over the terms. Later, the Irish Free State replaces British rule and Teddy and his allies begin patrolling in Irish Army uniforms. Meanwhile, Damien and his allies join the Anti-Treaty IRA. When the civil war begins, the Anti-Treaty column commences guerrilla tactics against the Free State. Damien is captured during a raid for arms on a Free State barracks commanded by Teddy and sentenced to death. Teddy pleads with Damien to reveal where the IRA is hiding the stolen rifles. Damien, unwilling to betray the IRA, refuses, choosing instead to be executed.
Juno And The Paycock (first production: Abbey Theatre, 3 March 1924. Hitchcock directed 1930 film version) is set in the working class tenements of Dublin in the early 1920s, during the Irish Civil War period.... Johnny betrayed Tancred, a neighbour and fellow comrade in the IRA, who was subsequently killed by Free State supporters; Johnny is afraid that he will be executed as punishment.... In the third act, Mrs Boyle learns that her son, Johnny, has been killed by the Republican IRA.
