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Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)

The original Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a guerrilla war against British rule in Ireland in the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, the IRA in the 26 counties that were to become the Irish Free State split between supporters and opponents of the Treaty. The anti-Treatyites, sometimes referred to by Free State forces as Irregulars,[1] continued to use the name Irish Republican Army (IRA) or in Irish Óglaigh na hÉireann, as did the organisation in Northern Ireland which originally supported the pro-Treaty side (if not the Treaty).[2][3] Óglaigh na hÉireann was also adopted as the name of the pro-Treaty National Army, and remains the official legal title of the Irish Defence Forces.[4] This article deals with the anti-Treaty IRA that fought against the Irish Free State in the Irish Civil War, and with its successors up to 1969, when the IRA split again.

Irish Republican Army
(Óglaigh na hÉireann)
Participant in Irish Civil War and the Troubles
ActiveMarch 1922 – December 1969
Allegiance Irish Republic
LeadersIRA Army Council
HeadquartersKnockmealdown Mountains (1923)
Area of operationsIreland
United Kingdom
Size14,500 (at maximum)
1,000 (at minimum)
Originated asIrish Republican Army
BecameProvisional IRA, Official IRA
Opponent(s) British Empire
Irish Free State (until 1937)
Battles and war(s)Irish Civil War (1922–1923)
IRA Sabotage Campaign (1939–1940)
IRA Northern Campaign (1940–1942)
IRA Border Campaign (1956–1962)
The Troubles (1966–1969)


The "Old IRA" split over the Anglo-Irish TreatyEdit


Anti-Treaty officers called an army convention in March 1922, attended by their supporters, which reaffirmed their opposition to the Treaty. They repudiated the authority of the Dáil, claiming that its members had broken their oath to defend the Irish Republic, and declared their own Army Executive to be the real government of the country until the Republic was formally established. The reasons why volunteers chose pro- and anti-Treaty positions are complex. One factor was an evaluation of the military situation. Whereas Collins, Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O'Duffy felt that the IRA could not continue to fight the British successfully, anti-Treaty officers such as Ernie O'Malley and Tom Barry felt that the IRA's position was stronger than it had ever been. Another factor was the role of powerful personalities; where the leader of an IRA unit—for example Sean McEoin, who sided with the Treaty in County Longford—took sides, often the remainder of his command joined him. The same was also true for anti-Treaty leaders such as Liam Lynch in Cork.

Civil War: National Army and Anti-TreatyitesEdit

Mick Mansfield, Staff Engineer, Waterford Brigade, 1922.

On the outbreak of civil war in June 1922, the government of the Irish Free State issued directives to newspapers that its Army was to be called "The National Army", and that its opponents were to be called "Irregulars" and were not to be associated with the IRA of 1919–1921.[5] This attitude hardened as the Civil War went on, and especially after the killing of Michael Collins in an ambush in August 1922. Collins wrote to W. T. Cosgrave on 25 July 1922 that those on the anti-Treaty side were "misguided, but practically all of them are sincere". However, the subsequent government attitude under Cosgrave was that the anti-Treaty side were rebels against the lawful government, and were not entitled to recognition as legitimate combatants. Some of the officers of the new Irish Army, led by Liam Tobin, formed an association called the "Old IRA" to distinguish themselves from the anti-Treaty fighters. Some pro-Treaty IRA officers, such as Eoin O'Duffy, alleged that the "Irregulars" had not fought the British in the War of Independence. O'Duffy claimed that the Kerry IRA's sole contribution in 1919–21 was "the shooting of an unfortunate soldier on the day of the truce". In Kerry's case (which saw more Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men killed than anywhere else outside Dublin and Tipperary),[citation needed] this was far from true; however, some areas such as County Sligo and County Wexford did see considerably more action in the Civil War than in the War of Independence. Other IRA men such as Florence O'Donoghue formed a group called the "neutral IRA", which tried to reconcile the two factions.

Meanwhile, the IRA in Northern Ireland maintained its links with Michael Collins; the only Northern IRA leader to join the anti-Treaty side was Belfast commander Joe McKelvey. The Northern IRA launched a renewed military offensive in May 1922, in which it was aided covertly by both the National Army and the anti-Treaty IRA.[citation needed] This was interrupted by the outbreak of civil war in the new Irish Free State. Many Northern IRA men then had to flee the North in order to escape internment or worse at the hands of the Northern authorities. Over 500 of them ended up in the National Army during the civil war.

The IRA had been expanded hugely in 1922, from perhaps 15,000 men before the truce with the British in July 1921, to over 72,000 by November 1922. Veterans of the War of Independence derisively termed the new recruits "truceileers". These were to divide in broadly the same ratio as the veterans; however, most of them did not take part in the Civil War.[citation needed] At the beginning of the Civil War, the Free State had about 8,000 fighters, mostly pro-Treaty IRA volunteers. The anti-Treaty side could muster about 15,000 men but it could not arm them all. At the start of the war, they had just under 7,000 rifles, a few machine guns and a handful of armoured cars taken from British garrisons (who were under orders not to fire on IRA units) as they evacuated the country. The remainder of anti-Treaty IRA arms were shotguns (3,000 of which were confiscated after the Civil War) and other civilian weapons.[citation needed]

Public support for the Treaty settlement and the new Irish Free State was reflected in the victory of the pro-Treaty side in general elections in 1922 and 1923. Anti-Treaty forces controversially seized a number of public buildings in Dublin in April 1922, most notably the Four Courts. Eventually, after two months and under British pressure, Michael Collins decided to remove them by force. Pro-Treaty forces bombarded the building, which surrendered after two days. Confused fighting raged for another five days, with anti-Treaty elements of the IRA's Dublin Brigade, under Oscar Traynor, occupying O'Connell Street until they were dislodged by artillery fire.

In July 1922, the anti-Treaty IRA units held most of the south and west of Ireland. However the Republicans, under a new Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch, soon lost most of the territory they initially controlled. While the anti-Treaty side had a numerical advantage at the very start of the war, they were soon both outnumbered and outgunned. The Free State's National Army was quickly expanded to over 38,000 by the end of 1922 and to 55,000 men and 3,000 officers by the end of the war; one of its sources of recruits was Irish ex-servicemen from the British Army. Additionally, the British met its requests for arms, ammunition, armoured cars, artillery and aeroplanes. By August 1922, the Free State had re-taken all the major towns and territory held by republicans. The Free State's best troops were the Dublin Guard: a unit composed of former IRA men, mostly from the Dublin Brigade's active service unit who were to the forefront in the Free State's offensive of July–August 1922. They sided with the Free State primarily out of personal loyalty to Collins.






By 1923, the defeat of the anti-Treaty IRA seemed assured. It controlled no territory and its guerrilla campaign had little public support. The civil war petered out in mid-1923 after the death in action of IRA chief-of-staff Liam Lynch. Shortly afterward, on 24 May 1923, the anti-Treaty forces received an order, issued by Frank Aiken, their chief-of-staff, to "dump arms". Éamon de Valera supported this in his speech "Legion of the Rearguard":[6]


By this time, thousands of republicans were already prisoners of the Free State government led by W. T. Cosgrave; many more were arrested after they dumped arms and returned to civilian life. By late 1923, over 12,000 anti-Treaty IRA men were interned. The prisoners were released over the following year, with Éamon de Valera the last to leave Kilmainham Gaol in 1924.

In 1924 the IRA counted 14,500 members in total, including young men aged from 19 upwards, but with just over 5,000 weapons in its dumps. By 1926 the number of members had shrunk to 5,042. By 1930 the IRA possessed fewer than 2,000 members and only 859 rifles, indicating the decline in its military potential. The casualties of the anti-Treaty IRA in the Civil War have never been accurately counted, but are thought to have been considerably more than the 800 or so deaths suffered by the Free State Army, perhaps two or three times as numerous. Significantly however, the war had not been brought to an end by any kind of agreement between the two sides. The IRA of the post-Civil War era would never accept the Free State as a legitimate Irish government and would continue to oppose its existence.

Ideology of the post-Civil War IRAEdit



Before the republican Fianna Fáil party took power after winning the 1932 general election, many republicans viewed the Free State, with its censorship of newspapers and extensive coercive legislation, as a sham democracy, in the service of British imperialism. The IRA remained prepared to take over the country by insurrection, after which it expected to have to fight the British again. In November 1926 it seized 11 Garda Síochána barracks, shooting dead two Gardaí. The Free State immediately used its Special Powers Act to intern 110 IRA men the next day. IRA men assassinated Free State minister Kevin O'Higgins in 1927 in revenge for his perceived responsibility for executions in the Civil War. A total of four Gardaí were killed by the IRA in the period 1926–1936.[citation needed] In 1932 Gardaí shot dead two IRA leaders, George Gilmore and Thomas Ryan, in Kilrush, County Clare.[8]




In Northern Ireland, the IRA's main role was to try to defend the Catholic community during outbreaks of sectarian rioting. For this reason Peadar O'Donnell, a left-wing IRA leader who was opposed to the Catholic nationalism of many IRA members, said disparagingly that "we don't have an IRA battalion in Belfast, we have a battalion of armed Catholics".

1926-1936, marginalisation in the Free StateEdit

In the summer of 1925, the anti-treaty IRA had sent a delegation led by Pa Murray to the Soviet Union for a personal meeting with Joseph Stalin, in the hopes of gaining Soviet finance and weaponry.[10] A secret pact was agreed, whereby the IRA would spy on the United States and the United Kingdom and pass information to Red Army military intelligence in New York City and London in return for £500 a month.[10] The pact was originally approved by Frank Aiken, who left soon after to co-found Fianna Fáil with De Valera, before being succeeded by Andrew Cooney and Moss Twomey, who kept up the secret IRA-Soviet espionage relationship until around 1930-31.[10]


Twomey was not an ideological Marxist-Leninist (although there were some communists in the IRA at this time, such as Peadar O'Donnell); he saw the arrangement as purely utilitarian and regarded the Soviets as "shifty" and "out to exploit us."[10] Some republicans argued that they had lost the Civil War because they had not appealed to the social unrest in the country and had lacked any social or economic programme, which allowed communists to gain influence. Nevertheless, the IRA passed specifications of British "submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks" to the Soviets[10] and the IRA's man in the U.S., "Mr. Jones", passed "reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army" to Red Army intelligence.[10]



From the debacle of the Republican Congress until it took a leftward turn again in the 1960s, the IRA would be inspired primarily by a conservative, strictly nationalist political outlook and was increasingly influenced by radical right-wing ideas based on Catholic social teaching such as corporatism, distributism and even the fascist ideology of Ailtirí na hAiséirghe which sent books, journals and posters to IRA internees imprisoned in the Curragh.[11][12]. Antisemitic sentiments also began to be expressed including satisfaction at the 'cleansing fires' of the Wehrmacht driving the Jews out of Europe and accusations towards the Irish government of being dominated by 'Jews and freemasons'.[13]


Legalisation and renewed repression: the 1930s and 1940sEdit

Aftermath of the 1939 Coventry bombing


The IRA was banned once again in 1935, as were the Blueshirts. Moss Twomey was imprisoned, and was succeeded as chief of staff by Seán MacBride. De Valera's government increasingly followed a strict anti-IRA policy. In 1936 Vice-Admiral Henry Somerville was assassinated in his West Cork home by IRA gunmen for recruiting many local Irishmen, including IRA members and even a captain in the Drimoleague IRA company, into the British military which combined with other members immigrating to the UK for work had a notable effect on IRA manpower. The Gardaí described the assassination as "a well and coolly thought-out outrage, well-planned and daringly executed”. Seán Russell became chief of staff in 1938, and set about preparations for a bombing campaign against Britain. In January 1939, the IRA Army Council declared war against Britain, and the Sabotage Campaign began a few days later.

On 23 December 1939, IRA members stole almost the entire reserve ammunition store of the Irish Army from the Magazine Fort in Dublin's Phoenix Park. This became known as the "Christmas Raid" in IRA folklore. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) found two and a half tons of the stolen ammunition inside County Armagh on 2 January 1940. The next day the Irish Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, at an emergency session of the Dáil, introduced the Emergency Powers Bill to reinstate internment, Military Tribunal, and executions for IRA members. It was rushed through and given its third reading the next day creating the Emergency Powers Act. It was later used to execute at least six IRA volunteers in Ireland between 1940 and 1944.[15] Peter Barnes and James McCormack who had been arrested in England shortly following an IRA bomb that exploded in Coventry on 25 August 1939 resulting in the deaths of several uninvolved English civilians, were executed on 7 February 1940. Republican publication An Phoblacht did not deny their mission in England and IRA membership, but maintains that they were not involved with the Coventry bombing.


World War II: The IRA, The Emergency, links to Nazi GermanyEdit


During the Second World War, the IRA hoped for support from Germany to strike against Britain. Seán Russell traveled to Germany in 1940 to canvass for arms. He became ill and died on board a German U-boat which was bringing him back to Ireland in August that year along with Frank Ryan (see Operation Dove). Stephen Hayes, the acting Chief of Staff, prepared an invasion plan for Northern Ireland and sent it to German Intelligence in 1940; this plan was later called Plan Kathleen, but it was discovered by the Irish authorities within one month of its creation. The Irish Free State opposed the IRA's collaboration with Nazi Germany, having adopted a position of neutrality.

Gunther Schuetz, a member of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), parachuted into Ireland and was almost immediately arrested. On 28 February 1942 he escaped. The IRA intended to send him back to Germany with a request for weapons, ammunition, explosives, radio equipment and money.[16] The IRA Army Executive met on 20 April and sanctioned the request. They also approved a plan to "give military information to powers at war with England even before any definite contacts [were] established with these powers", provided the information did not endanger civilians.[17] The plan was quickly discovered when an IRA courier was arrested on the Dublin-Belfast train with documentation of the decisions taken, and details of the Nazi contact. This led to the arrest of Schuetz, on 30 April, only hours before he was due to set sail. The boat was seized and the crew arrested.[18]

In 1942, the IRA launched an armed campaign in Northern Ireland. It has been rumoured[by whom?] that during the war period IRA members may have attempted to provide intelligence to assist the German aerial bombing of industrial targets in Northern Ireland. However, information recovered from Germany after the war showed that the planning of raids such as the Belfast Blitz was based exclusively on the aerial reconnaissance of the Luftwaffe.


Border campaign and traditionalist nationalismEdit


The border campaign, as it became known, involved various military columns carrying out a range of military operations, from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. The campaign received, initially, significant support from the south. Support increased massively after the deaths of Seán South and Fergal O'Hanlon in the Brookeborough Raid.[19] In the Dáil Éireann elections held in 1957, Sinn Féin fielded candidates and won four seats.


1960s: Marxist tendency and the 1969 splitEdit



The Official IRA mounted their own armed campaign in the Troubles up to 1972, when they called a ceasefire.[citation needed] However, some members engaged in some armed activities until 1979[24] when a decision was made to re-orient the group towards fundraising.[22]


  5. ^ "The Irish Civil War – A brief overview". The Irish Story. 2 July 2012. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
  8. ^ The Times, Kilrush Shooting Wednesday 2 November 1932
  11. ^ The IRA 1956–69: Rethinking the Republic, Matt Treacey, page 35
  12. ^ Architects of the Resurrection: Ailtirí na hAiséirghe and the fascist 'New Order' in Ireland, R.M Douglas, page 168
  13. ^ ‘Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler’? The IRA and the Nazis
  14. ^ "Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War". Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  15. ^ "Remembering the Past: Executed IRA men reinterred | An Phoblacht". Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  16. ^ "The IRA supported the Nazis in WW2". Retrieved 1 December 2016.
  17. ^ J. Bowyer Bell. "The Secret Army: The IRA".
  20. ^ "What is the Irish Republican Army and What do They Stand For?". News & Issues. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
  24. ^ "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". Retrieved 15 May 2016.


  • Treacy, Matt (2011). The IRA 1956-69: Rethinking the Republic. Manchester University Press. ISBN 1781700060.

External linksEdit