Just Finished Reading: The Republic – The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923 by Charles Townshend (FP: 2013)

Between 1918 and 1923 something quite dramatic happened in Ireland. From an important member of the British Empire considered vital to the defence of the British mainland a short 5 years later it had achieved a form of political settlement close to independence. How this happened is told with exquisite detail in this frankly fascinating book. Told with a consummate style I had come to expect from his previous work on the 1916 Uprising (the Centenary of which no doubt will be celebrated by many next year) the author shows how largely through mistake and miscalculation by the British government and Military an always troublesome country was lost to rebellion.

Although the seeds of the break with Britain lay deep in the past the more recent events of 1916, and more particularly the British heavy handed response to what they saw as a calculated stab in the back during wartime, laid the political and more importantly mythical foundations for what was to come. Already on the edge of revolt – England’s troubles being Ireland’s opportunity was a common refrain – things came to a head in 1918 when the British parliament proposed a compulsory draft of Irish men to help England raise enough troops to final defeat Germany. Although grumbling was expected outright and active resistance was not. This was a big enough mistake made worse by the threat of the use of force to ensure that enough men where pressed into service (no one, the author wryly points out, thought that training potential future rebels in modern weapons and tactics was a poor idea). When first passive and then active resistance to the proposed law – never actually brought into force – lit a fuse across the country it ignited an easily predictable explosion of violence that the authorities where singularly ill equipped to handle. This was the birth of the Irish Republican Army, a shadow Government of the Irish Free State and years of tit-for-tat killings between Catholics, Protestants and English forces across the whole country.

Whilst active rebellion ebbed and flowed and the British attempted to stamp it out in haphazard fashion all sides worked for an acceptable and viable political solution – although starting from very different positions and with very different aims. The British where determined to keep Ireland within the Empire with at the very best Dominion status. The Southern Catholics demanded complete Independence and the Northern Protestants wanted their own safe homeland forever linked to mainland Britain. Typically no one got anywhere near what they wanted although the emergence of what became known as Northern Ireland or Ulster came closest to what the Protestants in that area demanded. By 1923 the South had, after rebellion and a short lived Civil War, accepted a quasi-independence as a Free State still nominally within the Empire and equally nominally under the rule of the British crown. England had managed to keep the Empire together but only just and was more likely glad to see the back of such a troublesome neighbour.

Of course this brief overview does not do justice to either the author, this heavily detailed book or to the times themselves. To say that things where complicated is an understatement of historic proportions. The author manages, with a great deal of much needed gallows humour, to tease out the salient facts, analyse the strategies of all involved and give insights into the thinking of the men (and women) who fought for and against an independent Ireland. I had some idea of what went on back then – both from previous reading and a few snatches of conversation with my Irish born father – but it was good to see for myself what went on in the country of my forefathers. An important read for anyone interested in the Irish Question or for those of us with Irish blood in our veins.