The War of Independence Commemorative Miltary Memorial at Shankhill Cross, Elphin, County Roscommon, Ireland
The story of the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, begins in the early 20th century, a time when Ireland was still under British rule. The desire for independence had been simmering for centuries, but it was the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 that truly set the stage for a new kind of armed struggle. This organization was created in response to the formation of a unionist militia that wanted to keep Ireland within the United Kingdom. The Irish volunteers drew in men who believed that political negotiation alone would never be enough to achieve full Irish sovereignty. They felt that only through force of arms could they finally sever the ties with Britain and establish an independent nation, a dream held by generations before them. The political climate was tense, and the idea of a republic, free from any monarch or foreign power, was a powerful and motivating force for these early revolutionaries.
In 1919, in the aftermath of the failed but inspirational Easter Rising of 1916 and a landslide election victory for the Nationalist Party Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers were formally reorganised and became known as the Irish Republican Army. This wasn't just a change of name, it was a declaration of intent. The IRA saw itself as the legitimate army of the newly declared Irish Republic, which, despite its declaration, was not recognised by Britain. Its core mission was clear and uncompromising, to end British rule in Ireland using military means and to establish a unified, 32-county Irish Republic. This goal placed them in direct opposition to the British government and its forces stationed in Ireland, setting the course for a long and bitter conflict that would define the island for the next century. The IRA operated with a strong sense of purpose, often acting independently of political leaders, though many of its members were also involved with Sinn Féin.
This created a powerful but sometimes complicated relationship between the political and military wings of the Republican movement. The IRA's members were not professional soldiers in the traditional sense, They were ordinary men, farmers, shopkeepers, and laborers, who were transformed into a dedicated guerrilla force by their passionate belief in Irish freedom. Their primary objective was to make Ireland ungovernable for the British, to disrupt the administration, and to prove that British control could not be maintained against the will of the Irish people. This commitment to armed struggle as the only viable path to independence was the foundational principle that would guide the organization through its many different phases over the decades. The central goal of a united Ireland was the unbreakable thread that ran through the IRA's entire history.
The partition of the island, which would later become a reality, was seen by these early members as an unacceptable compromise and a betrayal of the Republican ideal. For them, Ireland was one nation, indivisible, and any settlement that left part of it under British control, was a failure. This unwavering belief in a fully independent and unified country was what fueled their recruitment, their strategy, and their willingness to endure immense hardship and risk. It was a powerful vision that attracted thousands to its cause, but it was also a vision that would lead to deep divisions and an immense amount of bloodshed and suffering for the people of Ireland both north and south of the border that was yet to be drawn. Make sure to hit that subscribe button for more content like this. During the Irish War of Independence, which raged from 1919 to 1921, the IRA, under the strategic leadership of figures like Michael Collins, perfected the art of guerrilla warfare.
Realizing they could not defeat the mighty British Empire in conventional battles, they adopted a different approach. They organized themselves into small, mobile units known as flying columns, which could strike quickly and then disappear into the support of local countryside. Their tactics were based on surprise and local knowledge. Ambushes of British military patrols and police barracks became their hallmark. These attacks were designed not only to inflict casualties, but also to seize much-needed weapons and to demoralize the forces of the Crown, making every road and every village a potential front line in the war for Ireland's freedom. Michael Collins, who was the IRA's Director of Intelligence, was a master of this new form of warfare. He established a sophisticated intelligence network throughout the country, with spies placed in government offices, police forces, and even Dublin Castle, the heart of British administration in Ireland.
This network allowed the IRA to identify and target key British agents and collaborators, disrupting the Crown's ability to gather information and control the population. Collins also created a special unit known as the Squad, an assassination team tasked with eliminating British spies and detectives. Their actions, while ruthless, were highly effective and spread fear throughout the British establishment, showing that the IRA could strike with precision even in the most heavily guarded parts of the capital city. The IRA's campaign was relentless and widespread. They conducted raids on police barracks, often in remote rural areas, forcing the Royal Irish Constabulary to abandon smaller outposts and consolidate in larger, fortified barracks in towns. This effectively handed control of vast swathes of the countryside over to the IRA.
They also carried out acts of sabotage, blowing up bridges, derailing trains, and cutting telegraph wires to disrupt British communications and troop movements. This constant pressure stretched the British forces thin and made it increasingly difficult and costly for them to maintain order. The conflict was brutal and personal, fought not on distant battlefields but in the fields, lanes and streets of Ireland, often pitting neighbour against neighbour in a desperate struggle for control. The effectiveness of the IRA's guerrilla campaign eventually forced the British government to the negotiating table. the constant attacks, the rising number of casualties on both sides, and the growing condemnation of Britain's heavy-handed tactics on the international stage made the war unsustainable. The British had responded with their own brutal forces, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, whose reprisals against civilians only increased support for the IRA.
The pressure exerted by Collins and his fighters demonstrated that a military victory for Britain was unlikely without a massive, and politically unacceptable, escalation of the conflict. This realization paved the way for a truce in July 1921, and the subsequent negotiations that would lead to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, forever changing the course of Irish history. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 was meant to be the triumphant conclusion of the War of Independence, but it instead became the source of a new and devastating conflict. The treaty offered a significant degree of independence for 26 of Ireland's 32 counties, which would become the Irish Free State. However, this new state would have dominion status within the British Empire, similar to Canada or Australia, and its parliamentarians would be required to swear an oath of allegiance to the British monarch.
Critically, the treaty also formalized the partition of Ireland, allowing the six predominantly Protestant counties of the Northeast to remain part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. For many Republicans who had fought for a fully independent, 32-county republic, these terms were an unacceptable betrayal of their core principles. The debate over the treaty tore the Republican movement apart, splitting both the political party Sinn Féin and, most devastatingly, the IRA itself. On one side was the pro-treaty faction, led by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. They argued that the treaty, while not perfect, was a historic achievement. Collins famously described it as giving Ireland not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve freedom. They saw it as a stepping stone, a practical compromise that provided the new Irish state with its own government, army and police force. from which full independence could eventually be won.
They believed it was the best deal that could be achieved at the time without risking a renewed and even more terrible war with Britain, a war they were not confident of winning. On the other side was the anti-treaty faction, whose political leader was Éamon de Valera. They were horrified by the compromises, particularly the oath of allegiance to the British crown and the acceptance of partition. For these staunch Republicans, anything less than a complete and unified Irish Republic was a surrender. They felt that the sacrifices of the war and the memory of the martyrs of 1916 had been dishonoured. They could not accept a settlement that left six counties under British rule, and required Irish leaders to swear loyalty to a foreign king. This faction of the IRA, who became known as the Irregulars, refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Treaty, or the new Irish Free State that was established under its terms. The split was not just political.
It was deeply personal and emotional, turning former comrades-in-arms into bitter enemies. The division within the IRA was profound and absolute. Those who supported the treaty would go on to form the nucleus of the new National Army of the Irish Free State. They were now tasked with implementing the very agreement their former colleagues so vehemently opposed. Meanwhile the anti-treaty IRA members held on to their weapons and their belief that they were the true defenders of the Irish Republic that had been declared in 1916. They saw the pro-treaty side as collaborators with the British, traitors to the cause. This fundamental disagreement over the nation's future set the stage for a tragic and bloody confrontation. The great split over the treaty ensured that Ireland's hard-won freedom from Britain would immediately give way to a war fought amongst its own people.
The deep and bitter divisions created by the Anglo-Irish Treaty erupted into open conflict in June 1922, marking the beginning of the Irish Civil War. The anti-treaty IRA, or Irregulars, occupied several key buildings in Dublin, most notably the Four Courts, in defiance of the new Irish Free State government. Under immense pressure from the British government, which threatened to re-intervene if the treaty was not upheld, Michael Collins, as head of the Free State's National Army, made the fateful decision to shell the four courts. This act marked the point of no return. The battle for Dublin was fierce, but short, with the better equipped National Army quickly securing the capital. However, the conflict then spread across the country, descending into a brutal guerrilla war that pitted former comrades against one another. The Civil War was arguably more brutal than the preceding War of Independence.
It was a conflict defined by assassinations, summary executions, and vicious reprisals from both sides. The anti-treaty IRA returned to the guerrilla tactics they had used so effectively against the British, conducting ambushes and raids against the forces of the new state. The Free State government, in turn, adopted extremely harsh measures to crush the rebellion, including a policy of executing any irregulars captured carrying arms. This led to the official execution of 77 anti-treaty prisoners, and many more were killed unofficially in the field. The most prominent casualty of the war was Michael Collins himself, who was killed in an ambush in his home county of Cork in August 1922, a devastating blow to the new state and a symbol of the war's tragic nature. Despite their determination, the anti-treaty irregulars were ultimately defeated. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and lacked the widespread public support they had enjoyed during the war against the British.
The majority of the Irish population, exhausted by years of conflict, accepted the treaty as the best available path to peace and stability. By the spring of 1923, it was clear that the anti-treaty side could not win. In May 1923, their leadership ordered their fighters to cease fire and dump arms rather than formally surrender. This brought the fighting to an end, but it did not resolve the underlying political bitterness. The anti-treaty IRA was defeated militarily, but it did not disband. Its members hid their weapons and remained a dedicated, if weakened, underground force. The aftermath of the Civil War shaped Irish politics for generations. The pro-treaty side solidified its control, and its leaders went on to form the party now known as Fine Gael. A few years later, in 1926, the political leader of the anti-treaty side, Éamon de Valera, broke with the hard line Republicans who refused to engage in constitutional politics.
He founded a new political party, Fianna Fáil, and entered the Irish Parliament, eventually coming to dominate Irish politics for decades. However, a significant faction of the IRA refused to follow de Valera. they remained committed to their original goal of a united Irish Republic, to be achieved by force. This remnant of the IRA would continue to exist as a secret revolutionary organisation, viewing both the Irish Free State and the government of Northern Ireland as illegitimate enemies. Following the end of the Irish Civil War, the IRA found itself in a difficult and isolated position. It was now an illegal organisation not only in Northern Ireland but also in the new Irish Free State, the very state its members had fought to create. The government in Dublin, now led by its former pro-treaty comrades, viewed the remaining IRA as a direct threat to the stability and authority of the new democracy.
The organization was forced to operate entirely in secret, its members meeting in clandestine groups, training with hidden weapons, and continuing to plot the overthrow of both states on the island of Ireland. This period saw the IRA become a truly underground movement, marginalized from mainstream society but still clinging fiercely to its Republican ideals. The Irish government took increasingly firm action against the IRA throughout the late 1920s and 1930s. In 1931, and again more forcefully in 1936 under Éamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil government, the organisation was officially declared illegal. Special laws were passed allowing for the internment of suspected members without trial, a powerful tool used to disrupt their activities and leadership. This was a bitter irony for many Republicans, as de Valera had been their leader during the Civil War. Now in power, he was using the same kinds of repressive measures against them that the British had once used.
The IRA's persistence, however, was remarkable. Despite arrests, internal splits, and a lack of public support, it managed to survive, fuelled by a core of dedicated individuals who refused to give up the armed struggle. During this time, the IRA's activities were sporadic and often ineffective. They carried out occasional bank robberies to fund themselves and sometimes targeted individuals they considered to be traitors or state informers. There were periodic internal debates about strategy, with some members arguing for a focus on social and political agitation, while others insisted on maintaining a purely military focus. This internal tension, combined with constant pressure from the police forces on both sides of the border, kept the organization weak and on the defensive. It was a far cry from the powerful force that had brought the British Empire to the negotiating table just a decade earlier.
The IRA was now a shadow of its former self, a small, secretive group, waiting for an opportunity to reignite the fight for a united Ireland. Despite being outlawed and weakened, the IRA never fully disappeared. It maintained a command structure and continued to recruit new, young members who were drawn to the romance and history of the Republican cause. The organization became a keeper of the flame, a custodian of the belief that the Irish Republic declared in 1916 had been betrayed, and that it was their duty to restore it through physical force. This enduring commitment meant that whenever a crisis arose or an opportunity presented itself, there was an existing network of militants ready to act. The IRA's survival in the shadows during these lean years ensured that it would be in a position to re-emerge as a significant force when political circumstances change dramatically in the decades to come.
As the world spiralled towards the Second World War, the IRA saw a potential opportunity in the old Republican maxim, England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity. In 1939, the organization launched a bombing campaign in England, known as the S Plan. The aim was to cause widespread disruption to civilian infrastructure, such as power stations, transport links, and post boxes, in order to force the British government to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The campaign was poorly executed, and honestly, it was ultimately a failure. It caused a handful of civilian deaths, which alienated potential supporters, and led to a severe crackdown by both the British and Irish authorities. The S Plan did not achieve its strategic goals, but did demonstrate the IRA's continued willingness to take the fight directly to British soil. The outbreak of war in Europe presented the IRA with a more controversial and dangerous opportunity.
Holding to their anti-British stance, some elements of the IRA leadership sought assistance from Nazi Germany. They believed that they could secure weapons, funding, and military support from Adolf Hitler's regime to help them drive the British out of Northern Ireland. Several missions were undertaken to establish contact with German intelligence, and at least one German agent was sent to Ireland to liaise with the IRA. This collaboration was a desperate and deeply misguided strategy. It severely embarrassed the neutral Irish government, led by Eamon de Valera, which was trying to navigate a difficult path between the warring powers. The Irish government's response to the IRA's flirtation with the Nazis was swift and ruthless. Fearing that the IRA's actions could provoke a British or German invasion and drag Ireland into the war, de Valera's government enacted the Offences Against the State Act and established military courts.
These measures gave the state sweeping powers to deal with the IRA. Hundreds of suspected members were rounded up and interned without trial in a camp at the Curragh for the duration of the war, which was known in neutral Ireland as the Emergency. Several IRA leaders were arrested, tried and executed by the Irish authorities, while others died on hunger strike in prison. This harsh crackdown effectively dismantled the IRA's leadership and operational capacity by the mid-1940s, By the end of the Second World War, the IRA was at its lowest ebb in its history. Its bombing campaign in England had failed, its leadership was either dead or imprisoned, and its alliance with Nazi Germany had been a strategic and moral disaster that cost it significant public sympathy. The organization was shattered. After Ireland officially declared itself a republic in 1949 and left the British Commonwealth, the primary justification for IRA action against the Southern state disappeared.
From this point onwards, the IRA's focus shifted almost exclusively to the North. Its sole remaining goal was to end the partition of Ireland and unite the six counties of Northern Ireland with the Republic, a goal that would define its violent and destructive campaigns in the second half of the 20th century. After Ireland became a republic in 1949, the IRA's ideological reason for opposing the government in Dublin largely evaporated. The 26-county state was now fully independent, leaving partition as the last unresolved issue of the revolutionary era. Consequently, the IRA's attention and resources turned almost exclusively towards Northern Ireland. The new and singular goal was to end British rule in the six north-eastern counties and achieve a united Ireland through armed force. This renewed focus led to a period of reorganisation and recruitment, as the IRA prepared for a new campaign aimed directly at the state of Northern Ireland and its symbols of British authority.
The border became the new front line in the IRA's long war. This new strategy was put into action during the 1950s, with the launch of the Border Campaign, which ran from 1956 to 1962. The IRA's plan was to conduct a series of guerrilla attacks on police barracks, customs posts, and infrastructure targets in Northern Ireland, primarily in rural border areas. The campaign was intended to destabilize the state and force a British withdrawal. However, it was ultimately a military failure. The IRA's attacks were sporadic and did not ignite a popular uprising in their support. The government of Northern Ireland responded with its own policy of internment, imprisoning hundreds of Republicans without trial, which severely hampered the IRA's operational ability. Furthermore, the campaign received very little support from the nationalist population in the North, who were largely passive and unwilling to get involved.
The failure of the border campaign led to a period of deep reflection within the Republican movement. By the time the campaign was officially called off in 1962, the IRA was once again weakened and demoralized. This failure prompted a significant shift in thinking for some of its leaders. A new, more politically-minded leadership emerged, influenced by left-wing and Marxist ideas. They argued that the armed struggle alone was not working. and that the movement needed to engage in social and political agitation to win support. This faction believed that the path to a united Ireland lay in uniting Protestant and Catholic workers against their common capitalist oppressors, rather than through a purely nationalist military campaign. This led the IRA to become more involved in social issues like housing rights and civil liberties. This shift towards political action caused further divisions within the IRA.
The more traditional militaristic members were deeply suspicious of this new left-wing direction. They believed that politics was a distraction from the core mission of armed struggle and that the movement was losing its way. They held on to the belief that only physical force could ever remove the British presence from Ireland. This growing ideological split between the political and military wings of the movement left the IRA in a state of internal turmoil throughout the mid-1960s. The organization was weak and divided, seemingly on the verge of fading into irrelevance, just as the political situation in Northern Ireland was about to explode. The late 1960s saw the emergence of a powerful civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Inspired by the movement in the United States, Catholics began to protest peacefully against decades of systemic discrimination in housing, employment, and voting rights within the Protestant-dominated state.
These marches and demonstrations were often met with hostility and violence from loyalist extremists, who saw the civil rights campaign as a hidden front for Irish nationalism. The police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was almost entirely Protestant, was widely seen as either failing to protect the marchers or actively siding with the loyalist attackers. The situation grew increasingly tense, with sectarian passions running high on both sides. The violence reached a boiling point in the summer of 1969. Following a traditional Loyalist Apprentice Boys' March in Derry, severe rioting broke out in a Catholic area known as the Bogside. The Battle of the Bogside, as it became known, was a three-day riot between residents and the RUC. The violence quickly spread to Belfast and other towns, where Catholic neighbourhoods came under attack from Loyalist mobs who burned entire streets of houses to the ground.
In the midst of this chaos, the IRA, which had been weakened by its internal political debates, was largely unable to fulfil its traditional role as the defender of the nationalist community. The graffiti that appeared on walls in Belfast, IRA, I Ran Away, reflected a deep sense of betrayal and vulnerability felt by many Catholics. This failure to protect Catholic communities led to another crucial split within the Republican movement at the end of 1969. The more traditional and militaristic members broke away to form the Provisional IRA, often called the Provo's. They were scornful of the left-wing political strategy of the existing leadership and were determined to re-establish the IRA as a fighting force. The Provisional IRA's mission was twofold. First, to act as a defence force for beleaguered Catholic communities, and second, to launch a renewed and far more intense armed campaign to destroy the state of Northern Ireland and force a British withdrawal.
The other faction became known as the Official IRA, which, after a brief period of its own violence, would eventually declare a permanent ceasefire and move entirely into politics. The emergence of the Provisional IRA marked the beginning of the darkest and most violent chapter in the organization's history, a period known as the Troubles. The provost quickly grew in strength, attracting a flood of new recruits who were angered by the state's violence and discrimination. They launched a relentless campaign of bombings, shootings, and attacks on the RUC and the British Army, which had been deployed to the streets of Northern Ireland in 1969. This campaign would last for nearly 30 years, plunging Northern Ireland into a vicious cycle of sectarian violence, paramilitary warfare, and political stalemate. the IRA's re-emergence transformed a civil rights struggle into a full-blown armed conflict that would claim thousands of lives and leave deep, lasting scars on the people of Ireland.
The long and bloody history of the Irish Republican Army has left an indelible and complex mark on Ireland and its people. For some, particularly within the staunchly Republican community, the members of the IRA are viewed as freedom fighters, patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in the noble pursuit of national liberation and unity. They are seen as the direct inheritors of a revolutionary tradition stretching back centuries, soldiers who fought a just war against a powerful occupying force. In this narrative, the violence, while regrettable, was a necessary and unavoidable part of the struggle to achieve the dream of a 32-county Irish Republic, free from British interference. This perspective honours the dead and justifies the decades of conflict as a legitimate fight for freedom. However, for the vast majority of people in Ireland, both North and South, as well as for the victims of the conflict, the IRA's legacy is one of immense pain, suffering, and tragedy.
The organization's campaigns of violence, particularly the provisional IRA's bombing campaigns during the Troubles, resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including hundreds of innocent civilians. The human cost of their actions is immeasurable, leaving behind a trail of bereaved families, traumatized communities, and a society deeply divided along sectarian lines. For these people, the IRA were not heroes, but terrorists who inflicted terrible wounds on their own country and prolonged a conflict that brought nothing but misery and destruction, deepening the very divisions they claimed they wanted to heal. The political legacy of the IRA is equally complicated. On one hand, the armed struggle of the provisional IRA during the Troubles did force the British government to recognize that the political situation in Northern Ireland was unsustainable.
The violence created a political pressure that eventually led to negotiations and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a peace deal that established a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The political party associated with the IRA, Sinn Féin, transformed itself into a major electoral force, now active in governments on both sides of the border. In this sense, the long war did, in a roundabout way, achieve significant political change, even if it wasn't the united Ireland the IRA had originally fought for. Ultimately, the IRA's story is a shadow that looms large over modern Ireland. It is a story of idealism and brutality, of sacrifice and sectarianism, of freedom fighters and terrorists. The struggle for a united Ireland, the central goal of the IRA for a century, remains unrealized, though it is now pursued through peaceful and democratic means by the very political movement that grew out of the conflict.
The memory of the IRA's campaigns serves as a constant and sombre reminder of the terrible cost of political violence and the profound difficulty of healing the wounds of a divided society. The legacy is not a simple one of victory or defeat, but a complex tapestry of conflict and change that continues to shape the identity and future of the island of Ireland.
