Ireland Becomes Two Nations
There are many conditions under which Ireland was divided into
two nations. Two main men were the main leaders of this split, Emon
de Valera and Michael Collins. Sinn Fein also played a large role. Their
differing visions for an Ireland free of British rule was the root
motivation for the split.
Born in New York City in 1882, Emon de Valera was described as
a 'tall, spectacled, schoolmasterly, of Jewish cast' as Tim Healy said.
Edward Norman, the author of A History of Modern Ireland, added that
de Valera was an 'austere theoretician' (Norman, 265). Michael Collins
was born in 1890 at Clonakilty, Co. Cork. Edward Norman said his
personality was to be to the contrary of de Valera's; he said Collins was
not an intellectual and was a man of violent impulses. He took that
statement further when he said the Collins would go as far to tumble his
colleagues on the floor and bite their ears in playful attention. Now that
de Valera's and Collins' personalities have been established, we can now
analyze the events and actual conditions under which Ireland was under
that led ultimately to her freedom.
All across Ireland people were repulsed by the executions which
they considered to be needlessly brutal. What they lacked was new
leadership to focus the restless energy of the Irish into effective political
action, but it was not long in coming. At Christmas 1916 all rebel
prisoners who had been interned without trial, those that the British had
considered insignificant, were released as a goodwill gesture to the
United States which had been very angry by British conduct regarding
the rebels. This proved to be a costly mistake. Among those released
was a cadre of IRB men who had spent their time in prison educating
and organizing themselves into what came out to be a formidable
political and military force. The leader of these efforts in prison was
Michael Collins, who was still a little known Volunteer at the time.
Despite martial law, Collins contacted the members of his secret
organization throughout Ireland and set in motion a clever plan to obtain
political power. Using Sinn Fein as cover, the IRB began to run its
members as candidates for parliament. Their successes throughout 1917
against Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party candidates shifted power to
Sinn Fein and caused a turmoil of public support for the republican
movement throughout Catholic Ireland. After Collins release in June,
1917,Eamon de Valera, the oldest of the surviving 1916 rebels, joined
Collins. De Valera was lucky for he had been spared by the British
because of his American citizenship. De Valera was a hero to the Irish
and he was elected as MP in July. In October he was elected president
of both Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers. Sinn Fein became popular
amongst the people.
In September the death of Thomas Ashe, a released 1916 rebel and
close associate of Collins who had again been arrested for sedition, had
also contributed to Sinn Fein's popularity was. Ashe went on a hunger
strike while in British prison and had died from injuries he received when
prison authorities tried to force feed him. Collins turned Ashe's funeral
into an enormous production that glorified the republicans and
demonized the British. This in turn established a tradition of using
funerals as propaganda ceremonies.
In 1918, two British 'fools', as put by Tim Pat Coogan, handed
Sinn Fein more political capital than the 'propaganda bonanza' of Ashe's
funeral. As World War I was continuing, Britain needed more troops to
send off to fight in Europe. Unable to recruit or draft enough men from
the rest of the Empire, the British announced in April that she would
extend conscription (drafting Irish people to fight) to Ireland. The Irish
were outraged. Huge protests erupted. Trade unions called for a general
strike, all political parties, except for the Protestant Unionists, spoke
against the draft, and the Irish Parliamentary Party MP's withdrew from
the House of Commons. The British dropped the Irish draft, but did so
too late to satisfy the republican and nationalist feelings. Having
miscalculated on the draft, the British further alienated republican
sentiment when it appointed a military 'viceroy' to govern Ireland under
martial law, claiming the it was legit with nebulous evidence that Sinn
Fein was conspiring with Germany. Sinn Fein was outlawed and
hundreds of Irish nationalists, including de Valera, were arrested. This
was more than the Irish could handle.
In an unhappy coincidence for the British, the first General
Election to be held in 8 years was scheduled for December, 1918. Sinn
Fein ran a full slate of candidates for the 105 open seats. Through a
combination of successful campaigning, hard work, chicanery, voter
fraud, and genuine heartfelt support, Sinn Fein won an outstanding 73
seats in Parliament. Among the newly elected MP's were men who were
held in prison and others who were on the run as wanted men. Rather
than go to Parliament, however, the 27 MP's who were not in jail
gathered in Dublin on January 21, 1919, where they constituted
themselves as the Dail Eireann, the Assembly of Ireland, and then
declared the formation of an independent Irish Republic. On that very
day, the first two murders of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) members
by Volunteers took place in County Tipperary. From then on for the next
few years ruthless violence would be brought along with the creation of
the Republic.
At the second session of the Dail, Collins was elected Minister of
Finance and de Valera, only recently freed from jail in a daring escape
masterminded by Collins, was elected President. While Collins remained
in Ireland to oversee the management of the infant Republic, de Valera
traveled to America to raise desperately needed funds and to try to
influence the United States to formally recognize the Republic. In
September during de Valera's absence the British outlawed the Dail and
began to crack down on Sinn Fein in a futile but bloody attempt to
regain control over Ireland. Collins responded to this by reconfiguring
the Volunteers into the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. Not clearly
under control of the Dail, but definitely following the orders of Collins,
the IRA carried out a program of terror and assassination directed at the
RIC. The RIC struck back with great ferocity but the IRA kept
intimidating the RIC so the British began to lose control of the situation.
Determined to prevail, the British responded by reinforcing the rapidly
thinning RIC ranks with British troops whose hastily supplied and
mismatched uniforms gave them the unforgettable name of the Black and
Tans. To supplement these new RIC members, Britain also began
recruiting decommissioned British war veterans to form a special
Auxiliary Force. Eventually the British forces assembled against the
republicans whom had 50,000. Together these proved lethal opponents
to the IRA in what rapidly degenerated into a bloody guerrilla war in
which hundreds died on each side from bombings, shootings, burnings,
and torture. Relations between the British and the nationalist Irish were
permanently scared by a nasty cycle of attacks in which intentional
brutal massacres of combatants were punctuated by episodes of inhuman
treatment of non-combatants as well. The level of violence inflicted
during 1920 was so extreme with neither side able to prevail that both
the British and the Irish began to recognize they were trapped in a
bloody stalemate. Thus, Ireland was granted her initial wish of existing
free of British rule. Consequently, the nation was divided into two
nations.
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