577. The Irish War of Independence: The Violence Begins (Part 2)

Summary

The Rest Is History - Episode 577: The Irish War of Independence: The Violence Begins (Part 2)

Release Date: June 25, 2025

In Episode 577 of The Rest Is History, hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland delve deeper into the tumultuous beginnings of the Irish War of Independence. Joined by historian Professor Paul Fraughan, the trio unpacks the intricate political maneuvers, the emergence of guerrilla tactics, and the escalating violence that defined this pivotal period in Irish history.

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1. Setting the Scene: From Ballads to Battle

The episode opens with a rendition of "The Gulty Mountain Boy," a poignant Irish ballad that nostalgically recounts the journey of a teenage volunteer joining the Irish Republican cause in 1916. Dominic Sandbrook remarked:

"[The ballad] ticks every Irish ballad box... there's a lot of geography, a lot of stuff about freedom and flags."
[03:02] - Dominic Sandbrook

Tom Holland adds a critical perspective on the romanticism of the ballad:

"Some of the characters mentioned... were a bit less romantic than the song suggests."
[03:37] - Tom Holland

This introduction sets the tone for the episode, balancing cultural narratives with historical realities.

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2. Political Landscape: The Birth of the Dáil Éireann

The hosts recap the political climate following the 1918 general election, where Sinn Féin secured a landslide victory in Ireland with a mandate to establish an independent republic. Dominic highlights the strategic decisions made by Sinn Féin:

"They had won this massive majority on a ticket of building an independent Irish republic. And they had said that they would do that by whatever means were required."
[04:55] - Dominic Sandbrook

Professor Fraughan elaborates on the foundational documents established during the inaugural meeting of the Dáil at the Mansion House:

"They established Dal Aaron, the Irish Parliament... a Declaration of Independence rejecting 700 years of occupation and establishing an Irish Republic."
[07:05] - Paul Fraughan

This section underscores the political assertiveness of Sinn Féin and their commitment to self-determination.

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3. The Spark: Ambush at Soloheadbeg

The conversation transitions to the pivotal event on January 21, 1919, when the first shots of the Irish War of Independence were fired at Soloheadbeg. Professor Fraughan provides a detailed account:

"This is the first shots in the Irish War of Independence. Dan Breen was a hard, violent man who was utterly unrepentant about killing people."
[15:49] - Paul Fraughan

Tom Holland draws parallels to the Wild West, emphasizing the guerrilla nature of the conflict:

"It actually reminds me of the Wild West... you could absolutely imagine Clint Eastwood starring in a film of this story."
[14:44] - Tom Holland

This ambush marked the transition from political agitation to armed resistance.

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4. Escalation and British Response: The Rise of the Black and Tans

As the conflict intensifies, the British government struggles to contain the rebellion. Professor Fraughan explains the introduction of the Black and Tans:

"They recruit unemployed soldiers from Britain... these new policemen wear distinctive khaki and green, dark green uniforms and they become famous... for their brutality."
[43:02] - Paul Fraughan

Dominic Sandbrook draws comparisons with Eastern European paramilitary groups:

"It's similar to what's happening in Eastern Europe, where you have large numbers of ex-servicemen joining paramilitary groups."
[44:16] - Dominic Sandbrook

The influx of these forces exacerbated tensions and fueled further violence.

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5. Guerrilla Warfare: The IRA's Strategic Evolution

Professor Fraughan discusses the IRA's tactical shift towards guerrilla warfare, emphasizing their adaptability and intelligence operations:

"This intelligence war is vital because there are women in this—they're typists... passing information."
[51:56] - Paul Fraughan

Tom Holland reflects on the unprecedented nature of this warfare:

"The British are confronting a form of combat that no militarized army has faced before."
[46:16] - Tom Holland

This evolution in tactics made the conflict more elusive and challenging for British forces.

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6. Sectarian Underpinnings: A Contested Narrative

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the sectarian elements of the war. Professor Fraughan addresses the contentious debate sparked by Peter Hart's work:

"I don't think you can make the point that religion is central to Irish identity... and then pretend that there is no sectarian element."
[53:03] - Paul Fraughan

He acknowledges the complexity, noting that while not all violence was sectarian, religious and ethnic tensions undoubtedly played a role in fueling the conflict.

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7. International Dimensions: Seeking Recognition and Support

The episode highlights Sinn Féin's efforts to gain international recognition and support, particularly through the Paris Peace Conference and Eamonn de Valera's mission to America. Professor Fraughan notes:

"De Valera goes to America in June 1919... he raises some money, but really cannot drive the recognition from America to get the British to say, okay, we need to give these guys independence."
[28:56] - Paul Fraughan

Despite significant fundraising efforts, the lack of international political backing left Sinn Féin's aspirations largely unmet on the global stage.

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8. Administrative Challenges: British Struggles in Ireland

The British administration in Ireland faced significant internal challenges, as detailed by Professor Fraughan:

"The administration was almost woodenly stupid... there's a creaking administration and then you don't have a unified military command."
[46:27] - Paul Fraughan

This disorganization hampered effective responses to the escalating guerrilla tactics employed by the IRA.

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9. The Prelude to Bloody Sunday: Escalating Violence

As 1920 progresses, violence intensifies with the IRA targeting police barracks and British intelligence efforts failing to quell the rebellion. Professor Fraughan summarizes:

"By Easter 1920, there are 350 police barracks around the country which have been destroyed."
[42:25] - Paul Fraughan

The British response, marked by reprisals and the notorious actions of the Black and Tans, further inflamed the situation, setting the stage for the tragic events of Bloody Sunday.

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10. Conclusion: The Inevitable Descent into Mass Violence

The episode concludes with the looming threat of widespread violence, as discussed by the hosts:

"We've started with a misty-eyed ballad, but there's a real edge to the story now... we're moving to Croke Park for the next part of the story."
[61:33] - Dominic Sandbrook

This sets the anticipation for the subsequent episode, which promises to explore the infamous Bloody Sunday and its profound impact on the Irish War of Independence.

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Notable Quotes

• Dominic Sandbrook [03:42]: "Are you a fan of an Irish ballad?"

• Tom Holland [05:25]: "You didn't sing it, so..."

• Paul Fraughan [15:49]: "Dan Breen was a hard, violent man who was utterly unrepentant about killing people."

• Tom Holland [14:44]: "You could absolutely imagine Clint Eastwood starring in a film of this story."

• Dominic Sandbrook [44:16]: "It's similar to what's happening in Eastern Europe, where you have large numbers of ex-servicemen joining paramilitary groups."

• Paul Fraughan [53:03]: "I don't think you can make the point that religion is central to Irish identity... and then pretend that there is no sectarian element."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 577 offers a comprehensive examination of the early stages of the Irish War of Independence, blending narrative storytelling with expert analysis. By challenging romanticized notions and highlighting the complex interplay of political ambitions, guerrilla tactics, and sectarian tensions, the episode provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of this critical chapter in Irish history. The anticipation builds for the next installment, which promises to cover the harrowing events of Bloody Sunday.

For exclusive content and to dive deeper into this series, listeners are encouraged to join The Rest Is History Club at therestishistory.com.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com this episode is brought to you by the Week Magazine, a publication for those who prefer clarity over chaos and facts over fury.

[Tom Holland]

Every issue draws on trusted voices from around the world, across the spectrum spectrum, distilling them into one clear, balanced read with insight and context on the stories that matter.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

The Rest Is History Listeners know the value of looking at the past from all angles. The Week applies that same principle to the present, mapping connections, weighing arguments, and untangling the complex threads of current affairs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Available in print, online or via the app, you can read it whenever or wherever curiosity strikes. At home, on the move, or halfway down a research rabbit hole, the Week rewards curiosity wherever it strikes.

[Tom Holland]

Visit theweek.comtrih to take advantage of a special introductory offer for fans of the Rest is history.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's theweek.comt Roh this message is brought.

[Paul Fraughan]

To you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone 16, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The Titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes, subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Ranch terms and [e-mail] I joined the Flying Column in 1916 in Cork with Sean Milan in Tipperary with Dan Breen. Arrested by Free Staters and sentenced for to die. Farewell to Tipperary, said the Galty mountain Boy. We went across the valleys and o' er the hilltop screen where we met with Dinny Lacy, Sean Hogan and Dan Breen, Sean Moylan and his gallant men they kept the flag flying high and farewell to Tipperary, said the Galty mountain Boy I'll bid farewell to Auld Clonmel I never more shall see and to the Galty Mountains that oft times sheltered me those who fought for liberty and died without a sigh May their cause not be forgotten, said the Gulty mountain boy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So that was the Gulty Mountain Boy, written by Patsy o' Halloran and Christy Moore and delivered quite beautifully by a man we will be introducing in a few moments. And it's the story of a teenage volunteer who joins the the Irish Republican cause in 1916. He fights the British in the Irish War of Independence, but he's sentenced to death by his own former comrades, the Free Staters in the Irish Civil War. And, Tom, for me, that ticks every Irish ballad box. There's a lot of geography. There's a lot of stuff about freedom and flags. There are random names of folk heroes that would mean a lot to Irish listeners, but perhaps not to British ones. And dare I say, a general heir of. Is mawkishness the right word there?

[Tom Holland]

Speaks the voice of Dublin Castle.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, exactly. Are you a fan of an Irish ballad?

[Tom Holland]

I love an Irish ballad and I especially love it because it's very convenient for our purposes, because two of the men mentioned in that ballad, Sean Hogan and Dan Breen, will feature in the dramatic story of the ambush at Solarhead Beg, which is the first engagement of the Irish War of Independence. And this is going to be the theme of our episode today, today. And just to give people a spoiler alert, some of the characters mentioned, including the two that I've just named, were a bit less romantic, I think, than the song suggests. But for now, let's just remind everyone where we are, because we are in Dublin. We are in the Royal Irish Academy. So that's the ria and we might be using the same letters in a different form later on in this story because we are telling the story of the Irish revolutionary struggle at the end of the First World war and the Dominic we ended last time in December 1918. We tracked how over the two years since the Easter Rising in 1916, there'd been growing radicalization. Sinn Fein had won a landslide majority in Ireland in the general election, and they had won this massive majority in Ireland on a ticket of building an independent Irish republic. And they had said that they would do that by whatever means were required.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, much as I love listening to you, Tom, I think we should have an Irish voice. So we are joined once again by Irish national treasure, professor at University College Dublin, friend of the show, a man described by a listener to the last Irish series we did as a Pound Shop Bono. It is. It is Professor Paul Fraus.

[Tom Holland]

Well, Paul, to be fair, you didn't sing it, so.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Paul Fraughan]

Oh, yeah, I think there would be. Family members warned me in advance that singing would not be a. Not be a wise thing to do. The Pound Shop Bono line was seized on. I'm blessed with friends who don't really worry about the difference between insult and compliment, but they seized on the insult after the last time I appeared.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, so come on then, Bono. We're in. We ended last time in December 1918 with the election and Sinn Fein have won, but they're not going to take their seats in the House of Commons and they're pledged to an Irish Republic. So let's move to January 1919. And there's one day in particular which looms so large. It's the 21st of January, because two things happen. Two extraordinary events happen on the same day.

[Paul Fraughan]

Each of them in their own right would be remarkable fact that they happened on the same day makes it a truly singular day in. In Irish history. It. They weren't planned to happen on the same day, as you. As you will see. But the first thing is a meeting in the Mansion House. Right next door to us here at the Academy is the Mansion House. It's the official residence of the city mayor. And what happened in that room is a remarkable moment in the Irish national story. 27 of the 73 Sinn Fein MPs who had been elected to the House of Commons, all of them had said they weren't going to take their seats, but they convened in the Mansion House and established what was called Dal Aaron, the Irish Parliament. It should be said that one of those who was not able to be present was Countess Markiewicz, who was then in Holloway jail. And she was the first female to be elected as a member of Parliament in the House of Commons, although of course she did not take her seat.

[Tom Holland]

So that's another count. Her husband is a Polish count, isn't he? Or was he? But she's a very glamorous figure.

[Paul Fraughan]

She's a very glamorous figure who was also, by the way, is mischaracterized, I think, a lot by history. She's one of those women who was central to the Irish Revolution over the years, but she really labored. She was not somebody who was a leader who frittered around the margins. She did the dirty, hard organizational work who anyone who's ever run any organization knows it's hard to. To do this. And she is one of the group of women who was fundament to this whole story.

[Tom Holland]

And ultimately she will give away all her inherited wealth and die a poor woman.

[Paul Fraughan]

She died a poor woman. She died very young. She died in ill health, but deserves to be remembered as a significant historical figure. Now, this meeting in the Mansion House of These elected members, 27 of them, was largely ceremonial in nature, but it saw the realization of four foundational documents. The first is the constitution of Dal Aaron as the Irish Parliament was called. And this was a kind of a short but base. It was the basic underpinning of the state. And it's really interesting. But the cabinet that was formed had five departments. Financial Affairs, Home Affairs, Foreign affairs, the President's and Defense. And it was based on the model of the British Cabinet system.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But that kind of makes sense because.

[Paul Fraughan]

That'S the model they're familiar with, I guess entirely. And they get. They want people to sway from one to the other, to pretend that the other doesn't exist and to come to us. The second is a Declaration of independence which rejects 700 years of occupation because the clock was still ticking at that stage. It had only got to just over 700 and established an Irish Republic. And that's a massive thing. It established an Irish Republic. It said we're going to pretend that your state does not exist and we are going to establish our own. We're going to graft it on. And this is what Griffith wanted to happen in the early 1900s. That's what he argued for.

[Tom Holland]

So it's kind of creating the Republic by sheer force of will almost.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah, making it real, making a practical thing, not just an aspirational thing or not just words, but actually putting it in place. It had a Declaration of Independence, as I say, which was there, but there was also a message to the free nations of the world. And that was all about the Paris Peace Conference and the kind of channel that Woodrow Wilson 14 points about self determination and. And anti imperialism. And of course the choice of French. The fact that that was published and spoken in English, Irish and French tells you the audience that that was. Was aimed at. And the final thing is a program which is a kind of a very socially and economically leftist program, certainly influenced by socialism and with that kind of idea of. Of what was happening in Russia in the background. It was pretty radical and it made some people in the Doll pretty uncomfortable, not least of whom was Kevin o' Higgins, later a minister in. In government, who described it as largely.

[Tom Holland]

Poetry and NDU cause. Countess Markiewicz will become the Minister of Labor, won't she? And the second woman to become a European minister.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes, and. And the fact that it's seen as. The fact that it's a. Is sometimes used to dismiss that fact, but again, I think it's important. But this was ultimately, in short, a revolutionary assembly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And then the amazing thing is that on the same day in Tipperary, I think it is, there is an event that is often seen as the first armed clash of the war. And as you said, it's not meant to be. It's a coincidence. It's not designed that way. So tell us what happens at solarheadbeg and why it matters.

[Paul Fraughan]

So, Tipperary is a county in the centre of Ireland and there is a town called Tipperary Town, right in the heart of that county. On a cold, damp morning in January 1919, 21st January, James McDonnell and Patrick O' Connell, who were two local policemen, were leading a horse and cart which were being driven by Patrick Flynn and Edward Godfrey. They were bringing gel ignite from Tipperary Town out to a quarry at Solehead Bag to blow stones for the construction work that was happening around the place. Now, Tipperary was a famously rebellious county. Tipperary had been the home of the 1867 rebellion and everything to do with Irish nationalism had a Tipperary strain to it. But Tipperary had not risen in 1916, and that caused deep pain to people such as Sean Tracy in particular, but also Dan Breen, Seamus Robinson and Sean Hogan. And they're among a group of eight volunteers, this newly militarizing force, who are desperate for action because they believe that unless somebody is killed, there is no war of independence beginning. They wish to kill somebody, they wish to start a war, they wish to shoot. And they use the opportunity of this gel ignite being moved through a quarry because they think they can get arms off whatever police are bringing. Because the Irish police were armed in the countryside, not in Dublin city, but armed in the countryside. Take their arms, take the gel ignite and you have both bomb making potential and you have guns and ammunition. So the cart is going out of country lane. There was an attempt to slow it down with a bicycle. Punk. Someone stopping with a puncture, fixing a puncture, it slows down and Tracy, Robinson, Hogan and Breen come out and Tracy at least shoots one of them. And it's not. They. They had really poor arms in what they were doing. But Tracy is said to have danced and kissed his rifle after he shot one of the policemen who was left lying on the ground. Sean Hogan took off with the. With the horse and cart, with the gelignite, and they dispersed across the countryside. These are the first shots in the Irish War of Independence.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And to be clear, the two policemen who are shot, so MacDonnell and O' Connell, they are Irish Catholic policemen? They're not British. They are. They're part of a large number of Irish Catholic policemen who are working for the state at that point?

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes. Patrick O' Connell was 30 years of age, from Cork, lived locally, known locally, most likely known to the people who killed him, James McDonald was from Belmont in County Mayo. He was in his 50s, but he was a widower with five youngest children and an Irish speaker.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Is there a sense this is a terrible thing? This is a terrible.

[Paul Fraughan]

Oh, there's an outcry against it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Paul Fraughan]

The idea that Breen and Tracy and Robinson and Hogan would somehow be celebrated in the local area for what they did is not correct. There was a revulsion locally about what had happened. The view locally was that this was. These were like well liked policemen who were in the area and Breen and Tracy had to go on the run. And there's outrage in the papers, outrage from the pulpit and even people in Dublin, people who are involved in the movement are. They don't like this, right?

[Tom Holland]

Because, Paul, you say that, that the, the men who do this want it to be a declaration of war, but reading about it and then the events that follow, it actually reminds me of the Wild West. It's like the kind of. It's the subject of a spaghetti Western or something like that. And it becomes even more so, doesn't it? Because in due course, the four men who have done the attack disperse. They go into hiding, they're on the run, being hunted down by lawmen. And then one of them gets captured and he gets put on a train to be taken off to trial and presumably ultimately to be hanged. And the other three stage a holdup. They get on the train, there's a massive shootout on the train and they manage to get Hogan free. They're all got blood spurting out of their arms and their chests and things. And then they take him off and they get a butcher's cleaver to hack through the handcuffs. And you could absolutely imagine Clint Eastwood starring in a film of this story.

[Paul Fraughan]

And it is a guerrilla war. The set piece war of 1916 is done. They know they've learned they're not going back into a building. This is a hedge war and it's an urban streets war. Now, in the mythology of the Irish revolution, it's that all of this fighting happened in country lanes and on the sides of mountains and people melted off into the countryside and lived on the land and were fed by people. And that did happen, but it was also an urban guerrilla war as well, which spread to the cities, but not yet. 1919, in terms of the War of Independence is really quiet.

[Tom Holland]

But.

[Paul Fraughan]

But Breen and Tracy are at the heart of it and they're on the run immediately.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And just on those men we mentioned, Tom said, you know, they're maybe not as Romantic as we, as the ballad makes them. I mean, these are quite the, are these, these are hard men. These are men who like a fight.

[Paul Fraughan]

So Dan Breen was a hard, violent man who was utterly unrepentant about killing people. And you can see that in the interviews that were recorded with him, for example, in, in, in the 1960s and it was glorified in his book My Fight for Irish Freedom. There was a wanted poster for Breen.

[Tom Holland]

Very Wild West.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah. And there's a reward of £1,000 for anyone who, who is, who hands him in. But he's described on the wanted poster. There's a picture of him kind of in, you know, relatively well dressed, but there's a picture of himself describing him as having a sulky bulldog appearance and looking like a blacksmith on his way home from work. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of remarkable that people would you put that on a poster?

[Tom Holland]

But Paul, you can I, I guess, see why to the British authorities this does seem a law and order issue rather than the declaration of a war. Right.

[Paul Fraughan]

And the fact that it was so slow to get going, if you look at what happened, the slow incremental rise in violence, particularly in the first half of 1919, it got a little bit quicker later in 1919, but what it really was was assaults. They were looking. They didn't have rifles, they didn't have gun, they didn't have ammunition, they didn't have much bomb making equipment. So what you have are the volunteers raiding for arms, raiding houses for arms, raiding police stations for arms, trying to find guns wherever they can get them, organizing boycotts, assaulting the police and Loyalists and resisting arrest. So for the first sway of the Irish War of Independence, the level of violence is. It's really small scale.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So in 1919, a lot of the story is about boycotts, isn't it? So you mentioned the importance of boycotts. And it's boycotts particularly of people who are like these policemen, people who are in the Royal Irish Constabulary. And it's about not selling them. You wouldn't sell them milk, you wouldn't sell them eggs. You would basically. In England we'd use the expression, you'd send them to Coventry. You'd basically sort of push them to the margins of life and make their life intolerable. And that works, doesn't it? I mean, people feel, the people who are still in the police feel they can't understand it, but they're being pushed out and people. It's harder to recruit policemen and people start dropping out and whatnot.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah. So the numbers who are. Who people over time begin to leave the police at a fairly significant rate. And that becomes. And this is really important for the story, as we'll tell it later on, but it's. It leads to recruitment from. From England of the Black and Tans who would become. And of the auxiliaries who become notorious in. In Irish history. But it. The fundamental place of the police in Irish society was destabilized through 1919, through that boycotting that you were talking about. But also an attack and it shouldn't be dismissed, I suppose, as well. I say the violence was low scale, but there were still 10 policemen shot right through the rest of 1919. And then by September there are attacks and the soldiers are being shot. So there's a group of British soldiers on their way to a Methodist church.

[Tom Holland]

The Welsh, aren't they?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They're from Shropshire. The Shropshire Light Infantry.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah. And they're. They're gold. They go to the church and to Methodist service and they're ambushed by an IRA unit led by Liam lynch and George power. There's about 30 attackers, but they have six guns between them. So. So the rest of big sticks. So the. It said that what they were trying to do there, they were going to take the men's rifles, not shoot anyone, not kill anyone. They arrived in two cars. There was an exchange of. There was a conflict emerged.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Paul Fraughan]

And one of the soldiers was shot and four were injured.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So do you know what? I looked him up yesterday and it reminded me of two things. So his name was Private William Jones and he was from Carmarthen. So actually Tommy Wright, some of them were Welsh. And he. That reminded me of two things. One, he just got out of a prisoner of war camp. He'd been held in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. And the second thing, he was only 20 years old and almost all the people that we'll be talking about in this story are remarkably young.

[Paul Fraughan]

And we'll see that when it comes to the IRA and who's involved in the IRA on these things. And I think another point to make, make about what happened down in Fermoy with, with that incident is the fact that the local coroner's jury declined to record a verdict of murder because they said that they hadn't intended to be killed, that they were just there to take the arms. And that led to members of the British military coming in and wrecking the shops of some of the people who had served on. On that. On that jury.

[Tom Holland]

P.O. can I just give a shout out to anyone who wants more detail on these incidents to the Irish history podcast presented by Finn Dwyer, which I've been listening to in preparation for this and is he has a huge series on the War of Independence.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And I highly recommend, I believe Tom's recommending a rival podcast.

[Tom Holland]

It's not a rival, it's a compliment.

[Paul Fraughan]

This is literally Tom's last.

[Tom Holland]

Very complicated.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is Tom's last appearance on the show, to be clear. Right, so let's move on into. Well, let's look at the politics. So you mentioned the foundation of Dale Aaron in beginning of 1919 and the shadow government. I mean they are really doing stuff and they're gaining legitimacy throughout the course of the year, aren't they? Because they're doing things like they've staffed the government, they're raising money, they are dispensing justice. So just give us a quick overview of what they're doing there.

[Paul Fraughan]

So what they actually try and do is to put into operation a state, despite the fact that they are continually harassed, particularly in the summer of 1919, and then suppressed, just as the Irish Volunteers then renamed the Irish Republican Army. Tom. Which gets you your IRA initials.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Paul Fraughan]

So on Sinn Fein. So these are suppressed at that point. But so De Valera is back as president.

[Tom Holland]

That's an amazing story, isn't it? Because he's been sprung from Lincoln jail by, among others, Michael Collins in person. And it's an extraordinary story of how he gets. There's a single key that opens all the doors and he makes a copy of the key, sends it off on a design to people outside. They then make the key, send it in and there are kind of various attempts. They put it in a variety of cakes and finally De Valera gets out. Very hair raising stuff. And again in Finn Dwyer's podcast, excellent account of that.

[Paul Fraughan]

And you can see it. And so I should say, by the way, if, if you're doing shoutouts, the Royal Irish Academy here, if people are interested in, in Irish history, all of the main characters that we are spoken about here, short biographies of them are available on the Dictionary of Irish Biography, which is housed here at the Royal Irish Academy. It's free online and you get brilliant, brilliant descriptions of people's lives from Craig and Carson, which is done by Alvin Jackson Onward. So really.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And you'll be very modest here because you've written 99 of these yourself.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah, I don't want to claim credit for the better ones, I have to say, but I have to say there were brilliant ones. By people like Ronan Fanning and Alvin Jackson, which are utterly superb as pieces of historical scholarship in their own right. But these people who are written about de Valera and Collins and Griffith and Owen MacNeil and Constance Markovich, they now head up ministries who are trying to do stuff. They have a secretary to a Dal committee called Dermot o' Hegarty, who is the clerk of the Doll as well, and they keep records and they organize cabinet meetings and they have exchanges and they do actually do stuff around. They raise a loan, for example, of half a million pounds.

[Tom Holland]

And it's Collins who's doing that, isn't it? Yeah, it's Collins because he's got this background. He worked in the post office and then an accountancy office, so he's kind of good at this thing. So he's the finance minister, but he's also at the same time kind of in charge intelligence, isn't he? And there's a brilliant description of this by Charles Townsend in his book the Republic, that he's a finance minister with the unusual advantage of running a death squad, which.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah, and, and, and it's, it's. It's. There's a brilliant note, actually, in the margins where Collins. Collins was a really organized mind and really, really brilliant at administration. So he raised the money from the loan of150,000 people. There were pilot schemes in fisheries, in land, but he got exasperated when people weren't able to live up to the operations of these things and he cut loose. And De Valer has a great note in it where he says, michael, not everybody has the same structured mind as you do. So he was. He was really well organized. And so, so what you, what you say there about the gun squad is. Is important because this money was needed to fund the army and to run the pilot programs in fisheries and land and housing. But there was an experienced policeman from the land war called Alan Bell, and Alan Bell was coming after this money and going after it and going after it, and Collins knew that he was going after it. And Collins had a unit that had him shot when he was coming in on a tram right to the center of the city. So this is thing. So there's. I think the other thing worth noting on this is, yes, it's important what they did with land and tried to do a small bit of land distribution. Yes, it's important, the local government stuff, but the key thing in this is the courts. They established a court service which were four tiers, parish courts, minor crimes, district courts and. And actually a supreme Court, a two member supreme court. And they issued fines in local areas, excluded people from being around the place, confiscated things like pochin stills which were making illicit whiskey, particularly in rural areas. And what this is, it's symbolic of.

[Tom Holland]

The withdrawal of allegiance and the delegitimizing.

[Paul Fraughan]

Of British law enormously important.

[Tom Holland]

So there's this comment in the Daily Herald in London that refers to this invisible republic with its hidden courts and its prohibited volunteer troops, exists in the hearts of the men and women of Ireland and wields a moral authority which all the tanks and machine guns of King George cannot command. And that's the key, isn't it? Because they, they can't hope to win a military victory. It's about persuading the Irish that this republic is real. It's real, but also persuading the British that they can't hope to win.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I mean, you could argue that's the whole strategy. The whole strategy is to basically show the British that they can never win because they can't defeat the British by shooting them, but they can make the British lose heart in the whole enterprise.

[Paul Fraughan]

Exactly. And crucial to this as well is to show what's happening in Ireland in front of the world.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So this takes us to the Paris Peace Conference, which you really think matters.

[Paul Fraughan]

Oh, it does. It matters because what isn't realized through it as much as what it was. Now, I didn't really understand at all in depth the symbolic importance of what was happening around the world to this idea. So there was a brilliant exhibition, exhibition last year in, in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, led out by Dr. Lisa Morne, among others, which brought in these artistic works from all across Eastern European, from Europe, from Poland and Ukraine and everywhere along that thing to show all of those small nations that were establishing states in the years between 1917 and 1919, but every single one of them was being built from broken empires. Yeah, they're from the Habsburgs, they're from the Russian Revolution.

[Tom Holland]

And that's why it's so important to situate this story of Ireland in the broader European context of the post war world.

[Paul Fraughan]

But what makes the Irish story different than the Habsburgs and the Ottomans and the Russian post empire states is that Ireland was looking for its independence from a state that had won the war, from an empire that was winning, that was now at the greatest extent of its power imaginable. And it went Paris, it sent Shawn T. O' Kelly, who I said had come in on the boat in December 1916. On the morning he went there with his wife and Wrote to George. To George Clement. So looking for a seat at. At the table and. And couldn't get one. And went through Wilson and said, listen, we fit your 14 points. Get us a seat at the table. And it just doesn't happen.

[Tom Holland]

Because the implication for Britain if Ireland leaves the United Kingdom is that the United Kingdom, one of the victors in the war, will end up with a greater loss of territory than Germany, which has been defeated.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And it's not just that, but one other thing. I mean, I think a massively important thing in the British minds is if we lose Ireland, then Egypt and India are next. Because in all this period, if you look at the headlines in British newspapers, often Ireland is actually dwarfed by what's happening in Egypt and India, by risings there. And so Lloyd George and company are thinking, if we concede on this, then India is next.

[Tom Holland]

1919 is also the year of the Emirates Army.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly, exactly.

[Paul Fraughan]

And America then becomes the focus. So Eamonn de Valera goes to America in June 1919. Paris hasn't worked out. All the promises of Sinn Fein from the election that they would use. Paris is now gone. So they go to. De Valera goes to America. He stays most of the time in New York's Waldorf Astoria, but he's basically on a mission to advance recognition for the new Irish Republic and to raise money. 50,000 people go to the great baseball stadium, Fenway park, where the Boston Red Sox played, to hear him. He does a bond Drive, which raises $5.5 million. But money was really the only real success out there because neither Democrats nor Republicans ultimately supported the Irish cause at the conventions that were held in the air. Because, of course, Irish America, as Irish America always was divided. There were personality disputes and power struggles and also a dispute over strategy, while all the while there were local people advancing themselves. So De Valera goes there, raises some money, but really cannot drive the recognition from America to get the British to say, okay, we need to give these guys independence.

[Tom Holland]

And in terms of the personalities, does De Valera's absence in America enable Collins and other figures to attain a greater kind of leadership role?

[Paul Fraughan]

Yeah, while he's away, it's Collins and Griffith, but particularly Collins is growing in stature and. And importance. And of course, Collins straddles the two worlds in a way that Dera now doesn't anymore. Dera is much more on the. Even though he had been out with a gun in 1916, he. That world is. He's now back in the politics side of things, where Collins is absolutely straddles both sides of the movement.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So with the failure to get a seat at the Paris peace talks, it's pretty obvious that if this struggle is going to be one, it's going to be one in Ireland. Yeah, and there's obviously the propaganda, but there's also the labor movement which plays a big part in this. A series of strikes. Strikes and boycotts, I guess.

[Tom Holland]

Well, there's the Limerick Soviet, isn't there?

[Paul Fraughan]

There is. Which is, which is. And it's kind of a term which is bandied around a little bit. The key, the key thing is the strikes that took place at various stages. Four key strikes, I think. One in support of conscription that we've talked about already. In 1919, a general strike in Limerick against the imposition of a special military area where permits needed to come in and out. In the third one, a two day strike in support of political prisoners and railway munitions strike which ran from May to December 1920. An enormous strike. And then you have Dublin dockers who refused to handle war material. So all of this had a huge impact later on the British ability to combat the ira. I should say, by the way, that there was the prospect of recognition from the USSR for the new Irish Republic. And it was. What ended up actually happening was the doll got kind of recognition from the International Socialist Conference in Bern in February 1919, but it didn't move quick enough to secure the agreement with, with Moscow and left it too late. And instead it was Britain who actually smoothed it over its relationships with Moscow which, which stopped that recognition coming in the end in.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So before we get to the break, you mentioned the IRA a couple of moments ago. So the ira, that, that's the term now being used for the, for the.

[Tom Holland]

Irish Volunteers, but it never becomes official, does it?

[Paul Fraughan]

It's a term that's, it's used always by 1920. It is the term the Irish Republican army that's pushed out.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The thing that struck me reading about this was, I mean this is a slightly, it might seem an old and indeed heretical comparison to Irish nationalists, but how similar the people who joined the IRA are to people who join paramilitary groups, let's say in Eastern Europe, or indeed the very famous one, the Freikorps, the German paramilitary group, is fighting in the Baltic at the same time. So men who've either spent a couple of years in the war or perhaps have just missed it and are eager for action and excite, there's a kind of cult of manliness and heroism and bravado. Is that a fair comparison, do you think?

[Paul Fraughan]

So there are a lot of different groups of people who were involved in the IRA and its ancillary organization. In common them on men and women who were involved in the War of Independence. And they were dismissed at the time and condemned as a rabble, as corner boys and guriers. Guriers. Just this phrase that's used to describe the rabble of every town and. And city with a few intellectuals thrown in at the top of the movement. That was the idea of it, and it really missed the point of what was happening. This is a huge generational shift. And I agree. I can see the parallels with those organizations that you're talking about. These are men and women in their late teens and in their 20s, most of whom had been born in the 1890s. They were in very many cases, they were literate, they were educated, they were skilled. They had a group of people who were denied immigration, which was the great Irish safety shoot since the famine was to go to New York, to go to London, to go ultimately to Australia, in later times in South Africa and Argentina, actually a huge focus of Irish things. But that was denied them during the war, so they stayed around. But they spanned people from farm laborers and farm workers up to medical students. Again, it's age often that binds them together. Manny had been through a Christian brother school education. We should actually have spoken about this, the importance of radicalization and how history is perceived and. And how it was taught in various places. There was a brilliant Methodist conference in Belfast after the writing, where this guy's turned up. He was a commissioner of education, and he says he worried about Ireland because there didn't seem to be enough history to go around to solve or to base every cause on it. In other words, there was a shared history here which people wish to pull apart. And the nature of the teaching of history was a contested space here. So it was said in the Commission on the Rebellion and repeatedly by people like Mahaffy, who is the provost of Trinity, and by British castle officials, that a huge problem here was the history of rebellion and of rejection of Englishness and of Britishness that was taught in the Irish national schools and then by. By its Christian brothers. So that's lurking there in the background. There are the ballads that we. We started with, with now, that wasn't about it at the time, but before that you had stuff like A Nation Once Again, It's a Nation Once Again that sung when Markovich comes back and.

[Tom Holland]

Paul, can I bowl you up? Up a half volley, to use an English phrase. The sport isn't There.

[Paul Fraughan]

There is. We'll probably when in. In the third episode talk a little bit about sport when it comes to Bloody Sunday and what happened in Crow park on Bloody Sunday. But what it is is an Irish imitation of the English sporting revolution. The English sporting revolution which saw the construction. People have always played sport. We know that across every society. And in the English sporting revolution, what you have is the formalization of games. And they're squeezing them into a modern playing field. And you get the spread of cricket, most popular field game in Ireland in 1870s and in the 80s.

[Tom Holland]

We'll be doing an episode on exactly this.

[Paul Fraughan]

Well, rugby and soccer. Rugby and soccer as well, spread. But the GAA turned that revolution on its head and by founding the Gaelic Athletic association for the cultivation and preservation of the Irish national pastimes and founded a game, invented a game which had called Gaelic football in. In opposition to others and re imagined the game of hurling for a modern era. I should say before I finish on the ga, what did why the GA matters in this context of revolution is there are people like Michael Collins and Harry Boland and J.J. walsh who learn their administrative skills and come to prominence and confidence through leadership within the Gaelic Athletic Association. And it gives them a status which they can then use elsewhere.

[Tom Holland]

And Paul, one other thing before we come to the break. You talked about men and women.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

And to pursue Dominic's analogy with the situation in Germany, Rosa Luxembourg example of the way that women in the. The aftermath the war are stepping forwards and taking a much more prominent role in revolutionary movements than they would ever have done before the war. And the same thing is happening in Ireland, isn't it? We've talked about Countess Mavitz, but there's. There are others as well.

[Paul Fraughan]

Okay, so women matter in the Irish War of Independence in multiple ways. They are, it is true, the victims of violence at various stages from both sides. You have women who get their head shaved and are also the victim of rapes during. During this period. There is degrading treatment on both sides. It should be said there are women who were involved in the ira. It is so important to remember when you talk about the ira, the majority of members of the IRA didn't fire a gun. They were there for logistical support. They may be involved in espionage, they may be involved in. In the trafficking of guns, in the provision of intelligence, all the ancillary supports that are involved in that. And women did all of those things during those years. And they were also fundamental to propaganda. So you see people like Mary and Muriel McSweeney whose brother in Mary's case and whose husband in Muriel's case he died on hunger strike while he was lord mayor of, of Cork. So they went to the United States after the death of Terence McSweeney and they went on a fundraising campaign through like Mary spoke to 300 meetings in, in 58 cities. And again, the most recent biography of her or the biography of her written by Leanne Lane does this brilliantly as a series of she comes on from people after people like Rosamund Jacob who are all women who are central to this world of kind of the construction of a nationalism which goes way beyond just those boys who are in their late teens and early 20s.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

All right, well, let's get back to the narrative. We're still in 1919, so as we've heard, the Doyle is raising money, the IRA are recruiting all these young men. There are women in the organization, the propaganda, making converts. The strikes have gained momentum. But so far, if you've been through the fighting on the Western front, this does not look like an all out war by any means. And that's all going to change when we get through into 1920 and the death toll begins to mount. So we will do that side of the story after the break.

[Tom Holland]

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Hello to our lovely wrestlers entertainment listeners.

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This is me, Marina Hyde and me, Richard Osman. Hello everybody.

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Yeah, the response has been incredible. Thank you all so much. Deep dive is an unfortunate thing to say in relation to Jaws. But I know what you mean. It's great to be able to do these deep dives into entertainment stories that are off the beaten track. We'd have to do topical stuff. We can tell like amazing stories about amazing movies, amazing albums, amazing characters, amazing stories from the past of showbiz and famous history.

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Really?

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Yeah, it's like the rest of history, but you know, you get to talk about Noel Edmonds.

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Are the hosts of another great Goal Hanger show, the Rest is Entertainment. Each week Richard and I talk about our favorite entertainment news stories and incredible behind the scenes facts.

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Like for example, often when people do podcasts, they are reading off a bit of paper. Well, when they do the trailers, you.

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[E]

Hello.

[Tom Holland]

Welcome back to the Rest Is History. We opened with a misty eyed and in the opinion of Dominic Mawkish ballad about freedom fighters on the run. But actually, Paul, so far in this episode we've had very little fighting. It's basically been wild west shootouts. So how does the pace start to pick up? When do the British start to realize they're in, they are in a war?

[Paul Fraughan]

By the time you get to early 1920, the war is beginning to get much more fierce. So the IRA go after police barracks and by Easter 1920, there are 350 police barracks around the country which have been destroyed. And the ir, the ric, the Irish police basically have to withdraw to just the larger towns. On top of that, there's about 30 actually courthouses which are demolished, destroyed, and local taxation offices too. And they kept at this from the. For the rest of us. So this is the retreat of the British.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But here's a question. Tom said, when did the British ever, ever, you know, when does it strike them that it's a war? And as we'll find out, there are people all through this story who basically dispute that it is a war. There are kind of British hard liners, die hards, who say we're facing a murder campaign. This is a criminality, pure and simple. And these people are, you know, this is what we're facing. It's a law and order issue.

[Tom Holland]

Just to follow up on. British power is being projected through the police force or through the army, through the police force.

[Paul Fraughan]

But then the police force proves unable to do it and the army is around the place as well, always. So it's. I wouldn't separate one from the other. I think, I think you look at it all in the round as Crown force.

[Tom Holland]

It's seen as a policing issue.

[Paul Fraughan]

It's seen as a policing issue. And that's the problem as well. Because what happens with the policing issue is that the police are unable to cope. As you mentioned earlier, Dominic, they are leaving the organization. There are about 50 policemen a week leaving by the summer of 1920. You need to get recruitment somewhere. So what they do is they recruit unemployed soldiers from Britain and they do that at a rate about 100 a week until June 1920. And these new soldiers or these new policemen wear distinctive khaki and green, dark green uniforms and they become famous in Irish history as the Black and Tans. Yeah, and this is one of the terms that is used for this war of independence is the Tan War. Because in the popular mind it's remembered some of the things that they did. They are joined also in the summer of 1922 by another crucial group who were involved in, again, in policing called the Auxiliaries. And these are mainly former officers within the British Army. And between both of those forces, you're looking at possibly around 10,000 people. And they are famous within Irish history and in reality, from the reports at the time, for their brutality, for their drunkenness, and for the unrestrained violence which characterized some of their behavior in some places.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So here the parallel, I would say, is again with what's happening in Eastern Europe, where you have large numbers of ex servicemen joining paramilitary groups basically, often because they're unemployed, because there's been a massive economic downturn at the end of the First World War, so they need a job, they want regular pay, they like having a uniform, they like carrying a gun. But also, I mean, this is a thing that I think is always underappreciated in all these stories. For a lot of these men, it's fun. It gives them a sense of. I mean, rather like joining any paramilitary group. It gives you a sense of brotherhood and belonging and excitement and all of these kinds of things.

[Paul Fraughan]

And they say this. They say this in. In interviews which were recorded later in the 60s for various television documentaries, where, for example, there's one who was on his way to join the French legion in early 1920 for a really small sum of money, and then he goes to pay. Here is good. I'm going to join this. I'll. It'll put me into fellowship again. That world, which he had lived in in the army for years, is now recreated in a different context in. In. In Ireland. Now, you're right in what you said earlier, Tom. This is not the battlefields of the Psalm or Verdun. This is the complete opposite. And it drives people crazy that they do not know where the enemy is coming from, that they're coming from hedges, they melt from the population. They come from it, they kill and they go back into it.

[Tom Holland]

And is this a new kind of.

[Paul Fraughan]

Warfare in the Irish context? Yes, it is. It is a new kind of warfare. It is seen and it is seen as kind of a prototype guerrilla warfare which is then taken different countries afterwards. I. I'm not enough of a military historian to. To say that this is some sort of a pioneering way of.

[Tom Holland]

But the way in which it's kind of joined in with the ballads and everything else that we've been talking about. There is a sense, isn't there, that the British are confronting a form of combat that no militarized army has, has faced before. And this in part must be why they struggle to get a handle on a strategy for coping with it, because no army has had to deal with something like this.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes, but it's more than that as well. They are singularly failed by the quality of the leadership in Dublin Castle and in the Viceroy. So Lord French was the Field Marshal at the time. Now, he wasn't helped by the fact that his sister, Charlotte Despard, was actually in full swing with the Republican movement. He failed to take the Republicans seriously until it was too late and he was shot in December 1920, or shot at in December 1920. 20. And, and, and almost killed. But you had people like Ian McFerson and Edward Scott and people like that who were just overwhelmed by the nature of their task. So much so that the head of the British Civil Service, Sir Warren Fisher, was sent to Dublin Castle to have a look at how the castle was run. And he wrote a report which is savage on the nature of the castle. He said it was almost woodenly stupid and how it did, how it conducted its affairs. So you have a situation whereby by. You have a creaking administration and then you don't have a unified military command because the police and the army are separate and they. It's not quite clear. And then you have at the top of this a government who does not know what to do and they oscillate between, oh, we'll allow for reprisals if someone's killed in an area, but we're not going to go down the route of absolutely going after everybody here and raising the place so it gets caught in a swinging boat ways.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So this is one thing that strikes me, me that if you're criticizing the British strategy, the British are either either you don't do any reprisals, I would say, and you try to kill with kindness, or you're sort of, you know, the Russians in Chechnya, and you just go in and say, listen, we're just going to kill as many people as it takes. We'll get this done. And we have far more force than you do. And actually the British completely fall between those two stalls that they're never going to go for the sort of utterly brutal raise everything to.

[Paul Fraughan]

They can't, Dominic, they can't.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They don't have the legitimacy, they don't have their support at home. Home, you know that they're inhibited, I think, from doing it even if they wanted to.

[Paul Fraughan]

They can't do it with America apart from anything else. And, and they can't do it because of British public opinion.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly.

[Paul Fraughan]

Because there's enough people in Britain who are appalled at what's going on. The Labour Party sends over delegations. The Manchester Guardian is filled with articles of people opposing what's happening.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But they're still doing enough reprisals to turn opinion against them in Ireland and really kind of.

[Paul Fraughan]

Of localized brutal acts. The destruction of Cork, the sacking of Bal Brigan, various other places. Bo. In County Roscommon, Lehin, County Clare, the towns of Trilly and Le and Kerry. You get these. You, you get these havoc wrought by the Black and Tans or the auxiliaries when they arrive in.

[Tom Holland]

There's a magnificent comment by Sir Neville McCre, who gets appointed supreme, Supreme Military Commander in Ireland in early 1920. And he is comically pessimistic. He, the whole way through this campaign, he's kind of saying it's all awful. And he's, he says whatever we do, we are. We are sure to be wrong. And I mean, he's right.

[Paul Fraughan]

But the world had changed. Like their world had changed. And the British state was also incredibly sick of war. And it was in financial turmoil as well. And it was right. Really clear that if you want to keep a really major army in the field here, it's going to cost you a lot of money, money that you don't necessarily want to spend. And all the while, there. There's no obvious political solution.

[Tom Holland]

And also there's that there are, as Dominic said, colonial situations in Egypt and in India, which may actually be prioritized.

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes. And you can't be seen to lose Ireland significantly while those situations are, are unraveling or unless you get to a certain. To a certain point with them, they're in the horns of a dilemma. They don't know what to do. Their legitimacy has been been utterly destroyed in large sections of the country.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So let's go through to the summer of 1920. We started with that, that mention of I joined the flying column in 1916. You couldn't have joined a flying column then because they didn't have them. But they do have them from summer 1920. Why do the flying columns matter? Why do they change things?

[Paul Fraughan]

So, of course, the great thing about ballads are that they don't have to be slavish to history. They create an atmosphere and an idea.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We create an atmosphere, but we're also slavish to history. So why Podcasts are better than Band Balance. So the, the IRA changing their tactics, Is that what they're doing?

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes, they are changing their tactics. And they go on the run and they're getting more arms. Their arms have been running from around America. They tried to get Tommy guns from America which come across through Liverpool. The IRA in England are. And in Scotland are sending arms over and there's money coming through. So there's a little bit more there. The army is, its intelligence is much better than it was previously run by Michael Collins and Intel War, which was really, really important. He managed to get four junior members of the detectives in Dublin Castle basically the turn, notably Ned Broy and David Nelligan and they gave him names and inspiration. And this intelligence war is vital because there are women in this. Yeah, they're typists and there's people who work in Dublin Castle more generally and they're typists in, in the gpo, Nancy o' Brien, who is a cousin of, of Collins and people who work on the trains are passing information and a special unit is set up in Dublin in mid-1919 in which they kill various people. And that really is flourishing through the 1920s. And this is an army which is developing its power. It runs flying columns around the place. Now it has to be said that it was very localized. The violence were. There were some counties where it was extremely poor, potent and successful and other counties where there was no real action at all during, during these years.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And is that just because the movement is a kind of bottom up movement rather than top down?

[Paul Fraughan]

Yes, it's, it's impossible. Dublin does not run what's happening in the IRA around the country. What the IRA does locally, there are, there is communication and there are weapons flows, but broadly speaking, it's up to local commandants to, to. To run them. And that's not a straightforward operation.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So talking about the IRA and its activities on the ground brings us to probably the single most controversial question of this whole subject. This is the issue of whether the violence is sectarian. And I know probably the most contentious book ever written about Irish history by Peter Hart, the IRA and Its Enemies. He published this groundbreaking book later, got a lot of criticism in which he said this is an aspect of the fighting that has been undervalued and kind of erased, which is there's a lot of sectarian violence and Protestants are the victims of it in some areas. Of course there's an awful lot of, we should say there's an awful lot of sectarian violence undoubtedly in the north in which both sides are carrying it out, but Catholics are predominantly the victims. But just on the IRA and its violence, do you think there's A sectarian edge to it.

[Paul Fraughan]

I don't think you can make the point that religion is central to Irish identity and to broader identities 100 years ago. I don't think you can make that point and then pretend that there is no sectarian element to what happens in the Irish War of Independence. I am not it for a minute saying it was a sectarian war, and I wouldn't want that to be mischaracterized. But to imagine that there were not people in the IRA who were sectarian, who disliked Protestants intensely, who were excluded from land ownership or from positions of power and wealth, who had not. Who had inherited a history in which their people and their religion have been stripped of the land as against other who won't. I think it is a denial of reality to imagine that there is no sectarian element in it. I think the question is, and it has to be posed on an individual basis, to what extent somebody was motivated by sectarianism or by other. By other impulses in causing them both to join the IRA and then to. To. To kill. You'll notice in a lot of Irish ballots, it's all about dying for Ireland. Nobody really wants to talk about killing for Ireland, but killing. Killing is massive in its impact on the lives, obviously, of the people who also. Also do the killing. And it's an extremely difficult conversation for people to have. And Peter Hart. So I was on a train to Belfast, it's 20 years ago now, more or less. And I ended up talking to somebody across me in the time when people used to talk to each other on trains, before phones really got going. And I had this great chat with this Canadian block. And after about half an hour, really, because I'm obviously not the greatest detective of all time, I realized it was Peter Hart. And we're going to a conference in Belfast, which I was talking at as well. And in the way of these things, he was a really, really nice fella. We went for a pint on the way to the conference which softened the blow. Belfast at lunchtime is most enjoyable. And we walk around the corner into the. Into the conference, and there's people protesting about him outside. They've set up a table. They're handing out material against him and his book and his reading of history. And so they view the work as being a scurrilous assault on the legacy of the ira, particularly in. In Cork. So what Peter Hart did was he wrote a study of the IRA in Cork during the War of Independence. Independence. And it's a brilliant book in large measure. It Is it gives a study of the. So of social class. It gives a statistical basis around the violence and everything around. Really, really formidable original piece of scholarship. The two controversial parts of it, largely speaking, are a Kill Michael ambush, which was a major ambush run by a man called Tom Barry.

[Tom Holland]

And we'll come to in the next.

[Paul Fraughan]

We will come to Tom Barry. And. And so Tom Barry. And the second part of it is the murders of 13 Protestants in the Bandon Valley after the truce. And Peter Hart charted all of those and he did so I think the mistakes he made in them and he did make mistakes in them and they are significant and serious mistakes in that his footnoting first of all of interviews was inadequate and that left the door open. And we can pass that off as the fallibility of historical scholarship, which we are all prone to. And there's. To imagine that any of us escape from that is not right. The sense was that Peter Hart had kind of used interviews in a way, however, that were not accurate and that he had invented interviews with people who are dead. Now. I think that's subsequently been proven not to be the case, but that argument still continues. The second point is a much more important point, and that is the point that he used the language. Used language to describe what happened in West Cork or in. And in the Bandon Valley in a really loose way, in a way to be provocative, not almost. He used language around ethnic cleansing in some of the stuff that he wrote and stuff like that. And it was very much of the time of the Balkans and Rwanda. And you can see how this happened. And it is also the work of a historian who's trying to make his name in a field. And you can see it when you do a PhD and you turn it into a book that you can get lured into, over into a use of language. And he got stuff entirely wrong, in my view, and he did not entirely, but he significantly walked back some of that language.

[Tom Holland]

Could I. I mean, just going back to the war itself, could I frame the question slightly different way, which is to ask the. The ideal that. That dates from the Napoleonic period of Protestants and Catholics as part of a single island, which of course is expressed in the tricolor. The. The green and the orange are both there. Is that starting to fade over already?

[Paul Fraughan]

In 1920 through the 19th century, the identification of Irish nationalists with Catholicism was something that gathered momentum through. Through that century. It was given a huge amount of momentum by Daniel O' Connell and his campaigns in the. In. In the 1820s and onwards. The identification, the growth of power in the Catholic Church and the kind of deal of around education and health that they did with the British government to allow them a sort of a pastoral role. And much more is vital in all of this. And the increasing identification of Irishness with Catholicism was well underway by the time there was a revolution in 1916. And you can see that in the poetry that was written and in the beliefs of other things. But there is also a strand of republicanism which utterly rejects the Catholic Church and believes in secularism.

[Tom Holland]

And it is going to shade in this period.

[Paul Fraughan]

It is well into shade at that spirit as the nationalist movement expanded, particularly before 1990.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so just as we move towards the end of the episode, let's remind ourselves that we are in 1920. The British have been flailing around. They've got a divided command. They don't really have a clear strategy or clear instructions from London, where David Lloyd George is still leading this coalition, this wartime coalition that he has managed to perpetuate after the end of the war, which is reliant on the Tories in particular. And they, of course, are very close to the Ulster Unionists. So the British finally pass the Government of Ireland act and they hope this is going to somehow magically fix the whole issue. And the key thing here is that you're going to have two new Home Rule parliaments, one in Dublin and one in Belfast. And this is massively important because this is what effectively establishes Northern Ireland, which is going to be six counties, three of which, well, two and a half of which are, are overwhelmingly Catholic.

[Paul Fraughan]

So if you have six counties. Ulster was historically a nine county province, but the number of Catholics in the nine counties in the 1911 census was about 43%, which was a little bit close to the 50% rule, which would have left things tricky for the future. Northern Ireland, if you went with six counties, you had a 34% Catholic population, which was still seen as a big enough area to be viable, but there was enough of a majority Protestant majority on which to do it. So that was chosen. But what this meant, and this is the deep irony of all of this, is that the one thing that Ulster Unionism had been founded on initially was the rejection of the idea of Home Rule, any home rule, it wanted only to be ruled from London. And now they're left with the situation whereby they must take, take as they see it, their own parliament on a permanent basis to keep them out of an All Ireland 32 county home rule Parliament.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right?

[Paul Fraughan]

But they gladly take this, gladly take it. And in the, in the context of the situation. And you're left then on the other hand, with a 26 county home rule plan, the Government of Ireland Act, a reheating of the 1914 government of Ireland act, which is nowhere near enough for Sinn Fein.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so this is not gonna fix it at all. I mean it might fix it in the north while leaving a massive Catholic minority, but in the remainder of Ireland, the Government of Ireland act is kind of irrelevant.

[Paul Fraughan]

Oh, it's entirely irrelevant.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so we've reached the autumn of 1920. The conflict's been going on for almost two years. You know, we began with a misty eyed ballad, but there's a real edge to the story now. We've, you've described the reprisals of the black and tank and the auxiliaries, houses being burned down, families being driven from their homes and so on. And now we're going to come to 21st November 1920, the most controversial day of the entire conflict. The game at Croke park between the Dublin and Tipperary Gaelic football teams. And that day will go down in history as Bloody Sunday. And Tom, we will be moving now to Croke park for the next part of the story. And can anybody. Is there any way that people desperate to hear that episode with Paul, Is there any way they can do that?

[Tom Holland]

Well, Dominic, it will stun you, it will stun Paul and it will stun all our listeners to learn that there is cause. Members of the Rest Is History Club can hear that episode right now by signing up to therestishistory.com and that is a website that no one has ever heard before. The Rest Is History. Go there and you can hear all about the most notorious episode in the entire history of the Irish revolution. For everyone else, people who don't want to do that, we will be back on Monday and we will see you then. Bye bye.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thanks so much, Paul. Bye bye.

[Paul Fraughan]

Goodbye.

[E]

Hey everyone, here's that Jaws clip that we mentioned during the break. You can listen to the whole episode for free on the Wrestlers entertainment dot com. There's no cast at this point as well.

[D]

The cast is so last minute for this.

[E]

It was nine days before principal photography was due to start. Two of the three main parts, Quinton Hooper still hadn't been cast nine days before. So everyone's ready, everyone's ready to go, you know, the whole universe, who were.

[D]

Eventually played by Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss in the movie. And those two have a massive feud. There were so many other different people that they considered. Now Brody, who is actually played by Roy Scheider. And it's a brilliant performance. He's so sort of. It's an amazing performance, actually.

[E]

So put upon and like every man.

[D]

But yeah, I mean, the other people considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert Duvall, Gene Hatman, like, definitely the last two of those could have done it.

[E]

Yeah, I think Charlton Heston was desperate to be in it. And Spielberg, again, you know what, he was smart right from the beginning. Spielberg, he said, think about Charlton Heston. He's too big a star.

[D]

Why is he too big? Because, you know, Charlton Heston always wins. That's the problem. You know, Charlton Heston is gonna defeat the shark. You don't know what Roy Scheider's gonna do. You just don't know. So it's really important.

[E]

Roy Scheider has the look of a man who could be eaten.

[D]

Who could definitely be eaten.

[E]

Ye. You'd be like, yeah, I can see it. I don't know if his agent is going to be saying he's going to be in it, but he can't be eaten. He could definitely be eaten.

[D]

Charlton Heston Eats Sharks. The end.

[E]

Charlton Heston Eats Sharks. Another. Again, another great title for the book.

[D]

Roy Scheider actually heard Steven Spielberg talking about it at a party. And Steven Spielberg was saying he'd had this idea for how he could get the shark to jump onto a boat. Roy Scheider thought, I'd like to be in that movie.

[E]

That sounds good. I like this kid.

[D]

And he said, I would like to be in this movie anyway.

[E]

Charlton Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that. Hey, everyone, here's that Jaws clip that we mentioned during the break. You can listen to the whole episode for free on the wrestlersentertainment.com. there's no comedy at this point as well.

[D]

The cast is so last minute for this.

[E]

It was nine days before principal photography was due to start. Two of the three main parts, Quinton Hooper still hadn't been cast nine days before. So everyone's ready. Everyone's ready to go. You know, the whole unit, who were.

[D]

Eventually played by Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus in the movie. And those two have a massive feud. There were so many other different people that they considered now, Brody, who was actually played by Roy Scheider, and it's a brilliant performance. He's so sort of. It's an amazing performance.

[E]

He's so put upon and like every man.

[D]

But yeah, I mean, the other considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, like, definitely the last two of those could have done it.

[E]

Yeah, I think Charlton Heston was desperate to be in it. And Spielberg again, you know what, he was smart right from the beginning. Spielberg, he said, the thing about Charlton Heston, he's too big a star.

[D]

Why is he too big? Because, you know, Charlton Heston always wins. That's the problem. You know, Charlton Heston is going to defeat the shark. You don't know what Reichshire is going to do. You just don't know. So it's really important.

[E]

Roy Scheider has the look of a man who could be eaten, who could definitely be eaten. You'd be like, yeah, I can see it. I don't know if his agent is, you know, gonna be saying he's gonna be in it, but he can't be eaten. It could definitely be eaten.

[D]

Charlton Heston Eats Sharks. The end.

[E]

Charlton Heston Eats Sharks. Another, again, another great title for the book.

[D]

Roy Scheider actually heard Steven Spielberg talking about it at a party. And Steven Spielberg was saying he'd had this idea for how he could get the shark to jump onto a boat. Roy Scheider thought, I'd like to be in that movie.

[E]

That sounds good. I like this kid.

[D]

And he said, I would like to be in this movie anyway.

[E]

Charlton Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Hi, everybody. You're still here right at the end of the episode. I'm very impressed by your commitment. But listen, I have a question for you. I want to ask you something in confidence. Do you sometimes listen to the adverts on these episodes and do you sometimes think, do you know what I wish that the listeners to this podcast, I wish they were listening to an advert about my brand rather than the other stuff that Tom and Dominic are promoting on here. If you have thought that there is of course only one way to find out what that would be like, you can disrupt the procession of adverts. You could be the next HSBC premier or the many other tremendous companies that have advertised on the Rest Is History. And you could put your brand in front of millions of like minded listeners by advertising on the Rest Is History and indeed the other shows on the Goal Hanger Network. Now you may be thinking, I don't know what the Goal Hanger Network is. Gohanger are the company behind this very show. And if you are in the market to increase the value of your brand, Goal Hanger would love to hear from from you. You can register your interest or indeed your company's interest by going to goalhanger.com right now. And that is goal G O A L hanger H-A N-G-E R dot com.