There are marked parallels between the two countries’ liberation wars
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.he Irish revolutionary Michael Collins has been pictured in a back room of the General Post Office in Dublin, shaking his head in disgust over the chaotic miscarriage of the 1916 republican uprising against British rule.
How was it, then, that just five years later British prime minister Lloyd George would settle with the Irish Republican Army in a treaty that gave Ireland self-government? Britain refused to recognise Dáil Éireann, the Irish counter-parliament formed after the republican electoral landslide, setting the stage for armed revolt.
In part, British policy on Ireland was driven by imperial arrogance and racism. For Tory leader Bonar Law the Irish were “an inferior race”; Winston Churchill wrote of “a diabolical strain in the Irish character … a treacherous, assassinating, conspiring trait … that prevented them from being a great responsible nation”.The leaders of the 1916 uprising were shot after being court-marshalled, with the barrister Patrick Pearse so badly wounded that he died strapped to a chair.
By September 1 900 members had quit and the RIC was largely driven from the Irish countryside, allowing alternative state structures such as republican courts to spring up. For the British Empire, the widely publicised spectacle of homeless families outside burnt-out houses and shops was a reputational disaster.
The British intelligence system also foundered at the start. Despite a £10 000 reward, Michael Collins, the Mandela-style Dublin Pimpernel, cycled around the city and plotted attacks in its pubs without being arrested. A further blow was the razing of the Customs House, the heart of the Irish civil service, in May 1921. Despite IRA losses — five killed and 80 captured — the operation has been likened for its shock effect to North Vietnam’s 1968 Tet offensive.
The de facto head of state and its most seasoned diplomat, Éamon de Valera, controversially stood back and left the treaty talks to others, including Collins.
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