**From RTÉ:** *Today marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.*
*The conflict lasted almost a year, cost 2,000 lives, and devastated the country. The cost of the physical destruction has been put at £50m in 1922 values.*
*Six months earlier, the leaders of the Irish War of Independence signed a Treaty with Britain, that ended the war and offered limited independence inside the British Commonwealth.*
*There would be no Irish Republic, the new entity would be called the Irish Free State.*
*All members of the new Irish parliament, the Dáil, would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown.*
*The Dáil narrowly voted to accept the terms of the Treaty, but those opposed to it believed too much had been conceded to the British, and that the ideals of the Republic had been betrayed.*
*The new Provisional Government saw the Treaty as a beginning not an end, and the freedoms that had been won could be expanded upon.*
*Reconciliation proved impossible. The anti-Treaty wing of the Irish Republican Army renounced its allegiance to the Dáil and the Government, and declared itself the defender of an Irish Republic.*
*Both sides prepared for war. The new Free State Army received substantial arms shipments from Britain.*
*The anti-Treaty IRA stole weapons from the Free State Army, the new Civic Guard police force, the British Army and Royal Navy.*
*The anti-Treaty IRA seized the Four Courts complex in Dublin as its new headquarters.*
*The Provisional Government held off from reacting, partly out of hope that reconciliation was still possible, but also because the Free State Army was not ready for battle.*
Keane. I felt McCarthy got it wrong at the time
Pro treaty parties won 78.1% of the vote at the June 1922 General Election, its clear which side the people of the time were on anyway.
One side was responsible for worse war crimes than the Black and Tans and it wasn’t the republicans.
I don’t think it’s helpful to look at it as who was right and who was wrong, good v bad.
I think it better to understand why both sides thought what they did, the context of the moment, the pressures that were pushing them in to taking such positions.
Both groups were convinced they were right and I think they were sincere and acting in good fate, such a shame it led to blood letting on such a scale
I wonder what the breakup would have been if they knew that literally none of them would live to see a United Ireland and the North would still be under UK rule 100 years later. The whole “stepping stone” thing hasn’t looked good.
None , cause it’s stupid and we shouldn’t divide ourselves over something that happened 100 years ago
No one won this war.
The Treaty Collins agreed, in hindsight, achieved more than the previous 700yrs of fighting did.
Granted, that even today we’re not fully there yet.
When you look at the progress with that perspective, we may have a United Ireland in the next 50yrs and that would still be a good outcome from the decision
The whole thing is so, so, so utterly devastatingly sad. There were just so many ways the situation could have been resolved without deteriorating into all-out civil war.
But let’s be clear, the only side truly to *blame* for the civil war was ultimately the British. To quote an exchange between two British civil servants from the famously on-point 1980s sitcom Yes Minister, on the subject of British policy towards former colonies:
*”We made the real mistake decades ago when we gave them independence. We should have partitioned the island, like we did in India, Cyprus, Palestine, and Ireland.”*
*”…But, didn’t partition always lead to civil war? I mean, it did in India, Cyprus, Palestine, and Ireland…”*
I don’t know about winners but the big losers were the Labour movement. They went from being the official opposition to being the default third party. The fact that we had a civil war divide meant that we were deprived of a left-right divide in government for decades.
Some people might say we have a left-right divide now and nominally we do but it seems more like grand coalition of rural populism, centre and green v left populism, which is not the same thing.
“which side are you on?” thats me on the right hand side four back in that picture . i was 26 at the time so that makes me 126 now and on the right.
Neither.
No matter who wins, in the end its going to be the rich assholes that are going to be the real winners. And I am not dying so their sons and be spoiled rotten, while being told to work hard and I too could be rich.
What’s often not appreciated is the Brits were fighting us with a small part of their armed forces. If we’d rejected the treaty they’d have sent the lot and declared a total war. We couldn’t fight the Brits who had the 700 ton Helga shelling the GPO, how the hell were we gonna tackle the 45,000 ton Hood?
I always thought the Irish Civil war was interesting.
In the U.S. Civil War, you generally fought for the State you were born in. In the English Civil War, the average soldier was just recruited by his local lord or baron.
But the Irish Civil War was actually ideological. The whole “brother against brother” thing was far more likely to be literal in our Civil War than in other countries’.
Liam Neeson
I’m just after reading a book called The Great Cover Up by Gerard Murphy about the assassination of Michael Collins and it was exactly that ; enacted not by the IRA as such but by the older and more distinguished IRB.
It was painted as a bumbling accident almost but this book explains how he was deliberately targeted having previously been condemned by the IRB.
For me personally, I think I would’ve been Anti-Treaty based on my black and white thinking and on reflection with hindsight, I would’ve been wrong….and dead..
The Civil War was is one of the most embarrassing things about our history to me. We had just spent a couple of years killing and dying for independence and the very first thing we do with our first bit of autonomy in hundreds of years is start a war with each other. I’ve always thought this, but it really hit home for me a few years ago when I did the tour of Glasnevin cemetary. You had friends and family members who spent their wholes lives together, fought together in the War of Independence and then fought against each other and died in the Civil War, buried within a few yards of one another.
I understand why it happened, but it was just such a waste and so maddening that the main political figures at the time were so completely pig headed that they would sooner have us killing each other than trying to develop our new country together. The boys in Westminster must have thought it was hilarious. What’s worse is that history proves it was completely irrelevant too. Within a quarter of a century all of the contentious compromises in the Treaty had been stripped away and we were completely independent and I can’t imagine any timeline where Northern Ireland would have been part of the Republic by now.
The side which says the department of education should’ve asked about this in LC history this year…
Ideals: Anti-Treaty
Realism: Pro-Treaty
How many revolutions also include civil wars? Revolution unlocks the human spirit, but civil war squashes it…
Pro treaty. I don’t have time for a long answer and I’m sure I’ll get lambasted, but it’s interesting to play out some what-ifs for Ireland’s prosperity and freedom from church oppression, which did massive damage to our country. We might have ended up more like Canada.
Go ahead, Blast me.
The shelling of the four courts is probably one of the greatest losses of this war from my perspective as a history nut.
So much amazing history lost forever that we will never know
I thought it was Thomas Shelvey who killed michael collins
The level of cuntyness of DeValera to fight against the treaty then become Taoiseach and invalidate it is beyond measure, Collins didn’t have to die this war didn’t have to be fought
26 comments
**From RTÉ:** *Today marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.*
*The conflict lasted almost a year, cost 2,000 lives, and devastated the country. The cost of the physical destruction has been put at £50m in 1922 values.*
*Six months earlier, the leaders of the Irish War of Independence signed a Treaty with Britain, that ended the war and offered limited independence inside the British Commonwealth.*
*There would be no Irish Republic, the new entity would be called the Irish Free State.*
*All members of the new Irish parliament, the Dáil, would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown.*
*The Dáil narrowly voted to accept the terms of the Treaty, but those opposed to it believed too much had been conceded to the British, and that the ideals of the Republic had been betrayed.*
*The new Provisional Government saw the Treaty as a beginning not an end, and the freedoms that had been won could be expanded upon.*
*Reconciliation proved impossible. The anti-Treaty wing of the Irish Republican Army renounced its allegiance to the Dáil and the Government, and declared itself the defender of an Irish Republic.*
*Both sides prepared for war. The new Free State Army received substantial arms shipments from Britain.*
*The anti-Treaty IRA stole weapons from the Free State Army, the new Civic Guard police force, the British Army and Royal Navy.*
*The anti-Treaty IRA seized the Four Courts complex in Dublin as its new headquarters.*
*The Provisional Government held off from reacting, partly out of hope that reconciliation was still possible, but also because the Free State Army was not ready for battle.*
Keane. I felt McCarthy got it wrong at the time
Pro treaty parties won 78.1% of the vote at the June 1922 General Election, its clear which side the people of the time were on anyway.
One side was responsible for worse war crimes than the Black and Tans and it wasn’t the republicans.
I don’t think it’s helpful to look at it as who was right and who was wrong, good v bad.
I think it better to understand why both sides thought what they did, the context of the moment, the pressures that were pushing them in to taking such positions.
Both groups were convinced they were right and I think they were sincere and acting in good fate, such a shame it led to blood letting on such a scale
I wonder what the breakup would have been if they knew that literally none of them would live to see a United Ireland and the North would still be under UK rule 100 years later. The whole “stepping stone” thing hasn’t looked good.
None , cause it’s stupid and we shouldn’t divide ourselves over something that happened 100 years ago
No one won this war.
The Treaty Collins agreed, in hindsight, achieved more than the previous 700yrs of fighting did.
Granted, that even today we’re not fully there yet.
When you look at the progress with that perspective, we may have a United Ireland in the next 50yrs and that would still be a good outcome from the decision
The whole thing is so, so, so utterly devastatingly sad. There were just so many ways the situation could have been resolved without deteriorating into all-out civil war.
But let’s be clear, the only side truly to *blame* for the civil war was ultimately the British. To quote an exchange between two British civil servants from the famously on-point 1980s sitcom Yes Minister, on the subject of British policy towards former colonies:
*”We made the real mistake decades ago when we gave them independence. We should have partitioned the island, like we did in India, Cyprus, Palestine, and Ireland.”*
*”…But, didn’t partition always lead to civil war? I mean, it did in India, Cyprus, Palestine, and Ireland…”*
I don’t know about winners but the big losers were the Labour movement. They went from being the official opposition to being the default third party. The fact that we had a civil war divide meant that we were deprived of a left-right divide in government for decades.
Some people might say we have a left-right divide now and nominally we do but it seems more like grand coalition of rural populism, centre and green v left populism, which is not the same thing.
“which side are you on?” thats me on the right hand side four back in that picture . i was 26 at the time so that makes me 126 now and on the right.
Neither.
No matter who wins, in the end its going to be the rich assholes that are going to be the real winners. And I am not dying so their sons and be spoiled rotten, while being told to work hard and I too could be rich.
What’s often not appreciated is the Brits were fighting us with a small part of their armed forces. If we’d rejected the treaty they’d have sent the lot and declared a total war. We couldn’t fight the Brits who had the 700 ton Helga shelling the GPO, how the hell were we gonna tackle the 45,000 ton Hood?
I always thought the Irish Civil war was interesting.
In the U.S. Civil War, you generally fought for the State you were born in. In the English Civil War, the average soldier was just recruited by his local lord or baron.
But the Irish Civil War was actually ideological. The whole “brother against brother” thing was far more likely to be literal in our Civil War than in other countries’.
Liam Neeson
I’m just after reading a book called The Great Cover Up by Gerard Murphy about the assassination of Michael Collins and it was exactly that ; enacted not by the IRA as such but by the older and more distinguished IRB.
It was painted as a bumbling accident almost but this book explains how he was deliberately targeted having previously been condemned by the IRB.
For me personally, I think I would’ve been Anti-Treaty based on my black and white thinking and on reflection with hindsight, I would’ve been wrong….and dead..
The Civil War was is one of the most embarrassing things about our history to me. We had just spent a couple of years killing and dying for independence and the very first thing we do with our first bit of autonomy in hundreds of years is start a war with each other. I’ve always thought this, but it really hit home for me a few years ago when I did the tour of Glasnevin cemetary. You had friends and family members who spent their wholes lives together, fought together in the War of Independence and then fought against each other and died in the Civil War, buried within a few yards of one another.
I understand why it happened, but it was just such a waste and so maddening that the main political figures at the time were so completely pig headed that they would sooner have us killing each other than trying to develop our new country together. The boys in Westminster must have thought it was hilarious. What’s worse is that history proves it was completely irrelevant too. Within a quarter of a century all of the contentious compromises in the Treaty had been stripped away and we were completely independent and I can’t imagine any timeline where Northern Ireland would have been part of the Republic by now.
The side which says the department of education should’ve asked about this in LC history this year…
Ideals: Anti-Treaty
Realism: Pro-Treaty
How many revolutions also include civil wars? Revolution unlocks the human spirit, but civil war squashes it…
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/do-all-revolutions-end-badly
Pro treaty. I don’t have time for a long answer and I’m sure I’ll get lambasted, but it’s interesting to play out some what-ifs for Ireland’s prosperity and freedom from church oppression, which did massive damage to our country. We might have ended up more like Canada.
Go ahead, Blast me.
The shelling of the four courts is probably one of the greatest losses of this war from my perspective as a history nut.
So much amazing history lost forever that we will never know
I thought it was Thomas Shelvey who killed michael collins
The level of cuntyness of DeValera to fight against the treaty then become Taoiseach and invalidate it is beyond measure, Collins didn’t have to die this war didn’t have to be fought
The whole thing was idiocy.
Duh, I’m on the Irish side