Gray 2007

The Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21: Lessons from
an Irregular Conflict
COLIN S. GRAY
National Institute for Public Policy
Fairfax, Virginia, USA
The Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21, the first modern guerrilla war, offers many lessons
relevant to today’s counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. The Irish Republican Army
(IRA), and de facto IRA commander-in-chief Michael Collins in particular, conducted a
highly effective insurgent struggle against a British opponent lacking a coherent COIN
strategy. For reasons discussed herein, however, the British government eventually was
able to obtain an agreement that ended the war and protected its most vital strategic
interests while nonetheless still permitting the creation of an Irish Free State. This study
examines the character of Anglo-Irish War and draws a series of twenty-eight lessons
from that conflict.
The British dilemma:
Whatever we do we are sure to be wrong. (General Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief Ireland [GOC in
C], 21 April, 1920).1
Introduction: Why Study the Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21?

While irregular warfare in its several modes (guerrilla war, insurgency, terrorism) is as old
as strategic history itself, modern revolutionary warfare of a guerrilla character was invented
in Ireland between 1919 and 1921. To quote a leading historian of the Irish “troubles”:
Irish republicans invented modern revolutionary warfare, with its mass parties,
popular fronts, guerrilla warfare, underground governments, and continuous
propaganda campaigns. What Michael Collins and company did in post–Great
War Ireland, Mao, Tito, and Ho Chi Minh would do during and after the next
world war.2
And, lest the claim for strategic historical significance has been insufficiently registered:
Irish events helped to inaugurate an era of mass movements, citizens revolts,

and guerrilla wars of liberation.3
The Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 was the first modern guerrilla war. It was conceived
and promoted in 1916–18, one must add, before T. E. Lawrence became popular as the
contemporary exemplar of the romantic guerrilla leader. That alone is sufficient justification
for this study. However, the case for studying this irregular war does not rest only, or even
In addition to the secondary sources cited in the notes, this article rests upon primary evidence
from “The Bureau of Military History, 1913–1921,” of the Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks,
Rathmines, Dublin. This collection of documents, primarily witness statements, has been released
to the public only recently and is a goldmine for the historian of the War of Independence, as the
Anglo-Irish War is known in Ireland. I am grateful to my colleague, Dr. Geoffrey Sloan, for access to
his set of these unique documents.
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Comparative Strategy, 26:371–394, 2007
0149-5933/07 $12.00 + .00
DOI: 10.1080/01495930701750208
372 C. S. Gray
largely, on its historical novelty. Instead, as we will show, the war revealed almost everything
one needs to know about irregular warfare. Both for the irregular and the regular belligerent,
the Anglo-Irish War had it all. Indeed, the relevance of the events of 1919–21, especially the
host of possible lessons, is almost uncannily appropriate to the conduct of irregular warfare
today.
It is necessary to offer the caveat that every war is unique. Its origins, outbreak, character,
course, and outcome are distinctive. It may follow that some of the lessons one discerns
are really nothing of the kind. They might simply be telling judgments that explain events
at a particular time and place. While acknowledging that caveat, and granting the rich
individuality of the warfare of 1919–21, keyed as it was to its unique contexts, this study
is not deterred from identifying many candidate lessons for today. Readers must judge
for themselves whether or not the lessons specified in the final section truly warrant the
ascription.
Historical Narrative: The Course of Strategic History, 1919–21

The Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21, seen in retrospect, was a war within a war. England,
Britain, the British Empire, was the enemy of the day, as in one form or another it had
been for 800 years, no less.4 But the war was only an episode, albeit a most vital one, in an
armed struggle between Irishmen that even today is not conclusively resolved. However,
for the limited purposes of this study, it is the events of 1919–21 that will concern us, with
suitable additional information on immediately preceding and consequent happenings. What
occurred?
In all but summary form, the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 may be dated from 21 January
1919, when the new, illegal, Irish Parliament, the Dail Eireann, proclaimed an independent
Irish Republic and declared war on Britain. The Dail was a one-party assembly, populated
by the 73 Sinn Fein (“Ourselves,” or “Our Own Thing”) winners of the 105 (Westminster)
parliamentary seats for Ireland, actually by the 26 who were not in Jail. In a spirit of
exaltation, or possibly by accident, enthusiastic gunmen in Co. Tipperary celebrated the
creation of the Dail by murdering two policemen. The war was on, though as yet it was
certainly not centrally directed or controlled. The war concluded with a truce, requested by
the British Government, on 11 July 1921. That truce was succeeded by months of hard and
bitter bargaining over treaty terms, both in London, where the talks were held, and even
more in Dublin, among the rival schools of Irish patriots. The result was the Anglo-Irish
Treaty of 6 December 1921. That treaty was accepted by the Dail Eireann on 7 January
1922, by a close vote of 64 to 57. For reasons we shall explain, there was an irreconcilable
faction in Sinn Fein and the IRA (there always is, cf. Hamas today) that would not accept the
Anglo-Irish Treaty. So, a second war was waged, this time a most uncivil civil war, which
lasted from 28 June 1922 until 27 April 1923. Those in the IRA who rejected the treaty were
comprehensively and bloodily defeated by the regular armed forces of the newly established
Irish Free State. The general public was not at all sympathetic to continuation of the armed
struggle. Unlike the British Government and its instruments of rule in Ireland, the Irish Free
State established by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921, and ratified by popular
vote, had all the authority it needed to suppress the IRA. There is a lesson there of enduring
significance. An intervening power often is tentative, even fearful, in employing force, but
a truly local government, with a clear popular mandate, need have no such inhibitions.
It is distinctly arguable whether or not the Anglo-Irish War was strategically or politi-
cally necessary for some significant measure of Irish independence. Britain was not fighting
to maintain the status quo. By 1919, the dominant political issue for Britain was the terms
The Anglo-Irish War, 1919–1921 373
for, and extent of, Irish autonomy within the empire. Home Rule for Ireland was accepted
everywhere, except in the Protestant counties of Northern Ireland (six of them for the hard
core, nine for the historic province of Ulster). Nonetheless, for historical and cultural rea-
sons, Irish self-assertion then, and since, has been wedded to faith in the power of the gun.5
This is why, even today, the disarmament of the paramilitary armies is an issue of immense
symbolic, as well as practical, consequence.
Between early 1919 and the truce of July 1921, the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
waged an ever more sophisticated guerrilla campaign against, primarily, the Royal Irish
Constabulary (RIC), and then, increasingly, the British Army itself. The campaign followed
a progressive, but flexible, strategic course, and its strategic logic was impeccable, effective,
and, dare one hazard the claim, eternally valid. In a later section of this study we shall explain
the methods of the IRA in detail. Suffice it to say at this juncture that the history of the war
lends itself to swift summary.
The IRA waged a quintessentially Clausewitzian struggle. The practical enemy was
not the military might of Britain. Since IRA activists never numbered more than 5,000, and
that is probably an exaggeration, whereas the British could field close to 80,000 security
forces of all kinds by mid-1921, a regular style military victory was always out of reach.
Instead, the IRA fought the war in such a way that the British would defeat themselves. To
those of us battle scarred from much more recent irregular conflicts, that ought to sound
familiar. The IRA fought for two and a half years, though truly only for a year intensively
(1920–21), to defeat the political will of the British. Every act of violence orchestrated
from the center by the IRA (local initiatives were another matter entirely, of course) was
designed to contribute to the political and psychological demoralization of the enemy. The
violence was necessary, but strictly instrumental. The IRA succeeded by (1) staying in the
field, undefeated; and (2) provoking reprisals by the forces of the crown, which antagonized
the Irish people and, even more to the point, created crises of conscience for liberal British
politicians.
The war was a military stalemate. In fact, the British forces ultimately, by 1921, were
remarkably successful, given that they had broken every one of what one can identify
with high confidence as the sound rules for effective counterinsurgency (COIN).6 That fact
may be a comment on the strategic quality of the IRA as an adversary, of course. The
British, eventually, waged a tolerably effective campaign. Moreover, it was a campaign that
threatened, credibly, to become very much more serious, were the IRA to refuse the offer
of a truce in July 1921. Deterrence was at work, without a doubt.
Overall, though, the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 was a guerrilla struggle wherein
the IRA succeeded in outlasting the political will of the British Government. The IRA
deliberately adopted methods, including murder, designed to encourage the British to make
fatal strategic and political mistakes. The outcome of the war, expressed in the terms of
the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921, fell considerably short of the expectations of
many of the IRA’s more ideological, less pragmatic, warriors. Hence, the newly established
Irish Free State had no choice other than to put down the irreconcilables of the IRA in the
bloody civil war of 1922–23. But, the Anglo-Irish War, although it fed richly into a century
of troubles to come, was historically distinctive, with at least an approximate beginning in
January 1919, phases of increasing military activity in 1919, 1920, and 1921, and a clear, if
fragile, conclusion, with the negotiated truce of 11 July 1921. And that truce laid the basis
for the negotiations that produced the nearly definitive Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December
1921, which resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State.
Thus far this narrative has carefully avoided reference to the iconic events of Easter
1916, The Rising. We will treat the significance and consequences of 1916 for the war of
374 C. S. Gray
The Anglo-Irish War: Chronology

1918
14–28 December General election, Sinn Fein wins 73 of 105 Irish seats.
1919
21 January Sinn Fein’s elected MPs establish an independent Irish Parliament,
the Dail Eireann. De Valera elected President of the proclaimed
Irish Republic.
12 September Dail Eireann declared illegal.
1920
2 January First “Black and Tans” recruited; former British soldiers to
strengthen the struggling Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).
27 July “Auxiliary” paramilitary force recruited to augment the RIC.
21 November “Bloody Sunday.” High point of IRA murders and “official” murders
in reprisal.
23 December Government of Ireland Act establishes six-county parliament and
administration for Ulster.
1921
11 July Truce between IRA and British forces
6 December Anglo-Irish Treaty
1922
7 January Dail approves the Anglo-Irish Treaty, 64 to 57.
March IRA splits into pro- and anti-Treaty factions
28 June Anti-treaty IRA rising. Start of civil war
1923
27 April IRA order ceasefire. Civil war over.
1919–21 in a later section. For now, we do not wish to muddy the water with detail inessential
to the course of later history. This brief narrative concludes with a terse chronology of the
key dates in the conflict.
The Threat to Britain

Before proceeding further with analysis of the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21, it is essential to
take note of the pervasive importance of historical context for both sides. When focusing on
a particular, apparently minor and even rather parochial conflict, it is all too easy to neglect
the historical context within which that conflict is locked.
First, on the IRA side, the War of 1919–21 was waged against a background of centuries
of English and British oppression. That Irish perception of oppression was no myth. For
nearly 400 years, from the late twelfth to the early sixteenth century, the hard hand of the
Norman and Anglo-Norman had borne down without undue violence. Indeed, so light was
the English yoke in practice that by the late fifteenth century the territorial zone around
Dublin that truly was under the firm control of the English crown and its servants was
confined by the famous “Pale” to a few hundred square miles. (The saying “beyond the
pale” came to mean outside of governance). But the advent of the Tudor dynasty changed
that situation. From the sixteenth century onward, the English ascendancy, augmented
in its determined exploitation of native resources by the Protestant Revolution, became
oppressive by any standard. By 1714, only 7 percent of Irish land remained in Irish hands,
a figure that declined to below 5 percent later in the century.7 This oppression, religious,
political, cultural, and above all else territorial, led to a series of abortive rebellions. The
dates of the famous risings were 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1881–82, and 1916. Irish Catholic
attitudes toward England, the Anglo-Irish, and Protestants were forged by these centuries
of oppression. Also significant was the great potato famine, which gathered pace from 1845
and was at its worst in 1848–49. By a combination of famine, the consequent spread of
disease, and enforced emigration, census returns show that the population of Ireland literally
halved in the second half of the nineteenth century. The census of 6 June 1841 returned a
total Irish population of 8,175,124; that of 31 March, 1901, showed only 4,458,775.8 That
was a remarkable decline by any standard.
Second, on the British side, one must not forget that for London Ireland was very much
an embarrassing sideshow. The grand historical context for Britain and its empire from 1916
to 1921 was, initially, the total war being waged against Germany and its allies. While Irish
would-be insurgents were escalating coercion and preparing for the resort to the gun again,
Britain was literally warding off defeat on the Western Front. In 1919 and beyond, although
Ireland intruded more and more into the required business of the British Government, that
government was massively preoccupied with reshaping the map of Europe, and indeed the
world, through the Versailles Settlement. Also, Lloyd George’s coalition administration was
beset with all of the problems of immediate postwar economic recovery. In addition, Britain
in 1919–21 was heavily committed to muscular imperial policing in Asia and the Middle
East. The Third Afghan War, for example, was well underway in 1919. The Anglo-Irish War
of 1919–21 has to be approached in both the long and the contemporary contexts just cited.
What threat was posed by the IRA to Britain and its Empire? A five-part answer to this
question is necessary.
First, and above all else, the IRA threatened to begin a process of forcible imperial
disintegration. Bear in mind that courtesy of the mandated former German and Turkish
territories granted Britain by the new League of Nations at Versailles, the British Empire
from 1919 to 1939 was at its most extensive. 1919 and after appeared to signal the finest,
certainly the most expansive, “strategic moment” of that empire.9 The British had many
faults, but they did not acquire and hold the largest global empire in history by rank stupidity.
London reasoned that its empire rested significantly on British prestige. And that prestige
depended critically on the respect of the governed for the British will and ability to rule.
The IRA menaced that strategically tidy world. If it were able to compel British retreat
from, or even just in, Ireland, it could be but the first of a cascade of revolts. The IRA
would have shown the way to cast off the colonial oppressor. In 1919–21, Britain was not
ready to concede political defeat in small, backward, Ireland, lest it fuel the lamp of hope
for self-determination elsewhere. India, the jewel in Britannia’s crown, was suffering from
widespread unrest. Britain had some good reason to fear that the political stakes in Ireland
might be empirewide.
Second, from Easter 1916 until November 1918, a period that saw a great deal of
uncoordinated coercive violence by Irish Volunteers (IV) (the IV were the precursors of the
IRA, which subsumed them entirely in 1919–20), London had reason to fear an alliance
between Germany and Irish republicans. This was not fanciful. In 1916, the Germans
shipped 20,000 rifles and ten machine guns on board the Aud, to equip the rising. The Aud
was intercepted off the Irish coast by the Royal Navy. But it so happened that the leader-
martyrs of the Easter Rising were fundamentally uninterested in military detail. Even had
the Aud succeeded in unloading its potent cargo, the leaders of the rebellion had made
no provision for its orderly distribution. Twenty thousand rifles and ammunition, keyed to
a seriously planned insurrection, would have been a dangerous crisis for London, albeit
376 C. S. Gray
one that could only have one outcome, to the Irish disadvantage. In 1918, rumors were
flying in Ireland of a German plan to land an expeditionary force in Ireland. Should such
a strategically improbable event have occurred, it would of course have altered notably the
seriousness with which London regarded its Irish troubles.
Third, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the old saying that “geography is des-
tiny.” It is Ireland’s geostrategic misfortune to lie where it does, proximate to the Western
Approaches to the British Isles (today, a geographical term contested by some in Ireland,
to the bafflement of cartographers). The Great War showed that the fundamental condition
for British security, which is to say its maritime security, required the use of naval bases
in Ireland. In 1917, prior to the introduction of the convoy system, Britain was facing the
prospect of defeat in the war as a result of Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign. The
IRA, with its demand for an independent Irish republic, thus threatened British strategic
survival in a future war. From London’s perspective, the right of access to a few vital Irish
ports was not negotiable. In historical practice, London did concede this right, in 1938 of all
years. But in 1919–21, the essentiality of Irish geography for British maritime security was
a genuine anxiety. Moreover, as the maritime history of World War II was to demonstrate,
bases in Ireland would have been most valuable.10
Fourth, London perceived the growing unrest and occurrence of “outrages” by the IRA
in 1919–21 as having the potential to spark a civil war. Such a war would not be so much
Anglo-Irish as sectarian-ethnic, with the Protestants against the Catholics, in a countrywide
collapse of civil order. In some measure, this did happen. Although most historical narratives
focus on the main plot of the Anglo-Irish War, there were violent pogroms against Catholics
in the northern counties, and against Protestants in the south.11 Again, this was a justified
fear on the part of officials.
Fifth and finally, London began to appreciate that its performance in dealing with
rebellion in Ireland contributed to its prestige internationally. Since, of necessity, the empire
was run far more on prestige, self-belief, and the respect of the governed than it was on force,
perception of British weakness, let alone failure, in Ireland—so close to home—had the
potential to destabilize imperial rule. And that empire was already somewhat destabilized
by the consequences of the Great War.
In short, Britain found plenty to worry it in the deteriorating situation in Ireland in
1919–21. At least, it found plenty to worry about once it turned its collective policy mind
to the complex problem at issue. And that took time.
Irish Motives
Nominally, IRA motives in the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 were crystal clear. They can
be summarised as a determination (a) to eject the British and their instruments of rule and
(b) to create a free and independent “Irish” Irish Republic. At that level of rhetoric, all Irish
rebels were in agreement. But, once reality intruded, in the form of British and northern
Protestant enemies, difficulties blossomed. Would the Irish Ireland that was demanded
include Protestant Ulster? Were Protestant Ulstermen truly Irish? How independent would
the new Ireland need to be? Britain already had conceded Home Rule, as noted above. It was
only set aside by the fortuitous outbreak of the war in 1914. Should Ireland settle for a large
measure of autonomy in domestic affairs and dominion status, after the model of Australia
or Canada? And, how important was the idea of an Irish Republic? Questions such as these
were of less than burning relevance during the war, but once the truce was signed on 11
July 1921, they assumed paramount significance. By late 1921 and beyond, the most bitter
divisions over political goals were not between the IRA and the British. Rather were they
between the pragmatic wing of the IRA, led by its charismatic master strategist, Michael
Collins, and the irreconcilable wing, eventually to be led by Sinn Fein President Eamon de
Valera. The result was the ghastly civil war of 1922–23, which produced more casualties
than had the war against British rule.
When one presents Irish motives in the conflict one has to be careful to distinguish
between the formal goals, which conflate to a unified, if usefully vague, vision of the
desirable, and the practical objectives. Political vision is crucial for an irregular belligerent.
It has to have a big mobilizing idea. That idea needs to be inspiring and inclusive. Its
function is to fuel the rebellion with inspiration. It has to avoid the specifics that could
trigger internecine strife. Time enough for those once the war is won.
Provided no qualifications were added, no caveats noted, the IRA in 1919–21, therefore,
was motivated by the desire to establish an Irish Irish Republic, entirely free of British rule
or tutelage. In practice, the hard men of the IRA, led by Collins, the ultimate pragmatist,
were motivated to win whatever could be won by force. If the maximum vision proved
unattainable, as indeed was to be the case, then Collins would take the best that he could
get. Needless to say, perhaps, to many romantic Irish rebels the prospect of compromising
the pure vision of an independent Irish Republic was anathema.
Even the most romantic believers in a united and wholly Irish Ireland were obliged to
recognize the inconvenient reality of a Protestant Ulster that was not clearly Irish. Britain
successfully solved the Ulster problem, at least for many decades to come, by means of
partition. With the Government of Ireland Act of 23 December 1920, a six-county Ulster
was granted its own Parliament (at Stormont) and became a self-governing province. The
Act also made provision for a Parliament in Dublin, but that idea had long passed its sell-by
date in terms of acceptability to Sinn Fein.
With the problem of not-quite-Irish Ulster dealt with, the challenge to the IRA in 1921
was to decide how many of its policy motives had to be realized for victory to be declared.
Indeed, what would constitute victory, if the British would only concede some of the IRA’s
demands?
To return to basics, what were the motives behind the IRA’s war against British rule?
It is easier to specify what did not motivate the IRA and Sinn Fein than what did. There
was no significant religious motivation. This is not to deny that membership in the IRA was
virtually entirely Catholic. Religion was present as a factor, and it was a potently destructive
factor in sectarian violence at the communal level in both north and south. But the war was
not about religion in any meaningful sense. The Catholic Church played a role supportive
of the IRA and its violence, but it was not an important stimulus to rebellion.
Next, the IRA and its political associates in Sinn Fein were not motivated by economic
issues. If anything, Sinn Fein was socially conservative. The Irish revolution, if such it
was, had no social or economic agenda. Given contemporary happenings in Russia, Ger-
many, Hungary, and elsewhere, this was perhaps surprising. This was a very Irish conflict.
Since land hunger was widespread in Catholic Ireland, following centuries of Anglo-Irish
rural dominance, it is strange that the IRA did not nail land reform to its masthead as
a potent source of popular appeal. It did not do so. The IRA did not promise a rural
revolution.
One is compelled to conclude that the nonstate actor, the IRA, was motivated primarily,
indeed almost exclusively, by ideology. The IRA and Sinn Fein demanded national liberation
from the British yoke (even for Ulster, admittedly an embarrassing and baffling issue). They
wanted, to repeat, a Gaelic, an Irish, Irish Republic from which all vestiges of past British
oppression would be expunged. In practice, as noted above, the pragmatists in the IRA
378 C. S. Gray
were motivated in 1921 to gain by the gun whatever they could, and call that success
victory enough.
Characteristics of the IRA

The IRA was the irregular enemy of Britain in the Anglo-Irish War. However, the IRA did
not come to be known as such until 1919, though by 1920–21 it was recognized by common
usage and assertion as the combatant arm of Irish republican nationalism. The title, IRA, was
not chosen casually. Each of the three words in its name was a politically potent descriptor.
Irish had a somewhat mystical charm, as well as affirming the organization’s identity. Exactly
who was “Irish” was a matter that could be left conveniently vague. Were the Protestants in
the six counties of the north Irish, for the principal example? The commitment to a republic
was central to nationalist ideology and, indeed, an Irish Republic had been proclaimed
“officially,” if illegally, both by the rebels in 1916 and by the Sinn Fein MPs gathered in
their Dail at the Mansion House in Dublin on 21 January 1918. And the announcement that
it was an army implied a legal status, a respectability, that was, at the least, contestable,
but certainly was politically useful. In the context of the appearance of the self-established
Dail Eireann, the new Irish Parliament, the irregular fighters of the IRA were saying that
they were the Army of this Irish Republic. It took a while for the IRA label to stick and be
universally recognized. Its acceptance by both sides was gradual but steady and irreversible
from 1919 to 1921.
Reaching back into history, the IRA could trace its origins to a secret society, the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known colloquially as the Fenians, which had been
founded on 17 March 1858. The IRB/Fenians had branches both in Ireland and in the
United States. The IRB was staunchly wedded to the gun as the leading instrument of
protest and coercion in Irish politics. The next step came in 1913, when nationalists in
the south felt licensed by events in the north of Ireland to create their own paramilitary
force, or private army.12 In the northern, Protestant, counties, Anglo-Irish leaders created
a well armed and militarily formidable private army in 1912, the Ulster Volunteer Force
(UVF). The UVF was created for the purpose of deterring and coercing London into not
proceeding to implement the (third) Home Rule Act, which was due to take effect in 1914.
In emulation of the Protestants’ military preparations to resist forcible incorporation into
a united and fairly self-governing Ireland—not that London had any intention of trying to
coerce Ulster by arms—the Catholic south followed suit in 1913 with the establishment
of the Irish Volunteers (IV). From the outset, and even more so after the outbreak of
the European War on 4 August 1914 (for Britain), the Irish Volunteers were split over the
issue of whether they should work constitutionally with London, or whether, instead, they
were a rebellion waiting to happen. The leadership of the IV took the path of conciliation
in the autumn of 1914, when it advised its members to volunteer for the British Army in
this, the hour of Britain’s need. This was expected to result in a grateful Britain acceding
to reasonable IV demands when the war was over. Needless to say, perhaps, gratitude does
not play a major role in history.
The Great War changed the context for Irish politics, as it did for so much else. In
1916, the Irish nationalist belief was that “Ireland’s opportunity is England’s adversity,” in
the words of Sir Roger Casement.13 The IRA of 1919–21 and its mode of warfare was to
be a direct consequence of the lessons that key members of the IV learnt from the military
debacle of Easter 1916. In fact, it would be an error to regard the 1916 Rising as a military
event at all. The bloody military scenario saw five days of open warfare in the heart of
Dublin. Contrary to the optimistic expectations of the Rising’s leaders, the British did not
hesitate to employ field artillery in the streets of Dublin, firing over open sights at point
blank range. Four hundred fifity were killed and 2,614 were wounded on the rebel side,
while 116 soldiers and 16 policemen were killed.
The modern IRA, the force that succeeded the Irish Volunteers in name after 1919, was
born in two senses out of the events of 1916. On the one hand, it was the beneficiary of the
political kickstart to armed rebellion given by the Rising, as its leaders had intended. On
the other hand, the Rising, for all its inspirational virtues, was a case study in how not to
fight British rule in Ireland. The men who would dominate the Irish side of the Anglo-Irish
War, and the civil war that followed, were a different breed from most of those who stood
up to be slaughtered for Ireland at Easter 1916. Most especially, the new post-1916 leaders
would be Eamon de Valera as the newly elected president of Sinn Fein (in 1917), and then
president of the proclaimed Irish Republic, and the charismatic and strategically gifted
Michael Collins, who was to lead the IRA in its war against Britain, and would become the
first prime minister of the Irish Free State.
A brief word is necessary to explain the contrast between 1916 and the war of 1919–
21. 1916 was the last, and by far the largest, in a lengthy series of open revolts by Irish
nationalists against British rule. Its strategic function, insofar as it had one, was to energize
the otherwise inert Irish public, and provide the spark to a general insurrection. Needless
to say, perhaps, the dreamers and others who led the 1916 event operated in such elitist
secrecy, and were militarily so unskilled, that even had there been an insurrection waiting to
be sparked, it would have died stillborn for want of communications, logistics, organization,
and planning. 1916 was designed to be inspirational. Even to call it political is to risk feeding
misunderstanding.14
The true purpose of the 1916 Rising, in the view of its most moving spirits, most
especially the poet and religious mystic, Patrick Pearse, was to keep faith with the Irish nation
and with those who, in every generation, had made the blood sacrifice for Ireland. The rebels
of 1916 were the latest manifestation of what Pearse called an “apostolic succession.”15
Every generation of Irishmen was obliged, from this perspective, to reaffirm its faith in an
Irish Ireland. And this it did by rising against the British oppressor and being shot. Pearse
even equated his own behavior, and fate, with that of Christ. It was all about making the
supreme sacrifice for Ireland. In the words of the oldest of the 1916 rebels, Thomas Clarke,
“We want a kind of spiritual dynamite to blow sky-high the chains of England on our hearts
and minds.”16
To a hard young man like Michael Collins, who was only 26 in 1916, such sentiments
were absurd. Collins and many others who had survived the fighting and were interned in
camps in Wales were determined that in the future the Irish would fight a war to win, not to
seek spiritual redemption. The IRA’s campaign of guerrilla warfare in the Anglo-Irish War
of 1919–21 was conceived and conducted in explicit rejection of open regular warfare. 1916
was to be the last Irish example of a futile conventional style of warfare that was militarily
unwinnable. The Collins generation wanted to win, not make their peace with Ireland’s
past. That past was strewn with repeated strategic failures, if arguable spiritual triumphs.
In retrospect, the 1916 Rising has to be seen as a political symbol of sacrifice and a spur
to crucial errors in British behavior, that were as important as its direct military value was
zero. Predictably, the astonished British somewhat overreacted to events.17 They condemned
90 rebels to death, but with typical half-heartedness commuted 75 of the sentences, shooting
only 15 of the ringleaders. That was just sufficient to arouse intense public sympathy.
Similarly, hundreds of rebels were interned briefly at Frongoch Camp in Wales, where they
debated the tactics and strategy of guerrilla warfare. The Irish general public had been
380 C. S. Gray
indifferent or hostile to the appalling violence of the Rising. They were certainly not ready
to rise. But, the protracted and clumsy British reprisals and new security measures fed
resentment and helped markedly to mobilize attitudes in favor of resistance to British rule.
Armed resistance was another matter, of course. As always in irregular wars, the militarily
weaker side is critically dependent for strategic leverage upon the errors committed by its
regular enemy. So it was in Ireland, so it has been in Iraq, and, one suspects, so it must ever
be. London all but followed an Irish nationalist script by adding to its mildly repressive
actions an apparent intention to introduce conscription to Ireland. Through 1917 and into
1918, the British Army was desperately short of men. Conscription had been introduced
into Britain, minus Ireland, already in 1916. This issue was the most mobilizing of all Irish
resentments against London and Dublin.
The IRA enjoyed a decisive advantage in leadership over the British. It had as much
unity of command as Irish circumstances allowed, and that unity was expressed in the person
of a man of extraordinary talent. Michael Collins was in fact, if not formally, commander-in-
chief of the IRA, as well as its chief of intelligence.18 In addition he held a series of official
posts in Sinn Fein’s shadow government. To Collins, intelligence and tactics were one.
Given the disparate human material with which he had to work, his own inexperience, and
the difficulty, and probably inadvisability, of explaining his grand strategic concept of the
campaign to many of his soldiers, his achievements merit high praise indeed. One hesitates
to claim that Collins was literally essential to the partial success that the IRA secured in
1921, but it is safe to say that the war the IRA waged in 1919–21 was very much his war.
His was the overall concept of strategic effect. His were the chosen tactics. And, last but
not least, he made it happen. It is worth noting that Napoleon did not know anything about
warfare that was a secret to others. But Napoleon had the ability to do it, to translate ideas
and principles into effective action. So it was with Collins also, despite the constraints of
material shortages and indiscipline.
What Collins brought to the conflict was charismatic leadership, a forceful style and
commanding presence, increasingly a reputation for ruthless efficiency, which was not
entirely deserved, and, above all else, a correct concept of operations. Collins had worked
out the only strategy, and supporting tactics, that offered a chance of victory. In other
words, unlike the British, or many of his colleagues, Collins the Clausewitzian understood
the nature of the war upon which he was embarked.19 Many of the footsoldiers, and some
leaders, of the IRA continued to expect, at least to wish for, the outbreak of an insurrection
and open warfare to drive British power out of Ireland. It followed that Collins was treading
on thin ice among some of his most devoted followers.
Collins understood that the IRA could not liberate Ireland by military means. The
strategic function of its warfare was to defeat the British psychologically and politically.
Every IRA “outrage” was a blow against the British will to persist, it had no mean-
ing in and of itself.20 Collins was playing politics with violence. He calculated that the
IRA’s guerrilla warfare, which actually entailed very little warfare, would provoke British
counterviolence.21 Those British responses would serve two essential strategic and political
ends. First, they would mobilize Irish opinion. Second, more important still, British brutality
in Ireland, freely reported in the press in mainland Britain, would be judged morally intol-
erable by Britain’s liberal-minded opinion leaders. The British would defeat themselves.
And that is very much what happened in 1920–21.
Although one must recognize Collins as the commander-in-chief and chief of intelli-
gence, operating secretly at the grandly titled General Headquarters in the heart of Dublin,
IRA organization was somewhat roughhewn and variable from area to area. Much of the
IRA’s warfare was undertaken at local initiative by local leaders. The authority of GHQ in
Dublin was often tenuous at best. It is important to remember that although Ireland had a
long history of secret societies and isolated violence, it had no tradition of guerrilla war-
fare. Everyone, including Collins, had to learn by experience how to do it. The IRA was
fortunate that its less than world-class competence as a guerrilla force was overmatched by
the incompetence shown by the British at COIN and CT.
Collins appreciated that since he could not win a military campaign, his prime mission
was to keep the IRA alive and, at least minimally, active. He had to prevent the restoration
of order. The key to that task was the intelligence war. Collins proved a superior intelligence
chief.22 He set about blinding the adversary, primarily the Intelligence Division (“G”) of
the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the British Secret Service. By the use of willing
informers, by intimidation of the less willing, and by murdering the unwilling,23 Collins
achieved a decisive dominance in the field of intelligence. The IRA knew about the en-
emy, as well as about its friends, and the enemy did not. This was tactically critical and
strategically decisive. The intelligence victory meant that the IRA could survive indefi-
nitely, which meant until London decided that it had had enough of the violent disorder in
Ireland.
The British waged this war primarily with two inadequate instruments: a police force,
the RIC, that was insufficiently military to stand up to Collins’s gunmen; and an army that
lacked competence in COIN and CT. Moreover, the police and the army never resolved the
problem of how to coordinate their activities. Collins’s campaign strategy was masterly.
First, as noted above, he defeated the RIC in the intelligence struggle, and then he defeated
it psychologically, physically, and territorially. Once the IRA had armed itself in 1919,
RIC barracks, the very lightly garrisoned ones in the countryside and small towns, were
the prime targets. In self-defense, the RIC abandoned its more exposed and indefensible
barracks, thereby leaving great swathes of rural Ireland to the IRA as “bandit country.” This
wholesale retreat by the RIC had negative implications for official operational intelligence.
But it had devastating political implications, for it demonstrated to the Irish public that
the police were on the run. In fact, more and more the RIC “holed up,” beleaguered, in
barrack-forts that were too strong for the IRA to attack.
In desperation, beginning in the winter of 1920, the RIC was allowed to recruit former
soldiers to fill out and augment their ranks. These “Black and Tans” (wearing a mixture
of police black and army khaki), knowing nothing about police work or about Ireland,
served Collins’s campaign strategy perfectly. They employed both casual and deliberate
violence on a scale that caused widespread offence, especially to delicate liberal consciences
in London. Collins knew that the vital work of his “Murder Squad” would be answered
murder for murder and that the British lacked the stomach for a truly ruthless campaign of
repression.24 And so it proved. As the British became more active in 1921, one cannot say
more effective, IRA gunmen increasingly had to leave home and become full-time guerrilla
fighters. Almost by default, they formed into Active Service Units (ASUs).
It is worth noting that both sides in the war had a love affair with technology, not that
it benefited either markedly. To be specific, both were entranced by the idea of motorized
mobility. The “flying column” is part of IRA mythology. Seemingly, every active IRA
brigade wanted one. On the other side, the Army and the Black and Tans similarly rejoiced
in racing about the countryside in convoys of trucks. Of course, if intelligence on the enemy
is lacking, motorization is strictly meaningless movement. The IRA was far too weak to
take on the Army in stand-up fights. The ambush was the preferred tactic. Flying columns
bred false confidence that probably caused the IRA more harm than benefit. As for the
Army, motorized movement was both futile without accurate intelligence, while it provided
concentrated targets for IRA marksmen who were not unduly risk averse.
382 C. S. Gray
It is well worth mentioning that it is a general rule in strategic history that both sides
learn by experience. Collins appreciated that the British were capable of tactical and then
strategic improvement. The outcome could therefore be the result of a race between British
political war weariness and the British learning curve in COIN. Collins won, but it may
have been a close run thing. What is certain is that in 1920 the IRA became a professional
guerrilla force.25
In terms of support, by far the greatest advantage enjoyed by the IRA was the broad
political approval it enjoyed from nearly all of Catholic Ireland. Many Catholics did not
support violence, and many more would have been delighted had the war not occurred at all.
But, there was no repository of popular support for British authority. The choice between
the IRA and the British was no choice at all. The people were with the IRA, at least in
the vital sense of being unwilling to cooperate or to share information with the RIC. The
IRA was rarely short of money, thanks to the Irish immigrant communities in America, but
money is only part of the logistical story. What the IRA needed were guns and ammunition,
and those proved difficult to acquire in sufficient numbers. In classic guerrilla fashion, the
IRA armed itself by a combination of forcible seizures from the enemy, and smuggling.
Weakness in armament was probably the IRA’s most signal lack, to the point in 1921 were
it was having a major constraining effect on the tempo of operations. The British Army and
its associates were capturing IRA arms stocks faster than they were being replaced. When
an insurgency runs out of weapons it runs out of a good prospect of success.
To close this description of the main characteristics of the IRA of 1919–21, it is helpful
to spotlight what one should call its ethos. That ethos was provided and sustained, indeed
it was lived, by Michael Collins himself, “the big fella.” In the sharpest of contrasts to the
insurrectionist effort of 1916, and all previous Irish rebellions, Collins’s IRA was strate-
gically serious. Collins was fighting to win, not simply to make a point. His IRA sought,
found, and practiced a mode of irregular warfare that could defeat the British, politically,
psychologically, and—above all—morally.
British Interests and Objectives

The British never decided to wage war in Ireland in 1919–21. Indeed, they stumbled into
the conflict, prodded by IRA violence, but without the benefit of anything resembling clear
policy guidance. In fact, London never could decide whether or not what was happening in
the south of Ireland was warfare or something else of much lesser significance.26 This inde-
cision over the character of events was reflected faithfully in an indeterminate relationship
between the RIC and the army. As British forces, civil and eventually military, responded,
more or less tit-for-tat, to IRA initiatives, they behaved according to no coherent strategy
or policy. There was none. For all that, British political interests in Ireland, and hence the
British interests at stake in the war, were almost crystal clear. This study has identified and
discussed them at some length already, in the section entitled “The Threat to Britain.” Given
that analysis, and to save redundancy, this section offers just a brief pointed summary of the
core of the matter, as it was seen by the Lloyd George coalition Government in London.
Britain had three overriding interests in Ireland in 1919–21. These were: (1) to preserve
the legal and political integrity of the British Empire; (2) to secure the strategic integrity of
the British Isles; and (3) to find a solution to the problem of Protestant rejection of Home
Rule that would prevent the outbreak of civil war. As to means and methods, London was
to prove flexible. It did not want to fight a war in Ireland, and it was willing to concede most
of what every major body of Irish opinion demanded.
The political roadblock of Ulster was resolved neatly, at least for a long time, by
the Government of Ireland Act of 23 December 1920. With Ulster as a consequence re-
moved from the game board, settled to its own satisfaction as not-Irish, the road was
open to uncomplicated focus on the challenge posed by the IRA and its demands for an
Irish Ireland and a fully independent Republic.27 Collins appreciated that he could not
negotiate what his troops had not won. We analyze the outcome of the war in a later
section. Suffice it to say at this juncture that the British Government had performed well
enough in the warfare by mid-1921, that it felt under no compulsion to give way on key
principles vital to its national interests. By the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921,
Collins was obliged to concede: (1) no Irish Republic, a new 26-county Irish Free State
would be independent under the crown—members of the Dail (Parliament) would have
to swear an oath of fidelity to the British crown; and (2) a British right to occupy three
Irish ports (Lough Swilly, Queenstown, and Berehaven) in peacetime, and more in time of
war.
With those political achievements, London had met its objectives and protected its
interests well enough. Or so it believed at the time. The Irish Free State was to be established
within the empire. It would not signal the beginning of an imperial meltdown. The Royal
Navy, with right of access to Irish ports, would be positioned where it needed to be for the
defense of the Western Approaches. And Ulster was conveniently isolated from the Catholic
majority in the south, content to pursue its own semi-British, but not Irish, destiny. Needless
to say, perhaps, the fact that the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 failed to result in a treaty that
granted a united Ireland full independence as a republic was a bitter pill which many IRA
warriors and others declined to swallow. But that is another story.
Irregular Warfare: The British Performance

The British Government never really came to terms with their Irish context in 1919–21. The
true situation was that while Britain had ruled in Ireland for centuries, it had never enjoyed
authority.28 Irish Catholics had never accepted British rule as legitimate. What this meant
in 1919–21 was that there was effectively no repository of loyalty and good will towards
the British and their agents of governance. London resolutely declined to recognize this
historical fact. London preferred to believe that the Irish troubles were the product of a
small “murder gang” who intimidated the essentially loyal, moderate majority of the Irish
people. The fact that the 1916 Rising was completely unsupported by the general public, and
indeed was thoroughly unpopular at the time, lent misleading evidence to bolster the notion
that the Irish were residually loyal. This British misconception was fatal. It meant that the
growing disorder in Ireland in 1918 and 1919 was approached by a British Government
ignorant of the true measure of alienation of the Irish people. Moreover, the fact that British
rule had never been accepted as legitimate by Catholic Ireland, had the most far-reaching of
political implications for all aspects of the conflict. Harboring the illusion that most of the
Irish were really loyal, the British proceeded on the assumption that there was a moderate
majority to whom they could appeal.
Although the analysis in the previous paragraph is historically accurate, it could easily
mislead. It suggests that London had something worth calling an Irish policy, and strategy, in
1919–21. It did not. At least, it did not until Lloyd George, very late in the day, decided that
he needed one. To fast-forward to the late spring and early summer of 1921, even though
British COIN was registering some success, and the IRA was on the back foot at last,
London recognized that it had reached a parting of the ways. Bluntly put, Britain had two
policy choices over Ireland in the summer of 1921: subjugate Ireland by the threat and use of
384 C. S. Gray
force, or make peace. Given its relatively strong military position, London was determined
to make peace by means of offering the IRA what it demanded, provided that was consistent
with British vital interests. The result was the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December. The British
instruments of order, the RIC, the Army, and the several secret service elements, eventually
had done well enough at COIN and counterterrorism (CT) to compel, coerce even, the IRA
into accepting what for them was a decidedly imperfect deal. What had the British done?
How was this irregular war conducted?
There was never anything resembling a strategy. In 1919, the warfare began with violent
incidents, but there had been sporadic violence in 1917 and 1918. Britain was presiding
over a deteriorating security situation. It was not aware that it faced a new quality of foe
in the IRA, and it did not recognize, or want to recognize, that it was at war. In point of
fact, the British cabinet did not even discuss the Irish situation in terms of warfare until July
1921.29 London persisted in defining the Irish problem as one of restoring order. It follows
that British measures to defeat the IRA were not undertaken strategically to gain advantage
in a war. The forces of the government were never committed coherently to the conduct
of warfare. London, or more proximately, “Dublin,” reacted to IRA initiatives. Violence
begat violence, as Collins intended, and the conflict escalated without being addressed
systemically by strategic thought or action on the British side. Initially, at least, the British
were wildly overconfident that a handful of terrorist-murderers would soon be discovered
and neutralized. The IRA enemy was much despised in London and even Dublin. Part of the
reason was elemental racism. The British in 1919–21 had a low opinion of the Irish. They
were regarded as racially inferior to the British, that is to say to the English, Scottish, and
Welsh British. This racial prejudice was not helpful when it came to debating policy and
strategy. In fact, it may be that British contempt for the Irish race was one reason why the
IRA’s campaign was not taken sufficiently seriously as to warrant a robust and consistent
policy and strategy response.
British behavior in the war, one can hardly refer to British strategy, exhibited most
of the features that have since become familiar as characteristic features of COIN and
CT, albeit mainly as pathologies of sound COIN and CT. The point that this study wishes
to emphasize, though, is that there was no consistency to that behavior. Consistency was
impossible because London and its agents in Dublin (1) never accepted that they were at
war, and (2) failed to understand the character of the war that Michael Collins was forcing
upon them. It followed that the British were led by the nose by Collins to make mistake
after mistake. London wavered between repression and conciliation. But repression fuelled
Irish anger, while conciliation signalled weakness and encouraged people to believe that the
IRA was winning. It was this dilemma to which General Macready referred in the words
quoted as the epigraph to this study.
The IRA was deterrable. Of course there were fanatics who wanted to make a blood
sacrifice of themselves for Ireland, but they were not in positions of command while Collins
was in overall charge. Indeed, as we shall show in the next section, the war was brought
to a fairly abrupt halt because Collins and his fellow realists were seriously deterred from
continuing with the war beyond July 1921.
Since the British did not understand their enemy, or indeed the fundamental political
and moral vulnerability of their position in the south of Ireland, it was never probable that
they could win. But, strange to note, perhaps, in practice London did win. It won in the
sense that in 1921 it achieved a treaty that satisfied its most vital interests. The same could
not be said quite so unambiguously for the IRA. Given the appalling incompetence in COIN
and CT shown by crown forces in the war, the happy outcome for London was no small
achievement.
Because Britain never approached the IRA as an enemy with whom it was at war, British
forces lurched from one response to another. Most often, though, the British were on the
defensive in all respects. Britain could have won an attritional military victory in Ireland;
the IRA was in no doubt about that. By the Spring of 1921, London faced the stark choice
mentioned already: subjugate by force or negotiate a deal. Collins recognized brilliantly
that the British center of gravity was the conscience of its liberal ruling class. Against
Russians, Germans, or Englishmen of a sterner stamp—one thinks of Oliver Cromwell—
the IRA’s campaign would have been washed away in a river of Irish blood. But, to a British
coalition liberal government in 1919–21, every official atrocity, real or pretended, was a
moral disaster and hence a dire political embarrassment.
London and Dublin danced to Collins’s strategic tune. As noted above, he created a
Murder Squad to enforce loyalty, punish disloyalty, disrupt the official chain of command,
earn public respect, and provoke self-destructive countermeasures. British COIN and CT
measures, blundering though they were, eventually ground down the IRA to the point where
it believed it must negotiate or be defeated. That point was reached in mid-1921, pretty much
despite the measures adopted over most of the previous two and a half years.
The key to understanding British behavior in the war is to recognize its inconsistency.
And that inconsistency stemmed, at root, from London’s failure of the Clausewitz test: it
did not comprehend the conflict upon which it was embarking. Initially, London did not
appreciate that it was embarking on an armed conflict at all. And throughout the war London
persisted in believing that the problem in the south of Ireland was one of restoring civil order.
So, the British behaved as if they were not at war with an army led by a master strategist,
but rather were faced with civil disorder provoked by a gang of ruthless murderers who
were wholly unrepresentative of Catholic Irish public opinion. It is little wonder that Britain
was confused in its behavior. It is worth noting, however, that although Britain was hugely
disadvantaged in its conduct of hostilities in Ireland, it never devised a strategy worthy of
the name, not even a bad one. To be fair, one could hardly devise a strategy, any strategy, in
the absence of a policy. What passed for British policy was simply a commitment of sorts
to “restore order.”
What measures did the British adopt to combat the IRA? The answer is everything
on the coercive side from the COIN and CT manual (had there been one in 1919–21). To
summarize:
1. The shadow government, indeed state, of the new proclaimed Irish Republic, was pro-
scribed. The Dial Eireann and Sinn Fein were suppressed. Prominent republicans had
to go into hiding, flee to America, or go to jail.30
2. Punishment for crimes was sought through the legal system. But, since no Irish witnesses
would testify against IRA defendants, it was literally impossible to secure convictions.
3. In frustration, the British decided that they had to fight fire with fire, atrocity with coun-
teratrocity. Ill-disciplined mercenary units of paramilitaries, hastily recruited to boost
the numbers of the RIC (the so-called Black and Tans, of deservedly evil reputation),
engaged enthusiastically in “official reprisals” which included murder, arson, and beat-
ings. Predictably, this orgy of semi-official violence provided wonderful propaganda of
the misdeed for Collins.
4. More sensibly, the British attempted to improve their intelligence gathering. This was
undoubtedly successful in 1921, and led to large arms captures which crippled the IRA
operationally.
5. And, still on the coercive side, in the spring and summer of 1921, Britain greatly increased
its troop commitment to Ireland. Later in the year, when Collins and Lloyd George were
386 C. S. Gray
trying to hammer out a treaty regime to replace the July truce, the latter threatened
credibly to wage war seriously against the IRA. Collins believed him, and a treaty
acceptable to London was signed.
6. Finally, on the positive side, Lloyd George was able to offer the IRA terms of peace that
were tolerable, albeit barely so. Those terms required a new Irish state to acknowledge
a continuation of British sovereignty, to permit British strategic use of Irish ports, and
to forget the unity of the whole of Ireland. The result, of course, was the bloody civil
war between the IRA’s realists and its irreconcilables, in 1922–23.
Ultimately, coercion did work for the British. After two and a half years of quarter
measures of force and conciliation, Britain had wrought sufficient damage upon the IRA
to secure a military stalemate. The threat to increase troop numbers significantly yet again
was entirely credible, and the IRA leadership was suitably deterred from continuing with
the war. But it is necessary to recognize that that decision by Collins was taken in the
context of a British opponent who seemed willing to concede acceptable political terms to
conclude hostilities. What had not worked for two and a half years were punitive measures,
either those targeted carefully or those of a random kind. Coercion in the form of the
counterreprisal time and again was proved to be strictly counterproductive. Collins needed
the British to overreact to his violence. He was able to manipulate British overreaction, and
hence the mobilization of Irish opinion and sympathy in England and America, in order to
win the all-important psychological war. And this was a psychological war. It was a war
of rivalry in determination, and it was won by Collins because the British could only win
the war militarily by the use of methods that British politicians, and their public, would not
tolerate.
Explaining the Outcome

The political outcome to the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 has to be judged a victory for
the IRA. Cases can be made for the rival propositions that both sides lost or that both
sides won. Hindsight, the historian’s best friend, indicates that the IRA secured the better
terms, and it was a fact that London took the initiative in seeking a truce. But at the time
claims for Irish victory were definitely contestable. The truce of July 1921 and the treaty
of December reflected both military reality extant, and the prospective military reality of
a lot more fire and sword threatened by Lloyd George should the IRA reject the deal on
offer. He may or may not have been bluffing. Collins chose to believe him. De Valera, ever
the cunning politician, had distanced himself from the peace negotiations by dispatching
Collins to London to head the Dail delegation. Collins’s integrity and bravery were to cost
him his life, since many IRA irreconcilables held him personally responsible for what they
were convinced was a betrayal of the sacred cause of a fully independent Irish republic. He
was murdered by anti-treaty members of the IRA on 22 August, 1922, aged 32.
What was the outcome to the war? Consider the balance sheet as expressed in the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921.
Sinn Fein/IRA
r Secured the expulsion of British rule from 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties.
r Achieved the creation of an Irish Free State, independent within the Empire.
But Sinn Fein/IRA

r Conceded sovereignty to the British crown, in the form of an “Oath of Fidelity”
required of members of the Dail Eireann.31
r As a consequence of the concession on sovereignty, the Irish Free State was not a
republic and the desire for that development was as iconic to many Irishmen as it
had been for many Americans and Frenchmen in the late eighteenth century.
r Surrendered in practice, if not in theory, their commitment to a united Ireland. They
accepted partition, and the political fact of a less-than-Irish six-county Ulster, wholly
distinct from the Free State. The Irish delegates were bought off with nothing of value
when they chose to accept Lloyd George’s empty offer of a “Boundary Commission”
to consider the territorial details of Northern Ireland. A truly naı̈ve Catholic might
believe that the Commission would produce a design for the North that would leave
Ulster politically nonviable.
r Conceded Britain’s sovereign right to strategic access to some Irish ports.
The IRA made major concessions. But, as Collins insisted later in defense of the treaty,
the armed struggle had achieved all that it could.32 There was no purpose to be served by
prolonging the violence. Collins explained:
We took as much of the government of Ireland out of the hands of the enemy
as we could, but we could not grasp all of it because he used the whole of
his forces to prevent us doing so, and we were unable to beat him out of the
country by force of arms. But neither had he beaten us. We had made Ireland
too uncomfortable for him . . . The British had not surrendered and had no need
to agree to humiliating terms any more than we would have done. It was time
for a settlement that would secure for us their withdrawal and evacuation. There
was duress, of course. On their side, the pressure of world opinion to conform
their practice to their professions. On our side, the duress the weaker nation
suffers against the stronger, the duress to accept really substantial terms.33
Perhaps the conclusive judgment on the outcome to the war has been offered by the
leading historian of modern Ireland. R. F. Foster, in his classic history, argues tersely thus:
The real point was: when to start negotiations [Collins’s dilemma]? And in the
end, public and political opinion broke the government’s nerve while the IRA
were still in the field. This was their victory.34
Collins and his IRA both outthought and outfought the British. But he knew that this
was a war that could not be won militarily. It could, however, be lost in that way. Collins’s
strategy was keep the IRA alive, remain an expensive nuisance and embarrassment,35 or
more, and prod the British into making strategic mistakes. This they did, obligingly. The
Irish cause was politically refuelled regularly by the excessive violence employed by ill-
disciplined agents of the crown. Collins succeeded in sustaining life in the IRA, even in the
face of an enemy who was learning some elements of COIN and CT, especially with respect
to the gathering, analysis, and swift use of intelligence. The question was, who would crack
first? As noted already, the war really had three parties. In addition to the IRA and the British
executive—political, civil, and military—there was also, most crucially, public opinion in
Britain and the United States. Collins succeeded brilliantly in posing Lloyd George a COIN
challenge that he was not at all eager to meet. The IRA was just about sufficiently potent
to require a considerable military campaign to suppress and keep suppressed. Faced with
a straight choice between a major campaign of repression at home in the less than United
388 C. S. Gray
Kingdom, and negotiations that should secure Britain’s minimum of vital interests, the
prime minister did not hesitate. He blinked first and requested a truce.
Collins did not win what Sinn Fain ideology demanded, a completely free Irish Repub-
lic. But, he did win what his IRA deserved. He was deterred from prolonging the warfare
by the credible threat of a huge escalation in the British military effort, and consequentially
by the near certainty of the destruction of the IRA. He knew when to take his winnings and
leave the game. Many Irishmen at the time and since have not been so wise.
Lessons from an Irregular War

What are we to make of all this? At the outset of the study we claimed justification for the
effort in the rich haul of COIN and CT lore that the events of 1919–21 provide. Because
every war is unique, one hesitates to suggest that judgments drawn from the Anglo-Irish
War can serve as a general paradigm or template for the conduct of irregular war. However,
when those judgments are reviewed and translated into “lessons,” it is tempting to suggest
that if one understands the belligerents in, the course of, and the outcome to this particular
irregular war, there will not be much left to learn about COIN or CT. Although this study
is interested primarily in the efficacy of deterrence and coercion, the history explained here
shows clearly that context is crucial. Both sides used coercion. Both resorted to murder,
or executions, extralegal killings. When Collins’s Murder Squad shot police informers and
secret service agents, it both deterred others from informing and, as important, it provoked
official and unofficial reprisals. And that was exactly what he wanted to happen.
It is the view of this study that although deterrence and coercion were vitally important
tools in the tactical armories of both sides, it makes no sense to isolate them from the whole
record of the conflict. To attempt to tell the deterrence story, or the coercion tale, in isolation,
and to specify lessons pertaining strictly to their employment and performance, would
be analytically unsound. Deterrence and coercion were central threads running through
the complexities of an irregular war. Whether or not they were effective depended upon
the several contexts of the war at the time. One can only speak intelligently about deterrence
and coercion in their actual historical context. Surely, we have learnt from our experience
with the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence that abstract paradigms and skeins of
logic, bereft of context, are both unreliable and probably dangerous.36
In keeping with the approach just outlined, the study concludes by itemizing no fewer
than 28 “lessons.” The Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 reveals them clearly. These have been
derived honestly from historical study. That is to say, the author has striven not to backfit
ideas and canons from the 2000s upon another, very different, place and time. In principle,
this list of lessons could have been written in the early 1920s, not in 2006. That claim should
add to the confidence one can place in them. Needless to say, perhaps, as a general rule the
lessons are presented for the benefit of the regular belligerent and from that perspective.
Lessons
1. Understand the country, its people and their culture
The British did not, despite 800 years’ familiarity.
2. Understand the enemy
British ignorance about Ireland foredoomed their efforts in this department. Suppos-
edly intelligent and experienced men, Winston Churchill for example, chose to believe
that the enemy was a small “murder gang.”37
3. Look for local allies

They are bound to exist, because irregular warfare is always a civil war to some
extent. Even if one cannot sign up allies, one ought to be able to keep a large fraction
of the populace disengaged and uncommitted.
4. Settle on a potent political cause
Every insurgency must have a Big Idea. In this case it was a Free Irish Republic.
This was tough competition. London could only offer a fairly Free Irish State under
the crown. But, it was enough, given the limited success of the IRA in the war.
5. Undermine the enemy’s political story
If possible, offer a deal that satisfies one’s minimum vital interests, yet which con-
cedes sufficient of substance as to take the political steam out of the enemy’s propa-
ganda.
6. Do not delegitimize local authority by making it appear to be acting as merely the
dependent agent of a foreign power (i.e. us!)
This can amount to advice to square a circle. All assistance to local authority must
diminish the political standing of that authority. This was not a severe problem in
1919–21, because of Ireland’s legal status as an integral part of the United Kingdom.
But, London did not grasp just how “foreign” its army was seen to be, despite the large
number of Irish soldiers serving voluntarily.38 Ireland was ruled in practice as part
of the UK very largely by Irishmen. But, that did not suffice to change the perception
that the structure of government, including the police (the Royal Irish Constabulary),
was the agency of a foreign power.
7. Develop and adhere to a clear and consistent policy
Britain stumbled into the war. It never had a policy beyond “restore order,” until
Lloyd George decided he had to have one in the Summer of 1921. By that time the war
had been lost psychologically and politically.
8. Develop and adhere to a clear and consistent grand strategy
This cannot be done absent a policy. It is essential because it determines how the
police and military efforts fit together. Also, grand strategy obliged the government
to consider the war in all its aspects, diplomatic, economic, and psychological. It is
important not to allow the military to take command by default.
9. Develop a clear and consistent military strategy in a civilian-dominated COIN/CT
effort
The British never had this in 1919–21. Even if they had, it would have done them
little good, because they lacked the intelligence to implement it.
10. Attack the enemy’s strategy39
This is what the British should have done, but did not. Since London did not have
a strategy, it would have been hard for Collins to attack it. However, he did his best.
What passed for British strategy was a determination to “restore order.” Collins’s IRA
created sufficient mayhem as to ensure that the forces of the crown, employing their
current means and methods, could not restore order. This created the need for Lloyd
George to consider seriously the benefit of a negotiated settlement.
11. Establish unity of command—government, police, military
The British lacked this throughout the war and it cost them dearly.
12. Recognize that intelligence and counterintelligence is a war-winner/war-loser
The British were systemically disadvantaged by the fact that almost the whole of
Catholic Ireland was sympathetic to the IRA. The IRA did intimidate and punish people,
but by and large it had no need to do so. The public was not at all inclined to cooperate
with the RIC, let alone its alien, non-Irish, Black and Tan recruits. Without superior
390 C. S. Gray
intelligence, which can come only from a public willing to take risks for the official
side, COIN and CT must fail.
13. Patience is essential: Time is a weapon
Irregular warfare is a psychological and political, rather than a military, struggle. The
IRA needed to remain alive, and at least minimally active, for longer than the nerves
and consciences of liberal London could stand. It succeeded.
14. Protect the people
Britain was unable to do this. Collins’s Murder Squad acquired a reputation for
ruthless efficiency in punishing informers and other enemies of the IRA. Without
personal security, few civilians are inclined to heroism. Also, not many people will
choose to take high risks for a cause that does not look certain to win.
15. Use minimum force
Half-hearted repression never works. In Ireland Britain was more quarter- than half-
hearted, in its imposition of martial law, internment, proscription, and its resort to
arson and murderous reprisals. British violence simply fed the flames of Irish anger.
It is possible that a strategy of serious repression would have earned Irish respect to
a point where the IRA would have been obliged to concede defeat.40 But that is idle
speculation. The history of the war shows that Collins needed official violence as a
challenge to official consciences. He gambled and won. But, if the government is made
of stern stuff, and operates in a permissive political context, a strategy of near maximum
force can and does work. The story of the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 demonstrates just
how effective force can be in an irregular conflict. But, it can only work if the agency
of force has full political authority, not just power, behind it. In 1922, the new Irish
Free State enjoyed an authority that the British signally lacked in 1919–21.
16. Obey your own laws41
This good advice was followed extensively in Ireland by the RIC in 1919–21, but
there was a problem. To grant due process of law to IRA rebels meant having resort to
a court system that would never convict. No Irish witnesses would testify.
17. Treat the public with respect
Since the Irish public and their sympathies were what the conflict was all about,
this lesson is almost too obvious to be worth citing. However, the British managed to
ignore its logic by recruiting a small army of exmilitary mercenaries to strengthen the
RIC. These non-Irish hard cases treated Ireland as bandit country, and its inhabitants
as inherently hostile. That attitude, a godsend to Collins, was fully reciprocated, of
course.
18. Do not underestimate the enemy
The British had mislearnt from all of their experience of Irish rebellions, most
recently 1916, that risings in Ireland were easily put down. Never before had they been
faced with guerrilla warfare in Ireland. Also, never before had they been opposed by
an enemy leader with the strategic and political gifts of Michael Collins. Because of
London’s deep ignorance of conditions in Ireland, the belief persisted that the enemy
comprised only a small group of wholly unrepresentative extremists, a “murder gang.”
19. A democratically elected local government means defeat for an insurgency
This, admittedly, is not a lesson of 1919–21. But, it is a lesson from the Irish Civil
War of 1922–23. The IRA was defeated decisively in 1922–23 by the regular army of
the new Irish Free State. It was defeated because the state enjoyed all the political and
moral authority that the British Government had lacked in 1919–21. A local authority,
freely elected by the people, can be bloodily ruthless to a degree beyond the dreams of
the most heartless Black and Tan. A stable, popular, democratically elected government
means defeat for an insurgency. So it was in 1922–23, at least. The fact that Britain
played no part in the Irish Civil War was of critical importance for official success.
20. Encourage the enemy to make mistakes
In the intelligence field, reread Sun-tzu and honor deception.42 The IRA delib-
erately invited reprisals, which the RIC duly provided, ultimately at fatal political
cost.
21. People are vitally important, numbers matter, technology does not (very much)
Irregular warfare is attritional. The IRA’s active service strength hovered between
3,000 and 5,000. It was always vulnerable to enervation by high casualties, as well as
by loss of arms and ammunition. The IRA placed great faith in The Gun. Irish history
demonstrated, they believed with some justification, that only the gun got results. The
brand new Thompson submachine gun was introduced into the war in 1921, but its
value was wholly psychological.43 It was unsuitable as a weapon for irregular warfare.
But, in common with motorization, faith was placed in new guns. Technology played
no significant role in the war.
22. Recognize that the impossible truly is impossible, it is not just another problem awaiting
solution
In irregular warfare a time can come when one needs to be prepared to walk away
from violence. By July 1921, Michael Collins, the hardest of hard men, and the ruthless
master mind of the IRA’s campaign of violence, recognized that the gun could achieve
no more for Ireland at that time. Fortunately, Lloyd George had reached a parallel
conclusion simultaneously. The result was the truce and, eventually, the Anglo-Irish
Treaty of 6 December 1921.
23. Avoid becoming the problem yourself
In Ireland in 1919–21, with British rule long established, London could not help
being “the problem.” This was not a war of intervention in aid of a local ally. Britain
was the government of Dublin. There was a solution that could, perhaps should, have
worked politically. Some variant of home rule, of genuine autonomy for Catholic
Ireland, would have satisfied most of Irish opinion, at least prior to 1916 it would have
done so. Alas, by 1919–21, with much assistance from Collins’s gunmen, the British
connection itself, and its official representatives, even the Irish ones, had become an
insuperable problem.
24. To win at COIN and CT you do not need to be loved, but you must be respected, and
preferably feared as well
In Ireland in 1919–21, as in all other irregular wars, most people would prefer the
violence to cease and for the men of violence to go away. Popular support of an active
or semi-active kind flows to the side that is feared the most. If that side happens to
embody an attractive ideology, that is a bonus. In Ireland, Britain was always fighting
against history. The Catholic Irish had long memories of British atrocities and op-
pression. But, that granted, unprodded they were not exactly eager to rebel in 1919.
Though this is not to deny that they were far readier to assist the IRA in 1919 than
they had been to rise to die in company with Patrick Pearce and his fellow martyrs in
1916. In 1919–21, Catholic Ireland beyond the tiny ranks of IRA activists was both
happy enough to cheer on the “boyos” of the IRA, while avoiding any serious, and po-
tentially dangerous, commitment themselves. As much to the point, official behavior
provided no convincing reasons to withhold support for the rebels. Official repression
was sporadic, half-hearted, and ineffective. Government forces could not offer protec-
tion, and they did not appear to be winning. What choice would any prudent family man
make?
392 C. S. Gray
25. Respect has to be earned

The irregular enemy has to be demoralized by tactical failures, by logistical difficul-
ties, and by a growing sense of the strategic futility of continuing the struggle. At that
point the enemy is open to negotiations, always assuming that the irregular is of the
negotiating kind. The situation just described is a slight exaggeration of the condition
of the IRA in the early summer of 1921. Collins feared that if he declined to negotiate,
the IRA would truly be defeated. If the regular enemy can earn the irregular’s respect,
then success in COIN is possible.
26. Politics is key: Political engagement can unravel an irregular foe
Given the fragile stability of most irregular armies, a political policy that can offer
truces and negotiations is always likely to work in favor of the more disciplined official
side. As the fighting dies down, so warriors will drift away from their now idle guerrilla
bands. They will simply go home, or they may move to bloodier pastures fresh. A
strategy of political engagement, when feasible, attacks the momentum of rebellion; it
assaults it psychologically. In 1921–22, the truce, followed by protracted negotiations,
followed by the treaty, pretty thoroughly defanged most of the IRA. Of course, there
was a hard core of irreconcilables. But, then, there always is.
27. Leadership is crucial
In Ireland in 1919–21, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the role
played by Michael Collins.44 This was his war. He planned it, he led it, he manipulated
the British enemy like a puppet, and he knew when to stop. One should not generalize
about indispensable people, but the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 unquestionably was
created, conducted, and “cashed,” by one person above all other: Michael Collins. This
historical experience suggests that there may be other episodes of irregular warfare
wherein the nonstate enemy does not enjoy an interchangeable leadership cadre. A
Michael Collins serves in partial compensation for the material weakness of his forces.
By personal charisma, skill in politics and strategy, and strength of character, a Michael
Collins literally can make the difference between victory and defeat. People matter.
Individuals matter.
28. Overall approach: In the probable event of military stalemate, make peace with the
moderates and leave them to marginalize, or, more likely, shoot, the true extremists
This is what Britain did to conclude its war in Ireland in 1921. It proved highly
effective.
Notes
1. General Sir Nevil Macready, quoted in Charles Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland,
1919–1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975), p. 85. Despite being thirty years old, this study remains authoritative for the British side of the
conflict. It has no competitors.
2. Peter Hart, The IRA at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 3–4.
3. Ibid., p. 29.
4. Robert Kee, Ireland: A History (London: Abacus, 2003), provides a superior popular intro-
duction. 1170 was the year when the English, actually the Normans from England, first intruded upon
Ireland, ironically at Irish request.
5. See J. Bowyer Bell, The Gun in Politics: An Analysis of Irish Political Conflict, 1916–1986
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991).
6. I have explored this well-traveled path in my study, Irregular Enemies and the Essence of
Strategy: Can the American Way of War-Adapt? (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army
War College, 2006), esp. pp. 17–29.
7. Kee, Ireland, pp. 48, 54.
8. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Penguin Books, 1989), pp. 606, 611. By
general assent, this is regarded as the most authoritative history of modern Ireland.
9. Anthony Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919–39 (Athens, GA: University
of Georgia Press, 1986), is a neglected minor classic.
10. This important subject is treated most competently in G. R. Sloan, The Geopolitics of
Anglo-Irish Relations in the 20th Century (London: Leicester University Press, 1997).
11. See Hart, The IRA at War, chs. 9–10.
12. Ibid., ch. 4.
13. Sir Roger Casement, quoted in Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 479.
14. Literature on 1916 is abundant, as one would expect of an event so significant for Irish
identity and in Irish mythology. For an exceptionally fair treatment, see Charles Townshend, Easter
1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Penguin Books, 2006).
15. Patrick Pearse, quoted in M. L. R.Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the
Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p.11.
16. Ibid., p. 12.
17. It is understandable that the 1916 Rising came as a complete surprise to the British. After
all, there had been no violence in the south of Ireland for a generation, there was no contemporary
evidence of angry disaffection, and the Irish Volunteers (IV) endorsed the British war effort and
encouraged enlistment in the British Army.
18. Collins biographies are legion. Three especially useful, very different, studies are, Tim Pat
Coogan, Michael Collins: A Biography (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Ulick O’Connor, Michael Collins
and the Troubles: The Struggle for Irish Freedom, 1912–1922 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996); and
Michael T. Foy, Michael Collins’s Intelligence War: The Struggle between the British and the IRA,
1919–1921 (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2006).
19. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howarded, ed. and Peter Paret, trans. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 88.
20. The RIC termed violent incidents “outrages.” For official statistics of “outrages,” 1919–21,
see Townsend, The British Campaign in Ireland, p. 214. “Outrage” figures for 1867–90 are provided
in Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 151.
21. Most of the deaths in this war were executions or murders, depending on one’s point of
view.
22. See Foy, Michael Collins’s Intelligence War.
23. For Collins’s most ruthless action in the intelligence war, see James Gleeson, Bloody
Sunday: How Michael Collins’s Agents Assassinated Britain’s Secret Service in Dublin on November
21, 1920 (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2004), the subtitle tells the story; and Anne Dolan, “Killing
and Bloody Sunday, November 1920,” The Historical Journal, vol. 49, no 3 (September 2006):
789–810.
24. On Collins’s Murder Squad see Foy, Michael Collins’s Intelligence War, pp. 29, 63.
25. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, p. 334.
26. Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, is excellent.
27. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 503, argues persuasively that the partition achieved by the
Government of Ireland Act was the necessary precondition for the Anglo-Irish Treaty a year later.
28. The British were in power in Ireland, but not in authority. Authority is power deemed
legitimate by the governed. The Catholic Irish had never accepted a British right to rule.
29. Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, p. 203.
30. To have been jailed by the British was almost a requirement for a respectable resume, were
one seeking political office in the Irish Free State. After 1916, some Irishmen wanted to be jailed by
the British.
394 C. S. Gray
31. See Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 506.

32. See Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, p. 193.
33. Michael Collins, quoted in Smith, Fighting for Ireland? p. 38.
34. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 502.
35. By 1921, British security measures in Ireland were costing £20 million a year. That was
an insupportable financial burden. Lloyd George was thus under economic pressure to find a prompt
resolution to the Irish problem.
36. See Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington,
KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001).
37. As Secretary of State for War and Air, Churchill demonstrated no grasp of Irish realities.
His attitude and judgments were consistently counterproductive.
38. Traditionally, approximately one third of the British regular Army was recruited in Ireland.
Those volunteers were both Protestant and Catholic.
39. “The highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy’s plans.” Sun-tzu, The Art of War,
Ralph D. Sawyer, ed. and trans. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p.177.
40. There is some merit in Ralph Peters, “In Praise of Attrition,” Parameters, vol. 34, no.2,
(Summer 2004): 24–32.
41. See Adam Roberts, “The War on Terror in Historical Perspective,” Survival, vol. 47, no.2
(Summer 2005): 101–30.
42. “Warfare is the Way (Tao) of Deception” Sun-tzu, The Art of War, p. 168.
43. See Hart, The I.R.A. at War, ch. 7.
44. Contrary to the general run of its performance in historical fidelity, Hollywood’s 1996
movie, Michael Collins, is quite remarkably accurate as well as dramatically convincing.

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The Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21: Lessons from

Introduction: Why Study the Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21?

Irish events helped to inaugurate an era of mass movements, citizens revolts,

Historical Narrative: The Course of Strategic History, 1919–21

The Anglo-Irish War: Chronology

The Threat to Britain

Characteristics of the IRA

British Interests and Objectives

Irregular Warfare: The British Performance

Explaining the Outcome

But Sinn Fein/IRA

Lessons from an Irregular War

3. Look for local allies

25. Respect has to be earned

31. See Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 506.

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