On this day, 100 years ago, the preeminent power on the planet signed a truce with people they regarded as their racial inferiors.
On July 8th, 1921, General Nevil Macready, the general commanding British forces in Ireland, drew up to the Mansion House in an open-top car.
His relaxed arrival was proof positive that the War of Independence was effectively over.
Indeed, only a few days earlier, MacReady in such a vehicle would have been a gift for the ASU of the Dublin Brigade.
Their commander Mick Collins would have loved it if his lads had assassinated such a high-value target on the streets of the Irish capital.
The war that had started at Soloheadbeg in January 1919 with the killing of two RIC men had cost 2000 lives, including 750 civilians.
After the military debacle of the Easter Rising, the men in Frongoch POW camp had used their time well to imagine how Round Two against the Brits would be different and on the IRA’s terms.
When they eventually got out, Michael Collins knew that they would have to wage a propaganda war backed up by a shooting war.
The fella from Cork knew that to survive the coming onslaught from the Brits, the IRA would need to win the intelligence war.
By late 1920 it was clear to foreign journalists in Dublin that the British were losing control of the situation.
Bloody Sunday and Kilmichael ambush within seven days of each other showed that the IRA had the upper hand.
That in itself was a remarkable achievement for Irish arms against a vastly better-resourced enemy.
While the paper membership of the IRA, carried over from the Irish Volunteers, was over 100,000 men, Michael Collins estimated that only 15,000 were active in the IRA during the course of the war, with about 3,000 on active service at any time.
Some historians believe that the Tan War and its conclusion were the beginning of the end of the British Empire.
The struggle of the Irish people against the global superpower next door enthused people in India to believe that they, too, could be free of Britain.
Despite being effectively opposed on the battlefield, Albion’s greatest strength lay in her perfidiousness.
The Truce negotiations would lay the groundwork for the Civil war that would poison Irish society for generations.
As the people at the European Union are currently finding out, a solemn obligation from the Brits isn’t worth that much.
The War of Independence prevented the British Empire from achieving their preferred outcome on this island, which was the imposition of the Home Rule-essentially what is extant in Scotland at the moment.
Instead, qualified as it was, a nascent separate state was in embryo.
Today, the Dublin polity has a seat at the United Nations and, with our gallant allies in Europe, could prevent the Brits from getting the cherry-picked Brexit they wanted.
None of this would be extant today without the armed conflict that ended in a truce one hundred years ago today.,
My thoughts tonight are with the combatants and their families and what they had to endure at the hands of Crown Forces.
Your humble correspondent has some skin in this game dear reader.
They should not have had to resort to physical force to achieve their basic rights.
However, that is a fact of life when you’re occupied and colonised.
It is undeniable that ordinary Irish people took on an empire and won a significant victory against all the odds.
I was reared on these stories, and my own archival research over the last decade have proved to my satisfaction that what I was told as a child at my grandmother’s knee in Westport County Mayo was essentially accurate.
History forgotten is a betrayal.
History remembered is a weapon.
Discover more from Phil Mac Giolla Bháin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
They may have lost the war but they won the truce. All out war on the Irish was never a thing and Collins knew it. It was loosing the dogs of war on the Catholic people of the north. If I am going to open all out warfare, I send the infamous letters to my Generals, not to the leader of the UVF. The releasing of the Irish regiments during the civil war turned the tide for the staters which of course was part of the treaty but they choose their time perfectly. The thousands who died in our recent conflict are once again, just victims of us losing the negotiations. There may in name be a republic in the south, but it is still a country ruled by the big houses of FF and FG. SF unfortunately blew it by not believing they could do it and did not stand enough candidates. They still have too much influence on our destiny and will do as long as the six are separate
Would Connolly have excepted the compromise?