Propaganda II: Propaganda of Dáil Éireann, 1919–21

Abstract

Throughout the struggle for independence, the press played an important role in Irish nationalist propaganda. The period from the establishment of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 was no exception to this. There is, nevertheless, still no detailed analysis of the content of propaganda during these years. In Virginia E. Glandon’s standard work on this topic an overview of the separatist press is provided, but she focuses on its operation in wartime circumstances and rarely discusses the actual contents of these papers.¹ In their recent works both Michael Laffan and Arthur Mitchell include sections on propaganda, but they do not focus on its content.² In this book, Ben Novick deals with aspects of advanced nationalist propaganda during the First World War (see Chapter 3), and recently I have analysed separatist propaganda during the Truce and the Northern Irish election campaign of May 1921,³ but the Anglo-Irish War is still left virtually untouched.