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The Irish Civil War and Society pp 22–51Cite as

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Pro-Treaty Social Attitudes and Perceptions of Republicans

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Abstract

When assessed in terms of casualty figures or the duration and scale of fighting, the Irish Civil War scarcely measures up to many other countries’ experiences of civil war.1 But while hardly prominent in the annals of military history, the 1922–3 fight between Irish nationalists stands out for the ferocity of the invective and partisan rhetoric that accompanied it.2 The notorious intensity of enmities between ‘Staters’ and ‘Irregulars’, among other less civil epithets the two sides traded, reflects the intimate, close-knit nature of Ireland’s revolutionary movement, which, when it ultimately foundered on the treaty question, produced a correspondingly ‘bitter, incestuous conflict’ tellingly known as the ‘war of friends’.3 The contrast between Sinn Féin’s unity of purpose (or, at least, ‘harmonization of political differences’)4 between 1916 and 1921, and the rancorous and highly public falling-out of movement leaders and factions from late 1921 is among the most rapid and dramatic transformations in a hectic decade of revolutionary change.

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Notes

  1. On the small scale of the civil war see Michael Hopkinson (2004 edn) Green against Green: the Irish Civil War (Dublin), pp. 272–4.

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  4. Kissane (2004) ‘Democratization, State Formation, and Civil War in Finland and Ireland: a Reflection on the Democratic Peace Hypothesis’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 37, No. 8, 969–86.

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  7. Quotation from Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. xii. See also Tom Garvin (2005 edn) The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (Dublin), p. 118.

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  8. Ambrose Bierce defined respectability as ‘The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account’, Bierce (1993 edn) The Devil’s Dictionary (New York), p. 105.

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  9. On respectability in different, but not totally unrelated, contexts, see F. M. L. Thompson (1988) The Rise of Respectable Society: a Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900 (Cambridge, MA),

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  10. and George Mosse (1985) Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York).

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  32. Brian Hanley (2003) ‘The Rhetoric of Republican Legitimacy’ in Fearghal McGarry (ed.) Republicanism in Modern Ireland (Dublin), p. 170.

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  34. Phrases taken from O’Higgins’ 15 April 1922 article for Free State reprinted as O’Higgins (1922) Civil War and the Events Which Led To It, P91/91(40–59), Todd Andrews Papers, UCDA. William Sears (TD) 12 Sept. 1922, Third Dáil, Vol. 1, D. E. website archive.

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  35. The editorial was published 31 January 1919. See Robert Kee (2000 omnibus edn) The Green Flag: a History of Irish Nationalism (London), p. 635.

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  48. Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, passim. But recently, Jason Knirck has challenged this picture of Cumann na nGaedheal. J. Knirck (2014) Afterimage of the Revolution: Cumann na nGaedheal and Irish Politics, 1922–1932 (Madison, Wisconsin), Introduction pp. 3–21 and passim.

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  49. Morning Post, RIC reports, and other sources quoted in Sinead Joy (2005) The IRA in Kerry (Cork), pp. 42–3.

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  50. General Sir Nevil Macready (1924) Annals of an Active Life Vol. 2 (London), pp. 460, 463, and 653.

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  51. A pungent example of hostility to the poor and unemployed expressed by Dáil Éireann Minister for Local Government, William Cosgrave, can be found in Diarmaid Ferriter (2004) The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (London), p. 186.

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  52. Freeman’s Journal, 5 Aug. 1922. United Irishman, 22 Feb. 1923. Terence de Vere White (1986 edn) Kevin O’Higgins (Dublin), p. 79.

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  54. Risteárd Mulcahy (1999) Richard Mulcahy (1886–1971): a Family Memoir (Dublin), p. 82. Ironically, Mulcahy later admitted that ‘a large proportion of the criminal element found its way into the [Free State] Army’, Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 137.

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  63. United Irishman, 6 Oct. 1923. Freeman’s Journal, 17 April 1923. On this theme see Gavin Foster (2012) ‘Res Publica na hÉireann? Republican Liberty and the Irish Civil War’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 16, No. 3, Autumn, p. 31.

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  64. Reginald Hathaway is a complex case in point. See Ernie O’Malley (Cormac O’Malley and Tim Horgan eds) (2012) The Men Will Talk To Me: Kerry Interviews By Ernie O’Malley (Dublin), pp. 24–7.

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    Gavin M. Foster

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© 2015 Gavin Maxwell Foster

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Foster, G.M. (2015). Pro-Treaty Social Attitudes and Perceptions of Republicans. In: The Irish Civil War and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137425706_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137425706_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49061-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-42570-6

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