By Peter Storey

On Easter Monday 1916, roughly 1,600 armed rebels entered Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. No mass uprising occurred and no reinforcements arrived. Within a week, their rebellion was forcibly put down by the British. When thinking of the most-noted counterinsurgencies (hereafter referred to as COIN) of the past century, minds often drift to the dense jungles of Vietnam and Malaya, the vast deserts of Oman and Aden and the sprawling Oriental metropolises of Algiers and Hue. But one major period of conflict often overlooked: Ireland between 1916 and 1921.

In 1916, Ireland was overwhelmingly an active participant and supporter of the United Kingdom. By 1921, the island had been partitioned and all but the six Unionist-dominant counties of Ulster were an independent nation – the Irish Free State. In these five years, Britain fought two COIN operations: the Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish War. For both, Britain’s military and political leadership largely acted in a strategic vacuum, failing to appreciate the realities on the ground in Ireland. Such mishandling stemmed from more pressing concerns elsewhere – namely the First World War raging in Europe – but also from a growing divide, initiated by a reckless British strategy, between the majority of the Irish people and the British state, which no side could rectify and which Republican insurgents actively widened. As we approach the centenary of the Easter Rising, the lessons from this example of COIN and the following five years of Anglo-Irish relations are an interesting and useful case study when considering operations in general, holding lessons which remain highly applicable a century later.

Black and Tan and Bloody

They were ‘a minority of a minority’ of dissident Republicans. Their ranks were largely composed of the minority of the Nationalist militia, the Irish Volunteers, who had not heeded the call to come to Belgium’s aid in 1914. Even within this minority, their leader, Eoin MacNeill, believed that rebellion would be suicide due to the lack of Republican sentiment. For the revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council, whose members had infiltrated the Volunteers, including Patrick Pearse, this did not matter; what was important was a “blood sacrifice.” Thus, the Rising was formed through a small minority of Volunteers under the control of the Brotherhood, as well as James Connolly’s Citizen Army.

COIN theorists tend to hold up the British as exemplar counterinsurgents because of their successful operation in Malaya, but we need to give Ireland in between 1916 and 1921 the attention it deserves.

Pearse’s sacrifice came in two parts: The initial defeat of the Rising and then the resulting coercion; Pearse would not have been disappointed. The British government immediately declared martial law in Ireland under General Maxwell. Through this, in dribs and drabs, the leaders of the Rising – including Pearse – were taken from their cells in Kilmainham Gaol and executed; in total, 16 martyrs were made. On top of this, in the weeks following the Rising, 3,430 men and 79 women with vague Republican links were arrested, with most of these being court martialled or interned in Britain. Whilst the rebels had initially been harassed and spat on by Dubliners, viewed as traitors, as the spring of 1916 progressed, “on every level, martyrolatry had taken over.”

In subsequent months, Republican sentiment grew from where there had been none. As World War One continued, however, no major military action was taken until after the 1918 general election in which Republican candidates under the Sinn Fein banner claimed 73 seats in comparison to the moderate – and previously hegemonic – Irish Parliamentary Party’s (IPP) six. Under this political mandate, taking up seats in their own Dáil Éireann (refusing to sit in Parliament), the Irish Republican Army (IRA) began an escalating campaign of violence and intimidation against crown forces in Ireland. Of the (roughly) 1,400 deaths in the Anglo-Irish War, 18 were in 1919, fewer than 300 in 1920, with the rest occurring up until the truce in July 1921. The IRA, however, never had more than 5,000 active Volunteers, relying on flying columns to inflict swift damage on a much better armed and numerous enemy.

The response to the IRA insurgency from Britain was somewhat confusing. Initially not recognising the military threat of the IRA, Lloyd George declared that a civil response was required to defeat this ‘murder gang’. With the low morale of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), however, by mid-1920, the British establishment in Dublin Castle recruited British ex-soldiers to have an auxiliary role in the RIC. These were to become known as the infamous Black and Tans and the less well known (yet probably more infamous) Auxies. Both were notorious for their unwarranted violence, ill-discipline and drunkenness; indeed, even the Auxies’ commander, F. P. Crozier, resigned rather than lead what he viewed as a drunken and insubordinate rabble. Coming from a military background and having only the most rudimentary police training, these men were poorly suited for the intended civil response Lloyd George’s government had envisioned.

Sun Tzu Revisited

Unsurprisingly, Britain was forced to negotiate with the ‘murder gang’, leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 after months of negotiation. Under this agreement, the six Unionist-dominated counties of Ulster remained in the United Kingdom, whilst the rest of Ireland became independent, albeit remaining within the Empire and with the British monarchy as head of state. From this relative strategic failure for Britain, however, comes a number of notable lessons, a few of which shall be explored presently.

• Recognise your enemy – One major COIN failure for Britain in Ireland was to unashamedly ignore Sun Tzu’s maxim that ‘if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles’. Only at the end of this five year period did the British government come to openly recognise the true nature of the threat they faced. In the immediate aftermath of the Rising, Sinn Fein, a known dissident group, was incriminated as it was discovered that many of the Volunteers who took part were members. That Sinn Fein was opposed to an insurgency (at this point) was overlooked. In reality, ‘no single organization could claim to represent all of the participating groups [of the Rising]; none of the surviving leaders were prominent public figures; [and] no clear policy had been affirmed by the rebels, beyond the establishment of a republican government’. In a strikingly similar sense to al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism, Sinn Fein became an umbrella term for Republicanism. Under this banner, Sinn Fein was able to organise Republicans, attracting support from the faux reputation they had gained from the Rising (ironically created by Britain). In this sense, Sinn Fein was able to channel the discontent with Britain in Ireland, winning numerous by-elections in the run up to 1918 and triumphing in the general election itself. Despite this, the British government constantly downplayed the Republican threat so as to not give Republicans further credence. As such, this threat was seen in civilian terms, despite the requirement of military force to meet the IRA in the Anglo-Irish War. To take an example of this confusing stance, in November 1920, when Lloyd George was answering questions in Parliament, he referred to the IRA as a ‘murderous conspiracy’ and less than a minute later referred to Britain being ‘in war’ (to shouts of ‘in war!’ from the backbenches). A further example is the 1920 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, which expanded the role of the military so that soldiers could arrest and dragoon individuals into a British regiment for a court martial, who, if sentenced to death, would be hung instead of executed by a firing squad. Such confusion transcended the British response, so that in the effort to not further play into the hands of Republicans through recognising their threat, Lloyd George played into their hands through not adopting an appropriate response for the threat.

• Ensure the discipline of your forces – Through reprisals and collective punishment, counterinsurgents in the past have attempted to strike fear into populations so that they did not continue to support insurgents. Certainly, this was a tactic used extensively in the Anglo-Irish War. Such tactics, however, are a double-edged sword. Whilst Dublin Castle approved certain reprisals, such as the burning down of houses of people linked to the IRA, many RIC, auxiliaries and soldiers took their own initiative. As one Dublin Castle official remarked, “Reprisals are the only thing to put down the Gun men and hearten the police,” but noted that “the sort that burns down half the town of Lisburn…is the wrong sort.” Possibly the most notorious of these unauthorised reprisals was Bloody Sunday, when, after the IRA assassinated fourteen British intelligence assets, Black and Tans opened fire at a Gaelic football match, killing twelve. While insurgents are largely free from public expectations, as Galula noted, and judged on their words and not their actions, the opposite is the case for counterinsurgents. As a result, pure coercion is rarely a viable solution, especially when it is unauthorised and unregulated. The attacks were largely mindless and drunken violence, such as the burning of Cork city centre on the night of 11^th-12^th December 1920 in response to an IRA ambush. The destruction wrought in that one night was more severe than the damage done to Dublin during the entire Easter Rising. In Clausewitzian terms, reprisals wholly undermine the trinity, with such violence not being linked to a viable political strategy. Violence, when it is let off of the leash of strategy, can only lead to further alienation, strengthening the hand of the insurgency.
• Control the flow of information – This lesson is very much related to the last. Through ensuring that one’s narrative reaches the people, this substantially aids in controlling their minds and allegiance. Failure to do so creates further alienation. Even not being willing to clarify events can create such a situation, as in the Rising’s aftermath. Despite, the public hostility towards the rebels, the unwillingness of the government to clarify the nature of the execution of their leaders aided significantly in the fulfilment of Pearse’s blood sacrifice. The response, considering Britain was in a state of total war, was not necessarily disproportionate. As John Dillon, the future IPP leader, famously noted in Parliament, however, ‘the fact of the matter is that what is poisoning the mind of Ireland…is the secrecy of these trials and the continuance of these executions’. Indeed, this ambiguity on the part of the government only aided in making the British out to the Irish people as all the Republicans said they were and more. Militant Republicans themselves, however, were highly adept at their own propaganda in the Anglo-Irish War. Through the illegal Irish Bulletin, a black and white narrative of reprisals was created. The IRA certainly committed reprisals, such as burying a man who colluded with the British up to his neck in sand and letting the tide take his life – only to realise that the tide had not reached him and so reburied him closer to the sea the following day. Such events, however, would not reach the public. Instead, acts of (supposed) British brutality and Irish heroism were concentrated upon. Indeed, the highest ranking British Army officer in Ireland, General Macready, remarked that propaganda was Sinn Fein’s strongest weapon. British and foreign journalists were taken on what Dublin Castle called ‘the Republican scenic railway’ so that these journalists returned to their countries having heard only one side. So effective was this propaganda that Lloyd George was moved to say regarding reprisals that “I never heard a topic so frequently discussed in so short a period.^” Thus, certainly in this COIN conflict, controlling information was half of the battle – and possibly the most important half. Without it, the insurgent was able to further gain public support, better placed, to paraphrase Mao, to move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.

Britain held a grand strategic aim of controlling Ireland. The government’s inability to formulate a coherent operational strategy, however, led to relying on blunt military tactics which ensured that Britain never truly held the initiative, constantly distracted by managing the political damage done through these tactics. COIN theorists tend to hold up the British as exemplar counterinsurgents because of their successful operation in Malaya. Hopefully future academic articles in COIN and strategic studies more broadly will give Ireland in between 1916 and 1921 the attention it deserves, with this short article highlighting just three of the numerous strategic COIN lessons which may be taken away.