The power and reach of Britain’s colonial administration was now diminished. Effective imperial government depended on the collaboration of the Irish population – on post office workers, tax collectors, local government officials and policemen – and the majority of them had voted for Sinn Féin. Judging that the time was now right to challenge British rule with force, the IRA declared war on the colonial government, thus beginning the ‘War of Independence’. Collins had learned from the failed Easter Rising that defeating the British by conventional military means was unrealistic; his plan was instead to make imperial rule in Ireland impossible. The IRA embarked on a series of guerrilla attacks on the personnel of the British state, ‘executing’ eighteen members of the Irish police force towards the end of 1919. The campaign was facilitated by Irish collaborators within the imperial police force and intelligence agency, and by countless members of the population who shielded the nationalist gunmen.
The success of the IRA campaign convinced the British government that its grip on Ireland was loosening, and its response was brutal. Lloyd George declared Sinn Féin illegal, appointed a draconian Irish chief secretary and recruited British ex-soldiers to ‘police’ Ireland. The unemployed ex-soldiers were promised ‘£15 a week … plenty of girls and lashings to drink’ as payment for destroying the IRA and quelling Irish nationalism. They formed a ‘terror squad’ and became known as the ‘Black and Tans’, a name that reflected the colour of their uniforms and recalled a breed of hunting hound. They proceeded to live up to their name by hunting down, kidnapping, torturing and executing suspects, raiding houses, looting shops and setting fire to entire villages.
The IRA responded by targeting the Black and Tans, while many civilians were caught in the crossfire. At Croke Park in Dublin on 21 November 1920, the Tans opened fire on a crowd watching a Gaelic football match. Twelve people were killed and sixty wounded on what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. The British chief secretary claimed the forces had acted in self-defence, but it was in fact an act of revenge for the IRA’s killing of twelve British intelligence agents and members of its forces earlier in the day.
The Croke Park massacre and other atrocities undermined any moral or legal authority the British might try to claim in Ireland. British brutality also inspired further popular support for nationalism, which undermined the numerical advantage the British forces enjoyed over the IRA. As reports of British cruelty reached England, and as the death toll rose to over 1,000 (in a population of only 3 million), the liberal English press and intelligentsia increasingly sympathized with Irish nationalism and condemned the ‘terroristic’ methods of the coalition, which now declared martial law. George Bernard Shaw, an Irish dramatist and intellectual with considerable popularity in England, drew a parallel between the Black and Tans terror and the Amritsar massacre, and some of the English elite agreed with this analysis. ‘Things are being done in Ireland,’ Asquith told parliament, ‘which would disgrace the blackest annals of the lowest despotism in Europe.’ ‘Are you going to shoot all the people in Ireland?’ King George asked Lloyd George. When the prime minister shook his head, the king continued, ‘Well, then you must come to some agreement with them. This thing cannot go on.’
At first, Lloyd George had defended the Black and Tans as ‘bravely’ defending the ‘civilisation’ of a ‘glorious’ empire from the threat of ‘terrorism’. Yet eventually he was forced to admit that ‘mistakes’ had been made by ‘a certain number of undesirables’. He was also compelled to pursue a more constructive policy. He introduced a fourth Home Rule Bill, officially called the Government of Ireland Act, which was passed at the end of 1920. By the terms of the act, one Home Rule parliament was established in Dublin, and another in Belfast to oversee the six counties of Ulster with substantial Protestant populations. Representatives of these two bodies would meet in a Council of Ireland, while a reduced number of Irish MPs would continue to sit in Westminster. The country would continue to acknowledge the ultimate authority of the British monarch and his representative in Ireland, the Lord Lieutenant.
Unsurprisingly, this compromise satisfied none of the interested parties. The Irish nationalists did not recognize the Dublin Home Rule parliament and instead continued to convene the Dáil; the Ulster Unionists refused to acknowledge the Council of Ireland. The Unionists did, however, accept the new parliament in Belfast, despite their objection to Home Rule. Following the passing of the act, elections were held for both Home Rule parliaments. The Unionists won an 80 per cent majority in the ‘six counties’ in Ulster, while Sinn Féin claimed virtually every seat in the south. These results merely served to confirm the stalemate; they also exacerbated sectarian divisions, as violence spread throughout Ulster. Thousands of Catholics were forcibly evacuated from Belfast housing estates and anti-Catholic discrimination was common on the streets. The IRA, meanwhile, killed Protestant policemen in the ‘six counties’, while the Dáil decided to boycott trade between the ‘north’ and ‘south’.
Yet some good came out of the elections. When King George travelled to Belfast to open the northern Home Rule parliament, he called for ‘the end of strife amongst [Ireland’s] people, whatever their race or creed’. The monarch’s words were followed by a truce, along with talks in London for a peace treaty. The chances of finding a compromise solution remained slim – the nationalists demanded an independent republic for all Ireland, while the Tory-dominated coalition was determined to preserve the ‘integrity of the Empire’ as well as the interests of the Unionists of Ulster, who were once again threatening civil war. ‘If you are unable to protect us from the machinations of Sinn Féin,’ Carson warned the government, ‘we will take the matter into our own hands. At all costs, and notwithstanding the consequences.’
Lloyd George offered the nationalist delegation dominion status for the twenty-six counties outside of the six counties of Ulster with substantial Protestant populations. The southern dominion, to be called the ‘Irish Free State’, would be self-governing and free from British forces; members of its parliament would, however, still swear an oath of allegiance to the British monarch as official head of state. The six counties in Ulster, meanwhile, were offered the right to remain part of the United Kingdom under the name ‘Northern Ireland’. Privately, though, Lloyd George promised the nationalists that the boundary would be drawn in such a way that the six-county northern state would be politically and economically unworkable; Northern Ireland would, he implied, soon have to join the Irish Free State. The prime minister also confirmed his acceptance of a de facto united Irish dominion by officially designating the treaty a settlement ‘between Great Britain and Ireland’.
Tempering these private promises with the threat of renewed hostilities, Lloyd George badgered and bullied the nationalist representatives into signing the treaty on 6 December 1921. Collins realized that it did not represent ‘the ultimate freedom that all nations desire and develop to’, yet believed it gave Ireland the ‘freedom to achieve’ that position. Most people in Ireland greeted the news that agreement had been reached with relief, yet the treaty’s critics argued that it opened up the near certainty of partition. Éamon de Valera refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British king and resigned as Dáil president soon after; Sinn Féin split into proand anti-treaty factions. These two groupings would fight a civil war that would last for around a year and claim 2,000 lives – a bloody beginning for the new ‘free’ state.