On BBC Radio 4 today ( Saturday 7 May 2022) a correspondent asserted that Sinn Fein had waged war for the independence of Ireland in the early 20th Century
Sinn Fein never waged war. But in December 1918 it won a landslide victory, pledged to establish an Independent Irish Republic in a General Election “regarded on all sides as a plebiscite” according to THE TIMES, never a friend of Ireland.
Following Municipal, County and other Local Elections in 1920 most local authorities adhered to the Republic established by the General Election and worked in tandem with its Parliament, Dail Eireann.
A Rogues’ Gallery of Academic Revisionists and other Charlatans would tell you otherwise. Sinn Fein got 47% of all the votes CAST in Ireland in the General Election. On 28 January 1919, one week following the first meeting of Dail Eireann, Edward MacLysaght noted in his Diary:-
“Just one thing occurs to me to mention: an example of how our claim for self-determination of small nations – championed by Britain in the case of the Czechs – is misrepresented by politicians and newspapers there. In quoting statistics for last year’s general election they give the total votes cast for and against Sinn Fein only in contested elections, completely ignoring the 25 constituencies where Sinn Fein candidates were returned unopposed, thus presenting an entirely misleading picture.”
Virtually all the firearms in Ireland at the time were in the hands of the Crown Forces. British Soldiers, Sailors and Marines equipped with artillery, tanks, armoured cars, warships and war planes based in numerous barracks and strongpoints throughout the country. They imposed curfews and motored at their leisure in trucks with searchlights and raided incessantly in the towns and villages. They imposed censorship . They depended on armed Irish Constabulary under direction from London through Dublin Castle, initially quartered in hundreds of small barracks, to report on the activities and opinions of the citizens.
Republican Volunteers were rarely in possession of a service rifle and more than twenty rounds of ammunition for it. But they put moral and physical pressure on these spies in their midst and hundreds of their barracks were either attacked or abandoned and and burned.
Following the Local Elections of 1920 the British Government waged a terrorist war on Ireland. Major Montgomery said he didn’t care how many houses he burned to defeat Sinn Fein. So the voters’ houses were burned by the hundred, voters and their elected representatives were interned, or murdered, shops were looted and burned, agricultural co-operatives were burned and Lloyd George boasted of it at the London Lord Mayor’s Dinner. Lord Mayor McCurtain of Cork was murdered by the RIC, Cork City’s Centre, its Municipal Offices and Carnegie Library were destroyed , Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney died on hunger Strike, a Mayor and ex-Mayor of Limerick were murdered by a British Officer and Coroners’ Inquests were abolished under the Defence of the Realm Act.
But neither the citizens nor their leaders were broken in spirit and Britain sued for a truce in 1921
The BBC would not openly dispute my narrative but never had the guts to endorse it. Nor would it tell you that the Conservative and Unionist Party and the top brass of the British Forces staged a mutiny against the Parliament at Westminster when a majority there were favourable to granting “Home Rule” a Mickey Mouse measure of local autonomy to Ireland. The Liberal Government buckled under that revolt without a fight.
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