Home Rule, the Easter Rising & the War of Independence

Chapter 7 closed with the Great Famine's own demographic catastrophe still shaping Irish politics decades on. By the early twentieth century, the long campaign for Home Rule would collapse into armed rebellion, and rebellion into a real guerrilla war that finally broke Ireland's own centuries-old union with Britain — though not without partitioning the island in the process.

The Third Home Rule Act (1912–1914)

A third Home Rule bill — proposing a devolved, bicameral Irish parliament within the United Kingdom — was introduced in April 1912. Unionist opposition was immediate and organised: on 28 September 1912, over 450,000 people signed the Ulster Covenant at Belfast City Hall, pledging to resist Home Rule "by all means which may be found necessary."

In June 1914, Erskine Childers smuggled 900 German rifles to the Irish Volunteers aboard his yacht, the Asgard, in the real Howth gun-running. Home Rule was formally passed but suspended for the duration of the First World War — a delay that would prove fatal to the moderate, constitutional path John Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party had championed for a generation.

The Easter Rising (1916)

On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, a small force of Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized the General Post Office and other key buildings in Dublin. Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the GPO steps, declaring himself President. James Connolly, commandant general of the Citizen Army, was severely wounded in the fighting.

Fifteen men were executed by firing squad between 3 and 12 May 1916, including Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Tom Clarke on the first day, and James Connolly — so badly wounded he was shot while tied to a chair — on the last. Roger Casement, tried separately for attempting to secure German arms, was hanged in London on 3 August 1916.

The Road to War: 1918–1919

In the December 1918 general election, Sinn Féin — now committed to full independence rather than Home Rule — won a landslide across nationalist Ireland. Rather than take their seats at Westminster, elected Sinn Féin MPs convened as Dáil Éireann, Ireland's own self-declared parliament, on 21 January 1919 in Dublin.

The War of Independence (1919–1921)

That same day, 21 January 1919, is generally recognised by historians as the war's real starting point: members of the Irish Volunteers (now increasingly known as the Irish Republican Army, or IRA) shot and killed two Royal Irish Constabulary officers at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary.

Under Michael Collins's leadership, the IRA fought a real guerrilla campaign — ambushes, raids, and targeted assassinations — rather than open battle against a far larger British force. Collins's own intelligence network, and the assassination squad known as "the Twelve Apostles," dismantled much of the British intelligence apparatus in Dublin.

The Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division — British recruits deployed to reinforce the RIC — became notorious for real, documented reprisals against civilians and property, further eroding what support remained for continued British rule.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921)

A truce was agreed in July 1921, and a delegation led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins negotiated directly with the British government. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, establishing the Irish Free State — 26 counties with dominion status within the British Empire — while the six predominantly Protestant counties of Ulster retained the option to remain part of the United Kingdom, which they immediately exercised.

Looking Ahead

Chapter 9 covers the real, bitter Irish Civil War that followed the Treaty's own split, and the partition that formally divided the island into two states.

Reflect