The birth of independent Ireland, 1912-1922

On the 19th of November, I gave a talk at London Metropolitan University's Irish Studies Centre as part of the Centre's Autumn Lecture series. The Centre is home to the most complete archive on the Irish in Britain. My topic was 'Changed utterly’: the birth of independent Ireland, 1912-1922. Here is a summary of what I said.

W.B. Yeats was right! Things did change utterly, and not just in, or because of, 1916 and its Easter Rising, but in a momentous decade between 1912 and 1922. This decade in Irish history is currently the subject of a major commemorative effort which will reach its peak in 2016, with the centenary of the Easter Rising.

During that remarkable decade in Irish history, the country was transformed from an integral if disaffected part of the United Kingdom into an independent State on an island that was divided politically for the first time in almost 1,000 years. How did this unexpected transformation come about?

In 1912, the great majority of Irish people favoured Home Rule for Ireland, a status we would probably now call devolution. The demand for this form of self-government for Ireland had been around for a long time and the Irish Parliamentary Party, which campaigned for Home Rule, was unquestionably the dominant political force in pre-war Ireland. In 1912, it looked as if the Party's long-held ambition was about to be realised with the tabling of the 3rd Home Rule Bill, which under the Parliament Act of 1911 could no longer be blocked by the House of Lords, and thus looked set to become law in 1914.

Ironically, the tabling of the Home Rule Bill represented the beginning of the end for the Irish Party and became the first landmark on the road to an independent Ireland. This was because resistance to Home Rule in Ulster, a campaign supported by the Conservative Party at Westminster, resulted in a militarisation of Ireland. This represented a challenge to the moderate parliamentarians whereas the new mood in Ireland was more conducive to the instincts of advanced nationalists for whom Home Rule was an unsatisfactory ambition. By the summer of 1914 Ireland had two rival militias, the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers, which were ready to confront each other over the question of a Home Rule.

The outbreak of war in August 1914 changed the course of world history. It also changed Ireland. More than 200,000 Irishmen took part in the war and 30,000-50,000 from all parts of Ireland and all political traditions lost their lives. Its political consequences were also significant. It split the Irish Volunteers and the 12,000 or so who refused to follow John Redmond's advice to enlist in the British Army in support of ’the freedom of small nations’ were responsible for organising the Easter Rising of 1916.

On Easter Monday 1916, members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied public buildings in the centre of Dublin, issued an impressively-written Proclamation of Independence and declared an Irish Republic. They held out for 6 days against vastly superior firepower and, following their surrender, 15 of the Rising's leaders were executed. About 1,500 Irish Volunteers took part in the Rising and about 450 people, including many non-combatant civilians, died during the fighting.

In the years after the Rising, the Irish political landscape was transformed and the election of December 1918 sounded the death knell for Home Rule and the Irish Party. The Sinn Fein Party, which had previously been a marginal political force, won 73 of the 100 Irish seats at Westminster, with a mandate to abstain from Westminster and press for the creation of an Irish Republic.

The Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921, which cost about 1,450 lives, was a rare phenomenon in Irish history. Not since the 1790s had any nationalist movement been able to mount a serious, sustained challenge to British power in Ireland. There were of course quite a few other European countries that gained independence in the troubled aftermath of the First World War. Ireland, however, was the only case where independence was extracted from one of the victorious powers in the 1914-18 war. The other newly-independent States emerged from the ruins of the defeated European Empires.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. The Treaty left a legacy of grievance and resentment which burdened Ireland for decades. There were deep divisions between North and South in Ireland, between nationalists and unionists, and, within nationalist Ireland, between supporters and opponents of the Treaty who fought a destructive civil war in 1923.

The events surrounding the birth of independent Ireland complicated Ireland's relations with Britain for generations. It is only in recent times that the divisive impact of this period of our overlapping histories has waned and more normal neighbourly relations have been established. These have been characterised by a momentous exchange of State Visits in 2011 and 2014, the first since the advent of Irish independence.

This current, positive era in Irish-British relations is something from which both countries have drawn draw benefit. Part of this new mood is that we can now commemorate the turbulent events of a century ago without feeling the need to rush to judgement about the rights and wrongs of that era. What we remember is a decade of war, revolution and profound political change that created the world, and the Ireland, in which we live today.

This decade of change in Ireland also had its impact on Britain. The Irish independence movement of 1916-1921, which inspired anti-colonial developments in Africa and Asia in the decades that followed, had a significant impact on the evolution of Britain from the Imperial entity that developed in the 19th century into the modern nation State that exists today.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London