Was the civil war irrepressible?

jonniebgood1

Much emphasis in regard or the Irish civil war is personality based, I would like to look at the issues that were at hand rather than specifically focus on the people involved. I think this should be compatible with the positives and negatives that are attributed to individuals that led both sides. As with most history the recorded views tend to side with the victors. In the Irish civil war this is the case with most historians feeling that the civil war was unnessesary with the blame for the conflict being layed upon the anti-treaty side. So naturally the victor may portray their enemy as being incoherent and illogical with specific individuals or figureheads isolated for their views rather than accepting that the opposition was widespread.

One suggested reason the anti-treaty side took up arms against their former friends was that they simply had conflicting ideas about democracy and freedom (Bill Kissane- the politics of the irish civil war p.203). Another suggestion is that once Sinn Feins main uniting factor (British occupation) was almost removed that a clear divide between extremists and moderates within the movement made some form of civil war irrepressible. Of course there are also British influences but I would prefer not to just focus fully on these.
So was the civil war irrepressible?
Were partition and the oath as important as is sometimes portrayed?
What other reasons/ issues were at the route of the conflict in social terms?

hokeypokey

There were those too who enjoyed all the action, fighting etc. and basically were just spoiling for another war.

Dr.Nightdub

Jayzis, that's a biggie! Apologies in advance for merely skimming...may come back and focus on more detail later.

First off, I don't fully agree that "As with most history the recorded views tend to side with the victors.". The Civil War appears to be one of the few instances where, at least until recently, the losers wrote the history, or at least the bulk of the first-hand accounts - Ernie O'Malley, Tom Barry, Peadar O'Donnell, etc.

Partition wasn't as central as is often made out - not saying that it didn't stick in the craw, but there was an inevitability about it that appeared to be accepted by both sides. Even Dev's Document No. 2 left the status of N.Ireland esentially unchanged. As Collins said:

"The Treaty is not to be blamed for partition. Document No. 2 is not to be blamed for partition. Partition was a fact and it was made a fact in the days of the Republic. It was made a fact by the British partition Act of 1920, and it was implemented by the 20,000 rifles that the British handed over to the north-east mercenaries. That is the fact that we have to deal with, and if we apply ourselves to the fact of the north-east situation without trying to make party capital out of it we will be doing something for the people of the north-east of Ireland. That is the way I want to tackle it. The unity of the 26 Counties is the greatest safeguard our people in the Six County area can have."
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/en.toc.dail.html (17th May 1922)

Now you can argue all you like about the "northern offensive" of May 1922 and whether Collins was genuine about supporting it as a means of inducing IRA unity to avoid civil war, or whether he was deliberately leading Lynch and the Republicans up the garden path, but by that stage partition was pretty peripheral to what was really exercising people.

As an aside, it's worth pointing out that the IRA in the areas least likely to get a "get-out-of-jail-card" from any Boundary Commission - i.e. Belfast and Antrim - sided with the pro-Treaty side in the south. OK, in return for promises of arms and support from Dublin, but still to the extent that hundreds of them ended up joining the Free State army.

The oath, if taken as shorthand for the structures of political independence - with dominion status, the Lord Lieutenant, legal role of the Privy Council and all the rest of it - was the key issue. Going by the Dail debates, what really separated the sides was the degree of adherence to the Republic declared in 1916 - "freedom to achieve freedom" v full freedom now.

Bear in mind it was less than ten years since the nationalist movement had split over whether Home Rule - a degree of independence within the UK - was acceptable or not. To those who opposed the Treaty, this looked like a slight variation on the same theme - a degree of independence within the Empire - and certainly not the Republic to which they'd sworn allegiance. If power flowed not from the king, but from the people, then the only logical extension of that view was to oppose the Treaty by force of arms if need be and stand by the Republic. Ninety years on, it may appear to us to have been just so much semantics and sure didn't we get a Republic in 1949 anyway, but at the time it was the defining factor.

Another factor was the "shoot first, vote later" aspect of Republicanism: 1916, Solohedbeg, occupying the Four Courts, etc - and on through to the border campaign of the 50s and even to today's dissidents. Note, I said "aspect" not "nature". But in fairness to them, without the IRA making the country ungovernable by late 1921, the role and relevance of the Dáil would have been far diminished - no Republican police, no Dáil courts, etc. However, the leading role of the IRA in the War of Independence made it inevitable that military, rather than political, opposition to the Treaty would equally take the lead - to put it crudely and simplistically (and in terms of personalities - sorry), Dev was always gonna traipse after Rory O'Connor and not vice-versa.

Against that, you had ranged the forces of pragmatism, again differing to degrees in terms of how grudgingly or not they accepted that the Treaty was the best that was on offer, or that the Free State was a stage on the road rather than the final destination. By the way, Conor McCabe's excellent recent book "Sins of the Father" sets out in great detail how all that was achieved was an element of political, but not economic, independence. Which leads you back to Connolly and "Whoop it up for liberty" but that's another day's work...

I think terms like "extremists" and "moderates" are overly loaded - to me, "idealists" versus "pragmatists" gives a more nuanced description. So to answer the orignal question: given that the trigger for the Civil War was the Treaty, and given the forces lined up on either side of that divide, yes I do think it was inevitable.