Liam Lynch and the tightening of the Irish Civil War

Ascendant

Article on Liam Lynch and his management of the Irish Civil War as it dragged on.

The Irrelevance of Discourse: Liam Lynch and the Tightening of the Civil War, 1922-3 (Part VI)


A week after the start of the fighting in Dublin, many assumed that the war was as good as over. The Free State had triumphed, ran the conventional wisdom, thanks to the might and valour of its National Army. For those anti-Treaty guerillas who still held out, the Irish Times had nothing but scorn:

While these men may be able to embarrass the Government for a while by raids from the Dublin Mountains, they are not likely to constitute anything in the nature of a serious menace to the State.

Except things did not work out like that.

(Wreckage of the Hamman Hotel on O'Connell Street)

The violence continued, taking the form of small-scale ambushes, sometimes in different areas at the same time. One night of shooting in Cork on the 26th August was described by a local newspaper as among "the most nerve-racking that Cork has experienced for quite a long time.”

Emmet Dalton, the Free State commander in Cork, complained at how he was “beginning to lose hope." Among his soldiers, "there is no zeal – no dash – no organisation or determination.”

(National Army soldiers -looking notably youthful – are offered cigarettes by helpful civilians)

Satisfied that the tide was turning in his favour, Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty forces, held a meeting of the IRA Executive in October 1922. There, the senior officers discussed how best to manage the country in the victorious aftermath. An onlooker might have assumed from the way they talked that the civil war had already been won.


The Executive took the opportunity to pledge support to the absent Éamon de Valera, asking him to form a new government, one which would preserve the continuity of the Republic. The Executive promised it:

...our whole-hearted support and allegiance while it functions as the Government of the Republic, and we empower it to make an arrangement with the Free State Government, or with the British Government provided such arrangement does not bring the country in to the British Empire.

However, in case anyone was unclear as to who would be holding the leash: “Final decision on this question to be submitted for ratification to the Executive.”


Meanwhile, for all such confidence, the position for the IRA continued to worsen. As Liam Deasy, the Deputy Chief of Staff, studied the situation before him, he saw that:

...no real resistance was being offered to the Free State Army, apart from the Second Kerry and Fifth Cork Brigades and that we could never achieve anything we hoped for. Despite all this, Lynch was entirely unmoved in his steady determination to continue the fight.

Lynch, in Deasy’s opinion, put far too much stock in the reports he received, many of which told him only what he wanted to believe. If only Lynch had seen more of the areas he was reading about, Deasy thought, and met the officers on the ground, he might have developed a more realistic view of what was possible – and what was not.

(Liam Lynch)

But this still might not have been enough, Deasy concluded: “[Lynch] was however, so set on victory that I doubt even this would have changed his thinking.”

Deasy could not help but admire him all the same. His commander was “to the very end an idealist with the highest principles as his guide and it was not in his nature to surrender or to compromise."

Ascendant

The five previous articles in the series:

The Limits of Might: Liam Lynch and the End/Start of Conflict, 1921-2 (Part I)

The Chains of Trust: Liam Lynch and the Slide into Civil War, 1922 (Part II)

The Fog of Certainty: Liam Lynch and the Start of the Civil War, 1922 (Part III)

The Self-Deceit of Honour: Liam Lynch and the Civil War, 1922 (Part IV)

The Treachery of Peace: Liam Lynch, Ernie O’Malley and the Politics of the Civil War, 1922 (Part V)

BalcombeSt4

The Irish Times was printing the same rubbish a year earlier and about the government they were now defending.

The IRA took over large areas of the country. I didn't even know myself that they occupied Bray barracks during the summer and early Autumn of 1922.

The Kilmallock battle which finished in August was even longer & bloodier than in Dublin in June. If it was all over there wouldn't have been any need for the 77 official executions or the 153 non-official executions of Republicans.

Ascendant

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

The Irish Times was printing the same rubbish a year earlier and about the government they were now defending.

The IRA took over large areas of the country. I didn't even know myself that they occupied Bray barracks during the summer and early Autumn of 1922.

The Kilmallock battle which finished in August was even longer & bloodier than in Dublin in June. If it was all over there wouldn't have been any need for the 77 official executions or the 153 non-official executions of Republicans.

The IRA had whole swathes of territory at the start of the Civil War and squandered them due to the idea that guerilla warfare would serve it better than a straight-up fight. While that avoided large causalities, it also meant the Free State took over Co. Cork and the like with the minimum of problems.

Morale among the Pro-Treatyites in the lead-up to the war was so low that one of their commanders, Pádraig O'Connor - in the hours before the assault on the Four Courts - made a bet with his second-in-command that their side would lose, not just Dublin but the war in general, and within days.

His argument was that:

We numbered 800 all ranks, the Second Eastern division was 500, with 200 from Kilkenny and it was reckoned we would have 1000 men available in Dublin. To oppose this force the Irregulars had in Dublin an estimated force of 3000 men, and there was in the country a force of 20,000 to 30,000 Irregulars. It was hardly likely that their HQ staff would remain in the Four Courts to be bottled up, nor was it likely that they would allow us to defeat their Dublin force and gain undisputed control of the city.

(page 91 of Sleep Soldier Sleep: The Life and Times of Padraig O'Connor)


And yet that was what the IRA did, for which Lynch must take responsibility.

BalcombeSt4

^
But a properly organized campaign of Guerrilla warfare probably would have served them better. They clearly couldn't match the Free Staters one on one who had British artillery, armored cars, as much rifles & machine guns as they needed and a small navy & airforce. If the IRA had fought them in conventional warfare it would have been over before the end of 1922. The IRA only had a limited supply of rifles & landmines, a few Lewis machine guns & some Thompsons.

There's no way no matter how low-morale was on the Free State side. There was certainly bad judgement from well trained & extremely committed IRA commanders even tho people like Tom Barry had success in re-capturing barracks, but they couldn't hold them for no longer than a few weeks. With hindsight they probably couldn't have completed their objectives either way. There goal was to maintain the Irish Republic, they would have had to beaten the Free State & then also the RUC, B-Specials & UVF in the North if they were to maintain the Republic.

Their best bet would have been to call off the campaign entirely, re-supply with as much weapons & ammo as possible and agitate for revolution & strike in a Tet Offensive manner in as many cities and towns as possible and hopefully create sympathy for their cause with the local population.

Ascendant

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

^ Their best bet would have been to call off the campaign entirely, re-supply with as much weapons & ammo as possible and agitate for revolution & strike in a Tet Offensive manner in as many cities and towns as possible and hopefully create sympathy for their cause with the local population.

Which assumes the Free State would have been careless enough to leave them alone to do just that - and not also used the time to become further entrenched.

As for public sympathy, most people supported the Treaty, if only for the peace it offered, and would unlikely to have had much love for a group that wanted to reverse all of that.

BalcombeSt4

^But they let the IRA keep all their weapons they didn't demand they hand guns in & most POWs were only interned for a year two. Lenin was banished from Russia for years, he kept a actually quit e a small but well organized movement agitating for years & struck in what was pretty much coup in October 1917. Castro overthrew the Cuban dictatorship with a couple of guerrillas who lived in the mountains. Ho Chi Minh & Giap beat the French & Americans with guerrilla tactics. So it was wasn't impossible for the IRA to achieve their goals. During the Troubles in South Armagh the British got a bit of bloody nose, they tried to use the same SAS ambush style tactics that worked for them in East Tyrone & South Derry failed in South Armagh during Operation Conservation.

Public opinion can change in an instant as we seen with the Easter Rising. I was actually very surprised at the amount of support the Provisional IRA had in the 26 counties in the early 70's. Tens of thousands of people came out in the street during Sean MacStofain's hunger strike, that support was largely gone within a year two.

The point I was originally making tho was guerrilla warfare worked much better for the IRA than conventional warfare during the Civil War. It's why Collins was so against large attacks like the Customs House burning and other large scale attacks during 1919-21. During the Guerrilla phase the Free State suffered very heavy casualties, they lost over 800 men during the whole conflict in 11 months compared to the British who lost just over 700 in 2 years, in which the Free State responded with absolute brutality.

Ascendant

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

The point I was originally making tho was guerrilla warfare worked much better for the IRA than conventional warfare during the Civil War.

Did it? Yeah, the Free State forces lost a disproportionate number of men, as you said, but the IRA also suffered accordingly. By February 1923, less than a year since the war started, as the officers of the First Southern Division - the mainstay of the War of Independence - were telling Lynch that they could not last the summer at the rate they were going. And this was months after they started the guerilla strategy that had previously worked so well.

As for any Tet-style offenses, the Vietcong at least had the advantage of North Vietnam to use as a secure base. The IRA lacked that advantage, since it gave up all the cities and towns it held near the start.

At the start, which was defined mostly one-on-one engagements, the Free Staters lost as many times as the IRA did. Ernie O'Malley was able to cut a swathe through the Free State posts he found outside Dublin. There was clearly nothing inherently superior about the training or skill of the National Army.

Could the IRA have kept this up? Maybe not, but - with the benefit of hindsight, maybe - it might have stood a chance.

pedroeibar1

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

^But they let the IRA keep all their weapons they didn't demand they hand guns in & most POWs were only interned for a year two. Lenin was banished from Russia for years, he kept a actually quit e a small but well organized movement agitating for years & struck in what was pretty much coup in October 1917. Castro overthrew the Cuban dictatorship with a couple of guerrillas who lived in the mountains. Ho Chi Minh & Giap beat the French & Americans with guerrilla tactics. So it was wasn't impossible for the IRA to achieve their goals. During the Troubles in South Armagh the British got a bit of bloody nose, they tried to use the same SAS ambush style tactics that worked for them in East Tyrone & South Derry failed in South Armagh during Operation Conservation.

Public opinion can change in an instant as we seen with the Easter Rising. I was actually very surprised at the amount of support the Provisional IRA had in the 26 counties in the early 70's. Tens of thousands of people came out in the street during Sean MacStofain's hunger strike, that support was largely gone within a year two.

The point I was originally making tho was guerrilla warfare worked much better for the IRA than conventional warfare during the Civil War. It's why Collins was so against large attacks like the Customs House burning and other large scale attacks during 1919-21. During the Guerrilla phase the Free State suffered very heavy casualties, they lost over 800 men during the whole conflict in 11 months compared to the British who lost just over 700 in 2 years, in which the Free State responded with absolute brutality.

Where do you think the IRA would have got their arms? Do you not know that the guerrilla is the fish that swims in the sea of human population, and the IRA had lost its environment because – as the election showed – it lost the population.

You seem to be obsessed with numbers. Bodycount of small people in small numbers does not matter a jot in military strategy. You also are wrong in making a comparison between the ‘Old IRA’ and the later variety. They had little in common. Cutting down a few telegraph poles, or forcing some passers-by at gunpoint to dig trenches might cause a bit of embarrassment to a government, but it does not win a war.
I have no idea where you get your notions expressed above – the Provisional IRA had little or no support in the 26 during the 1970’s; nor did ‘tens of thousands’ protest for MacStiofain’s release – a couple of thousand is being generous. He was derisorily referred to by most as ‘Stevenson’, his real name, and even in Republican circles he was regarded as a dinosaur and first used and then ignored by the likes of McGuinness and Adams, who soon dumped him.

You also seem to have a rather weird notion of the amount of support/popularity for Sinn Fein had in the 26 during the ‘seventies. There was, as I have previously said, support for the ‘Republican Movement’ after Burntollet and the Civil Rights marches. That was quickly lost due to the antics of the various IRA factions who also misread, like you, what they thought was the amount of ‘support’. Just look at the election results in the 26 – McGiolla was possibly the only post 1970 candidate that got elected, and even the HBlock crowd, who eventually got 2 nobodies elected (out of more than a dozen candidates fielded) and both of them were from border counties.

The vast bulk of the population of the 26 don’t give a rats about the aims of Sinn Fein, other than the ‘pay for nothing’ brigade who live on social welfare and believe the non-factual economic nonsense purveyed by socialist dreamers. What credibility could a potential Sinn Fein finance minister (Pearse Doherty) have after Sinn Fein's and his inept (mis) management of advising the Greek Government / Tsipras / Syriza. And when his/their advice was proved inept/unrealistic and hard economic facts ruled, he and Mary Lou come up with a story that there is an EU conspiracy to destroy Syriza, and then dropped them like a hot brick.
You really need to read some international news, some reliable sources, not the propaganda pap spun/written by idiots.

BalcombeSt4

Ascendant wrote: »

Did it? Yeah, the Free State forces lost a disproportionate number of men, as you said, but the IRA also suffered accordingly. By February 1923, less than a year since the war started, as the officers of the First Southern Division - the mainstay of the War of Independence - were telling Lynch that they could not last the summer at the rate they were going. And this was months after they started the guerilla strategy that had previously worked so well.

As for any Tet-style offenses, the Vietcong at least had the advantage of North Vietnam to use as a secure base. The IRA lacked that advantage, since it gave up all the cities and towns it held near the start.

At the start, which was defined mostly one-on-one engagements, the Free Staters lost as many times as the IRA did. Ernie O'Malley was able to cut a swathe through the Free State posts he found outside Dublin. There was clearly nothing inherently superior about the training or skill of the National Army.

Could the IRA have kept this up? Maybe not, but - with the benefit of hindsight, maybe - it might have stood a chance.

I think if they used conventional warfare tactics they wouldn't have lasted 1922.

But there was no way the IRA could have beaten the Free State no matter the military skill of individaul guerrillas, the IRA probably had just as many good commanders as the Free State did, but the IRA was up against too many forces.
The Free State had the support of the Irish middle class, the press & the British military.

The Republicans could not have won the Anglo-Irish war either. The leadership was very conservative and was afraid of the revolutionary socialist forces in the country.
The type of Republicanism advocated by the leadership in the early 20th century was one to suit the upper middle class, small businessmen, civil servants, tenant farmers etc... it was not a very revolutionary movment. The contradictory objectives of of people within in the movment mean't that splits were bound to happen.

For example the more radical Republicans like Conolly & Mellows supprorted the strikers during the 1913 lockout, Arthur Griffith on the other hand said "the strikers should be bayonetted.

When the working class became involved in the struggle, the Limerick Soviet, Argina Soviet, general strikes, occupation of large estates, the large spike in tradde union membership etc... All this brought the Republican leadership into conflict with militant workers & peasants, a lot of time of the Republican Courts set up by the Dail was spent clamping down on illegal land seizures. The Irish Republican Police were used to evict landless families.

So rather than support the radical working class and to risk a socialist revolution & revolt against the capitalist system, the conservative leadership of the Republican movment preferred to negotiate a deal with Britain.

Once the struggle turned from a popular uprising into a straight forward military conflict between a badly armed IRA who had a limited number of men against the most experienced & best armed army in Europe, there was only going to be one outcome. The guerrillas fought wel with what they had, especially in Cork & Limerick were working class support for the IRA was at it's strongest.

BalcombeSt4

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Where do you think the IRA would have got their arms? Do you not know that the guerrilla is the fish that swims in the sea of human population, and the IRA had lost its environment because – as the election showed – it lost the population.

You seem to be obsessed with numbers. Bodycount of small people in small numbers does not matter a jot in military strategy. You also are wrong in making a comparison between the ‘Old IRA’ and the later variety. They had little in common. Cutting down a few telegraph poles, or forcing some passers-by at gunpoint to dig trenches might cause a bit of embarrassment to a government, but it does not win a war.
I have no idea where you get your notions expressed above – the Provisional IRA had little or no support in the 26 during the 1970’s; nor did ‘tens of thousands’ protest for MacStiofain’s release – a couple of thousand is being generous. He was derisorily referred to by most as ‘Stevenson’, his real name, and even in Republican circles he was regarded as a dinosaur and first used and then ignored by the likes of McGuinness and Adams, who soon dumped him.

You also seem to have a rather weird notion of the amount of support/popularity for Sinn Fein had in the 26 during the ‘seventies. There was, as I have previously said, support for the ‘Republican Movement’ after Burntollet and the Civil Rights marches. That was quickly lost due to the antics of the various IRA factions who also misread, like you, what they thought was the amount of ‘support’. Just look at the election results in the 26 – McGiolla was possibly the only post 1970 candidate that got elected, and even the HBlock crowd, who eventually got 2 nobodies elected (out of more than a dozen candidates fielded) and both of them were from border counties.

The vast bulk of the population of the 26 don’t give a rats about the aims of Sinn Fein, other than the ‘pay for nothing’ brigade who live on social welfare and believe the non-factual economic nonsense purveyed by socialist dreamers. What credibility could a potential Sinn Fein finance minister (Pearse Doherty) have after Sinn Fein's and his inept (mis) management of advising the Greek Government / Tsipras / Syriza. And when his/their advice was proved inept/unrealistic and hard economic facts ruled, he and Mary Lou come up with a story that there is an EU conspiracy to destroy Syriza, and then dropped them like a hot brick.
You really need to read some international news, some reliable sources, not the propaganda pap spun/written by idiots.

They got their arms from raids on RIC barracks, some from America & some from European countries.

And thats basically what I said, I said the IRA had lost its support base and no chance of winning.

Adams & McGuinness were not in a posistion to dump him in 1972. It wasn't until the 1975 ceasefire that Hughes & Adams wanted to get rid of the leadership who were talking with the British & Mike Oatley from MI6, they wanted rid of Billy McKee, Daithi O'Connell, Seamus Twomey, those type of people from the Army Council, they wanted rid of them because they believed they were being led into a ceasefire which had no benefit to the Republican Movement. By around 1977 Adams & Hughes had enough support to de facto take control of the IRA.

I don't have a clue what your talking about Sinn Fein for, I never mentioned Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein for most of the 1970's wasn't even a political party it was just a presure group, it wasn't until after the Hunger Strikes that they became a political force.

And as for MacStiofain prosters there's seems to be a good few here, you wouldn't see this support or TV coverage for a Republican hunger Striker today anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yw1Vt5dEyY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAVWBN0UzyQ

The last part is just about currrent politics so I won't respond to that, just so you know I'm not a Sinn Fein supporter, to middle class for my liking.

pedroeibar1

Why do you persist in trying to rewrite history? Do you really think the people on this forum are clueless idiots who might believe the twaddle you write and accept a line or two on Civil War folowed by a discourse on the merits of the IRA in Northern Ireland?

This thread is about the Civil War – apparently your favourite topic - yet at the outset you get it totally wrong – again.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

…..t their arms from raids on RIC barracks, some from America & some from European countries.

How could anti-treaty forces wage a war without large amounts of arms and munitions? Are you not aware that the Four Courts was in July 1922 but the RIC was disbanded early in 1922 and gone completely by the middle of that year? How could arms be captured from a body that did not exist? Arms from America? Really? With the Royal Navy still firmly established in the Treaty Ports and ruling the waves (having been on a war footing from 1914-1918), there was no hope of serious arms landings. Arms from ‘some European countries’? Really? Which ones? From Germany or France, broken piles of rubble after WWI? Are you not aware that the French government was very close to and sympathetic with the Free State and a delegation of Free State army officers had meetings early 1920’s in Paris about using St. Cyr as a model for the Irish Cadet School? (It came to naught, they used Sandhurst.) I could go on but it is not worth the effort, it would just give you an excuse to write more nonsense.

If you want to promote your brand of rose-tinted communism, the politics forum is the place, not this forum about history that is based on factual information, not poorly informed opinion or aspirations.

BalcombeSt4

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Why do you persist in trying to rewrite history? Do you really think the people on this forum are clueless idiots who might believe the twaddle you write and accept a line or two on Civil War folowed by a discourse on the merits of the IRA in Northern Ireland?

This thread is about the Civil War – apparently your favourite topic - yet at the outset you get it totally wrong – again.


How could anti-treaty forces wage a war without large amounts of arms and munitions? Are you not aware that the Four Courts was in July 1922 but the RIC was disbanded early in 1922 and gone completely by the middle of that year? How could arms be captured from a body that did not exist? Arms from America? Really? With the Royal Navy still firmly established in the Treaty Ports and ruling the waves (having been on a war footing from 1914-1918), there was no hope of serious arms landings. Arms from ‘some European countries’? Really? Which ones? From Germany or France, broken piles of rubble after WWI? Are you not aware that the French government was very close to and sympathetic with the Free State and a delegation of Free State army officers had meetings early 1920’s in Paris about using St. Cyr as a model for the Irish Cadet School? (It came to naught, they used Sandhurst.) I could go on but it is not worth the effort, it would just give you an excuse to write more nonsense.

If you want to promote your brand of rose-tinted communism, the politics forum is the place, not this forum about history that is based on factual information, not poorly informed opinion or aspirations.

I believed that you were talking about the pre-split IRA.

As for the Royal Navy bloackade they did manage to smuggle in around 500 Thompson SMG's, Tom Barry in his memoirs claimed he was the first person in Ireland to test one in 1921.

pedroeibar1

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

....As for the Royal Navy bloackade they did manage to smuggle in around 500 Thompson SMG's, Tom Barry in his memoirs claimed he was the first person in Ireland to test one in 1921.

Lots of claims in that book, which, like those of Dan Breen in his, have to be taken with a very large dose of salt. Both Meda Ryan and Peter Hart give some credibility to Barry’s claim.

However, the IRA did not import 500 Thompson SMG’s. Allegedly Boland bought about 650, of which the main shipment - about 500 - was seized by US Customs (in NY, June 15, 1921 on a ship named ‘East Side’). So that’s 150, and it was at the end of the War of Independence.

Thompson production was low volume for many years because the guns were too expensive - in today’s money they cost about $3,000 each. So the IRA spent about 2 million and lost about 1.5 of it through confiscation. Not a very good return on investment!

By the time of the Civil War the Thompson still was a basic firearm, with stick magazines that held either 20 or 30 rounds. With a firing rate of 600 rounds a minute, they would have been emptied in about two seconds. Even in very skilled hands (which required lots of training/lots of ammunition) , it was very inaccurate for ranges beyond 50 yards. Procuring and transporting sufficient ammunition along with a very heavy gun made it totally unsuitable for a sustained guerrilla war.

BalcombeSt4

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Lots of claims in that book, which, like those of Dan Breen in his, have to be taken with a very large dose of salt. Both Meda Ryan and Peter Hart give some credibility to Barry’s claim.

However, the IRA did not import 500 Thompson SMG’s. Allegedly Boland bought about 653, of which the main shipment - about 495 - was seized by US Customs (in NY, June 15, 1921 on a ship named ‘East Side’). So that’s 150, and it was at the end of the War of Independence.

Thompson production was low volume for many years because the guns were too expensive - in today’s money they cost about $3,000 each. So the IRA spent about 2 million and lost about 1.5 of it through confiscation. Not a very good return on investment!

By the time of the Civil War the Thompson still was a basic firearm, with stick magazines that held either 20 or 30 rounds. With a firing rate of 600 rounds a minute, they would have been emptied in about two seconds. Even in very skilled hands (which required lots of training/lots of ammunition) , it was very inaccurate for ranges beyond 50 yards. Procuring and transporting sufficient ammunition along with a very heavy gun made it totally unsuitable for a sustained guerrilla war.

The Claim was also made in Tim Pat Coogans biography on Collins.

Peter Hart made the claim in his book about 653 being bought in America & just over 150 getting to the IRA. He also went on to state the Civil War IRA purchased mor SMG's (does not say how much) but that they were very ineffective in Ireland; the Thompson caused serious casualties (death or serious injury) to those attacked in only 32% of the actions in which it was used in.

Collins also tried to acquire arms from Italy but from what I know was not successful.

Yes, but updated models of the SMG from other countries would prove valubale in guerrilla war especially in Vietnam were the Viet Cong in particular liked it.