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—Mao Zedong 1 страница
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Overshadowing the IrishVolunteers’ strategic and tactical military record is their political record. Politics is about principle, persuasion and power, and persuasion is the foremost factor. Not only do the most successful guerrilla tactics stress the ‘political’ over the ‘military’ element but also the ‘victory’ they achieve gains meaning only when exploited politically—only when the ruler has put his own house in order, the despot has been overthrown or the invader has been displaced. The purely military effects of guerrilla war will usually be seen as subordinate to the political and psychological effects. 1 Political vision is crucial for a guerrilla campaign. The movement has to have a mobilising idea, one that is inspiring and inclusive. The ‘idea’ is to fuel the military campaign with inspiration.
This historical record is of utmost importance if one is to understand why and how guerrilla warfare evolved into the ideal instrument for the realisation of socio-political and economic aspirations through the centuries, for the Irish in the early twentieth century and in guerrilla wars of today. 2 Michael Collins was, above all, a realist: he knew his enemies and what was necessary to ‘defeat’ them. The Irish did not have to hold large swathes of territory or drive the British into the sea; they only had to outlast the British will to fight. Their long-term objective was a political goal, and to achieve that they had to destabilise the British government in Ireland. Collins was the pragmatic strategist: if the vision of a Republic was unattainable (as it turned out to be), then Collins was willing to push the British into negotiations and take the best he could get. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s
dictum, ‘they succeeded by surviving’.
US Field Manual 3-07. 22, Counterinsurgency Operations, defines insurgency as an
organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict. It is a protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control. Political power is the central issue in an insurgency. [Emphasis added]3
In any struggle for political power there are a limited number of tools that can be used to induce the population to obey, including:
• coercive force,
• economic incentive and disincentive,
• legitimating ideology, and
• traditional authority.
While these tools are often available to both insurgent and counter- insurgent forces, in the Irish War of Independence the British could have had a head start; from the perspective of the Irish population, however, neither side had an explicit or immediate advantage in the initial battle for ‘hearts and minds’. The civilian population would support the side which it was in its best interests to obey. The regard for one’s own benefit or advantage is the basis for behaviour in all societies, regardless of religion, class or culture. To win the support of the people, the Irish military—and the de facto government of the Dá il—had to selectively provide security, as well as persuading the population that the Irish could provide them with a better government than could the British. Governments are elected to exercise control and ensure public safety in what amounts to a contract with the public. When the British government failed to provide security for the Irish people, and actually became a threat to them in the case of the Black and Tans or Auxiliaries, it failed to fulfil that implicit contract of governance, and the Irish goal of their own governance became a reality. This goes back to the ancient idea of protecting the public good and
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ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of people. The Irish revolutionaries believed that ordinary people could rule their own lives better than the British were doing.
Charles Townsend noted: ‘If the nature of the challenging “force” is misunderstood, then the counter-application of force is likely to be wrong’. 4 The British never seemed to understand that the goal of the Irish war was as much a political as a military one. For example, the IRA consistently viewed itself as the legitimate army of a legitimate state, and construed its activities as a ‘war’ against British occupation. Thus any British actions that implied that the conflict was a war provided effective propaganda for the IRA. According to the Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920–1, ‘recognition [by British military authorities] of the IRA as belligerents may ipso facto be said to involve the Imperial Government in the recognition of an Irish Republic’. 5 Identifying the conflict as a war would have legitimised Sinn Fé in and threatened the political legitimacy of the British government—and of the Union itself. As Lloyd George said in April 1920, ‘You do not declare war against rebels’. 6
Throughout the period, the British government position was that this was a criminal enterprise on the part of the Irish and thus should come under the purview of police forces. There were several legal reasons for this position, beyond the issue of criminality. British common law did not recognise an internal state of rebellion and therefore did not accept the actions of rebels as legitimate. Further, the law and constitution did not permit the use of military force in support of civil power except in rare and unusual circumstances. British law did not envision an armed, organised and determined IRA threatening the government, and thus there were inadequate mechanisms in place to deal with the Irish. 7
Throughout the twentieth century, most guerrilla attempts at overthrow have failed. It is only when the political aspects of the wars are recognised by the national guerrilla leaders and emphasised over the military aspects that the rebels have succeeded. Those guerrillas who have ‘succeeded’ often do not‘win’ in a military sense. They are successful because the invader/oppressor/autocrat is obliged to recognise the guerrillas and accedes, at least partially, to their political demands. For example, in conjunction with Vietnamese forces the US military might have been able to exercise control over the rice paddies ofVietnam, but the US government
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could not achieve control over the demonstrators on the streets of Chicago. The Tet Offensive of 1968 is still recognised in the US as the turning point of the Vietnam War. 8 Although the communists suffered massive losses, Tet precipitated the collapse of the American people’s will to win in Vietnam. General Võ Nguyê n Giá p and the Vietnamese were losing the military war but they won the propaganda war. It is accepted that after that series of battles the American public felt that they had been deceived and misinformed about how the war was proceeding. Within one year the American troops began to withdraw from Vietnam. Likewise, with a great infusion of more troops and maté riel the British military might have been able to maintain some control over the cities and countryside of Ireland, but the British government could not control Parliament nor British and international opinion. Like Tet’s US military ‘victories’, Lloyd George’s claim to have ‘murder by the throat’ just ten days before Bloody Sunday (21 November 1920) rang hollow in the British press and encouraged the British government to seek a negotiated solution. 9 The reprisals and the stories of atrocities that were published in the worldwide press completely changed the British view of the war. The political will of the British was beaten more soundly than was the military will of the British military establishment. Collins recognised that a guerrilla’s task is to draw the opponent into a battle he cannot win. The British could not win the political/propaganda war. Within a year they, too, began their withdrawal from Ireland.
In a counter-insurgency, no military effort can succeed for long if the status quo government does not enact sound policies. The British military could contain the IRA only until the British government enacted policies or legislation that pre-empted or usurped the particular issues of national freedom from the Irish. The British government did not do so, and therefore did not support its military actions. In the long run, the British had to grant the Irish some measure of autonomy. Instead, they responded at the outset with forceful military measures, further alienating the population, so that by late 1918 the Irish had finally given up on the legitimacy of the British government and were committed to Irish independence.
Insurgencies are weakest at the beginning, and a forceful British move against the Irish in 1919 would have required careful political and propaganda operations that the British were not sufficiently ready to
perform at that time. A ‘foreign’ power is often tentative, even fearful, in employing force against the local population. Such action might have strengthened the ‘physical force’ wing of Irish separatism, and could have damaged the British relationship with the US. It might have been viewed as nothing more than political repression. If the British had extended martial law over the whole country from 1916 to 1918 it would likely have speeded up the process of bringing the Irish people over to the rebel side. The application of martial law would have played directly into Irish propaganda, as it strips away the rights of everyone. Mass arrests, as after the Rising, would have generated more recruits. Executions after ‘show’ trials like Roger Casement’s, or trials in camera as after the Rising, would have made the situation worse. Martial law has very rarely been used in the UK, as its legal basis is not certain. The British establishment has a ‘love/hate’ relationship with the concept, but by 1919, and more so in 1920, the pressure to introduce it from the senior military staff in London and Dublin was strong. 10 Introduction of martial law in Munster had very little effect on the IRA campaign, which rose to the challenge and became more energetic. The inconvenience to local people was considerable, but the biggest problem was the legal basis. 11 Throughout the period, the British Cabinet was sensitive to the opinion of Parliament and the British public, as well as to international opinion, particularly in the US. These pressures precluded the British from taking actions that would have offended those groups. Without mobilising popular Irish, British and international support to take the strongest military action, the British failed at the outset of the war. That mobilisation did not turn out to be possible later, either.
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The Irish claim to be a legitimate government was based on the ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ of the Easter Rising. The Proclamation based the claim on the existence of an Irish nation prior to the first English settlements in Ireland. It further stated that the Provisional Government would administer Irish affairs until a permanent national government could be elected, and that took place in the election of December 1918. 12 Irish willingness to be ruled by others faded, and that 1918 election was seen as the chance to form the permanent government envisioned in the Proclamation. The election success of Sinn Fé in was seen as an expression of the Irish people, which legitimised the existence of a separate Irish state. The elected Dá il ratified the Proclamation and ordained itself the sole
legitimate governing power in Ireland. The IRA campaign of 1920–1 was made possible by the complete change of Irish political allegiance from constitutional to ‘physical force’ nationalism between 1916 and 1921. An t- Ó glá ch described the Irish military/political combination of strategy clearly:
We will strike in our own way, in our own time. If we cannot, by force of arms, drive the enemy out of our country at the present moment, we can help to make his position impossible and military activities futile.
As long as British conventional commanders failed to adapt organisation, policies and tactics to meet the Irish political challenge instead of trying to convert it into an orthodox military challenge, the revolutionary campaign prospered. The Irish War of Independence did not lend itself to an exclusive military solution, which is ephemeral at best. The words ‘winning’ and ‘victory’ diminished in meaning as the British faced the awesome political/economic challenge that in 1919–21 they seemed unable to comprehend. T. E. Lawrence summed up a volume of thought in fifty words: ‘Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain’. Every successful guerrilla leader in history has heeded this basic formula. The Irish knew what Lawrence meant when he said that ‘rebellion must have an unassailable base’, and that it is found not so much in terrain as ‘in the minds of men converted to its creed’. ‘Rebellions must have a friendly population’, he wrote, ‘not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. ’ Lawrence wrote almost nothing new but he learned greatly from history. Not much was new, either, in what the Irish guerrillas in their time said and did. The Irish preached an extremely effective doctrine—that of national independence, of pride and dignity. The first stage of the Irish revolution was essentially a political process in which the advanced nationalism of Sinn Fé in squeezed out the Irish Parliamentary Party and established itself as the voice of the Irish people.
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Above all, Lawrence called for qualitative tactics, just as used by the
Israelis, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and other rebels throughout the twentieth century. There was nothing new about these, nor about terrorist tactics such as those used by the Vietcong and condemned by United States moralists—American guerrillas in the Carolinas used precisely those same vicious tactics in the American Revolution, and they were as horrible in 1780 and in 1920 as they are today—but they are selective, very effective and kill far fewer people than major battles and big guns. 13 What one must realise is that every tactic employed by the Irish guerrillas served a political purpose in that it helped to enlarge and consolidate the support base—the ‘water’, as Chairman Mao has it, in which guerrillas ‘swim’.
The only valid counter-insurgency tactic is to steal the support base from the guerrilla, and that means fighting a predominantly political war, an immensely complicated war that has almost nothing to do with conventional strategy and tactics. 14 It is a low-level war and involves, among many other things, protecting loyal citizens while repairing errors of government, for the Irish insurgency could not have begun, much less grown, but for those errors. 15 For example, between 1916 and the Truce the RIC lost its legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the population in many counties by a process of physical (because so many barracks were closed), political (because the RIC were ostracised) and psychological distance between the police and the community. 16 By late 1917 the RIC were reviled as the most obvious instrument of British rule in Ireland. 17 In October the County Inspector for Clare reported that
The people appear to regard the police as their enemies and have ceased all friendly intercourse with them. Shops continue to supply provisions, but they would rather that the police did not come to them. 18
One of the most prolific writers among modern guerrilla warriors was Mao Zedong. He consistently reverted to the theme that a guerrilla war is carried out among the people, and that one must always look to the political effects of any military action.
There is no reason to consider guerrilla warfare separately from
national policy. On the contrary, it must be organised and conducted completely in accord with national policy …
…
It is only who misinterpret guerrilla action [sic] who say, as does Jen Ch’I Shan, ‘the question of guerrilla hostilities is purely a military matter and not a political one’. 19 Those who maintain this simple point of view have lost sight of the political goal and the political effects of guerrilla action. Such a simple point of view will cause the people to lose confidence and will result in our defeat. 20
The changing attitude of the Irish towards the Rising and the prisoners taken to British jails also brought difficulties for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), under the leadership of John Redmond and John Dillon. Dillon, who was in Dublin during the Rising, was the first to recognise this even while General Maxwell’s executions were ongoing. 21 He grasped the key political problem, which was how to prevent the growing reaction in favour of the Irish rebels from becoming a reaction against the IPP. He addressed the House of Commons in May 1916 and denounced the secret courts martial and the executions. He conferred a sort of moral sanction on the rebels, who
… fought a clean fight, a brave fight, however misguided, and it would have been a damned good thing for you if your soldiers were able to put up as good a fight as did these men in Dublin. 22
British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith visited Dublin in May 1916 and the executions were halted, but it was too late. Upon his return to London, Asquith decided to take a different approach and attempted to make a political settlement. Not only was he being pressured by Dillon and others within the British establishment but he also hoped that a political settlement would come at the expense of the more radical nationalists and would deflate the growing international criticism of the British reaction to the Rising, particularly that coming from the US (Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British Ambassador in Washington, alerted Asquith that the executions had badly shaken American opinion). An ‘Irish Convention’ sat in Trinity College Dublin from 25 July
1917 to 5 April 1918 (there were also some sessions in Cork and Belfast); Horace Plunkett was its chairman. Its ninety-five members included mayors and chairmen of public bodies, together with almost every prominent Irishman outside politics, but its weakness was on the political side: Sinn Fé in had been allocated five seats but declined to take part. 23 William O’Brien’s All for Ireland Party also declined. 24 The membership consisted of fifty-two Nationalists, twenty-six Ulster Unionists (headed by Hugh Barrie and George Clarke), nine Southern Unionists (headed by Lord Midleton), six Labour representatives and two Liberals. 25 British Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George proposed the conference to the Irish Parliamentary Party chairman John Redmond in order to moderate nationalist opinion. The British thought that the Irish could debate the future government of Ireland, particularly with regard to Ulster, although attempts to broker a settlement were dismissed by Sinn Fé in as surrender. There was a moment’s silence for those who perished in the Rising and a call for those still in custody to be treated like prisoners of war, but the most significant action was a call asserting ‘Ireland’s right to freedom from all foreign control’. The convention reaffirmed the measure of disagreement between the North and South, bogged down over the issue of fiscal control, and partition could not be resolved. The fact that Sinn Fé in boycotted the convention meant, however, that it was doomed from the outset to achieve very little, if anything. It was destined to fail, as the wide diversity of views even among the moderates prevented any consensus, much less the unanimity demanded by the Conservative and Unionist elements in the British Parliament and government. Although discussions carried on for almost a year, the base positions of a united Irish State and a separate Protestant Ulster were incompatible. By May 1918, when the convention’s final report was published, the British had already ruined any hope of success by passing primary legislation providing for Irish conscription, although not legally triggering its actual commencement.
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Beginning in 1917, in addition to contesting the by-elections in North Roscommon, Longford, East Clare, Cavan and Kilkenny, the Irish began to set up their own political structures that would set their course for the next four years. It is necessary to look at the politics within Ireland as much as those international political overtures that came later to fully realise the development of Irish political aims and Collins’s maturation on political goals during the war.
Women were among the most involved activists in the nationalist movement from the beginning, but that they stood in danger of being marginalised was recognised in the aftermath of an important meeting held on 19 April 1917, almost exactly one year after the Rising. Count George Plunkett, father of one of the executed leaders, Joseph Mary Plunkett, convened the meeting to determine whether Count Plunkett’s ‘Liberty Clubs’ or Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Fé in would become the nucleus of the new nationalist political movement. It was clear that the nationalist movement was divided: Griffith’s more peaceful view of constitutional efforts clashed with Plunkett’s harsher view of militarist separatism. The issue was not resolved but it was agreed that negotiations would continue, and a number of people were selected for this purpose. One month after the 19 April meeting, the dissidents came together to discuss the situation. Those who attended included representatives of Cumann na mBan, the Irish Women Workers’ Union and women from the Irish Citizen Army. All the different viewpoints within the women’s united front were represented: Á ine Ceannt was actively involved in recruiting for Cumann na mBan, Jenny Wyse-Power was a member of Cumann na mBan and the Irish Women’s Franchise League, Helena Molony was working for the Irish Women Workers’ Union and Fiona Plunkett represented the younger generation of women activists. At long last the women succeeded in extracting a significant concession: four ‘ladies’ would be co-opted onto the executive of Sinn Fé in, on the understanding that none of them represented any organisation and that they were all members of a Sinn Fé in branch. There was an obvious concern to prevent the possibility of the formation of an organised feminist caucus. Four months after the informal ‘League of Women Delegates’ had been formed, their efforts had met with success. Women were now on the executive of a regenerated Sinn Fé in.
The Tenth Sinn Fé in Ard-Fheis was held in Dublin’s Mansion House on 25–26 October 1917. 26 It was a crucial watershed in the Irish struggle for national independence and was the culmination of a process of reorganisation that had begun almost as soon as the quicklime had settled on the bodies of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising. Those who had taken part in the Rising (the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army and the women’s organisation Cumann na mBan), together with Sinn Fé in and other small nationalist groups, were faced with the daunting challenge of
creating an entirely new political movement in the midst of disarray and military defeat. About 1, 700 delegates attended, including members from 1, 009 Sinn Fé in Clubs. 27 The secretary stated that the total number of clubs was about 1, 200, with a membership of almost 250, 000. 28
Women were a visible and vocal presence at the Sinn Fé in Convention of 1917. They decided to Gaelicise their name to Cumann na Teachtaire and to work to ensure that women would be elected onto public boards and onto all institutions within the Sinn Fé in organisation. They reluctantly had to drop the idea of producing a women’s newspaper, but they agreed to produce leaflets and to try to link up with other women’s societies. When the convention met, the women’s resolution, originally drawn up by the League of Women Delegates, was proposed by Kathleen Lynn and seconded by Jenny Wyse-Power: ‘that the equality of men and women in this organisation be emphasised in all speeches and leaflets’. It was passed by general agreement. The women’s tactic in getting executive backing had paid off. A precedent had been set, and four women were elected to the new twenty-four-member executive, while considerable numbers of women were later co-opted onto the various organisations set up by Sinn Fé in as it refined its machinery of civil resistance to British rule in Ireland. 29 É amon de Valera was elected president of Sinn Fé in (and, a few days later, of the Irish Volunteers as well). The vice-presidents were Arthur Griffith and Fr Michael O’Flanagan. Secretaries elected were Darrell Figgis (later replaced by Harry Boland) and Austin Stack (who remained Hon. Secretary until his death in 1929). Laurence Ginnell and William Cosgrave were the treasurers. Eoin MacNeill was elected to the twenty-four-member Sinn Fé in Executive Council. (There was controversy when MacNeill was proposed for the Executive—É amon de Valera, Arthur Griffith and Seá n Milroy voted for him, while Kathleen Clarke, Helena Molony and Countess Markievicz opposed him—but he received an outstanding majority of votes. 30 Griffith expressed the opinion that MacNeill could not have acted otherwise in attempting to call off the Rising and reiterated, ‘I will not stand by and see one man whom I know, sentenced and put out of Irish public life’. DeValera’s input to the row was to say that ‘he understood MacNeill’s reasons for his actions were honest and that he had done his duty for Ireland
as he conceived it’. )
Irish political differences were apparent from the beginning of this
convention. The meeting began with Cathal Brugha (a former IRB member) barely consenting to sit in the same room as Griffith, and with Collins and Rory O’Connor walking out and being brought back by de Valera. Early cracks in ‘Republicanism’ were clear even then and would widen until the Treaty split. Collins took a hard line, supported by the IRB, to block-vote de Valera into the presidency. (Though de Valera, too, was once a member of the IRB for a short while, he resigned after the Rising, and Collins’s position was that in spite of this he should be leader of Sinn Fé in, not Griffith. The IRB viewed Griffith as much too moderate because Griffith clung tenaciously to the notion that Ireland could achieve her ends by constitutional means alone. ) Collins viewed Sinn Fé in with mixed feelings: on the one hand he was entirely in agreement with its doctrine of self-reliance and separatism, while on the other hand he disagreed with achieving those goals by entirely political efforts rather than by military force. At one stage Collins walked out of talks with Griffith, but eventually a compromise was reached. Griffith agreed to abandon his lifelong aim of restoring the sovereignty of Ireland under a dual monarchy, and in return for these concessions the militants, led by Collins, agreed to accept Sinn Fé in’s economic policies and its strategy of abstention from parliament.
Prior to the meeting, Collins and the others planned a ‘take-over’ of Sinn Fé in, but their plan failed miserably. Collins’s hard line backfired badly for the IRB at the Ard-Fheis, as most of its delegates were not elected to the Executive. Even Collins suffered, as he was only elected on the second ballot, held the next day. The other members elected to the Executive were Piaras Bé aslaí, Ernest Blythe, Harry Boland, Cathal Brugha, Kathleen Clarke, Dr Thomas Dillon, Dr Richard Hayes, David Kent, Diarmuid Lynch, Fionan Lynch, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Seá n MacEntee, Countess Markievicz, Joseph McDonagh, Joseph McGuinness, Seá n Milroy, Seá n T. O’Kelly, Count Plunkett, Grace Gifford Plunkett, Fr Matt Ryan, Fr Thomas Wall and James J. Walsh—a majority of ‘physical force’ advocates over those favouring more political means. 31
It is important to note that at this early stage many of the Irish, particularly members of the IRB, including Collins, were wedded ‘only to physical force’. After the failure of the Rising it should have been apparent that a physical conflict—using only military force—was going to fail again. Any future conflict along the same lines would meet the same fate, and the
British knew that as well. 32 Just as Collins and the others had to grow into their roles in intelligence, they also had to learn to accept that the political view was going to be at least equal to the physical-force view.
Brugha proposed the Sinn Fé in Constitution, and Seá n Milroy seconded it on 25 October. The Constitution stated:
Whereas the people of Ireland never relinquished the claim to separate Nationhood; and
Whereas the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, Easter 1916, in the name of the Irish people, and continuing the fight made by previous generations, reasserted the inalienable right of the Irish nation to Sovereign independence, and reaffirmed the determination of the Irish people to achieve it; and
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