Neutral Northerners during the Irish Civil War: A Biographical Study

Abstract

Neutral Northerners during the Irish Civil War:A Biographical Study Adrian Grant (bio) One could be forgiven for assuming that the Irish Civil War was a conflict that split the entire nation, with everyone clearly taking one side or the other. The term "civil-war politics" dominated political discourse and analysis in the Twenty-Six Counties until quite recently and perpetuated the notion that supporters of the two main political parties in the Republic of Ireland were the descendants of those who had fought for or supported one side or the other during the Civil War.1 It would be more accurate to describe this twentieth-century political phenomenon as "Treaty-split politics," given the fact that a large proportion of not only the general population but also the IRA itself remained neutral during the Civil War. As Bill Kissane has demonstrated, numerous civil-society organizations maintained a neutral line throughout the conflict, advocating peace to no avail.2 The Labour Party also maintained a neutral position, or as its leaders perhaps more accurately termed it, an "antimilitarist" one. Labour assumed the role of official opposition in Dáil Éireann, and in doing so, signaled its intention to accept the institutions of the Free State that emerged from the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Sensing the lack of appetite for further violence in the country, the Labour leadership believed that this strategy presented the best means of advancing a progressive agenda on social and economic issues.3 However antimilitarist the [End Page 139] country may have become in 1922, the constitutional issue remained at the forefront of Irish political discourse. Republicans generally viewed Labour supporters with contempt for this strategy, arguing that they had effectively taken the pro-Treaty side and were actively legitimizing the Free State through their actions.4 While the IRA was definitively split over the Treaty, not all members were willing to carry their strongly held opinions into a violent confrontation with former comrades. The Neutral IRA Association was formed in December 1922, and its membership was open to those who had been active during the War of Independence but were opposed to the Civil War. It claimed a membership of around 25,000 and advanced peace proposals to the political and military leaders of the civil-war belligerents.5 These went unheeded, despite the strength in numbers of neutral IRA members and public support from a large number of local-government bodies. Again, while these individuals remained neutral in the Civil War, it is clear that most of them were not supporters of the Treaty or the Free State.6 In Ulster the IRA generally followed the national trend, with its divisions declaring either in favor of or against the Treaty. The exception was the 4th Northern Division under the command of Frank Aiken; this was the only division in Ireland to declare a formally neutral position on the Treaty. Aiken and some of his men later took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, but only after their garrison at Dundalk Barracks had been attacked by the National Army in July 1922. Previously, Aiken had been a prominent advocate of seeking unity in the IRA to ensure that internal conflict did not distract from what he saw as a priority—the destabilization of Northern Ireland.7 Volunteers in the 4th Northern [End Page 140] Division later revealed that a swift decision to maintain neutrality was reached once the Civil War had broken out, and that they would also cease all operations in Northern Ireland given that "all hopes of a united Ireland effort against the British forces in the North was smashed for the time being."8 While the 4th Northern Division was unique in its formal declaration of neutrality, there were many more IRA Volunteers from within the Six County area who saw the Civil War as a distraction from the main task at hand—the destabilization and destruction of Northern Ireland. This article explores the attitude taken to the Civil War by IRA members from the Six Counties, with a focus on those who took a decidedly neutral position. If we consider the stance attributed to the IRA divisions covering the Six...