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00:01There's nothing romantic about war. I think it is bestial. The only war which I can justify to myself is a war of liberation.
00:15Ireland, 1918. The people have spoken. In the general election, the clear majority of Irish nationalists vote for the establishment of an Irish Republic, free from British rule.
00:37But the British government rejects the demands of Irish voters, fearing contagion across its troubled empire.
00:47Irish separatists respond with a campaign of mass civil disobedience, while the Irish Republican army embarks, against all odds, on a guerrilla war.
00:58It's a war of attrition, it's an increasingly vicious war, and it really is getting to the end game.
01:08Ruthless methods of attacking people, ruthless counter-assassination.
01:14So if the IRA shot somebody, within a couple of weeks, somebody else would be shot.
01:19On the Irish side, there was a calculation, well, the more we can up the ante, the sooner they'll get out.
01:26Get the bloody British army out of Ireland.
01:33The battle now is for international public opinion. The world is watching.
01:38To an international audience, the reprisal policy underlines this message that the Irish are victims and are experiencing a foreign invasion.
01:53Britain has power and wealth on its side, where the Irish rebels are playing for the highest stakes.
01:58A free nation that has been the dream of many for centuries.
02:03Ireland is in the full throes of war.
02:18Towns and villages have been ravaged.
02:21Raids and homes strike fear among the people.
02:24Hundreds of Republicans have been arrested.
02:27Ireland had the appearance of this period of an arms camp.
02:34Sentries were on guard at all places likely to be seized for use as a military post.
02:39Garbed wire surrounded the approaches to sentries, barracks and many public buildings.
02:44Armoured cars and lorry loads of soldiers, police and auxiliaries paraded roads and streets.
02:50With tens of thousands of troops on the ground, Britain appears to have the IRA.
02:56Formed into guerrilla army flying columns, the rebels often sleep rough in open country.
03:05We ate hedgehog in late winter, or stewed hare.
03:09We handled our weapons constantly to get the feel of them.
03:13Others find shelter in safe houses, often arranged by the women of Kamanaman.
03:21One of the big activities of Kamanaman was discovering safe houses.
03:26Because the men on the running mean in Dublin, well, the leaders had to have not one but four or five houses.
03:36With less than 3,000 rifles and even fewer full-time fighters, the rebels are hopelessly outnumbered.
03:45But the British public is turning against the war, horrified by the atrocities committed in their name against the Irish people.
03:52In late 1920, Britain's government sends the first peace-feelers to Ireland's underground government, Dáil Éireann.
04:01Stop the police and soldiers being murdered in return for the British ceasing reprisals.
04:09Not all on the British side, however, support moves towards peace.
04:14If there were a truce, it would be an admission that we were beaten.
04:18It might lead to our having to give up Ireland.
04:22The British government demands that the IRA disarm before any talk of negotiations can begin.
04:29The IRA refuses.
04:32Realities on the ground then change the political calculus for both sides.
04:41During the summer and autumn of 1920, British intelligence and the castle and the police are starting to get their act together.
04:54Among 9,000 British troops reinforcing Dublin is a unit of military intelligence officers known as the Cairo Gang.
05:02Their mission is to break the rebel movement.
05:05Top of their list, IRA Director of Intelligence, Michael Collins.
05:11Collins, he sees the initiative slipping away in Dublin.
05:16His belief was, if you're losing the initiative, seize it back.
05:21Collins decides to strike using his own intelligence network.
05:28Lily Mernon worked as a typist in Dublin Castle.
05:31In that capacity, she had access to information about the residences of the British intelligence agents.
05:38Through spies like Lily Mernon, Collins locates the home addresses of each Cairo Gang member.
05:44The plan is for teams of IRA assassins to attack all the agents, at the same time, on the same day, for maximum effect.
05:53Sunday, November 21st, 1920.
06:03The assassins gather in Dublin city centre.
06:08They agreed that we'd meet outside St. Andrew's Church in Westland, all at 9 o'clock on Sunday morning.
06:14Something was got massed that morning there.
06:17They weren't trained soldiers.
06:20Charlie Dalton was only 20.
06:22He was too young to really have any serious sense of what he was doing.
06:25Following orders, the men spread out through the city by foot and by tram.
06:32At each house, the assassins force their way inside.
06:42We knocked at the door and the maid admitted us.
06:45Upstairs, we succeeded in shooting Lieutenant McMahon.
06:49There was a second man in McMahon's bed, but we did not shoot him, as we had no instructions to do so.
06:55Some victims are killed in front of their wives.
07:02They put the two of them up against the walls.
07:05They said, the Lord of mercy on your souls.
07:07They plugged the two of them.
07:10By mid-morning, 15 men are dead.
07:13There was a great sense of rage.
07:24Their bodies are laying out in Dublin Castle covered in blood.
07:29And the soldiers in and around Dublin Castle are just going mad with anger and rage.
07:34Panic. Complete panic.
07:37The biggest blood I ever got.
07:45On the afternoon of this bloody Sunday, thousands attend a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Dublin's Croke Park.
07:53A unit of British auxiliaries is sent to the stadium to search and question the spectators.
08:05At that time, it would take a free into the Dublin goal.
08:08When the next thing happened was, fire was opened from the canal end of the field.
08:17The auxiliaries shoot indiscriminately into the crowded stadium.
08:23People run in panic.
08:26Several are crushed to death in the stampede.
08:30Tipperary player Michael Hogan tries to crawl to safety from the pitch, but is shot dead.
08:36When the attack is over, 14 people have been killed, including three young boys.
08:44That night, three Republican prisoners are tortured and killed in Dublin Castle, bringing the death toll for Bloody Sunday to 32.
08:52In London, the killings of the spies cause panic.
08:57Barricades are erected at Downing Street.
08:59200 armed officers are dispatched to guard the Houses of Parliament.
09:03Bloody Sunday makes headlines around the world, and particularly in Britain.
09:08But it is not the killing of intelligence agents that principally exercises the public mind.
09:13It is the killing of sports fans in Croke Park.
09:16It's bringing into stark relief that the British are not a humanitarian beacon,
09:22that they're willing to use violence against civilians.
09:27They are proving that their empire doesn't rest on elevated ideas and principles,
09:32that it's actually just based on brute force.
09:36That really demoralizes the British people.
09:39That's not how they perceive themselves.
09:43The British public is already in shock.
09:46Nine days before Bloody Sunday, thousands had gathered at London's Westminster Abbey
09:51to unveil the tomb of the unknown warrior.
09:55Honouring those killed in the First World War, but whose bodies will never return home.
10:01You have this sense of loss, of mourning, of catastrophe.
10:04But this is a very dark and sombre period for the domestic public,
10:07and they're associating what's happening in Ireland with that, and they just want it to end.
10:11They want no more death and suffering.
10:17But Minister for War, Winston Churchill, is determined to stay the course.
10:21Are we now, fresh from victory in the Great War,
10:26to collapse miserably and impotently before the meanest, basest and feeblest of foes?
10:34Orders are given to round up Republican leaders, among them, Acting President of Dáil Éireann, Arthur Griffith.
10:44With Griffith imprisoned, Prime Minister David Lloyd George loses his tentative thread to peace.
10:49Five days after Bloody Sunday, Galway brothers Paddy and Henry Loughnan are arrested in South Galway for IRA involvement.
11:03They were taken from the field where they were helping to harvest, and they were brutally beaten.
11:13They were dragged behind a car, they were shot, and they were ultimately left in a bog.
11:18And when their bodies were found, they were burned as well.
11:23Those photographs are taken of the brothers' mutilated bodies.
11:27This is kind of typical of what the Republicans do, is when the British use force, they broadcast it.
11:37The Loughnan case is published in the Irish Bulletin, Dáil Éireann's propaganda paper.
11:46The Bulletin is produced by Kathleen McKenna, who gathers material for each edition as she rides her bicycle around Dublin.
11:54Kathleen McKenna used to sew copies of the Irish Bulletin into her petticoats.
12:01It was very interesting how the women at the time used their clothing and their femininity to disguise their kind of subversive activity.
12:12Written and printed in secret, the Irish Bulletin chronicles British repression in Ireland.
12:18Copies are distributed across the world by expatriates through a network of unofficial embassies in the United States, Asia, Africa, Europe and South America.
12:29Any war that's being documented every day would become unpopular.
12:34Any war where you see the actual brutality, where it's shown in your face, where you get the details.
12:41No war like that will survive in the court of public opinion.
12:48In the weeks after Bloody Sunday, IRA flying columns increased their actions against British forces, targeting the auxiliaries in particular.
12:56Towards the end of 1920, the pressure was mounting.
13:01These auxiliaries had gone right through Ireland, burning and shooting and pillaging.
13:06And they had to be stopped.
13:07November 28th, two days after the Loughnan killings, a 36-man IRA flying column makes its way to a remote country road in Kilmichael, West Cork.
13:20They are led by Tom Barry, a First World War veteran with extensive combat experience.
13:25It rained all night as we marched.
13:29And we got here without anybody knowing it.
13:32We came across field and through Boreens.
13:35And the men were soaking wet.
13:36The IRA had the upper hand in the sense that they knew their terrain.
13:42And the importance of landscape can't be emphasised enough.
13:46From eight o'clock in the morning, they were in their positions and they weren't allowed to lift their head in case they'd be observed.
13:55We wanted to corral and concentrate the auxiliaries and police into a small little valley or a crossroads or a junction or have rocks to protect your positions.
14:11As dusk falls, Barry flags down two lorries carrying 18 auxiliaries.
14:15When the lorries slow, the rebels open fire.
14:24Seventeen of the 18 auxiliaries are killed.
14:27Controversy surrounds the event to this day.
14:31I shouted to the section, keep firing and don't stop till I tell you.
14:36These are former officers of the First World War, the combat experience, and they are wiped out by basically half-trained small farmers and farm labourers in an obscure by-road in West Cork.
14:53That's really shocking to the British psyche.
14:55Kill Michael is just one of many IRA attacks against British forces in Ireland's southwest during the final months of 1920.
15:09In response, on December 10th, Britain imposes martial law on the province of Munster.
15:14The next day, December 11th, the IRA responds with an attack against another auxiliary unit at Dillon's Cross, Cork City.
15:25One soldier is killed, several more are injured.
15:31This is a spark then for an extraordinary night of arson, of damage, of destruction.
15:37Probably the biggest single act of destruction in the whole period, the single biggest reprisal in the whole period.
15:46That night, British Crown forces descend on Cork.
15:51In late 1920, the British resort to a policy of official reprisals.
15:56And in some way that's a recognition that the British can't control the black and tans.
16:00They started in revenge for the casualties we'd received in the ambush.
16:08We had 11 casualties there.
16:11They were completely out of control, they were looting, they were sacking, they were stealing.
16:17They were harassing people.
16:19And then they proceed down into the city centre.
16:23Ending up destroying most of Patrick Street, the commercial centre of Cork.
16:27I woke up to see the flames reflected through the north window on the wall.
16:34And I thought it was in Aurora Bora Alice, which we had seen the week before.
16:39And I called my father and he said, no, he said, it's the damn British burning cork.
16:46Soon large parts of the city are in flames.
16:48When the fire brigades bravely came out, they even cut the hoses, you know, to prevent any help being given.
17:03Five acres of the city are left in ruins.
17:06More than 2,000 people lose their jobs as a direct result.
17:09The next day, when you went down, there was nothing, nothing left.
17:20Rubble and the smell of smoke.
17:23The images from Cork all over the world, it's described as the Irish Louvain,
17:27after the Belgian city, of course, famously destroyed by the Germans in 1914.
17:32Britain had told its people that it was going to war in 1914 to save the poor civilians in Belgium.
17:46Millions killed.
17:47And here we are a couple of years later, and the British are doing in Irish towns and cities what they saw the Germans do in Belgium.
17:57It's completely unruly. It's completely undisciplined.
18:00The British public knows this. They're horrified. They're utterly horrified.
18:12Winter, 1920.
18:13The Irish Bulletin reports killings by British forces for the previous 12 months.
18:19They include 98 civilians killed. Among them, 12 children and two pregnant women.
18:26With each month, the war in Ireland intensifies.
18:32The Irish people are weary.
18:36They find themselves under martial law.
18:39And having this massive militarization of Ireland.
18:44And so, of course, as time goes on, they become increasingly resentful.
18:50Late 20 and early 21 was a grim, bleak time.
18:56There was curfew.
18:58People were going around in fear of their lives.
19:00There were constant arrests.
19:03It was very dangerous.
19:04This is a war for strategic gain, so you can then negotiate from a position of power.
19:12And maybe one of the tragedies of the Irish War of Independence is all sides are fighting to get to the political table.
19:17All sides recognise there's going to be a political table.
19:19Only in Ireland's northern province of Ulster is the conflict less a constant of daily life.
19:32Here, the Protestant majority, loyal to the British Crown, wants no part of the Irish independence project.
19:38Led by Edward Carson and James Craig, Ulster Unionists regard membership of the United Kingdom and the British Empire as their ancestral birthright.
19:50By the turn of the 20th century, Ulster Unionists had been in Northern Ireland as Scottish and English settlers for over 300 years.
20:04They referred to themselves as Irish or Ulster men, and they saw themselves as having an identity that was very much rooted in the land that they lived on.
20:16If Irish nationalists or Republicans were to have their right to self-determination, then who is to deny the right of a majority in the north-east of the country, the preservation of their rights?
20:29Under pressure from domestic and external forces, the British cabinet seeks a political solution to the Irish question.
20:42Their proposal attempts to satisfy the demands of the Irish nationalists for self-government and Ulster Unionists to remain within the United Kingdom.
20:50It's two Home Rule Parliaments, one for the South and one for the North.
21:00This two-parliament solution is envisioned as a temporary arrangement.
21:07The assumption in the British state's mind is gradually, peacefully, over time, they expected to see moderate men of both sides coming together.
21:16Not for a united Irish Republic, but for a united Irish dominion, which would eventually evolve towards Irish unity.
21:29On December 23rd, the Government of Ireland Act 1920, a British and Unionist solution to the Irish question, drafted with no input from Irish nationalists, is enacted at Westminster.
21:42Under the Act, a new territory is established within the United Kingdom.
21:48Consisting of six of the nine counties of Ulster, it is called Northern Ireland.
21:53Within months, Northern Ireland will have a Home Rule Parliament of its own in Belfast.
21:58So the one part of Ireland that has campaigned against Home Rule most vigorously is the one part that ultimately ends up getting it.
22:08So far as British legislation can affect it, the partition of Ireland has been virtually accomplished.
22:14On the very day the Government of Ireland Act is enacted, after eighteen months in America gathering money and support for the Irish cause,
22:31Eamon de Valera, President of the illegal Irish Republic, returns to Ireland.
22:38With Griffith still in prison, de Valera represents a new thread for any potential peace.
22:44Again and again there are these unofficial lines coming from the British government, indirectly.
22:51But every time one of these feelers came, he said, no, I'm not dealing with this indirect communication.
22:57If the British want to talk to me, they can talk to me anytime, but the approach has to come from Lloyd George.
23:03Despite these peace feelers, the war grinds on.
23:14With 50,000 soldiers and 15,000 armed police, British forces are infinitely stronger.
23:21But IRA attacks on military targets are on the increase and spreading to new parts of the country.
23:27Much of the countryside becomes ungovernable for the British, as rebel leaders, including Liam Lynch, Michael Kilroy and Frank Aiken escalate armed attacks.
23:47Some instances of IRA violence are designed specifically to provoke crown reprisals.
23:52Others are designed to show that the IRA is willing to be as ruthless and as brutal as the crown forces.
24:00In any war there is a murky site, there is a brutal site.
24:05In some instances, both crown forces and the IRA execute captured prisoners.
24:13Warring factions are always concerned with controlling civilian populations.
24:18And in that type of warfare, horrific things happen.
24:23Acts of intimidation, acts of ritual violence, hair cutting on women, sexual violence.
24:29These are all tools that are used by both sides.
24:32By both sides.
24:34We were warned by our parents and the priests not to go out with black and tan.
24:39Because the IRA would cut off our hair if we were seen with them.
24:43But it didn't stop us.
24:45It didn't stop the girls because the British soldiers were such fun.
24:49It was such fun.
24:56Though the Republicans for the most part have the people's support, some citizens provide information to the British.
25:03In the course of the war, the IRA executes almost 200 people as suspected informers.
25:09Their bodies often left in ditches as warnings to others.
25:13Cork was particularly brutal in terms of killing.
25:19A substantial minority of cases, they killed people who were probably innocent.
25:25Essentially, you had a period of anarchy where there was no law and order, limited law enforcement.
25:33And the Protestant community was particularly exposed in this period.
25:40The gentry class was hit hardest.
25:44They were forced out.
25:46The house burnings, arson attacks.
25:49They were attacked not because they were Protestants, but because they actively supported the old regime.
25:56Scores of great houses are burnt and destroyed during the war.
26:00Their ruins will mark the land for generations to come.
26:08Spring 1921.
26:10The Republican propaganda machine goes into overdrive.
26:14It invites foreign correspondents into Ireland.
26:18It coordinates their tours around reprisals.
26:21It documents reprisals.
26:23And then it spreads that message through the global diaspora.
26:25Republicans travel widely, spreading the story of Ireland's troubles.
26:31In the United States, Mary Mac Sweeney, sister of Terence Mac Sweeney, who died in hunger strike just months before, speaks in 58 cities.
26:39Thousands of women and children go hungry.
26:43The English government openly declares its intention to starve the people into surrender.
26:50How can a country like the United States stand for such atrocities as these?
26:55Moved by such accounts, America responds.
26:56The American Committee for Relief in Ireland is established to raise money for victims of British reprisals.
27:10The funds, distributed in Ireland by Cumannamon and the Irish White Cross, with Hannah Sheehy Skevington and Maud Gon McBride at the helm.
27:20In March 1921, an American delegation visits 95 locations in Ireland, including Balbriggan and Cork, to witness the impact of Britain's actions firsthand.
27:31Behind the tragedy lies the determination of the imperial British government to hold Ireland in its grip, even at the costs of what can only be described as organized anarchy.
27:47With endorsements from President Warren Harding and Pope Benedict XV, the White Cross increases pressure on the British government to end the war in Ireland.
27:57But the British continue the reprisal attacks.
28:03Over 150 are conducted in the first months of 1921.
28:08There was a large ambush, there was a big attack, and lorry loads of tans and oxys would arrive into a village and burn them down and smash them up and sack them.
28:25A lot of prominent IRA men and Doyle officials were captured, and it was extremely difficult for bodies like the Doyle to meet.
28:39Even de Valera himself was arrested. A message was sent to London, we have the rebel leader.
28:44And the British soldiers in Dublin were appalled to be told, let him go. And he was turfed out on Rathmines Road and told to go home. Because by then, Lloyd George was determined on negotiations in the very near future.
28:57Though some commanders, like Flowery O'Donoghue and Cork remain confident, by May 1921, Michael Collins and the IRA GHQ are becoming concerned about the rebels' capability to continue the fight.
29:14The organisation was good, the morale was good, but we had no arms.
29:21People's state of mind was that we were winning, whereas the people that were doing the fighting group were well aware we weren't winning.
29:28Because they were being hard pressed, and they had a very small supply of arms, and they're still smaller supply of ammunition.
29:36The gun running into Ireland has been cut off.
29:42Collins has a number of attempts to get guns from the European continent, and they're blocked in various places.
29:48So he is very conscious of gun supply and ammunition supply.
29:54There's also a sense that the public has had enough.
29:59The IRA's strategy of disruption, of breaking up roads, bridges, you know, all of this has a very immediate effect on people's day-to-day lives.
30:07With the British news tightening, Republicans make a risky decision, favoured by de Valera.
30:19They will launch a spectacular attack in Dublin to grab headlines and announce that the IRA is still in business.
30:26The force employed in this action included practically all of the active volunteers in Dublin city.
30:34May 25th, 1921.
30:38100 volunteers march up the banks of the River Liffey and charge the Custom House, seat of British local government in Ireland.
30:46Once inside, the volunteers set the building on fire.
30:54A passing auxiliary patrol sees the blaze and surrounds the building.
30:58A gun battle flares for an hour until the outgunned and outnumbered rebels are forced to surrender.
31:11In military terms, it's a joke.
31:14And it's only after that that Collins and de Valera both see, look, we've got to get a deal of some sort as soon as we can.
31:20Yes, the British are wobbling, but we're wobbling too.
31:24And we've got to conceal the fact that we're wobbling from them sufficiently long for them to wobble first.
31:29For some of the leadership, it was time to call a halt. It was time to see what deal they could get.
31:37On May 24th, the day before the Custom House attack, in the general election for the 26-county Southern Home Rule Parliament, called under the Government of Ireland Act, all 124 Sinn Féin representatives are returned unopposed.
31:55We had the spirit of the people, old and young. It was that support that kept us, not guns or hand grenades or anything else.
32:08It's not really until 1921 that British politicians are getting clearly the message that actually the Irish people, by and large, certainly in the South, support for republicanism and the problem isn't going to go away.
32:20And what the British government finally realized is that no government that they instill on the Irish people is going to be accepted as legitimate.
32:30We are defeated. There is nothing else but to draft 400,000 men and exterminate the whole population of the country. And we're not willing to do that.
32:41The coercive policies of the British really backfired on them. And it was the public opinion in Britain, influenced by the journalism, that would pressure on the British to come to the negotiating table.
32:55On June 22nd, 1921, King George V travels to Belfast to open Northern Ireland's new Home Rule Parliament. In his speech at City Hall, the King offers Irish nationalists an olive branch.
33:12I make a plea to all Irishmen to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land they love, a new era of peace, contentment and goodwill.
33:33Three weeks later, on July 11th, 1921, a truce is declared. The Irish War of Independence is over.
33:42The republican forces carrying on this guerilla war have essentially brought the might of the British Empire to a standstill.
33:54Roughly 1,500 people have lost their lives. Swathes of Ireland's villages, towns and cities have been destroyed.
34:07Thousands of Northern Catholics and Southern Protestants are migrating. Ireland has been radically changed.
34:17But Nationalist Ireland's quest for independence is not yet over. First, Republicans must negotiate with the leading statesmen of the British Empire.
34:35The announcement of the truce on July 11th, 1921, comes as a great relief for most Irish people.
34:41When the truce was declared, everybody was delighted, simply because there was peace.
34:48Bonfires in the countryside, trains blowing whistles.
34:53There's a kind of a sense of euphoria about the sudden absence of violence.
34:58There is a very heady atmosphere throughout Ireland.
35:03So a huge amount of Dáil Éireann deputies and IRA commanders get married in the truce period.
35:11They've had sweethearts, they've been on the run, they haven't been able to sleep in the same house for two nights in a row.
35:17And now, a period of almost normalcy comes to Ireland.
35:21And between the lifting of the curfew and the disappearance of the auxiliaries and the blackened hands off the street,
35:31people began to think we actually had something.
35:38But even as the truce is celebrated, events in Belfast underlying the difficulties Ireland will face if it is to achieve lasting peace.
35:47July 10th, a gun battle erupts between Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries in West Belfast.
36:02They weren't really concerned who they were killing.
36:06Getting up behind the chimney pot with a rifle or revolver and taking pot shots.
36:11When the violence ends several days later, ten Catholics, five Protestants and a policeman have been killed.
36:26As the truce holds in the south, Prime Minister David Lloyd George formally invites Eamon de Valera,
36:32President of Dáil Éireann, to London to discuss terms for negotiations.
36:37The big thing about the truce was, in a lot of ways, it recognised Doyle Éireann, the representatives of the Republic.
36:46People who had been denounced as gangsters, terrorists, criminals, all of a sudden were now negotiating directly with the Prime Minister of the greatest empire in the world.
36:57And that was a big shock.
36:59De Valera talked afterwards about the level of trickery that Lloyd George used.
37:05He showed him a map up on the wall of the Cabinet Room in Downing Street,
37:09covered by the red of the British Empire and then covered over Ireland with the top of his fountain pen
37:15to demonstrate how insignificant Ireland was in the scheme of things.
37:18Crucially, De Valera decides he will not take part in the negotiations and returns to Ireland.
37:28Instead, the Irish delegation is led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins.
37:32In the Prime Minister's office in Downing Street, the Irish face a formidable team, led by David Lloyd George, Lord Birkenhead and Winston Churchill.
37:45The Irish outlined their core demands, an independent republic consisting of all 32 counties of the island of Ireland.
37:54A republic was out. Lloyd George made that clear at the very beginning, long before the negotiations began.
38:02When he met De Valera privately, he said, no republic, no republic, have no illusions on that.
38:07It's one of the reasons why Michael Collins is obviously uncomfortable about being sent to London
38:13if there's any sense that they're expected to bring back a republic.
38:16It would have been totally unacceptable to British public opinion.
38:20It would have been a symbol of defeat.
38:24A 32-county Ireland is also ruled out by the British.
38:28Northern Ireland, they insist, must remain in the United Kingdom.
38:32As far as the British are concerned, once the Parliament of Northern Ireland has opened,
38:37it means that Ulster is off the table.
38:40To most intelligent political observers, it would have been clear what's going to happen in the summer of 1921.
38:49Britain wanted the Irish to accept Home Rule, and that was no longer acceptable.
38:53Sinn Féin wanted a republic. Britain were unwilling to give that.
38:57The British fear that granting the Irish a republic might spark insurrections by other colonised peoples in Asia and Africa,
39:06which would undermine the British Empire.
39:08So, the settlement was always going to be somewhere in the middle of a Home Rule and a Republic.
39:14And that's what we get. We get Dominion self-government.
39:21In December 1921, the British make their final offer.
39:25A 26-county Ireland, to be known as the Irish Free State, will be granted Dominion status.
39:30Irish politicians and public servants will have to take an oath of allegiance to the British King.
39:37Britain will retain control of some Irish ports for its navy.
39:41Ireland must pay a share of Britain's war debt.
39:44Now, Lloyd George issues an ultimatum.
39:49Sign or return to war.
39:53When Lloyd George made the demand that the delegates make up their mind quickly,
39:59they decided, we know what is available, we know what isn't available.
40:03This is the best deal available.
40:07We are plenipotentiaries appointed by the Dáil.
40:10We have full authority.
40:12We will sign.
40:14December 6th, 1921.
40:17Without referring it back to de Valera or Dáil Éireann, as was agreed,
40:22the Irish plenipotentiaries sign the treaty.
40:24For Michael Collins, the decision is a pragmatic one.
40:29The treaty gives us not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to,
40:35but the freedom to achieve it.
40:41It wasn't the Republic that Peirce had proclaimed outside the GPO in 1916.
40:47That was not on offer.
40:49But this was vastly more than had ever been on offer before.
40:52Vastly more than almost all Irish nationalists had wanted before 1914.
40:58So it was, in that sense, a great victory.
41:03Michael Collins is making a speech trying to sell the treaty.
41:07He's arguing that what we wanted was Irish freedom.
41:10That the state be a republic wasn't important.
41:13But for a lot of people, independence was synonymous with a republic.
41:17And some lesser form of independence,
41:20some other form of state, just wasn't acceptable.
41:25Many Irish Republicans, including Éamon de Valera,
41:29reject the treaty for its failure to deliver a republic.
41:31I couldn't swallow a northern leg into the King of England.
41:39Couldn't swallow it. I couldn't do it.
41:42Not for a million pounds could I do it.
41:45Not for all Ireland could I do it.
41:51Despite such opposition, on January 7th 1922,
41:55Dáil Éireann narrowly ratifies the treaty.
41:57And the Irish Free State is established.
42:01Five days later, British troops begin to withdraw from Ireland.
42:06This is a major moment in Anglo-Irish relations.
42:07It is a major moment in Anglo-Irish relations.
42:09It is a recognition by the British that the 700 years game is up.
42:11The departure of the British forces meant that the dream of the British was the dream of the King of England.
42:12It is a major moment in Anglo-Irish relations.
42:16Five days later, British troops begin to withdraw from Ireland.
42:21The departure of the British forces meant that the dream had become the reality.
42:29They had won.
42:32On January 16th 1922, Dáil Éireann,
42:35Dublin Castle, the historic seat of British power in Ireland, is handed over to the Irish Provisional Government.
42:57People simply can't believe what they're seeing.
43:01This is a revolutionary act.
43:07This is the coming of a new regime.
43:11This is democracy.
43:14This is the people controlling their own destinies.
43:17The Irish Free State is contested from the start.
43:39Many in the IRA and Come and Amman refused to wait for a republic to be achieved at some future date.
43:49If you've been on the hillside, if you've been in ambushes, if you've seen comrades killed, if you've killed yourself, you're saying, no, that's too long.
43:57It has to be in my lifetime. It has to be in my young lifetime.
44:03And so there's an all-or-nothing mentality that some of them will have.
44:07A bitter, hard-fought civil war breaks out between those who accept the treaty and those who stand against it.
44:19Atrocities are committed by both sides.
44:25Much of the national infrastructure is destroyed.
44:34Scores of anti-treaty IRA prisoners are executed by the new state.
44:40Before the war ends, Michael Collins, chairman of the Irish Provisional Government, is killed in an ambush at Bail na Blaw, West Cork, on August 22, 1922.
44:58Nine months later, in May 1923, realising that the government will not bend,
45:03Ayman de Valera and the IRA admit defeat and abandon military operations.
45:16Though the civil war is over, it leaves behind a legacy of political divisions that lasts for generations.
45:28Now, the difficult process of state-building can begin.
45:31But given the heady visions of the revolutionary generation, the Ireland that emerges in the Free State's early years disappoints many of the radicals.
45:43Ireland kind of turns in on itself, and it becomes very socially conservative.
45:49The visionaries take a back step.
45:52The dreams of a free Ireland, the dreams of a Gaelic Ireland.
45:56The aim of the Workers and Small Farmers Republic, the egalitarian promise of the 1916 Proclamation.
46:06The idea of a free Ireland in all the ways they imagined that in social terms and cultural terms and economic terms.
46:16Did all that come to pass? No.
46:17No.
46:20Look what we got in the end, it wasn't a change.
46:24We lost the North and we lost the language.
46:29We fought for real, real equality for everybody.
46:33Revolutions are utopian projects that are about a sense of possibility for the future.
46:47Independent states are about the prosaic realities of state power.
46:52As you go from revolutionary expectation to the realities of statehood, all revolutions fail on some level.
46:59But in time, the treaty does provide a path to independence.
47:06The Constitution of 1937 excludes all mention of a British monarch and gives the Irish people complete sovereignty over the 26 county state.
47:18In 1949, Ireland leaves the British Commonwealth and declares itself a republic.
47:23And in 1955, the Republic of Ireland takes a seat at the United Nations as a fully sovereign state.
47:32Its unique history is a source of inspiration for anti-colonial movements across the world.
47:38The fact that the Irish were able to break away to the extent that they did was a great encouragement to Indians, to Egyptians, to Burmese and others.
47:47And they did say, we too can do it.
47:53For the next 50, 70, 80 years, when the Irish went abroad, they were very much greeted by people who had been colonized as comrades.
48:02And the Irish struggle was very much recognized and appreciated by people who also struggled against the empire.
48:10That bond which began when both were struggling for freedom has continued.
48:16And I hope that we shall cooperate in future for peace and goodwill and understanding among nations.
48:28The partition of Ireland endures.
48:39In Northern Ireland, the Protestant Unionist majority monopolizes power, while the Catholic nationalist minority resists, resulting in a divided society with recurring communal violence.
48:51In the troubles that follow between 1968 and 1998, 3,600 people are killed.
49:02Political accommodation in the late 1990s brings the violence to an end.
49:08But lasting reconciliation between the two communities remains stubbornly elusive.
49:12Today, the Republic of Ireland is a stable, democratic and internationally respected state.
49:29Its people continue to strive to interpret and realize the ideals espoused 100 years ago by the men and women of the revolution,
49:39through whose efforts the Republic was born.
49:43The freedom to achieve freedom presents an ever demanding challenge, inviting constant redefinition by the generations to come.
49:54Ireland calls her children to the building of a harmonious national life,
49:59that by its defence of the least powerful proves all-powerful, that will be strong because true, beautiful because free, full of the music of its olden speech, caught by the magic of her encircling sea.
50:15Ireland the
50:38It has told them three vile to put
50:45Ispant the mean and regeoing lemesh
50:54Ach an chole and as leu fange gal and lay
51:08The Atlas of the Irish Revolution published by Cork University Press and the book on which this series is based is now available in bookshops and online
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