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00:00April, 1916.
00:05Driven to achieve an egalitarian, progressive and Gaelic Ireland,
00:101,500 Irish rebels march into Dublin City to mount a rebellion.
00:23The rebellion fails, but its ideals inspired the majority of Irish people to vote
00:29in the 1918 general election for the establishment of an Irish Republic.
00:37And after 700 years, an end to British rule.
00:42I felt they had no right or reason here.
00:45We were a separate island and we felt we owned it
00:49and we wanted at some day or stage to get them out.
00:53But fresh from victory in World War I, Britain rejects the people's mandate.
01:00Ireland must remain in the United Kingdom and the Empire.
01:10Undaunted, the Irish rise and stand against Britain's might and power.
01:14I don't consider it so much action against Britain,
01:18it's action for Ireland, for the liberation of Ireland.
01:23Armed with little more than faith and courage,
01:26the Irish declare a republic and vow to defend it, whatever that may bring.
01:31January 21st, 1919.
01:50The general election has resulted in a landslide victory for the Sinn FĂ©in party.
01:54Irish nationalists have expressed a clear desire for independence.
02:03The successful Sinn FĂ©in candidates, who are not in prison,
02:06gather at Dublin's Mansion House where they proclaim an Irish Republic.
02:14They form an independent parliament known as Dáil Éireann
02:17and call on the world to recognise the Irish Republic,
02:21free from British rule for the first time in centuries.
02:27There's a wonderful description of the first Dáil by Moira Comerford.
02:31It's about how incredible it felt to be walking into the Mansion House
02:36and to be actually there and to have done it.
02:40There's the feeling that they're getting control of their own destinies,
02:44trying to think out how they're going to make a new country.
02:53I think for those who were there, it was a turning point.
02:57An inspirational moment.
03:00But we perhaps need to take a hard-cold look at this and say,
03:04well, really the power that they wielded was very limited
03:09and the power still rested with the British government at Westminster.
03:12The British reject independence.
03:16At that particular stage they just reject.
03:19What do you mean you're independent?
03:20You're part of the United Kingdom.
03:22You're part of the Empire.
03:24Despite Britain's response,
03:26Manny and Dáil Éireann remain hopeful that Britain can be persuaded
03:29through peaceful negotiation to grant Irish independence.
03:42But in the military wing of the Republican movement, others have a different view.
03:47They believe that Britain will only leave Ireland if it is forced out by the barrel of a gun.
03:56War must be faced. Blood must be shed. Not gleefully, but as a terrible necessity.
04:04Freedom must be had at any cost of suffering.
04:07Among the most militant in the Irish Republican army, some will become household names.
04:18Ernie O'Malley, Dan Breen and Tom Barry.
04:21With the circumstances of guerilla warfare and people struggling for freedom,
04:27your first duty is to keep alive and keep your men alive.
04:31Your second duty is to look after the people who were supporting you
04:34and who you were trying to raise from a status of serfdom.
04:37But the IRA is to become a far greater force than the few whose names are remembered.
04:46Over 100,000 volunteers from all over Ireland will enlist in its ranks to support the cause.
04:54It is literally a people's army.
04:58It's of the people. It's of the community.
05:00It's of every parish in the country, literally.
05:03You're talking about well-educated, literate, young men in their mid to late 20s.
05:10They are lower middle class, Catholics primarily, but not exclusively.
05:15They are the sons of small farmers.
05:17They are skilled tradesmen.
05:19They are people who have a lot to gain if there is change in the country.
05:24The IRA will be aided by the Women's Republican Organization, Common Amman.
05:29The solidarity was something extraordinary.
05:33You had a completely new idea of life, it was what you could do for Ireland, and nothing else mattered.
05:39The one priority was to get our freedom.
05:43Upwards of 20,000 women will enlist in 800 Common Amman branches nationwide.
05:48We don't pretend to be one voice. We're one people with many voices. But we all wanted freedom.
06:00January 21st, 1919. The same day Dahl Ehren meets in Dublin, the Republican military wing launches an unexpected attack.
06:17If we were to wait to get others from Dublin, nothing would ever happen.
06:20You just can't be waiting for someone on them 200 miles away to tell you to do something.
06:26You seize the opportunity and do it.
06:30In Solohedbeg, County Tipperary, two Royal Irish Constabulary officers escorting explosives are ambushed by a local IRA unit acting on their own initiative.
06:39The RIC men are shot dead.
06:46Mayo man James McDonnell leaves seven orphan children behind.
06:54The killing of the Irish police officers at Solohedbeg is condemned by many leading Republicans and by the Catholic Church.
07:01Come on Amman and the IRA may be ready to fight against British rule.
07:07But as yet, few in Ireland want war visited upon their shores.
07:14Many Irish families had had sons and husbands and brothers who had died in World War I.
07:20People were exhausted. They didn't want any more war.
07:24For now, the IRA holds fire, leaving Republicans who advocate non-violence in control.
07:35They include former maths teacher, veteran of the 1916 rebellion and Sinn Fein president, Eamon de Valera.
07:44On April 1st, 1919, after a daring prison break, and despite now being a wanted man,
07:50de Valera arrives at the mansion house to tumultuous applause, as Dáil Éireann sits for the second time.
08:00The room is packed to see de Valera elected first president of the Irish Republic.
08:07Dublin-born Cahil Brewer, veteran of the 1916 rebellion, is elected Minister for Defence.
08:12A 28-year-old from County Cork, Michael Collins, also a 1916 veteran, becomes Minister for Finance.
08:21Collins immediately launches the Doyle Bond scheme.
08:26In the months that follow, people across Ireland open their wallets to support their illegal republic.
08:31370,000 raised a huge figure to finance the counter-state, but also in raising public consciousness of the new Dáil.
08:50Dáil Éireann is intent on finding a peaceful path to Irish independence.
08:55The appeal in those days wasn't fighting with England or that.
09:01The project being put to the general public was that there'd be an appeal to the Peace Conference.
09:08That we stood some chance of getting something from the Peace Conference.
09:12With the First World War over, victorious Allied powers meet in France at the Paris Peace Conference to carve the territories of the vanquished between them.
09:26American President Woodrow Wilson has become a strong advocate for the self-determination of small nations.
09:34If President Wilson could be persuaded to support Irish independence at the Paris Peace Conference, they could win freedom.
09:40A Dáil Éireann delegation led by future Irish President, Sean T. O'Kelly, travels to Paris to petition for recognition of the Irish Republic.
09:53Eamon de Valera, meanwhile, travels to America, where he hopes to persuade the Irish diaspora to pressurise President Wilson to support Ireland's cause.
10:02The welcome De Valera received in America was unprecedented and absolutely off the scale.
10:13In Fenway Park in Boston, 60,000 people turned out to see him.
10:22A couple of weeks later in Wrigley Field in Chicago, he couldn't speak for 34 minutes because the crowd were cheering and applauding.
10:30San Francisco, Butte, Montana, Cleveland. Every city he went to was the same.
10:37You have to go back to the 19th century to see the roots of that connection.
10:56It's basically the famine and it's devastating. A million people die, a million people flee the country.
11:03Thousands end up on the east coast of America.
11:08And these Irish, some leave with the view that in Ireland's extreme aura of need that the British government had failed the people.
11:17And hence you have this memory bank which builds up in the United States amongst Irish Americans.
11:22And they want to see their homeland free of this oppression.
11:29The welcome De Valera receives in America encourages Irish Republicans.
11:36In Paris, new nations are being created at the peace conference.
11:39Perhaps Ireland can succeed as well.
11:46The Versailles moment is in many ways one of huge hope and utopianism.
11:52There is a sense that this will remake the world.
11:55This will create a new, fairer, more just world, global system.
11:58And there will be much more self-determination allowed to individual nations.
12:04Now, that doesn't come to fruition.
12:09From Britain's point of view, Ireland was probably a bloody pain in the neck.
12:13You know, they had bigger problems.
12:15They had bigger fish to fry.
12:17They had to think about the Empire.
12:18The Irish are not the only people in the British Empire agitating for freedom.
12:25They have so many hot spots to worry about.
12:29Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and Ireland.
12:36Despite pressure from Irish America, Woodrow Wilson is convinced by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George
12:41to ignore Ireland's plea.
12:44And another door closes on Ireland's peaceful quest for freedom.
12:49When that fails, they don't really have a follow-up plan.
12:54And so it's that continued failure to achieve self-determination through peaceful means
13:01that sets up an alternative, which is you achieve it through using a gun.
13:04Having held fire for four months, in May 1919, the IRA strikes again.
13:14Two Royal Irish Constabulary officers are shot dead as they escort a Republican prisoner
13:20at a railway station in County Limerick.
13:23As the face of British law and order in Ireland, the 12,000-strong RIC force
13:28becomes a prime target for Republicans.
13:34The RIC, the Royal Irish Constabulary, was the police force in Ireland.
13:38It was the most visual presence and it was the eyes and the ears of the British government in Ireland.
13:44The police kept a file that time on practically anybody of the movement.
13:49Even joining the Gaelic League, the police kept a file on.
13:53Their movements were watched and they were shadowed.
13:57They knew what you had for your breakfast dinner and supper if you had it.
14:01And they knew even what you were thinking.
14:05On June 23rd, three weeks after the knock-long killings, Michael Hunt, an RIC district inspector,
14:13is shot dead by the IRA in Thirless, County Tipperary.
14:20By the year's end, nine more RIC officers would have been killed.
14:24Again, the killings are widely condemned.
14:28Fearing that the Irish public would be opposed to an all-out military campaign against the Crown forces,
14:40Dahl-Eyern calls instead for a boycott of the RIC and their families.
14:44Their children were shunned at school, their wives were shunned, they were completely ostracised.
14:53They couldn't even buy goods in the local shop.
14:56The wives and the children of the RIC in particular seem to have suffered psychologically.
15:02The strategy is make the RIC into pariahs and make their ability to function as a police force impossible.
15:14As the boycott takes effect, IRA headquarters are established in Dublin in the early summer of 1919,
15:24under the command of Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy.
15:27The IRA must be prepared for any military conflict to come.
15:32I don't think people like Michael Collins or Richard Mulcahy think there's any question that the British can be forced to leave Ireland.
15:38I think they think they can make British occupation very, very painful.
15:43And they can deplete their willingness to stay.
15:49Newly appointed as IRA Head of Intelligence, Michael Collins establishes an IRA spy unit.
15:56It becomes known as The Squad.
15:59They're hitmen.
16:01These are young men.
16:02These are young men whose only function is to kill people whom Collins once killed.
16:13Collins used to come down maybe twice a week.
16:17He'd come in and two hands stuck in his trousers pockets and,
16:21how are you going on lads?
16:24Oh, not bad Michael.
16:26Yeah.
16:28Well, it's got to be witches now and go on with the good work.
16:32The Squad's headquarters on Dublin's Abbey Street is disguised as
16:37Moreland's cabinet makers, upholsters and builders.
16:41This was a most unusual builders because they never did any work.
16:45They had one of the squads standing behind the counter and dealing with any potential customers who would come in.
16:52It was always, sorry, we're absolutely fool.
16:55Behind the wall, the squad were there.
16:59They had their guns ready.
17:02And then, when the order came, out they went.
17:05The squad's first target is G Division, the intelligence unit of Britain's police force in Dublin.
17:17Among them, Detective Sergeant Patrick Smith from County Longford is suspected by Republicans as having identified leaders of the 1916 rebellion leading to their executions.
17:28On July 30th, just yards from his North Dublin home, a squad team shoots Smith in the back.
17:37His children run to help, but he dies days later.
17:44September 12th.
17:46The squad assassinates another G Division detective, Daniel Hoey, outside a police station in Dublin city centre.
17:53These killings of senior detectives anger those loyal to the British Crown.
17:58Immediate action is demanded.
18:01As pressure mounts, Lloyd George decides to act.
18:05On September 12th, 1919, the IRA, Cumannamon, Sinn Féin and Dáil Éireann are all outlawed.
18:15Irish nationalism's democratically elected representatives are forced underground.
18:21The suppression of the Dáil is the turning point.
18:25This is the crossing of the Rubicon.
18:28If you suppress the Dáil, you're removing the only legitimate vehicle that nationalism has for expressing its voice peacefully.
18:38There was no way back after that.
18:49With all non-violent paths to independence closed, in late 1919, the IRA leadership makes the decision to go to war.
18:57Their strategy is to undermine British rule by making Ireland ungovernable.
19:11In December 1919, the IRA launches an assassination attempt on Lord French, Britain's Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, as his convoy drives through the Phoenix Park.
19:21It's symbolic. He is the representative of the British government, of the King in Ireland, and to carry out a successful assassination attempt on him would make headlines around the world.
19:33In the ambush, the IRA attacked the wrong car.
19:45Though Lord French escapes, the attempt sparks panic in London.
19:50When the attempt is made on the life of Lord French, this is something that rocks the British establishment to its core because members are sitting around the cabinet table, not knowing if they're safe.
19:59It's a sign that the IRA campaign has moved up a notch.
20:08The IRA continues to exert pressure.
20:13January 3rd, 1920.
20:15IRA Cork No. 1 Brigade approaches Caractual RIC Barracks in County Cork.
20:20The attack force numbered about 20 men. The attack opened about 11 p.m. with volleys of rifle and gunfire. The RIC responded vigorously.
20:32After an hour's fighting, the RIC surrendered. The rebels pull out with a haul of guns, bombs and ammunition.
20:42That same night, 60 IRA men attack Kilmurray RIC barracks west of Cork City. The RIC easily repel the attackers and the IRA men flee into the night.
20:56With the odds stacked against them, the IRA resorts to guerrilla war.
21:05Move quickly, be aggressive, be careful and then disperse. Don't stick around. And don't fight it out. Live to fight another day. Because of that, they're very hard to catch.
21:15The Irish Republican Army had one outstanding quality. That of suitability to its purpose. It was indeed the spear point of an uprising of a people.
21:30They arm themselves. They finance themselves. They elect their own officers. And they are not really getting anything other than kind of words of encouragement now and then from their general headquarters.
21:45The idea that Ireland should be liberated from colonization, from occupation, is something that is shared by the many. But it is only the few who take up arms.
21:58Nominally, the IRA has 100,000 volunteers in its ranks. But weapons shortages mean fewer than 3,000 actually engaged in armed conflict.
22:12Those not fighting support in other ways.
22:18They were doing intelligence work. They were following people. They were opening letters. They were cutting wires. They were digging trenches. They were blocking bridges. They were cutting down trees.
22:28They were doing all sorts of support work. Basically to make Ireland ungovernable.
22:35Common Ammon Women also provide vital support.
22:39Our activities included carrying dispatches, arms and intelligence work.
22:44We visited the IRA prisoners and supplied them with such comforts as warm clothing, tobacco and papers.
22:49IRA attacks occur throughout the country.
22:59The heaviest concentration is in Munster, and particularly County Cork.
23:04Where IRA volunteers are frustrated for having failed to rise in the rebellion of 1916.
23:10It was right across the board in terms of rank and file, the sense of frustration, the sense of shame that they had failed.
23:21And there was a steely determination not to let that happen again.
23:24March 1920. Eight RIC officers are killed in IRA attacks.
23:37Across Ireland, the RIC become increasingly concerned for their lives and safety.
23:41When these attacks quicken and when individual constables are being killed, a whole portion of the force want to have nothing to do with it.
23:51So resignations go through the roof. About a third of the force resign.
23:55The government sees a lot of its posts as extremely vulnerable, and so they withdraw from hundreds of barracks across the country just in about three or four months.
24:06By the end of 1920, 700 barracks are evacuated as the RIC retreats to the relative safety of large towns.
24:22And that leads us to a situation where the British state is no longer as visible or as powerful or is able to assert its control and authority in Ireland on a daily basis.
24:33Though Britain has tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in the country, it is reluctant to be seen as officially going to war in Ireland.
24:50Instead, War Secretary Winston Churchill develops an alternative plan.
24:55Decided to meet force with force, terror with terror.
25:06Churchill recruits World War One veterans into a new armed auxiliary police force known as the Black and Tans.
25:15Their orders are to support the RIC and reassert British control in Ireland.
25:20They are told, take them out, kill as many as you have to, torture as many as you have to.
25:26You are released from the normal rules of war because you aren't fighting the normal rules of war, and this is entirely their responsibility.
25:32I joined it because there were no jobs about, and things were pretty rough.
25:38And I went up to Whitehall for an interview, and I went to Ireland the same night.
25:47They'd seen the horrors of World War One.
25:50And within a year, they were being dispatched to Ireland to fight a guerilla war.
25:55You can't imagine something so different.
25:58The IRA, they used to dig trenches in the road around the corridors.
26:06You come across this and down and go your front wheels, wallop, straight in.
26:11And that's when they used to throw on it, the old-made bombs.
26:15In the bombs there was chilling night, bolts, pieces of iron, and scrap metal.
26:20And scrap metal.
26:23And all you could do then was say, here, share that emotion.
26:26Human beings are going to stand so much, and you're going to retaliate, aren't you?
26:32If your life's at stake, the other fellow's going before you.
26:38They're incredibly badly led, incredibly badly disciplined, and a context of fear causes ordinary men to then behave in really apparent and repugnant ways, become extremely violent.
26:51The IRA, men are all hiding. You can't find the men.
26:56So who do you attack? You attack the family home.
27:01In the course of the war, thousands of homes and properties throughout Ireland are attacked.
27:08We were ruthless to the marked degree of going to the limit of law and order.
27:15We'll put it that way.
27:16The pattern is usually that a Crossley tender would arrive in the middle of the night with maybe 12 to 20 black and tans on board.
27:27They would kick the door in, stick a bane up against you, you know, and then they searched the house.
27:37And the search was really quite brutal.
27:39The children would be crying, terrified, and sometimes then the women were dragged outside and had their hair cut off with razor blades.
27:48We see several cases of women who reported being raped, where the women's names and their full addresses were reported to add veracity to these stories that this was actually really happening.
27:59Local elections in early 1920 confirmed the strong support of Irish nationalists for the Republican cause.
28:17Sinn FĂ©in wins control of many local councils.
28:22In Cork, IRA leader Tomás McCurtain is elected as the city's Lord Mayor.
28:27McCurtain's term as mayor would prove short-lived.
28:32March 19th, 1920, RIC officer Joseph Murta is returning home from the theatre in Cork City when he is shot dead by the IRA.
28:46Hours later, RIC officers, their faces blackened in disguise, break into McCurtain's home in Cork and shoot him dead in front of his wife and son.
29:06The killing of McCurtain, the democratically elected public representative, sparks outrage.
29:16One hundred thousand people lying in the streets of Cork for his funeral.
29:24What the Republicans were very good at was propaganda, the propaganda value of funerals.
29:33Newsreels and correspondence from around the world come and cover his funeral.
29:38What Irish civil society is showing is that they have no appetite for British assassinations of Republican officials, even Republican officials who were involved in the IRA.
29:53Days later, the writer and IRA leader Terence MacSweeney stands in City Hall as Cork's new Lord Mayor.
30:00He's not a stereotypical Irish gunman. He has a young family, he has a beautiful wife, he has a baby. He's pretty much the best front man the Republicans can put forward.
30:13One day, the consciousness of the country will be electrified by a great deed or a great sacrifice and the multitude will break from lethargy and march with a shout for freedom in a true, a brave and a beautiful sense.
30:30Easter Sunday, April 4th, 1920.
30:41Two weeks after McCurtain's death, IRA men march out across the land.
30:47Within hours, they have set 400 of the evacuated RIC barracks on fire.
30:53The flames confirm Britain's weakened authority over Ireland.
31:08The next day, Easter Monday, 4th anniversary of the 1916 rebellion.
31:1450 Republicans go on hunger strike in Dublin's Mountjoy prison, demanding immediate release.
31:20When prison authorities refuse to negotiate, hundreds of Come and Amman women descend on the prison to support the hunger strikers.
31:33One of the most iconic photographs was that photograph of women on their knees praying outside of Mountjoy jail in that period in 1920.
31:42They use the power of prayer to make mass civil acts of disobedience.
31:48From the point of view of the government, in keeping public order, it's easier to deal with a crowd of restless men than it is to deal with a crowd of restless women.
31:57You cannot really break up a demonstration of people who have come together ostensibly simply to pray.
32:03It's religion as a weapon, the rosary as a weapon.
32:09The women are not alone.
32:10The Irish Labour Trade Union Congress decides to call a national strike to force the British hand to release the hunger strikers.
32:18Across Ireland, hundreds of thousands join the national strike.
32:21So it was energy workers, it was water workers, it was, you know, road workers.
32:26Basically the country couldn't operate without all these people.
32:29Lord French argues that the British government must ignore the prisoners' demands.
32:34The prisoners should be left to die.
32:36But Britain is nervous, fearing a social revolution like that led by Vladimir Lenin in Russia.
32:45For the British government, this is a scary moment.
32:50They don't know what's going to happen next.
32:51After just two weeks, the government caves.
32:58The prisoners are released from Mountjoy Prison.
33:02People within the British administration and Dublin Castle and the police and the military are horrified.
33:10What is going to be the deterrent if you can go into prison and you can just not take food and you can be cut loose?
33:16Emboldened by their success, nationalists boycott the Crown Courts.
33:24And all Ireland establishes its own alternative court system.
33:31Nationalists take control of most administration in Ireland.
33:37People stop paying government taxes, giving their money instead to Republican funds.
33:41Railway workers embark on a six-month strike causing major disruption to British military operations.
33:51A body of soldiers got on the train, crews walked off.
33:56As opposed to their attempted patriotism.
34:02There's a Gandhian quality to this.
34:05We exist as a distinct people.
34:07And ultimately, there is nothing you can do to stop us from being the Irish nation.
34:21Only in Ireland's northern province of Ulster does British authority continue virtually unchallenged.
34:28Here, Unionists loyal to the United Kingdom want nothing to do with Irish independence.
34:33Unionist politicians Edward Carson and James Craig have some degree of influence over Prime Minister Lloyd George.
34:42They urge him to find a political solution to the Irish question.
34:47The British Cabinet resolves to establish two Home Rule Parliaments in Ireland.
34:54One for the North, one for the South.
34:56The Partition of Ireland is underway.
34:57The Partition of Ireland is underway.
34:59The Partition of Ireland is underway.
35:07Summer, 1920.
35:09With IRA attacks increasing, British authorities move to reassert control over Southern Ireland.
35:16Lloyd George and his government realised by the middle of 1920 that large parts of the island have gone over to the enemy, are being controlled by the enemy.
35:29We must strike back.
35:30Somebody Churchill knew as a hard man, General Hugh Tudor, is sent to Ireland.
35:38This country is ruled by gunmen. They must be put down.
35:44Tudor unleashes a new paramilitary group of elite British officers to support the Black and Tans in the RIC.
35:50They are known as the Auxiliaries.
35:55Police and military will patrol the country roads at least five times a week.
36:01When civilians are seen approaching, shout hands up.
36:05Should the order be not obeyed, shoot with effect.
36:11The Auxiliaries were dangerous because they were really courageous.
36:15There absolutely no cards in them and they didn't care what they did.
36:21They regard Ireland as England's Wild West.
36:26And they're the new sheriffs in town.
36:31Crown forces resort to collective punishment against local communities to discourage support for the IRA.
36:37During 1920, they destroy 48 farm creameries throughout the country.
36:47That collective punishment though, that's pretty much the last thing you want to do.
36:52Because the only thing that does is that creates a lot of animosity.
36:55It doesn't normalize conditions, it actually makes them worse.
36:59It destabilizes things even more.
37:01September 20th, 1920.
37:11An IRA unit enters a pub on Drogheda Street in Balbriggan, north of Dublin.
37:17Where RIC Inspector Peter Burke is drinking with friends.
37:21The IRA opens fire killing Burke.
37:24His death sparks an immediate reprisal.
37:27140 black and tans and auxiliaries descend on Balbriggan, intent on revenge.
37:36The town will be destroyed.
37:38To realize the full horrors of that night, one has to think of bands of men.
37:45Enflamed with drink, raging about the streets, firing rifles wildly, burning houses here and there.
37:55Loudly threatening to come again tonight and complete their work.
38:02By morning, Balbriggan lies in ruins.
38:05Two local Republicans, Seamus Lawless and Sean Gibbons, have been bayoneted to death.
38:10Churchill basically says, it's regrettable, but we have no alternative but to meet fire with fire in this way.
38:20Over coming months, in response to IRA killings and ambushes, Crown forces continue to conduct reprisals against civilians.
38:30Hundreds of towns are looted and burnt.
38:36The policy of reprisal is, I think, hardened and toughened public opinion against the British occupation.
38:41It made them say, these are not our well-meaning rulers, these are our occupiers, these are our enemies.
38:48Though Britain is resolved to suppress the Irish Republican challenge to the bitter end,
38:58one man is about to make a sacrifice so great that it will cause people throughout the world to condemn British misrule in Ireland.
39:06August 9th, 1920.
39:19In a further attempt to control Ireland, the British government enacts the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act.
39:25The act grants Crown forces special powers to arrest Irish Republicans.
39:33Hundreds of IRA volunteers are rounded up.
39:36Those who slip the net are forced to go on the run.
39:39And what eventually ends up happening is they start to gather in groups of anywhere from 10 to 30 or 40.
39:51And these become the nexus points of what will ultimately be the Flying Columns.
39:56The members of the Flying Columns are the most zealous of the Republicans.
40:02The number of ambushes doesn't dramatically increase, however, the casualties inflicted increases significantly.
40:16Flying Columns rely on the people to hide and feed them as they live rough in ditches, hills and mountains across the land.
40:26Now, partly as a result of British countermeasures, British repression,
40:32there's a feeling that it's us against them.
40:35We will support them, we will protect them, we will disguise them, we will put them up and so on.
40:41So they supported the community, they were able to disappear back into the community and reemerge from it.
40:46And of course that's what frustrated the British so much, the fact that they couldn't get them.
40:49Get them.
40:54On August 12th, 1920, Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSweeney is arrested.
41:00Charged with sedition, he is sentenced to two years hard labour in Cork jail.
41:07In prison, MacSweeney joins 11 other Republican prisoners on hunger strike.
41:11In an effort to break his resolve, the authorities transfer MacSweeney to London's Brixton Prison.
41:20Here, MacSweeney continues his refusal to eat.
41:26As an elected mayor and member of Dáil Éireann, MacSweeney's action captures global attention.
41:32So all the press from all over the world came to London, and they watched day by day,
41:41and every morning they would send out a bulletin, the Lord Mayor's condition today.
41:48He is talked up as a sort of Christ-like figure, sacrificing himself for the good of the people,
41:54sacrificing himself for Ireland, just as Christ sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world.
41:58Appeals for his release are made by international governments and by Pope Benedict XV in Rome.
42:06But the British government remembers its humiliation by IRA hunger strikers in April,
42:12and refuses to yield.
42:18The release of the Lord Mayor would have disastrous results in Ireland,
42:22and would probably lead to the mutiny of both military and police in the south of Ireland.
42:35As MacSweeney endures his hunger strike, on August 22nd, a unit of the Cork IRA travels north.
42:41In Lisburn, they assassinate District Inspector Oswald Swansey, in revenge for suspected involvement in the murder of Tomás MacCurton.
42:52Hours later, local loyalists retaliate by attacking Catholic homes and businesses in the town.
42:59Communal violence across much of Lisburn, first of all, 300 Catholic houses are burned and most of the Catholic population is expelled, but it actually spreads to other towns.
43:13In Belfast, Catholic workers are attacked by loyalists in the city shipyards.
43:21The Catholics flee.
43:24They were running, but there wasn't anyone actually in chase.
43:28Whatever had happened in the shipyard, they were so terrified that it started to run and they just kept on running.
43:35Belfast IRA units retaliate, sparking the worst violence of the war in Ulster.
43:45After three weeks of fighting, 7,000 Catholics have been expelled from their jobs.
43:5122 people are dead, hundreds wounded.
43:54By winter 1920, Ireland has been flooded with British military reinforcements, making it even more difficult for the IRA to operate.
44:14With Dublin city under curfew, resentment grows on both sides.
44:18Shopkeepers boycott Crown forces.
44:21Raids and private homes and businesses take place almost every day.
44:28With 9,000 troops in Dublin, British military cordon off entire city blocks to conduct room-by-room searches.
44:36Innocent civilians are shot dead.
44:39It's a surreal world.
44:41You've got ordinary men and women and children going about their lives, but erupting into that world is this other world of a grenade being thrown, of a shooting, of a squad assassination.
44:57With raids, arrests, you had counter-assassinations by auxiliaries.
45:03This is taking place in a city that officially is still part of the United Kingdom.
45:14In constant fear of arrest, Dáil Éireann meets in secret rooms and basements.
45:18It wasn't a normal parliament by any stretch of the imagination, though there was at times an element of scarlet pimpernel about the activities of the Dáil government.
45:33W.T. Cosgrave was, on one occasion, about to leave his office in Wicklow Street in Dublin.
45:39And he checked in the mirror to make sure that his disguise was impenetrable and his staff approved his appearance.
45:46Nobody will recognise you, Minister.
45:48And out he went into the street and was accosted by a beggar who said,
45:52Spare a copper, Mr. Cosgrave.
45:53There was a conspiracy to protect these underground ministers because they were seen as the leaders in our fight against the British.
46:03And by now, the demarcation lines were clear, it is Irish against British.
46:10With 55,000 troops and 15,000 armed police on the ground, by October 1920, Crown forces feel that they have finally regained control of Ireland.
46:21Lloyd George announces that he has murder by the throat.
46:33But Lloyd George has failed to take account of how Terence MacSweeney's hunger strike has captured the world's attention.
46:40There were demonstrations around the world, Barcelona, South America, all across the states.
46:46When you see the protesters outside the White House in Washington DC, that's when we begin to see Lloyd George really worrying about how the perception of Ireland is undermining his legitimacy on a global stage.
47:00Even the stevedores in New York harbour wouldn't empty British cargo ships.
47:08So the King asked the Prime Minister, could he not put an end to this? And the Prime Minister said, no.
47:14What MacSweeney does is he manages to encapsulate the drama, and it's one in which the Irish are positioned as heroically suffering and enduring for something that's right over might.
47:28Each day, friends and family stand in solidarity with MacSweeney's wife, Muriel, at Brixton Prison.
47:35Terence asked me to remain friends with his wife, you know, and I was trying to reassure him that we would look after her.
47:45At this time, the weight of the bedclothes was too much. To lift his finger, it was agony, you know.
47:57On October 25th, having survived 74 days without food, Terence MacSweeney dies.
48:05His death elicits a global outcry.
48:15It is one of the great propaganda coups of the history of any nationalist movement, I think.
48:22The international interest that follows MacSweeney is absolutely extraordinary.
48:27His name is known all over the world.
48:36MacSweeney's body is met by huge crowds, and it is returned home to Cork City.
48:52Tens of thousands march behind the coffin, with Acting President Arthur Griffith at the head.
48:58MacSweeney becomes this story which other oppressed peoples identified as a kind of heroic moment of resistance to empire.
49:06MacSweeney's heroism, fortitude in the face of inevitable death, it instills a spirit of resistance into a lot of people who would previously have said,
49:18well, I'm against the British government in Ireland, but what can be done about it?
49:24A sufficient number of young people would have gone so far as to say,
49:28well, I'm not going to do it myself, but I'm certainly going to have more understanding and help as far as I can those who prefer to do it.
49:37In the months that come, the war escalates as British Crown forces try to exert their power over the Irish people.
49:43Britain has the IRA on the run.
49:48In America, while having raised millions for the struggle, de Valera has failed to gain recognition for the Irish Republic.
49:56But MacSweeney's death has changed something.
49:59The majority of Irish people are now resolved to stand for freedom and face the inevitable consequences of war.
50:08It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most, who will conquer.
50:15They have a strong power over the Irish Republic of Ireland.
50:16The Irish Republic of Ireland and the Irish Republic of Ireland and all the Irish Republic of Ireland.
50:20The end of the day
50:50You
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