From the founding of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) to Easter Week 1916 can be described as the organisation’s heroic period. It would survive the Rising by a further twenty years: until the Civil War in form and occasional actions and campaigns, then in suspended animation until 1934, and reviving for one more year before … Read more
In January 1913, Ulster Unionist resistance to Home Rule entered a more militant phase with the establishment of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Work published on the UVF to date (most notably, A.T.Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis: resistance to Home Rule 1912-1914 [London 1967]) has concentrated largely on the Larne gunrunning of 24 and 25 … Read more
Sir,—I noticed a few assertions in Timothy Bowman’s article, The Irish at the Somme (HI 4.4, Winter 1996), which I believe are incorrect. Firstly, Mr Bowman mentions that there were twenty-three ‘Irish’ battalions at the Somme; there were several more that I am aware of, namely: 1st and 2nd battalions/18th London Regiment (London Irish Rifles), … Read more
David Officer A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles resting in a communications trench at the Somme, 1 July 1916. Historians of Ireland regularly harp on about the often blunt and crude forms in which the past is mobilised by contemporary interests. However, historians themselves pay scant attention to the forms, methods and media … Read more