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Conflict in Ireland Essay

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Conflict in Ireland

Which of these events has had the biggest impact on the history of the Conflict in Ireland?

(a) The Easter Rising, 1916.

(b) The deployment of British troops in Northern Ireland, 1969.

(c) “Bloody Sunday”, 30th January 1972.

(a) The Easter Rising, 1916.

Event

On Monday April 24th 1916, a force between 1,000 and 1,500 Irishmen and women consisting of volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized control of the General Post Office in Dublin which became Pearse and Connolly’s (organisers of the rebellion) command post for the rebellion along with the Four Courts, Jacob’s Factory, Boland’s Bakery, the South Dublin Union, St. Stephen’s Green and later the …show more content…

Thus causing Sinn Fein to win two parliamentary elections in 1917 to take two previously held nationalist seats by the end of that year. There were now more than 200,000 Sinn Fein members and they could finally challenge the Irish Nationalists. The British parliament tried to combat this by setting up a convention which lasted about a year before Sinn Fein stopped it. In the general election of 1918 Sinn Fein won 73 seats and the Nationalists 7 and Ulster 23. In January 1919 Sinn Fein members assembled in Dublin as the ‘Dáil Éireann’ with Eamon de Valera their president proclaiming Ireland’s independence which demonstrated their commitment to the cause of freeing Ireland from British rule. They then organised a guerrilla unit led by Michael Collins which attacked and bombed the British responsible for controlling Ireland. The guerrilla unit later formed the IRA ‘freedom fighters’.

The British Government were unable to stop the IRA politically, so they called upon armed units called the ‘Black and Tans’ and the ‘Auxiliaries’ to destroy the IRA by raiding and burning houses, killing and torturing IRA members suspects as well as innocent people. They failed to defeat the IRA even though they heavily outnumbered them. This was because Michael Collins organised his guerrilla unit very well with a series of ‘hit and run attacks’

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