Ireland and the First World War

The story of the engagement of Ireland and the Irish of the global diaspora in the Great War is complex and controversial.

The British declaration of war against Germany and her allies in 1914 temporarily ended open hostilities in Ireland. John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party that had helped to achieve Home Rule by peaceful means, was assured by the British Government that once the war ended, the Home Rule Bill, which was enacted in 1914 but suspended before it could take effect, would be implemented. For his part Redmond, who was in charge of the Irish Volunteers, rallied them to enlist in the British Army as a visible expression of loyalty to the Crown and their suitability to govern themselves. In 1914 alone, over 30,000 of the renamed Irish National Volunteers joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), primarily in two Irish Divisions, the 10th and 16th, which were drawn from at least thirteen historic regiments, including the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Royal Munster Fusiliers. Similarly, at the encouragement of Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson, close to 28,000 members of the UVF volunteered en masse, primarily in the mainly Protestant 36th Ulster Division. The 36th would distinguish itself on July 1, 1916, on the first day of the Somme, as one of the few British Divisions to achieve its objectives in the early days of the Somme offensive. Their losses, however, were staggering, so much so that few families in Belfast and other centres in the north of Ireland did not lose a son, husband or father, thereafter making it a day of sacred memory across Ulster. In 1917 the 16th and 36th Divisions fought side by side at Messines, in Belgium, which is now the site of the Island of Ireland Peace Tower (erected in 1998), a place of both commemoration for the Irish war dead and symbolic of Irish reconciliation in our own time. It has been estimated that close to 200,000 volunteers and regular soldiers from Ireland served in the BEF.

For over a century, Irish men and women had migrated to England, Scotland and Wales in search of work. In 1914 there were thousands of Irishmen and Irish descendants living across Great Britain who were recruited directly into Irish regiments in Lord Kitchener’s ‘new army’ of the British Expeditionary Force. Liverpool, arguably one of the most Irish cities, outside of Ireland, in the world, witnessed massive recruitment to the 8th (Irish) Battalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment, in 1914, and two additional battalions later in the war. The London Irish Rifles raised three battalions, which were divided between several brigades and saw action in Belgium, France and the Middle East from 1915 to 1918. By war’s end the London Irish had casualties totalling 1,016 killed and 2,644 wounded. The Irish who lived and worked in the Newcastle area formed six battalions (two of which were in reserve) and therefore constituted a complete Brigade, the Tyneside Irish. At the Somme, the Tyneside Irish Brigade was nearly decimated and the surviving battalions had to be constituted and amalgamated into other units. The creation of ‘named’ Irish battalions and brigades tells only part of the story of Irish participation in the British Army. Thousands of Irish living in Britain were recruited into units without an Irish designation, in their neighbourhoods, parishes or places of work. It is therefore very difficult to ascertain total Irish recruitment statistics, and dead and wounded.

The effort by Irish soldiers and nurses in both the Irish and British Divisions at such places as Gallipoli, Belgium, France, Thessalonika and Mesopotamia were overshadowed by the Easter Rising and its aftermath in Dublin in the spring of 1916. Influenced by the leadership of the IRB, thousands of Irish Volunteers remained behind in Ireland, refused to enlist and continued military-style drilling under the opinion that “Britain’s calamity was Ireland’s opportunity.” On Easter Monday, members of the IRB, some units of the Irish Volunteers and members of the socialist Citizens’ Army (the fourth armed body, which sought both independence and social justice for workers), supplied with weapons, many from Imperial Germany, took control of key Dublin buildings. After fierce fighting for a week, and the implementation of martial law in Ireland, units of the British Army suppressed the uprising and arrested its leaders. Most Irish people, both in Ireland and as part of the diaspora, denounced the Rising as an act of folly and disloyalty until British authorities summarily executed sixteen leaders after hasty military trials. This action swayed public opinion to the extent that they felt General John Maxwell had created Irish martyrs and undercut the decades of hard work by constitutional nationalists such as John Redmond. Britain now viewed Ireland with greater suspicion, particularly given the fact that the Germans had assisted the IRB. In the last years of the war, as casualties mounted and British Divisions were depleted, the moves by Westminster to impose conscription were rebuffed by Ireland. Although the law passed, conscription was never imposed in Ireland for fear of continued insurrection: Britain did not need a second front while the war was proceeding with minimal success on the Western Front. When the war ended in 1918, Ireland still smoldered and Britain soon found itself engaged in the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) with units of the Irish Volunteers, or, as they became known from August 1919, the Irish Republican Army. By 1922, under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), the Irish Free State was created, minus the six counties of Ulster that now constituted Northern Ireland and remained a part of the United Kingdom.

In the century preceding the war, hundreds of thousands of Irish had migrated to the United States. The large Irish community in America — particularly in their urban enclaves of Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and New Orleans — kept a very close eye on events as they unfolded in Ireland in the decades leading up to the Great War. Not surprisingly, the Irish community in the United States was divided between those preferring constitutional solutions to the ‘Irish Question’ of autonomy and a very vocal group of Irish Americans who passionately supported Irish independence and an Irish republic to be won by physical force. Historically the Irish diaspora in the United States had been valued as financial supporters of a variety of Irish nationalist movements. During the Home Rule crisis preceding the war, it was this latter group of radical nationalists who came to the fore. In 1914 Irish Americans and one of their largest fraternal associations, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), were noted for their anti-British and pro-German sentiments, making it difficult for US President Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party, home to many Irish American voters, to appear to be supportive of the British Empire and its allies. Canadian Hibernians, for instance, who overwhelmingly supported the Empire’s struggle, demanded that Prime Minister Robert Borden’s government prohibit AOH publications from crossing the border, insisting that they were seditious.

When the United States declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, however, Irish Americans were pronounced in their demonstrations of loyalty to their adopted republic. Tens of thousands of Irish Americans had fought on both sides of the Civil War (1861-1865) and some units from that period made a re-emergence in the American Expeditionary Force. Most prominent was the 69th Irish Regiment of New York, immortalized by the nickname ‘The Fighting 69th,’ and its popular chaplain, Canadian-born Father Francis Duffy, who today is the only American priest honoured with a monument in a public place — in Times Square. The Knights of Columbus, while not exclusively Irish, but prominently so, initiated the Army Huts campaign, which provided recreational facilities, reading rooms and convalescent centres for troops in the United States and Europe, regardless of religion or nationality. Irish America fought as Allies, primarily to demonstrate their status as patriotic citizens of the United States, regardless of British policies in Ireland. When the war ended, thousands of Irish Americans continued their support of the Clan na Gael, which became an agent for supplying the Irish Republican Army with money and arms.

In Canada, the Irish Catholics and Protestants overwhelmingly supported the war effort from the time Britain declared war until the hostilities in Europe ceased. Irish Catholics, both of Irish birth and descent, flocked to the Imperial encouraged by the enthusiastic support of their bishops, priests, politicians, religious newspapers and fraternal benevolent societies. The vast majority of Irish Catholic Canadians saw no contradiction in their support for the Empire and their constitutionally framed desire for Irish Home Rule. As many Irish Catholic leaders proclaimed: Ireland needed what Canada already had — self-government within the British Empire. While there was a small minority of Irish Canadians who favoured physical force to achieve Irish independence, Irish Catholics and their leaders were largely divided between those who enthusiastically supported a ‘Canadian model’ as a solution to the Irish question, while Irish Protestants were strong advocates for maintaining the status quo of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland.

Two notable Irish battalions emerged within the Canadian Expeditionary Force: the 199th Irish Rangers, a predominantly Catholic regiment raised in Montreal and Eastern Ontario, and the overwhelmingly Protestant 208th Toronto Irish (later the Irish Regiment of Canada). Both battalions were broken up once they arrived in England, because of the urgency to fill depleted brigades in Canada’s four active divisions, but not before the 199th was paraded through Ireland to boost Irish recruitment. Most Irish Canadians were active in local militia units and were notable in general battalions formed in Halifax, Saint John, Ottawa and the Prairie West. Irish Canadians were most likely to enlist in local and regional units, following the example of family members, colleagues from work and school or neighbourhood friends. By the end of voluntary enlistment, it is estimated that nearly 32,000 Irish Catholics joined the CEF and its Nursing Corps. The support for the war effort by Irish Catholics and their clergy created tension between themselves and the French Canadian majority in the Catholic Church in Canada, who eschewed the trappings of imperialism and opposed conscription.

Newfoundland was an independent member of the British Empire in 1914, with an Irish population that comprised the largest ethnic minority in the colony. It is not surprising then that over 30 percent (830/2687) of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (RNR) were Catholic and mostly of Irish descent. Irish Newfoundlanders had demonstrated both support for constitutional Home Rule for Ireland and pride in Newfoundland being a constituent part of the British Empire. Irish Newfoundlanders trained in Egypt, fought side-by-side with the ANZACs during the Gallipoli Campaign, and then headed to the Western Front. On that fateful morning of July 1, 1916, they were among the waves of Irishmen, together with the Tynside Brigade and the 36th Ulster Division, that went over the top on the first day of the Somme. The RNR was among a second wave of Brigades that went “over the top” at Beaumont Hamel, and by day’s end suffered 80 percent casualties. Hardly one out-port or street in Newfoundland, much like in Ulster, did not suffer the loss of a loved one that day.

Elsewhere in the British Empire, Irish-born immigrants and Irish descendants were well represented in the contingents sent to various fronts by South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. While the Irish population of South Africa was quite small, with a majority being Protestant, the Irish in Johannesburg raised what eventually became known as the South African Irish Regiment. It saw action primarily in the capture of the neighbouring German territory of Southwest Africa (Namibia), and in 1915 some of its members were redeployed in other units for the campaign against German East Africa (Tanganyika). On the Western Front, there was a company of Irish that served in the 5th South African Infantry.

Irish in the antipodes were members of the joint colonial force called the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps). The Irish, mostly Catholic, formed a significant majority in both countries, with the Australian Irish demonstrating a strong presence historically in the Volunteer Rifle Movement and the New South Wales Irish Rifles. While this unit was not deployed as one of the regiments in the ANZACs, thousands of Irish Australians flocked to the colours in other units. It is estimated that 6,600 Irish-born men and women served in the Australian regiments included in the ANZACs during the Great War, 970 of whom were killed during the Gallipoli Campaign or on the Western Front. As in Canada, the Australian Government attempted to establish a policy of conscription but was defeated on the issue in two referenda. Unlike Canada, some of the chief opponents of the measure were Irish Catholics and their prelates who believed Australians should not be compelled to fight but should serve voluntarily. The most notable anti-conscriptionist was Archbishop Daniel Mannix, the controversial Irish-born prelate of Melbourne. Above all, Mannix was a zealous Irish Nationalist who later told an American Irish audience: “England was your enemy; England is your enemy today; England will be your enemy for all time.” While not typical of the sentiments of most Irish Australians, it is clear that the Easter Rising and the conscription referenda heightened sectarian tensions in Australia as they would elsewhere in the Empire.