Physical force Irish republicanism is a term used by historians in Ireland to describe the recurring appearance of non-parliamentary violent insurrection in Ireland between 1798 and the present. It is often described as a rival to parliamentary nationalism which for most of the period drew the predominant amount of support from Irish nationalists.

Physical force Irish republicanism has usually been marked by a number of features:

• A commitment to an Irish republic which stressed the rights of the Irish people as a community to independence and the ownership of Ireland rather than to individual rights, such as the rights to private property;

• The holding of a series of rebellions or campaigns, often with minimal support, but some of whom impacted upon parliamentary nationalism;
  • A demand to break all links with the United Kingdom through the use of force.
  • The use of secret societies to plot and organise rebellions; including the Fenians/Irish Republican Brotherhood.

  The most prominent physical force rebellions and campaigns were:

  • 1798 rebellion of Wolfe Tone and the Society of the United Irishmen
  • 1803 rebellion associated with Robert Emmet -also a United Irishman
  • 1848 Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 associated with Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy
  • 1867 Fenian rebellion associated with James Stephens and Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
  • 1916 Easter Rising associated with Padraig Pearse and James Connolly
  • 1919-21 Anglo-Irish War
  • 1922-23 Irish Civil War
  • 1940s Sabotage Campaign (IRA)
  • 1950s Border Campaign (IRA)
  • 1969-97 Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997

    The overall impact of the various rebellions and campaigns differed. Many historians and contemporary archives suggest that the 1798 rebellion triggered British determination to ensure the union of the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain, lest a rebellious Ireland, in sympathy with revolutionary France, be used as a means to attack Britain. Some historians speculate that the 1848 rebellion, through tiny in physical impact, helped weaken the strength of the parliamentary movement of the recently deceased Daniel O'Connell The Liberator, though others contend that the movement, under the politically less skilled Morgan O'Connell, was a spent force politically in any case.

    The 1867 rebellion was similarly unsuccessful in a military sense, but did become a focal point in Irish revolutionary folklore, inspiring later generations of rebels.

    The 1916 Rising alone had a dramatic impact in achieving Irish independence. Though it too was a military failure, with its Government of the Irish Republic all executed, the backlash against the brutality of the British response was a factor in allowing surviving Rising leader Éamon de Valera to take over parliamentary politics in the 1918 general election. The tensions between the democratic features of the new Irish Republic proclaimed by the First Dáil, the Army of the Republic (The Irish Republican Army), and the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood, reached a head in 1921 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which created an independent Irish dominion known as the Irish Free State. Allegations of bad faith, betrayal of republicanism and secret IRB plots (Michael Collins's association with the IRB, who accepted the new state's legitimacy, irked rivals Éamon de Valera and Cathal Brugha) plunged the new Irish state into civil war (1922-1923).

    Physical force republicanism continued after 1923. Anti-Treaty republicans continued to use the name IRA.They launched unsuccessful armed campaigns in England in the 1940s and Northern Ireland in the 1950s aimed at achieving a United Ireland. The Irish Republican Army (1922-1969) and its political wing, Sinn Féin went through periodic splits, most dramatically in 1969 when two IRAs emerged, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, along with two Sinn Féins; Sinn Féin - Gardiner Place or Official Sinn Féin and Sinn Féin - Kevin St or Provisional Sinn Féin. The two provisional organisations came to dominate only to split again in the mid-1980s, into the mainstream Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA, and Republican Sinn Féin and its own small Continuity IRA.

    In 2005 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams called on the Provisional IRA to move from physical force activity to exclusively democratic means.

    Other IRAs, notably the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA continue to exist along with their political wings, though with less impact than the earlier PIRA.

    Additional Reading

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    • Marianne Elliott, Robert Emmet: The Making of a Legend
    • Hugh Gough, David Dickson (Eds), Ireland and the French Revolution
    • Patrick Geoghegan, Robert Emmet: A Life (Gill and Macmillan) ISBN 0717133877
    • Jim Smyth, The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century
    • A.T.Q. Stewart, A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irish Movement
    • Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles
    • Robert Kee, Ireland: A History
    • Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society
    • Dorothy McCardle, The Irish Republic

    Irish rebellion