Talk:Irish Republican Army (1919–1922)/Archive 6

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DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 1 and 24 Auust 2005.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying the section you are replying to if necessary. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.)

Please add new archivals to Talk:Irish Republican Army/Archive07. Thank you. Palmiro | Talk 21:38, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for comments

This is just notification that the page is now on Request for Comments.Palmiro 15:39, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

• Are we agreed that the contrary proposals are these:

1. Article Irish Republican Army should begin with a traditional disambiguation statement referring people looking for events after 1 Jan 1922 to other articles, and consist solely of material about the Army of the Irish Republic during the Irish War of Independence, ending in the Anglo-Irish Treaty. For example, see Dublin.
2. Article Irish Republican Army should be only a disambiguation page. The Army above should be relegated to something like Irish Republican Army (original) or Irish Republican Army (1919-1921), with equal status to the other organisations that have recycled the name. This is the format of article IRA.
3. Article Irish Republican Army should be a long account covering 100 years from 1905 to 2005, with side branches, subclauses, exceptions, footnotes. For the magnitude of this, see Geneaology of the IRA.

Agreed? --Red King 19:46, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

My votes are 1: Strongly support; 2: Oppose; 3 Implacably opposed. --Red King 14:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

How about drawing the line at May 24 1923? --ClemMcGann 00:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed? Where exactly did this idea come about that there is any agreement to do that? A series of users have made it absolutely clear they most definitely not agreed under any circumstances to that format. This page should cover the Irish Republican Army, the Army of the Republic, up to the end of the Civil War, as Clem makes clear. Later self-proclamed claimants to the name belong elsewhere. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 00:30, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

There are two options re the cut off point:

• The coming into force of the National Army which subsumed the Army of the Republic; or
• The end of the Civil War.

Either are acceptable to me. I suspect the Civil War bit probably needs inclusion, even if only in passing. But certainly after May 1923 there was no Irish Republican Army in the sense of an army validated by popular election and a democratic parliament. From then on, remnants of the old army proclaimed themselves as a continuation, in the face of the opposition of the national parliament, national army and national public opinion. There has to be a break in narrative at this point to avoid pushing a POV of continuity. When historians used the name IRA subsequently they are talking about a different IRA, not a continuous organisation. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 00:38, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed - their should be a definite cut off point in the early 1920s when the Irish Republican Army was no longer the army of the state. If we want to let the article run indefinitely to the present then someone would be more appropriately served writting History of modern Irish republicanism. Djegan 18:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

JTD, please try and listen to what other people are saying. Covering the various IRAs on one page is not a POV pushing of continuity in itself. Deciding that only one IRA was "legitimate" enough to appear on this page is, and it's also extremely unhelpful to wikipedia users. The only NPOV way of dealing with the issue is to explain the historical facts of the matter. People can then see what the relationships and differences between the IRA(s) were. History is rarely black and white, and there were both continuities and discontinuities at many stages in the history of the organisations known as the IRA.

Deciding that this article "must" cover only one or two of the manifestations of the IRA and "must" end at a given date, largely on the basis, it would appear, of what you consider that people in the Republic of Ireland now in 2005 think was legitimate 80 years earlier, is ahistorical as well as POV pushing. Palmiro 19:10, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Palmiro, please read what is being said. The argument has nothing to do with validity, legitimacy, sainthood or any other qualititive measure. The issue is this: (a) the claim of the original IRA to the name is undisputed and is therefore NPOV. (b) the claim of subsequent organisations to the name is strongly disputed. To include them in this article and to imply that they are the same organisation is therefore your PPOV (at least for the purposes of Wiki). To put them in a separate article, where readers may judge for themselves, is NPOV. That it the essence of the issue. --Red King 14:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I have read what's being said and disagree with both your analysis and your conclusions, for reasons which have already been rehearsed ad infinitum. Your argument has, in the end, everything to do with qualitative measures.

Fundamentally, quite apart from the historical arguments about the extent to which the various organisations were connected or historically continuous (let alone legitimate), it is extremely unhelpful to users and somewhat perverse that the organisations that have been known almost universally as "the IRA" for the last 84 years should not be on this page and one that only existed for about 4 years from 1917 to early 1922 should be exclusively covered. Palmiro 15:10, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

You wrote of organisations that have been known almost universally as "the IRA" for the last 84 years. There are no such organisations. There are organisations formed later who claim to be a continuous version of the IRA. But the Provisional IRA only exists since 1969, the Continuity IRA since the mid 1980s, the Real IRA since the mid 1990s. They claim to the IRA since the 1920s but the fact is that they aren't. They were set up later. But they used an old name, used the same name for their internal stuctures as the previous organisations, and had some members who were involved in another organisation of the same name. But that does not, by any wild stretch of the imagination, make them the same organisation. It makes them at most a son of type of organisation. If you accept that all are the same organisation, which they all say they are, then what do you do with the fact that each of them insists that the others aren't a continuation of the IRA. And whose word then do you take? The Provisional IRA that they are they real IRA, and that the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA aren't actually the IRA? Do you take the word of the Continuity IRA who say that they are the real IRA and that the PIRA and the RIRA aren't really the IRA? Or the word of the Real IRA, who say that the PIRA and the CIRA aren't the actual IRA? And what about the Official IRA? They certainly say the PIRA aren't the IRA, but a breakaway from the IRA. Or do you take the Catholic twist and treat the 3 modern IRAs like the Blessed Trinity, which is simultaneously 3 and 1?

Red King's argument, my argument, and everyone else's argument is perfectly straight forward: you use the name Irish Republican Army for the one universally accepted organisation that all sides agree was the Irish Republian Army. You then place all the later claimants under their own actual names, as opposed to claimed names. You don't imply a continuity but leave it up to the reader to decide it. That is NPOV in action. Your solution involves accepting all the claimants's claims as correct, which in turn involves by implication saying that the Irish people, all Irish governments since the 1920s, and the renmants of the one Irish Republican Army, all of whom said the claimants weren't the IRA but new organisations claiming to be a continuation, all as wrong. Your solution is as POV as it is possible to be, because you are accepting a POV as fact. Our solution involves leaving it up to the reader to decide, and keeping a clear space between each organisation, so that we can tell which organisation is which. So the reader can find out that that a is universally accepted as being the Irish Republican Army, b insisted they were between 1923 and 1970, c said from 1969 that they were the IRA, d said from 1987 that they were the IRA, e said from 1997 that they were the IRA. Some people accept the claims of b, some of c, some of d, some of e. Yet more accept the claimants of b + c, or b + c + d, or b, c, + e. Most Irish people do not accept the claimants of either b, c, d or e. The one thing all sides are agreed however is that there is no dispute over a. They all simply claim to be a continuation of a. But the majority of Irish people do not accept that and view a as a self-contained time-limited organisation that existed from the 1910s to the civil war and then disappeared, with most of its members joining the Irish Defence Forces, which stated, with the full support of the vast majority of the Irish people, that it was the continuation by using as its Irish name the Irish name of the Irish Republican Army, Oglaigh na hÉireann. That is factual history.

BTW numerous organisations claim to be the real Catholic Church, but the vast majority of people, inside and outside the Church, don't accept the claims. If we go by your 'solution' here then we'd have to accept Antipope Pius XIII, Antipope Gregory XVII and all the other claimants to the papacy as equal of Benedict XVI. Of course we don't do that. We call it for what it is: people self-proclaimed claimants. It is left up to the reader to decide whether there is any validity in their claims, and whether the nutty old geezer in Montana who calls himself Pius XIII, or the asshole called Pope Michael I who was elected (sic) in a conclave involving his Dad, Mum, himself and 3 others, really is the Pope. If your solution of treating claimants as valid was implemented on Wikipedia we would be a laughing stock and our pages on the papacy (and many monarchies) would be a joke. You simply can't treat claimants to any name as real successors to previous holders of the name without breaking NPOV rules. And that is something we cannot do here. It is the fundamental rule of Wikipedia. No breaking of NPOV. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 00:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Please stop trying to set up straw men. You say "You don't imply a continuity but leave it up to the reader to decide it. That is NPOV in action. Your solution involves accepting all the claimants's claims as correct." That is a misrepresentation. I merely said that the article on the IRA should ideally cover all the organisations generally using and known by that name. Most Irish people call the Provos the IRA. That doesn;t mean they accept its political claims. The vast majority of them don't. Your obsession with what it's called is very much a minority pursuit. In any case, your comparisons are fatuous. My position remains that we should confine ourselves to setting out the facts and letting readers decide from the facts what the relationship between them was and what the different nature of the variou organisations was. That is what NPOV demands. And don;t go claiming that everybody else agrees with you. It's obvious that nobody else agreed with your dogmatic position on this until you asked DJEgan to come in. Palmiro 21:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Notwithstanding that fact that Jtdirl made me aware of this discussion those opinions I have expressed are solely of my own and are made in good faith without bias to anyone else’s expression. Moreover based on past experience Jtdirl knows that I do not always agree with his opinion - my vote is not guaranteed. Djegan 12:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Correct. Often Dj does not always agree with me (we have disagreed as often as agreed), and inviting him to the discussion involved no guarantee that he would agree with me here. I asked him (and others) to participate because of their independent-mindedness. I believe that other people's views are other having. After all this is not a private debate. Anyone can join in. Dj brought his own valuable perspective to the issue. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 13:48, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I've no intentions of casting aspersions on anyone's contributions to the debate. What I was pointing out was that you claimed that no-one agreed with my position - you described your position, as opposed to mine, as "everyone else's position", which is just nonsense. In fact it was your position that nobody else had agreed with, until you set out to find support by leaving tendentious (to say the least) messages on other users' talk pages. Palmiro 14:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

" I support FearEireann on this one. Encarta is deeply wrong to omit the original Irish Republican Army. Anyone coming new to this must begin here: absence this, they have no context, no way to understand the assertions of legitimacy, no basis to evaluate those claims. It is completely unwieldy to have an article that goes from the Fenians to the present day, and to do so would confirm a legitimacy on the present mobsters that they don't deserve. The narrative reaches a clear break point with the Civil War and that's the point where different articles begin. --Red King 23:44, 19 July 2005 (UTC) "

Red King obviously doesn't agree with you, according to the comment reproduced above. Jonto doesn't agree with you. Clem doesn't agree with you. DJ doesn't agree with you. BTW I didn't ask Red King here. He was here already. I didn't as ClemMcCann. I did invite Jonto because he has contributed to Irish articles. Again as with DJ we have disagreed as often as agreed. There was absolutely no guarantee that he wouldn't agree with you rather than me. He too however disagrees with your approach. So much for your myth about there being a consensus behind your plans which I somehow wrecked. What there is is a clear majority against your plans. Please stop trying to blame me for the fact that your plans not merely lack a consensus but even a majority on the page. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 19:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh really? Red King proposed a way of moving forward. I tweaked it slightly and reproposed it. Red King agreed, Damac agreed, Tom688 agreed. It was roughly similar to Jonto's views as expressed earlier (I quote: "A summary page stating that several groups use the name "Irish Republican Army" should suffice"). You disagreed. Four to one sounds like a pretty near consensus to me (five to one if Jonto is included). At that point, you went around putting a distorted version of what was going on on other people's talk pages. This produced two users who, as was their right, and with perfectly reasonable arguments (though I don't think they outweigh the counter-arguments) agreed with your position. That still makes a majority in favour of Red King's/mine, unless Red King has indeed changed his mind (as his posts above suggest).

I don't have any particular attachment to this plan on a personal level: I proposed it as a compromise because there was clear disagreement. It didn't reflect my own ideal view and probably not Red King's either, but we both supported it in order to reach a reasonable compromise which would (1) solve this argument and (2) help users of wikipedia rather than leaving the current messy situation in place. You then chose to launch a series of attacks on my competence and good faith, which I deeply resent. That is what has happened so far. I still want to reach a compromise which will help users of Wikipedia, and I'm still very much open to suggestions, but you seem merely determined to impose your own view. Palmiro 18:33, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Not so. See my vote above. My strong preference is as quoted above - italicised for clarity. If the choice is only between a 100 year saga and a brief disambiguation article, then the latter has my second preference vote. It doesn't mean I like it, it just means that it is less intolerable than the saga option. As the discussion has developed and arguments have been put on each side, I am less and less persuaded that it is a reasonable compromise. For me, the turning point came when we got off the articles of dogma (to which I admit to being a contributor) and onto the question of "what is the most NPOV way of explaining the position to an unfamiliar reader, whilst leaving it to that reader to judge the validity of the various organisations?". I am not persuaded by the argument "but that is how they are popularly known and is the usage in all the papers": papers prefer short names to long - take for example Ulster. Observe that Wiki doesn't equate it to Northern Ireland like the papers do. See ditto Éire. --Red King 19:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

We are perilously close (if not already there) to the Life of Brian episode where the Palestinian People's Popular Front argue with the Popular Front for the Palestinian People. We need to accept that all the arguments have been made and all that has happened is that positions have hardened. The RFC hasn't helped. We don't have anything approaching a consensus. Is there any alternative to a vote, with the dissenting view reflected in the {{disagreement}} at the head of the article? --Red King 19:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

New Proposals

I'd like to propose that:

• This article be a history of all IRAs, concentrating on the first up to the Truce, and to a lesser extent, the Anti-Treaty IRA, and to an even lesser extent, the Provisionals, but without omitting any

• IRA redirect here

• The article on the Old IRA should end at either the Truce or the creation of the National Army

• The creation of Irish Republican Army (1922-23) to cover the Anti-Treaty IRA, starting at either the Truce or the formation of the National Army, and ending with the "dump arms" order

• The creation of Irish Republican Army (1923-69)

Lapsed Pacifist 06:19, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Broadly I agree but - Was there an active IRA after 24 May 1923? The armed struggle was abandoned. Aiken remained CoS. It wasn't until deV formed FF, or perhaps 1925, that the IRA was reformed/resurected/recreated. If its an IRA article the breaks should follow along with the Chief of Staff. (1) up to treaty (2) from treaty until 1926 while Frank Aiken was CoS (3) from 1925 when they announced that they were no longer answerable to political authority (4) we have separtate articles for the provos etc --ClemMcGann 11:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I could go along with that. I'd like to try and pin down whether or not there were any signs of the divisions to come between the Truce and the Treaty. I think there were, but I cannot recall any at the moment, and if there was something definitive, we should mark that as the beginning of the break, i.e. the beginning of a nascent "nothing less than the republic " IRA. If not, I have no problem with your version.

Lapsed Pacifist 11:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it's probably obvious from my contributions to the endless debate above that I think something like this would be an improvement. I don't see the logic of having separate articles for the IRA during the Civil War and the IRA after the Civil War, though. They were precisely the same organisation. If some people find that politically unpalatable, that's still not a reason for breaking up the article. In any case, I doubt if an article on the IRA during the Civil War would be likely to have much in it that wouldn't be better off in the article on th Civil War: in my view, the current article on the IRA post-Treaty split is already overbalanced towards the Civil War period. Palmiro | Talk 16:20, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

• These are not new proposals. They are a repeat of the same Provo propoganda that they have some lineage with the War of Independence army. It is a very POV position that is not accepted. There are already clear links to the modern pretenders if anyone cares to follow them. All of this was discussed earlier. Which part of NO don't you understand? --Red King 19:57, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not that it's politically unpalatable, it's that IRA activity until the end of the civil war, when compared with the following decades, indicates a natural break. The civil war IRA were engaged in a full-blown conflict, whereas until 1969 its activity was sporadic and mostly low-key. I for one am not disputing the continuity of personnel. An article on the IRA during the civil war could go into a lot of detail on its motivation, organisation, activities, etc. than would be suitable for the civil war article. Clem has proposed that it should cover from '22 until '25 or '26, and gave reasons above.

Lapsed Pacifist 00:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

This article should not go beyond 1926, when the leadership of Sinn Féin left to join purely constitutional politics. Whatever credibility the republican movement had while the Sinn Féin leader was the ex-president of the Republic it lost when deV, Lemass, Aiken et al left. From then on it was a different entity most definitely on the fringe of Irish society. But then one can equally argue that the defeat of the Anti-IRA in the civil war marked the end of the original IRA in the view of most people. 1923-1926 may be a grey area. After 1926 it isn't. It is a new leadership, with a smaller, frequently new membership, just reusing an old name. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 00:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

You've certainly come along way, FÉ. Once vociferous in your claim that there was no IRA after 1922, you’ve now extended your net to encompass a band of people who waged war against what you persistently portrayed as a sovereign government and the will of the people. This attempt to define a clear break between a legitimate-respectible and illegitimate-murderous IRA is pathetic. First we had the loyal Cumann na nGaedhael view condemning the post-Treaty IRA as irregulars, murderers and upstarts. Then, the Fianna Fáil element rowed in to defend their founding fathers. Now we have the Cumann na nGaedhael/FF defending their heroes against the savages and murderers who followed in 1926. When might see some more ingenious moral bordermaking in order to encompass the likes of Tom Barry and Seán MacBride later? Your credibility is in tatters IMO and shows how stupid it is to play political games and Civil War politics with encyclopaedia articles. --Damac 07:18, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

So by FE's logic above, the Workers Party article should presumably stop in 1992, the Socialist Party of Italy article in 1921, etc, etc. This is ludicrous. Perhaps the article on Guinness should stop at the point when they gave up putting a secondary fermentation in bottled stout as well. Palmiro | Talk 16:33, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Some people are interested in accuracy. Obviously all you too are interested in is childish gameplaying. I never said there was not an IRA after 1922. I said the Irish Republican Army, the army of the republic, ended in 1922, which it did because the Irish Republic legally ceased in 1922. A minority continued in opposition to the Treaty to use the name IRA. The majority of republicans ditched Sinn Féin in 1926, which means after 1926 you had a minority of a minority, with a political party with negligable support and a leadership of minor figures, left behind claiming to be the IRA. That is not the same as the authenticated army of the Republic. It is not even the same as a large minority of the original IRA under the political leadership of the ex-president of the Republic. The army of the Irish Republic ceased to exist when the republic ceased to exist legally: that is a fact. By 1926 any semblance of a link to the Republic had all but disappeared, as anyone with an iota of knowledge of Irish history knows. Damac's increasingly ludicrous arguments, which would be thrown out of a junior cert exam as simplistic, remain as preposterous and dubious as they have been all the time on this page. If he has a hazy POV understanding of the topic then he should stop pontificating as if he is some expert. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 17:11, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The above is hilarious considering that the same author once wrote that a Hohenzollern prince was "considered king of Ireland" in 1916 and who included the Hohenzollern coat of arms in an article on the IRA, the Army of the Republic. How many marks did you get in your Junior Cert for writing that? I have an MA in history from the NUI and a PhD in history from University College London which suggests that I've done much better at the Inter Cert than you suggest. --Damac 19:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

If you don't know the accounts of the discussion about Joachim, obviously none of your degrees involved anything more than reading a ladybird book on the Easter Rising. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 20:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Friends, rather than comparing our Junior Certificate marks, or where we were awarded MAs, let’s discuss the issue at hand.

On 24 May 1923, the armed struggle was abandoned. --ClemMcGann 20:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• support a logical cut off point. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 20:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Put in abeyance would be more accurate than abandoned.

Lapsed Pacifist 23:04, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

How can you say that? On July 24 deV issued a statement "It is not the intention of the republican Government or Army Executive to renew the war". And they did not renew the "war". (Later others did) --ClemMcGann 11:23, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, Dev et al had no intention of renewing the war, so they abandoned it. That's not the same thing as saying it was abandoned, full stop. If it was, we would'nt be having this discussion.

Lapsed Pacifist 12:18, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Lapsed Pacifist is correct that the IRA put their campaign in abeyance. Of course it can be said. The IRA "dump arms" order of May 1923 was precisely that, a dump arms order. Those who issued it did not see it as a surrender or marking the dissulution of the organisation. Dev's statement of July 24 merely reflects that the IRA at that time - in which he played no rule whatsoever it must be added - did not intend on renewing the war then. He did not say ever. Arms were not handed in and the training and drilling of IRA members continued.

Getting back to the Joachim sideshow. I am aware of the discussions relating to him, it's mentioned in plenty of history books and is no big secret. My point here has always been that it has nothing to do with an article on the IRA (by all means mention it in the 1916 Easter Rising article) and the Hohenzollern coat of arms had no place here. That's why I removed them.

As for the claim that the majority of republicans ditched Sinn Féin in 1926. We must remember that Dev left Sinn Féin after he was unable to secure a majority for his proposals. Had a majority been for his plans, there would have been no need to set up a seperate party called Fianna Fáil and Dev would have remained leader of SF. Furthermore, the 1926 break was not a clean one. Some senior Fianna Fáil leaders continued their membership of the IRA up to the late 1920s and 1930s and dual membership at local level was considerable and commonplace. Even relations between senior FF and IRA men were close - Seán Russell even met with Dev in Government Buildings in 1934! True, the Sinn Féin minus Dev was a shambolic organisation, so much so that the IRA had nothing to do with it after 1925. In fact, the IRA tried on three occasions to set up a new political party. --Damac 12:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Lapsed Pacifist is inaccurate in saying that the IRA put their campaign in abeyance.

On July 24 deV issued a statement "It is not the intention of the republican Government or Army Executive to renew the war". And they did not renew the "war". They kept their arms in the belief that prisoners would therefore not be mistreated. Just what happened in 1926 may be a matter for debate. However there was a clear gap from 24 May 1923 until guns were used again. --ClemMcGann 13:17, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I think part of the problem here is that the IRA is being considered as if it was a regular army, with proper chains of command. Therefore some people reason if Collins and the Dáil ordered the IRA to become the National Army, that should be the end of story. Ditto others if Dev and the Republican government/Army Executive ordered the IRA not to renew the war (it is not made clear here if Dev is referring just to the war against the Free State government, or also any potential future action against the British presence; I find the latter harder to credit, given the circumstances). The autonomy that guerrilla warfare necessitated made this level of discipline almost impossible from the outset. The reality was that the anti-Treaty IRA felt the pro-Treatyites had betrayed the Republic, and thus had no right to their allegiance. When the anti-Treatyites became part of the established order, those who remained with the IRA felt the same about them. It's misleading to write that the IRA "kept their arms in the belief that prisoners would therefore not be mistreated", as that implies that this was the sole reason. While that may have been the logic of the leadership, the nature of the organisation defied discipline beyond what individual units were prepared to accept. There was certainly a gap from May '23, but when the guns were used again, they were in familiar hands.

Lapsed Pacifist 14:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

You may find it "hard to credit", but it is what was said by the president of Sinn Fein and (in some view) still president of the Republic.

I will come back with a reference to refute: It's misleading to write that the IRA "kept their arms in the belief that prisoners would therefore not be mistreated"

Thanks for accepting There was certainly a gap from May '23. how long was that gap? Since there was a gap, it is an obvious 'break point'--ClemMcGann 14:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Clem, I'm not disputing what he said, I'm saying it's not clear what he meant by not renewing the war. He could have been referring specifically to the conflict with the Free State forces, or he could have been ruling out any further IRA action against either the Free State or the British. Either way, its academic. When Fianna Fáil came to power, the IRA did not hand in their weapons. I seriously doubt treatment of prisoners was still a factor by that stage, so what was? Neither am I disputing that the treatment of prisoners was the major factor in the leadership's decision to retain the IRA's arms, I'm saying it's misleading to imply this was the sole reason for doing so. O'Higgins was killed in July '27. I'm not aware of any significant IRA activity after the "dump arms" order and before this, but I would be happy to be set straight on that.

I originally proposed that the "dump arms" order be the end point for an article on the civil war IRA, and you suggested bringing it as far as '25 or '26. We now seem to be arguing from the opposite positions. Either is acceptable to me.

Lapsed Pacifist 15:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• I continue to assert that the Army of the Irish Republic became the National Army when the Dáil voted to ratify the Treaty and it ceased to exist at that point. Any group thereafter are simply recycling the name. But, since it appears that there is a majority for the pretence of continuity (recalling deV's The majority have no right to do wrong), the lesser of two evils is that this article becomes Irish Republican Army (1916 - 1922) and we have a disambiguation article like IRA. --Red King 23:40, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Another option would be to use the full name Irish Republican Army to refer to the army of the Irish Republic, and use acronym IRA for all successors, given that they were usually referred to by the acronym rather than the name. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 23:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)