History question - Did we call the Irish Republican Army "Roman Catholic Terrorists"?

[Adrahil]

92. That's a bit simplistic, I think.

The Irish rebels were Catholic, almost to a man (and woman). There were exceptions, of course, but they heavily identified as Catholic. The Orangemen were Protestant. As you point, mostly descendants of English colonizers. The English had been colonizing Ireland for a LONG time. Since the 12th Century at least. The aristocracy of Ireland were Anglo-Norman, placed in power by the Anglo-Norman kings, and they ruled their native Irish subjects with an iron fist. Many of the former Irish nobility married into these families and they became Anglo-Irish before long (couple hundred years). Another wave of invasion and colonization occurred under Elizabeth I. One wave, which left a deep scar on Ireland was the one initiated by Oliver Cromwell, which certainly had religious underpinnings. And, of course, during the "Glorious Revolution" of the late 17th century, James II (a Catholic) was deposed by William of Orange and Mary. That revolution was initiated largely in opposition to James II's Catholicism, and James drew support from Irish Catholics. William of Orange defeated an Irish army fighting for James in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne, which has become foundational to the conflict between Republicans and Unionists. That battle lead to the identification of the Unionists with the color orange, in opposition to the green Catholics.... symbolism which persist in the flag of the RoI today, and in the tensions that still persist in the North.

I'd agree that there is a strong political element to the tensions, but there is NO DOUBT, that religion was heavily associated with the factions involved. This was absolutely NOT the case in American Revolution, where the American colonies had a wide background of religious affiliation. The combatants in the American Revolution did not identify themselves in religious opposition at all, as the conflict in Ireland most certainly did.

The Easter 1916 Rising is a special case, as well. Great Britain was, of course, embroiled in the Great War at the time. The Republicans saw that as an opportunity, of course. There had actually been some strong movement toward support of Irish autonomy before the Great War. Some limited autonomy was introduced in 1912, but strongly opposed (even violently opposed) by the Ulster Unionists. The Republicans opposed them with their own militias and the British finally restrained the unionists with a threat of force. Who knows how things would have progressed, but when war broke out in 1914, both sides agreed to support the British in the war effort. There were holdouts on the Republican side, and they looked to keep pressing. They actually made a deal with the Germans who supplied arms to the rebellion. Despite modern popular myth, the rebellion was not strongly supported. Many families had men serving in British Army, and many saw it as a breach of a promised truce until the end of the war. The rebellion was crushed quickly, but the British handled the aftermath very poorly, executing leaders and imprisoning a few thousand. This led to resentment in the Irish public. The British attempted to fix this by restarting Home Rule negotiations and releasing the uprising prisoners, but the damage was mostly done and Sinn Fein gained strength.

1918 was marked by increased violence, and a continued strengthening of Sinn Fein, and once the war was over, the Irish War for Independence was all but inevitable. Britain was weary of war, and death (as Spanish flu swept through Europe), and cimmitted only token forces to the war. Political support for Irish Independence had been growing in Parliament in any case, so 1922 comes and the Republic is formed, with Ulster (a stronghold for Unionists) remaining in the UK.

I'm a bit of a history buff. When I was in Dublin some years ago, there was a GREAT exhibit on the War for Independence, and it included a ton of cool stuff, like Michael Collins' uniform and personal field office.

My point here was that was a strong religious identification associated with the factions in Ireland.