Gun Running for Irish Freedom

One cannot fight a war without weapons of some sort. William H. Kautt seeks to reconstruct how the I.R.A. armed itself during the War of Independence, assessing the effectiveness of these efforts. As the author notes, the overwhelming majority of works on 20^th century Ireland’s ‘Revolutionary Period’ have focused on political and sociological aspects and the few existing military studies generally neglect the issue of logistics. While worthwhile essays have been written about specific facets and incidents of the acquisition of arms, this is the first attempt at a comprehensive investigation. As this is the author’s fourth book about Ireland’s Revolutionary Period, Kautt, an Air Force veteran, former instructor at the U.S.A.F. Academy, and currently a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, is more than qualified to address this topic.

The Revolutionary Period was initiated in 1912, not by nationalists, but by the opposition to the passage of a ‘Home Rule’ Bill that would have re-instated Ireland’s Parliament, which had been shut down in 1801 by the ‘Act of Union’ (thus the term ‘Unionists’). The gun was reintroduced to politics in Ireland when Unionists raised the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.), which, as Kautt explains, obtained 20,000 rifles from Germany in an elaborate operation in 1914. Supporters of Home Rule responded by raising their own paramilitary force, the Irish Volunteers, which engaged, later that year, in its own more modest gunrunning effort, landing 1,500 rifles from Germany.

With Britain’s entry into the World War, the implementation of Home Rule was suspended and the leaders on the opposing sides of the issue encouraged the members of their respective militias to enlist. The underground revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.), had, behind the scenes, promoted the formation of the Irish Volunteers in hopes, not of joining, but of fighting against the British Army to achieve an independent Republic, as opposed to merely Home Rule. The call to serve in the war split the Irish Volunteers, leaving less than 10% available to the I.R.B., which sought to strike while Britain was preoccupied. But they were in desperate need of arms and, as related by Kautt, an attempt to obtain guns from Germany was thwarted just off Ireland’s coast.

The Easter Rising of 1916 was crushed, but it was the actions of the British authorities in the wake of the Rising that led the majority of Irish Catholics to abandon the cause of Home Rule for complete independence. The Irish Volunteers, re-christened the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.), initiated the War for Independence in 1919, pursued through a campaign of guerrilla warfare. The heart of Kautt’s study is concerned with the various means by which the I.R.A. sought to arm itself, including theft, capture from the enemy, purchase, and manufacturing. The focus is on these last two options if only because these methods are the best documented. Because the I.R.A. sought recognition as the legitimate armed forces of the Republic that was proclaimed during the Easter Rising, it generated a treasure trove of documents. These, along with witness statements and published memoirs, serve as the main sources with which the author reveals the means developed by the I.R.A.’s G.H.Q. to procure arms.

Kautt explains that the abject failure of the large-scale gunrunning effort just prior to the Easter Rising led G.H.Q. to rely instead on small-scale smuggling. Agents, in such far-flung locations as Buenos Aires, arranged the shipment of weapons to British ports, from where they were stored in five ‘arms centers’ located in British cities until they could be smuggled across the Irish Sea with the cooperation of sympathetic seamen and ships’ stewards. Within Ireland, the movement of arms relied heavily on the assistance of R.R. employees and members of the I.R.A.’s women’s auxiliary, the Cumann nam Ban.

In addition to smuggling, G.H.Q. pursued the manufacture of weapons, primarily explosive devices such as grenades. As Kautt demonstrates, this presented significant challenges, ranging from acquiring large quantities of specific types of coke and coal to finding locations where the noise and fumes resulting from the manufacturing process would not attract unwanted attention. Explosive compounds and reliable fuses had to be designed using readily available components. As the author notes, the I.R.A. showed considerable ingenuity in overcoming these challenges.

Kautt’s detailed reconstruction of G.H.Q.’s procedures for the smuggling and manufacture of arms is what makes this study a significant contribution to our understanding of the Irish War of Independence. However, there are also aspects of this book that subtract from its value. It is written in a manner that assumes a considerable prior knowledge of Ireland’s Revolutionary Period; all too often, individuals, organizations, and incidents are mentioned with little or no explanation of their nature or significance. This is compounded by a near complete lack of maps, the single example showing the location of I.R.A. manufacturing facilities within the city of Dublin.

Remarkably, in a work concerning illegal activities that depended on secrecy in order to be carried out, coverage of the British Security forces against which these efforts struggled is, more often than not, absent. A chapter at the beginning of the book describing the composition, legal powers, and methods used by these different forces, including how they evolved during the course of the war, would have added considerably to readers’ understanding of the difficulties under which the I.R.A. labored. Instead, less than five pages in the final chapter (pp.197-201) are devoted to British attempts to counter smuggling.

The author’s assessments of the I.R.A.’s efforts to procure arms should provide clarity for this issue. Instead, they are muddied by seemingly contradictory statements. Kautt asserts that, while the I.R.A. lacked the munitions necessary to continue operations at the time of the Truce that ended the fighting on 11 July, 1921, by the time the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, 6 December, 1921, these deficiencies had been rectified, calling into question the need to settle for partition and dominion status within the British Empire; “…there were three reasons the I.R.A. could be unable to continue the war: men, will, arms.” (p.208), claiming all three were present by December, 1921. But this ignores a number of other factors. Following the Truce, I.R.A. guerrillas were celebrated in public, thus losing the anonymity that had previously allowed them to evade capture. Moreover, whether or not the I.R.A. would have had the determination to resume the struggle, the general public made its feelings known in the subsequent election for representatives in the forthcoming Free State government. Ninety-two candidates who supported the Treaty won their seats versus thirty-six who opposed the Treaty, demonstrating that the majority of the population preferred a compromise peace to a return to war.

In any case, even within the author’s own parameters of ‘men, will, [and] arms’, his statements concerning the latter are inconsistent. Kautt argues that at the time of the signing of the Treaty, the I.R.A. had enough rifles and sufficient ammunition - a little over 54 rounds per rifle - to continue fighting the war. Yet, in his coverage of one of the large-scale gunrunning operations which G.H.Q. sought to arrange prior to the Truce, the author states, “Considering the rate of fire during the Great War, five million rounds [for 100,000 rifles] was simply not enough; once the [I.R.A.] Volunteer had fired his fifty rounds, he would be left with a heavy mechanical club and a bayonet.” (p.133).

When seeking a yardstick with which to measure the I.R.A.’s efforts to arm itself, Kautt remarks that, “An amateur student of war might be tempted to say that there is no better evidence of effectiveness in war than victory. While not wholly incorrect, this…simplistic view of war is too facile to be useful here.” (p.179). Yet ten pages later one reads that, “Although the [I.R.A.’s] directorates of Chemicals and Munitions made substantial amounts of high explosives and grenades, these were not going to change the outcome of the conflict.” (p.189).

The author’s conclusions seem clear, with statements such as, “Indeed, the previous chapter readily demonstrated that the weapons in the hands of the average [I.R.A.] Irish Volunteer came from his or his company’s efforts, not the massively expensive republican smuggling efforts.” (p.207) and “Although G.H.Q. did not arm the I.R.A. adequately during the War of Independence to fight in the manner it wanted or expected, this does not take away from what it achieved. Perhaps the mission was just too much, given the geopolitical situation and the time frame in which G.H.Q. was operating.” (p.209). In his introduction, however, Kautt asserts that, “The Irish Volunteers’ [I.R.A.’s] general headquarters (G.H.Q.) worked to supply through a centralized system. Ultimately, that system failed its mission but succeeded in its strategy.” (p.11), an assertion that’s never adequately explained. Far more baffling, given the conclusions quoted above, is the statement, “This, the [G.H.Q.’s] systematic approach carried the republicans [I.R.A.] through to the end of the revolutionary era.” (p.207).

In the end, however, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, Kautt deserves high praise for Arming the Irish Revolution, providing what is likely to be our best understanding of how the I.R.A. obtained the weapons with which it forced Great Britain to the negotiating table, resulting in de facto independence for twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties.

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Our Reviewer: Paul V. Walsh earned his Master’s degree in Military and Diplomatic History from Temple University in 1994 and taught history at Delaware County Community College from 1999 to 2009. An author, his most recent article, “Italians on World War I’s Western Front”, appeared in Issue No. 334 (May-June, 2022) of the magazine Strategy & Tactics.

Note: Arming the Irish Revolution, a volume in the UP Kansas series “Modern War Studies“, is also available in several e-editions.

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