Talk:Irish Republican Army (1919–1922)

Previous discussions

 * Archive 1 (start to end 2004):
 * Archive 2 (start 2005 to August 2005, excluding discussions of current reorganisation):
 * Archive 3 (from 27 July 2005, excluding discussions of current reorganisation):
 * The House of Hohenzollern, Everybody uses the same (Irish) name...? ,


 * Archive 4 (Reorganisation discussion, from 18 July 2005):
 * Complete rewrite, IRA ceasing to exist after Civil War, IRA 1922 - 1969


 * Archive 5 (Reorganisation discussion continued, from 29 July):
 * Organisation of wikipedia coverage of IRA(s), Proposals for moving this article forward, Interim proposal,


 * Archive 6 (Reorganisation discussion continued, from 1 August):
 * Request for Comments, New proposals


 * Archive 7 (Various discussions from 1 June 2007 - 1 October 2011)

Bi-ist article
This article has appeared to have been composed by a user with what obviously is a very pro-IRA stance. For the sake of everyone's education and perhaps not unbelievable selfish smug, enlighten us Wikipedia users more about "IRA". (60.234.214.63 (talk) 23:32, 22 February 2013 (UTC)) -- TheGreatCornholio


 * What do you have in mind? This article is about the original Irish Republican Army that fought in the Irish War of Independence with the authority of Dáil Éireann.. It is heavily supported by citations of reliable external sources and is the work of many editors.
 * Or do you have in mind one of the modern organisations that subsequently took the name? If so, see List of IRAs where you might find the one you want. --Red King (talk) 20:44, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

What I naturally had in mind understandably was a complete history of any Irish Republican Army activity. The most defeatest thing they could have done was surrender and they did yet there are still some of us who are strong enough to continue. So that is my answer to you for cutting the mustard like that boy-o. I don't mean to boast or threaten you but I very well have family in Sinn Fein and I feel very proud to know that. But for the sake of education, you can't continue to be bi-ist like that with an article, because this is Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.214.63 (talk) 05:35, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

References inline and otherwise
As time permits I am attempting to clean the references up without changing content. Anough for today. Juan Riley (talk) 01:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC) And I have not gotten back to this reference clean up yet. Sigh. Juan Riley (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Dates and leading caveats
Since the parenthetical statement at lead indicates that this about organization that fought in the Easter rebellion and the Anglo-Irish war..should not the info box date be 1916-1922? Juan Riley (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * A slight misreading Juan, the IRB and Irish Volunteers, the precossors faught in the Easter Rising ("It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916" in the lead). In the section "Emergence of the IRA after the Easter Rising", it states "first steps towards reorganising the defeated Irish Volunteers were taken on 27 October 1917 when a convention took place in Dublin". A point being, you could put forward 1919 either as the army of the Irish Republic and the first Dail. Murry1975 (talk) 00:59, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I do understand all the subtleties..however the article starts off with :This article is about the historical organisation that fought in the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21. Juan Riley (talk) 01:14, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Good spot, removed inaccuaracy. Murry1975 (talk) 01:20, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If consistently followed in article...I now agree with..say 1919? Juan Riley (talk) 01:23, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Give me a couple of days and I should be able to come up with the goods. Sound? Murry1975 (talk) 01:26, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. Juan Riley (talk) 01:28, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 6 April 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. We have clear consensus that this article (the pre-1922 IRA) is not the PRIMARYTOPIC of the term, and that the base name should be a WP:CONCEPTDAB for all IRA articles. There is some question as to whether Irish Republican Army (1917–22) is the best way to disambiguate the article, so if a better solution is identified, a new RM discussion can be opened without prejudice. Cúchullain t/ c 15:25, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

– The name "Irish Republican Army" is just as commonly used to refer to other groups (such as the Irish Republican Army (1922–69) and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, amongst others). There should be greater distinction between them. Charles Essie (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Irish Republican Army → Irish Republican Army (1917–22)
 * List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army → Irish Republican Army
 * Support. Googling suggests that the current (post-1969) incarnation is the one readers are seeking. The eigenvector (talk) 06:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)  !vote by sock of community-banned user struck. Srnec (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Alternative It is definitely not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and so should be moved, but not to the suggested target name.
 * The current name reflects the official view of later Irish states that only the pre-Treaty IRA is legally or morally entitled to call itself such, and any later IRA is merely "an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army". That view may be in some sense official, but
 * Wikipedia goes by common-name, not official-name and
 * it is POV: it was obviously not the later-IRA view; neither was it the UK view, in which the pre-1922 IRA was just as illegal as the later ones.
 * However, 1917 is not an appropriate start date; the IRA's origin from the Irish Volunteers was not a single event occurring in 1917 but rather an evolution from 1916 to 1921. I also think the use of a parenthetical in both the proposed rename and Irish Republican Army (1922–69) is question-begging, implying that they are two separate entities that happen to have the same name, rather than two phases in the history of a single organisation.
 * I suggest instead History of the Irish Republican Army to 1922 and History of the Irish Republican Army, 1922–69. (Or similar: I'm not sure what the naming convention is for specifying dates in such cases.)
 * Another alternative is Old IRA, which currently redirects to the pre-1922 article; however, "Old IRA" is itself an ambiguous and contested term. jnestorius(talk) 09:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It ain't broke. It is not hard to find what you're looking for, but it is hard to know exactly what people are looking for. Therefore leave it as is. Srnec (talk) 13:41, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Nowadays, they have these amazing thingees called "search engines," including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These sites bring up results that were popular with previous users who typed in the same or similar search terms. The eigenvector (talk) 13:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC) !vote by sock of community-banned user struck. Srnec (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This page is atop my Google search. And my Duckduckgo search. "List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army" is not in the top 10 of either. My comment was correct: it is not easy to know if people are primarily interested in the Provisional IRA, the 1922–69 IRA or an overview of them all. What search engines do show, it seems, is that, as I said, nobody has any trouble getting to the Wikipedia result they want. Srnec (talk) 22:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh my. Surely you realize that this article is on top only because it is our primary topic article. The other results that come up refer to the modern IRA. The eigenvector (talk) 06:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC) !vote by sock of community-banned user struck. Srnec (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I surely do. Does any of this have a point? You said that search engines will show us what people want. They show that this article is what people want most of all! When they search for "irish republican army", anyway. It shows that our List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army is not what they want. And of course the other results are for the post-1922 IRAs. There are no other IRAs they could be for! The fact that our articles on the other IRAs come up immediately after this one in Google searches buttresses my point that nobody is having trouble getting what they want. Srnec (talk) 11:37, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems that some clever search engine optimization has pushed this article to the top. We should all feel proud, I guess. My original recommendation above was to google . When I do that, the top result is a Britannica article that covers the history from 1919 to today. For the most part, the following results focus on post-1922 history. The eigenvector (talk) 03:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC) !vote by sock of community-banned user struck. Srnec (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * "it is not easy to know if people are primarily interested in the Provisional IRA, the 1922–69 IRA or an overview of them all." -- agreed, but we can add the pre-1922 IRA to that list. Hence the move request. jnestorius(talk) 09:53, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army were turned into a good article (and not a list), I would support the multi-move as requested. Right now, I prefer the current layout with the hatnote to forcing folks to read the opening of the List article. I would have no problem beefing up the hatnote on this article to explicitly link to the PIRA etc. Srnec (talk) 16:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * With more than 10 percent of readers (6077/59588) taking the hat note, the current setup is definitely creating some confusion and dissatisfaction. With a hat note as long and involved as this one, I suspect plenty of readers are simply pressing the backup key on their browsers. The eigenvector (talk) 05:13, 12 April 2015 (UTC) !vote by sock of community-banned user struck. Srnec (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Strong Support. The term IRA is commonly used as an umbrella term for the many factions by the layman reader . If anything List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army should be moved to Irish Republican Army. Zarcadia (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Support both moves as proposed or another alternative (such as one of User:Jnestorius's proposals above) that makes the current CONCEPTDAB page the target of "Irish Republican Army". The "old" IRA is not the primary topic, i.e. it is not "highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term" (my emphasis). —  AjaxSmack   03:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Also, there is already Category:Irish Republican Army (1917–22) members. Snappy (talk) 09:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. Juan Riley (talk) 22:21, 5 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

In trying to sort out incoming links, it isn't always obvious which links should go to Irish Republican Army (1917–22) and which should stay at the concept disambiguation Irish Republican Army. Unfortunately, readers better versed in the nuances than I am will have to take on that task.--Cúchullain t/ c 15:55, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste
The bulk of two sections of this article properly belonged in the Irish Volunteers article, as they dealt in depth with developments in the Volunteers before they became known as the IRA. I have moved the content to there as a straight cut-and-paste, replacing it with a summary section in this article. Scolaire (talk) 13:21, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Recent edit war
I missed the recent edit war between and. What I find extraordinary is that both parties used angry edit summaries saying "take it to talk", yet neither made any attempt to discuss the edits on the talk page. Does either of you know what "take it to talk" means? For what it's worth, the IRA was the Irish Volunteers, and the two names were used interchangeably throughout the revolutionary period. They were even referred to as the Volunteers in the Treaty debates, and in anti-Treaty literature during the Civil War. For that reason, I am reverting to Alfie Gandon's edit, but I advise both of you to make proper use of talk pages in future, and to seek opinions from third parties if you can't reach agreement. Scolaire (talk) 13:00, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry but personal editor opinions dont matter. All cited sources say the IRA was founded in 1919. The IRA (as referred to during the rising) referred to something different.Apollo The Logician (talk) 16:11, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * All the cited sources? Which ones are they? Encyclopaedia Britannica? Here, here, here, here and here are just five random books thrown up by a Google Books search, and they all say what every serious student of the period knows: that the Irish Volunteers became known as the IRA during the war of Independence. That's why I suggested you use the talk page instead of edit-warring based on your own "personal editor opinions". Scolaire (talk) 09:20, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Black and Tan uniform
(Because of Shortages) Perhaps a citation is required. I find it hard to believe in the immediate aftermath of World War 1 with hundreds of thousands of men demobbeed and the expected continuation of the war into 1919 keeping production running right up to armistice day, the war department would have enough uniforms to last into the 1930's. In basic training in 1976 we were still using the 1938 pattern webbing that was thrown away at Dunkirk. In deployment in Germany we were still using the Bren gun as our company Light Machine guns in support units. It seems more likely to me, that as these personnel were not regular troops but auxiliaries, they were given an appropriately different looking uniform so they weren't confused with the regular Army. 90.248.76.197 (talk) 09:41, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * The sentence is badly phrased, but the explanation is simple. The Black and Tans were not recruited to the army, they were ex-army men recruited to the Royal Irish Constabulary. It was a shortage of RIC uniforms that led to them wearing a mix of dark green RIC and khaki army uniforms. I will try to re-fashion the sentence and add a citation. Scolaire (talk) 09:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)