Frank Aiken - Irish Republican Army Involvement

Irish Republican Army Involvement

Aiken, operating from the south Armagh/north Louth area, was one of the most effective IRA commanders in Ulster during the conflict. In May 1920, he led 200 IRA men in an attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in Newtownhamilton, forcing the police to surrender and then burning the building and seizing the arms contained within. In December 1920, he led another assault, this time abortive, on the RIC station in his home village of Camlough. In reprisal the newly formed Ulster Special Constabulary burned Aiken's home and those of ten of his relatives in the Camlough area. From this point onwards, the conflict in Aiken's area took on an increasingly bitter and sectarian quality.

In April 1921, Aiken's IRA unit took a Protestant church congregation hostage in Creggan, County Armagh in order to ambush the police and Special Constabulary arriving for the service. One Special was killed in ensuing ambush. Although Aiken then released the Protestant civilians unharmed, the incident heightened local sectarian animosity. Starting the following month, the Special Constabulary started shooting Catholic civilians in revenge for IRA attacks. In June 1921, Aiken organised his most successful attack on the British military, when his men detonated a mine under a British troop train headed from Belfast to Dublin, killing the train guard, three cavalry soldiers and 63 of their horses. Shortly afterwards, the Specials took four Catholics from their homes in Bessbrook and Altnaveigh and killed them.

The cycle of violence continued in the area in the following year, despite a formal truce with the British as of 11 July 1921. Michael Collins organised a clandestine guerrilla offensive against the newly created entity of Northern Ireland in May 1922. For reasons that have never been properly determined, Aiken and his Fourth Northern Division never took part in the operation, although it was planned that they would. Nevertheless, the local IRA's inaction at this time did not end the bloodshed in South Armagh. Aiken has been accused by unionists of ethnic cleansing of Protestants from parts of South Armagh, Newry, and other parts of the north, in particular the killing of seven Protestant civilians in Altnaveigh in June 1922. The incident was a revenge attack for the killing the previous day of two local Catholics and the sexual assault of a woman by the Special Constabulary.

The IRA split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and this left Aiken ultimately aligned with the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War in spite of personal efforts to prevent division and civil war. Aiken tried to remain neutral and after fighting broke out between pro- and anti-Treaty units in Dublin, he wrote to Richard Mulcahy, calling for a truce and the removal of the Oath of Allegiance (Ireland) from the Free State constitution. He took no part in the fighting until he was arrested, along with over 300 of his men who were billeted in Dundalk, by the Free State Army on 14 July. However, just ten days later he was freed in a raid on Dundalk prison. Then, on 14 August, he led a surprise attack of 300–400 anti-treaty IRA men on Dundalk. They blew holes in the army barracks there and rapidly took control of the town at a cost of just two of his men killed. The operation freed 240 republican prisoners and seized 400 rifles. However, while in possession of the town, Aiken publicly called for an end to the civil war. For the remainder of the conflict, Aiken and his unit remained at large, carrying out some guerrilla attacks on Free State forces; however, Aiken was never enthusiastic about the internecine struggle.

He succeeded Liam Lynch as IRA Chief of Staff in March 1923, and issued the cease fire and dump arms orders on 24 May 1923 that effectively ended the Irish Civil War. He remained Chief of Staff of the IRA until 12 November 1925