Talk:Irish Volunteers

Curragh Mutiny

I've added a link to the mutiny (see Curragh incident) as it helped enlistment before the Howth gun-running.Red Hurley (talk) 12:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Irish officers

The statement "Unlike the latter, the 16th Division had no trained military Irish officers of its own, and were commanded by British officers, with the exception of Irish General William Hickie" seems highly dubious. The 16th Division actually had no officers originally, as it was new and so took officers from other regiments or who had retired. Plenty of these were Irish in any meaningful sense of the word as used in 1914, such as this example. The associated reference is presumably to [1] and I do not see any justification for the claim in the article.--Rumping (talk) 22:54, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me the important thing is not the specific ancestry of every officer in the Division, but to contrast how the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers were treated by the British Army. I don't have any sources in front of me right now, but I seem to recall that when the Ulster Volunteers enlisted they were allowed to keep much of their established power structure and such whereas the Irish Volunteers were not. -R. fiend (talk) 13:04, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The politics of the issue is alluded to in Heroic Option pp217- . A factor in treating the 36th and 16th differently seems to have been influenced by Kitchener's view of the nascent 16th "as rebels in sheep's clothing". RashersTierney (talk) 13:29, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear that such issues were the reason for the unequal treatment of the two volunteers organizations when they enlisted, though I've never seen it so blatantly stated. That's much more significant than what may or may not have been the ancestry of various officers. Does someone want to use this or another source to clean up the section in question? -R. fiend (talk) 13:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Rv historical revisionism

I have reverted this edit by a "new editor" as an unexplained down-play/removal of the Volunteer's role in WWI. I do not believe it to be appropriate. If any justification can be provided, a CON building discussion would be welcomed here on talk. Guliolopez (talk) 18:21, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Infobox

While there is nothing wrong in theory with having an infobox in the article, the infobox as it currently stands gives practically no info, and what it does give is contradictory. As an example of lack of information, it has (presumably deliberately, because of differing POVs) no ideology, no allies and no opponents, and its strength is given as less than 200,000 (at maximum). That could mean a Marxist group of a dozen people fighting with the Citizen Army against the UVF for control of Irish loyalism. As an example of contradictory information, it was active, apparently, between 25 November 1913 and December 1918, despite becoming the Irish Republican Army in 1917; and the war in which it participated was the Easter Rising, but the image is of "an Irish Volunteer atop a memorial to the Irish War of Independence". Either interested parties need to thrash out what properly belongs in this infobox, or it needs to be removed. Scolaire (talk) 13:37, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

You make some good points there. I was never hugely attached to the infobox, but I think it has, or can have, enough good information to serve a purpose. Exactly when the Volunteers became the IRA appears to be a little less than straightforward - I believe at least of the the leaders of the Rising used that term for the joint Volunteers/ICA forces that fought that week, so one could argue it happened as early as 1916. I removed the years from the link, so any contradiction doesn't appear in the infobox, at least, for what it's worth. Ideology is a little tough to pin down in a few words, as they deliberately kept it broad in order to appeal to as many people as possible. For allies I see no problem with listing the Irish Citizen Army, at least. We had a controversy over the opponents section a while back, I recall, in that someone wanted to list the Ulster Volunteers, to which many of us objected (that was one of the few times myself and another now departed user agreed on something). At one point I think it said "British Empire" which was probably not the most accurate way to put it, though they did fight the British Army during the Rising. If anyone can come up with a better way to phrase its strength that's great, but I don't have a big problem with its current phrasing. Sure, technically a dozen people is "less than 200,000" but it's pretty clear that it means membership approaching, but short of, 200,000 when the group was at its height. As for the image and the potential confusion as to whether it depicts a Volunteer or a member of the IRA, I see no problem with replacing it with something less ambiguous; there should be plenty of photos from the Rising itself which we could use. -R. fiend (talk) 14:12, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The thing is that each of the things I talked about could easily be a bone of contention. The "200,000", for instance: does that mean the membership in September 1914, and if so is that in any way meaningful given that the Volunteers that organised through 1915 and took part in the 1916 Rising numbered 10-15,000? People will argue on both sides. If we remove the image of the War of Independence, then we're saying the Volunteers did not take part in the War of Independence, but the Soloheadbeg Ambush, for instance, says that that was a Volunteer action. So then, do we say that it was active until sometime in the middle of the War of Independence, say 30 June 1920. We can't justify that. I don't think there's any date we can justify. Simply covering up the 1917–22 dates of the linked IRA article doesn't resolve the problem. In fact, I'm going to revert that until this is thrashed out. And, of course, if they were still active in the War of Independence – as we all know they were – then Eoin MacNeill was not the sole leader. Éamon de Valera was president from October 1917. Allies: Citizen Army, yes. But will people then start adding Cumann na mBan, the Fianna, the Hibernian Rifles, Sinn Féin, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Uncle Tom Cobley and all? Enemies: I would agree with the British Empire, but you think that would not be "the most accurate way to put it". Somebody will say the obvious enemy is Great Britain, and then somebody else will inevitably say no, it's the United Kingdom. Ideology: yes, it was deliberately kept broad at the start, but in Easter Week 1916 they fought for an Irish Republic, and they were re-formed as a republican force in 1917. So, even of the paltry amount of information in the infobox (which gives out little or no info as it is), only one fact – that their area of operations was Ireland – is indisputable. Unless there is a proper discussion around these things (and are there enough editors who care any more?) we can't make it any more useful, and we'd be better off scrapping it. Scolaire (talk) 19:42, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi. If we think it's adding little value, then removing the infobox is OK with me. I'm not sure it's adding no value however - so perhaps that would be a bit drastic. To the areas of the infobox that might be expanded/changed/clarified:

• Opponents - As noted, the reason opponents were removed was due to edit-warring mostly by (as noted above) a now "departed" editor. This was mainly due to attempts to position the organisation as a pro-Imperial Germany actor in WWI. Which rather didn't account for the complexities of reality. If we feel the complexities (greyness) can be communicated in what is (in essence) designed largely as an "A v B" (black/white) attribute, then I'm OK with trying to figure out how to do that. (But we may need to be wary of "keeping it simple" (when it isn't), supporting a given POV (in either direction), or otherwise trying to make a complex reality "fit" a binary infobox field). In my view, if we keep the infobox, we're better off leaving this blank - As the complexities are difficult to communicate in summary infobox form
• Allies - As Scolaire notes, there is a risk here that even loosely associated groups might be listed (with perhaps ideological overlaps rather than membership overlaps. Or strategic interlinks rather than tactical/practical ones). As above, if we keep the infobox, I'd recommend leaving this field unused.
• Image - Personally I think the current image is fine. While the monument pictured also commemorates those volunteers who fought in the War of Independence, it's scope has always included the Rising volunteers (Dublin C Company founded 1913). In honesty I can see this image being less controversial than, say, one of Redmond inspecting volunteers (or similar) - as there may be some dispute about whether this represents a pre- or post- "split" image.
• Strength/size - Perhaps the best thing to do here is given dated ranges. (As in the number of volunteers at different times or involved in different engagements). Again though, perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to ask the infobox to impart this.
• Split - Per Template:Infobox war faction, this is an available field that we are not using. If anything this is perhaps one we should be using (to communicate the split between Redmondite elements and those closer aligned with MacNeill's ideals). With this field expanded, it might also assist in clarifying the date complexities that Scolaire mentions
• Ideology - Maybe I'm wrong to think this is more straight forward, but I think this is a field we could populate. "Irish nationalism" would seem a relatively safe bet. (As although there was division about HOW the ideals of the nationalist movement would be realised, the goal itself [home-rule/devolution/etc] was largely not in question.)

Do we want to create a version of the infobox here (or a sandbox somewhere) and see if we can sort out CON - before then implementing/reimplementing (or removing) from main article. Guliolopez (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we should just scrap it then. Unless we can pinpoint an exact moment when the Irish Volunteers ceased to exist and became the IRA (which I think we cannot do, despite what this article purports to do), much of this won't be settled. I don't think changing the image to something from the Rising or before denies they fought in the War of Independence any more than having the current image denies they fought in the Rising. Without an image to change it to the point is kind of moot, anyway (though a google search led to a few potential candidates). I'm not even sure Irish Nationalism was the most accurate ideology, as many of the were Home Rulers, and Home Rule, as the republicans liked to point out, was not nationhood. Likewise the problem with putting the British Empire or the like as an opponent might give the impression that their purpose was to stage a rebellion against Britain, when their official goals were less specific and only defensive. Guliolopez points out that if we change to the "faction" infobox we can use the "split" option, which should be a pretty uncontroversial place to add the National Volunteers, I would think. So there's a little more information we could use, if we decide to keep an infobox. -R. fiend (talk) 16:31, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

We wouldn't be changing to the "faction" infobox: it already is the "faction" infobox. Opponents are the people they fought against, and they fought against the British, regardless of what their declared aims were in 1913. Home Rulers called themselves nationalists, as did Sinn Féiners and republicans. In fact, "nationalist" is virtually always used to refer to Home Rulers rather than separatists. Scolaire (talk) 17:10, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Guliolopez:I'd prefer to discuss it here, but I think your bulleted list is preferable to creating an actual infobox. There wouldn't be any need to include every field every time; we can probably reach agreement on most of them fairly quickly.

Before going further, I'd like to say that the article is woefully unbalanced. I can't think of any other article – on WP or elsewhere – that devotes so much space to the origins of a military organisation and none at all to its actions: even the Easter Rising section says nothing about what the Volunteers did in the Rising. It's like reproducing the first chapter of a book and leaving out the rest. So what I'm going to suggest is based on what I think the article should be about rather than what's now there.

• Name, native name, native name lang: a no-brainer.
• War: Easter Rising and War of Independence.
• Image, caption: leave as is, since the War of Independence is now specifically included.
• Active: 1913 – (?). 1918 is too early, to my mind. They were definitely the Volunteers at the start of the War of Independence. Tim Pat Coogan says that de Valera in March 1921 brought the Volunteers "under the civil control of elected representatives", and that they became known as the IRA "after the first Dáil", which would be after May 1921 (The IRA, pp. 25–6). One suggestion is "1913 – about 1921". Alternatively, we could say 1913–22, as they didn't become inactive as a result of becoming known as the IRA (see the website below).
• Ideology: Agree that Irish nationalism is an obvious choice.
• Leaders: Eoin MacNeill and Éamon de Valera. I wouldn't be inclined to give dates because it's a bit woolly for both of them.
• Strength: 180,000 (pre-split); 15,000 (1916). See Defence Forces for the first figure; Irish Times, BBC and Dept. of the Taoiseach for the second.
• Allies: leave out.
• Split: National Volunteers (majority faction) and Irish Volunteers, September 1914.
• Opponents: Here I disagree with Guliolopez. I think a war faction without opponents is a nonsense. The British Army and the RIC (of which the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries were part) are their obvious opponents.
• url: http://irishvolunteers.org/

Comments welcome. Scolaire (talk) 17:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I was just working on a similar thing in my sandbox, and I think there's a good deal of agreement here. I would like to see if we can get a bit more of a consensus as to when the Volunteers ceased to be an entity, but there might be too much grey area to make such a call. But let's look further at what we have: NAME (etc:) as you said, no-brainer, WAR: adding War of Independence seems good to me, IMAGE/CAPTION: as you said, fine now that we've expanded into the War of Independence (though I think there still might be better options, but that's a separate issue), ACTIVE: 1913 is obviously good (I agree we should drop the months), and the ending year is still debatable, and perhaps deserves more investigation. IDEOLOGY: since it seems Home Rulers were called nationalists (sounds technically inaccurate to me, but terms are often used in odd ways, and I can't always keep them straight) Irish nationalism works for me. LEADERS: adding Dev seems to make sense too. STRENGTH: Those changes work (this reminds me, different articles gives different numbers for the Irish and National Volunteers following the split; we should probably coordinate them). ALLIES: I think adding the ICA would clearly be accurate, but if that's just going to open the door for everyone and the kitchen sink then maybe leaving it blank is best. SPLIT: certainly mention the National Volunteers, but I'm not sure we need to mention the IV, as they're already the subject of the template (a minor detail). OPPONENTS: your proposal seems fine. URL: I'm surprised they have one, but since they do, yeah, add it. What about BECAME? Do we want to remove the link to the IRA? -R. fiend (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

No, we don't. This edit was actually correct. The only reason I reverted was that I didn't want the sands to be shifting while we were discussing it. They did become the IRA, no question about it. The only problem is that there was no date on which they stopped being one and started being the other. I'm surprised, come to think of it, that no historian has ever tried to trace that change. It would be good for a journal article, at least. The website was put up by the Irish Volunteer Commemorative Organisation, which describes itself as "a non-political, non-profit organisation dedicated to recording and preserving the history and artifacts of the Irish Volunteers in the years 1913-1922." It's largely because of their use of 1913-1922 that I think maybe we ought to use that as our "years active". Readers should be able to click on the link and not immediately see something that contradicts something else in the infobox. Scolaire (talk) 19:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm on board with all of that. Except the "opponents" bit. And the "url" bit.

On the former (opponents), perhaps it is just me, but I don't really agree that it is "a nonsense" to summarise the shape of a military faction/force - without shoehorning their "opponents" into a few bullets. Reality tends to be more complex than can quickly be imparted in a short infobox elements. Obviously the reasons for it are varied, but I would note for example that the infoboxes for Al-Qaeda and the Zapatistas (and a bunch of others that use the same infobox template) don't populate this field. Probably because "it's complicated" would be a useless addition (and so editors rely on the text to explain stuff instead of feeling the need to populate the infobox). Personally I think adding "British Empire" is at odds with two aspects of the volunteers history (in 1913 when they were formed to counter the UVF - not really as an anti-empire org. And later, many volunteers saw it as in-keeping with the org's goals to join the entente war effort).

On the latter (url), I don't think we should have one. The org is 100+ years old, so having an "official website" seems a bit odd to me. While the IVCO are one of the more prominent commemorative orgs for those involved, I'm not sure it's appropriate to treat the IVCO website as the only, exclusive or "official" one. Guliolopez (talk) 19:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I take your point on the url. On the opponents: I am proposing British Army, not British Empire. We have agreed that Volunteer actions were in 1916 and the War of Independence. Both times they fought the British Army. Your "two aspects" are both incorrect. One, it was stressed time and again that the Volunteers were not in opposition to the Ulster Volunteers. MacNeill said it in "The North Began", and at the launch of the Volunteers in Cork the Ancient Order of Hibernians rioted when MacNeill called for "three cheers for Carson". Pearse also wrote approvingly of the Ulster Volunteers. Two, the Volunteers split specifically over Redmond's support of the war effort. The Irish Volunteers, as opposed to the National Volunteers, not only did not see it as "in keeping with the org's goals to join the war effort", but mounted an aggressive and sustained anti-recruitment campaign, for which senior members such as Seán MacDermott, Desmond FitzGerald and Ernest Blythe ended up in prison. It's not complicated at all. The Irish Volunteers were never pro-British in any sense, in peace or in war, and in their actions they fought the British Army. Scolaire (talk) 21:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

No further comments, so I'm going to implement that. We can continue discussing, if desired. Scolaire (talk) 11:31, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Small fraction

Really Scolaire?. From "Oxford Companion to Irish History":

The greater majority of the original 160,000 Irish National Volunteers joined the National Volunteers. However, the organisation soon became defunct through enlistment and demoralisation.... around 35,000 to 40,000 of them joined the British army. - page 403. Not a "small fraction" but around a quarter of the organisation!

The radical nationalists in the Irish Volunteers were left with only a skeleton organisation of about 2,000-3,000 members. They slowly reorganised until they comprised about 15,000 men by 1916. - page 282. 2-3,000 is a small fraction. Mabuska ^(talk) 22:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

A quarter is a small fraction. The sentence I removed said that "over 90% of members joined the National Volunteers and enlisted in the 10th (Irish) Division|10th and 16th (Irish) Division|16th (Irish) Divisions of the British Army." The impression given was that the National Volunteers joined these divisions en bloc, which is totally misleading. My edit summary said "only a small fraction of Redmond's Volunteers [the National Volunteers] enlisted", so the strength of MacNeill's faction relative to Redmond's has no bearing on it. At any rate, the number of National Volunteers that enlisted – large or small – does not belong in the lead of the Irish Volunteers article. And, for the record, a diff that I replaced the deleted content with factual content. It was not just a blind revert. Scolaire (talk) 07:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I was simply proving a point on numbers. A small fraction heavily implies a very small number, not a quarter. If that was the case then why have Northern Ireland's Catholics always been classed as a large minority and not a small fraction of the country's population? At any rate, I do agree that the en bloc is misleading, the same for the UVF considering a higher percentage of IVF members enlisted compared to UVF members. Mabuska ^(talk) 10:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Small is not "very small", nor does it "heavily imply" it. Small is small. If you invested £160,000 in 2008 before the financial crisis, and two years later your investment was worth £35,000 to £40,000, I think you'd be saying that it was only a small fraction of your original investment. Scolaire (talk) 10:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Scolaire, that impression is misleading. A common enough one obviously, I believed it myself until two minutes ago. Gob Lofa (talk) 10:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste

Because this article ended abruptly with the Easter Rising, and the Irish Republican Army (1917–22) article contained a lot of content about the reorganisation of the Volunteers and their relationship with the First Dáil, I have moved it to here as a straight cut-and-paste, replacing it with a summary section in the IRA article. I take no responsibility for the veracity or verifiability of the content. It is practically unsourced, but at least it's better than having only half an article. Scolaire (talk) 13:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes called

I have had a research interest in the Irish Volunteers for several years – and not just for Wikipedia – and I have never before seen the organisation referred to as Irish Volunteer Force or Irish Volunteer Army. The phrase "Irish Volunteer Force" appears on the original enrolment form from 25 November 1913. As far as I am aware it never appears thereafter. Similarly, the phrase "Irish Volunteer Army" seems to have been used in connection with Roger Casement's mission to Germany (hence its frequent use in a witness statement by a member of the Irish Brigade), but never in any other context. Neither has ever appeared as a descriptor in a book or article, to the best of my knowledge. The McCaffrey book that is cited says, "In the autumn of 1913, a committee representing Home Rule, Sinn Féin and republicanism formed an Irish Volunteer Army", not "an organisation called "The Irish Volunteer Army". While it may be useful to mention frequently-found aliases of an organisation (and I can think of a couple that are found far more frequently that these), it adds nothing to the article to add in obscure aliases like these, especially in the lead. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Scolaire (talk) 14:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Regardless of your past interest in the article, the references were numerous and well-documented and warrant inclusion in the lede. (EDIT) What I fail to understand (and am disturbed by, quite frankly) is why you were perfectly happy to include this information at the bottom of the lede which again, was your idea.Regards,   Aloha27  talk  15:56, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection of information, but I think it's useful to mention these names, as they were used officially by the organization and by some of its leaders. They weren't used often, but the article doesn't claim or imply that they were. I have come across books and articles which call them "the Irish Volunteer Force" or "the Irish Volunteer Army" as a descriptor; often using those names at the outset and "Irish Volunteers" thereafter. Also, the former is used as a name in several BMH witness statements. I don't see the harm in mentioning them briefly at the end of the lede. Perhaps we could put them in quote marks rather than in bold? ~Asarlaí 16:27, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

What can I say? I disagree, for the reasons I stated above. If they are frequently found as descriptors in books and articles, why aren't those books and articles cited, instead of the rather esoteric refs that are there? Scolaire (talk) 17:21, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Seriously Scolaire, you've never before seen usage of "Irish Volunteer Force" or "IVF" in regards to the Irish Volunteers? Must hunt out my books, I've seen it several times, even back in school when we were being taught about the Easter Rising and before it. Mabuska ^(talk) 19:27, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

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