Who Were the IRA (Irish Republican Army)? | 5 Minute History: Episode 1 

Hi everyone - just wanted to write a few things based on some comments and the potentially poor timing of this upload given the current protests in Northern Ireland. 1. I actually recorded this video in mid-March - before there were any riots in Northern Ireland and it happens to have been scheduled for today, rather than this video having been inspired by current events or meant to demonise a particular community. 2. I have already recorded a video on one of the Unionist paramilitary organisations, the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) which will be uploaded shortly. I can't upload everything at once and once again this video isn't meant to target one side without representing the other as violence and terrible acts were committed by both Unionists and Nationalists during the Troubles. 3. Some quick points about this new format: -It's a 5 minute clip so some things will be simplified to get the general point across. -Don't worry if you prefer the longer videos they won't be going away - this is just a new series that I'll be uploading some episodes of alongside more in depths videos. - I have to record videos well in advance because I'm currently in my last year of university and need to study for my exams at which point I won't have time to record weekly videos. Because of this time constraint I thought it better to make some shorter videos which means I can upload every week rather than only a few of the longer ones. 4. Thank you to everyone for pointing out that Ireland only became a republic in 1948 rather than already in 1922 when it was technically a 'Free State' within the Commonwealth. That was a mistake on my part for which I apologise! Thank you all for watching and continuing to support the channel, I just thought it was important to point these things out given the frequency with which they were being questioned by some in the comments.

you've won a car, fellow english man. Please take a ride on it

I'm Irish and even my head is spinning keeping up with the 100 different IRAs

Is this the first time Hilbert hasn't been able to find a Dutch connection in some minute way?

Correction, the treaty didn't make the 26 counties a Republic. It created the "free-state" which was still a dominion of the British commonwealth and was called at the time the "freedom to gain our freedom". The republic wasn't formed until 1948.

Accordion to a recent study, 90% of people didn’t realise I put an instrument at the start of this sentence.

It's quite convenient for all these groups, when something happens just say "It wasn't our IRA, it was their IRA"

This reminds me of that Monty Python sketch. But everyone calls themselves some form of IRA.

One thing living in Ireland has taught me is these kind of situations are very complex and never really boils down to a simple good vs bad scenario like we see in movies. The IRA had reasons to stand up to the British but they soiled their local representation by killing people that had nothing to do with the British forces.

Person 1: "I'm a Republican!" Person 2 (American): "Really what is your stance on the second amendment?" Person 1: "I live in Ireland" *Gunshots* Person 2: "OH, SHI-"

Just saying u can trace the IRA to the irb before 1900 as that's where the original IRA members came from

Very topical right now

Well done for mentioning that when the IRA split in the early 70's the Official IRA were the Marxists and the Provisional IRA were not. The Officials were the much smaller group and when they called a ceasefire in the 70's those that wanted to continue the fight formed the INLA. There had always been a very vocal Marxist minority within the IRA, most likely stemming from the Marxist Irish Citizen Army being one of the IRA's founding organisations, and post revolutionary Russia's recognition of the legitimacy of the Irish armed struggle.

An excellent presentation, and a very difficult one to do. Just one point - the Irish Free State was not a republic (that came later); it was, in fact, a Dominion like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., with the King as Head if State, represented by a Governor General.

Lmao “WERE” OH NELLY

Teacher: what is 26 + 6? Everyone: 32 The Irish kid: *1*

Great job. Being from Belfast you've did your research and must admit, fantastic work. Edit, I thought you would have mentioned Bloody Sunday, this event changed everything, caused the IRA to swell in ranks and giving birth to the Provisionals. Nonetheless, excellent job!

Oof that timing

You should do a video about the Insurgency in Mozambique too

Very informative and to the point.

Very good this new short format video

It’s a family legend but my great grandfather was apparently a rebel who would take potshots and ambush British troops after WWI around the north. he fled to New York after it all and here I am.

Good job and very topical!

Great video Hilbert! Idea for future video? The history of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna)

This is perfect timing

" Were?" Hmmmm very bold claim for someone with a car.

Love your videos Hilbert. It might be interesting to make one about the Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland too since most people around Europe (or elsewhere) know nothing about them and think only the IRA were the cause of all the trouble in the north.

Great video on this topic/ political group.

A neat video idea would be to go over the different paramilitary groups during the troubles. Kind of like what you did with the Spanish Civil War factions.

the music is so loud and lively that it feels like Hilbert is trying tell me all this while we sit at the back of a pub as a trad band is playing lol

good job guys, inspiration to all

Very good timing

very good unbiased and factual video

Amazing video! Really helps me to have more of an insight into Irish history. Slainte Hilbert!

As an Irish, American, who decided to start learning Gaelic and I started picking up history as kind of a side project to all that, this was a real mindfuck, and before anybody asks, I’m not one of those people who had a grandfather 20 generations ago. There was a Irish, I’m a bit newer than that lol, my great grandfather my grandmother’s father, came over here in the 30s to the US, so I’m not some doofus that just thinks I’m Irish, because I like to drink lol,

Thank you for covering this stuff much appreciated from me

Can you please do a video on the free Wales army. It's one of my favourite topics in history and I love it. Thanks you

I’m here because I watched the movie blown away and patriot games, I love history especially historical wars, I never really understood what the this was so thank you for the education 😊

good video

That was a lot, I guess I have to rewatch it.

Really well made video no bias just the straight facts! :)

The little guy with balaclava is cute. Like a little mascot.

I'm currently reading Northern Spy by Flynn Berry which deals with two sisters living in Belfast during a time of unrest with bombings and terrorist attacks by the IRA. This has been really informative and helpful to learn about the IRA's history. Thank you!!

nice timing

I hope you'll do the INLA, UVF, UDA etc. etc. as well.

Thank you for a surprisingly unbiased summary.

Thank you for this video. As a geography and history fanatic I was familiar with the Good Friday Agreement but I actually heard of the IRA recently after watching the show National Treasure: Edge of History. The Antagonist Billie lost her parents from an IRA bombing incident when she was 10 years old which is why I wanted more details on the IRA.

So, how many IRAs do you want Ireland? Ireland: *YES*

Good Topic

Hilbert never fails with these dopamine inducing videos

nice video

Good video. The only correction I would make is that Southern Ireland didn't become a republic immediately after the 1922 treaty - we were the Irish Free State, still a dominion and a member of the commonwealth. The treaty was dismantled over a number of years in the 1930s, and our constitution was written in 1937. Ireland officially became a republic in 1949. Not that all that extra info is relevant to a 5 minute video when it's not the exact topic at hand, but interesting nonetheless.

The pro treaty forces were called the free state or national army not the IRA

It would be a good idea to do one abt loyalist factions so people can have a better understanding of whats happening here right now

We watched that in class and It's really interesting now we had to do portfolio about How Brexit reopening old wounds in Ireland and I've choosed your video for my portfolio

Good Friday agreement was in 1998. If you want a good story to talk about is the " one man march" in which during the late 60s ( the Catholics ) in the north marched on being inspired by MLK Jr.

I can still hear the song black and tans

This is a prime example of how groups that become divided within themselves will ultimately fail.

The background music is of the best !!!

On the day in about 1977 I arrived to attend college in a city in California, my aunt said to me and my friend, "Be careful who you make friends with....... there's a lot of IRA members here; it's a haven and hideout for them.......". One day around sunset, the street was ablaze with the colors of the sun setting over the Pacific. I saw a guy and his immense German Shepherd on a balcony above. I waved, asking, "You got a saddle for that horse?". I noticed he had a mixed drink in hand, which he held up and asked if I like Tanqueray and tonic. I've never had a weakness for alcohol, but Tanqueray's a different matter. I asked about his UK dialect....... "100% Irish", he replied. In the course of chat he said in a city of millions, he'd never felt so lonely....... then revealed he was an IRA member, and that part of the loneliness was his worry about being spotted by another member. He was on the lam in an IRA haven. He told me the story of his exile....... He was a bomber......... bomb-maker........ he'd carried out a revenge mission for his mother's death in a bombing of a Catholic parish. He'd bombed a Protestant church, then immediately after went inside, on the premise he'd lower the chances of being marked as a suspect as he acted the part of a victim's family member. He said that the blood was so deep his shoes were completely submerged in it. I think at that point I guzzled the rest of my Tanqueray. He began to cry with regret and sorrow...... he was marked for death for using IRA materials and methods, and especially for carrying out a personal vendetta with them. He was already well along in his years; no doubt he's no longer among the living. Something that I've always found rather ridiculous..... Catholic and Protestant faiths have far more parallels than not. I was baptized Lutheran in 1958, confirmed by catechism in the early 70's. I wasn't about to reveal to this IRA dude I was Lutheran, given it was the first Protestant denomination of the Reformation. When I was to be married in a Catholic church, during prenuptial consultation I asked the priest if he had any concerns that I was Lutheran. His answer was absolutely perfect: "My doctorate is in theology, NOT religion". I've come to believe that the religious have grasped their idea of a surrogate for spirituality; in spirituality there's no room for, nor virtue in fear and proselytizing. Lastly...... a few years later, back home on East Coast, I continued college........ in an English course we had to read "Guest of a Nation" by Frank O'connor. Over dinner, I was telling the owners of the farm where I'd boarded and their long-time friend who was also living on the farm about the book I was reading....... as I'm unknowingly sitting right next to the very author's son........!?!? He loved to drink; he'd recite from memory the very long and elaborate poems of Whitman and the like, earning free drinks all night :) What a small world sometimes.

Irish author Brendan Behan - who had been in the ira in the 1930's once joked that the first item on the agenda of a republican meeting was 'the split' - very pythonesque indeed!

Very nice video and as some one from NI I all ways like it when English people manage to explain groups like this (especially the funding from America) casue so many people don't now it happened

What doesn't get mentioned is that the conflict is basically between 3 groups - Irish Catholics (IRA+Sinn Fein), Irish Protestants (RUC+UVF), British Army. This is not a foreign colonial occupation issue

Quick correction- the IRA originates from the Irish Volunteers who were founded in 1913 with the aim to insure, with arms if necessary, that the Irish Home Rule (devolution) Bill, about to be passed in Westminster, would indeed come into effect. They were a response to the Ulster Volunteers who were in opposition to Home Rule and were set up a year earlier. After 1916 and the Easter Rising the Volunteers switched from being a Nationalist to a Republican movement, changing their name later to IRA as you mentioned.

you jumped from the Irish Civil War to the troubles omitting the fact the IRA were continually engaged in attacks in N Ireland and the mainland UK from then and during WW 2 and throughout the next decades until with a short-lived escalated campaign in the early 50s which was suppressed until the Troubles campaign all that happens is that the core dissidents simply use a new prefix but it is still essentially the same organisation remember one Gerry Adams quotation where he said "we haven't gone away you know"

Gotta remember Gerry was ‘never’ in the Ra

When talking about modern Ireland one thing that needs to be mentioned was how a Protestant Irish Parliament successfully gained independence for Ireland between 1782 and 1800, during which time Catholics got most of their rights back, with most Irish people of different faiths uniting under the ideologies of either constitutionalism or Republicanism, with both in favour of varying degrees of Irish sovereignty/autonomy and increased personal rights. This independence ended when a failed Republican Revolution in 1798 led British prime minister William Pitt to intimidate and bribe the Irish Parliament into merging the Kingdom Ireland into the UK after an initial Union vote failed. Ireland’s Parliament was forced to merge with The British one (though the courts and civil service of Ireland remained separate, but nominally subject to Westminster from now on). People on both sides seem to have completely forgotten this chapter in Irish history, because Protestants and Catholics fighting together for an independent Irish Kingdom doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative, and yet it had a major impact on the island. Unionism, Republicanism and Constitutionalism all originate from the original Irish volunteers that used the opportunity of the American Revolution distracting Britain to revolt in 1782. This heralded the independence and has shaped all aspects of Irish politics ever since

Very much appreciated, now I can get a good grade in english

"Were" COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS, COME OUT AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN...

Good timing for this topic

good lads

Now I understand the lyrics, "It's the same old thing, since 1916.."

You should cover the Yugoslav Wars.

Convienient time to post this one

The IRA just do mitosis whenever someone disagrees with someone else

Great video on the subject would love to see you make one on loyalist parmiliratires

Actually the weapons weren't actually being handed over they were "being put behind use"

Good vid but Ireland didn't become a republic in '22 it was the free state and still a member of the commonwealth with the monarch as head of state, one of the catalysts for the civil war was maintaining the monarchy rather than having a president. :)

where i can get the longer version of this video?

Ah yes, the past tense. How...uncertainly apt.

The IRA was the replacement for the Fenians (IRB). My grandfather and his Brother were Fenian and later IRA

The British Army was initially sent in to Northern Ireland as a neutral peace keeping force, and were welcomed as such by the Nationalist Community. However, as with the RUC before them, they began to sense growing bias towards those who were in the Unionist and Loyalist Communities and things got worse from there until the 1990's

Good history lesson. Mark, England.

A little history on the FWA would be in order with this episode.

Are you going to do the other side of the equation: UVF?

Proud Irishmen fighting to free their homeland from foreign occupation and tyranny. TAL ☘️🇮🇪

Do you think you could make a video of the Nagorno karabakh war and the Chechen war

Liked how they missed the border campaign of „56

Under the Anglo Irish Treaty (signed 6th December 1921) the island was to be partitioned forming two nations, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, with parliaments in Dublin and Belfast, creating an independent United Ireland but as a dominion not a republic and to happen in exactly one year. The anti-treaty side wanted to continue fighting for a republic. The pro-treaty side wanted to take advantage of independence to achieve a republic. Then came 6th December 1922 (independence day) and Northern Ireland's parliament was already set up but in Southern Ireland both Sinn Fein and the IRA had spilt between pro-treaty and anti-treaty sides thus the Civil War. Northern Ireland's parliament was to give itself 30 days in this new Ireland before deciding whether or not to return to the UK but the Civil War in Southern Ireland made them quickly choose to return to the UK after only two days. Southern Ireland was renamed the Irish Free State. The Irish Constitution was ratified in 1937 renaming the Irish Free State "Ireland", and established the presidency making Ireland a republic which the Irish government didn't declare until 1949.

A five minute video is way way too short to cover this. I wouldn't be political inclined but I do know those who were and still are. And they all have their own different stories be they republican Sinn Féin or provisional Sinn Féin. I will say it is a hard part of history to cover and it is controversial and no doubt will cause arguments on this video and most of them will be from people who don't have a clue. Fair play to you for taking it on..

The PIRA were not signatories to the GFA, decent video, couple of continuity issues but very good for 5 mins.

i feel more confused than i did before watching the video.... why is history so crazy?!

It's kind of cool that the literal country of Libya was allies with them😂

26+6=1

The creator of the original IRA was the first Irish Prime Minister (as it was called at the time) Michael Collins, he later left the IRA and signed the Anglo-Irish treaty with Britain and was eventually assassinated by one of his old men, who was in opposition to his decision. Michael Collin's last words were; "Forgive them. Bury me in Glasnevin with the boys." He was murdered on the day his soon-to-be wife was picking out a dress for their wedding.

I'm Indian and didn't knew about it until I watched Derry girls on Netflix damn that show made me curious

Has the man from the daily mail shown up yet?

the british army do kind of have some kinky boots 😳😳

I appreciate you saying unify instead of reunify. It always irks me when I see that.

Be funny if a financial IRA ad popped during this 😅🤣