ABSTRACT
This chapter characterises the shifting relationship between Irish and Welsh nationalists during the mid-twentieth century and then outlines the cooperative history of several significant Irish and Welsh organisations. The precursor was the Irish Anti-Partition League, whose activities in Ireland and Britain in the 1940s and early 1950s brought Irish and Welsh nationalists together in a manner only ever imagined at gatherings of the primarily academic Celtic Congresses. From here, further attempts at cooperation can be traced in the civil disobedience campaigns of the Irish and Welsh language movements, and in the activities of paramilitary groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Welsh associates such as the Free Wales Army and Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru. In suggesting that the Irish have risen up against authority when threatened at various times across history, it is interesting to observe how this Welsh call to arms now returned to Ireland in the form of language activism.
