ABSTRACT
At the same time that the First Dáil was convening in the Mansion House on 21 January 1919, a group of IRA men from Tipperary, including Dan Breen, Seán Treacy and Seamus Robinson, ambushed an RIC convoy at Soloheadbeg in an attempt to capture a consignment of gelignite that the police were escorting from the military barracks in Tipperary town to a local quarry. The aim of the action was to use the gelignite for the manufacture of explosives and to strike a symbolic blow against the RIC. The ambush resulted in the deaths of two police constables, James McDonnell and Patrick O'Connell, making them the first casualties of what became known variously as the Irish War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish War or, more colloquially in Ireland, the Tan War (Abbott, 2000: 30–3).
