ABSTRACT
This chapter examines an extreme case of protest: the armed struggle of Irish nationalists between 1912 and 1921, and the efforts on the part of sections of the British state to defeat the rebellion by the use of armed force. It examines the different cognitive frames and strategies of the various police and military organizations of the British state (Royal Irish Constabulary, Dublin Metropolitan Police, the “Black and Tans” and Auxiliaries, and the British Army, together with the intelligence services) as they confronted armed insurgency in Ireland. States, as Jasper (2015) and Goldstone (2004) have argued, should not be treated as unitary actors. This is immediately apparent in the case of the British state in Ireland, where even the sectors where one might expect considerable policy coherence – in the coercive organizations and in the Cabinet – displayed a high level of organizational incoherence and difficulty in coordinating strategy. This was one factor, perhaps a crucial one, in the failure of British counterinsurgency in Ireland.
