Provisional Government of Southern Ireland - Lack of Control Despite Electoral Success

Lack of Control Despite Electoral Success

As a transitional entity the Provisional Government needed co-operation to steer the creation of the Free State, ensure the smooth withdrawal of British forces and to restore the economy. Anti-treatyites, having opposed the Treaty in the Dáil, mostly withdrew from the assembly and, having formed an opposition "republican government" under Éamon de Valera, began a political campaign from March 1922. At the same time the powerful IRA Army Executive divided, and its anti-Treaty members refused to be bound by the Dáil vote that had ratified it. Barracks that were being evacuated by the British army, in line with the Treaty, were sometimes taken over by anti-Treaty forces. In some cases no government soldiers were available and take-overs had to be made by the new Garda Síochána police force. The Dunmanway killings in April emphasised the government's lack of control. A force led by Rory O'Connor occupied four central buildings in Dublin on 14 April. The Provisional Government ignored this challenge to its authority, hoping that the occupiers would realise that they had achieved nothing, and leave. Instead some incidents at the Four Courts in late June led to the open outbreak of the Irish Civil War on 28 June.

Adding to the instability, the Provisional Government continuously and covertly supplied arms to the IRA in Northern Ireland in an attempt maintain IRA support elsewhere. This undeclared conflict was formally ended by the "Craig-Collins Agreement" of 30 March 1922, but Collins continued to supply arms until shortly before his death in August 1922. Provisional Government policy veered between trying to persuade the Government of Northern Ireland to join a re-united Ireland and trying to conquer it. A major concern was the welfare of Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, many of whom suffered the harsh policing methods of the Ulster Special Constabulary that was formed in late 1921 to deal with the IRA there. Collins' support for the IRA in the north prolonged the suffering, though from 2 August he did limit it to defensive actions. The Government lifted, then re-imposed and then lifted the "Belfast Boycott", designed to end the sale of Northern Irish goods in the south.

Following the general election on 16 June 1922, held just before the civil war, the Second Irish Provisional Government took power until the creation of the Irish Free State on 6 December 1922.

By mid-1922, Collins in effect laid down his responsibilities as President of the Provisional Government to become Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, a formal structured uniformed army that formed around the pro-Treaty IRA. As part of those duties, he travelled to his native County Cork. En route home on 22 August 1922, at Béal na mBláth (an Irish language placename that means 'the Mouth of Flowers'), he was killed in an ambush. He was 31 years old. After Collins' and Griffith's deaths in August 1922, W. T. Cosgrave became both Chairman of the Provisional Government and President of Dáil Éireann, and the distinction between the two posts became irrelevant.

On 6 December 1922, Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland and the Irish Republic were replaced by the Irish Free State, with executive authority nominally vested in the King, but exercised by a cabinet called the Executive Council, presided over by a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council. On 7 December the House of Commons of Northern Ireland unanimously exercised its right under the Treaty to secede from the Irish Free State.