The Rise of the IRA

After the death of Queen Victoria in 1888, the British Empire struggled with what Edward VII and his contemporaries dubbed the Irish question. Irish resistance to British rule was a centuries-old concept, but the attempted assassination of a British monarch and the subsequent ascension of Edward to regent made the island at the forefront of British politics. The crown had tried and failed to appease the Irish through limited autonomy and the granting of conditional citizenship for the families of Irish servicemen. They then attempted to suppress them militarily with the appointment of General Gregory Bates to the Emerald Isle, who was supported fully by Prime Minister Gladstone. With all this behind him, the newly crowned king and his advisors devised a new strategy to calm the trouble they found in Ireland. Little did he know, while he may succeed in calming Ireland itself, the Irish would never stop in their quest for liberation, no matter where they may be…

In an effort to ease anti-imperial sentiments in Ireland resulting from the disastrous handling of the potato famine of the prior decades, Queen Victoria made an unexpected overture to the Irish nationalist elements within her own government in an attempt to restore peace. Directing Prime Minister Gladstone to reach an agreement with the nascent elements of the Irish Home Rule League in an effort to mollify the growing resistance present on the island. Following months of backroom meetings and the expenditure of a great deal of political capital, Charles Stewart Parnell was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Viceroy of Ireland in 1875. After a trial period of five years during which political violence was expected to abate, Ireland was to be granted a provisional status as a dominion of the crown with autonomous home rule.

While highly popular among landed aristocrats throughout southern Ireland, the provisional government faced strong opposition from rural populations which resented its protestant leadership, and from radical unionist elements present in Northern Ireland who objected to what they felt was an unnecessary and demeaning separation from the government in London. While sectarian violence did lessen within some major cities, resistance in rural areas continued to rise. These tensions reached a head in the final months of the trial period, when in late 1878 Irish nationalist and Catholic priest Father James McFadden assassinated Lord Lieutenant Parnell as he exited the church following Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin with an unregistered firearm. Parnell died instantly, and McFadden was seized by his security detail and executed without trial less than an hour later by overzealous members of the local constabulary.

In the coming weeks, violence erupted across the island, with Protestant and British loyalists outraged at the assassination of their leadership, and Irish nationalists crying foul at the summary execution without a trial of the supposed assassin and beloved priest. Only four months later, unnamed Irish assassins made an attempt on the life of Queen Victoria herself, and while she survived the attack, she was left in poor health and unable to govern. During the final nine years of her reign, Prime Minister Gladstone and the prince assumed responsibility for many of her duties as head of state, including the swiftly deteriorating Irish situation. British authorities struggled to regain control of rural areas, many of which were in a state of tacit rebellion.

In 1889, a new agenda of handling the unrest on the island was undertaken as part of “The Ireland Sanitation, Acclimatization, and Integration Act(ISAIA)”. It started with a country-wide census documenting the total population of Ireland. British officials went door to door in Ireland, offering monetary relief in exchange for participation in the census, as well as the identification of others who refused to comply. The monetary incentive was all too appealing to much of the Irish population, as the people were still reeling from the effects of the potato famine and political violence. While many census takers were known to go missing in the Irish countryside as a result of partisan efforts by Irish republican bands, the concerted effort afforded by the London government and their accompaniment by members of the regular army met with great success. After about a year of census taking, the London government had highly accurate demographic information concerning the total population of Ireland.

In 1890, phase two of ISAIA began, with the mass testing of the Irish population to see who was eligible for British integration. These tests were framed under the guise of various initiatives that would provide educational incentives, land grants, and agricultural relief. A stronger Ireland could in theory prevent a repeat of the past famine with proper preparation, and for the sake of public health the people of the island were expected to do their part. Participation in the testing was mandatory for all Irish citizens over the age of ten, exempting the youth out of perceived “fairness”. In truth, the tests given as part of this initiative were rigged against the Irish, with most of the questions framed towards niche English history that even the most patriotic Londoner would struggle with, and severe negative penalties assigned to any test takers who listed their native language as Irish or their religion as Catholic. The test also featured a mathematics section devised by an acclaimed professor from Cambridge University, who was informed that the test he was making was for college applicants, not those of the general public. Even the lone agricultural section, which in theory was the most relevant topic to be testing, was incredibly technical, and largely featured questions pertaining to exotic flowers from warmer climates, rather than practical farming knowledge.

To the skeptical observer, it was obvious that this test was designed to be impossible for most people who were subjected to it. As such, only 6 percent of the population received a “satisfactory” grade, with less than half of a percent qualifying for the advertised grants. The results caused outcry on a national scale, with the public decrying the program as a blatant violation of their rights. However, in the eyes of the British and much of the world, the large-scale failure of the Irish to pass the educational standards set by the government and integrate into British society was further proof of “the inferiority of the Irish Race”. If they lacked the stability and knowledge to maintain their own island, then for their safety and well-being they needed to be uplifted from their self-afflicted plight.

After the testing, the final phase of ISAIA was to begin implementation. By 1890, the British government privately determined that the Irish were a hostile cultural group located unacceptably close to the heartland of the British Empire. They announced their new resettlement program as part of the act, where the Irish would be gently removed from the isle and instead granted permanent residence and home rule on a specially designated colony world. Pamphlets advertising “New Hibernia” were distributed among the Irish population, with the advertisements promising extra land and wealth to those among the Irish who peacefully boarded the first transport ships. A transitional government was established in the sparsely populated New Hibernia under Irish Parliamentarian John Redmond. This government was promised autonomy in domestic affairs and the provision that it be allowed to maintain a small planetary defense force without the direct oversight of the Imperial government in exchange for accepting a higher than average tax burden after an establishing period of ten years, and the swearing of oaths of loyalty to the royal family by all members of government.

The following decade saw both increased resistance from Irish Republican radicals and an incremental increase in population departing from Ireland as the voluntary relocation slowly escalated to outright deportation. Those that participated in the voluntary relocation and swore the required oath to the new government and British crown were rewarded with preferential land claims. This resulted in much of the best farmland available in the new colony going to those most loyal to the government in London and leaving the least productive and least suited to cultivation land for those later forcibly relocated. In some cases, entire villages moved together to what was an altogether more inhospitable location.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood had not stopped their partisan activity in the wake of ISAIA, and actively resisted the mass deportation programs. Unfortunately for the republicans, pro-relocation loyalists had managed to infiltrate much of the republican command structure, and there were those among the desperate Irish civilian population who were more than willing to sell them out in exchange for preferential treatment in their new lives in New Hibernia. In early March of 1891, the first three ships departed Dublin's Aether Port for New Hibernia. As each ship slowly ascended into the atmosphere, the third ship, the HMS Success exploded, shattering debris down onto the spectators watching the departure. All 400 of the passengers were killed, including 4 British military officers. The explosion was blamed on the Irish Republican Brotherhood by the British press and was seen as an escalation in their rebellion against the crown. Irish Brotherhood leadership including its nominal head John Daly vehemently denied participating in the attack, which killed far more Irish than it did British, instead accusing the British of self-sabotage. However, the extreme decentralization of Brotherhood forces meant that Daly was unable to say with absolute certainty that no Brotherhood personnel had been involved in the incident. Regardless of the true culprit, the British began gearing up for the full-scale destruction of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

At midnight on St. Patrick's day, loyalist forces acted on their intelligence, launching a nighttime raid on homes suspected of harboring many leading brotherhood figures, including those containing both John Daly and John O’Leary. As the armored cars rolled into town and soldiers began entering homes, people began flooding into the streets of Dublin and other major cities such as Limerick and Cork to protest the arrests. The protestors threw rocks at the soldiers as Brotherhood officials were dragged from their homes. Eventually, armed and organized Brotherhood elements arrived on the scene, and the British opened fire on rebels and civilian alike. This event became known as the St. Patrick's Day Massacre, and was the spark of a full-scale rebellion across much of Ireland. Despite the political fallout of the massacre, the British were successful in culling much of the Brotherhood's leadership during their nighttime operations across Ireland. However, John Daly’s nephew Éamon de Valera managed to escape the massacre, and would go on to assume command over one of the largest remaining Brotherhood cells. It had also become apparent that the deportations would no longer be optional. As a result, the British military was deployed in force alongside local volunteer units composed primarily of British settlers already present throughout much of the island, who began rounding up most of the native population and forcing them onto colonial ships.

Although Irish resistance would continue, the dwindling civilian population deprived Irish resistance groups sufficient civilian populations to conceal themselves within and eventually even recruitment pools to replenish their ranks. The full force of the British army grew too much for the remnants of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who were all but stomped out by 1892. Despite this, a Brotherhood cell under the command of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in one final act of resistance, managed to detonate a bomb under Prince Albert Victor’s stage as he was declared the Viceroy of Ireland, killing him. This act traumatized King Edward, and hardened his heart to any fair treatment of the Irish in New Hibernia. The final three years of resettlement would prove even harsher than the years prior.

Following an exhaustive forensic analysis of the detonation, an MI5 investigation was eventually able to prove that the bomb used to assassinate the late Prince Victor was of French design. MI5 then made the official determination that the bomb was almost certainly provided to the brotherhood for the express purpose of conducting the assassination by the French government. The revelation was followed by a sharp increase in the rate of deportations, as the London government was eager to move the raucous Irish population into their newly fortified penal-colony-planet and safely out of the reach of further French supply. Realizing the futility of continued resistance on an island with a majority unfriendly population, at this time many of the remaining members of the Irish resistance movements began to covertly join relocation ships bound for New Hibernia. Prior to boarding a transport, former IRB member and poet Padraic Pearse would send his collected works to a friendly publisher in Boston to be circulated after he was safely off-world. These poems brought the struggle of the Irish people to international attention, and were widely circulated throughout the United States and Continental Europe despite being banned within the British Empire.

Life in New Hibernia was quite difficult for the Irish exiles when they first arrived. The autonomous government under John Redmond had arrived to little fanfare, and given the lenient tax policy established for the first ten years of the settlement he expected them to develop the rich soil quickly and relatively painlessly. However, worsening relationships between the London government and the Irish people led to a culture of the district which eventually saw many of the rights and privileges previously promised to the Irish people stripped away. When unwilling Irish settlers began to be relocated to the colony, what followed was an explosion of violence.

The British ultimately did little to prepare the planet for the arrival of the remaining population of Ireland. Little was done to provide housing or clothes for the arriving refugees. Most of the population was forced into large tent cities, as the immigrants scrambled to build houses out of what little lumber was available to them. Food was less of an issue due to the rich soil and fair climate of the coasts. Space was cramped, as settlement too far inland proved difficult due to the toxic fumes present among most of the continent. Although ISAIA promised self-governance for the Irish, the jump in radicalism due to the relocation of resistance groups such as the de Valera cell prompted the British government to open up lands previously reserved for Irish settlement to British colonists. The need for grain on the competing British aether colony of Avalon was great, and the overproduction of food in the first few seasons on New Hibernia proved the answer to this need. For this reason, the British government abrogated the promised ten year tax-break after only six years and in 1896 levied a hefty grain tax on the Irish Immigrants, demanding a significant portion of the food produced. In the harvest seasons, soldiers would patrol through the Irish shanty towns in search of hidden grain to ensure the population wasn’t holding out on them.

The imposition of heavy taxes alongside the influx of former radicals created a fertile ground for the creation of a new wave of Irish resistance groups. Although the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had long been executed and the organization all but extinguished, a new group would rise from the ashes of the Brotherhood to fight back against the British. The newly dubbed Irish Republican Army or IRA was formed in 1897 with the stated goal of forming a democratic republic for the Irish people. Championed by many leaders with connections to the old brotherhood such as Pearse and de Valera, this new movement saw the emergence of what would become national heroes. Much like the brotherhood before it, the IRA began waging a guerilla war against what they saw as an oppressive government. Unlike the IRB however, the early IRA was forced to resist a nominally Irish controlled government headed by the aged John Redmond. Over the following decade, the Irish population began to establish itself in its new home, with shanty-towns and tent-cities giving way to more long-term settlements.

Most of their rebellion remained contained to New Hibernia, with much of the guerilla army operating while hidden within the civilian population and when necessary retreating to the unexplored mushroom jungles that dotted the landscape of the planet's volcanic surface. So effective was their war against the home rule government that New Hibernia, now dubbed Eire Nua by the rebels, became the most dangerous place for a colonial soldier to be stationed. Redmond’s government failed to suppress the rebellious population as demanded by London necessitating an ever increasing deployment of British colonial soldiers in an effort to bolster the local Hibernian constabulary. The effectiveness of IRA bands earned the planet a reputation as a death trap for any British soldier that stepped foot there, leading the few majority British settlements which functioned on its surface to grow highly insular and fortified. During the Explorer Movement, the IRA was able to extend its operations onto Avalon as well, as foolish explorers in search of alien artifacts were met with improvised explosives and salvaged weapons from dead British soldiers. Rumor has it that the largest cells have even managed to smuggle in weapons from international benefactors, though they seem to avoid using these arms unless larger operations are undertaken.

In 1926, an IRA cell under the command of the charismatic rebel Michael Collins conducted a series of assassinations of high ranking British Intelligence officers and Irish informants throughout New Hibernia, and notably somehow smuggled a French made bomb into Scotland Yard. The attack resulted in over thirty deaths, after which the London government finally had enough with the ineffective home-rule government. This incident provided the new government under Stanley Baldwin to pass a series of drastic measures, which were designed to strip the home-rule government of any real power, and secure the all important grain supply from New Hibernia. Six months following the bombing, Redmond’s government was officially dissolved and the administration of the colony placed directly under the command of the first English Lord Lieutenant and Viceroy of New Hibernia, Sir Oswald Mosley, who placed the planet under a perpetual state of martial law. While this did have the desired effect of increasing British control over colonial affairs, it also had the expected but unfortunate result of strengthening what had been the dwindling IRA forces with a wave of new recruits, as former supporters of the home-rule faction defected to the rebels.

While the majority were still politically republican, the harsh living conditions faced by generations of Irish civilians alongside persistent support from the democratic socialist and later revolutionary government in France has led to a small but vocal communist element within the IRA. Many members see their dream for an independent Irish Republic which supports the well-being of its citizens as being broadly compatible with the communist vision of the future. Collaboration between IRA groups and scattered internationalist groups such as the Bolsheviks is greatly feared by the vengeful counterparts to the IRA in Scotland Yard, with intelligence teams such as the infamous Cairo Gang tasked with hunting IRA bands and preventing any great deal of collaboration. This team and others like it have been engaged in a constant game of assassination and espionage against IRA teams such as the one led by Collins, which has resulted in a bitter rivalry whose consequences frequently make newspaper headlines as far away as Vienna and Washington. Fortunately for the Irish, Collins has evaded numerous attempts on his life by these groups, with the location of his base of operations remaining a closely guarded secret only known by his closest confidants.

Although Pressure from the IRA was rarely seen back on Earth due to increasingly strict security on the Victoria Aether Station, the IRA’s presence in The Victoria System was felt by all who lived there. Even with the transition in government to an Imperial Protectorate and the creation of the “Watchman State” under Lord Protector Stanley Baldwin, the IRA has continued its war against the British to this day. At the start of the Great War, the IRA managed to seize a large amount of British military equipment, which has been used alongside covertly supplied French weaponry to further menace the Empire from the safety of their bases across the colonial worlds in The Victoria System. Today, the IRA’s war on the British Protectorate continues, putting further strain on British mobilization efforts as the Protectorate is forced to contend not only with its enemies on Earth but its own colonial holdings in the aether.