Pictured above is an “anti-treaty” unit of the Irish Republican Army patrolling Dublin’s Grafton Street in 1922. The treaty in question was the proposed Anglo-Irish Treaty between the self-declared Irish Republic and Great Britain that would end the Irish war of independence and establish 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties as the Irish Free State, a semi-autonomous dominion of Great Britain. The remaining 6 counties in the north of Ireland would remain under direct British rule. In early 1922, the treaty was being bitterly debated by the Dail Eireann, Ireland’s equivalent of our Congress. The large Sinn Fein minority in the Dail and […]