The destruction of the Royalist field armies at Naseby and Langport in 1645 did not end the English Civil War. Althought the king had suffered irreversible military defeats, Parliament was unable to govern effectively while politically important towns and fortresses remained in enemy hands. To ensure political stability Parliament’s army was forced to besiege and reduce a large number of strongholds in England, Ireland and Scotland, a task that was not finally completed until the surrender of Galway in 1652. In particular the war in Ireland was to test the army’s siege-making capacity more severely than any previous campaign. To complete the political conquest of Britain and Ireland the army and its generals were compelled increasingly to practise an aspect of warfare that had been traditionally neglected by English soldiers. In contrast, siege warfare was an area in which their continental counterparts had excelled.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European wars produced few set-piece battles. Conflicts were more frequently resolved by the assault and defence of fortified cities and towns. Consequently the art of siege warfare evolved rapidly. England’s political and military insularity during this period detached the country from advances in siege technology that had transformed the conduct of European warfare. No major siege had been undertaken by an English army since Henry VIII had invested Boulogne in 1544, and as there had been no siege of English towns or fortresses since medieval times, there had been little innovation in defensive fortifications. What improvements did occur were sporadic and unco-ordinated. In the sixteenth century a great fortress was built at Berwick-on-Tweed to counter Scottish infiltration and a number of coastal towns in the south-east were refortified against the threat of Spanish invasion. However, by the outbreak of civil war in 1642, even these were obsolete by contemporary continental standards.

In February 1849, the Whig prime minister Lord John Russell gave the first hint of what was to be the last of his special relief measures for famine-stricken Ireland. This was a national rate to be imposed on every poor-law union in the country in aid of twenty-three bankrupt unions, all of them, with the exception of Glenties (County Donegal), in the provinces of Connacht and Munster. The opposition of Ulster interests to the rate was so vehement that the matter came to be regarded in parliament as ‘the Ulster question’. Ulster opposition was stimulated by the widespread conviction among local boards of guardians that they had managed the famine crisis well, while boards in the west and south had mismanaged it badly. These local perceptions were shared — and publicly acknowledged — by the senior poor-law administrators in Ireland. The poor-law boundary commissioners of 1848–9 were similarly complimentary. Ulster members of parliament had no doubts about the superiority of their local guardians. Led by Viscount Castlereagh and William Sharman Crawford and helped by some Dublin Tories, they spread an Ulster propaganda within parliament whereby they conveyed the misleading impression that the rate would bear more heavily on Ulster than on any other province. The parliamentary campaign was supported by a vigorous programme of public meetings at home, although there is evidence to suggest that this programme was not as successful as had been hoped, because the ‘heads of society’ in the province failed to provide sufficiently vigorous leadership.

In the words of one veteran communist, the Irish republican movement has experienced throughout its existence ‘a constant searching’ on social issues. In 1934 the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) was fractured when a group of members who believed in socialism seceded to establish the Republican Congress movement. This article will examine a programme for government published early in 1934 by the I.R.A., consider the schism that occurred in March 1934, giving rise to the Republican Congress, and describe the aims, character and early activities of the new movement. It will be argued that there existed among republicans in 1934 two significant interpretations of the relationship between social radicalism and republican philosophy. The first involved a multi-class, Gaelic communalism. Public and private ownership were to be blended in post-revolutionary Ireland and emphasis was placed on class harmony rather than class struggle. Advocates of this approach employed radical rhetoric but tended to avoid any tangible involvement in immediate social struggle. Socio-economic radicalism was effectively obscured by nationalism. The second interpretation was socialist. This held that class conflict and the national struggle were necessarily complementary. Any attempt to restrain the social advance until independence had been achieved was ill-advised, since the republic could only be won through a struggle that was deeply imbued with class struggle.