Examining the local, the everyday, and the ‘minor’ acts of revolutionary violence in Ireland brings a more common experience to the fore. It is not necessarily the common experience, but one closest to that felt by most on the island. It also brings into question the dominance of the spectacular and the seedy among studies of the Irish Revolution and suggests that the culmination of many small threats or harmful acts, repeated over a period of time, more suitably defines the period of conflict between 1917 and 1922. Similarly important are the small, repeated acts of loyalty, defiance, or betrayal. It is here that the substantial and fluid middle-ground between total collaboration and total resistance can be found, where one can see the ‘neutrality’ and ‘hedging’ so common in irregular conflict.1 On the grander scale, the enemy in the Irish struggle for independence was the British government in Ireland and its armed forces. On a smaller scale – the scale with which this study is most concerned – the enemy lived nearby, had a face, and had a name. It may have worn a uniform, but often it did not. Control could not be achieved without the minor acts of everyday terror that have been described throughout the preceding chapters; they were, to a great extent, a necessary corollary of this kind of war. In that context, it is the local and the perpetual which counts; the daily interaction between neighbours, friends, and enemies.

Examining low-level, recurring acts of terror raises important questions about the way we should view loyalty and defiance during the Irish Revolution. Immediately it is clear how unsuitable any attempt to place the general public into one of two neat camps – nationalist/separatist or loyalist/unionist – will remain. Further, it raises questions about any comfortable assumptions we may make about the nature of public support for the republican or British campaign. That the IRA relied on the support of the general population in its guerrilla campaign, whether that support was active or passive, is clearly true in many ways, but in many others it becomes an oversimplification, missing many of the complexities and nuances inherent in individual and communal behaviour.