Irish Republican Army attacks and operations in England & Scotland during the War of Independence/Tan Wae

There's very little detail on the IRA in Britain during the Anglo-Irish War, even though on articles, videos or blogs it's accepted that there was significant IRA activity in England during the last seven & a half months of the war. But it's very hard to find details of the attacks.

The best source I found was from a book called "The Provisional IRA in England: The Bombing Campaign 1973-1997" by Gary McGladdery it deals mainly with the Provo campaign in England but it also has a chapter on the 1880s Fenian Dynamite campaign, the 1939 bombings & the 1920/21 IRA campaign.

I think one reason there might be so little on it, even though there were around or close to 100 IRA incendiary devices detonated in England, the attacks took place within a 24-hour period. For instance one night 40 incendiary bombs were detonated in buildinngs in Tyneside, mainly factories, cotton mills & garages, which cost in damages £150,000, about £7.5 million today. Another reason coulld be the lack of blooshed. Only two were killed in the campaign, both from gunshot wounds & six others injured in the same manner, there were no injuries from the incendiary blasts in the cities, as the detonations occurred at night, unlike in very Republican counties in Ireland under martial law & the saturation of Dublin, IRA Volunteers in England were able to move about freely, and as long as violence ws kept to a minimum and the attcks occurred spread out out over several different nights it was extremely unlike the British public would stand martial law in their citiesh

Kevin Davies details the IRA Tyneside Brigade in his book on 1919 - 1923 period

"It comprised ten companies established in the North East between the start of 1920 and March 1921. Its membership, some of whom were demobilised soldiers from the First World War, according to Tyneside IRA Brigade Quartermaster Gilbert F. Barrington, had 480 men of English birth enlisted from the Irish diaspora in the north-east."

He goes on about the Liverpool IRA, which has a well known huge Irish diaspora:

"After the brutal Black and Tan burnings of Balbriggan and Trim, the Liverpool IRA sought “an eye for an eye”. On November 27th they launched more than 40 arson attacks around Merseyside, causing more than £500,000 damage"

Here's a timeline of the attacks

27/28 Nov 1920: There were incendiary attacks on 19 buildings in the Liverpool docks area causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage.

6 Feb 1921: Two farms in Croydon were the subject of incendiary attcks causing extensive damage.

13 Feb 1921: There were a series of incendiary attacks on warehouses & cotton mills causing extensive damage.

14 Feb 1921: There were more incendiary attacks on factories & cotton mills in Stockport, Oldham & Manchester

20 Feb 1921 - Ten farms over a 25 mile radius in Lancashire and Cheshire were the subject of a number of incendiary attaks causing extensive damage caused to a number of barns & significant produce loss.

9 Mar 1921 - 13 farms around Liverpol were subject to incendiary attacks. One farmer was shot & injured in a shootout during one of the attacks.

16 Mar 1921: A total of 40 buildings were subject to incendiary attacks around Tyneside causing extensive damage to property & machinery, costing over £100,000 in damages.

23 Apr 1921: There were a total of 30 attacks to property, including farms, factories, garages, and railway stations in Newcastle. A gas main in the city was also blown up.

4 May 1921 - One policeman was killed and another wounded in an attempt to rescue IA POW Frank Carty from a prison van in Glasgow.

14 May 1921: In London & Manchester, 15 homes of former members of the RIC Auxiliary Division who had been singled out for brutality against IRA POWs in Munster were attacked; five were wounded from gunshot wounds & a relative of one was killed; others escaped with relatively minor wounds like debris from broken glass. Even though the attacks were largely failures, it had the effect of bringing the war home to the British government, who didn't want it to spill onto the streets of London. Around January/February back-channel talks broke down when Hamar Greenwood demanded the IRA surrender their weapons before negotiation talks could formally begin; by June this was no longer an issue, with Lloyd George inviting de Valera to London for preliminary talks.

8 June 1921: In a number of English cities, including Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester & London, hundreds of telephone wires were cut, causing disruption to services all over the country.

16 June 1921: Ten railway signal boxes were sabotaged in the London suburbs, causing trains to be delayed for several hours.

1 Jul 1921: An incendiary device was found at the Ministry of Pensions building in Regent's Park, London. Ten days later, a truce came into effect.

Very interesting stuff & probably the IRA's bst strategy in England, to hurt the economy with around 150 incendiary/ firebomb devices, but done in a way without turning public opinion against them.