The conclusion examines the negotiations of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the formation of the Irish Free State, foregrounding the British-Irish political figures brought together at 10 Downing Street who illuminated the events of this book. Far from a sideshow to developments in Ireland, the concluding chapter submits, Irish nationalism in Britain was integral to both Irish and British contemporary assessments of the Irish Revolution. Irish nationalists in Britain, further, mobilised popular political interest, and activism, on an unprecedented scale across this decade of constitutional crisis, war, and revolution. The potential influence of Irish nationalism in British cities, moreover, occupied the minds and minutes of British policy makers, from Winston Churchill to David Lloyd George. How was Irish nationalism re-constructed across Britain between 1912 and 1922? Shaped by the influences of the Irish Revolution, British politics, the Irish diaspora, and the British Empire, Irish nationalism was the cumulative experience of layers of overlapping representations of, and relationships with, ideas of nation. In its modes of political activism, gendered experiences of political life, and representations of public politics, Irish nationalism was impacted by changes, and continuities, across the British polity between the late Edwardian, First World War, and post-war periods.

Chapter five evaluates the impacts of Irish republican military campaigns in Britain, from the conclusion of the 1916 Rising to the conclusion of the War of Independence in July 1921. It profiles the political languages and cultures of Irish republican militants in British centres; investigates the I.R.B.’s involvement in the post-war British arms trade with criminal gangs and Communists; and assesses the political, cultural, and social impacts of I.R.A. campaigns in Britain, from provincial Scotland to metropolitan London. ‘British’ I.R.B. sections, under the direction of Michael Collins, were integrated into a specialist, interconnected arms system designed to sustain the republican arsenal in Ireland. Their ‘circulation of weapons’, this chapter establishes, underpinned Collins’ war against the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1919 and 1920. Between 1920 and 1921, meanwhile, British-based I.R.A. Volunteers carried out attacks in major English urban centres. This research establishes the influence of I.R.A. G.H.Q. over the campaign and the strategic ‘logic’ underpinning I.R.A. attacks in British centres. British political leaders at Downing Street, this chapter submits, judged I.R.A. attacks in Britain as a significant part of the wider republican military campaign in the months leading to the Truce.

Chapter two examines the conflicting nationalist politics mobilising Irish volunteers in wartime Britain. It profiles the political languages and cultures of Irish volunteers in British centres, from the 150,000 recruits in the British armed forces to the eighty-seven rebels in the armed forces of the Irish Republic; interrogates the correspondence, and separation, of Irish nationalist identities between home/front; and charts the rise, and estranged demise, of Irish Party support in wartime Britain. The Irish Party, this chapter submits, successfully maintained its ‘two face’ political position in Britain, in anticipation of a short war and a bitterly contested general election on the Home Rule issue, a political strategy termed ‘home front nationalism’. Redmond’s rejection of a British Cabinet position in May 1915, and the I.P.P.’s rejection of conscription in January 1916, however, fatally undermined the Irish Party’s policy. The participation of British-based Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Rising was a rebellion against the wartime politics of ‘home front nationalism’ and British citizenship. An examination of the ‘British connection’ to the Rising, from the Edinburgh-born James Connolly to the London-based Michael Collins, supports the thesis that military strategy was not the primary focus of the 1916 leaders.