QWhat incidents were taken from real life?
AThe ambush scene was derived from the Kilmichael ambush where 17 Auxillaries were ambushed and wiped out by an IRA 'Flying Column' nearly four times their size. IRA leader Tom Barry alleged the police had used the tactic of false surrender to kill three of his men but doubt has been cast on this account in interviews with other witnesses present. The torture scene is based on the story of Tom Hales, a leading IRA member who claimed to have been tortured by soldiers for information. However Hales was officially listed as an informer in military records who provided information in return for a reduced sentence.
QWhat was the controversy over the Treaty?
ABy mid 1921 IRA leader Michael Collins considered the organisation '6 weeks from defeat', desperately short of arms and ammunition and with nearly 5000 of its' members in prison. But this left the British Government with the problem of giving Home Rule to Southern Ireland whose population had elected the Republican leadership as their representatives. A truce was arranged and a Treaty agreed which gave a slightly enhanced version of Home Rule in return for Unionist dominated Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. This was considered treason by hardline republicans but was endorsed in a referendum by the vast majority of Southern Ireland's population. A vicious civil war ensued with the Irish Free State government crushing the anti-Treaty IRA much more ruthlessly than the British government had. Sir John's warnings over Ireland's future were largely fufilled, Irish Unionists remaining undefeated in Northern Ireland whilst an increasingly impoverished South would become a 'Catholic State for a Catholic people', both capitalist and sectarian.
QWhy was this film so controversial?
AThe film was criticized for bring entirely one sided, Irish Republicans being uniformly depicted sympathetically whilst Irish Unionists are villified and their viewpoint never once articulated. IRA violence is portrayed as a response to vigilante actions by the security forces when in reality the Black and Tans did not arrive in Ireland until mid-1920 by which time the IRA had already killed hundreds of regular Royal Irish Constabulary officers, soldiers and Irish Unionist civilians. Another criticism was that it overly stressed the class struggle aspect of the conflict, falsely portraying Republicans as a socialist movement rather than an ultra-nationalist organisation.
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