Irish Volunteers

The Irish Volunteers was a paramilitary organisation founded in Ireland in 1913 in response to the establishment in 1912 of the Ulster Volunteers, a paramilitary body pledged to fight any attempt to force Ulster to submit to a proposed Home Rule government in Dublin (the 'Home Rule' policy being proposed by the British Government sought to give certain powers of internal self-government to Ireland, which would still remain within the United Kingdom). It was dominated by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a republican secret society, and fought alongside the Irish Citizen Army in the failed Easter Rising of 1916. In 1919 the Irish Volunteers were reconstituted as the Irish Republican Army which are regarded as terrorists.