Remilitarising the Connaught Rangers Mutiny

This chapter seeks to reassert the military origins of the Connaught Rangers Mutiny in June/July 1920. By placing the mutiny into a longer durée context from 1914-1922, it demonstrates that the breakdown in officer-man relations can be traced back to the unit's peculiar wartime experience as well as the dislocating effects of demobilisation. It argues that the ensuing political narrative was merely a convenient explanation. For the British military authorities, it deflected attention away from post-war institutional failings, while for the mutineers, it provided them with a route into Irish Nationalist consciousness and the potential compensation associated with it.