Ireland
Éire, Republic of Ireland, Poblacht na hÉireann
History of the Flag
The stripes were found in a different order in the early (pre-independence) days.

James Dignan, 14 May 1996

The oldest known reference to the use of the three colours (green, white and orange) as a nationalist emblem dates from September 1830 when tricolour cockades were worn at a meeting held to celebrate the French revolution of that year - a revolution which restored the use of the French tricolour. The colours were also used in the same period for rosettes and badges, and on the banners of trade guilds. There is also one reference to the use of a flag 'striped with orange and green alternately'. However, the earliest attested use of a tricolour flag was in 1848 when it was adopted by the Young Ireland movement under the influence of another French revolution. Speeches made at that time by the Young Ireland leader Thomas Francis Meagher suggest that it was regarded as an innovation and not as the revival of an older flag.

The Society of United Irishmen, a republican movement which emerged in the 1790s, used a gold harp on a green field (the 'Green Flag'). This flag was carried in the rebellions of 1798 and 1803 and it quickly achieved popular acceptance as the national flag. The flag was used during the widespread peaceful agitations for 'Repeal' of the act of union in the 1830s and 1840s but was viewed as a seditious emblem by the British authorities. In 1848 the Repeal movement split and the radical wing (known as 'Young Ireland') adopted both republican ideas and a tricolour inspired by that of the second French republic. The Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 was quite a small affair and the tricolour flag was largely forgotten until the twentieth century. The next revolutionary movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (or 'Fenians') of the 1860s, was much more formidable and it reverted to using the Green Flag. That flag was also used by all the nationalist politicians who campaigned for 'Home Rule' (devolved government within the United Kingdom). By about 1880 or so the Green Flag had become officially tolerated to the extent that one was no longer likely to be arrested for displaying it, but it never had any official status and was always seen as a nationalist emblem.

Vincent Morley, 19 December 1996

The Green Flag was extensively used during the campaign for repeal of the Act of Union which Daniel O'Connell led during the 1830s and 1840s - the flag is invariably shown in illustrations of the mass meetings convened by O'Connell during that period and it is probable that it was in continuous use from 1798 onwards. Both the Green Flag and the tricolour were used by the insurgents in 1916, but in the period after the rebellion the republican separatists in Sinn Féin tended to use the tricolour while their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party (which advocated 'Home Rule' for Ireland within the United Kingdom) used the Green Flag exclusively. The alternative national flags thus became the flags of competing political parties until the general election of December 1918 when Sinn Féin's landslide victory finally relegated the Green Flag to a secondary role.

Information provided by: FOTW Flags Of The World website at http://fotw.digibel.be/flags/