Free-Stater (Ireland)

Free Stater is a term often used by opponents to describe those in Ireland who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 that led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The pro-Treaty side included members of the IRA who had fought the British during the recent Irish War of Independence. Led by Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, it soon became the nucleus of the new (regular) Irish National Army that overcame their anti-treaty opponents during the often bitter Irish Civil War of 1922-23.

The term is sometimes heard anachronistically in Northern Ireland for anyone from the South of the country, occasionally as a pejorative term.

The term is also used across Ireland to describe people from the Republic of Ireland who do not support a united Ireland.

Followers of Irish republican legitimatism use the term to describe those who defected from the Republican movement and accept the institutions of the 26 county state as opposed to giving allegiance to the Irish Republic out lined in the 1916 Proclamation.