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 with a pejorative republican slant.