The outbreak of the civil war in the South ended the violence in the North, as the war demoralized the IRA in the northeast and distracted the attention of the rest of the organization from the question of partition. After Collins' death in August 1922, the new Irish Free State quietly ended Collins' policy of covert armed action in Northern Ireland.
At UNIA's August 1922 convention, Garvey called for the impeachment of several senior UNIA figures, including Adrian Johnson and J. D. Gibson, and declared that the UNIA cabinet should not be elected by the organization's members, but appointed directly by him.