The War Against the R.I.C., 1919–21

Abstract

THE WAR AGAINST THE R.I.C., 1919–21 W.J. LOWE I the period from Easter Week in 1916 through the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923 continues to attract intense popular and scholarly interest, as reflected in a growing literature of historical treatments, local studies, and personal memoirs. The armed campaign that resulted in the eclipse of British administration in twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties occurred over thirty months during 1919–21, and in this conflict the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) was a principal target of the republican movement . The Irish war for independence, at the very least, was a struggle to remove any meaningful British presence from the daily lives of Irish citizens . The R.I.C. was the manifestation of British authority that Irish people encountered most regularly.1 By 1919 the R.I.C. represented a century -old police tradition2 that had recruited generations of young Irishmen to its ranks and had achieved substantial acceptance in Irish communities.3 The local R.I.C. presence, usually in station parties of four or five men, enabled constables to develop an unrivalled local knowledge that became a direct threat to local Sinn Féin clubs and Volunteer bodies.4 The independence movement challenged the R.I.C. by force and through an elaborate campaign to isolate policemen from the communities of which they had become part. Between March 1920 and December 1921 a separate catTHE WAR AGAINST THE R.I.C., 1919–21 79 1 The constabulary policed the whole of Ireland except Dublin, which was the jurisdiction of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. See David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, 1913–21: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Dublin, 1977), 1. 2 See Stanley H. Palmer, Police and Protest in England and Ireland, 1780 –1850 (Cambridge, 1988). 3 See W.J. Lowe and E.L. Malcolm, “The Domestication of the Royal Irish Constabulary , 1836–1922,” Irish Economic and Social History 19 (1992), 27–48. 4 Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, 1–4. egory of R.I.C. statistics documented the determined republican campaign against the police.5 This previously unanalyzed source adds depth to our understanding of how Irish nationalists accomplished the neutralization of the R.I.C., and it provides multiple insights into the day-to-day experiences of policemen during the low-intensity struggle that ended in the exhausted stalemate of July 1921. II Paramilitary organizing had been raising tensions in Ireland ever since the Ulster unionist movement of 1912, and by 1914 volunteers of all stripes were drilling with weapons. World War I and attendant emergency restrictions such as the Defence of the Realm Act (D.O.R.A.) further militarized the atmosphere. The 1916 Rising brought armed conflict between Irish nationalists and the R.I.C. for the first time in a half-century and helped to prepare Irish opinion for an armed campaign for independence.6 Before the spring of 1916 members of the R.I.C. rarely faced armed resistance of any sort7 and usually found it a practical inconvenience and a hindrance to good community relations to carry their carbines while on duty. But attacks on the police became more common during the years 1916–18.8 The pattern of police responses to the nationalist challenge was established in the wake of the Easter Rising. Aggressive actions against nationalist political activity by armed members of the R.I.C. contributed to a more violent environment. D.O.R.A. empowered the police to search THE WAR AGAINST THE R.I.C., 1919–21 80 5 Weekly Summaries of Outrages against the Police and Returns of Recruitment, Retirement and Dismissal, April 1920–Dec. 1921 (Public Record Office [PRO], Kew, CO 904/148–50). 6 J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), 28–36; Fitzpatrick , Politics and Irish Life, 129; Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–23 (Oxford, 1998), 204. 7 Examples of Volunteers or Sinn Féin members suspected of firing at policemen are found in the inspector-general’s and county inspectors’ monthly confidential reports (hereafter R.I.C. Monthly...