Who were the Auxiliaries?

Abstract

In the summer of 1920, as the I.R.A.'s guerrilla campaign against the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British Army approached its climax, the British government attempted to reinforce the R.I.C. by raising a force of ex-officers to act as a mobile police striking force. The new organization was called the Auxiliary Division of the R.I.C, and its members, though officially referred to as ‘cadets’, were popularly called Auxiliaries or Auxis, a denomination which suggests a kind of subconscious analogy with their I.R.A. opponents, who were generally known as ‘Volunteers’. In the subsequent mythology of the Irish ‘Troubles’ the Auxiliaries were generally lumped together with the ‘Black and Tans’ but were in fact a more elite body. The ‘Black and Tans’ were ex-servicemen recruited to serve as R.I.C. constables and initially kitted out in a motley of R.I.C. dark green and Army khaki. The Auxiliaries on the other hand were nattily dressed in tarn o'shanters, khaki tunics and puttees (or officer's gaiters) and were paid a pound a day — twice the R.I.C. constable's rate — which made them the most highly-paid uniformed force in the world at that time.1 Altogether only 2,214 were recruited (with perhaps two-thirds that number in service at the peak of the formation's strength), but they did more than their fair share to discredit the British regime in Ireland.