Black and Tans
The Black and Tans were sometimes confused with the Auxiliary Division, a counterinsurgency unit of the RIC, also recruited during the conflict and made up of former British officers.
They were to help the overstretched RIC maintain control and suppress the Irish Republican Army (IRA), although they were less well trained in ordinary police methods.
[10] Ennis comedian Mike Nono elaborated the joke in Limerick's Theatre Royal, and the nickname soon took hold, persisting even after the men received full RIC uniforms.
[10] Some modern sources refer to the Black and Tans as the "RIC Special Reserve", such as the Irish police researcher Jim Herlihy.
[20] Some historians, such as David Leeson, Tom Toomey and Jim Herlihy, define "Black and Tans" as only those RIC recruits from Britain during the War of Independence.
[13][19][21] Leeson argues that British-recruited police received less training, which took place at Gormanston Camp rather than the RIC depot in Phoenix Park.
[20][5][15] Gannon argues that records do not show a large difference in training time between British and Irish-recruited personnel, that both wore the black-and-tan uniform, and that they performed identical duties.
[20] However, while the "Black and Tans" were regular constables, the Auxiliary Division was a paramilitary counterinsurgency force which was operationally independent and composed of former British military officers.
British Unionist leader Walter Long had suggested recruiting these men into the RIC in a May 1919 letter to John French, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
The newly appointed 'Police Adviser' to the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland Lieutenant-General Hugh Tudor called for the adding of 4,000 men to the RIC.
[34] According to Jim Herlihy, author of The Royal Irish Constabulary – A Short History and Genealogical Guide, 10,936 Black and Tans were recruited; the vast majority were born in Britain, while 883 (8%) were "Irish-born".
[6] Based on RIC recruitment data stored in the British Public Record Office at Kew, William Lowe, extrapolating from a sample of 2745 (about one quarter), estimates that 20% of Black and Tans were Irish, with just over half of these giving their religion as Catholic.
For the most part, the Black and Tans were "treated as ordinary constables, despite their strange uniforms, and they lived and worked in barracks alongside the Irish police".
[38] Differing discipline, dialect and ignorance of "local knowledge" contributed to an estrangement between the Black and Tans and the greater police force which at times rose to violent infighting.
[44] In early November, Black and Tans "besieged" Tralee in revenge for the IRA abduction and killing of two local RIC men.
On 14 November, Black and Tans were suspected of abducting and murdering a Roman Catholic priest, Father Michael Griffin, in Galway.
From October 1920 to July 1921, the Galway region was "remarkable in many ways", most notably the level of police brutality towards suspected IRA members, which was far above the norm in the rest of Ireland.
[46] Taken together with an increased emphasis on discipline in the RIC, this helped to curb the atrocities the Black and Tans committed for the remainder of the war, if only because reprisals were now directed from above rather than being the result of a spontaneous desire for revenge.
For instance, Tomás Mac Curtain, the Mayor of Cork, was killed in his home on the night of 19 March 1920, when few Black and Tans were stationed in the city.
The coroner's inquest found that Mac Curtain had been murdered by unknown members of the RIC, and named District Inspector Oswald Swanzy as the responsible officer.
[48] The Burning of Cork city on 11 December 1920 was carried out by K Company of the Auxiliary Division, in reprisal for an IRA ambush at Dillon's Cross.
[47] Edward Wood MP, better known as the future Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, rejected force and urged the British government to make an offer to the Irish "conceived on the most generous lines".
Lionel Curtis, writing in the imperialist journal The Round Table, wrote: "If the British Commonwealth can only be preserved by such means, it would become a negation of the principle for which it has stood".
[53] The King, senior Anglican bishops, MPs from the Liberal and Labour parties, Oswald Mosley, Jan Smuts, the Trades Union Congress and parts of the press were increasingly critical of the actions of the Black and Tans.
[58] Due to the enduring historical memory of the Black and Tans' violence, historian David Leeson describes them as "the most notorious police in the history of the British Isles".
This resulted in widespread criticism due to the Black and Tans being members of the RIC; many officials announced that they would not appear and refused to participate.
