It’s March 1920, and in Ireland, the war
for independence from Britain has entered
its second year.
With the police unable to contain the rebellion,
Britain turns to veterans of the Great War
to restore order.
But the so-called Black and Tans would soon
find that fighting in Ireland was much different
than the trenches of the Western Front.
Hi, I'm Jesse Alexander and welcome to the
Great War.
In the spring of 1920, conflict between Ireland
and Britain was certainly nothing new.
But during the Great War, tensions had risen
over the concept of Home Rule for Ireland
and culminated in the Easter Uprising of 1916.
By 1919, the violence had grown into a low
intensity war for Irish independence.
So, let’s take a look at the events surrounding
the arrival of the Black and Tans in Ireland
in March 1920, exactly 100 years ago, up until
the summer of that year.
When the Great War began in 1914, the political
expression of the desire for Irish independence
was the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).
The IPP sat in parliament in London and hoped
to achieve self-rule through political means.
They argued that British government control
in Ireland, based at Dublin Castle, was archaic,
non-representative and inefficient.
The British administration, they said, was
a cumbersome bureaucracy dominated by a Protestant
elite, even though most of the population
was Catholic.
Some English politicians even agreed, like
Liberal Party politician John Morely, who
described Dublin Castle as: “The best machine
that has ever been invented for governing
a country against its will.”
(Hopkinson 4)
By 1914, the IPP’s popularity had led to
a reduction of centralized British control,
culminating in the Third Home Rule Act which
promised even more reforms.
But even though the outbreak of war had helped
the act get passed, because of the war the
British government delayed it from coming
into force.
This meant that Irish republicans who favoured
independence feared the British government
would go back on the Home Rule agreement,
because the government supported Protestant
Unionists in Ireland who opposed independence.
To some, the political route to independence
favoured by the IPP was not working, and smaller,
more radical groups who were willing to take
up arms now became more prominent.
On Easter 1916, around 1,000 pro-independence
members of two radical groups, the Irish Republican
Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers, seized key
buildings in Dublin and announced a free Irish
government.
The British sent in the troops, and the uprising
was put down at a cost of 485 lives, over
half of them civilians.
The Rising’s importance was clear to British
Prime Minister Lloyd George, who was very
concerned about getting the US to join the
war at the time.
He made a grim prediction about the impact
on the large Irish-American population: “In
six months the war will be lost… the Irish-American
vote will go over to the German side.
They will break our blockade and force an
ignominious peace on us, unless something
is done… to satisfy America.”
(Hopkinson 4)
Well, the US did eventually join the war on
the Allied side, but developments in Ireland
continued.
In the 1918 general election, a new and more
radical party burst onto the scene.
Sinn Fein, or We Ourselves, was a small party
with links to the Easter Rising and Irish
Volunteers.
In the 1918 vote, the party won three quarters
of Irish seats in the British parliament,
and the moderate IPP was crushed.
But Sinn Fein refused to send its MPs to London.
Instead, the party president, Éamon de Valera,
announced the creation of an independent Irish
parliament, the Dáil.
The self-proclaimed Irish state looked to
America for help, but when none came it prepared
for armed conflict with Britain.
Sinn Fein created a headquarters for the Irish
Volunteers, now known as the Irish Republican
Army, or IRA.
In reality though, most IRA groups acted independently,
and some even resented interference from Sinn
Fein’s quote “Dublin pen-pushers.”
So, in early 1919, tensions in Ireland were
running high.
Many anticipated the first session of the
Irish parliament, but it was a much smaller
event that would have a larger impact on events
to come.
The Irish parliament sat for the first time
January 21st 1919, which was mostly a symbolic
session.
Many members could not attend, and it had
little actual control in Ireland.
The parliament did, however, demand the end
of British rule: “We solemnly declare foreign
government in Ireland to be an invasion of
our national right which we will never tolerate,
and we demand the evacuation of our country
by the English garrison.”
(Hopkinson 208)
Despite the fact that there was now an Irish
parliament, the British were still in control,
most visibly in the form of the police force,
the Royal Irish Constabulary, or RIC.
To republicans, the RIC was an occupying force,
and on the same day as the Dáil met, a small
group of IRA men decided to ambush a shipment
of explosives being transported by horse cart
through the Tipperary countryside.
The IRA men were armed with one lever action
Winchester rifle and several revolvers, and
lay in wait for hours until the shipment arrived.
The ambushers jumped out and demanded the
two policemen, who were also Irish, surrender.
But the RIC men ducked behind the cart and
appeared to prepare their rifles, so the IRA
men opened fire and both policemen were killed.
This incident is known as the Soloheadbeg
Ambush, and even though it was not officially
sanctioned by Sinn Fein, it is often seen
as the start of the Irish War of Independence
because of its important consequences.
But the British government did not want to
call it a war, since that might legitimate
the Irish state.
Instead, the Prime Minister considered the
incident as an armed crime, and said that
cleaning up the problem would quote “a policeman’s
job supported by the military and not vice
versa”.
(Lowe 47)
The Soloheadbeg ambush was the first armed
violence since the Easter Rising, but similar
attacks soon became commonplace.
Usually, the police were outnumbered and outgunned
– what the British needed were men who knew
how to fight, and in 1920, there were plenty
of those.
By early 1920, the Royal Irish Constabulary
was in crisis.
It was a local police force mostly staffed
with local Irish Catholics, but since its
violent response to the Easter Rising, recruitment
had dropped off.
And as a civilian police force, it was not
equipped or trained for the attacks against
it.
So with Ireland threatening to become unpoliceable,
the RIC turned to Great War veterans for experienced
recruits.
Officially, they were to be titled the RIC
Special Reserve and entered service on March
25th 1920.
But the public nicknamed them the Black and
Tans, because they often wore parts of khaki
army uniforms given the shortage of the traditional
green uniforms of the RIC.
Sometimes another RIC group, the Auxiliary
Division, is also called Black and Tans, but
they were a distinct force and will be discussed
later.
The Black and Tans soon developed a reputation
among many for brutal reprisals and public
terror that persists until today.
Some Sinn Fein and IRA members even suggested
the Black and Tans were mostly former criminals,
claiming the British government offered prisoners
pardons in return for service.
In 1926, Piaras Béaslaí - an Irish writer
and member of the Easter Rising - wrote: “The
Black and Tans were largely drawn from the
criminal classes, and authentic cases were
discovered where they had been released by
the beneficent Government from penal servitude,
incurred through revolting crimes, to enable
them to bring the lights of English law and
order to Ireland.
They were, in short, dirty tools for a dirty
job.”
(Leeson 69)
More recent research has revealed this is
unlikely to be the case.
Only around 0.6% had criminal records before
the war, and a potential recruit needed an
army character rating of “good” or better
to join.
The average Black and Tan was likely English,
from London or southern England, from the
urban working class, and between 18 and 24
years old.
1 in 5 were Irish – though these were mostly
Protestant, as were the English.
Only 1 in 5 of the 13,000 Black and Tans were
Catholic.
About two-thirds of the Special Reserve were
former soldiers, mostly infantry, but few
came directly from the army.
Most had already been demobilized into civilian
life, and many joined to escape unemployment
for the good pay in the RIC.
But, although the Black and Tans may not have
all been criminals in uniform, there are reasons
for the violent reputation they earned.
For one thing, the mostly Protestant and English
policemen were not likely suited to work with
an Irish population that was largely rural
and Catholic.
Especially without proper training, which
they didn’t get.
The urgency to fill the ranks meant that police
training was sacrificed in favour of military
training.
Former Special Reservist Douglas Duff wrote
that training for infantrymen only lasted
three days, and consisted mostly of shooting
and grenade practice, with only a single class
on policing: “As far as I remember, the
schoolmaster was lecturing on some point of
the Game Laws.
We solemnly listened for an hour and were
then dismissed to our companies as fully trained
policemen, ready for duty with the public”.
(Leeson 78)
This lack of training, combined with the pressures
of counter-insurgency combat, goes some way
to explaining their reputation and actions.
The Black and Tans, once they had been recruited,
were indeed more likely to commit criminal
acts than the average soldier, with 18% being
punished for disciplinary problems, including
bank robbery, and 8% being dismissed – twice
the proportion of disciplinary dismissals
in the regular army.
So the overmatched police were trying to adapt
to the growing insecurity and unpredictability
of the situation in Ireland.
But for the former soldiers of the RIC Special
Reserve, the enemy they were fighting was
worlds apart from the Germans they’d faced
in the Great War.
When the new Irish government was announced,
some Sinn Fein politicians advocated for fighting
Britain in a conventional war, as this would
help legitimate the Irish cause.
This was quickly seen as impractical and in
order to have any chance against experienced
British troops, the IRA would need to play
to its asymmetrical strengths.
But the IRA did not fully abandon standard
military organisation.
The force was split into different companies,
brigades and battalions along British lines,
with a company roughly equating to a single
village or parish, and a brigade with a county.
The exact makeup and numbers of these groups
was quite variable.
Early IRA leaders were often also local notables,
such as successful farmers or even accomplished
athletes.
Generally they were selected not for military
skill, but for physical presence and force
of personality - which caused some issues
early on.
John McCoy, a member of the South Armagh IRA
battalion, described his first commander:
“Our first captain was selected for his
fine physique, football ability and his decency
of character.
He was a local farmer without the organising
ability or the sense of discipline necessary
to make a successful officer.”
(Hopkinson 15) School teachers were also commonly
involved, to oversee recruitment and political
education of the troops.
In time, the IRA developed what they called
‘flying columns’ - groups of around 25
men who could form up, attack and then disappear
at very short notice.
These columns became the main means of striking
against the police as the war continued.
The IRA were also decentralised in terms of
arms and equipment.
Many of the early attacks of 1919 and 1920
were mostly concerned with stealing arms and
ammunition - which were always in demand.
This meant they were often armed with whatever
weapons they could find.
One South Tipperary IRA company had 15 different
types of rifle, and home made bombs and mines
were also part of the IRA arsenal.
The individual and irregular nature of IRA
companies often caused friction with the central
command in Dublin, but it also provided some
important benefits.
The local character of the companies meant
that many Irish began to increasingly support
and identify with ‘their boys’.
Locals were often related to the fighters,
knew each other, or at least socialized in
the same pub.
Also, the IRA structure provided tactical
and organisational flexibility.
Writer and former IRA member Florrie O’Donoghue
explained: “The democratic organisation
of the Volunteers and the impossibility in
the circumstances of any tight control by
the headquarters staff permitted and encouraged
the development of local initiative on a scale
quite abnormal in a regular army.”
(Hopkinson 16)
This new type of army also brought a new type
of fighting - in which large scale battles
were a thing of the past.
Instead, as one historian put it, the Irish
conflict was a war in which “the guerillas
did most of the fighting, and the police did
most of the dying.”
(Leeson 130)
The vast majority of combat during the Irish
War of Independence were instigated by the
IRA, usually against isolated and vulnerable
police patrols and barracks.
This was the only way the IRA could counter
the superior military strength of the RIC.
This made for a war that has been described
as one of ‘in betweenness’, where frontlines
were ambiguous, soldiers and civilians were
indistinguishable and war and peace coexisted
in an uneasy balance.
And for both sides, although combat was small
scale and rare, when it did happen it was
deadly.
(Leeson 96)
If a firefight lasted for any length of time,
it would likely be won by the police, sometimes
due to the IRA’s lack of ammunition.
The IRA therefore preferred ambushes, surprise
attacks on barracks, and only the occasional
direct encounter.
In particular, ambushes on RIC patrols and
supply convoys soon became the preferred method
of attack for IRA forces.
They would usually only involve a handful
of men on both sides, but these skirmishes
heavily favoured the IRA.
They could choose the location, and pick a
spot with minimal cover for the police, and
prevent speedy reinforcement.
They were also able to avoid conflict if a
patrol appeared too strong, or fire first
if it did not.
Seamus Conway, an IRA fighter, described a
typical ambush: “In a brief space of time
two lorries… approached.
The mine on being exploded blew the front
part off the first lorry, bringing it to a
standstill and throwing out the occupants.
The second lorry pulled up behind this and
concentrated rifle fire was brought to bear
on it.
Its occupants jumped, and dived for cover,
a good many of them knocked out as they did
so.
Cover at this point was scarce.
They got their Lewis gun into operation immediately,
but after a few bursts, the gunner was knocked
out and the guns did not get into action any
more.”
(Leeson 138)
RIC and Black and Tan accounts of ambushes
are often filled with anecdotes of firing
blindly at “spurts of flame” or “flashes”.
They could rarely see their attackers, let
alone fire back with any real effect.
Although these ambushes were quite small scale,
they became enormously influential in both
Ireland and Britain, to the extent the timeline
of the war is often divided up between notable
ambushes.
Historian Michael Hopkinson explains: “In
terms of the scale of fighting, [ambushes]
appear piffling affairs by comparison with
the Somme but they still had enormous consequences
for British policy in Ireland.
Successful ambushes made a deep impression
on the public consciousness and remain the
stuff of legend in the Irish countryside;
signposts in Cork and Tipperary direct the
traveller to ambush sites and not to stately
homes.”
(Hopkinson 74)
Attacks against fortified RIC barracks, on
the other hand, were a much more complex affair.
They became more common as the war went on,
and regardless of the outcome still served
to increase morale and show that the IRA were
on the offensive.
More often than not, the IRA attackers were
repelled, but the occasional victories were
strategically significant for the Irish.
Over time, police barracks would be reinforced
with barbed wire, high walls, mesh firing
ports, periscopes and other defences.
But even an unsuccessful IRA attack could
force the Black and Tans to abandon a position
and fall back to a safer area.
Bombs and mines were increasingly used to
blow a hole in barracks defences, and the
explosion alone often triggered the surrender
of the police inside.
Encounter battles were the exception.
These involved the police taking the initiative
and seeking out IRA cells in the countryside.
Usually, if the IRA unit was discovered and
unprepared to fight, they tried to flee or
surrendered.
But finding them unawares in the first place
was extremely rare, as the IRA’s flying
columns would often only form in anticipation
for an attack of theirs.
For example, in South Ireland, the RIC’s
6th Division General Staff recorded 177 IRA
attacks on police but only 12 attacks by the
police against the IRA.
And so, in this in-between irregular warfare,
the IRA did not need tactical victories for
strategic success, and chose its battles carefully.
Every death of an RIC policeman had major
implications for the war in general, even
if casualties - by most standards - were quite
low.
Throughout 1919, only 15 policemen were killed
in the fighting, but this drastically increased
to 143 in 1920.
But even though the overall casualty rate
in the RIC was low, for those involved in
combat it was extremely high.
In cases of IRA attacks, only 34 percent of
the police escaped unharmed, 24 percent were
killed, and 42 percent wounded.
In high profile cases, entire patrols could
be virtually wiped out.
In some particularly active areas, like Cork,
the ratio of killed to wounded was 1:1, much
higher than the Great War ration of 1:4.
These numbers can partly be explained by the
weapons used, as there was no artillery or
gas that tended to wound rather than kill.
Instead, the close range use of rifles, pistols,
and grenades made combat quick and deadly.
A kill ratio like this helps explain the impact
the fighting had on the morale and psychology
of the police.
This meant that every skirmish in the Irish
War of Independence appeared to many to be
a defeat of sorts for the British, even if
the IRA were driven off.
The IRA’s ability to operate freely showed
that the British strategy was failing.
And so, faced with increasingly brazen and
sophisticated attacks, the police withdrew
to more easily defensible urban barracks,
virtually handing over Ireland’s vast rural
areas to the IRA in the spring of 1920.
To illustrate this to the public, the IRA
began a nationwide campaign of arson in summer
1920.
By July, they had burned and destroyed over
400 abandoned police barracks and fifty courthouses.
This showed the public and politicians in
both Britain and Ireland the reality of the
situation: in much of Ireland, the police
were no longer in control.
The RIC leadership and British administration
were frustrated at being on the defensive,
and so they once again looked to Great War
veterans for a solution.
In July, Dublin House gained permission to
raise another force - this time of hardened
former British Officers.
The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish
Constabulary was designed to be as irregular
as the enemy they were to fight, a paramilitary
force that could go on the offensive on equal
terms.
And indeed, their arrival in July 1920 marked
an important shift in the frontline of the
conflict.
So by the summer of 1920, the British were
losing their grip on Ireland.
With no means to retaliate militarily, a vengeful
police force began to turn to other ways of
exercising influence, by reprisals against
the civilian population.
The IRA could easily disappear, but their
families and supporters could not.
In summer 1920, it was normal Irish people
who became the target of Auxiliary Division
and Black and Tan violence as shops were looted,
houses shot up, and town centres destroyed.
The British hoped that this new type of repression,
often state-sanctioned, would stop IRA attacks.
But far from reducing the violence in Ireland,
it merely added new fuel to a fire that the
British could not control, and which only
seemed to burn brighter the harder they tried.
ROUNDUP
So, now it’s time for our roundup segment,
where we take a look at what else is going
in March 1920:
Let’s start in the former Russian empire,
where in the middle of the month, the so-called
Pitchfork Uprising in the Soviet republics
of Eastern Tatarstan and Western Bashkortostan
was crushed by Soviet forces.
After peasants refused to hand over food supplies
to the Red Army, Bolshevik troops turned their
guns onto villagers, killing 3000.
Between the 22nd and the 26th, forces of the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic massacred the
Armenian population of the town of Shusha
following a revolt.
Estimates of the number of victims vary from
as low as 500, to as high as 30,000.
On March 27th, the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk,
which had been an important White and British
base, fell to the Red Army.
Elsewhere in the world, on March 1st in Hungary,
Admiral Miklos Horthy became regent of the
Kingdom of Hungary.
After initially refusing the appointment,
he accepted after his powers were increased.
On the 7th, in the wake of the Arab Revolt,
Syria declared its independence with Emir
Feisal as king.
On the 15th, British forces formally occupy
the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, though
informally they had been doing so since November
1918.
And finally, on the 19th, the US senate rejected
the League of Nations covenant for a second
time, maintaining its policy of isolationism.
ENDCARD
We want to thank Mark Newton for his help
with this episode.
As usual, you can find all our sources for
this episode in the video description, including
links to our amazon stores and merchandise.
To get access to all our podcast episodes
with expert interviews and other perks, you
can also support us on Patreon or by clicking
the join button below.
I’m Jesse Alexander and this is The Great
War 1920, a production of Real Time History
and the only YouTube history channel that
was looking for a pot of gold at the end of
this episode.
