In the spring of 1920 the first surge of new recruits to the diminishing ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary began arriving from Britain. Some months later, an altogether separate force arrived. But even today, many conflate the two, erroneously lumping them together under the handy one-size-fits-all moniker of ‘Black and Tans’. Pat Poland examines the question of

 

What was the difference between the Black and Tans and the Auxies?

 

As journalist Christopher O’Sullivan alighted from the train at Limerick Junction, he couldn’t but help notice the large crowd of policemen milling around on the platform, being organised into serried ranks by their officers. Their odd uniform attire intrigued him.

As he later discovered, the regular RIC stores had been unable to cope with the number of uniforms required to supply the huge volume of new recruits and had to call on their army colleagues to make good the shortfall. Thus, the newcomers were rigged out in a mismatched combination of police dark green (so dark it looked black) and army khaki.

He immediately coined a word for the curious assembly: ‘Black and Tans’. Their bizarre uniform, he thought, was redolent of the colouring of the Scarteen Hounds, the renowned Irish foxhound pack based at Knocklong, Co. Limerick.

The phrase first appeared in an article in the Limerick Echo on 25 March, 1920, and was taken up by comedian Mike Nono when he used it in material at a show in the Theatre Royal, Limerick. The nickname stuck, because it was vivid, mocking, and perfectly captured what the men looked like: half police, half soldiers.

Officially, they were simply RIC constables. But Ireland knew better. Their short tenure here – less than two years from initial recruitment to official disbandment – would be characterized by ruthlessness and disregard for law, and, 126 years’ later, the sobriquet remains a by-word for British political misrule and ineptitude in Ireland.

When Irish people speak of the War of Independence (1919–1921), two names still evoke immediate anger and bitterness: the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries —often joined together in popular memory as one and the same. In truth, they were different forces, created at different times, recruited from different types of men, paid differently, trained differently, and often used for different tasks.

Yet to the ordinary Irish civilian living through raids, reprisals, and burnings, the distinctions mattered little. Both were agents of Crown policy at its most desperate — and most brutal.
Still, if we want to understand what happened in Ireland in those fraught years, we must understand the difference.

By early 1920, the British administration in Ireland was losing control. The Irish Republican Army, reorganized and micro-managed under Michael Collins, was increasingly effective. Ambushes of police patrols, attacks on barracks, intelligence warfare, and political intimidation, were spreading across the country.

The backbone of British authority in rural Ireland was the Royal Irish Constabulary — an armed police force, but not an army. By 1919 and early 1920, the RIC was being steadily undermined. Barracks were abandoned, resignations rose, and recruitment collapsed. London needed reinforcements quickly. It improvised.

The result was the arrival of two new forces: first the Black and Tans, then the Auxiliary Division.
The ‘Black and Tans’ were not a separate organization in the way people often imagined. They were recruits brought into the RIC, officially as temporary constables. They began arriving in Ireland in early 1920, with recruitment intensifying in the spring and summer.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own