Continuing St. Patricks week with a look at the post WW I Irish independence struggles: As (Irish nationalist leader) Michael Collins was keenly aware, the Anglo-Irish War was less a war than a police action involving a minimal number of British troops...In July 1920 Britain backed the Royal Irish Constabulary with yet another paramilitary security force, a 2000-man group of ex-military officers known as the Auxiliary Division...Fiercely loyal to the Crown, the Auxies were accountable to no one and committed atrocities as a matter of course. Collins determination to meet brutality with brutality had a darker purpose than simply meeting the enemy on his own ground...Collins set out with a plan to eliminate the most effective British detectives and thus knock out the eyes and ears of the Dublin Castle regime in order to provoke the British to retaliate blindly. The Big Fellow knew his enemy and was confident that, deprived of specific political targets, the Black and Tans and Auxies would turn their rage against the Irish people, thereby driving the citizenry into the republican camp. (Ron Soodalter, Michael Collins, Military History, March 2014, 52).
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 06:21:40 +0000