I agree with something Mick Talbot said in response to Jim Herlihys last post -These men [the RIC] stood between the law and anarchy. In the main, particularly during the War of Independence, most members of the RIC and the DMP, Catholic and Protestant, did what they could to maintain law and order. They tried to protect the Irish people from the excesses of the IRA and the Crown forces - of which they were a nominal part. We know perfectly well how ruthless the Black and Tans could be, and we know to what extent the RIC was implicated in that ruthlessness. But what we dont pay enough attention to is the ruthlessness of the IRA at that time - the truth is, they killed Irish civilians as heartlessly as the Tans did. And they made no bones about that - I say this as the relative of a family with a long and bloody association with the IRA. The following posts are from newspaper accounts of incidents that took place in the first year or so of the War of Independence. The first story gives an indication of precisely what the IRA planned to do with the civilian population within its locale. The second is a famous article that appeared in the Freemans Journal on the 10th July 1920. It is both chilling in its detail and thrilling in its depiction of the RIC. What I find most instructive about these documents is the similarity between the planned strategies of both the IRA and the Tans. Both of them valued physical force and terror above all else, and the RIC found itself stranded between them and the Irish people. The articles will appear as comments below this post.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 10:54:00 +0000
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