Table Of Content~ Michael Farrell
The Formation of the Ulster Special Constabaiie
and the Royal Ulster Constabulary 1920-27
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BELFAST INSTITUTE
IVEIUIIGAUI Farrell
‘Arming the
Protestants
- The formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary and
the Royal Ulster Constabulary, 1920-7
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Pluto Press B.LEHE.
London and Sydney LIBRARY
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First published in Great Britain in 1983 by Pluto Press Limited,
The Works, 105a Torriano Avenue, London NWS 2RX
and in Australia by Pluto Press Australia Limited,
PO Box 199, Leichhardt, New South Wales 2040, Australia
Simultaneously published in Ireland by Brandon Book
Publishers Limited, Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Copyright © Michael Farrell, 1983
Typeset by Wayside Graphics, Clevedon, Avon
Printed in Great Britain by Garden City Press,
Letchworth, Herts
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Farrell, Michael
Arming the Protestants: the formation of the Ulster Special
Constabulary and the Royal Ulster Constabulary 1920-7
1. Royal Ulster Constabulary — History
Arentitle
363.2'09416 HV8197.N/
Pluto ISBN 0-86104-705-2
Brandon ISBN 0-86322-050-9
Contents
Preface / v
Acknowledgements / viii
Abbreviations / ix
Introduction / 1
. Raising a private army: The revival of the UVF in 1920 / 7
. The establishment of the Ulster Special Constabulary / 30
. Holding on to their guns / 55
. Arming forces against itself / 81
. Peace is today declared / 104
. Reassuring Ulster / 125
. Bloodfeuds which will last for generations / 147
. ‘Frightened of their own people’ / 167
. An indecently threadbare argument / 187
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10. Indiscreet speeches / 210
1 be Terrorising the Commission / 232
12. Throwing them on the street / 252
Conclusion / 276
iv / Contents
Appendix 1. The structure of government in Ireland,
1919-27 / 293
Appendix 2. Alleged reprisals in Belfast / 298
Appendix 3. Alleged reprisals outside Belfast / 301
Appendix 4. Key individuals / 305
A note on documentary sources / 310
Notes / 312
Bibliography / 365
Index / 368
Preface
I grew up in South Derry during the IRA campaign of the 1950s in
the North of Ireland. Whenever we travelled at night by bus or
car we were held up at road-blocks mounted by the ‘ “B”
Specials’, the Ulster Special Constabulary. I still remember the
fear and intense dislike the ‘Specials’ aroused in the Catholic
community in which I grew up.
This book is about the establishment and the early years of
the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) — 1920-7. It also deals with
the early years of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), on which
the USC left a significant mark. It is a limited topic and a limited
period, but the USC played a crucial role in the establishment and
consolidation of the Northern Ireland state, and its character and
actions did much to shape the attitude of the Catholic minority to
the new state —I saw the results during my boyhood in Co. Derry.
The story of the USC, and the policy decisions (in Ireland
and Britain) which produced and sustained it, helps to explain a
lot about the current conflict in the North of Ireland. It is an
extraordinary story, involving government, army and police col-
laboration with illegal paramilitary groups; reprisal squads
within the police forces operating without check; government
suppression of reports severely critical of the USC; IRA ‘moles’
operating inside the police force; mutiny and threats of mutiny
by the ‘Specials’ themselves. But more important than these
dramatic details is the light they shed on the attitudes and policies
of the Ulster Unionists, the British government, and the new
Dublin government during the crucial formative years of the
Northern state.
The wealthy, respectable leadership of Ulster Unionism,
vi / Preface
closely connected with the leadership of the British Conservative
Party, is seen delving into the murky underworld of paramilitary
groups involved in sectarian rioting and killings and mobilising
mass support by inflammatory appeals to one side of a bitterly
divided community. Successive British governments are seen
setting up, arming and financing an exclusively Protestant force
in the North of Ireland despite warnings of the consequences.
They are seen, despite frequent complaints, failing to put serious
pressure on the Northern Ireland government to moderate its
policy towards the Catholic minority; and they are seen steadily
eroding the content of a key article in the Anglo—Irish Treaty —
the Boundary Commission — thereby causing deep resentment in
the South of Ireland and among the Catholic minority in the
North.
Since the Ulster Unionist movement, though led by in-
dustrialists and landowners, embraced Protestants of all social
classes it was inevitably racked by tensions between the plebian
rank and file, especially in Belfast, and the upper-class leader-
ship — the more so at a time of recession and unemployment like
the early 1920s. Because the cement which held the Unionist
alliance together was the defence of Protestant supremacy,
lower-class discontent with the Unionist leadership often ex-
pressed itself in a more extreme sectarianism than that of the
pragmatic leaders.
A lot of this internal tension within the Unionist movement
found expression in connection with the USC and paramilitary
groups, and the story of the USC helps to illustrate the often
uneasy relationship between the Unionist leadership and the
rank and file, and how the latter, having been mobilised around
the slogans of ultra-Protestantism, prevented the leaders from
diluting their policies a little in order to reach an accommodation
with the Catholics in the North and the new government in the
South. At the end of the book the Unionist government in
Belfast is seen asserting its authority over some of the Specials,
but only at the expense of guaranteeing another section of the
force, the ‘B’ Specials, a permanent role in the security apparatus
of the state.
The story of the early years of the USC inevitably involves
consideration of the actions and policies of the IRA at the time
and of the new government established in the South in January
Preface / vii
1922. Partition and the cutting off of half a million Catholics and
nationalists in the North caused considerable problems for the
new regime in Dublin, and this study looks at the continued
involvement of Michael Collins in particular in both political and
military activities in the North, and at how his successors began
to disengage themselves from an embarrassing problem.
This study is based on Cabinet and private papers in Belfast,
Dublin and London which have only recently become available,
and on interviews with some of the participants in the events. It
deals in detail with the paramilitary origins and continued para-
military links of the USC which have been ignored by previous
writers on the subject. It examines the question of reprisals by
both the regular and special police, and the official attitude to
them, a topic also scarcely touched on by other writers on the
early years of the Northern state. And it looks at IRA, Provisional
Government and Free State government policies towards the
North, an area virtually ignored in the many studies of events in
the South in the early 1920s.
Certain Cabinet papers in the Belfast Public Record Office
were refused to me while researching this book, even after they
had been used by other researchers politically more sympathetic
to Ulster Unionism. I believe their absence does not leave any
major gaps in the story — it merely removes some useful detail.
The reader can draw his or her own conclusions about the
material in the files which have been withheld.
Essentially this book attempts to use the history of the early
years of the USC as a prism through which to examine the policies
of the Ulster Unionists, the British government, and the Dublin
government towards the ‘Ulster’ problem in the 1920s, and to see
what conclusions relevant to the present day can be drawn from
this examination.
Acknowledgements
A number of people gave me very valuable help while I was
researching this book. Some were fellow researchers, others
were veterans of the period it covers. I am grateful in
particular to Eamon Phoenix, Philip McVicker, Professor Kevin
Boyle, Ken Ward, Henry Patterson, Paul Bew, Colonel Roger
McCorley, General M.J. Costello, Donal and Brendan
McDevitt, Colonel George O’Doherty, Peadar O’Donnell,
Murtagh Morgan, Tom Cosgrove, sen., the late General Joe
Sweeney, Sean MacBride and the late Pat Thornbury.
I am grateful as well to the staff of a number of research
institutions which I used extensively: the British Public Record
Office at Kew, the State Paper Office, the UCD Department of
Archives and the National Library in Dublin, and the Linenhall
library in Belfast. I have more mixed feelings about the Northern
ireland Public Record Office in Belfast, where many files
originally open for research and used and quoted by other
researchers have now been closed. Within the constraints of that
arbitrary policy, however, most of the staff were very helpful and
obliging.
My thanks are due as well to my wife, Orla, for helping to
put this manuscript in some sort of order, to Deirdre Morrissey
for doing some of the preliminary typing, to Rita Byrne for
typing the finished manuscript and to Orla, Sean and Eimear for
putting up with it for so long.
