The Time of the Tans

An Oral History of the War of Independence in County Clare

Tomás Mac Conmara

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781781175309
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

'The Black and Tans [raises voice] raided my aunt's house where my mother was in bed at three o'clock in the morning … I was due to be born three days later … she got a stroke of paralysis and lost the power of all her left side. So I never saw my mother walk … she could get around with the aid of a chair.'
Stories of the Black and Tans have been told across Ireland since the force was first released into the country in March 1920. Casting a dark and lingering shadow, they remain an evocative and emotive category of memory. For people who lived through it and those who inherited associated stories, the Black and Tans were the embodiment of British repression, violence and malevolence. The Irish War of Independence is a landmark in the chronology of Irish history and profoundly affected all areas of life. Much of that experience was never recorded.
Based on Tomás Mac Conmara's almost two decades of oral history recordings, selected from over 400 interviews, as well as access to multiple private family collections, The Time of the Tans illuminates the stories of a period that has dominated the historical consciousness of Ireland. From direct testimony of 105-year-old Margaret Hoey, to the inherited tradition of Flan O'Brien, who was born in 1927, the stories pulsate with an intensity of emotion. The majority of interviewees who were recorded for this research have sadly since passed away. Now, their memories which have been preserved for posterity, breathe new life into an enduringly important period in modern Irish history.

1
‘The Criminals
of England’

Stories of Memory

The Black and Tans in Memory

Since the Easter Rising of 1916, demands for Irish indepen­dence had taken on a progressively more determined form. When it became apparent that the declared political will of the Irish people was insufficient to move British democrats, the likelihood of violence increased, and shots fired in mid-January 1919 in south Tipperary sounded the commencement of the Irish War of Independence. By January 1920 the increasing violence in Ireland had left fifty-five dead and a further seventy-four wounded.1 When the RIC was forced to concede that the escalating IRA campaign was beyond their control, the British government decided to reinforce them by raising a mobile police strike force.

From January 1920 posters were placed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and many other British cities. Potential recruits were asked to ‘face a rough and dangerous task’ in Ireland. From then until December 1921, over 10,000 men, predominantly demobbed British servicemen who had fought in the Great War, joined the force in England, Scotland and even Ireland. So keen was the British government to send their new force into action that sufficient uniforms were unavailable. Some wore military khaki with the belt and cap of the RIC, while more donned the dark pants of the police and the khaki jackets of the military. An appropriate ensemble perhaps for a unit that was neither police nor military but some ill-defined hybrid coloured in black and tan. It was to be this dichotomy of colours that gave the force its enduring name, the Black and Tans. These men should not be confused with the Auxiliary Division, ex-officers who arrived in November 1920 to further bolster the RIC and Black and Tans.

Historians have shown that while the suggestion that criminals were hired for the Black and Tans can be hard to prove, the fact that recruiting agents were less than thorough in their enlistment practices for the force is certain.2 The basic requirement of military experience was important. Those trained skills and an undeniable culture of hatred towards the Irish in Britain, as well as the implicit directive to use any means necessary to suppress republicanism in all its forms, were a deadly combination.3 After a cursory training at the depot at the Phoenix Park in Dublin, the Black and Tans were sent out into the country in March 1920. Although in Ireland for only just over a year and a half, they left a haunting legacy in their wake and imprinted their actions on the psyche of the Irish nation. The animosity felt towards the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence is well illustrated by one historian, who noted the presentation of two notices posted at the time. One notice appealed for British recruits, encouraging readers to ‘Join the Army and see the world’. A second notice was soon placed beside it, which read: ‘Join the Black and Tans and see the next!’4

In recent years new perspectives have been disclosed on the Black and Tans, including the fact that a considerable number of Irish men joined the force.5 Historians have also clarified the culpability of other elements of the British crown forces in Ireland in relation to many deaths in the period, which had initially been attributed to the Black and Tans.6 However, while these clarifications are wel­come, the correct attribution of blame to the military and not police in some cases does nothing to minimise the intent, inclination or reality of Black and Tan violence. That British soldiers, Auxiliaries and the RIC were also culpable simply draws attention to the reality that the actions of the Black and Tans were inseparable from the broader British establishment which dispatched, directed and paid for the activities of all their imperial forces.

While a distinction is evident in social memory between the RIC and the force recruited in January 1920 to support them, my research shows a consistent categorisation of the entire Bri­tish forces during the War of Independence as Black and Tans or simply ‘Tans’. Two considerations are important. Firstly, while the categorisations can be technically inaccurate, I have found that the collective description ‘Tans’ does not indicate an inability to distinguish. Instead, it is often a recognition of the divided nature of the war, which saw the British on one side and the IRA on the other. For many, the Black and Tans, RIC, Auxiliaries and even British Army could acceptably be labelled as ‘Tans’. One west Clare contributor asserted, ‘shur they were all on the one side anyway’, while in north Clare, another noted ‘they were all Tans. They were all on the British side.’7 In the same way, their counterparts in the republican movement were referred to interchangeably as ‘Sinn Féiners’ and ‘the IRA’, despite the technical distinction.

‘The criminals of England’

In 1938, when thousands of schoolchildren combed the country for knowledge as part of the Irish Folklore Commission’s Schools’ Folklore Scheme, the memory of that force was still raw. From stories she heard in her local area, thirteen-year-old Mary Fitzgerald in Miltown Girls’ School understood the Black and Tans as ‘English soldiers’ who were ‘let free in Ireland and could do what they liked’.8 Her schoolmate, Máire Ní Bhrian, characterised the force as ‘demons roaring and shouting around the streets’.9 A Miltown Boys’ School, fourteen-year-old Joe Woulfe’s impression of the force was equally clear. After visiting several older people to hear about the period, he was able to decisively conclude asserted that ‘The Black and Tans caused all the trouble.’10 In a possible reflection of the local community’s perspective almost two decades after their departure, Teresa Kelly, aged thirteen, exclaimed in her contribution, ‘Thank God we have none of those British scoundrels in our quiet and peaceful country today.’11

The popular belief that the Black and Tans were recruited from the lunatic asylums and jails of England has been registered by many historians.12 This contention hardened in social memory over time. One Irish emigrant recorded in Chicago in 2010 had a firmly fixed view of how the force was assembled:

You see what happened in England, they opened up all the jails and they armed all them jailers and sent ’em over to Ireland. The Irish had no guns so they had to fight ’em back so the Irish had to fight ’em and get their guns off ’em … they fought ’em with pitchforks.13

While Tom Brennan’s description may be somewhat simplistic, it carries an impression of the force that has lingered in memory. The belief that the men had been liberated from jail was one that was commonly held at the time. On 3 November 1920 Labour Party Member of Parliament Thomas Cape asked at a sitting of the House of Commons whether ‘condemned criminals have been released on promising to serve in what is known as the Black-and-Tans?’ The suggestion was rejected by the then under-secretary of state, Sir John Baird of the Conservative Party, as being without foundation.14

Although recent research has largely challenged the notion that the force was comprised of released prisoners and lunatics, negative attitudes amongst the Irish population about the new recruits formed quickly, and it is apparent that many members of the contemporary British forces, too, were less than impressed by them. Private J. P. Swindlehurst of the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, commented on arriving in Dublin that ‘The Black and Tans … seem to be all out of work demobbed officers and men who can’t settle down’.15 Major General Douglas Wimberley similarly commented that the Black and T...

Table of contents

• Praise for The Time of the Tans
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on Memory
• A Note on Transcription
• Introduction
• 1‘The Criminals of England’
• 2‘Run for it’
• 3‘All their own sons’
• 4‘Born wild’
• 5‘A corner of the grave’
• 6Carrying Wounds
• 7‘Dormant sympathies’
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• About the Author