'BUT THE men who dared the Auxies, who fought the Black Tans/ Were the boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wren," writes Frank Bouchier-Hayes
These familiar lines from the Sigerson Clifford ballad refer to the much despised police reinforcements who fought the IRA during the War of Independence. But while the conflict is often described as the "Tan War", this term serves to hide the equal, if not greater, threat which the "Auxies"posed to Irish volunteers in their fight for freedom.
The Auxiliary Division of the RIC, to give the body its full title, owed its existence to Winston Churchill. Although the idea put forward by him at a British cabinet conference in May 1920 was initially viewed as impractical, a plan to recruit a "Special Corps of Gendarmerie" was agreed two months later.
Maj Gen Henry Hugh Tudor, appointed as "police adviser", chose Brig-Gen FP Crozier and Brig-Gen EA Wood to take charge of the Auxiliary Division. Crozier commanded the force until his resignation in February 1921 following the reinstatement by Tudor of men suspected of wrecking and looting and dismissed by Crozier; his assistant, Wood, then replaced him until the force's demobilisation in 1922.
Tudor submitted his police scheme in early July 1920. The Canadian historian David Leeson suggests that he also invented the paradoxical term of "temporary cadet" to squeeze the new recruits "into the RIC's table of ranks and to preserve the illusion that these men were civilian police rather than auxiliary troops". Tudor later successfully advised that they should be organised in military-style companies to provide "a mobile police force to send to threatened points and to the worst disturbed areas".
Members of the new force were paid the princely sum of £7 a week plus allowances, dressed either in military khaki or police green uniform and wore distinctive tam o'shanter caps. Those who joined up were responding to newspaper advertisements such as the following, which appeared in the London Times in September 1920: "EX-OFFICERS WANTED. Seven pounds a week, free uniform and quarters. Must have first-class records: to join Auxiliary Division, Royal Irish Constabulary; 12 months' guarantee. Apply, with full particulars, service, age, c. to R.O, R.I.C., Scotland-yard, London, S.W."
While we are very familiar with the story of how men from C Company were successfully attacked and beaten by the IRA at Kilmichael in November 1920, it seems that many spent their time in Ireland raiding houses and business premises for wanted men, incriminating documents, weapons and explosives. Sean O'Casey, in typically eloquent fashion, explains how tans, auxies and soldiers differed: "The Tans alone would make more noise, slamming themselves into a room, shouting to shake off the fear that slashed many of their faces. The Auxies were too proud to show a sign of it. The Tommies would be warm, always hesitant at knocking a woman's room about."
"Tudor's Toughs", as the Auxiliaries were later nicknamed, quickly developed a reputation for rough tactics in the course of their duties. Indeed, David Neligan, Michael Collins's famous Dublin Castle spy, later wrote concerning the rank initials TC which appeared on their shoulder straps: "The Auxiliaries' own interpretation of those letters is unprintable." The recently published Paper Wall: Newspapers and Propaganda in Ireland, 1919-1921 by Ian Kenneally (Collins Press) understandably fails to provide the reader with any positive images of these men.
Indeed many commentators, including RIC veterans, would later confirm their unruly nature. Yet contemporary newspaper reports do occasionally provide us with a different impression. During a Christmas Eve 1920 search of a train bound for Sligo, it was reported in this paper that "the Crown forces acted with the utmost courtesy, and, while it would be absurd to pretend that any of the weary passengers liked his ordeal, none of them could complain of the behaviour either of the military or of the police."
An Auxiliary patrol in Dublin also "behaved with well disciplined constraint and courtesy" when dealing with a street incident in December 1920 involving several groups of young men. Following a raid on a Dublin tenement house in March 1921, the Irish Independent reported that some of the auxiliaries "distributed pennies to children in the house".
Clearly, these few examples cannot serve to counterbalance the far greater number of instances in which Auxiliaries behaved very badly indeed, most notably during the reprisal burning of Cork in December 1920 when the men of K Company set the city ablaze and prevented firemen from dousing the flames. Moreover, Gen Douglas Wimberley, adjutant of the 2nd battalion of the Cameron Highlanders in Ireland, recalled that "whenever some of them accompanied me, on any search, patrol or foray in which I was in command, my first action was always to detail two or three of my own Jocks simply to watch over them, and see that they did not commit any atrocities such as unlawfully looting or burning houses, when they were acting under my command, or even shooting prisoners, on the grounds that they were attempting to escape!"
Curiously, Michael Collins paid tribute to his wartime opponents during an official visit to his Armagh constituency in September 1921: "Wherever they appeared it was because the men of the place had put up a good fight. . . the Volunteers knew generally they were the best fighters they had to meet".
After the acceptance of the Treaty by Dáil Éireann in January 1922, Auxiliary companies quickly began to leave Ireland. Whereas M Company left Longford in January amid "much merriment when a Volunteer officer was 'jocularly' held up by two of the Auxiliaries while a third member of the Division photographed the trio", those who left Dublin that same month were treated to "a spattering of jibes, derisive cheers, and muffled hootings". The mysteriously initialled "R.J.P.", writing in the Irish Independent, further noted that an elderly woman marking their departure from Dublin "threw her gray locks to the wind, discarded her shawl, and raising her skinny arm on high shrilled forth her opinion of the warriors".
The writer appropriately ends by quoting a railway porter who happily watched the departing train: "We're just as well without them lads, anyway."