Royal Irish Constabulary
The Royal Irish Constabulary was the police force in Ireland between 1822 and 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police, patrolled the capital, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later had special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matched that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants were overrepresented among its senior officers.
The RIC was under the authority of the British administration in Ireland. It was a quasi-military police force. Unlike police elsewhere in the United Kingdom, RIC constables were routinely armed and billeted in barracks, and the force had a militaristic structure. It policed Ireland during a period of agrarian unrest and Irish nationalist activity. It was used to quell civil unrest during the Tithe War, the Young Irelander Rebellion, the Fenian Rising, the Land War, and the Irish revolutionary period.
During the Irish War of Independence, the RIC faced mass public boycotts and attacks by the Irish Republican Army. It was reinforced with recruits from Britain—the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries—who became notorious for police brutality and attacks on civilians. The Ulster Special Constabulary was formed to reinforce the RIC in most of the northern province of Ulster.
In consequence of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and partition of Ireland, the RIC was disbanded in 1922 and was replaced by the Garda Síochána in the Irish Free State and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland.
The RIC's system of policing influenced the armed Canadian North-West Mounted Police, the armed Victoria Police force in Australia, the New Zealand Armed Constabulary in New Zealand, the armed Royal Newfoundland Constabulary in Newfoundland, the British South Africa Police in Rhodesia, and the Royal Hong Kong Police in Hong Kong.
History
The first organised police forces in Ireland came about through Dublin Police Act 1786, which was a slightly modified version of the failed London and Westminster Police Bill 1785 drafted by John Reeves at the request of Home Secretary Lord Sydney following the Gordon Riots of 1780. A force of 400 armed policemen and 40 mounted petty constables, all full-time and uniformed, headed by three commissioners, four divisional judges and two clerks, was viewed as oppressive by local elites and became a strain on the city budget. The population of Dublin was under 300,000 at the time, which makes a very high rate of police officers per capita. That arguably excessive budget was used as a pretext by Irish nationalist MP Henry Grattan and short-lived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, to essentially abolish the Dublin Police in 1795, downsizing it to two inspectors and 50 constables headed by superintendend magistrate and two divisional justices and even temporarily moving it under Dublin Corporation.The Peace Preservation Act 1814 for which Sir Robert Peel was largely responsible, and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 formed the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act established a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the UK civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration. By 1841 this force numbered over 8,600 men. The original force had been reorganised under the Constabulary Act 1836, and the first constabulary code of regulations was published in 1837. The discipline was strict and the pay low. The police faced civil unrest among the Irish rural poor, and was involved in bloody confrontations during the period of the Tithe War. Other deployments were against organisations like the Ribbonmen, which attacked landlords, their property and stock.
The new constabulary first demonstrated its efficiency against civil agitation and Irish separatism during Daniel O'Connell's 1843 "monster meetings" to urge repeal of the Act of Parliamentary Union, and the Young Ireland campaign led by William Smith O'Brien in 1848, although it failed to contain violence at the so-called "Battle of Dolly's Brae" in 1849. This was followed by a period of relative calm.
The advent of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, founded in 1858, brought a plan for an armed uprising. Direct action began with the Fenian Rising of 1867. Fenians attacked on the more isolated police barracks and smaller stations. This rebellion was put down with ruthless efficiency. The police had infiltrated the Fenians with informers. The success of the Irish Constabulary during the outbreak was rewarded by Queen Victoria who granted the force the prefix 'Royal' in 1867 and the right to use the insignia of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick in their motif. The RIC presided over a marked decline in general crime around the country. The unstable rural unrest of the early nineteenth century characterised by secret organisations and unlawful armed assembly was effectively controlled. Policing generally became a routine of controlling misdemeanours such as moonshine distilling, public drunkenness, minor theft, and wilful property crimes.A Land War broke out in the 1879–82 Depression period, causing some general unrest.
In Belfast, with its industrial boom, the working population mushroomed, growing fivefold in fifty years. Much of the increase arose from Catholic migration and there were serious sectarian riots in 1857, 1864, 1872 and 1886. As a result, the small Belfast Town Police civic force was disbanded and responsibility for policing passed to the RIC. Likewise in 1870, the RIC took over the duties of the Londonderry Borough Police.
During the 1907 Belfast Dock strike which was called by trade union leader Jim Larkin, a portion of the RIC went on strike after Constable William Barrett was suspended for his refusal to escort a traction engine driven by a blackleg carter. About 70% of the police force in Belfast declared their support of the strikers and were encouraged by Larkin to carry out their own strike for higher wages and a better pension. It never came to fruition, however, as dissident policemen were transferred out of Belfast four days before the strike was to begin. Barrett and six other constables were dismissed and extra British Army troops were deployed to Belfast. The dock strike ended on 28 August 1907.
The RIC's existence was increasingly troubled by the rise of the Home Rule campaign in the early twentieth century period prior to World War I. Sir Neville Chamberlain was appointed Inspector-General in 1900. His years in the RIC coincided with the rise of a number of political, cultural and sporting organisations with the common aim of asserting Ireland's separateness from England. The potential success of the third Home Rule Bill in 1912 introduced serious tensions: opponents of the Bill organised the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913 while supporters formed the Irish Volunteers in response. These two groups had over 250,000 members, organised as effective private armies. In reports to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, and the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, Chamberlain warned that the Irish Volunteers were preparing to stage an insurrection and proclaim Irish independence. However, in April 1916 when Nathan showed him a letter from the army commander in the south of Ireland telling of an expected landing of arms on the southwest coast and a rising planned for Easter, they were both 'doubtful whether there was any foundation for the rumour'. The Easter Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days, ending only when much of O'Connell Street had been destroyed by artillery fire. Although the Royal Commission on the 1916 Rebellion cleared the RIC of any blame for the Rising, Chamberlain had already resigned his post, along with Birrell and Nathan.
Characteristics
During the early 19th century in the United Kingdom, both the idea of police and the word itself were "disliked as a symbol of foreign oppression". Accordingly, the state was later than its European neighbours in developing organised police services: the Metropolitan Police in London was not established until seven years after the RIC. The RIC was as a result pulled in two directions. To some extent it had a quasi-military or gendarmerie ethos: barracks and carbines; a marked class distinction between officers and men; jurisdiction over rural districts lacking a population density to warrant their own civilian police force; obligatory service outside of one's region of origin; plus a dark green uniform with black buttons and insignia, resembling that of the rifle regiments of the British Army. At the time of the RIC's disbanding the debate over its very nature was ongoing: a paramilitary police in the gendarme-style, or merely an armed version of the English-style civilian police? A delegation of prominent Irish-Americans led by former Illinois governor Edward F. Dunne, returned with the following impression: "The Constabulary is a branch of the Military forces. They are armed with rifles, as well as small side-arms; engage in regular drills as well as small warfare"; the authorities in Dublin Castle conceded that the Constabulary was armed and drilled, but considered that its operational independence from the ministry of war rendered it not a true gendarme force. French military observers similarly reported on the "Royal Irish Constabulary ".However, the RIC also followed civic police forces in the rest of the UK in using non-military ranks such as "constable" and "inspector"; and there was a gesture towards "policing by consent" through attempts to match postings to the religious affiliation of the communities affected.
The RIC was an all-male police force. For most of its history, its ethnic and religious makeup broadly matched that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants were overrepresented among its senior officers.