Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve.
The RUC policed Northern Ireland from the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence until after the turn of the 21st century and played a major role in the Troubles between the 1960s and the 1990s. Due to the threat from the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who saw the RUC as enforcing British rule, the force was heavily armed and militarised. Officers routinely carried submachine guns and assault rifles, travelled in armoured vehicles, and were based in heavily fortified police stations. It was the first police force to use rubber and plastic bullets for riot control.
The RUC's membership was overwhelmingly Protestant, leading to accusations by sections of the Catholic and Irish nationalist minority of one-sided policing and sectarianism. Officers were also accused of police brutality as well as collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. Conversely, it was praised as one of the most professional police forces in the world by British security forces. During the Troubles, 319 RUC officers were killed and almost 9,000 injured in paramilitary assassinations or attacks, mostly by the IRA, which made the RUC the most dangerous police force in the world in which to serve by 1983. In the same period, the RUC killed 55 people, 28 of whom were civilians. In 2000, the RUC was awarded the George Cross for bravery.
The RUC was superseded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2001, as mandated by the final version of the Police Act 2000. Allegations regarding collusion prompted several inquiries, the most recent of which was authored by Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan in 2007. The report identified police, CID and Special Branch collusion with loyalist terrorists, but no member of the RUC has been charged or convicted of any criminal acts as a result of these inquiries. O'Loan stated in her conclusions that there was no reason to believe the findings of the investigation were isolated incidents.
History
Establishment
Under section 60 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Northern Ireland was placed under the jurisdiction of the Royal Irish Constabulary. On 31 January 1921, Richard Dawson Bates, the first Minister of Home Affairs for Northern Ireland, appointed a committee of inquiry on police organisation in the region. It was asked to advise on any alterations to the existing police necessary for the formation of a new force.An interim report was published on 28 March 1922, the first official report of the new Parliament of Northern Ireland, and was subsequently accepted by the Northern Ireland Government. On 29 April 1922, King George V granted to the force the name Royal Ulster Constabulary. In May, the Parliament of Northern Ireland passed the , and the RUC officially came into existence on 1 June. The headquarters of the force was established at Atlantic Buildings, Waring Street, Belfast. The uniform remained essentially the same as that of the RIC – a dark green, as opposed to the dark blue worn by the other British police forces and the Garda Síochána. A new badge of the Red Hand of Ulster on a St George's Cross surrounded by a chain was designed but proved unpopular and was never uniformly adopted. Eventually the harp and crown insignia of the Order of St Patrick, as worn by the RIC, was adopted.
From the beginning the RUC had a dual role, unique among British police forces, of providing a normal law enforcement service while enforcing the new Northern Ireland entity in the face of considerable opposition, both armed and unarmed. To this end, its members were armed, as the RIC had been. The RUC was limited by statute to a 3,000-strong force. Initially, a third of positions within the force were reserved for Catholics, a reflection of the denominational proportions of the population of Northern Ireland at that time. The first two thousand places were filled quickly and those reserved for Catholics were filled mainly by ex-RIC members fleeing north. Due to reluctance by the political establishment to employ too many Catholics the force abandoned this policy. As a result, representation of Catholics in the RUC never exceeded 20%. In addition, many Catholics who joined the force, particularly during the Troubles, were targeted for murder or ostracised by their own community. By the 1960s, representation of Catholics in the RUC had fallen to 12%.
The RUC were supported by the Ulster Special Constabulary, a volunteer body of part-time auxiliary police established before the Northern Ireland government was set up, who had already been given uniforms and training. The RUC's senior officer, the Inspector General, was appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland and was responsible to the Minister of Home Affairs in the Northern Ireland government for the maintenance of law and order.
Early years
The polarised political climate in Northern Ireland resulted in violence from both sides of the political and sectarian divide. The lawlessness that affected the region during the early 1920s, and the problems it caused for the RUC, are indicated in a police report drawn up by District Inspector R.R. Spears in February 1923. Referring to the situation in Belfast after July 1921 he stated:For twelve months after that, the city was in a state of turmoil. The IRA was responsible for an enormous number of murders, bombings, shootings and incendiary fires. The work of the police against them was, however, greatly hampered by the fact that the rough element on the Protestant side entered thoroughly into the disturbances, met murder with murder and adopted in many respects the tactics of the rebel gunmen. In the endeavour to cope simultaneously with the warring factions the police efforts were practically nullified. They were quite unable to rely on the restraint of one party while they dealt with the other.
About ninety police officers were killed between 1920 and 1922 in what would become Northern Ireland. The security forces were implicated in reprisal killings of Catholics but no convictions ever rendered. Most notable of these incidents were the McMahon killings on 26 March 1922, in which six Catholics were killed; and the Arnon Street killings several days later on 1 April 1922, in which six more Catholics were shot dead in retaliation for the IRA killing of a policeman. By the mid-1920s the situation had calmed down; for the next forty-five years the murder rate in Northern Ireland would be lower than in the rest of the UK and the crime detection rate higher.
The 1920s and 1930s were years of economic austerity. Many of Northern Ireland's traditional industries, notably linen and shipbuilding, were in recession, which contributed to the already high level of unemployment. Serious rioting broke out in 1932 in Belfast in protest at inadequate relief for the unemployed. In response to the growth of motorised transport, the RUC Traffic Branch was formed on 1 January 1930. In 1936 the police depot at Enniskillen was formally opened and an £800,000 scheme to create a network of 196 police barracks throughout Northern Ireland by rationalizing or repairing the 224 premises inherited from the RIC was underway. In May 1937 a new white glass lamp with the RUC crest went up for the first time to replace the RIC crest still on many stations. About the same time the Criminal Investigation Department in Belfast was significantly expanded, with a detective head constable being appointed to head the CID force in each of the five Belfast police districts. There was sporadic IRA activity in the 1930s.
In 1937, on the occasion of the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the province, the IRA blew up a number of customs posts. In 1939 the IRA launched its Sabotage Campaign in England, which would end a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War. The war brought additional responsibilities for the police: the security of the land border with the Republic of Ireland, which remained neutral during the war, was one important consideration; smuggling greatly increased due to rationing, to the point where police virtually became revenue officers; and many wartime regulations had to be enforced, including "black-out" requirements on house and vehicle lights, the arrest of striking workers, port security, and restrictions on the movement of vehicles and use of petrol.
The RUC was a "reserved occupation", i.e. the police force was deemed essential to the domestic war effort and its members were forbidden to leave to join the other services. The wartime situation gave a new urgency to discussions regarding the appointment of women police. The Ministry of Home Affairs finally gave approval to the enrolment of women as members of the RUC on 16 April 1943, with the first six recruits starting on 15 November, headed by Marion Paterson Macmillan, who transferred from the Metropolitan Police. Post-war policies brought about a gradual improvement in the lot of the RUC, interrupted only by a return to hostilities by the IRA border campaign from 1957 to 1962, in which seven RUC officers were killed. The force was streamlined in the 1960s, a new headquarters was opened at Knock, Belfast and a number of rural barracks were closed.