Ulster Special Constabulary
The Ulster Special Constabulary was a quasi-military reserve special constable police force in what would later become Northern Ireland. It was set up in October 1920, shortly before the partition of Ireland. The USC was an armed corps, organised partially on military lines and called out in times of emergency, such as war or insurgency. It performed this role most notably in the early 1920s during the Irish War of Independence and the 1956–1962 IRA Border Campaign.
During its existence, 95 USC members were killed in the line of duty. Most of these were killed in conflict with the IRA in 1921 and 1922. Another 8 died during the Second World War, in air raids or IRA attacks. Of the remainder, most died in accidents but two former officers were killed during the Troubles in the 1980s.
The force was almost exclusively Ulster Protestant and as a result was viewed with great mistrust by Catholics. It carried out several revenge killings and reprisals against Catholic civilians in the 1920–22 conflict. Unionists generally supported the USC as contributing to the defence of Northern Ireland from subversion and outside aggression.
The Special Constabulary was disbanded in May 1970, after the Hunt Report, which advised re-shaping Northern Ireland's security forces to attract more Catholic recruits and demilitarising the police. Its functions and membership were largely taken over by the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Formation
The Ulster Special Constabulary was formed against the background of conflict over Irish independence and the partition of Ireland.The 1919–21 Irish War of Independence, saw the Irish Republican Army launch a guerrilla campaign in pursuit of Irish independence. Unionists in Ireland's northeast were vehemently against this campaign and against Irish independence. However, once it became apparent that the British government was committed to implementing Dominion Status for all of Ireland outside Ulster in response to Sinn Féin's demands, which were far more radical than those of the defunct Irish Parliamentary Party, Unionists in most of the province of Ulster directed their energies into the partition of Ireland by the creation of Northern Ireland as an autonomous region in the United Kingdom. The new region would consist of two thirds of Ulster, the six counties that Unionists could control. The other three counties had disproportionately Catholic and nationalist majorities and would become part of the Irish Free State. Partition was enacted by the British Parliament in the Government of Ireland Act 1920.
Two main factors were behind the formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary. One was the desire of Unionists, led by Sir James Craig, that the apparatus of government and security should be placed in their hands long before Northern Ireland was formally established.
A second reason was that violence in the north was increasing The Troubles in Northern Ireland |after the summer of 1920. The IRA began extending attacks to the Royal Irish Constabulary, RIC barracks, and revenue offices in Northern Ireland. There had been serious rioting between Catholics and Protestants in Derry in May and June and in Belfast in July, which had left up to 40 people dead.
With police and troops being drawn towards combating insurgency in the south and west, Unionists wanted a force that would be dedicated to taking on the IRA. At a 2 September 1920 meeting of government Ministers in London Craig said that the loyal population was losing faith in the government's ability to protect them and that loyalist paramilitary groups threatened, in the words of Craig, "a recourse to arms, which would precipitate civil war". Craig proposed to the British cabinet a new "volunteer constabulary" which "must be raised from the loyal population" and organised, "on military lines" and "armed for duty within the six county area only". On 23 July 1920 Craig informed the British cabinet that the "Specials" would "prevent mob law and the Protestants from running amok." He recommended that "the organisation of the Ulster Volunteers, should be used for this purpose". Wilfrid Spender, the former UVF quartermaster in 1913–14, and by now a decorated war veteran, was appointed by Craig to form and run the USC. UVF units were "incorporated en masse" into the new USC.
The idea of a volunteer police force in the north appealed to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George for several practical reasons; it freed up the RIC and military for use elsewhere in Ireland, it was cheap, and it did not need new legislation. Special Constabulary Acts had been enacted in 1832 and 1914, meaning that the administration in Dublin Castle only had to use existing laws to create it. The formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary was therefore announced on 22 October 1920.
On 1 November 1920, the scheme was officially announced by the British government.
Composition
The composition of the USC was overwhelmingly Protestant and Unionist, for a number of reasons. Several informal "constabulary" groups had already been created, for example, in Belfast, Fermanagh and Antrim. The Ulster Unionist Labour Association had established an "unofficial special constabulary," with members drawn chiefly from the shipyards, tasked with 'policing' Protestant areas.In April 1920, Captain Sir Basil Brooke, had set up "Fermanagh Vigilance", a vigilante group to provide defence against incursions by the IRA. Brooke himself had been personally affected by the organisation, as his son had been a victim of kidnapping. In Ballymacarrett, a Protestant rector named John Redmond had helped form a unit of ex-servicemen to keep the peace after the July riots.
There was a willingness to arm or recognise existing Protestant militias. Wilfrid Spender, head of the Ulster Volunteer Force, encouraged his members to join. For these groups, was an immediate and illicit supply of arms available, especially from the Ulster Volunteers. Charles Wickham, Chief of Police for the north of Ireland, favoured incorporation of the Ulster Volunteers into "regular military units" instead of having to "face them down". A number of these groups were absorbed into the new Ulster Special Constabulary.
Nationalists pointed out that the composition of the USC was overwhelmingly Protestant and loyal, claiming the government was arming Protestants to attack Catholics. In addition, a number of Special Constables, newly appointed by the Lisburn Urban Council, had been charged with rioting and looting committed over three days and nights following the assassination of RIC Inspector Oswald Swanzy. During that same time period, members of the Dromore UVF were said to have supervised the expulsion of Catholic families from Dromore. A further detail was that many UVF units joined the new Constabulary, with their commanders being appointed to senior positions.
Unsuccessful efforts were made to attract more Catholics into the force, but these largely failed. One reason for this was that Catholic members were more easily targeted by the IRA for intimidation and assassination. The government suggested that, with enough Catholic recruits, special constabulary patrols made up of Catholics only could be extended into Catholic areas. However, the Nationalist Party and Ancient Order of Hibernians discouraged their members from joining.
The IRA issued a statement which said that any Catholics who joined the Specials would be treated as traitors and would be dealt with accordingly.
Organisation
The USC was initially financed and equipped by the British government and placed under the control of the RIC. The USC consisted of 32,000 men divided into four sections, all of whom were armed:- A Specials – full-time and paid, worked alongside regular RIC men, but could not be posted outside their home areas ; usually served at static checkpoints
- B Specials – part-time, usually on duty for one evening per week and serving under their own command structure, and unpaid, although they had a generous system of allowances, served wherever the RIC served and manned Mobile Groups of platoon size;
- C Specials – unpaid, non-uniformed reservists, usually rather elderly and used for static guard duties near their homes
- * C1 Specials – non-active C class specials who could be called out in emergencies. The C1 category was formed in late 1921, incorporating the various local unionist militias such as the Ulster Volunteers into a new special class of the USC, thus placing them under the control and discipline of the Stormont Government.
The Belfast units were constructed differently from those in the counties. The districts were based on the existing RIC divisions. The constables drew pistols and truncheons before going on patrol and considerable efforts were made to use them only in Protestant areas. This did free up regular policemen who were generally more acceptable to most Ulster Catholics.
By July 1921, more than 3,500 'A' Specials had been enrolled, and almost 16,000 'B' Specials. By 1922 recruiting had swelled the numbers to: 5,500 A Specials, 19,000 B Specials and 7,500 C1 Specials. Their duties would include combatting the urban guerrilla operations of the IRA, and the suppression of the local IRA in rural areas. In addition they were to prevent border incursion, smuggling of arms and escape of fugitives.
Opposition
From the outset, the formation of the USC came in for widespread criticism, mostly from Irish nationalists and the Dublin government but also from some elements of the British military and administrative establishment in Ireland and in the British press, which saw the USC as a potentially divisive and sectarian force. In the British House of Commons, the leader of the Nationalist Party of Northern Ireland, Joseph Devlin, formerly a leading member of the now defunct Irish Parliamentary Party, made his feelings on the creation of the USC clear: "The Chief Secretary is going to arm pogromists to murder Catholics...we would not touch your special constabulary with a 40 foot pole. Their pogrom is to be made less difficult. Instead of paving stones and sticks they are to be given rifles."Sir Nevil Macready, General Officer Commanding-in-chief of the British Army in Ireland, along with his supporters in the Irish administration, refused to approve the new force but were overridden; Lloyd George approved of it from the beginning. Macready and Henry Hughes Wilson argued that the concept of a special constabulary was a dangerous one.
Wilson warned the formation of a partisan constabulary "would mean; taking sides, civil war and savage reprisals." John Anderson, the Under Secretary for Ireland shared his fears, "you cannot, in the middle of a faction fight, recognise one of the contending parties and expect it to deal with disorder in the spirit of impartiality and fairness essential in those who have to carry out the order of the Government." On 18 March 1922 Lionel Curtis sent a memo to the British Cabinet urging them to reduce the size of the USC: "The British Government has armed and is paying for that force but, without question, the government of Northern Ireland controls it...they have assumed the military functions specifically reserved to the British Government simply by calling their forces police." The Deputy Controller of Finance at the British Treasury stated that the military was concerned that the USC posed a threat to peace: "The military authorities and indeed all but the extreme Orange regard these Specials not only as unnecessary but as very dangerous to peace."
The Irish nationalist press was less reserved. The Fermanagh Herald noted the opposition of Irish nationalists:
Vice Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet in the official History of the Ulster Special Constabulary, contended that "Sinn Fein regarded the Specials as an excuse for arming the Orangemen and an act even more atrocious than the creation of the 'Black and Tans'! Their fury was natural as they saw that the Specials might well mean that they would be unable to intimidate and subdue the North by Force. Their skilful propaganda set about blackening the image of Special Constables, trying to identify them with the worst elements of the Protestant mobs in Belfast. They sought to magnify and distort every incident and to stir up hatred of the force even before it started to function."