Osprey - Essential Histories 065 - The Anglo-Irish War 1913-1922

Warring sides 21
their popularity. Despite their stations being
called barracks they were in reality ordinary
houses, rather than military installations,
accommodating up to half-a-dozen men, and
resembled rural police houses elsewhere in
the UK. The most controversial elements of
the RIC were the Temporary Constables and
the Temporary Cadets of the ADRIC (or
'Auxies'). Because of kit shortages the
Temporary Constables were forced to wear
a mixture of RIC green and army khaki
uniforms, and soon they were nicknamed
Black and Tans after a famous pack of
hunting hounds. Despite their folk-myth
image, the Tans were never a separate
organization but short-service policemen who
served alongside the Regular RIC. What made
them stand out was that many of them were
not Irish (although a significant number of
them were). Incidentally, the British public
did not view the 26 per cent of mainland
British policemen who had been born in
Ireland as foreigners.
The Auxies are often confused with the
Tans and erroneously treated as the same.
They were not. The ADRIC were mostly
ex-officers recruited specifically to form
anti-IRA companies that would operate
independently of the rest of the RIC. Irish
folk-myth remembers the Tans as brutal
foreigners recruited from English gaols, but in
reality the 2,200 men of the ADRIC held 632
gallantry awards; Cadets George Onions and
James Leach had won the VC; Cadet Bernard
Beard MC had been a Brigadier General; and
many were Irish by birth. It is easy to forget
the long shadow that the First World War cast
over the young men who joined the RIC, or
even the IRA, after coming of age in the
RIC Auxiliaries in Cork 1921. (Courtesy of National
Library of Ireland. Photographic Archive)