Tag Archives: Constáblacht Ríoga na hÉireann (Royal Irish Constabulary)

Truth Is The First Casualty Of War

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Cecil O'Donovan, age 18, and his brother Aidan, age 14, murdered by the Royal Irish Constabulary, 20.02.1921

Cecil O’Donovan, age 18, and his brother Aidan, age 14, murdered by the Royal Irish Constabulary, 20.02.1921

Last Monday I watched the second part of TV3’s drama-documentary series, “In the Name of the Republic”, where once again Eunan O’Halpin claimed to offer an analysis of the alleged actions of the Irish Republican Army during the Revolution of 1916-1923. Despite a few days of thinking it over and trying to see some historical value in the whole exercise it is hard to escape the impression that the programme (like the one before it) was anything other than some weirdly anachronistic anti-Irish Republican propaganda film. If fact it could have come straight from the film archives of the British Imperial War Museum, stamped 1921.

Stripped of the shallow pretence of balance it was obvious that the documentary makers had set out to “prove” that the men and women who fought to defend Irish democracy at the start of the 20th century were simply “terrorists” and “murderers” lacking in any sort of electoral mandate or support. In fact, going further, the programme all but justified British colonial rule in Ireland by taking the point of view of the country’s British paramilitary police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British judicial system, the British Occupation Forces and individual members of the Irish population who actively supported or collaborated with British rule.

I suppose if the Revisionist fringe of academia in the southern United States can produce books and movies to “prove” that the Confederacy was actually a paragon of democracy and morality with hundreds of thousands of happy-go-lucky slaves then why not a “reform” of Colonial Ireland? What is it that the Neo-Confederates in the United States now demand as the proper title of the internecine conflict that scarred the nation during the mid-1800s? It’s no longer the American Civil War, it’s now the War Between the States. Or should that be the War of Northern Aggression? 

So what’s next for our own Irish Revisionist tendency? Will the Irish War of Independence become the War of Irish Aggression? Some Neo-Unionists in Ireland are already half-way there with their favoured meme of the moment: the Irish Terror. Not as in the Irish being terrorized by their then colonial rulers from Britain.  Oh no. It’s the other way around. The Irish terrorized the British – and the Irish terrorized the Irish. Or so they would have us believe. And sure, if the facts of history don’t fit that interpretation don’t worry, they will be ignored or replaced with some home-made ones of their own. It worked before. Just ask Peter Hart.

Perhaps I should leave it to others to offer a more studied opinion of the televised theatrics of the TV3 documentary? Professor John Borgonovo has his say in the Irish Examiner:

“In the first episode, viewers met an aged Co Laois man who related his boyhood encounter with a neighbouring farmer, who claimed he had dug up a body while ploughing his field, one of three corpses supposedly buried there by the IRA.

Series host Prof Eunan O’Halpin (of Trinity College Dublin) told the audience his research had uncovered two civilians abducted by the Tipperary IRA and “never seen again”. The rest of the episode attempted to prove his theory that they were interred in this Laois field.

At considerable expense, a team of forensic archaeologists dug up the fine pasture, before informing O’Halpin that no corpses could be located. Meanwhile, O’Halpin travelled to Dublin to request the release of Department of Justice files relating to his two missing men.

The episode concluded with O’Halpin opening the sealed files, only to learn that both had survived the conflict. They were never killed by the IRA, much less secretly buried in Laois. The obvious lesson here is: Finish your research before you rent the JCB.

Undeterred, in the second episode, O’Halpin moves to more fertile ground in Cork City and Knockraha, a village a few miles east of Cork. In recent years, the area has attracted considerable speculation about the killing of alleged informers, especially Protestants.

Much interest stems from Gerard Murphy’s 2011 book, The Year of Disappearances, which received overwhelmingly negative reviews from historians concerned by his over-reliance on folklore and supposition. Murphy’s unlikely theories of covert revolutionary activity in Cork included the IRA’s unrecorded killing of up to 30 Freemasons in the spring of 1922, and the drowning of Protestant schoolchildren by IRA intelligence agent Josephine Brown.

The absence of such dramatic events in contemporary and later records (civilian, military, governmental, and religious) leads me to conclude that they did not occur. I was surprised, therefore, by the sight of Murphy relating additional theories for In the Name of the Republic.”

Surprise is one way of putting it. But then birds of a feather an’ all that.

Meanwhile historian John Dorney, who’s truly excellent website The Irish Story has gone to great lengths to present a dispassionate and fair evaluation of the revolutionary period, examines the issue of the 200 “murders” Eunan O’Halpin alleges were carried out by the Irish Republican Army:

“Immediately this set alarm bells ringing. In 2012, O’Halpin published the first results of his and Daithí Ó Corráin’s research, which revealed that the IRA in the War of Independence, was responsible for 281 of the 898 civilian fatalities, with British forces being responsible for 381. A further 236 deaths could not be confidently attributed to any party (the IRA, loyalist, rioters, undercover Crown forces).

This brings up two questions – first of all, where did all the extra ‘disappeared’ victims come from? There was no effort made in the programme to verify this figure of 200 secret killings by the IRA. Secondly, given that state forces actually killed more civilians, why was this not given greater prominence in the programme?

Even worse was the programme quoting the Royal Irish Constabulary as an impartial witness to events. An RIC DI was quoted saying,  ‘People are afraid to be associated with the forces of the crown’, by an IRA – ‘system of universal terrorism’, and called for the ‘extermination of these bandits’. What else would a party to a counter insurgency campaign say?

In the second part, looking at County Cork, it was alleged that the IRA Cork Number 1 Brigade, which covered north Cork and the city, abducted and killed up to 90 victims and secretly buried them on the farm of one Martin Corry.

Corry claimed in his IRA pension that 27 bodies were buried on his farm and in a bog (now forest) called Knockraha. In recordings in the 1970s he claimed that there were ’60 even’. The problem with this testimony is that there does not seem to have been 60, 90 or even 30 victims missing that could fit into the alleged mass graves. Corry for instance told local historian Jim Fitzgerald that 17 ‘Camerons’ (of the Highland Cameron regiment) were buried there. In fact, John Borgonovo tells us, the regiment had only 3 men missing in its time in Cork.

I am informed that Jim Fitzgerald himself estimates that between Corry’s farm and Knockraha there may be 15 bodies buried. The figure of 90 secret deaths comes from Gerard Murphy, whose book, the Year of the Disappearances, was rightly savaged here on the Irish Story by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc for presenting supposition as evidence.

But there was no evidence presented for scores of disappeared civilians. Nor for tendentious talk about the Cork IRA’s campaign of ‘extortion’ and ‘torture’. The casual viewer would never have guessed that the IRA represented a political movement with overwhelming electoral support in the elections of 1918 and 1920.

…this was a bafflingly biased programme. It presented and inflated all the bad things the IRA did, shorn of context while proposing a thesis of hundreds of disappeared which was never even remotely proved.

So why the sensational anti-republican tone of ‘In the Name of the Republic’?

There is nothing to be gained by treating nationalist history as a sacred cow but nothing either by making radical claims unsupported by evidence.”

But that begs the question, is there nothing to be gained by the falsification of Irish history as it relates to the War of Independence? Or are there in fact real political gains to be made by inflicting untold damage on the Irish people’s understanding of their own history? Are we seeing in Ireland a larger “culture war”, as has been witnessed in the United States, over the nation’s past, present and future? A war played out in the pages of our national newspapers every week, and on our radios and TVs? The United States has Glenn Beck or Fox News. We have Kevin Myers or the Sunday Independent. In the struggle between Progressives and Regressives in Ireland the Irish Revolution represents the greatest loss of status and influence for the latter. Is it any wonder that they wish to contest it, even in retrospect?

And what about Ireland’s British-owned television channel TV3? Some more analysis and dramatic re-enactments of supposed events from world history in a series of exciting new TV programmes? Perhaps the “truth” about Anne Frank? Or a sympathetic examination of the Lost Cause? But after the farce of the last two weeks will anyone be watching?

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In The Name Of History

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Mutilated remains of Harry Loughnane Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army tortured to death by the Royal Irish Constabulary 1920

The mutilated remains of Harry Loughnane, age 22, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his older brother Patrick, age 29, by the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, Britain’s loathed colonial police force in Ireland, 1920

I’ve just finished watching a history-documentary (and I use that term advisedly) on Ireland’s British-owned private television channel, TV3, called “In The Name of the Republic”. Presented by Eunan O’Halpin it set out to investigate the alleged “disappearance” of some 200 Irish people during the Irish Revolution, supposedly executed by the Irish Republican Army as part of its struggle against the British Occupation Forces from 1918-1923. Beginning with an archaeological dig searching for the corpses of three men found shot dead in 1921/22 by a local “eccentric” farmer the program goes on in drama-documentary style to present a case for the mass and indiscriminate murder by the IRA during Ireland’s War of Independence of countless innocent civilians (who may or may not have been British spies or informers, officers of the feared British paramilitary police, the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, or soldiers of the British Army).

Of course the archaeological dig failed to uncover any evidence of any murdered men (spies or otherwise), despite the fact that the program makers offered us some identities for two of the three supposed victims, complete with dramatic reconstructions of their capture and deaths. However (and quite bizarrely) at the end of the program we were told that the two suggested victims actually survived the conflict completely unharmed.

Not only do we not have the bodies of the ”murdered” we don’t even have any suggestions for who was “murdered”. In fact we don’t have any evidence that any “murders” happened in the first place! What we do have is a supposed drama-documentary from the Peter Hart school of Irish history, with a hefty dollop of Gerard Murphy (of which more here).

By the by, if any historians are looking for murder victims from the Irish Revolution with, you know, real actual identities and, hey, actually physical remains, here they are. The photographs above and below are of Patrick and Harry Loughnane, aged 29 and 22, both Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, detained, tortured and murdered by members of the RIC’s Auxiliary Division in November 1920. From Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc’s article that featured on The Irish Story in 2012:

“The Loughnane brothers were arrested in daylight at their family home at Shanaglish, Co. Galway on the 26th November 1920. Their partially burned and mutilated bodies were discovered in a pond near Ardrahan on 5th December that year. The two brothers had been tied to the back of an R.I.C. lorry and forced to run behind it until they collapsed from exhaustion and were dragged along the road. Both of Pat’s wrists, legs and arms were broken. His skull was fractured and there were diamond shaped wounds, resembling the cap badge worn by the RIC Auxiliaries, carved into his torso. Harry’s body was missing two fingers; his right arm was broken and nearly severed from his body. Nothing was left of Harry’s face except for his chin and lips. A doctor who examined the Loughnane’s bodies stated that the cause of death was “laceration of the skull and the brain.” The attached photographs of the brothers’ bodies at the time of their discovery show some of the horrific injuries they suffered. The same month that the Loughnane brothers were killed, members of the RIC in Galway also killed a pregnant woman and a Catholic priest.”

Mutilated body of Patrick Loughnane Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army tortured to death by the Royal Irish Constabulary 1920

The mutilated body of Patrick Loughnane, age 29, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his younger brother Harry, age 22, by the Royal Irish Constabulary, Britain’s feared colonial police force in Ireland, 1920

If I might also add, all that archive film shown in the “documentary” of supposed victims of violence by the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence, including men, women and children made homeless sitting in ditches at the side of the road? They were actually from a contemporary newsreel showing Irish civilians hiding in the fields of north County Dublin following the Sack of Balbriggan. That is the burning of the small Irish coastal village of Balbriggan by the British Occupation Forces in 1920.

Irish refugees hiding in the countryside following the Sack of Balbriggan

Irish refugees hiding in the countryside following the Sack of Balbriggan, the destruction by the British Occupation Forces of the small village of Balbriggan during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1920

A column of Irish refugees fleeing the ruins of their homes following the Sack of Balbriggan

A column of Irish refugees fleeing the ruins of their homes following the Sack of Balbriggan by the British Occupation Forces during the Irish War of Independence, Ireland, 1920

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Cutting Through The Lies

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An Irish family forced from their home by the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC as their land is siezed by a British colonial landlord during the Land War, Ireland, 1879

Two excellent articles debunking the recent attempts by Pro-British and Neo-Unionist apologist-historians and journalists to rewrite Irish history with the aim of “rehabilitating” the memory of Britain’s colonial police force in Ireland, the detested Royal Irish Constabulary.

Historian Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc has a short but searing study over on The Irish Story, while Alfie Gallagher has a more personal examination on the Pensive Quill.

Below are the photographs of the bodies of Patrick and Harry Loughnane, aged 29 and 22, both Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, detained, tortured and murdered by members of the RIC’s Auxiliary Division in November 1920. From Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc’s article with The Irish Story:

“The Loughnane brothers were arrested in daylight at their family home at Shanaglish, Co. Galway on the 26th November 1920. Their partially burned and mutilated bodies were discovered in a pond near Ardrahan on 5th December that year. The two brothers had been tied to the back of an R.I.C. lorry and forced to run behind it until they collapsed from exhaustion and were dragged along the road. Both of Pat’s wrists, legs and arms were broken. His skull was fractured and there were diamond shaped wounds, resembling the cap badge worn by the RIC Auxiliaries, carved into his torso. Harry’s body was missing two fingers; his right arm was broken and nearly severed from his body. Nothing was left of Harry’s face except for his chin and lips. A doctor who examined the Loughnane’s bodies stated that the cause of death was “laceration of the skull and the brain.” The attached photographs of the brothers’ bodies at the time of their discovery show some of the horrific injuries they suffered. The same month that the Loughnane brothers were killed, members of the RIC in Galway also killed a pregnant woman and a Catholic priest.”

The mutilated body of Patrick Loughnane, age 29, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his younger brother Harry, age 22, by the Royal Irish Constabulary, Britain’s feared colonial police force in Ireland, 1920

The mutilated remains of Harry Loughnane, age 22, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his older brother Patrick, age 29, by the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, Britain’s loathed colonial police force in Ireland, 1920

And these are the people certain Irish journalists, including former members of the Gardaí, wish to celebrate?

Lies, Dammed Lies And The Pro-British Regressives

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The Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, the British Empire’s colonial police force in Ireland

Rewriting Irish history?

That seems to be the main concern of the contemporary Pro-British faction in modern Ireland. These anachronistic, post-colonial throwbacks are currently engaged in a long-running campaign to rehabilitate the memory of the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, Britain’s paramilitary police force in Ireland during the colonial occupation.

Like the Far Right and Neo-Nazi revisionists in France who are trying to repackage the record of the the Vichy Regime and the infamous Milice française, the Neo-Unionist extreme here are engaged in the political whitewashing of our collective history and the attempted brainwashing of an entire generation of Irish people. A generation who will never know the ever-present fear of the RIC that our great-grandparents and those before them knew. Unless one was raised in the North of Ireland, where the RIC’s direct successor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, continued to operate as Britain’s colonial enforcers in Ireland, the dread of the British terror machine is but a fact in the pages of a history book. Not the reality of everyday life.

An Irish family forced from their home by the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC as their land is siezed by a British colonial landlord during the Land War, Ireland, 1879

This “revisionist” censorship is no more evident than in the columns of our national newspapers where the media elite, shaped by the views and politics of the British apologists amongst them, beat a steady drum roll of Neo-Unionist propaganda. From the Herald:

“THE 90th anniversary of the disbandment of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary takes place this week.

Nearly 500 — mostly native Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant — were murdered during the War of Independence by the IRA, writes Gerry O’Carroll.

Some were shot dead as they left mass with their families, others ambushed while outnumbered.

But why does the State still refuse to recognise the men of the RIC and DMP who died in the War of Independence and 1916? Most were innocent policemen doing their duty.

Is it not time to honour those who gave their lives while serving to uphold the law, even if it was administered by a colonial British government?”

Innocent policemen? Innocent policemen who enforced, through violence and the threat of violence, British colonial rule in Ireland. Innocent policemen based in fortified barracks across our island nation, organised and trained in infantry formations and tactics, armed with revolvers and rifles, bribed with money and status, who garrisoned and terrorised entire communities. Innocent policemen who corrupted thousands of men, women and children, turning them into spies and informers in a web of treachery and deceit unknown outside of some Middle East dictatorship. As well celebrate the Stasi of the former East Germany or the Mukhabarat of Saddam Hussein.

And notice the terminology? “Murdered”. “Outnumbered”. What an utter distortion and abuse of history, of historical truths unpalatable to the Pro-British (pro-colonial?) mindset.

These people do not wish to simply rewrite Irish history. They wish to reverse it too.

Proud Of The Gardaí – Ashamed Of The RIC

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Thomas Hand, a popular Sinn Féin politician in north Dublin, presiding at a Republican Arbitration Court assisted by his wife, a Cumann na mBan activist, in Skerries, 1920. Within a month of this photo being taken Hand was murdered by members of the RIC who dragged him from his home and shot him in the back of the head.

An Garda Síochána or “The Peace Guard” is Ireland’s national police service; a largely unarmed, civilian police force carefully regulated by law and democratically mandated by the people of Ireland through their parliament, Dáil Éireann.

The Garda is the direct successor of the Irish Republican Police, the law enforcement arm of Dáil Éireann during Ireland’s War of Independence, an organisation some of whose members, like their Garda descendants, never carried weapons.

The Royal Irish Constabulary (or RIC), on the other hand, was Britain’s colonial police force in Ireland. It was a heavily armed paramilitary organisation quartered in fortified bases or stations throughout the island of Ireland, enforcing British rule and British laws in the country. As well as infantry training and tactics drawn from the British Armed Forces it was equipped with the best of weapons, modern rifles and handguns, motorcars and lorries, telephones and telegraph systems, at a time when such things were not widely available to the wider population.

It’s prime purpose was not simply keeping the peace or tackling crime but rather fighting a constant counter-insurgency struggle against Irish Nationalism and Republicanism. As a consequence of this forever war against the democratic wishes or aspirations of the Irish people the RIC maintained a vast network of paid spies and informers throughout Irish society. Dublin Castle, the formal seat of British colonial rule for centuries, was regarded as the spider at the centre of the RIC web that stretched across the entire island of Ireland, one that was feared, loathed and hated.

One would think then that contemporary Ireland would regard those Irishmen who served in the RIC as misguided at best, traitors at worse. And that indeed is the case. However, there exists a post-colonial, pro-British faction who wish to rewrite Ireland’s history, who believe that they can censor and delete those aspects of British rule in Ireland that most sane or right-thinking people would disdain and instead present a sanitised, purified version. They exist in the same cultural milieu as those British historians who are currently rewriting the history of the British Empire, presenting it as a force of good in global affairs not, as it demonstrably was, a force of great evil, pain and suffering. These apologists have permeated Ireland’s media and now they are reaching their tentacles into An Garda Síochána, using its image in a desperate attempt to rehabilitate the memory of the RIC by associating that detested paramilitary police force in the mind of the general public with our respected civilian police service, a patently false and anti-historical act.

During the Irish War of Independence the different factions of the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC pose for the British war cameras. The infamous Black and Tans and Auxies, Cork City, 1920.

The Irish Independent and Sunday Independent are the two “newspapers” that are most readily identifiable with the modern manifestation of the pro-British faction and predictably they are cheerleading the repackaging of Ireland’s very own Milice.

“An unofficial and low-key ceremony looks set to take place in Glasnevin Cemetery next weekend to commemorate the 493 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary killed during the War of Independence.

A number of retired gardai along with the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Foundation, whose patron is Prince Charles, sought permission earlier this year to formally commemorate the anniversary of the disbandment with an ecumenical service at the cemetery. Despite not getting official approval, the group decided to go ahead with the ceremony.

Two years ago the Garda Síochána Retired Members Association adopted a motion at its annual conference to specifically commemorate the disbandment of the RIC. Talks had taken place with the RUC’s retired members’ association and, it is understood, with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and the British government’s Home Office which has responsibility for the upkeep of the RIC plots in Glasnevin Cemetery.

The association adopted a motion at its annual delegate meeting in 2010 stating: “That the ADM directs the central committee to use all the means and influence at its disposal to have a monument or plaque erected at a suitable site in the Republic of Ireland to commemorate the 493 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary who lost their lives between 1st January 1, 1919, and June 30, 1922.””

I am proud of An Garda Síochána. But I am disgusted by those who would damage the reputation of that organisation by associating it with Britain’s colonial police force in Ireland or the Neo-Unionist cabal who wish to rewrite the history of their political antecedents, Ireland’s Vichy faction.

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Guns For Hire – From RIC To RUC

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In the 1920s, following the British defeat in Ireland’s War of Independence, many serving members of Britain’ paramilitary police force in Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), went on to become “guns-for-hire” throughout the waning British Empire. What they failed to do in Ireland, the defeat of an anti-colonial revolution, they attempted to do in many an outpost of the Pax Britannica. The most infamous of these ex-RIC officers were the former gunmen of the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve (the loathed Black and Tans) and the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (the notoriously barbaric Auxies). Many ended up in the Middle East fighting with Britain’s Palestinian Police Force, the Transjordan Frontier Force and other paramilitary outfits against Arab and Israeli nationalists while others served in India and the Far East.

A decade after Britain’s compromise peace in the North of Ireland some former members of the British paramilitary police force in the north-east of the country, the hated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), are once again turning up in Britain’s overseas conflicts, in an eerie rerun of history. Journalist and Irish civil rights activist Eamonn McCann touches upon this in an article for CounterPunch:

“Norman Baxter may find policing in Kabul these days more congenial than policing in Belfast. The former RUC and PSNI Detective Chief Superintendant is one of a number of senior Northern Ireland police officers who have decided that the new, reformed force is not for them, have taken redundancy and signed up with a private firm of “security consultants” with a contract from the Pentagon to help train the new Afghan police force.

Since leaving the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2008, Baxter has spoken and written of his anger and frustration at changes which have seemed to him to belittle the sacrifices of Royal Ulster Constabulary in the long fight against the IRA and at policies brought in under the peace process which he believes now hamper the force in its continuing fight against terrorism. A year and a half ago, Baxter joined New Century, founded and led by Belfast-born Tim Collins, a commander in the Royal Irish Rangers.

He has been joined in the upper echelons of New Century by a cluster of colleagues, including Mark Cochrane, former RUC officer in charge of covert training; David Sterritt, a 29-year RUC/PSNI veteran and specialist in recruitment and assessment of agents; Joe Napolitano, 25 years in the RUC/PSNI, retiring as a Detective Inspector running intelligence-led policing operations; Raymond Sheehan, 29 years a Special Branch agent handler; Leslie Woods, 27 years in the RUC/PSNI, with extensive Special Branch handling the selection, assessment and training of officers for covert intelligence-led operations. And many others.”

The whole article is essential reading for anyone wanting to know why the echoes of Britain’s dirty war in Ireland continue to rumble so loudly. And why it continues to be unfinished business.

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When Policemen Want To Commemorate A Police State Its Time To Worry…

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I’m really thinking of setting up a regular “Only In Ireland” series here at An Sionnach Fionn, just so I can take into account the madness, the sheer schizophrenic, self-hating insanity of the colonial mindset in Ireland. For only in Ireland could one come across a shameless rewriting of history of the type presented by Jim Cusack, the Security Correspondent(!) of the Irish Independent newspaper, today. Be warned. You may want to hold your nose before reading this:

“RETIRED Gardaí are seeking permission from the Government to erect a monument in Glasnevin Cemetery to 500 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, including the ‘Black and Tans’, who were killed by the IRA in the War of Independence.

The Garda Siochana Retired Members Association has written to Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister for Justice Alan Shatter seeking the go-ahead to erect a monument in an existing plot in the cemetery, which is famous for its links to 1916 and the War of Independence.

Retired Garda Pat McCarthy, who has headed the campaign to have the RIC commemorated, said the time had come for the State to recognise all who were killed in the War of Independence.”

Yes, that’s right. You really did just read that. Members of An Garda Síochána, the democratically-mandated, unarmed civilian police service of Ireland, want to erect a monument to the members of an anti-democratic, armed paramilitary police force which upheld and enforced colonial rule in Ireland for decades.

The fact that most (but not all) of those RIC members were born on the island of Ireland does not give them a get out of jail free card (no pun intended). Nor do pleas about the dire economic times they lived in, or loyalty to the existing order, or following family traditions or that they were simply doing their job serve as an excuse either. If those were legitimate reasons for the most heinous of crimes then those who collaborated with the Axis Forces in Occupied Europe, or those who wrought murder and mayhem in the Balkans at the turn of the century are just as innocent and just as worthy of commemoration. Should someone phone up the Hague? All those war criminals you’ve got under lock and key: let them go. They were just following orders.

How familiar a call is that?

Be under no illusions. The RIC officers who served in Ireland during the War of Independence followed their orders. And those orders meant burned villages and towns, assassinations and executions, tortured men and women (and sexually assaulted and raped women. Yes, the British Forces – RIC included – raped Irish women and girls during the conflict in untold numbers), orphaned children, refugees and all the horrifying theatre of colonial warfare. The brutality of the British Forces was not simply the infamous “Black and Tans”, or “Auxies”, or regular British “Tommies”. It was not simply British men in British uniforms. It was Irish men in British uniforms. Many, many of whom believed themselves to be as British as anyone born in Britain. These were the RIC. The real RIC. They were not harmless country policemen: big red faces and big red hands, cycling to mass, a friendly clip around the ear for errant waifs and a sing-song in the local pub. They were the eyes and ears and willing hands of the British Empire.

The men and women of the Irish Revolution were hard people capable of hard deeds. Where do we think they came from? And who the hell do we think made them like that? Ask the RIC. They could have told you. From famine to insurrection, they were there. The British boot on the neck of the Irish people.

As someone who comes from a “Garda family”, my relatives look to Óglaigh na hÉireann, the Irish Republican Army and the Irish Republican Police for their origins, and are incredibly proud of that inheritance. They see no line of succession between themselves and the Royal Irish Constabulary and would reject any such claim. Perhaps those who claim otherwise have different loyalties? And agendas?

“The Irish Independent columnist and historian Kevin Myers said: “There is this mystique about flying columns of IRA men fighting the British army, but for the most part the killing was of RIC men, some coming out of Mass or in front of their families when off-duty.

“Many were killed on patrol and always in ambushes, where 20 or 30 IRA men were involved in killing these policemen, who were alone or in two-man patrols.”

He agreed that they should be remembered.”

I’m sure he did. Kevin Myers, the “historian” of Irish counter-history.

Next week the Waffen SS. Overeager social workers and town planners or mass murderers and war criminals? You decide.

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