Early in the twentieth century, British Cabinet ministers recognised that their administration in Ireland was in a precarious position as republican insurgents battled to end rule by London. Employing a calculated policy of destabilisation, the insurgents had paralysed much of the country’s administration. Key to their strategy was a bloody campaign to immobilise the locally recruited Royal Irish Constabulary and thus undermine civil government in Ireland. 

The strategy was effective. Most of those who joined the Irish police did so to find employment and never anticipated fighting a protracted war against fellow countrymen.  Many, therefore, showed little heart for battle, often surrendering arms and police stations with only token resistance. Worse still from a British stand point were those Irish–born police officers who worked pro-actively for the insurgents, supplying rebel commanders with detailed and deadly intelligence.

Regular British troops were present in plenty but without a detailed knowledge of the population and terrain, were of limited use. In an attempt to bolster its law enforcement structures in Ireland, Britain’s government recruited ex-soldiers and sent them to Ireland as policemen hoping they could reinforce the rapidly disintegrating Royal Irish Constabulary. Winston Churchill claimed these men were selected for, “… their intelligence, their characters and their records in the war…”.   It was not, though, a view widely shared in Ireland. 

The new recruits were not ‘the dregs of the British criminal system’ as republican propagandists of the time claimed. They were however, unemployed, demobbed soldiers of the Great War who were to be paid between four and eight times the average workman’s wage for policing a country of which they had little understanding. In a hostile, dangerous arena, with few friends outside their barracks they drank often and heavily. And as ex-soldiers with little regard for the indigenous police or their structures, they interpreted discipline as military people do rather than how a constabulary would. The Dublin Police Journal had written on their arrival in March 1920 that these recruits were determined to make Ireland hell for rebels to live in and whatever about the rebels, they certainly created hell in Ireland.

Under pressure from London to crush insurrection, the British administration in Dublin turned a blind eye as these new police recruits vented their frustration and anger on the local population. When guerrilla insurgents proved difficult to pin down in the aftermath of frequent attacks, the ex-soldiers retaliated against civilians and their property. They were responsible for countless beatings; house wrecking and murderous attacks on civilians. In December 1920 they torched the entire commercial and administrative centre of Cork city.

While official British government statements at the time usually blamed the insurgents for all outrages, a significant section of English public opinion was under little doubt where the blame lay. Condemnation of what became known as ‘Black and Tannery’ poured from the Manchester Guardian, The Observer, The Daily News, Non Conforming ministers, Anglican Bishops, leading trade unionists, Liberal and Labour MPs and Communist Party speakers.  So damaging was the split in British public opinion that the Cabinet eventually offered to negotiate with the republican insurgents and agreed to independence for much of Ireland. What most enlightened British people of the period viewed as a proper option was achieved only after their government’s policies had traumatised Ireland and created a bitter legacy that lasted into the present century.

In a new century, there are disturbing echoes of a damaging practice being repeated in other theatres. Earlier this month, NATO sources reported the death of a security contractor in Afghanistan. The dead man, a former member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was part of a group supplied by private security firm New Century. Former British Army colonel Tim Collins leads the Guernsey based firm. According to the company’s website, the firm offers, "… the creation of a cohesive operational intelligence picture of local tribal, ethnic and social power …" and more ominously; "pre-emptive policing" to reduce violence.

It is unclear exactly what New Century does in Afghanistan. We can, however, view the decision of NATO installed president Hamid Karzai to give private security firms working in Afghanistan four months to end their operations, as a blunt criticism of such companies. According to Al Jazeera
(16 Aug 2010) Karzai has repeatedly called to have them banned saying they undermine his government’s security forces. "It's not about regulating the activities of private security companies, it's about their presence, it's about the way they function in Afghanistan ... all the problems they have created," Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, recently said.

Nor has criticism been confined to Afghan and Arab reporters. In February, US senate investigators said the contractor formerly known as Blackwater hired violent drug users to help train the Afghan army and declared "side arms for everyone'', even though employees were not authorised to carry weapons.

The company, now renamed Xe, is still employed by the US in Afghanistan.

Yet in spite of obvious parallels with the past, there is currently an almost total absence of criticism and indeed critique from the liberal British Establishment. We have always had progressive English radicals but when the enlightened middle ground disappears into anaemic ‘ConDemary’, prospects for a positive British input into a settlement in Afghan are greatly reduced.

The use of Black and Tans greatly exacerbated problems in Ireland of the 1920s and damaged relations for generations to come.  Re-spraying their contemporary equivalent, 90 years later, in olive green will surely not see an improved outcome when they are deployed elsewhere.

Tommy McKearney