IN MARCH 1920 British recruits to the Royal Irish Constabulary began to arrive in Ireland.

Their scruffy, improvised uniforms of khaki and black soon gave them their nickname: the Black and Tans.

No fewer than 8,000 British fighting men were sent across the Irish Sea in yet another attempt to quell the rebellious Irish.

This was no well-disciplined army in smart uniforms, but a ragged band of mostly unemployed ex-servicemen, back from the trenches of the first world war and recruited to support the Royal Irish Constabulary, which was losing the battle against the newly formed Irish Republican Army.

The IRA had been formed in 1917 from Irish Volunteers, members of the Irish Citizens Army, members of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood and other republican groupings.

In 1919 the brand new independent Irish Parliament, the Dail Eireann, had declared the IRA the official army of the new Irish Republic.

It had other things to deal with too. Some 25,000 Irish people were dying from the post-first-world-war flu pandemic.

Some 800,000 had the disease in Ireland and unlike today many of the fatal victims were young and healthy.

In January 1919 British prime minister David Lloyd George had appointed a post-war peacetime Cabinet with Winston Churchill as secretary of state for war.



Just as Churchill had to scrape the barrel to find men for his new force, he had the same problem with uniforms and equipment.

He outfitted his motley band in a mixture of well-used second-hand police uniforms and ex-army khaki.

The Irish, a nation of natural poets, soon came up with the perfect name for these scruffy invaders. They called them Black and Tans.

The Irish war of independence was a guerilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the IRA and British forces along with the paramilitary Royal Irish Constabulary.

By 1920 the British needed extra forces — first came the Auxiliaries, then the Black and Tans.

In all about 7,000 Black and Tans served in Ireland, the last of them leaving in 1922. One in three left the service early.

At least two former Black and Tans were hanged for murder in Britain and another wanted for murder committed suicide before the police could arrest him.

In April 1916, Irish republicans had launched the Easter Rising, proclaiming an Irish Republic. The British crushed the rising and shot the leaders, including murdering an injured James Connolly tied to a chair.

If the British thought this would quell the Irish they could not have been more wrong. In fact the rising and the British response led to greater popular support for Irish independence.

In the December 1918 election, the republican party Sinn Fein won a landslide victory.

On January 21 1919 it formed a government — Dail Eireann — and declared an Irish republic.

That day, two Royal Irish Constabulary officers were shot dead by IRA volunteers acting on their own initiative.

The conflict developed gradually. For much of 1919, IRA activity involved capturing weapons and freeing republican prisoners, while the Dail set about building the new Irish state.

In September, the British government tried to outlaw the Dail and Sinn Fein and the conflict heated up.

The IRA began ambushing Royal Irish Constabulary and British army patrols, attacking barracks and forcing isolated barracks to be abandoned.

The Black and Tans became notorious for ill-discipline and reprisal attacks on civilians.

This led to some calling the conflict the Black and Tan War.

Recently we have discovered the substantial role women played in the Irish war of independence and indeed in the battles against the Black and Tans.

Prior to Easter 1916, many republican women were brought together through women’s suffrage organisations.

James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army had always promoted equality between men and women, many Irish suffragettes, including Constance Markiewicz, joined Connolly’s movement that brought together suffragettes, socialists and republicans.

The primary women’s republican group that would fight in the war of independence, Cumann na mBan – the Women’s Council – was launched in 1914. It organised 9,000 women in 800 local groups.

During the Easter Rising of 1916, Cumann na mBan members fought alongside the men.

Markiewicz, for instance, took command of St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, where she shot a policeman.

Other women acted as dispatch carriers, travelling between Irish Volunteer Posts while under fire by British forces.

Women could often get through where men would be shot or detained.

After the Easter defeat, the British shot Connolly, Patrick Pearse and the other leaders.

The more traditionalist Eamon de Valera — who escaped the death penalty as a US citizen — opposed the participation of women in combat.

Feisty republican women mostly ignored de Valera and refused to give up playing an active role in the war of independence.

Republican women also engaged in undercover work against the British war effort. They smuggled guns, ammunition and money to the IRA.

One, Kathleen Clarke, smuggled gold worth £2,000 — over £100,000 in today’s money — from Limerick city to Dublin for IRA leader Michael Collins.

Many women were subject to raids on their homes by British soldiers and the Black and Tans, this often involved rape and other sexual violence.

Civil disobedience was an important part of the Irish struggle, as it was in many other countries striving to throw off the heavy yoke of British imperialism.

Trade unions, too, had their role. For instance Irish railway workers refused to transport British troops or military supplies.

On the morning of Bloody Sunday, November 21 1920, 14 British police spies were assassinated all across Dublin by members of Michael Collins’ Squad — a specially picked group of IRA men working undercover.

That afternoon the British took their revenge. Royal Irish Constabulary armoured cars crashed through the gates of Croke Park Gaelic Football Ground and opened fire on the huge crowd. They killed 14 civilians and wounded another 65.

A week later, 17 Auxiliaries were killed by the IRA in an ambush in Co Cork.

In response the British government declared martial law. In December British troops set the centre of Cork City aflame.

The battles continued to escalate over the next seven months, with Dublin, Belfast and Co Cork seeing most of the fighting. Over 1,000 people were killed and 4,500 republicans interned.



In May 1921 Britain divided Ireland, declaring six counties in the North a separate province, and signed the Anglo Irish Treaty, ending British rule in 26 counties of Ireland.

Michael Collins was head of the Irish negotiating team at the London talks. With him were Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein, Eamon Duggan, George Gavin Duffy and Robert Barton. Erskine Childers went as secretary.



At last most Irish women and men had achieved what they had fought so long for — a free and independent Ireland.

Not everyone in Ireland was happy with the treaty and the battle for a united Ireland of all 32 counties would go on. A century later, it remains unresolved.