Revisionist line on role of RIC challenged
The RIC had been called on to surrender and had instead raised their rifles in response. As Dan Breen said: “It was their lives or ours” - and they had been given a chance.
It is true - as Ryle quotes Sean Moylan saying - that the RIC were not widely unpopular prior to 1916. Up to that time the force was one of a limited number of career opportunities open to Irishmen.
Yet they were still the agents of a foreign government which was not wholly accepted here. There was no Irish police force to join - just as there wasn’t an Irish army or Irish government.
While many of their duties were mundane, they were also used extensively by the British establishment to spy on Irish people. All IRA veterans’ accounts agree that the RIC were the ‘eyes and ears’ of the British, and were essential, especially after 1916, in arrest raids on volunteers.
In 1918 the Irish people democratically mandated Sinn Féin to establish a Republic with Dáil Éireann at its head. The RIC - the Irish origin of many rank-and-file notwithstanding - were immediately employed by their British masters to nip this democratic development in the bud.
Many younger RIC members especially saw the way things stood and resigned. Some had to be encouraged by boycotting or even the threat of a bullet. Some actively aided the IRA.
Those who stayed on and continued to harass the republican movement - civil or military - knowingly put themselves in the firing line.
The tragedy of the RIC is that it provided the British establishment with a political tool to suppress the Irish people’s expressed will for self-determination. The fact that many rank-and-file were Irish compounds the tragedy. Ryle Dwyer would have done well to quote Moylan a little further: “The man who takes up arms against an invader is lauded a hero - in Poland, tuigeann tú - but here in Ireland (he was) deemed a murderer by those who controlled all the organs of publicity.”
Nick Folley
36 Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
