A Force Divided: Policing Ireland 1900-60
Brian Griffin describes the forces that arose from the ashes of the Royal Irish Constabulary to face the very different problems of policing Ireland north and south.
One of the most pressing problems facing the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, the two new Irish states that emerged from the troubled 1916-22 period, was that of policing. Over the previous hundred years most of the country had been policed by the Royal Irish Constabulary. This armed, highly-trained body of men, most of whom lived in small barracks dotted throughout the Irish countryside, had borne the brunt of the Irish Republican Army’s guerrilla campaign, and the disbandment of the force in 1922 ushered in a new era in Irish police history.
The RIC, some 10,660 strong in 1900, had an intimate knowledge of the communities in which they were stationed, and the contemporary description of the force as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Dublin Castle authorities was well merited.
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