Ouch, Mr Punch!
Sir,–The last History Ireland (Spring 1994) contains many good things. Alas, the review of R.F. Foster’s Paddy and Mr Punch by Gerardine Meaney is not one of them. This isprecisely the kind of writing which will render your magazine completely unreadable outside any but the most narrow of academic circles. It is not simply a question of approach but also of style and quality of writing. Gerardine Meaney’s arid, jargon ridden references to ‘complex negotiation between negation and affirmation’, ‘something deeply reductionist’ and ‘engagements’ with ‘post-colonial critics’ are pretentious and very boring. Most importantly the article tells the reader next to nothing about the book itself and gives not an inkling of the pleasures and insights to be derived from it. I know that if you avoid publishing this kind of article you will give greater enjoyment to your readers and thus increase your circulation.
With warm regards and every good wish for your venture
FRANCIS CHAMBERLAIN
53 Pyecroft Street,
Handbridge,
Chester,
England.
Black and Tans?
Sir, – In the article by Brian Murphy on the first Dail Eireann (HI spring994) there is a photograph with the caption ‘The British response ?Black and Tans in action, 23 November 1920′. The two uniformed men in this picture are not Black and Tans but members of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, as their distinctive tam-o’-shanter bonnets make clear.
The Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries were markedly different I forces and I think it is undesirable to use the term ‘Black and Tan’ to cover both.
Constables, known as Black and Tans, were recruited in Britain to reinforce the RIC from January 1920. Some 9,500 men, mainly former soldiers and sailors from the south of England, joined over the following two years. After training in Dublin, they were dispersed to barracks to serve alongside regular Irish RIC con stables and by the end of 1920 their mixed police-military uniform, which had given them their name, had been replaced by the dark green RIC uni form. In theory they were ordinary police constables.
The Auxiliaries, on the other hand,were ex-army officers recruited as temporary officer cadets for the RIC. Recruitment began in July 1920 and some 1,800 men joined between then and the end of 1921. But the Auxiliary Division was a separate body from the RIC, under the command of an ex-Ulster Volunteer Forcefficer, Frank Crozier. Heavily armed and motorised, its role was to support the RIC and co-operate with the army in the most ‘disaffected’ areas’Auxies’ never wore RIC uniforms and in fact acted as an independent force, often beyond the control of anyone, including their own officers. Crozier himself was driven to resign because of their indiscipline.
So the civilian in your photograph is not being arrested by police constables, even by English-born RIC constables in quasi-military uniforms. He is being searched by members of a ruthless, elite paramilitary force which was virtually a law unto itself. If he was taken by them, one does not envy his fate. ? Yours etc.,
ELIZABETH MALCOLM
Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, England
[Point taken, but it seems that in this particular case they were neither Black and Tans nor Auxiliaries but actors! Read on below…]
Sir, ? The unaccredited photo The British response ? Black and Tans in action, 23 November 1920′ is in fact a film still from a British propaganda newsreel shot (so to speak) in Vico Road, Killiney. The photo has been used, captioned correctly, in a number of books, including Tim Pat Coogan’s biography of Michael Collins where it appears close to an actual photo of the sack of Balbriggan taken some two months after th eevent of 20/21 September 1920.
Perhaps you would consider commissioning an article on the relationship between history and propaganda, such as, for example, the creative freedoms which distance recent movies like In the Name of the Father and Schindler’s List from the historical realities which inspired them.
Yours, etc.,
MEDB RUANE
31 Royal Terrace West, Dun Laoghaire.