4 - A Protestant Force: the Social Composition of the B Specials

Summary

I

The governing Unionist Party's approach to the Catholic minority during Northern Ireland's formative years bequeathed a deeply divisive legacy to the new state. It was not without a degree of justification that Northern Ireland was labelled ‘the Orange state’ and ‘a Protestant state’. Central to the state’s discriminatory practices was the partisan policing conducted by the RUC and USC. Despite the significance of policing and security policy in shaping the minority's attitude to the new state, little is known about the formative years of these forces. A good place to start is by understanding the context in which they were formed.

By mid-1920 the IRA campaign across Ireland had placed significant strain on British military resources, prompting the loyalist community in the northeast to engage in reactive communal violence. The Unionist Party's position appeared precarious: it faced the tripartite threat of IRA activity encroaching on Ulster; the potential for loyalist violence to undermine its political efforts in London; and the possibility of David Lloyd George, the prime minister, granting a generous degree of independence to Sinn Féin. With the enactment of the Government of Ireland Bill, the Unionist Party expected to gain control of the proposed northern parliament but, without the transfer of security powers to Belfast, the survival of the nascent six-county state was far from assured. Such a transfer would ameliorate the challenges faced by the Unionist Party by allowing for the suppression of IRA violence in Ulster. The consolidation of power by the new state would also provide a bulwark against whatever deal Sinn Féin extracted from London. It was in this context that a new force, the Ulster Special Constabulary, was born. Its establishment addressed an additional challenge faced by Unionist politicians: the USC provided a ‘safety valve’ for loyalist excesses by legitimising their violence, potentially confining it to those in state-issued uniforms. It was agreed by the British government in September 1920 that this force would be established.

The USC consisted of three classes: the A, B and C Specials. The A Specials was a full-time force of mobile platoons designed to assist the regular RIC across north-east Ireland. Tenure of service lasted an initial six months, with recruits receiving the basic RIC pay of £3 17s 6d per week.