Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:17:24.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THE FORMATION, COMPOSITION, AND CONDUCT OF THE BRITISH SECTION OF THE PALESTINE GENDARMERIE, 1922–1926*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2013

SEÁN WILLIAM GANNON*
Affiliation:
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
*
Department of History, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland[email protected]

Abstract

The British Section of the Palestine Gendarmerie was raised in early 1922 by the colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, as a striking force and riot squad for Palestine. Through the agency of the Irish police chief, General Hugh Tudor, this British Gendarmerie was recruited almost entirely from amongst the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its Auxiliary Division, then in the process of disbanding as part of the recent Anglo-Irish settlement. The international notoriety of the Black and Tans led to official efforts to obscure the fact that the force was to be drawn from RIC ranks but these were entirely unsuccessful. Indeed, the British Gendarmerie itself quickly acquired a reputation for Black and Tan-type behaviour but an examination of its four-year career indicates that this derived more from preconceptions about the force's composition than from its actual conduct. In fact, in terms of force discipline and levels of police brutality, the British Gendarmerie's record compared very favourably with those of its ‘parent’ forces in Ireland, lending support to recent claims that historians have tended to over-value character-based explanations at the expense of circumstance-based assessments when analysing police behaviour both during the Irish revolution and the Palestine Mandate.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to Dr Deirdre McMahon, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, for her valuable comments on early drafts of this article. My thanks also to the anonymous readers for their remarks, and to Dr Andrew Preston for his editorial advice.

References

1 Sir John Shuckburgh, Colonial Office minute, 20 Dec. 1922 (The National Archives, Kew (TNA), Colonial Office files (CO), 733/35/616).

2 Three categories of police which formed part of the RIC are relevant to this study, namely the ‘old RIC’, the Black and Tans, and the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (ADRIC). Given the confusion prevailing in both sources and literature over what constituted membership of each, it is best to define them precisely at the outset. A Black and Tan is here defined as any man, British or Irish, ex-serviceman or no, who joined the RIC on or after 2 Jan. 1920, the date on which the first RIC constable was recruited in Britain. The term ‘old RIC’ refers to those who joined the service prior to this date. The ADRIC or Auxiliaries, a ‘special Corps of Gendarmerie’ composed solely of ex-officers, was recruited from July 1920 onwards. As the Black and Tans were, unlike the ADRIC, fully integrated into the RIC, they and the ‘old RIC’ are, taken together, referred to as the ‘regular RIC’. However, it should be borne in mind when reading quotations below that many British officials, including Winston Churchill, Henry Wilson, and Herbert Samuel, conflated the Black and Tans with the ADRIC and used the terms ‘Auxiliaries’, ‘Auxiliary Division’, and ‘Black and Tans’ interchangeably when referring to the two groups combined.

3 See, for example, Sinclair, Georgina, At the end of the line: colonial policing and the imperial endgame, 1945–1980 (Manchester, 2006), pp. 20–2Google Scholar, and The Irish policeman and the empire: influencing the policing of the British Empire–Commonwealth’, Irish Historical Studies, 36 (2008), pp. 173–87, at pp. 177–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fedorowich, Kent, ‘The problems of disbandment: the Royal Irish Constabulary and imperial migration’, Irish Historical Studies, 30 (1996), pp. 88110CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 98–9; Rudd, Jeffrey, ‘The origins of the Transjordan Frontier Force’, Middle Eastern Studies, 26 (1990), pp. 161–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim; Christopher Hammond, ‘Ideology and consensus: the policing of the Palestine Mandate, 1920–1936’ (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1991), pp. 151–4, 168–72; John Knight, ‘Policing in British Palestine, 1917–1939’ (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2008), pp. 99–108; Bowden, Tom, The breakdown of public security: the case of Ireland, 1916–1921, and Palestine, 1936–1939 (London, 1977), pp. 163–6Google Scholar, and Barker, James, ‘Policing Palestine’, History Today, 58 (2008), pp. 52–9Google Scholar, at pp. 55–9.

4 Churchill, cabinet memorandum, 11 Aug. 1921 (TNA, cabinet papers (CAB), 24/127).

5 Quoted in Jeffery, Keith, The British army and the crisis of empire, 1918–1922 (Manchester, 1984), pp. 128–9Google Scholar.

6 Churchill, Colonial Office memorandum, 11 Aug. 1921 (Churchill papers, Churchill College, Cambridge (CHAR), 17/13).

7 Richard Meinertzhagen, ‘Military report on Palestine’, 25 Mar. 1923, p. 10 (typescript copy at TNA, CO 733/61/37–53).

8 Churchill to Lloyd George, 3 Sept. 1921, Lloyd George papers, UK Parliamentary Archives, London (LG/F/9/3/86/646–8).

9 Churchill, MED minute, 11 Sept. 1921 (CHAR 17/15).

10 Gerard Clauson, Colonial Office minute, 26 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/29/403).

11 Middlemas, Keith, ed., Thomas Jones: Whitehall diary, i: 1916–1925 (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar, 7 Dec. 1921, p. 183.

12 Cited in Sullivan, Donal J., The Irish constabularies, 1822–1922: a century of policing in Ireland (Dingle, 1999), pp. 367–8Google Scholar.

13 Churchill to Sinclair, 30 Sept. 1921 (TNA, CO 733/15/199).

14 Meinertzhagen to Shuckburgh, 3 Oct. 1921 (TNA, CO 733/15/201); Churchill to Meinertzhagen, 10 Oct. 1921 (CHAR 17/15).

15 Churchill to Samuel, 12 Nov. 1921, Samuel to Churchill, 15 Nov. 1921 (CHAR 17/11); Churchill, cabinet memo, undated Nov. 1921 (TNA, CAB 24/131).

16 Wilson to Congreve, 11 Oct. 1921 (Imperial War Museum, London, Sir Henry Wilson papers (HHW), 2/52B/34).

17 Wilson to Congreve, 10 Dec. 1921 (HWW 2/52B/40); Wilson, Diaries, 16 Mar. 1921 (HHW 1/36/3); Wilson to Congreve, 10 Jan. 1922 (HHW 2/52B/47).

18 Congreve, Diary, 23 Mar. 1922 (Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service, Stafford, Walter Congreve papers, Diary transcripts, D1057/O/5/3).

19 Wilson, Diaries, 19 Dec. 1921 (HHW 1/36/12); Meinertzhagen, , Middle East diary (London, 1959), 19 Dec. 1921, pp. 114–15Google Scholar.

20 The fact that Tudor was charged with the creation of the British Gendarmerie has led some historians to credit him with its actual conception. However, according to Clauson, although it was ‘to all intents and purposes the creation of General Tudor … its original formation was due to the inspiration’ of Churchill himself. This was confirmed by Tudor in a letter to Churchill from Palestine in which he noted that ‘your idea of using Black and Tans … here has been a great success’. Gerard Clauson, Colonial Office minute, 26 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/29/403); Tudor to Churchill, undated Oct. 1922, (CHAR 17/25).

21 Grindle to Tudor, 24 Dec. 1921 (TNA, CO 733/15/639); ‘Minutes of MED meeting held December 22, 1921’, 28 Dec. 1921 (TNA, treasury files (T), 161/21).

22 C. A. Walsh, ‘Palestine Gendarmerie’, 25 Jan. 1922 (TNA, CO 904/178/186).

23 British Gendarmerie application form (MS in possession of M. Higgins, Cheltenham).

24 Jeans, John, ‘The British (Palestine) Gendarmerie’ (part 1), Malayan Police Magazine, 4 (Aug. 1931), pp. 230–3, at p. 231Google Scholar.

25 William Crewe, ‘British Gendarmerie of Palestine’, 28 July 1959 (MS in possession of PB, Belfast), pp. 1–2.

26 Duff, Douglas, The rough with the smooth (London, 1940), p. 88Google Scholar. Duff wrote several other memoirs which covered his time with the British Gendarmerie, including Sword for hire: the saga of a modern free-companion (London, 1934), and Bailing with a teaspoon (London, 1953).

27 Fedorowich, ‘Problems’, p. 101.

28 Churchill to Meinertzhagen, 10 Oct. 1921 (CHAR 17/15); Samuel to Churchill, 11 Dec. 1921 (CHAR 17/11).

29 Churchill to Samuel, 14 Jan. 1922 (TNA, CO/733/33/293).

30 Grindle to Tudor, 24 Dec. 1921 (TNA, CO 733/15/639–40).

31 ‘Minutes of Colonial Office meeting held December 22, 1921’, 28 Dec. 1921 (TNA, T 161/21).

32 Churchill to Shuckburgh, 11 Jan. 1922 (CHAR 17/26).

33 Times, 18 Jan. 1922; Irish Times, 18, 20 Jan. 1922.

34 Irish Independent, 27 Feb. 1922.

35 Shuckburgh to Tudor, 14 Jan. 1922 (TNA, CO/733/33/292); Shuckburgh to McNeill, 7 Mar. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/40/22).

36 Tudor to Churchill, 18 Feb. 1922 (CHAR 17/22).

37 Hopkinson, Michael, ed., The last days of Dublin Castle: the Mark Sturgis diaries (Dublin, 1999), pp. 32Google Scholar, 61, 250 n. 88; Wilson, Diaries, 16 Mar. 1921 (HHW 1/36/3).

38 Meinertzhagen to Shuckburgh, 14 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/38/688); McNeill to Meinertzhagen, 13 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/38/690); Godley to Meinertzhagen, 11 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/33/482–3).

39 Foley provided short accounts of the recruitment period in ‘Questionnaire’, undated MS (Middle East Centre Archives, St Antony's College, Oxford (MECA), Gerald Foley papers, G2 no. 17, fo. 534), and ‘The Irish invade Plymouth’, in Palestine Police Old Comrades’ Association Newsletter, 119 (1980), p. 39.

40 Quoted in Horne, Edward, A job well done: being a history of the Palestine Police Force, 1920–1948 (Lewes, 2003) pp. 76–7Google Scholar.

41 Meinertzhagen to Thwaites, undated, Mar. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/33/96).

42 Report on Palestine Administration, 1922, p. 39 (typescript copy at TNA, CO 733/43/507); ‘Nominal roll of all ranks of the British Section of the Palestine Gendarmerie’, Samuel to Churchill, 17 July 1922 (TNA, Home Office files, HO 351/66).

43 Angus McNeill, Diaries vol. 1, 8 May 1922 (MECA, McNeill papers, GB 165–0197); Deedes to Churchill, 19 May 1922 (TNA, CO 733/22/30–1).

44 ‘Constable Frank Swayne, Palestine Gendarmerie: treatment for tuberculosis’ (National Archives of Ireland, TCSH/3/S4085).

45 Freeman's Journal, 24 Jan., 17 Mar. 1922.

46 Palestine Weekly, 20 Jan. 1922; Sunday Times, 26 Feb. 1922; Irish Independent, 27 Feb. 1922; Freeman's Journal, 27 Feb. 1922; Evening Standard, 28 Feb. 1922; Jewish Chronicle, 3 Mar. 1922; Western Morning News and Mercury, 15 Mar. 1922; Irish Times, 18 Mar. 1922; Times, 31 Mar. 1922.

47 See, for example, Hansard, House of Commons debates, 16 Feb. 1922, vol. 150 cc. 1197–8; 20 Feb. 1922, vol. 150 cc. 1630–1; 9 Mar. 1922, vol. 151 c. 1519; 1 May 1922, vol. 153 cc. 1003–4.

48 Freeman's Journal, 17 Mar. 1922; New York Times, 31 Mar. 1922; Ormsby-Gore, Colonial Office minute, 15 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/35/616).

49 Tudor to Churchill, undated Oct. 1922 (CHAR 17/25).

50 Shuckburgh, Colonial Office minute, 20 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/35/616).

51 Hammond, ‘Ideology’, p. 119.

52 Young to Shuckburgh, 13 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/18/396–7); Bramley to Devonshire, 6, 8 Nov. 1923 (Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Cambridge, Bramley papers, Palestine 1923–5 file, RCMS 64). See also McNeill, Diaries vol. 2, 25 June, 5 July 1923.

53 Young to Shuckburgh, 13 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/18/397); Meinertzhagen, ‘Draft note to secretary of state’, 22 Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/18/406).

54 Churchill to Samuel, 10 Feb. 1922 (TNA CO 733/18/146). See also Churchill to Samuel, 30 Mar. 1922 (TNA CO 733/20/56).

55 McNeill, ‘Notes on British Gendarmerie’, 3 Jan. 1923, (MECA, McNeill papers, GB 165–0197, file A, no. 3), p. 4; Duff, Sword, p. 112.

56 Duff, Bailing, p. 27.

57 Cahill, Richard, ‘“Going berserk”; Black and Tans in Palestine’, Jerusalem Quarterly, 38 (2009), pp. 5968Google Scholar; Clayton to Samuel, 14 May 1924 (Durham University, Sudan Archive, Gilbert Clayton papers GB-0033, SAD.694/2/60).

58 Roland Vernon, Colonial Office minute, 9 Aug. 1924 (TNA, CO 733/72/61).

59 Meinertzhagen, ‘Military report’, p. 2.

60 Duff, Bailing, p. 31.

61 McNeill, Diaries vol. 1, 23 Oct., 2 Nov. 1922; McNeill to Churchill, 7 Apr. 1926 (TNA, T 1721/1551).

62 Jeans, John, ‘The British (Palestine) Gendarmerie’ (part 2), Malayan Police Journal, 4 (Sept. 1931), pp. 257–60Google Scholar, at p. 257.

63 Glynn, Jenifer, ed., Tidings from Zion: Helen Bentwich's letters from Jerusalem, 1919–1931 (London, 2000), p. 82Google Scholar. See also Horne, Job, pp. 87, 91; Duff, Sword, p. 111.

64 McNeill, Diaries vol. 1, 19, 23 May 1922. See also Constable John Fails to Constance Taylor, 24 May 1922 (MS in possession of R. Fails, Belfast).

65 F. J. Howard, Colonial Office minute, 19 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/33/619); Deedes to Shuckburgh, 18 Jan. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/60/206); Samuel to Devonshire, 8 Mar. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/43/116); Tudor to Deedes, 11 Jan. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/60/207); McNeill, ‘Notes’, p. 4. See also Report on Palestine Administration 1922, p. 38 and Meinertzhagen, ‘Military report’, p. 2, both of which rated British Gendarmerie discipline as ‘excellent’.

66 Ormsby-Gore, Colonial Office minute, 21 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/35/617).

67 Samuel to Devonshire, 23 Feb. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/62/48).

68 Tudor to Trenchard, 25 Jan. 1923 (RAF archives, Colindale, London, MRAF Viscount Trenchard papers (MFC76/1), MFC76/1/285); Samuel to Devonshire, 8 Mar. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/43/116).

69 Sinclair, End of the line, p. 21.

70 See, for example, ‘British Section Palestine Gendarmerie: revised nominal roll of members’, 20 Nov. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/27/235–45); ‘Nominal roll of British Section of the Palestine Gendarmerie by ranks showing dates of expiration of contract, year 1925/26’ (TNA, CO 733/95/478–86); ‘Return of officers by grades of the British Gendarmerie on 1 May 1925’ (TNA, CO 733/94/261–3).

71 Horne, Job, p. 91; McNeill, Diaries vol. 2, 25 Apr. 1923.

72 Irish Times, 14 July 1923.

73 Colonial Office minute, 10 Oct. 1924 (TNA, CO 733/73/406; Brewer, John D., The Royal Irish Constabulary: an oral history (Belfast, 1990), p. 122Google Scholar).

74 Meinertzhagen, ‘Military report’, p. 8.

75 Kisch, Frederick, Palestine diary, 1923–1931 (London, 1938)Google Scholar, 14 Feb. 1923, p. 32; McNeill to Samuel, 29 Aug.1924 (TNA, CO 733/73/412).

76 ‘They will soon get all our RIC men as they will give the same rates of pay and the men will be able to draw full RIC pensions’. Tudor to Trenchard, 17 Feb. 1923 (MFC76/1/285).

77 Meinertzhagen, ‘Military report’, p. 8.

78 Churchill, Memorandum on Tudor's appointment, undated, Feb. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/19/335).

79 Trenchard to Tudor, 28 July 1922 (MFC76/1/285).

80 Clauson, Colonial Office minute, 26 Dec. 1922 (TNA, CO 733/29/403–4).

81 Clauson, Colonial Office minute, 13 Sept. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/48/188).

82 McNeill, Diaries vol. 2, 12 July 1923; Times, 3 July 1923; Irish Times, 3 July 1923; see also ‘Divorce court file 2359: Tudor vs Tudor’ (TNA, J77/1990/2359).

83 Trenchard to Tudor, 21 Nov. 1923 (MFC76/1/285); Clauson, Colonial Office minute, 13 Sept. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/48/188).

84 McNeill, Diaries vol. 2, 10 Aug. 1923, 30 Mar. 1924.

85 Meinertzhagen, Colonial Office minute, 10 Mar. 1924 (TNA, CO 733/65/113); McNeill, Diaries vol. 3, 23 June 1924.

86 Palestine Weekly, 2 Feb., 9 Apr. 1926; Churchill to Marsh, 15 Apr. 1926 (TNA, T 172/1551).

87 Gwynn, Charles, Imperial policing (London, 1939), p. 222Google Scholar.

88 Fedorowich, ‘Problems’, p. 99.

89 Samuel to Thomas, 26 Sept. 1924 (TNA, CO 733/73/408–43).

90 See, for example, ‘Members of British Gendarmerie who have been dismissed from the formation of the force to 20 May 1924’ (TNA, CO 733/69/595–7) and ‘Lt. Luxton and Major Barrows; resignation from British Gendarmerie’ (TNA, CO 733/28/40–58).

91 Lowe, W. J., ‘Who were the Black and Tans’, History Ireland, 12 (2004), pp. 4751Google Scholar, at p. 50.

92 Leeson analysed a ‘sample cluster consisting of the single largest monthly intake of British recruits; the 1,153 who joined up in October 1920’. Leeson, D. M., The Black and Tans: British police and auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence (Oxford, 2011), p. 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Samuel to Devonshire, 23 Feb. 1923 (TNA, CO 733/62/46–7).

94 A. S. Mavrogordato, ‘Report of the Palestine police and prisons’, 23 July 1923, pp. 8–10 (copy in TNA, CO 733/49/124–34). See also Tudor, ‘Report on police and gendarmerie’, 15 Aug. 1923, p. 1 (copy in TNA, CO 733/49/100–7).

95 Leeson, Black and Tans, p. 191.

96 Ibid., p. 224.

97 Tudor to Churchill, 1 Oct. 1922 (copy in Trenchard papers, MFC76/1/285).

98 McNeill to Churchill, 20 Dec. 1937 (CHAR 2/348).

99 Townshend, Charles, ‘The defence of Palestine: insurrection and public security, 1936–1939’, English Historical Review, 103 (1988), pp. 917–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 931; Dolan, Anne, ‘The British culture of paramilitary violence in the Irish War of Independence’, in Gerwarth, Robert and Horne, John, eds., War in peace: paramilitary violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford, 2012), p. 215Google Scholar. See also Townshend, Charles, Britain's civil wars (London, 1986), p. 92Google Scholar.

100 Nick Kardahji, ‘A measure of restraint: the Palestine police and the end of the British Mandate (M.Phil. thesis, St Antony's College, Oxford, 2007), p. 45; Smith, Charles, ‘Communal conflict and insurrection in Palestine, 1936–1948’, in Anderson, David M. and Killingray, David, eds., Policing and decolonisation: nationalism, politics and the police (Manchester, 1992), pp. 6283Google Scholar, at p. 79; see also Cahill, ‘Going berserk', pp. 65–6; Koestler, Arthur, Promise and fulfilment: Palestine, 1917–1949 (London, 1949), p. 15Google Scholar, and Krozier, Gad, ‘From Dowbiggan to Tegart: revolutionary change in the colonial police in Palestine during the 1930s’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 32 (2004), pp. 115–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 130. For the most recent study of the Farran affair, see Cesarani, David, Major Farran's hat: murder, scandal and Britain's war against Jewish terrorism, 1945–1948 (London, 2009)Google Scholar.

101 According to McNeill, ‘Spicer tried to make [the police] word perfect at crime sheets, traffic duties and elementary law – but when they are called upon to go forth and take on a gang, they haven't the foggiest’. McNeill to Churchill, 20 Dec. 1937 (CHAR 2/348). See also Krozier, ‘Dowbiggan to Tegart’, passim.

102 Hughes, Matthew, ‘The banality of brutality: British armed forces and the repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939’, English Historical Review, 124 (2009), pp. 313–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 353.

103 Stewart to Matthews, 9 June 1936 (MECA, Jerusalem and East Mission papers, GB165–016, box 61, no. 1); MacMichael to MacDonald, 5 Sept. 1938, cited in Smith, ‘Communal conflict’, p. 71; O'Connor to wife, 2 Nov. 1938, cited in Barr, James, A line in the sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East (London, 2011), p. 185Google Scholar.

104 Cesarani, Major Farran's hat, p. 26.

105 See, for example, Krozier, ‘Dowbiggan to Tegart’, p. 117; Knight, ‘Policing British Palestine’, p. 109; Horne, Job, p. 102.

106 McNeill to Churchill, 20 May 1926 (TNA, T 172/1551); Howard to Shuckburgh, 10 June 1926 (TNA, CO 733/120/731–3).

107 Plumer to Amery, 24, 27 Feb. 1926 (TNA, CO 733/112/553–4, 707).

108 The British treasury figure of 25 ex-RIC in the BSPP in 1939 cited by Sinclair omits 18 former Auxiliaries who were also still serving at this time. Sinclair, End of the line, p. 22.

109 Cited in Bowden, Breakdown, p. 230.

110 The minutiae of its organization, training, and equipment were devised by Rymer-Jones's senior staff officer, Michael McConnell, an ex-RIC district inspector and British Gendarmerie officer but he did so at the direction of Rymer-Jones who ‘laid down the broad details of what was required to him’. Horne, Job, pp. 515–16.

111 See, for example, Sinclair, ‘Irish policeman’, p. 177, and End of the line, p. 21. While Sinclair is correct in stating that Gerald Foley ‘assisted with the management of police training’ in that he was installed as commandant of the police training school for Palestinian recruits in 1926, he was replaced one year later by A. J. Kingsley-Heath, a non-‘Irish’ officer who placed an enormous emphasis on the teaching of civil policing skills. Her statement that Munro served as commandant of the British Police Training School from 1926 until 1946 and that John Wilkinson was his chief assistant is also misleading. While Munro instituted an ad hoc RIC-style training programme for BSPP recruits in 1926, the British Police Training School was not established until 1931. Although its syllabus focused on civil policing methods, Munro was appointed its first commandant but was removed after less than a year and did not return to training duties until 1939. Meanwhile, Wilkinson was not involved in BSPP training at all, having resigned from the British Gendarmerie in 1923 and joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

112 Kenny, Kevin, ‘The Irish in the empire’, in Kenny, Kevin, ed., Ireland and the British empire (Oxford, 2004), pp. 90122Google Scholar, at p. 112.

113 Sinclair, ‘Irish policeman’, p. 179, and End of the line, pp. 17–18.

114 Tudor to Irish under-secretary, 5 Feb. 1922. See also ‘Summary of proceedings of interviews of [RIC] representative bodies with chief secretary’, 6–8 Feb. 1922, p. 6 (TNA, CAB 24/134).

115 Casualty figures are abstracted from Richard Abbott, Police casualties in Ireland, 1919–1922 (Cork, 2000).

116 See also Brewer, RIC oral history, pp. 117–27.

117 3,000 applications were reportedly received by early Mar. 1922, while the Jewish Chronicle put the final figure at between 5,000 and 6,000. Daily Mail (Hull), 7 Mar. 1922; Jewish Chronicle, 7 Apr. 1922.

118 Churchill to Shuckburgh, 12 Nov. 1921 (CHAR 17/15).

119 See, for example, Anderson, David M. and Killingray, David, ‘An orderly retreat: policing the end of the empire’, in Anderson, and Killingray, , eds., Policing and decolonisation, pp. 121Google Scholar, at pp. 7–8; Sinclair, End of the line, pp. 16–35; Jeffries, Charles, The colonial police (London, 1952), p. 31Google Scholar. For a critique of Jeffries's theory, see Hawkins, Richard, ‘The “Irish model” and the empire: a case for reassessment’, in Anderson, David M. and Killingray, David, Policing the empire: government, authority and control, 1830–1940 (Manchester, 1991), pp. 1832Google Scholar.

120 Anderson and Killingray, ‘An orderly retreat’, p. 8. See also David M. Anderson and David Killingray, ‘Consent, coercion and colonial control: policing the empire, 1830–1940’, in Anderson and Killingray, ‘Policing the empire’, pp. 1–15, at p. 13.

121 Ibid.