Talk:Royal Irish Constabulary

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What became of RIC members after the creation of the Gardai? Did many join the new force? Did any RIC members face reprisals after disbandment?

"... there were many fewer Catholics in the higher ranks. " In English? Many fewer? I don't understand what this guy is on about! TheWickerMan

"Others however, faced with threatened or actual violent reprisals, fled with their families to Britain" (Quote from article as of today.) What evidence is there of reprisals or threatened reprisals? Cill Ros 22:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• See "The RUC 1922 - 1997" by Chris Ryder (ISBN 0 7493 2379 5) for details of reported reprisals against former members of the RIC, following disbandment of the force on 4 April 1922. These appear to have taken the form of beatings rather than actual killings but newspaper reports of the time refer to several abductions of "wanted" RIC members. During April sixty to seventy RIC men, with their families, are reported to have arrived in England each day, sometimes after having received written "deportation orders" from local IRA units. On the other hand, the new Irish authorities and even the IRA sometimes provided escorts for parties of former police travelling to ports or railway stations. A petition was made to the British Government by RIC members requesting protection when in transit from the disbandment centres in the south and accomodation in the form of camps or barracks upon arrival in England.Buistr (talk) 11:49, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Six Counties

To the ex-RIC men, that's exactly what they were; six counties of Ireland.

Talk:Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland Demiurge 15:17, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What's relevant is what they were officially called, not what the RIC men thought of them as. The RUC policed Northern Ireland! -- Necrothesp 15:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Armed & Irish

RIC was the first permanently-armed police force in UK. Trekphiler 10:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Would the RIC count as a Gendarmerie?

I'm just wondering here - could the RIC count as a Gendarmerie? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.196.97 (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I think your question is adequetly addressed here Constabulary

They were more akin to a state militia, the functions of which they largely took over. --Ponox (talk) 01:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The abovementioned "constabulary" disambiguation page no longer seems a useful guide to the nuances: it documents a confusing usage of one term for four different categories of police force, from a purely civil force (as in modern England) to a markedly paramilitary one. In any case, terms such as Police, Constabulary and Gendarmery can be ambiguous, as a force might have one name for historical reasons even after its role changes (as in the Canadian Mounted Police, called the 'Mounted Gendarmery' in French). I think it misleading to compare the RIC to a US state militia: it was a permanent security force that carried out policing towards civilians while operating under military discipline, rather than a reserve military force for emergencies (though it's correct that there's not always a sharp distinction between them, and a US militia can be thought of as fulfilling some of the roles carried out by a European or Latin American gendarmery).

Maybe it's easier if we start by considering what a gerndarmery was, and why we use that term at all rather than simply using 'police'. The defining trait of gendarmeries is that, historically, they fulfilled a role as a centralised, nationwide force dispatched to patrol 'lawless' countryside, particularly in areas prone to insurrection or invasion. During peacetime they could operate as any other police force would, though dispersed in small numbers to patrol areas too small and low-density for their own municipal police. Then, in times of conflict, they were the central state's first boots on the ground, doubling up as soldiers until the actual military could be mobilised and transported. An urbanised country like England (majority urban by 1850) had no need of a gendarmery, as its density allowed civilian municipal police to be the norm and it faced little serious challenge to the constitutional regime - it could afford to let civil policeling become generalised; whereas a gendarmery was designed to play an important role in a country like France, Italy or Spain: majority rural, low-density population with strong local identity, little automatic loyalty to the central state, risk of serious threat to public order via insurrection, banditry and/or invasion.

The interesting point is that we can compare the rural, paramilitary RIC to the urban, civilian DMP just as in France we can compare the urban, civilian Paris Municipal Police to the paramilitary, rural Gendarmerie Nationale (or in Spain the civilian Madrid Municipal Police to the paramilitary rural Guardia Civil, etc.). In fact, in the early 20th century French-speaking commentators *did* refer to the RUC as Ireland's 'gendarmerie; it seemed obvious to them that of the two types of police force they knew, the RIC was one and not the other.

Just my two cents. But I think it's worth keeping in mind that institutions in 19th century Ireland could indeed follow English trends, but did not necessarily. The RIC strikes me as one of those cases of convergent evolution, where a similar set of challenges led British authorities in Ireland to develop a comparable institution to their counterparts on the continent. Moranete (talk) 16:10, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Irish Translation

Was this term ever used while the RIC existed? I would have thought the word "Poilíní" (or worse!) would have been used by Irish speakers at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.80.60 (talk) 07:34, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Balance

The balance of this article is out of kilter, with more space given to the brief War of Independence than to the three generations of the RIC's earlier history. Diomedea Exulans (talk) 19:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, although I don't think anyone would say the coverage of the RIC's final dramatic years is too long. The problem is simply that the earlier history needs a lot more detail, and it's a matter of the willingness of someone to expand it. If you can take it on, so much the better. Moonraker (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

There is absolutely no mention of the RIC mutiny during the 1907 Belfast Dock strike. I would suggest a separate section dealing with the mutiny. About 70% of the force supported the striking dockers and carters; they came close to going out on strike themselves.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Anti-Catholicism in the RIC

Not a single mention of the lack of Catholics in senior positions in this deeply sectarian force. Why avoid the elephant in the room? Or of its massacres of innocent Irish people, most notably during the Tithe War in places like Castlepollard. 89.101.41.216 (talk) 15:37, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Badge

The badge I suspect is incorrect. Until the 1950s the crown used in artwork was a representation of the Tudor imperial crown. An actual representation of the real St Edward's Crown only came in, AFAIK, with Queen Elizabeth II, who suggested as badges were being updated to include her that it was a bit silly to use a representation of a crown that was only an artist's estimation of what the Tudor crown may have been like, and that they should use the real crown instead.

So badges pre-the 1950s shouldn't use St Edwards crown. All the crowns on badges and letterboxes I have seen in Ireland all use the Tudor Crown. The difference is the shape of the arch on the top. St Edward's crown uses two half-arches that curve down at the top. The Tudor crown in effect used a non-dropping arch. 213.233.148.31 (talk) 22:29, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I have updated the badge design to one that faithfully traces the original 1867 design as appeared on RIC documents compared to MrPenguin's interpretation. For instance, the harp is actually further down, and slightly rotated compared to the RUC version and it is NOT the Government of Ireland harp as that is too young a design and would never have been used by the pre-independent Ireland. There are significantly more shamrocks than the RUC and previous versions, and the detailing of the garter is more intricate. I also decided to go with the more familiar Tudor (King's) Crown rather than the Queen's crown (specifically the Victorian version) as per later cap badges. These changes should address the historical accuracy concerns cited above.Cyberbeagle (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

References

I would have though most would have joined the Gardaí

Interesting article. One of my relatives was in the RIC but left for America and became a sniper in the army there whilst the war of independence and civil war were being fought, and then came back afterwards and joined the Gardaí. Which I think was pretty sensible. It reads like only about 600 left like him and a large proportion of the ones who stayed did not remain as police in Ireland at the end. I am a bit surprised I would have expected most of the RIC to have gone on to become Gardaí. Any idea of actual numbers of those who became Gardaí? Dmcq (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Contrary to the referenced newspaper article, The Royal Irish Constabulary by Jim Herlihy, 2016, Table E, pg 184, says a total of 180 ex RIC men joined the Gardai between 1922-1933. The vast majority, 160, in 1922. Of these 160, 14 were admitted directly with the rank of superintendent or higher. 5 of these officers had served as RIC district inspectors.Suckindiesel (talk) 21:51, 24 February 2020 (UTC)