Focus on Kerry in 1920

THE LISTOWEL MUTINY PROVED A TURNING POINT IN THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. EXPERT HISTORIAN OF THE EVENT FR J ANTHONY GAUGHAN PROVIDES A LUCID ANALYSIS OF THE AFFAIR ON ITS CENTENARY

THE LISTOWEL CONSTABLES WERE LEFT IN NO DOUBT THEY WERE TO BE AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE WAR

ONE hundred years ago, a historic event was played out in the Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks at Listowel. It became known as the Listowel police mutiny. The crucial influence and importance of this event is now generally agreed by historians: the mutiny by these 15 members of the RIC in the police barracks in Listowel in June 1920 was one of the most significant events in Ireland’s War of Independence.

Fifteen constables refused to be transferred and to hand their barracks to the military.

As news of this spread throughout the RIC and later appeared in the press, the pace of members of the force taking early retirement or being dismissed quickened.

Eventually, by March 1, 1921, 2,570 members had left the force. Their places were taken by the hastily-recruited Black and Tans.

For the most part, these were ex-soldiers, and they received little, if any, serious police training.

Their indiscipline and the outrages for which they were responsible alienated the Irish people, most of whom had no enthusiasm whatsoever for the policy and actions of Sinn Féin and the IRA. The result was that the crown forces found themselves operating in an increasingly hostile environment, which cast serious doubts on their capacity to successfully pacify the country. To understand and appreciate this event, it is necessary to place oneself in the context of those who were involved in it. The Rising of 1916 and particularly the executions in its immediate aftermath had a considerable effect on some members of the RIC. They foresaw the dilemma in which, as members of a para-military force, they would be placed in the event of a serious conflict between Irish separatists and the crown forces.

Coincidentally in 1917-18, in spite of government opposition, some of the British police had succeeded in re-organising the National Union of Police and Prison Officers, which had been founded in 1913. With the support of representatives of the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police, Sergeant Thomas J McElligott, RIC, established an Irish branch of the NUPPO in 1918.

According to a report in the Irish Independent of February 8, 1919 ‘…practically all the DMP had joined the Union, including the Harbour police. The majority of prison officials were also members and so far 3,500 of the RIC’.

In the event, while the NUPPO was recognised by the authorities, McElligott and his colleagues were informed that they were not to join the NUPPO as they belonged to a semi-military force under direct control of the crown and subject in many respects to the discipline and general conditions of employment of the army and the navy.

Notwithstanding this rejection, the Irish Police Union held its first All-Ireland Conference in April 1919, at which one of the resolutions carried was that the force be disarmed. In the meantime, in the struggle between the crown forces and those of Sinn Féin, more and more members of the RIC were becoming victims of the IRA’s murderous campaign against the force. On the fateful day, June 19, 1920, Colonel George Ferguson Smyth, the divisional commissioner of the combined crown forces – military and police – of Munster, left the constables in the barracks in Listowel in no doubt that they were to be in the very forefront of an all-out war on the forces of Sinn Féin.

His bellicose and highly emotional address simply occasioned a mutiny which was bubbling beneath the surface. Initially the mutineers received widespread support, especially from the members of the Police Union – six of the mutineers were members of it. But this quickly dissipated as authorities indicated they were prepared to take drastic action against mutineers imperative under Martial Law. Thus, not waiting to be dismissed, the mutineers left the barracks, each to go his own way.

Photo courtesy of their grandson, Ciarán Mee Former Constable Jeremiah Mee with his wife in the 1930s. Constable Mee is ‘famed in the annals of Irish history’ for his role as the spokesman of the group of RIC officers in Listowel who ‘mutinied’ by refusing to shoot any ‘suspicious-looking’ Irishman on sight during the War of Independence.

TheRIC barracks after it had been burnt by members of the Anti-Treaty forces in 1922, before it was renovated to become, years later, An Garda Síochána’s North Kerry HQ.