Karol Mc Sweeney
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JERUSALEM The decision by Israeli police to prevent Cardinal Pizzaballa and the Custos of the Holy Land from entering the Holy Sepulchre has been called a: 'manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure' The criticism was made in a joint statement The statement also clarifies, contrary to anti Catholic propaganda being spread about the incident, that it was compliant with safety protocols in place: 'The Heads of the Churches have acted with full responsibility and, since the outset of the war, have complied with all imposed restrictions: public gatherings were cancelled, attendance was prohibited, and arrangements were made to broadcast the celebrations to hundreds of millions of faithful worldwide, who, during these days of Easter, turn their eyes to Jerusalem and to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre'













Today in 1920, the first English recruits to the Royal Irish Constabulary stepped off a boat at North Wall dock in Dublin. Because of a shortage of RIC uniforms, the men wore a mixture of dark green trousers and khaki tunics. The mismatched colours reminded people of the Scarteen Hunt's famous hound pack "The Black and Tans". The infamous name stuck, long after the rabid murderers were issued proper uniforms. The British government had begun advertising for recruits in January 1920, looking for men willing to "face a rough and dangerous task." Most were unemployed veterans of the First World War, men trained in the logic of lethal trenches, not the demands of policing civilian populations. They received just three months of hurried training. Then they were shipped west and paid ten shillings a day. The guerrilla war launched by the IRA in January 1919 was grinding on, and Ireland was becoming ungovernable. Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson wrote in his diary that "The state of Ireland is terrible. No one's life is safe, spies and murderers everywhere, the Cabinet absolutely apathetic." Wilson wanted the police doubled. What London sent instead was these bastards. About 100 men were recruited per month through the first half of 1920. By November 1921, roughly 9,500 had enlisted. They were deployed mostly to the south and west, where the fighting was heaviest. In County Tipperary alone, by 1921, the Black and Tans made up almost half the entire local RIC strength. Historian D.M. Leeson documented that around one fifth of the Black and Tans were Irish-born themselves. What followed were a catalogue of Tan atrocities. The sack of Balbriggan in September 1920. The burning of Cork in December 1920, when K Company set the city centre alight and then shot at the firefighters trying to put it out. The abduction and murder of Father Michael Griffin in Galway. The shooting of pregnant Ellen Quinn, 24 years old, sitting outside her house with a 9-month-old baby, who bled to death the same night. Thomas Hodgett, postmaster of Navan, a Loyalist and a Protestant, dragged from his house before dawn, shot through the chest, and thrown into the Boyne. His body was found five weeks later. And the list goes on and on. These outrageous crimes didn't go unanswered. Between July 1920 and July 1921, 890 policemen were killed or wounded. Of those attacked by the IRA, only a third escaped unharmed. Forty-two per cent were injured. Twenty-four per cent died. Winston Churchill, who as Secretary of State for War was the political architect of the whole enterprise, would later write that it had become customary to lavish abuse on the Black and Tans, and that in fact they had been selected on account of their intelligence, their characters and their records. What he did not dwell on was the 1921 report from the British Labour Commission, which concluded that in forming the Black and Tans, the government had "liberated forces which it is not at present able to dominate." They were disbanded along with the rest of the RIC in 1922. About 3,000 were in need of financial assistance afterward. Some seven hundred went on to serve in the Palestine Police Force. A few hundred joined the new Royal Ulster Constabulary. More than a third had already quit before disbandment. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…
















