LITMIR.BIZ

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by Sir Basil Brooke, future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, who ‘felt that the hotheads on the Ulstermen’s side might take the matter into their own hands, if not organised’.2 He urged Dublin Castle to form an official special constabulary in June.3 Another vigilante group, ‘Protective Patrol’, formed by John Webster in Armagh city, sought and received 174 UVF rifles from the Ulster Unionist Council.4 ‘Worried lest Loyalists at the local level should pass beyond the Unionist Party’s own control, Sir James Craig assigned Colonel W.B. Spender the task of resurrecting the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in order to harness Loyalists’ militant energies’.5 Unionists looked to police themselves as they did not trust the RIC. As an all-Ireland body, its membership was mainly Catholic, and with the IRA campaign, ‘the authorities had begun to transfer the most zealous and strongly loyalist RIC men to the South and West and send old, inefficient, unenthusiastic or even suspect men to the North’.6

      The violence that accompanied the expulsion of workers dissipated in late July. However, another wave began after the death of RIC district inspector Oswald Swanzy in Lisburn in August. Swanzy was believed to have been involved in the killing of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Thomas MacCurtain, in March 1920, thus making him a prime target of the IRA.7 He was shot dead on 22 August as he left a church service in Lisburn. The loyalist reaction led to the expulsion of almost the entire Catholic population of Lisburn from their homes. 300 homes were destroyed.8 Catholic families fleeing Lisburn took trains to Belfast or Newry, and many had to walk to Belfast, crossing the Divis Mountain en route. The rioting spread to Belfast, where twenty-two people were killed in just five days.9 On 30 August, ‘the military authorities brought in a curfew from 10:30pm to 5:00am for the Belfast area. It was to last, with variations in the times, until 1924.’10

      Even though most of the violence was perpetrated against Catholics, Craig warned ‘that the loyalists were losing faith in the government’s determination to protect them, and were threatening an immediate recourse to arms which would precipitate a civil war’.11 He attended a ministerial conference in London on 2 September where he used the pretext of attempting to keep the extreme loyalist elements in harness to demand a special Ulster constabulary to serve only the area that would become Northern Ireland. Ultimately, Craig wanted the nucleus of the UVF to form an armed constabulary for the six counties. The Conservative Party leader, Bonar Law, was unsure and pointed out that ‘if we armed Ulster, public opinions in this country would say the Government was taking sides and ceasing to govern impartially’.12 The military Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Nevil Macready, and the leading civil servant in Dublin Castle, Under-Secretary John Anderson, were also opposed. Macready wrote to Bonar Law, stating that a remobilised and rearmed UVF ‘would undoubtedly consist entirely of Protestants, and no amounts [sic] of so-called loyalty is likely to restrain them if the religious question becomes acute … the arming of the Protestant population of Ulster will mean the outbreak of civil war in this country, as distinct from the attempted suppression of rebellion with which we are engaged at present’.13

      He threatened to resign if the UVF was recognised. It wasn’t. However, helped by the backing of Arthur Balfour and Bonar Law, Craig was granted his special constabulary. Balfour felt that ‘in view of the terms of the Bill the government would be justified in thus hiving off the Ulster administration forthwith from that of the rest of Ireland’.14 The British government, fearing the public would think they were taking sides, wanted it to appear as if they had had the idea. Otherwise, as Bonar Law told Lloyd George, it would seem ‘as if we were acting on their dictation’.15 The special constabulary was meant to be for all of Ireland, but ‘the relevant Cabinet minutes betray the government’s actual motivation: they refer to the creation of the special constabulary in “Ireland”, with “Ireland” written in pen over the crossed out “Ulster” in typescript’.16

      The Ulster Special Constabulary came into public existence in October 1920, with enrolment starting on 1 November and an initial strength of 3,000 planned. Its members were organised into three classes: The ‘A’ class consisted of full-time uniformed police auxiliaries; the ‘B’ class were employed on a part-time basis and allowed to keep their weapons at home, whilst the ‘C’ class, the largest group, were only to be called out for emergencies, such as invasions.17 Enrolment was slow at first, with many suspicious that they would be asked to serve in the south or west of Ireland. They had to be reassured that they would only have to serve in the six counties.18 According to Robert Lynch, while northern Catholics were officially allowed to join the force, few did nor were they actively encouraged to do so. From the very beginning, northern nationalists saw the Specials as being ‘nothing more and nothing less that the dregs of the Orange lodges, armed and equipped to overawe Nationalists and Catholics, and with … an inclination to invent “crimes” against Nationalists and Catholics’.19

      The new special constabulary was placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Wickham, the divisional commissioner of the RIC for Ulster, partly answering to another new appointee, the Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland to be based in Belfast, Sir Ernest Clark.20 Craig also won the support of the British government in securing the appointment of the Assistant Under-Secretary (Clark) with responsibility for the area that would make up Northern Ireland before the Government of Ireland Bill was enacted in December 1920. Clark claimed that his appointment was not a preliminary step to partition.21 In reality, however, it was, and signified yet another concession to Ulster unionists.

      Born in Kent in 1864, Ernest Clark joined the British civil service in 1881, where he built up a reputation as a leading taxation expert. This brought him to the Cape Colony government in 1904–5 where he witnessed for the first time the establishment of a Home Rule territory – the South African federation.22 Clark’s ‘bluster about “setting up” the South African government’ caused some annoyance later on with personnel in Dublin Castle.23 He served as Assistant Under-Secretary to Ireland from September 1920 until November 1921. Following this, with the formal transfer of services, he became Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and head of the civil service of Northern Ireland, a position he held until 1925. He subsequently served as governor of Tasmania from 1933 to 1945.24 His work as Assistant Under-Secretary was crucial in creating the structures of a functioning government for Northern Ireland when it came into being in the summer of 1921. Basil Brooke described him as the ‘midwife to the new Province of Ulster’.25

      John Anderson, who himself favoured a different settlement to the Government of Ireland Bill, recommended Clark for the post in Belfast. Years later, Clark described a letter he received from Anderson in September 1920:

      asking me whether I still was in a mind to come to Ireland and if so, whether I would take the position at Belfast of Assistant Under Secretary for Ireland … His letter ended with a sentence which at the time I did not understand; ‘I suppose you are not by any chance a Roman Catholic?’ … he realised as I subsequently did, that had I been a Roman Catholic I could never have been accepted by the Northern Government or been able to carry out my duties, even had I survived to undertake them.26

      Once he expressed interest, he was interviewed in London by Hamar Greenwood, who had recently replaced MacPherson as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Greenwood then brought Clark to James Craig’s office in the Admiralty, where he was ‘vetted’ by Craig and two other prominent Ulster unionists, Wilfrid Spender and Richard Dawson-Bates. Clark later revealed, ‘I afterwards found … that really I was on show to Craig (and possibly also to Spender and Bates)’.27 At the meeting, Clark recalled that the Ulster unionists ‘were full of grievances’ and painted ‘a picture of the deathly peril which threatened all loyalists’. He later ‘discovered by experience how necessary it has always been to emphasise, even to exaggerate, the conditions in Ireland in order to arrest the attention of the ordinary Englishman’.28 As the meeting was ending,

      Sir James Craig walked across to me and towering above this little man said ‘Now you are coming to Ulster you must write one word across your heart’, and he tapped out with his finger on my chest “ULSTER”. I fear that I only saw the humour of this and not understanding its importance at the time said, ‘Sir James, I can hardly do that, for the space is already occupied by two names … “The British Empire” and “England”. I am afraid “Ulster” can only be written after these’.29

      Clark experienced a degree of distrust,

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