Reprisals continue as General Macready issues order prohibiting looting and retaliatory acts

Dublin, 18 August 1920 - Sir General Nevil Macready, Commander of the British forces in Ireland, has issued an order to the troops under his command prohibiting looting and acts of retaliation against the civil population. Lapses in discipline will be, the order states, severely punished.

Significantly, however, the order, issued yesterday, does not concede that military abuses have actually taken place, only that accusations had been made. Macready refers to allegations against soldiers, not confirmed facts.

The Freeman’s Journal newspaper refers to the order as ‘belated’ and has said that the general could not be charged with ‘undue haste’ as the evidence of military reprisals has been outlined over many months in the pages of the Irish newspapers and in the pamphlet ‘Military Rule in Ireland’, written by Erskine Childers, ‘whom even general HQ cannot rule out as a mere manufacturer of noxious propaganda’.

EXTERNAL LINK: Read the full pamphlet ‘Military Rule in Ireland’ by Erskine Childers

And though Macready and the Irish command do not accept that their troops have anything to atone for, the Freeman’s Journal says that it is ‘something to the good that it should announce that breaches of discipline will not be permitted to go unpunished in the future.’

The general order is addressed only to the military, and the newspaper has questioned why a corresponding order, more strongly worded, has not been issued to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). ‘That it is required nobody should know better than General Macready. The Limerick burnings and the wreck of Templemore, to take only two of the latest instances, show that the doctrine of reprisals is being applied in a fashion which rivals the German achievements in Belgium.’

Prof. Fearghal McGarry compares the scale of the Anglo-Irish conflict of 1919-1921 with developments in central and eastern Europe, where paramilitary violence and civil wars were experienced.  Set against this context, violence in Ireland occurs at a relatively low level, argues Prof. McGarry

Reprisals in Limerick and Templemore
In Limerick, the military reprisals followed the shooting of a policeman, Constable Nathan, as he emerged from church. According to the official report of what occurred, the police took to the streets after an assault on two of their members and were ‘attacked from several directions’. However, alternative accounts tell of police firing volleys of shots over the heads of crowds gathered on the railway platform at Limerick junction. Some of the police began searching the passengers waiting on the platform and using objectionable language. Later, many houses were destroyed, particularly on Parnell Street, High Street and Cornmarket Row.

Locals lay the blame for the destruction on the ‘Black and Tans’, the nickname given to a recent batch of recruits to the RIC.

In Templemore, the shooting of District Inspector W.H. Wilson led to ugly scenes of violence that saw houses attacked by police and soldiers, the town hall and Market House burned and creameries in nearby Loughmore, Castleiney and Killea wrecked. These incidents bring the number of creameries destroyed in Tipperary to 12. The reprisals were not unexpected as, on learning of D.I. Wilson's murder, many townspeople began to shutter their premises and vacate the streets.

Early in the evening, the garage of George Moynan, a protestant, was entered by police and damage was done to the value of £5,000. Mr Moynan says that he doesn’t know why he was targeted: ‘I was on very friendly terms with D.I. Wilson and took no part in any political movement.’ The answer to why his premises was attacked may lie in the fact that police took 22 tins of petrol with them when they left. A soldier, who was later observed carrying tins of petrol up a ladder at one of the destroyed buildings, is understood to have fallen to his death.

It has also emerged that a motorcyclist who arrived on the main street in Templemore in the midst of the reprisal was arrested and mistreated by police. The individual, whose name is not known, was allegedly handcuffed and tied to a statue near the burning Market House and was threatened with being thrown on the flames. He was later released.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]