Hugh Tudor

When Tudor took up his new post, the Irish War of Independence was approaching a crisis: indeed, within a couple of months, the British administration in Ireland was on the verge of collapse. The Royal Irish Constabulary's morale and effective strength were both declining: Irish Republican Army guerrillas were ambushing police patrols, burning police barracks and organising boycotts of police and their families. Railway workers went on strike, refusing to move trains that carried armed police or troops. Merchants refused to serve police customers. Police recruits and servants were being attacked and intimidated, and women who were friendly with police had their hair cut off. Police property was wrecked and stolen: in some cases, police bicycles were taken away while their owners were in church. Hundreds of police officers resigned both as a result of intimidation and in protest at the governments repeated mass releases of IRA prisoners which continued up until the spring of 1920.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin was building an alternative state — the Irish Republic proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916. Local governments were acknowledging the authority of the First Dáil. IRA Volunteers were acting as Republican police. Republican courts were adjudicating both civil and criminal cases. In some parts of Ireland, the Republic was becoming a reality.

Tudor's assignment, as he saw it, was to raise police morale, punish crime and restore law and order: "I had nothing to do with politics," he wrote years later, "and don't care a hoop of hell what measure of Home Rule they got." At a Cabinet conference on 23 July 1920, his Dublin Castle colleagues were calling for an offer of "Dominion Home Rule" (i.e. Canadian-style self-government, within the Empire, as opposed to the devolved Parliament within the UK which was due to have become law in 1914 and was eventually elected in May 1921). However, Tudor was confident that "given the proper support, it would be possible to crush the present campaign of outrage. The whole country was intimidated," he said, "and would thank God for strong measures."[10]

The government chose the hard line: on 9 August 1920, Parliament passed the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, which gave Dublin Castle the power to govern by regulation; to replace the criminal courts with courts martial; to replace coroner's inquests with military courts of inquiry; and to punish disaffected local governments by withholding grants of money.

As Police Adviser, Tudor assumed control of Ireland's police forces, and eventually styled himself "Chief of Police". Under his administration, the police were militarised: indeed, at the Cabinet conference of 23 July 1920, Tudor had conceded that the RIC would soon become ineffective as a police force; "but as a military body he thought they might have great effect." Like his patron, Churchill, Tudor gave police posts to his military friends and colleagues: Brigadier-General Ormonde Winter, for example, became Deputy Police Adviser and Head of Intelligence; "He had once been my Captain in a battery at Rawalpindi," said Tudor, "and we had done a lot of racing together at various meetings in India." The beleaguered RIC was reinforced with British ex-soldiers and sailors—the notorious 'Black and Tans'.[11] With the army stretched very thin by the deployment of 2 extra divisions to Iraq, and the threatened British coal strike in September 1920, Tudor created the Auxiliary Division, a temporary gendarmerie composed of ex-officers and commanded by a pair of experienced colonial warriors: Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier and Brigadier-General E. A. Wood; its numbers peaked at 1,500 in July 1921.[12][13]

While working hard to rebuild the RIC's numbers and morale, Tudor did comparatively little to restore its discipline. When police and auxiliaries were killed in ambushes and attacks, their comrades often responded with reprisals against Irish Republicans and their communities: some of these reprisals were spontaneous "police riots," but others were organised and led by local police officials. Tudor's own response to these outbreaks of arson and murder was weak and ambiguous: in a memorandum on discipline dated 12 November 1920, Tudor admonished his men to maintain "the highest discipline", while reassuring them that they would have "the fullest support in the most drastic action against that band of assassins, the so-called IRA."

Sir Nevil Macready (Commander-in-Chief, Ireland) had been initially impressed by Tudor (June 1920) and thought he was getting rid of "incompetent idiots" from senior police positions. Macready and the CIGS Sir Henry Wilson became increasingly concerned that Tudor, with the connivance of Lloyd George, who loved to drop hints to that effect, was operating an unofficial policy of killing IRA men in reprisal for the deaths of pro-Crown forces. However Macready also told Wilson that the Army was arranging "accidents" for suspected IRA men, but not telling the politicians as he did not want them "talked and joked about after dinner by Cabinet Ministers".[14] Tudor's complicity in the reprisals was implied by Macready when he wrote that "assassination is rife and the G.S. [General Staff] have now adopted it à la Tudor and Co." [15]

Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. More than 30 people were killed or fatally wounded. The day began with an Irish Republican Army operation, organised by Michael Collins, to assassinate members of the "Cairo Gang" – a team of undercover British intelligence agents working and living in Dublin. IRA members went to a number of addresses and killed or fatally wounded 16 men, mostly British Army intelligence officers. Five other men were wounded. Later that afternoon, in retaliation, members of the Auxiliary Division and RIC opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing or fatally wounding fourteen civilians and wounding at least sixty others. After a Roman Catholic priest was shot dead by an insane Auxiliary in December 1920, a Castle official noted in his diary that he felt some sympathy for the killer, "as these men have undoubtedly been influenced by what they have taken as the passive approval of their officers from Tudor downwards to believe that they will never be punished for anything."[16]

After the killing of 17 Auxiliaries in an ambush at Macroom, County Cork, martial law was declared (10 December 1920) in the four Munster Counties of Cork, Tipperary, Kerry and Limerick. On 23 December Irish Home Rule became law, to the delight of the Opposition Asquith Liberal faction and Labour Party. On 29 December, Tudor attended a special Cabinet conference, along with Wilson, Macready and John Anderson (Head of the Civil Service in Dublin), who all advised that no truce should be allowed for elections to the planned Dublin Parliament, and that at least four months of martial law would be required to restore order: the date for the elections was therefore set for May 1921. Martial law was then extended over the rest of Munster (Counties Waterford and Clare) and part of Leinster (Counties Kilkenny and Wexford).[17]

By this time, however, reprisals had become a scandal in Britain. In the first half of 1921, police discipline improved, and police reprisals became less common, but this improvement came too late: the political damage was irreversible. In addition, Macready thought the RIC had become unreliable and had lost confidence in Tudor, who was also being criticised by Robertson, under whom he had previously served on the Rhine.[18]

The Irish War of Independence reached a climax in the first half of 1921, with deaths of Crown forces running at approximately double the rate of those in the second half of 1920.[18] However IRA losses were also mounting with many of their key members captured and the organisation critically short of funds and ammunition: IRA leader Michael Collins would later describe them to Chief Secretary of Ireland Hamar Greenwood as 'dead beat' and 'within six weeks of defeat' by the summer of 1921. By May 1921, it was clear however that the Government's strategy of combining limited repression with limited concessions was not working.[19]

With the Irish elections and the potential Triple Alliance strike in Britain out of the way, an extra 17 army battalions were sent (bringing British strength up to 60,000) in June and July 1921; but the politicians drew back from the brink, and faced with the choice of either waging a war of reconquest or negotiating peace with the insurgents, they opened secret talks with James Craig and Éamon de Valera.[20] A Truce was agreed in July 1921, and a Treaty signed in December.[21] Whilst the Anglo-Irish Treaty would prove acceptable to the British government and Irish Unionists its terms prompted a vicious conflict between Irish Republicans resulting in the Irish Civil War.