Ulster Special Constabulary - Background To Formation

Background To Formation

The Ulster Special Constabulary was formed against the background of conflict over Irish independence and the partition of Ireland.

The 1919–1921, Irish War of Independence, saw the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launch a guerilla campaign in pursuit of Irish independence. Unionists in Ireland's northeast – who were against this campaign and against Irish independence – directed their energies into the partition of Ireland by the creation of Northern Ireland as an autonomous region within the United Kingdom. This was enacted by the British Parliament in the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

Two main factors were behind the formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary. One was the desire of the Unionists, led by Sir James Craig (then a junior minister in the British Government, and later the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland), that the apparatus of government and security should be placed in their hands long before Northern Ireland was formally established.

A second reason was that violence in the north was increasing after the summer of 1920. The IRA began extending attacks to Royal Irish Constabulary barracks and tax offices in the north and there had been serious rioting between Catholics and Protestants in Derry in May and June and in Belfast in July, which had left up to 40 people dead.

With police and troops being drawn towards combating insurgency in the south and west, Unionists wanted a force that would both take on the IRA and also help the under-strength RIC with normal police duties. Furthermore, many Unionists did not trust the RIC, which, being an all-Ireland force was mostly Catholic. A third aim was to control Unionist paramilitary groups, who threatened, in the words of Craig, "a recourse to arms, which would precipitate civil war".

Craig proposed to the British cabinet a new "volunteer constabulary" which "must be raised from the loyal population" and organised, "on military lines" and "armed for duty within the six county area only". He recommended that "the organisation of the UVF (the unionist militia formed in 1912) should be used for this purpose". Wilfrid Spender, the former UVF quartermaster in 1913–14, and by now a decorated war hero, was appointed by Craig to form and run the USC.