Auxiliary Division - Recruitment and Organisation

Recruitment and Organisation

In September 1919, the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, Sir Frederick Shaw suggested that the police force in Ireland be expanded via the recruitment of a special force of volunteer British ex-servicemen. During a Cabinet meeting on 11 May 1920, the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, suggested the formation of a "Special Emergency Gendarmerie, which would become a branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary." Churchill's proposal was referred to a committee chaired by General Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Ireland. Macready's committee rejected Churchill's proposal, but it was revived two months later, in July, by the Police Adviser to the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland, Major-General H H Tudor. In a memo dated 6 July 1920, Tudor justified the scheme on the grounds that it would take too long to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) with ordinary recruits. Tudor's new "Auxiliary Force" would be strictly temporary: its members would enlist for a year: their pay would be £7 per week (twice what a constable was paid), plus a sergeant's allowances, and would be known as "Temporary Cadets". At this time a London advertisement for ex-officers to manage coffee stalls at two pounds ten shillings a week received five thousand applicants.

The ADRIC was recruited in Britain from among ex-officers who had served in World War I - especially those who had served in the Army including the Royal Flying Corps. Most recruits were from Great Britain, though some were from Ireland, and others came from the British Empire and Commonwealth. Many had been highly decorated in the war and three, James Leach, James Johnson, and George Onions, had been awarded the Victoria Cross. Interestingly, their decorations make it clear that many had been promoted from the ranks: some men, for example, had been awarded the common soldier's Military Medal instead of (or in addition to) the officer's Military Cross. Enlisted men who had been commissioned as officers during the War often found it difficult to adjust to their loss of status and pay in civilian life, and historians have concluded that the Auxiliary Division recruited large numbers of these "temporary gentlemen".

Recruiting began in July 1920, and by November 1921, the division was 1,900 strong. The Auxiliaries were nominally part of the RIC, but actually operated more or less independently in rural areas. Divided into companies (eventually fifteen of them), each about one hundred strong, heavily armed and highly mobile, they operated in ten counties, mostly in the south and west, where Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity was greatest. They wore either RIC uniforms or their old army uniforms with appropriate police badges, along with distinctive Tam-o-shanter caps. They were commanded by Brigadier-General F P Crozier, a former officer of the Loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteers.