The Royal Irish Constabulary

In June 1920, Constable Daniel O'Sullivan resigned from the RIC. O'Sullivan was a 31-year-old native of Limerick who had joined the force in 1908, spending his career stationed in Kerry. O'Sullivan had not been shot at, held up and disarmed, ambushed while on patrol, or defended his barracks against a late night attack. He was at home on leave in Limerick when a gang of masked men entered the family home and told him to resign from his job or he would be shot. O'Sullivan refused, and as the gang attempted to drag him outside his mother tried to intervene, before promptly fainting. At this point O'Sullivan agreed to the demand and signed a declaration that he would not return to his station ‘on account of his mother's health’. O'Sullivan's reason for resignation in the RIC's General Personnel Register is simple: ‘Intimidation by S.F.’ When Daniel O'Sullivan joined the RIC, they were a respected – even popular – civil police force; the vast majority were Irish Catholics. By the time he resigned in June 1920, the police were the most obvious expression of British rule in Ireland, seen by many as the eyes and ears of the enemy, traitors to their country. As one Volunteer later put it, ‘That was their sorrow, their tragedy, their disease, to be classified as aliens and enemies in and to their own land.’ Some policemen were shot and killed or wounded, but most were not. More often they were shunned in public, refused supplies and transport, denied information, and forced to live an isolated and dangerous existence. The section that follows will explore the everyday revolutionary experiences of Irish policemen like Daniel O'Sullivan.

The police boycott serves as a useful starting point from which to observe the local intimidation and coercion that most concerns this book. As Joost Augusteijn has pointed out:

This form of terror, consisting of a general boycott and regularly enforced by intimidation and aggression, was not new to Ireland.