Royal Irish Constabulary

The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC, Irish: Constáblacht Ríoga na hÉireann; simply called the Irish Constabulary 1836–67) was the police force in Ireland between 1822 and 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrolled the capital, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later had special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matched that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants were overrepresented among its senior officers.

The RIC was under the authority of the British administration in Ireland. It was a quasi-military police force. Unlike police elsewhere in the United Kingdom, RIC constables were routinely armed (including with carbines) and billeted in barracks, and the force had a militaristic structure. It policed Ireland during a period of agrarian unrest and Irish nationalist activity. It was used to quell civil unrest during the Tithe War, the Young Irelander Rebellion, the Fenian Rising, the Land War, and the Irish revolutionary period.

During the Irish War of Independence, the RIC faced mass public boycotts and attacks by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was reinforced with recruits from Britain—the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries—who became notorious for police brutality and attacks on civilians. The Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) was formed to reinforce the RIC in most of the northern province of Ulster.

In consequence of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and partition of Ireland, the RIC was disbanded in 1922 and was replaced by the Garda Síochána in the Irish Free State and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland.

The RIC's system of policing influenced the armed Canadian North-West Mounted Police (predecessor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), the armed Victoria Police force in Australia, the New Zealand Armed Constabulary, the armed Royal Newfoundland Constabulary in Newfoundland and the British South Africa Police in Rhodesia.

The first organised police forces in Ireland came about through Dublin Police Act 1786, which was a slightly modified version of the failed London and Westminster Police Bill 1785 drafted by John Reeves at the request of Home Secretary Lord Sydney following the Gordon Riots of 1780. A force of 400 armed policemen and 40 mounted petty constables, all full-time and uniformed, headed by three commissioners, four divisional judges and two clerks, was viewed as oppressive by local elites and became a strain on the city budget. The population of Dublin was under 300,000 at the time, which makes a very high rate of police officers per capita. That arguably excessive budget was used as a pretext by Irish nationalist MP Henry Grattan and short-lived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, to essentially abolish the Dublin Police in 1795 (even despite some success with fighting the crime), downsizing it to two inspectors and 50 constables headed by superintendend magistrate and two divisional justices and even temporarily moving it under Dublin Corporation.

The Peace Preservation Act 1814 for which Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) was largely responsible (the colloquial names "Bobby" and "Peeler" derive from his name Robert and Peel), and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 formed the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act established a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the UK civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration. By 1841 this force numbered over 8,600 men. The original force had been reorganised under an act of Parliament^[which?] of 1836, and the first constabulary code of regulations was published in 1837. The discipline was strict and the pay low. The police faced civil unrest among the Irish rural poor, and was involved in bloody confrontations during the period of the Tithe War. Other deployments were against organisations like the Ribbonmen, which attacked landlords, their property and stock.

The new constabulary first demonstrated its efficiency against civil agitation and Irish separatism during Daniel O'Connell's 1843 "monster meetings" to urge repeal of the Act of Parliamentary Union, and the Young Ireland campaign led by William Smith O'Brien in 1848, although it failed to contain violence at the so-called "Battle of Dolly's Brae" in 1849 (which provoked a Party Processions Act to regulate sectarian demonstrations). This was followed by a period of relative calm.