BELFAST RB BOOKLET 2020 - Flipbook - Page 33
Ci t y of Belf ast Grand Bl ack Chapt er - Dem onst rat i on Bookl et 2020
remaining under British control; but
having its local, and autonomous, rule in
Belfast.
A new police service, the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) was constituted from the
former RIC and the 'A' Specials.
The 'B' Specials were retained as a
Reserve Force whilst the 'C' Specials were
disbanded.
The IRA border insurgencies continued
however and during the 1922 campaign
forty-nine (49) 'B' Specials were murdered.
In the years between 1933 and 1935
several more were murdered by republicans
with others killed during another murderous
period from 1937 to 1939 and in the same
period, numerous IRA bombings occurred
throughout Great Britain.
During the ensuing years from 1939 the
IRA took advantage of
the war to launch many
more bomb attacks
throughout Ulster once
again
using
the
previous adage of 1916,
that with 'England's
difficulty at war, in
Ireland it was their
opportunity to cause
havoc.'
During what was thought back then to be
the last of the border campaigns, from 1956
to 1962, the planned IRA attack on Gough
Military Barracks in Armagh, resulted in the
rebel gang adding more than three hundred
and forty different types of weaponry to its
now deadly arsenal.
During this particular campaign the
optimum strength of the RUC was around
three thousand five hundred officers,
supplemented by twelve and a half
thousand 'B' Specials on call with another
ten thousand in reserve. Indeed the USC
was very effective in countering the IRA
threat at that time.
So much so that in his book, 'The IRA',
novelist Tim Pat Coogan penned that the 'B'
Specials, (Ulster Special Constabulary) were
the rock on which any IRA mass movement in
Northern Ireland inevitably founded; this was
due to their knowledge of the areas in which
they operated; they were the eyes and ears
for the Royal Ulster Constabulary; with many
men from the USC later moving on to hold
very high positions within the Royal Ulster
Constabulary.
At that time the republican movement was
forced to recognise its failure and plan a new
strategy, which then led to a split within the
rebel organisation and the emergence of a
more evil grouping in the Provisional IRA.
. In 1969 a body titling itself as the Civil Rights
Movement also reared its ugly head on the
streets of our Province.
In fact this was just a front name for the
Provisional's propaganda machine and
another IRA campaign of sectarian
agitation and hatred
whereby they began to
orchestrate
street
rioting across many
diverse
locations
stretching from Belfast
to Lurgan; Armagh to
Londonderry
and
Dungiven, in-between.
At the extreme point,
after days and nights of
never ending rioting in Londonderry, the
Royal Ulster Constabulary was physically
exhausted and the Stormont Government
finally mobilised ten thousand 'B' Specials to
assist their colleagues in the RUC.
Later and with the on-going threatening
agitation from the IRA's political partners,
in Sinn Fein, an Advisory Committee on
Policing in Northern Ireland was set up by
Harold Wilson's governing Labour
administration.
Chaired by Baron Hunt CBE; DSO the
final report dated 3rd December 1969
recommended that the Ulster Special
Constabulary (USC) should be stood down
on April 30th, 1970 to be replaced by the
Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve (which
in fact were, Special Constables) and the
IN MEMORY OF THE FALLEN - 31 - AND THE FUTURE OF THE LIVING