‘A Strong Seasoning of Irishmen’: The British Palestine Police, 1926–1948

Gannon, Seán William

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96394-5_3

Seán William Gannon⁴

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter takes as its subject the recruitment in 1926–1947 of Irishmen into the British (Palestine) Gendarmerie’s successor force, the British Section of the Palestine Police (BSPP). The extent of Irish participation is investigated and trends during four distinct recruitment periods (1926–1935, the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, the Second World War period, and the postwar years) are examined. Personal testimonies, together with data extracted from BSPP personnel files, are interpreted in the light of contemporary historical, social, and economic trends to explore the reasons for which Irishmen enlisted, with particular focus on post-Second World War period enlistments, who accounted for almost half of all Irishmen recruited. Official and popular attitudes towards what became, by the mid-1940s, open recruitment for a British colonial force on Southern Irish soil are also examined.

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Notes

1.
Government of Palestine, ‘Report on Palestine Administration, 1922’ (London: HMSO, 1923), 38.
2.
London Gazette, 20 October 1916, 10189; 18 June 1917, 6023; 10 April 1918, 4374/5; 1 July 1918, 7719; 20 May 1920, 5710; 6 January 1921, 153.
3.
Figures provided in Knight, ‘Policing in British Palestine’, 129–130.
4.
Palestine Post, 4 June 1939, 1.
5.
Jason Tomes, ‘Tegart, Sir Charles Augustus (1881–1946)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36447, accessed 5 February 2014).
6.
Irish Times, 1 July 1947, 2.
7.
Connacht Tribune, 9 August 1947, 8; Patrick Tynan, Hampshire, Author interview, 27 August 2012.
8.
Kelly, Returning Home, 28.
9.
The Times, 11 September 1929, 12; Irish Times, 13 February 1932, 17. See also Palestine Post, 14 May 1934, 11.
10.
Jack Binsley, The Palestine Police Service (London: Minerva, 1997), 9, 17. Binsley enlisted in August 1930.
11.
Geoffrey John Morton, Just the Job: Some Experiences of a Colonial Policeman (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1957), 17–18.
12.
Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1992), 526–529.
13.
This is not to say that these enlistments were not motivated by economic concerns, but they were most likely those that perennially affected the small-farming sector in Ireland and indeed some were resident in Britain when they joined the BSPP, having already left their family holding in search of work.
14.
Irish protectionist policies implemented in the 1930s were the main contributory factor to an annual increase in industrial employment of over 6 per cent between 1932 and 1938 which saw 50,000 new jobs created. Nevertheless, the impact of the Great Depression and a steep decline in emigration consequent on the introduction of USA immigration quotas kept unemployment figures high, peaking at 145,000 in January 1936. Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: a New Economic History, 1780–1939 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), 406–416.
15.
D. H. Akenson, Sean Farren and John Coolahan, ‘Pre-University Education, 1921–84’ in J. R. Hill (ed.), A New History of Ireland, VII: Ireland 1921–1984 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010), 725–726.
16.
The Times, 27 January 1938.
17.
Downie, Colonial Office minute, 20 November 1934, cited in Hammond, ‘Ideology and Consensus’, 273.
18.
Spicer was described by one former BSPP constable as ‘the high priest of social snobbery’, but his successor, Alan Saunders, also placed an emphasis on the importance of ‘breeding’, believing that policemen who did ‘not come out of a high enough drawer’ would be unable ‘to deal with officers in other branches of the [Colonial] Service … on equal terms’. Irish Times, 3 June 1933, 3; TNA, CO/850/40/7, Spicer to chief secretary, 30 January 1934; Harry Arrigonie, British Colonialism: 30 Years Serving Democracy or Hypocrisy? (Bideford: Edward Gaskell Lazarus, 1998), 24; TNA, CO/877/16/3, Furse, Departmental minute, 23 November 1937.
19.
Chancellor to Passfield, 17 November 1930, quoted in Hammond, ‘Ideology and Consensus’, 273; TNA, CO/733/195/8/26, Chancellor’s office to Cunliffe-Lister, 19 November 1931.
20.
Irish Times, 3 June 1933, 3; 1 September 1932, 6.
21.
See, for example, Irish Times, 9 December 1933, 17; 9 November 1935, 17; 25 January 1936, 13. This column had been running since 1910 when it was titled ‘RIC and Police Expert’.
22.
Alvin Jackson, ‘Ireland, the Union and the Empire, 1800–1960’ in Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire: 123–153, 140.
23.
Penny Perrick, Something to Hide: the Life of Sheila Wingfield, Viscountess Powerscourt (Dublin: Lilliput, 2007), 37.
24.
Irish Independent, 1 September 1932, 6.
25.
Palestine Police Magazine, June 1947, 5.
26.
Figures abstracted from Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College, Oxford (MECA), GB165-0365 Palestine Police Service Record Card Collection (PPSRCC); Commonwealth & Empire Museum Bristol (CEM), Palestine Police Archive, Personnel Records, uncatalogued (PPAPR).
27.
TNA, CO/733/389/13/35, MacMichael to MacDonald, 8 February 1939.
28.
Jackson, ‘Ireland and Empire’, 140.
29.
Jim Beach, ‘Soldier Education in the British Army, 1920–2007’, History of Education, 37/5 (2008): 679–699, 688.
30.
According to David French, even the first-class army certificate was an unexceptional educational qualification, establishing ‘a standard of knowledge that was about a year below that of a G.C.E. ordinary level examination’. David French, Army, Empire and the Cold War: the British Army and Military Policy, 1945–1971 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 178.
31.
O’Connor, Irish Officers, 262. See also Jeffery, ‘British Army and Ireland’, 437.
32.
The economic depression in 1930s Northern Ireland was ‘unrelenting … Between 1931 and 1939, 27 per cent of the insured workforce was unemployed’ and almost 30 per cent of insured industrial workers were jobless in February 1938. Bardon, Ulster, 529.
33.
Figures abstracted from MECA, PPSRCC; CEM, PPAPR.
34.
CEM, PPAPR, Patrick Moran (Dublin), Attestation papers: employment history; CEM, PPAPR, John Ritchie (Antrim), Attestation papers: employment history.
35.
CEM, PPAPR, Christopher Ryan (Dublin), Ryan to Saunders, 3 February 1939.
36.
Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfilment: Palestine 1917–1949, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 1983), 15.
37.
Binsley, Palestine Police, 10.
38.
David M. Anderson and David Killingray, ‘Consent, Coercion and Colonial Control: Policing the Empire, 1830–1940’ in Anderson & Killingray, Policing the Empire, 1–13, 11. See also Jeffries, Colonial Police, 52–53.
39.
The Times, 27 January 1938.
40.
Source: MECA, PPSRCC; CEM, PPAPR. The Royal Ulster Rifles served in Palestine from November 1936 until the end of the Arab Revolt, the Irish Guards from July to October 1938. The Royal Irish Regiment arrived as the Irish Guards was leaving and remained until late March 1939.
41.
The other 20 per cent of Irish home allotments were paid mainly to ‘self’ (a form of saving) or friends.
42.
Figures collated from home allotment forms found in CEM, PPAPR.
43.
CEM, PPAPR, Benjamin Carpenter (Dublin), Carpenter to Saunders, 8 September 1941; CEM, PPAPR, Thomas Davis, Davis to Saunders, 10 May 1943.
44.
M. Forde, South Africa, Correspondence with author, 5 December 2011.
45.
Data extracted from CEM, Palestine Police Archive, Palestine Police Pension Records, uncatalogued (PENREC); CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
46.
Data source: CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
For discussions of the reasons for which citizens of Ireland volunteered for the British armed forces during the war, see Doherty, Irish Men and Women, 27–46 and Kelly, Returning Home, 28–34.
47.
TNA, CO/537/1698/22-3, Acton to Gater, 5 December 1945.
48.
The reasons for these resignations and dismissals are discussed in Chap. 4.
49.
Data abstracted from CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
50.
For an account of how disillusionment with military life led one British-born soldier to volunteer for the PMF in August 1944, see Jack Wood, One Life: From Barnsley, Then Through the War to the Palestine Police and After (Lincoln: Tucann, 2006), 109–111.
51.
TNA, CO/733/450/4/31, Rymer-Jones, ‘Extract from report on organisation of Police’, 14 March 1944.
52.
CEM, PPAPR, Thomas Cosgrave (Dublin), Cosgrave to Gray, 22 May 1946.
53.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/154-66, Brighton, ‘Palestine Police Force recruitment campaign: publicity proposals’, 14 February 1946.
54.
Kieran Woodman, Media Control in Ireland, 1923–1983 (Galway: Galway UP, 1985), 47; John Horgan, Irish Media: a Critical History Since 1922 (London: Routledge, 2001), 35.
55.
Irish circulation figures for the British press are not available for 1944, so the readership of those that carried the advertisement for BSPP in December cannot be determined definitively. However, figures compiled by the office of the Irish press censor in April 1940 provide some indication as to their circulation during the war. Although the Northern Irish dailies and the Manchester Guardian had modest circulation, each selling an average of 3400 copies a day, the circulation of the Sunday Times and The People regularly exceeded 220,000 copies per week. Robert Cole, Propaganda, Censorship and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006), 36; Donal Ó Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (Cork: Cork UP, 1996), 188–199.
56.
Data source: CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
57.
Figures abstracted from CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC. That the low percentage of Catholic enlistments in the BSPP during the war did not derive from a reluctance to join British forces is evidenced by the fact that Catholics were volunteering for the British Army ‘out of proportion to their numbers in the population and in an environment that was especially unsympathetic to them’. Brian Girvin, The Emergency: Neutral Ireland, 1939–45 (London: Macmillan, 2006), 263.
58.
Tracey Connolly, ‘Irish Workers in Britain during World War Two’ in Brian Girvin and Geoffrey Roberts, Ireland and the Second World War: Politics, Society and Remembrance (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000), 128.
59.
Belfast Telegraph, 11 December 1944; Irish News, 11 December 1944.
60.
Data source: CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC; CEM, PENREC.
61.
According to F.S.L. Lyons’ famous analogy, the wartime Irish were ‘condemned … to live in Plato’s Cave, with their backs to the fire of life and deriving their only knowledge of what went on … from the flickering shadows thrown on the wall … by the men and women who passed two and fro behind them’. F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, revised edition (London: Fontana, 1973), 557–558.
62.
Bardon, Ulster, 562; Brian Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1995), 52.
63.
See, for example, TNA, CO/537/1697/114, Note on BSPP recruitment, undated, c. February 1946. The issue of compulsory retention is discussed in Chap. 4.
64.
Lehi, the Irgun, and Haganah, had formed a United Resistance Movement in October 1945 and launched what became ten months of joint operations.
65.
CEM, PENREC, Box 7, R. O. Cafferata, McConnell to Cafferata, 7 May 1946.
66.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/2, Smith, Colonial Office minute, 11 January 1946.
67.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/171-3, Minutes of meeting on Palestine Police recruitment held at the Colonial Office, 10 January 1946; TNA, CO/733/451/8/154-66, Brighton, ‘Palestine Police Force recruitment campaign: publicity proposals’, 14 February 1946.
68.
Mather & Crowther had previously carried out several successful publicity campaigns for the Government that earned it the reputation of ‘the leading creative agency’ in the UK. Jeremy Tunstall, The Advertising Man in London Advertising Agencies (London: Chapman & Hall, 1964), 66.
69.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/123, Boggan to Hall, 10 April 1946.
70.
TNA, CO/733/451/9/96-100, ‘Interim report on Palestine Police recruitment campaign’, 9 July 1946.
71.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/2, Smith, Departmental minute, 11 January 1946.
72.
‘By taking advantage of a specialised and manly service, that period [i.e. national service] can be turned into an excellent mental and physical training ground for their after life.’ TNA, CO/733/451/9/102, Cafferata, Circular to school headmasters, 28 June 1946.
73.
TNA, CO/733/451/9/38, Russell Edmunds to Smith, 13 September 1946. The campaign was scaled back in October (insertions were restricted to one or two per month in the Sundays, six national dailies, and just six of the original 106 provincial newspapers), and ended in March 1947.
74.
TNA, CO/733/451/8/123, Boggan to Hall, 10 April 1946.
75.
TNA, CO/537/2268, Shelton, ‘Contact report’, 7 March 1947.
76.
Mather & Crowther disputed these figures, putting the total cost of its campaign from June 1946 to March 1947 at £21 per recruit. Ibid.; TNA, CO/537/2268, Mather & Crowther to Smith, 17 March 1947.
77.
TNA, CO/733/451/9/33-5, Downie to Gater, 2 October 1946.
78.
TNA, CO/733/451/9/96-100, ‘Interim report on Palestine Police recruitment campaign’, 9 July 1946.
79.
The number of traceable responses generated by the Northern Irish dailies between June and September 1946 was as follows: Belfast Telegraph (219), Northern Whig (126), Irish News (49), Belfast Newsletter (41), Irish Daily Telegraph (40). TNA, CO/733/451/10/67-71, ‘Palestine Police: final cost per reply to completion of returns for first campaign running from mid-June to mid-September 1946’, 5 November 1946.
80.
Irish Times, 08 May 1946, 7; Cork Examiner, 10 May 1946, 8.
81.
TNA, CO/537/1697/68, Crown Agents to Gray, 25 May 1946; TNA, CO/733/451/9/124, Smith to Shaw, 3 July 1946.
82.
O’Connor, Irish Officers, 249–250.
83.
National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Department of Foreign Affairs files (DFA), 385/6, McCauley, Memorandum, 13 June 1946. The BLLO had been established during the war to oversee the recruitment of Irish citizens for the British war economy.
84.
Irish Times, 27 August 1946, 4.
85.
Seventy-three per cent of enlistments were from Southern Ireland and 27 per cent from the North.
86.
Data source: MECA, PPSRCC; CEM, PPAPR.
87.
John Humphreys, West Sussex, Author interview, 26 September 2011.
88.
Patrick Tynan, Author interview.
89.
Michael Lang (ed.), One Man in His time: the Diary of a Palestine Policeman 1946–1948 (Lewes: Book Guild, 1997), 6; Patrick Tynan Author interview; John Power, Waterford, Author interview, 7 September 2003.
90.
‘Patrick J. Byrne’s service in the Palestine Police, 1947–1948’ (www.landofbrokenpromises.co.uk/palestine/byrneweb/enlisting.html, accessed 14 March 2014).
91.
CEM, PPAPR, William Reidy (Kerry), Reidy to Gray, 20 June 1947; Imperial War Museum London (IWM), Sound Archive 10125, Michael Burke interview, 20 February 1988.
92.
Gerald Murphy, Copper Mandarin: a Memoir (London: Regency, 1984), 21–22. As in the 1930s, the BSPP was the only colonial force actively recruiting a ‘British’ rank-and-file.
93.
Thomas Freeburn, Essex, Author interview, 12 June 2011.
94.
William Bond, Correspondence with author, 2 May 2013.
95.
Alexander McClements, Gloucestershire, Author interview, 29 July 2014.
96.
MECA, GB165-0392 Robert Hamilton collection, Interview with Sharif Ismail, 20 April 2006.
97.
Connolly, ‘Irish Workers’, 130.
98.
‘The Node’, a period house in Codicote, Hertfordshire, had been acquired by the Palestine Police in 1947 for the enlistment and preliminary training of recruits. Queries regarding BSPP grants, gratuities and pensions in the aftermath of the force’s disbandment were dealt with there until its functions were transferred to the Palestine Police office in London in December 1948.
99.
CEM, PPAPR, William C. (Cork), William C. to The Node, 12 June 1948.
100.
CEM, PPAPR, John W. (Waterford), John W. to The Node, 14 October 1948; CEM, PPAPR, Joseph H. (Louth), Joseph H. to The Node, 3 July, 30 August, 22 September 1948; CEM, PPAPR, Kevin M. (Tipperary), Kevin M. to The Node, 29 June 1948.
101.
CEM, PPAPR, Lawrence D. (Down), Lawrence D. to The Node, 11 January 1949; CEM, PPAPR, Edward I. (Antrim), Edward I. to The Node, 20 September 1948.
102.
CEM, PPAPR, John F. (Dublin), John F. to Gray, 4 January 1948.
103.
Dennis Quickfall, Shadows over Scopus: Reflections of an Ex-Palestine Policeman (Manchester: Cromwell, 1999), 8.
104.
John Fitzpatrick, Longford, Author interview, 18 June 2012.
105.
Patrick H., Canada, Correspondence with author, 4 March 2010.
106.
Irish Times, 27 August 1946, 4.
107.
B. Draper, Liverpool, Correspondence with author, 9 August 2011.
108.
IWM, Sound Archive 16689, Paul MacMahon interview, 13 June 1996.
109.
Thomas Allen, Leeds, Author interview, 19 October 2014; Nora Sheedy, Limerick, Author interview, 15 November 2010.
110.
Kelly, Returning Home, 90–93.
111.
Data extracted from CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
112.
David Brown, Bangor, Author interview, 9 November 2011.
113.
Data extracted from CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
114.
Kelly, Returning Home, 93.
115.
Britain refused to pay unemployment insurance to claimants who were resident outside its jurisdiction. Ex-servicemen living in Ireland were eventually exempted under a bilateral unemployment insurance agreement reached by the London and Dublin governments in late 1946.
116.
Irish Times, 31 January 1947, 5.
117.
Patrick Cawley, Lancashire, Author Interview, 10 October 2011.
118.
Kelly, Returning Home, 173.
119.
Christopher L., London, Author correspondence, 15 January 2013.
120.
Paul MacMahon, IWM interview.
121.
Martin Moore, Dublin, Author interview, 8 September 2009.
122.
Data extracted from CEM, PPAPR; MECA, PPSRCC.
123.
Eleven sets of Irish brothers joined the BSPP between 1939 and 1947. In total, in excess of 40 sets of brothers, 10 of father-son, as well as an assortment of cousins and in-laws, joined the BSPP during this time.
124.
MECA, GB165-0393 Edward Wells collection, Interview with Josie Delap, 27 April 2006.
125.
William Bond, Author interview, 2 September 2013; MECA, GB165-0403 Geoffrey Owen collection, Interview with John Knight, 13 June 2006.
126.
G. Crowley, Galway, Author correspondence, 4 May 2013.
127.
Irish Times, 27 August 1946, 4.
128.
Irish Independent, 20 December 1946, 5.
129.
Dáil Debates, 23 January 1947, 104/2, cc187–188.
130.
NAI, DFA/340/12/5, ‘Note for minister’s information’, unsigned, 21 January 1947.
131.
Dáil Debates, 23 January 1947, 104/2, cc187–188.
132.
Irish Independent, 9 January 1947, 5.
133.
Dáil Debates, 12 February 1947, 104/6, cc804–805.
134.
Briscoe vigorously defended Ziff against an attack by Dillon in the Dáil two months later, which resulted in Briscoe’s removal from the chamber. He had previously felt obliged to defend him to Dan Breen, who had accused Ziff of being a pro-British agent. Dáil Debates, 24 April 1947, 105/5, cc.1318–1319; NAI, DFA/10/P/40, Breen to Briscoe, 14 November 1941 & Briscoe to Breen, 17 November 1941.
135.
Robert Briscoe, For the Life of Me (London: Little Brown, 1958), 264.
136.
Eunan O’Halpin, Defending Ireland: the Irish State and its Enemies Since 1922 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999), 220–221.
137.
Bodleian Library, Oxford (BLO), Commonwealth and African Studies (CAS), MSS.Medit.s.38, John James O’Sullivan collection, Diaries, 3 October 1947.
138.
NAI, DFA/340/12/5, ‘Note for minister’s information’, unsigned, 21 January 1947.
139.
Dáil Debates, 12 February 1947, 104/6, cc804–805.
140.
NAI, DFA/385/6, Bryan to Boland, 18 August 1947. Unfortunately, the G2 file relating to BSPP recruitment during this period is listed at the Military Archives in Dublin as missing.
141.
Dáil Debates, 20 June 1947, 106/9, c.2335.
142.
In addition to the above-cited articles in the Connacht Tribune, see, as examples, Munster Express, 25 October 1946, 3; 15 November 1946, 1; 10 January, 1947, 1; 14 February 1947, 3; 9 May 1947, 1; 1 August 1947, 3; 19 September 1947, 1; 26 March 1948, 8; 9 April 1948, 3; Southern Star, 22 June 1946, 5; 15 March 1947, 7; 25 October 1947, 5; Meath Chronicle, 15 February 1947, 8; 5 June 1948, 5; Anglo-Celt, 7 December 1946, 8.
143.
Patrick Tynan, Author interview; John Power, Author interview.
144.
Irish Democrat, August 1947. Martin Moore’s father, an IRA veteran, saw the BSPP and the Black and Tans as one and the same: ‘When I was going on about joining the Palestine Police he was dead against it on account of the Black and Tans forming the [British] Gendarmerie. And he said: look if you want to do something join the British Army. The British Army’s honourable, not the Black and Tans.’ Martin Moore, Author interview.
145.
BLO, CAS, O’Sullivan collection, Diaries, 25 September, 3 October 1947.
146.
See, for example, La Metropole, 8 September 1948.
147.
Irish Independent, 9 January 1947, 5. The BLLO was eventually closed in October 1954.
148.
CEM, PPAPR, John B., John B to The Node, 18 June 1948.
149.
See, for example, Irish Times, 23 June 1948, 7; 15 September 1948, 7; 11 January 1949, 5; 4 March 1949, 7; 29 July 1949, 7; Irish Independent, 7 July 1948, 1.

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Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Seán William Gannon

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Gannon, S.W. (2019). ‘A Strong Seasoning of Irishmen’: The British Palestine Police, 1926–1948. In: The Irish Imperial Service. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96394-5_3

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