History:John Regan's memoir is a remarkable narrative of the Irish revolutionary era from a policeman's perspective. Regan provides a first-hand account of some of the most significant events of the period, writes Brendan Ó Cathaoir.
He observed the distribution of arms from the Larne gun-running (the government "issued no orders to deal with the emergency"); having joined the British army, he helped to suppress the 1916 Rising and was "greatly impressed" by the insurgents. His subsequent war recollections are not particularly riveting, unlike his views on the Anglo-Irish conflict (when he was county inspector in Cork and Limerick).
Hardened by war, he would have liked to have seen crown forces taking the offensive against a reorganised IRA, but believed they were hamstrung by political expediency. He considered the RIC was suited only to dealing with a few "moonlighters" (agrarian agitators who fired shots through windows for the purpose of intimidation). Therefore, he agreed with the indigenous force being augmented by ex-soldiers from Britain. Furthermore, he defended the reprisal shooting of Tomás Mac Curtain, the lord mayor of Cork, who, as IRA brigade commander, Regan held responsible for the death of his men.
The police quickest to take revenge were, in his opinion, Irishmen "of an excellent type. Black and Tans, having drink taken, might fire out of lorries indiscriminately, loot public houses or terrorise a village, but the Irishman would avenge his comrade when absolutely cold sober and on the right person." Regan maintained that the actual fighting men on both sides were the least bitter. After the Treaty, he claims Michael Collins offered him a position in the newly-formed Civic Guards. He was approached by a member of the IRA headquarters staff. One is tempted to speculate that the intermediary was Michael Staines. As first commissioner, he declared on September 9th, 1922: "The Garda Síochána will succeed not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people." A staunch unionist, Regan declined to meet Collins and, when the RIC was disbanded, opted to transfer to the RUC.
He denied the RIC had been hostile to the Irish people. The depot in the Phoenix Park was run on military lines, nonetheless, and became the training centre for officers of the different colonial police forces. While still a cadet, he accompanied "for instructional purposes" a reserve detachment to Kerry for eviction duty. The constabulary tried first to break down with a battering ram the door of the house from which a tenant was to be evicted. They gained entry eventually though the gable with crowbars.
He appeared surprised then that Irish people were averse to complying with the law and lacked "the civic spirit of the Englishman". Collecting evidence in agrarian crime was practically impossible.
Nevertheless, Regan was a man of humanity and humour. This is most evident in his chapters on pre-war Clare. At the age of 20, he was appointed district inspector to Tulla. Due to agrarian trouble, Clare at this time was the second most policed county in Ireland (after Galway), with one policeman for every 214 inhabitants. The high number of police facilitated leisure activities, particularly cricket and hunting.
He found that "the perpetrators of agrarian outrages were by no means all callous ruffians as the nature of their crimes would lead one to expect, many of them being quite decent fellows who seemed to become maniacs when engaged in a dispute over land". After Clare, police work in Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh, seemed "almost a holiday".
EVEN THOUGH A history book without an index is suspect, Niamh O'Sullivan's chronicle of Kilmainham Jail Museum is also recommended.
As O'Sullivan (archivist for much of her 24 years working in the museum) points out, only 15 per cent of those incarcerated between 1796 and 1924 were political prisoners. The rest "were unknown and, up until now, largely unrecalled". They included Joseph Williams, aged six, imprisoned in the 1850s for travelling without a train ticket (although accompanied by his parents).
Among the illustrations in the Kilmainham book is an 1848 photograph, one of the first taken in Ireland. The previously unknown prisoner in this image has now been identified as Young Irelander Patrick O'Donohue, who was transported along with William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher and Terence Bellew MacManus.
Every Dark Hour will be of interest mainly to Kilmainham's 225,000 annual visitors. Reading it will send you back to revisit Ireland's Bastille.
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian and journalist
The Memoirs of John M Regan: A Catholic Officer in the RIC and RUC, 1909-48, Edited by Joost Augusteijn, Four Courts Press, 218pp. €55
Every Dark Hour: A History of Kilmainham Jail, By Niamh O'Sullivan, Liberties Press, 244pp. €14.99