These so-called attacks on police barracks simply consisted in gangs of hooligans first taking careful cover in houses adjacent to the barracks, and then firing off as many rounds as they possessed. They always ceased fire long before daybreak, in order that they might be home in good time before it was possible for the police to leave barracks or a relief party to arrive on the scene.
At this period of the war, raiding the houses of the Loyalists for arms, and incidentally for money and valuables, not forgetting drink, was a much safer and more remunerative night’s amusement than shooting policemen or attacking barracks, though the price then was £60 for every policeman murdered.
A party of twenty to thirty Volunteers, usually boys from fifteen to twenty years of age, would meet at a fixed rendezvous some time after dark with all the arms they could raise. They would then don black cloth masks, turn up their coat collars, pull their hats down, and sally forth to spend the night robbing, murdering, and terrorising the unfortunate Loyalists of the district.
Imagine the feelings of a respectable old man living in a lonely house, who had probably never harmed any one during his lifetime, and whose only crime consisted in being loyal or refusing to subscribe to the funds of the I.R.A., in many cases a form of common robbery.
Night after night he lies in bed expecting to hear a loud knock at the door, and at last it comes. He opens the door to find a dozen shot-guns, old rifles, and pistols pointed at him. Some brute then demands his arms; the old man says he has none. They push him aside and force their way in. The old man is made to sit down while two young hounds keep prodding him in the back of the neck with the muzzles of their pistols, to remind him what they could do if they liked. The remainder ransack the house from top to bottom, take away any money or valuables they can find, and consume any drink there may be. If they cannot find any money or valuables, they threaten him with death until he disgorges. And lonely women suffered in like fashion.
The demand for arms used to be merely a blind for committing robbery. The location of every firearm in a district was well known from the beginning of the war.
If the reader happens to be an English country gentleman, let him think what it would be like never to know the night or hour when he would be raided by a gang of farm labourers or village loafers, armed and masked, from the nearest village. He might retire to bed to be waked up by loud knocking on his front door. If he did not open quickly a rifle shot would be fired through the lock, and if the door did not open then, it quickly would to the blows of hatchets which would follow. A wild gang of drunken brutes would burst into his nice house, smash desks, sideboards, and cupboards, searching for loot. Lucky man if he escaped with the loss of arms, money, and valuables, and not of home and life as well.
If the reader is an ex-soldier, let him imagine what his feelings would be like if in the middle of the night he was pulled out of his bed by these same ruffians, and given his choice between joining Trotsky’s Own Light Infantry, or whatever the local Red force may call itself, or being shot out of face. Being true to his country, he refuses to have anything to do with Bolshevism, and is shot before the eyes of his agonised wife.
Remember that the loyal country gentlemen and ex-soldiers of Ireland have sacrificed their blood and treasure on the altar of Empire as well as their English cousins, and hence are entitled to as much protection.
But no, when it comes to a matter of politics and votes they are thrown to the wolves, to the eternal shame of England. The sacrifice of the southern Loyalists will form one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of England.