Introduction from
Chronology
Major General Tudor
(Chief of Police) inspects the RIC garrison and D Company of the Auxiliaries in
Galway City.
According to the Connaught
Tribune, in his address to the RIC, he says “In the determined stand that
you have taken in lifting the terror of the reign of the gunman, I assure you
that you have my fullest support”.
The Tribune continues
“Having inspected the Auxiliaries, he spoke of the
pleasure it gave him to hear from many sources of the excellent discipline of D
Company. He congratulated them upon the gallantry a small party of them when
ambushed at Kilroe on January 18 last”. There was an ambush on the Auxiliaries at Kilroe on January 18th – see Jan-18 to 22-21/1. No member of the Auxiliaries was killed in
this ambush but, in its aftermath, the RIC killed four unarmed civilians.
Comment on Tudor’s Address
At this point, the
RIC (including the Auxiliary Division of the RIC) in Galway had been
responsible for the killing of, at least, nineteen people in Galway City and
County.
Of these people, six
were members of the IRA. (See
Sep-08-20/2 – Two IRA men killed; Nov-24-20/6; Nov-26-20/3; Feb-20-21/5 and
Mon-24-21/3.) Of these six men, only one
was possibly armed when he was killed.
The rest were mostly ‘shot when trying to escape’ or ‘failing to stop
when ordered’ or dragged from their beds and shot dead.
The other thirteen
were all civilians. (See Sep-16-20/1;
Oct-02-20/1; Oct-19-20/5; Oct-24-20/2; Nov-01-20/5; Nov-14-20/1; Nov-26-20/3;
Dec-20-20/3; Jan-18 to 22-20/1 – four men killed and Mar-03-21/2.) While some
of the civilians killed by the RIC were ‘shot trying to escape’ (for example,
Laurence McDonagh – see Dec-20-20/3) or gross negligence (for example, Eileen
Quinn – see Nov-01-20/5), some were targeted killings (for example, Michael
Walsh – see Oct-19-20/5 and Fr Michael Griffin – see Nov-14-20/1). It would seem clear from these figures that
in their “determined stand” to lift “the terror of the reign of the gunman”,
the RIC had little information on who the gunmen were and were quite
indiscriminate as to who they killed. Nevertheless, they got Tudor’s “fullest
support”.
By way of contrast,
by this point in time, the IRA had been responsible for the killing of nine
people in Galway City and County. Seven
of these were members of the RIC. (See Jul-19-20/ 2 – Two RIC men killed;
Aug-21-20/3; Sep-08-20/2; Oct-30-20/2 and Mar-16-21/3 – Two RIC men killed.) All
the RIC men would have been armed when they were shot but, as they were mostly
killed in ambushes, they would have had little chance to use their arms. Also, the IRA shot a man who they alleged was
a spy – see Oct-15-20/3 and, in what was probably a raid for arms by the IRA,
they shot a man who was in the house they were raiding – see Mar-04-20/2. This was an act of gross
indiscipline by the IRA. Nevertheless, overall, the killings carried out by the
IRA in Galway, up to this point, were a lot more targeted than those carried
out by the RIC.