On This Day / September 27, 1921

Summary: On This Day – 27th September 1921, the B Specials returned to duty on Belfast’s streets amid continuing violence, intimidation and the expulsion of families from their homes. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

‘B Men’ Return | On This Day – 27th September 1921

FOLLOWING the announcement made by Sir James Craig in the Northern Parliament on Monday, the B Specials were again on duty in various parts of the city last night. They were accompanied by regular members of the RIC.

The Dublin Evening Telegraph comments: When the Truce was declared [on 11 July 1921] the whole-time Specials were ordered to be kept to civil police duties and the B Class or part-time Specials were for a time disbanded.

These measures were deemed necessary in the interest of public peace…. The remobilisation of the force where the latest pogrom is in full swing is a flagrant breach of the Truce.

… The British Government organised a partisan ‘police’, armed and paid them and virtually placed the lives and property of the Catholic minority in Ulster at their mercy.

Under the Truce these Orange mercenaries were to be kept in leash. They are once again to be loosed upon the population.

Military Communique

THE following official communique was issued from [Military] HQ Belfast last night:

At 5 p.m. it was reported that Catholic families in Beersbridge Road were ordered to leave their houses.

Police protection was afforded them. At 5.15 p.m. two Protestant workmen were assaulted by a number of women near Smithfield and were forced to leave their work.

At 7.30 p.m. a report was received that Catholic families were being driven from their homes in Douglas, Belmont and Willowfield Streets.

…At about 10 p.m. a Protestant was assaulted at the junction of Lancaster and York Street.

Looting in Belfast

A SPIRIT grocery, the property of Mr Hugh O’Neill, Tennant Street, which had been previously looted, was reopened about six o’clock yesterday evening.

A couple of hours later a mob assembled and completely wrecked the place, carrying off all the stock and everything else they could lay their hands on.

Numbers of individuals styling themselves the ‘Belfast Watch Committee’ visited shopkeepers in the centre of the city and ordered them to put up notices in their premises against selling any goods manufactured in Ireland outside North-East Ulster.

A large poster, printed in red ink, in the following terms: ‘This shop is owned by a Catholic and Sinn Feiner’ was pasted up on the outside of business premises owned by Catholics but immediately taken down by the owners.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: The return of the B Specials on the streets was deplored by the nationalist population which regarded them ‘with the same hostility that the Black and Tans had inspired in the South’.

Suspended from duty under the July Truce, they were seen by Craig as the guardians of the Unionist state.)

On This Day – 27th September 1921

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

About Eamon Phoenix

About the Eamon Phoenix Foundation