FAQ

The film was criticized for bring entirely one sided, Irish Republicans being uniformly depicted sympathetically whilst Irish Unionists are villified and their viewpoint never once articulated. IRA violence is portrayed as a response to vigilante actions by the security forces when in reality the Black and Tans did not arrive in Ireland until mid-1920 by which time the IRA had already killed hundreds of regular Royal Irish Constabulary officers, soldiers and Irish Unionist civilians. Another criticism was that it overly stressed the class struggle aspect of the conflict, falsely portraying Republicans as a socialist movement rather than an ultra-nationalist organisation.

At the beginning of the conflict the regular Irish police (the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police) were seriously understrength due to many members leaving to fight in World War 1, recruitment made more difficult as it was widely thought that the impending Home Rule government would disband both organisations. By early 1920 hundreds of officers had been killed or wounded and many more had resigned due to IRA intimidation and in protest at repeated releases of IRA prisoners by the British government. The government began to recruit veterans of the Great War from across the UK to supplement the RIC and they were initially dressed in a mixture of army khaki and police dark green uniforms earning the nickname 'Black and Tans' after a famous foxhunt. The term is normally applied to the 'Auxillaries', an elite force formed from ex-officers and distinguishable by their 'Tam-O'Shanter' caps (bonnets with a bobble in the middle) who inflicted notable losses on the Republican movement. IRA propaganda portrayed them as the devil incarnate and all vigilante actions on behalf of the security forces were ascribed to them, not least because so many regular policemen and British Army soldiers would later join the Irish Free State's new police force and army.

In 1912 the British government passed the Home Rule Bill, granting limited self-government to Ireland with the prospect of greater independence later, a move fiercely opposed by Irish Unionists who feared being oppressed and persecuted as an ethnic and cultural minority once removed from the rest of the United Kingdom. In 1916 a group of Irish Republicans staged a rebellion with German support in Dublin killing over 400 people and in 1919 began a guerilla war demanding a fully independent Irish republic with no link to the rest of the British Isles.

By mid 1921 IRA leader Michael Collins considered the organisation '6 weeks from defeat', desperately short of arms and ammunition and with nearly 5000 of its' members in prison. But this left the British Government with the problem of giving Home Rule to Southern Ireland whose population had elected the Republican leadership as their representatives. A truce was arranged and a Treaty agreed which gave a slightly enhanced version of Home Rule in return for Unionist dominated Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. This was considered treason by hardline republicans but was endorsed in a referendum by the vast majority of Southern Ireland's population. A vicious civil war ensued with the Irish Free State government crushing the anti-Treaty IRA much more ruthlessly than the British government had. Sir John's warnings over Ireland's future were largely fufilled, Irish Unionists remaining undefeated in Northern Ireland whilst an increasingly impoverished South would become a 'Catholic State for a Catholic people', both capitalist and sectarian.

The ambush scene was derived from the Kilmichael ambush where 17 Auxillaries were ambushed and wiped out by an IRA 'Flying Column' nearly four times their size. IRA leader Tom Barry alleged the police had used the tactic of false surrender to kill three of his men but doubt has been cast on this account in interviews with other witnesses present. The torture scene is based on the story of Tom Hales, a leading IRA member who claimed to have been tortured by soldiers for information. However Hales was officially listed as an informer in military records who provided information in return for a reduced sentence.

Between the Easter Rising in 1916 and the end of the Civl War in 1923 the death toll is reckoned to be nearly 3500 in a population of roughly 4 million (as opposed to over 30,000 Irishmen killed in the Great War and an equivalent number dying in the Spanish flu epidemic afterwards). Between 1919-1921 the IRA would kill over a thousand people whilst the security forces would kill 500 in return (but take nearly 5000 prisoners, some of whom were repeatedly captured and released). The civil war which followed killed roughly 2000.