On this day - the attack on Clara RIC Barracks, 2nd June 1920

Ascendant

An article on the attack on Clara RIC Barracks by several companies of the Offaly IRA which resulted in one dead and two others seriously wounded.

Undefeated: The Attack and Defence of Clara RIC Barracks, June 1920

By then, the RIC were very much on the wane as a police force. An internal review by the British Army on its performance during this war described the RIC as having:

…lost control over the population even in the towns and villages in which they were stationed, and it was becoming the exception rather than the rule for head constables and sergeants in command at outstations to do more than live shut up in their barracks.

In contrast, the IRA were very much in the ascendant. Its attack on Clara Barracks would display a shrewd understanding in how to isolate a target beforehand and an array of sophisticated, if unsubtle, techniques against a fortified position.

The inhabitants of Clara and those in nearby towns were awoken that night by the sounds of gunshots and lightning-like flashes. The latter were from the Verey flare guns that the besieged garrison were sending up to call for aid, and one of the participants in the assault would remember them vividly in his Bureau of Military History Statement:

While we were in the yard showers of multi-coloured verey lights came down on top of us. When the verey lights were fired they went right into the air like a star, then spread out like miniature fiery balls of many brilliant colours.

The Crown forces would learn from the battle on how to improve their counter-insurgency in Ireland:

1. The RIC to be concentrated in larger garrisons than before.
2. Directive boards to be set up at all military look-out posts, and the firing of alarm signals from neighbouring barracks to be practised.
3. Instructions in the care and firing of rockets and other alarm signals to be offered to soldiers and RIC.
4. Barracks in obviously untenable positions to be evacuated.
5. Military lorries to carry equipment that would help clear barricades, road trenches or damaged bridges, such as cross-cut saws, hawsers and temporary bridging equipment.

As well as a major operation for the area, the battle of Clara Barracks provides a dramatic example of the sort of warfare at that stage in the War of Independence and Ireland's fight for freedom.

Jimmy Garlic

A lot of RIC men were actively collaborating with the IRA also. British forces in Ireland tended to leave them out of the loop for that reason. They more or less just stood aside and waited it out.