The Black and Tans

by Jack R Johnson 09.2026

To most Americans the term black and tan conjures a cool glass of pale ale layered on a thick Guinness stout, but it also has a less palatable and far darker historical meaning.

In January 1920, about 10,000 constables were recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence. The majority were unemployed former British soldiers from England, Scotland, and Wales who had fought in the First World War. These soldiers received little if any training about how to “police” a civilian population. They were called “Black and Tans” because their uniforms consisted of black pants and tan shirts, apparently the result of making do from the remnants of various squads or brigades.

Lacking formal police training, the “Black and Tans,” not surprisingly used a wide variety of violent techniques to squelch the Irish Rebellion. According to author Richard Cahill these included “the demolition of homes of suspected rebels or in some cases, entire villages; arrests and imprisonments without warrants, charges or trials; beatings; torture; and rape.” In the summer of 1920, The Guardian reported that the Black and Tans began responding to IRA attacks by carrying out arbitrary reprisals against civilians, especially republicans. This usually involved the burning of homes, businesses, meeting halls and farms. Some buildings were also attacked with gunfire and grenades, and businesses were looted. Reprisals on property "were often accompanied by beatings and killings". In early November, Black and Tans "besieged" Tralee in revenge for the IRA abduction and killing of two local RIC men. They closed all the businesses in the town, let no food in for a week and shot three local civilians dead. Later, on November 14, Black and Tans were suspected of abducting and murdering a Roman Catholic priest, Father Michael Griffin, in Galway. His body was found in a bog in Barna a week later. Charles Townshend noted that “Members of the British government, the British administration in Ireland, and senior officers in the RIC tacitly supported reprisals as a way of encouraging the police and scaring the population into rejecting the IRA.”

But the reports from Ireland impacted public opinion in Britain and the United States, which in turn mounted pressure on London to withdraw from southern Ireland. By 1922, the “Irish Free State” (today's Republic of Ireland) was established in the south and the British retreated.  But the “Black and Tans” weren’t entirely disbanded. Rather, they found a place for their particularly aggressive policing in another faraway country, British Palestine.

In April 1922, approximately 650 former “Black and Tans” arrived in Haifa, Palestine and commenced their duties as the British Palestine Gendarmerie. How did so many former “Black and Tans” end up in Palestine? According to Richard Cahill, “there seems to have been a personal connection. The Inspector-General of Police and Prisons, Major-General H. H. Tudor (who also served as the General Officer Commanding), was in charge of the British military, Palestine Police, and the Palestine Gendarmerie. Coincidently, Tudor had been the Chief of Police in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion. As the Black and Tans were being disbanded in Ireland, enrollment sheets were being circulated. One former Blank and Tan who served in Palestine later claimed that before they had left Ireland, he put his “name on a list calling for volunteers for a new Force, the Palestine Gendarmerie, which the gods at Whitehall [i.e. the British] proposed to raise.” So, it was the case that 75 to 95 percent of the new British Palestine Gendarmerie were former members of the Black and Tans. Among them were “excommunicated priests and other former clergy, lawyers who had been debarred, a man who was arrested for murder in Mexico but had escaped, and a former medical doctor who allegedly raped a female patient after performing an abortion.” 

They drank heavily and wore a distinctive uniform that included a Stetson broad-brimmed hat, reminiscent of a cowboy hat like the kind wore by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Among the most famous of the Stetson donning Black and Tans was a character named Douglas Duff, a former Black and Tan who rose to the rank of the Police Inspector for Jerusalem.

Duff carried “an Irish blackthorn baton or club (called a shillelagh) which he occasionally used to whack Palestinians over the head, leaving them unconscious. He carried a Colt .45 pistol on his hip and a Turkish styled whip. He generally bullied his way about, enforcing immediately and spontaneously his ideas of justice or at least whatever measure it would take to maintain order and get a job done.” When there was an earthquake that left two “important” female tourists buried in a collapsed hotel in Jericho, he used his whip to coerce local Bedouins to dig them out. When one of the Bedouins attempted to leave before they found the bodies, Duff “hit him with a beautiful left uppercut to his bearded face and sank a right-cross to his heart.” The Bedouin collapsed. Duff ordered him to be wrapped in woven-wire and whipped; the other Bedouin kept digging.

Duff also used various types of torture in the prisons, including water boarding and “suspension.” The slang term for torture used by other colonial police, “duffing up” was likely a reference to Douglas Duff. Later, Jewish members of the Palestine Police claimed that they learned a great deal about how to torture effectively from Duff during his years in Jerusalem, particularly how to torture without leaving physical marks. 

Finally, on February 25, 1926, The Times of London ran a story, describing the disbandment of the Palestine Gendarmerie. It mentioned that it had consisted of mostly former Black and Tans and that some of them would stay and serve in the British section of the Palestine Police. According to Cahill, the article praised the Black and Tans as a “remarkable as well as picturesque force.” The subtitle of the article was “End of an Efficient Force.”