Between 1919-21 the IRA (Irish Republican Army), an extreme nationalist terrorist group launched a campaign of killing British soldiers, police officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary/Dublin Metropolitan Police and Irish Unionist/moderate Nationalist civilians in an attempt to force the British government to grant a fully independent, united, Irish republic with no link to the rest of the British Isles. To counter them the British government recruited First World War veterans to supplement the RIC, nicknamed the 'Black and Tans' after a famous Irish fox hunt due to their mixture of police and army uniform. They became renown for their vigilante assassinations of IRA members and revenge attacks against IRA supporters in response to IRA killings, which O'Flaherty refers to. In 1921 the IRA was forced to sign the Anglo-Irish treaty which was accepted by the British government but plunged them into a vicious civil war over its' terms . In World War 2 the IRA supported the Axis and collaborated with the Nazis to sabotage the Allied war effort whilst numerous 'Black and Tans' fought against them.
