Hugh Tudor
Sir Henry Hugh Tudor | |
---|---|
Early life and education
Tudor was born in
Tudor enrolled in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1888.
Early career: India and South Africa
Tudor was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery on 25 July 1890. He was stationed in India from 1890 until 1897, when he returned to England, having been promoted to lieutenant on 25 July 1893.[6]
Tudor was sent to South Africa during the
In the following years, Tudor went back to India for another five years (1905–10), and then was posted to
First World War
Tudor served on the Western Front from December 1914 to the Armistice, rising from the rank of captain in charge of an artillery battery to the rank of major general and the command of the 9th (Scottish) Division. He continued to command this formation after 11 November 1918, as part of the Army of the Rhine, until the 9th Division was disbanded in March 1919.
Tudor was a professional and forward-looking artilleryman: historian Paddy Griffith has described him as an "expert tactician." He was a fighting general who spent a lot of time in the front lines: he was almost killed at the
Ireland
After the 9th Division was disbanded, Tudor was posted once again to Egypt and India. In May 1920, however, he was appointed 'Police Adviser' to the
Situation in Ireland
When Tudor took up his new post, the Irish War of Independence was approaching a crisis: indeed, within a couple of months, the British administration in Ireland was on the verge of collapse. The Royal Irish Constabulary's morale and effective strength were both declining: Irish Republican Army guerrillas were ambushing police patrols, burning police barracks and organising boycotts of police and their families. Railway workers went on strike, refusing to move trains that carried armed police or troops. Merchants refused to serve police customers. Police recruits and servants were being attacked and intimidated, and women who were friendly with police had their hair cut off. Police property was wrecked and stolen: in some cases, police bicycles were taken away while their owners were in church. Hundreds of police officers resigned both as a result of intimidation and in protest at the governments repeated mass releases of IRA prisoners which continued up until the spring of 1920.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin was building an alternative state — the Irish Republic proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916. Local governments were acknowledging the authority of the First Dáil. IRA Volunteers were acting as Republican police. Republican courts were adjudicating both civil and criminal cases. In some parts of Ireland, the Republic was becoming a reality.
Tudor's assignment, as he saw it, was to raise police morale, punish crime and restore law and order: "I had nothing to do with politics," he wrote years later, "and don't care a hoop of hell what measure of
The government chose the hard line: on 9 August 1920, Parliament passed the
Tudor's leadership
As Police Adviser, Tudor assumed control of Ireland's police forces, and eventually styled himself "Chief of Police". Under his administration, the police were militarised: indeed, at the Cabinet conference of 23 July 1920, Tudor had conceded that the RIC would soon become ineffective as a police force; "but as a military body he thought they might have great effect." Like his patron, Churchill, Tudor gave police posts to his military friends and colleagues:
Reprisals and indiscipline
While working hard to rebuild the RIC's numbers and morale, Tudor did comparatively little to restore its discipline. When police and auxiliaries were killed in ambushes and attacks, their comrades often responded with reprisals against Irish Republicans and their communities: some of these reprisals were spontaneous "police riots," but others were organised and led by local police officials. Tudor's own response to these outbreaks of arson and murder was weak and ambiguous: in a memorandum on discipline dated 12 November 1920, Tudor admonished his men to maintain "the highest discipline", while reassuring them that they would have "the fullest support in the most drastic action against that band of assassins, the so-called IRA."
Sir
Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. More than 30 people were killed or fatally wounded. The day began with an Irish Republican Army operation, organised by Michael Collins, to assassinate members of the "Cairo Gang" – a team of undercover British intelligence agents working and living in Dublin. IRA members went to a number of addresses and killed or fatally wounded 16 men, mostly British Army intelligence officers. Five other men were wounded. Later that afternoon, in retaliation, members of the Auxiliary Division and RIC opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, killing or fatally wounding fourteen civilians and wounding at least sixty others. After a Roman Catholic priest was shot dead by an insane Auxiliary in December 1920, a Castle official noted in his diary that he felt some sympathy for the killer, "as these men have undoubtedly been influenced by what they have taken as the passive approval of their officers from Tudor downwards to believe that they will never be punished for anything."[22]
After the killing of 17 Auxiliaries in an
By this time, however, reprisals had become a scandal in Britain. In the first half of 1921, police discipline improved, and police reprisals became less common, but this improvement came too late: the political damage was irreversible. In addition, Macready thought the RIC had become unreliable and had lost confidence in Tudor, who was also being criticised by
The
With the Irish elections and the potential
Palestine
Tudor remained Chief of Police until his forces had been demobilised and the RIC was disbanded. In February 1922, Churchill (who was now
Later life
In 1923, Tudor was made a
In the 1950s, Tudor's presence in Newfoundland became known to the
Media
In 2012, Newfoundland-based independent audio program producers, Battery Radio, produced a story on Tudor, entitled 'A Bullet For The General'. The programme was broadcast on RTÉ Radio in January 2012, on CBC Radio in March 2012[31] and ABC Radio National in June 2013.[32]
Personal life
Tudor married in 1903 Eva Gertrude Josephine Edwards; she was the only daughter of Lea Priestley Edwards, of Warberry Court, Torquay, Devon, and his first cousin Emily Gertrude, daughter of Conservative politician Sir Henry Edwards, 1st Baronet. They had one son and three daughters.[3]
Tudor died of natural causes in St. John's on 25 September 1965. His body lies in the Anglican Cemetery on Forest Road in St. John's.
References
- ^ "Life story: Henry Hugh Tudor | Lives of the First World War".
- ^ "Tudor, Sir (Henry) Hugh | Dictionary of Irish Biography".
- ^ a b Burke, Sir Bernard, ed. (1939). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (97th ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 2931.
- ^ A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, sixth edition, vol. I, Sir Bernard Burke, Harrison (Pall Mall), 1879, p. 515
- ^ Alumni Cantabrigienses, volume 2: From 1752 to 1900, part 6: Square-Zupitza, ed. John Venn, J. A. Venn, Cambridge University Press, 1954, p. 242
- ^ Hart′s Army list, 1901
- ^ "No. 27170". The London Gazette. 2 March 1900. p. 1433.
- ^ "No. 27459". The London Gazette. 29 July 1902. pp. 4835–4840.
- ^ "Naval & Military intelligence - Troops returning Home". The Times. No. 36977. London. 14 January 1903. p. 8.
- ^ Joy Cave, "A Gallant Gunner General," esp. pp. 92, 97, and 102.
- ^ Riddell, George (1934), Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, pg 202.
- ^ David Leeson, "The Black and Tans: British Police in the First Irish War, 1920–21," p. 47
- ^ 'This is the story of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, the most notorious police forces in the history of the British Isles.' D. M. Leeson, The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), cover. Ronan Fanning describes how a proposal to recruit ex-soldiers as police forehadowed 'the transformation of the RIC (already ostracised by Sinn Fein) into the notorious Black and Tans.' Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution, 1910–1922, Kindle edition (London: Faber and Faber, 2013), location 3873. Michael Hopkinson describes the decision to recruit British ex-soldiers to serve as police as the British government's 'most notorious decision': Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Montreal and Kingston: McGill -Queen's University Press, 2002). W. H Kautt goes even further, and says the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries are 'infamous,' but argues that only the Auxiliaries 'actually earned this infamy.' W. H. Kautt, Ambushes and Armour: The Irish Rebellion, 1919–1921 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011) p. 80.
- ^ Leeson, "Black and Tans," pp. 47–48.
- ^ Jeffery 2006 p264-5
- ^ Jeffery 2006 p265-6
- ^ p120 Improving the law Enforcement-Intelligence Community Relationship quoting General Sir Nevil Macready, GOCinC, British Forces Ireland, personal letter to Lt.-Gen. Sir Hugh Jeudwine, Commander of 5th Division, April 1922, Imperial War Museum (IWM), papers of Lt.-Gen. Sir Hugh Jeudwine, 72/82/2
- ^ Riddell, pg 319.
- ISBN 019821863X.
- ^ Townsend, pgs. 112 & 160.
- ^ Townsend, pg 112.
- ^ Leeson, "Black and Tans," p. 226
- ^ Jeffery 2006 p267-9
- ^ a b Jeffery 2006 p270-1
- ^ a b Jeffery 2006 p271-3
- ^ Leeson, "Black and Tans," pp. 78–79
- ^ "Henry Hugh Tudor – His Life and Times – the Irish Story".
- ^ Air of Authority – A History of RAF Organisation Archived 10 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "No. 32933". The London Gazette. 6 May 1924. p. 3636.
- ^ Tim Pat Coogan, "Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora" pp.432
- ^ "Battery Radio archives".
- ^ "A Bullet for the General". 3 June 2013.
Sources
- Joy Cave MS "A Gallant Gunner General: The Life and Times of Sir H H Tudor, KCB, CMG, together with an edited version of his 1914–1918 War Diary, 'The Fog of War,' Imperial War Museum, Misc 175 Item 2658.
- "A Woman of No Importance" [pseud. Mrs. C. Stuart Menzies], As Others See Us (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924).
- "Periscope" [pseud. G. C. Duggan], "The Last Days of Dublin Castle," Blackwood's Magazine 212, no. 1282 (August 1922).
- Jeffery, Keith (2006). Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820358-2.
- Bert Riggs, "Longtime resident fled from IRA; distinguished British officer served in First World War and Ireland before coming to Newfoundland," St. John's Telegram, 25 September 2001, p. A11.
- David Leeson, "The Black and Tans: British Police in the First Irish War, 1920–21," (PhD: McMaster University, 2003).
- Tim Pat Coogan, "Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora", Palgrave Macmillan (18 October 2002)
- Improving the law Enforcement-Intelligence Community Relationship National Defense Intelligence CollegeWashington, DC June 2007
- Seán William Gannon, 'Henry Hugh Tudor – His Life and Times' The Irish Story, April 2020
External links
- Program information sheet at Battery Radio