The Trim Incident

This weekend in 1920 was busier than normal in Trim.
The War of Independence was in full swing and the IRA were concentrating on attacking RIC barracks. The Royal Irish Constabulory were the main method of control in Ireland by the British government at the time and the barracks in Trim was a formidable establishment. It had over 20 men stationed there and contained guns, ammunition and grenades. It was located in what is now the Castle Arch Hotel and it had walls and steel gates that were over 15ft high.

The Meath IRA hatched a plan to attack the barracks on Sunday because they knew that half of them would be gone to mass. The IRA was very active in this area and one of the Lalor brothers had already single handedly attacked a truckload of soldiers at the Wellington monument
They blocked off the roads to Trim, captured the constables in the church and attacked the barracks. Only one constable tried to stop them and he was shot in the lung. Then the building was burned down using oil that they brought with them. The IRA escaped and went into hiding. One of them was said to have hid in a freshly dug grave.

They had to hide because they knew that the Black and Tans would arrive soon. The British government had a strategy for dealing with guerilla warfare since the Boer War. Reprisals. Four lorries of Black and Tans arrived and shot into a crowd hurling on the fair green, injuring two boys, George Griffen and James Kelly. The local priest and town leaders intervened and pleaded with the auxillaries not to take it out on the town. They drove off but returned in the early hours of the morning. This is when the madness started.
Witnesses say that the town was left looking like something from the war-fields of France. A quarter of the buildings were burned, including J&E Smyths, right beside where our premises are now located, and the town hall with all the town records. Soldiers waved grenades in front of windows where children hid. For years afterwards, children were forbidden to play with toy guns in the street because so many of them were traumatised. Many of the townsfolk left their homes and hid down by the river, rather than suffer the reprisals.

The looting and burning by the Black and Tans was reported in the New York Times and on the British Pathe newsreel. It had two significant consequences. The IRA in Meath became the centre of the Eastern force in Ireland, and General Crozier, the leader of the Auxillary British Forces, was forced to resign over the actions of his forces in what was called the Trim Incident.After the War of Independence, quite a few of the volunteers that took part on the raid of the RIC barracks went on to join the newly formed police force, An Garda Siochana