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Michael Collins was Commander in chief of the Irish Republican Army who waged a guerrilla war against occupying British forces in Ireland from 1919 to 1921.
The Black and Tans were created after the First World War by Winston Churchill and other ministers who were faced with a increasing tide of attacks from the IRA who had launched a campaign to take their country back and drive Britain out of Ireland.
The Catholic cardinal of the day called them "a horde of savages, some of them simply brigands, burglars and thieves".
Similar denunciations came from within the armed forces, their commander,
General Frank Crozier resigned in 1921 because they had been "used to murder, rob, loot, and burn up the innocent because they could not catch the few guilty on the run.
A Party commission reported that it felt great feelings of shame at witnessing the "insolent swagger" of the Tans, whom they described as "rough, brutal, abusive and distinctly the worse for drink ".
They were undisciplined and some displayed psychopathic behaviour carrying out murders of innocent civilians.
In 2001 Kevin Barry and nine others who fought in the war of independence were disinterred from Mountjoy Jail and given state funerals in recognition of their sacrifice for their country and buried with full military honours in Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin, Ireland.