CHAPTER THREE
So in August 1969 a Labour Government, at the request of the Northern Irish authorities, committed the British Army on to the streets of Belfast and Londonderry. Civil disorder between the Catholic and Protestant communities had escalated to such a degree that the Northern Irish police forces were no longer capable of subduing the violence or maintaining order.1 The committal of troops was in some ways a reversion to the position in Ireland before independence – British troops were once more on Irish soil to subdue rebellion against the Government. However, for a short period in the summer of 1969 there was a significant difference in the task of the military; while its role would soon change, the British Army was initially directed to protect the Catholic areas against the onslaught of the Unionists.
There is a debate in the academic literature over the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1969. Analysts have been divided over whether in fact it represented a neutral force placed between warring ethnic factions or whether it was committed to shore up Unionist power. Very simply, the Labour Government of the day expected it to do both. The first task of the British Army was indeed to control the estranged communities – to try to separate the warring Catholics and Protestants. In geographical terms this meant occupying the areas between the two factions. The British soldiers placed themselves between the two and a so-called peace line was established. To mark this boundary, a ‘wall’ consisting of corrugated iron, barbed wire and look-out posts was constructed. The Irish ‘Berlin Wall’ as it became known was an attempt to prevent either faction attacking the other.2
During this initial period the IRA did not constitute a threat to the Army. Indeed, ironically, at this juncture the British Army was regarded as the ‘cavalry’ by a besieged Catholic community.3 It has been observed that there was something unnatural in Catholic approval of the presence of British soldiers4 but in fact in 1969 relations were so good between the two that this time became known as the ‘Honeymoon’ period – a reference to the fact that soldiers drank tea provided by grateful Catholic housewives and British officers negotiated with leaders of the Catholic community to dismantle the barricades erected in August 1969 when the fighting was at its most violent.5
Some of the British soldiers believed that the Irish ‘problem’ could be managed without real difficulties; as one officer expressed it, ‘I felt that given three weeks I could sort my patch out fairly easily’.6 This tendency to regard the presence of the troops as short-term was not, however, shared by the British Government. When the soldiers were committed, the British Home Secretary, James Callaghan, stated that ‘this is a limited operation’,7 but in private Wilson commented that British troops would have to stay in the Province for at least seven years.8 The idea was that the Army would keep the peace while necessary reforms and adjustments were made and the Province returned to normality under a reconstructed Unionist rule. As part of the price of a military presence, Wilson demanded a number of concessions from the Unionists. Two reports were commissioned by the Wilson administration – the Cameron and the Hunt Reports – both of which specifically examined the causes of the riots. The Hunt Report recommended that the B-Specials be abolished and replaced by a special reserve force, a new part-time military force under the command of the British Army. Discrimination in housing and gerrymandering of the local politics were outlawed. These were laudable attempts to make the Northern Irish Government politically and socially more acceptable to the Catholics, but the reforms made were all short-term measures. Long-term constitutional and political changes were shunned. For example, the introduction of proportional representation was considered as a solution to the political mistreatment of the Catholics but it was rejected by the Labour Government because ‘it was a long term measure’ and ‘in 1969 Wilson and his colleagues were interested only in immediate steps in Ulster’.9 There were several reasons for this hesitancy in confronting the roots of the Irish question. First, the crisis had caught the British Government by surprise and there had long existed a tendency within British politics to avoid confronting the problem of Ireland.10 Secondly, it was recognized that the Unionists would not accept radical changes easily and any major reforms would have to be introduced into the Province with great caution.11 The findings of both the Cameron and Hunt Reports, which were deeply critical of the security operations of Northern Ireland, had indeed produced Unionist anger. On 10–11 October, outraged Protestants attacked the British Army and the first RUC officer was killed, somewhat ironically by a Protestant sniper. The British military were literally the target of both communities.
The tinkering of the Wilson Government with the political system in Northern Ireland did little in reality to ameliorate the condition of the Catholic community and antagonized the Unionists. It soon became apparent that the truce between the soldiers and the Catholic communities was not going to last forever. In early 1970 the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland began to change. In his work Urban Guerillas, Moss asserts that the nature of the conflict altered in June 1970. He believes that it was at this juncture that the rioting in the Province assumed a new character; riots were no longer a spontaneous sign of disaffection but consisted of orchestrated attacks on the British Army by a regrouped, reorganized and more professional IRA.
After the failure of its border campaign during the late 1960s, the IRA had rethought its role in Irish politics and actually contemplated participation in legitimate political activities. During the outbreak of the conflict in the North the IRA leadership was incapable of mounting an effective response to the Unionist onslaught on the Catholic communities. In the wake of this failure, the IRA in Belfast rid itself of those members in favour of a non-violent path and reverted to a semi-military strategy. The IRA had split into two in January 1970 and the newly constituted Provisional IRA (PIRA) had taken control of the struggle. This group, driven by taunts of the besieged Catholic areas (according to graffiti in the Bogside, IRA had become synonymous with ‘Irish ran away’), had taken it upon themselves to rekindle the battle with the British. Paramilitary snipers began to operate from behind the crowds and systematic bombing and assassinations became common as the PIRA endeavoured to drive the Army out.12
The inability of the Labour Government to initiate change immediately in Northern Ireland fed the frustration of the Catholic population and allowed the PIRA room to operate freely within those communities. Nationalist politicians in the North were ill-prepared to take the political initiative. It was not until the summer of 1970 that MPs of Republican inclinations joined together to form the Social Democratic and Labour Party under the leadership of Gerry Fitt. This was fully one year after British troops had arrived and too late to rally Republicans under its political flag; in the intervening period the PIRA had embarked on a campaign against the troops.
The spiral of violence in the Province escalated with the defeat of the Labour Government and the election of a Conservative Government under Edward Heath in June 1970. While the new Prime Minister was primarily interested in the domestic crisis on the mainland, his Party committed itself to defeating the PIRA. Whereas Callaghan and the Labour Party had been cautious in its military actions, the new Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, was prepared to give the Army its head to crush the rebels.13 Few analysts have much that is positive to say about Maudling's handling of the Irish situation or indeed his knowledge of the intricacies of the Irish problem,14 and it was under his Home Secretaryship that the Conservative Party redefined the roots of the problem in Northern Ireland. They perceived the roots of the conflict as lying with the rebellious Catholic communities led by the PIRA. The Army concurred in this view. During the remainder of 1970 relations between the Army and the Catholic community steadily deteriorated. Violence mounted: after two nights of rioting in Belfast in June, five people had been killed and 248 injured.15 It was at this point that the British troops reverted to their historic role of subduing anti-Government forces in Ireland.
The offensive
During July 1970 the British Army imposed a curfew on the Lower Falls area of Belfast, a predominantly Catholic area. During the curfew house-to-house searches were undertaken and a sizable haul of weapons was made, including 100 bombs, 2501bs of explosives and 21,000 rounds of ammunition.16 While the size of the haul represented a success for the Army, the imposition of such a curfew also suited the strategy of the PIRA, who wanted to provoke a campaign of repression which would turn the people against the government.17 The searches resulted in five deaths18 and aided the PIRA in their endeavour. The imposition of the Lower Falls curfew had precisely the effect of allowing the Provisionals to claim that the historic British enemy was once again flexing its muscles on Irish soil. British tactics were presented as a strategy of repression exercised purely against the Catholic communities. Despite the obviously counter-productive nature of the searches in terms of Republican sympathies, the use of house searches continued throughout the next year. In many ways this illustrated the difficult role that the Army was increasingly expected to fulfil. The British Government expected it to both stem the rise of rebellion against the state but also not to fuel support for the paramilitaries. This meant in military terms depriving the paramilitaries of support and materials, which demanded searches of suspects, but the presence, attitudes and actions of the Army during these searches was calculated to drive Catholics if not into support for the PIRA, then at the very least into passive acquiescence of its activities. As one leading authority on Irish politics has commented on the searches of 1970–71: ‘The Army may have behaved with relative restraint by comparative military standards – but the victims of the 17,262 house searches in 1971 were not in a position to ponder average behaviour.’19
British troops were not in an enviable position. The Stormont administration, which at least in theory ran Northern Ireland, looked increasingly fragile, with a leadership trying to introduce limited reform against the wishes of the Unionist Party. The indigenous security forces of the Province were discredited and the British military were left in an alien environment, attempting to subdue rebellion while constitutional solutions were sought. The British military found Ireland a paradoxical and difficult theatre in which to operate. The troops went into Ireland in 1969 against an operational background of colonial counter-insurgency. Many offficers had had experience of rebellions in places such as Borneo, Malaya and Kenya. A strain ran through military thinking that Northern Ireland and its peoples were the equivalent of the restless natives encountered in far-flung places of the British Empire – a view that was reflected in the range of military techniques used by the Army on the streets of Belfast during the period 1970–71: the curfew, searches and the use of special legislation were resonant of previous British campaigns in the colonies. Indeed, the catalyst that finally transformed the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland was exactly this type of colonial technique – the introduction of internment without trial which began in August 1971.
In the months before August, the activities of the PIRA had escalated. Each month had brought new heights of destruction and viciousness. Between January and August 1971 a total of thirteen soldiers, two policemen and sixteen civilians died.20 Rioting during this period had grown increasingly organized and violent; in February 1971 the first British soldier was killed in the modern conflict. Internment, it was claimed, was designed to halt the escalation of violence.
Internment without trial had been used by the British Army in many of its colonial campaigns. In Malaya, for example, internment had been regarded as an effective tool for use against insurgents. The Army had used it selectively, arresting twenty-five carefully picked suspects every month.21 This was not how it happened in Northern Ireland. Internment was introduced with the agreement of the British Government on 9 August. The aim was to remove or suppress Republican political opposition to the Government.22 The operation was brutal and in many ways random. In one night, 346 men were arrested. Far from being carefully selected, since the intelligence sources used by the Army were so out of date, one of the arrested men was blind and some of the others named had been dead for several years.23
The officer in charge of the Army in Northern Ireland, Lieutenant-General Tuzo, claimed he was actually opposed to the use of internment at this juncture on two grounds. First, he believed that the Army was being rushed into the operation without adequate preparation because both Westminster and Stormont believed that internment might provide an instant solution. Secondly, he feared that internment on such a scale would alienate the Catholic community completely. This proved, not unsurprisingly, to be the case, particularly as not one Protestant was arrested during the operation.24 In retrospect, soldiers like Tuzo, who were involved in the internment operation, claimed that the operation was conducted on too large a scale. Major-General Chiswell, for example, expressed the view that the weapon of internment should have been used as it had been in the colonies, with only a few suspects removed at any one time.25 Internment, which had been intended to stop the rise of violence, in fact had the opposite effect. As one serving officer wrote of the process: Tt has in fact increased terrorist activity, perhaps boosted PIRA recruitment, polarized further the Catholic and Protestant communities and reduced the ranks of the much needed moderates.’26
By the end of 1971, 174 people had been killed and 2,375 people injured, 15,000 troops were stationed in the Province27 and the Catholic population perceived the conflict once again as a battle between Irish nationalism and the forces of the British Crown. The very presence and actions of the British Army had exacerbated the initial crisis of August 1969 into outright conflict two years later. Why was this? If any force in the world appeared suited to the task of countering and subduing terrorism, it was the British military which had enjoyed extensive experience in dealing with political violence in the post-war period. During the withdrawal from Empire, the British Army had been involved in campaigns in Aden, Borneo, Cyprus, Malaya and Palestine. According to some sources, ‘calling out the military to aid the civil power used to be a straightforward matter … the rules were simple, the chain of command direct and the objective clear’.28 However, as Townshend points out, this myth of a golden age in countering political violence was highly misleading; there were no easy answers to the problem of how a state should respond to the threat and use of political violence.29 This problem was enhanced by the fact that it was not possible in post-industrial Northern Ireland to behave as if it was Aden, Borneo or Cyprus. This point has been missed by many analysts who argue that:
The major lesson of recent urban guerilla campaigns around the world is that they can and have been defeated by efficient armies provided that the troops are not made to fight with their hands tied behind their backs.30
In accordance with this view, it has been suggested that the British Army was held in check too long, allowing the violence in Northern Ireland to escalate. Perhaps, it is suggested, the British military could have defeated the PIRA by reacting more forcibly at the beginning of the conflict. Moss, for example, points out that this had been the method chosen by the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau to deal with the terrorist group the Front de Libération Québec (FLQ) at the time of the Montreal kidnappings in 1970.31 Trudeau aroused a storm of criticism over his handling of the terrorists but by that stage they had already been crushed.
Wilkinson points out that the Israeli state (a parliamentary democracy) used violent methods against the Arabs in the Gaza Strip in 1971.32 But these were not comparable cases. The state of Israel had been under siege from surrounding enemies since its inception, and violence seemed to be the accepted mode of response. For many reasons these types of response would not have been appropriate for Northern Ireland. First, at the beginning of the crisis it was generally recognized that the Catholic community did have genuine grievances that required and deserved political, not military, solutions. By the early 1970s, given the widespread appeal of the Civil Rights movements in North America and Europe, the British Government had, at least initially, to be seen to be responding to these. A second and more pragmatic reason why the British Government could not act as forcibly as some might have wished was that Britain is not Israel – it would not have been suitable for the British security forces in a region of the United Kingdom to indulge in the Israeli tactics of dynamiting houses in reprisal for harbouring suspects. It must also be added that those analysts who claim that the British Army did not react forcibly enough to subdue the violence ignore much of the evidence that reveals that during the prolonged and bloody conflict in Northern Ireland the British Army has been involved in abuse of the civilian Catholic population. Tough actions against the minority community merely exacerbated existing tensions and did not do anything to bring a political settlement closer to fulfilment. This was increasingly the case during 1970–71 when the military regarded itself as on the offensive against the PIRA.
This ‘offensive’ was clearly demonstrated during the process of internment in August 1971 when the Army carried out its orders to detain suspects. The conduct of the Army during the process of internment should not be glossed over. In August 1971 in the early hours of the morning people were dragged from their beds in front of their families and summarily taken to jail. As O'Malley has written of internment, ‘the brutal knock in the middle of the night… the random brutality, the abuse of rights … the uncertainty … all reeked of totalitarianism’.33 Small wonder that the Catholic communities were alienated.
The situation was made worse when it became clear just how defective the information on which the Army had operated was. It had mainly been supplied by the RUC, who had kept files on the old IRA command but knew little about the new and more professional Provisionals. In fact, the information was so faulty that the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Faulkner, refused to issue the detention orders for ninety-seven of the first 337 suspects.34 The débâcle also had the effect of creating huge sympathy for the PIRA in Eire. More and more aid and arms began to cross the border into the North and the southern Irish Government did litde to impede their progress. Taoiseach Lynch himself demanded the abolition of Stormont.
What is interesting in retrospect is the manner in which the decision-makers of the time now claim to have been opposed to the use of internment. Senior Army officials and Faulkner himself assert that they harboured severe reservations about the use of selective detention and yet it was still implemented. It is not unusual for politicians and senior military figures to distance themselves from controversial decisions, but if there was such opposition to internment what motive was there for proceeding with such a process?
One answer is that by the summer of 1971 neither the Unionist Government, Westminster nor the British Army had a strategy for defeating the PIRA or a way of subduing Catholic support for PIRA. Internment was percieved as a risky strategy but one that might work by taking out the communities’ ‘troublemakers’. It also had the added virtue of allowing both the Unionist Government in Northern Ireland and the Heath Government in Westminster to claim that they were actively engaged in combatting terrorism. Faulkner himself had successfully implemented a policy of internment during the border wars of the 1950s and was hopeful that it would again defeat the paramilitaries. The possibility of introducing internment into the Province had been discussed within the Cabinet committee set up to deal with the Irish question, which was known as GEN42.35 It was Faulkner who appeared throughout the summer of 1971 to have urged the committee, of which Lieutenant-General Tuzo was a member, to back internment. Initially, however, he encountered opposition. However, by 5 August, when the committee again met, there was increased support for the idea from Tuzo and from Harold Smith, who was a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) adviser.36
There was powerful internal imperative for Faulkner to do something about the PIRA. During the summer months the marching season in Northern Ireland took place. Traditionally, both communities triumphantly marched through the streets provocatively parading the symbols of their ideologies. In 1971 Faulkner hoped to curtail the marching, in particular he wanted to ban the march of the apprentice boys but he did not dare take on the Unionist community without an inducement. The prize they were offered was the implementation of internment against the Catholic communities. However, the introduction of internment was not just brought about by the skilled advocacy of Faulkner. In this period many in the ruling political-military circles of Northern Ireland were concerned that ‘something’ had to be done about the PIRA. It is also clear that it had been under consideration in some quarters for some time but that there was political hesitation over its implementation. The practical preparations for it had been in place for a considerable period. For example, lists of those to be interned were prepared well in advance, as were the places where internees would be kept. Once the decision had been taken, troops moved swiftly to implement the process of internment.
Internment marked an irrevocable change in the nature of the conflict. The lifting of ‘suspects’ from their homes into camps provoked some of the worst violence seen in the Province. In the eight months before internment thirty-four people had been killed; four months after, 140 people died.37 Rioting once again marred the streets of Northern Ireland and by 31 August levels of public outrage were such that a committee of inquiry under Sir Edward Compton was set up to examine the process of internment. During the following autumn, three more battalions were deployed, bringing the troop level in the Province to nearly 14,000. At this point it became apparent that the British Army would be a fixture in Northern Ireland for the foreseeable future. Callaghan's idea of the Army as a temporary measure lost any of its remaining validity. An indication of how permanent the Army's position had become was that by early 1972 it had implemented a system to deal with greatly increased troop levels on a long-term basis. Three catogories were devised. The first consisted of those battalions which formed part of the permanent garrison, serving in Northern Ireland for two years. The second category was made up of the great majority of battalions removed from the forces of the British Army on the Rhine, serving four-month tours of duty in the Province. And the third consisted of those battalions kept on standby to perform emergency duties in an unexpected crisis, particularly in the border areas.38 After the débâcle of the internment process, Northern Ireland lurched from one bloody crisis to the next. Republican anger seethed in tandem with Unionist fears that the very structures of security and government that had protected them would be pulled down. Out of this fear grew one of the most powerful Unionist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), which gathered men from the various street vigilante groups in Protestant areas into more organized paramilitary activities. This development provided yet another anxiety for the security forces in the sense that they were now potentially under attack from two forces, but there was more to the Army's relationship with the UDA than this. The UDA would provide a willing source of local information for them. A more sinister development was that UDA members were at times able and willing to perform dangerous and illegal tasks for certain factions of the military.39 The Catholic communities remained suspicious of British involvement with the UDA, so when, in June 1972, William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, held a meeting with UDA leaders to try to persuade them not to set up barricades and ‘no go areas’ in Protestant communities, this was interpreted as an endorsement of Unionist paramilitary behaviour. In fact, Whitelaw was trying to pursue a broader strategy by talking to ‘leaders’ on both sides of the divide and would later talk to the leadership of the PIRA.
Yet, talking did little to soothe either community after the events of Sunday 30 January 1972. ‘Bloody Sunday’, as it became known, is surrounded by many myths and became one of the most emotive leif motifs for the modern conflict. It is alleged by Republicans that British soldiers from the Parachute Regiment deliberately opened fire, shooting and killing thirteen men at the end of a Catholic Civil Rights march in Londonderry (a fourteenth man later died). The Army contended that the soldiers acted only in self-defence, fearing for their own lives. Reports differ widely over these events. The coroner at the inquest into the deaths of the thirteen men accused the Army of ‘sheer unadulterated murder’.40 The Guardian newspaper alleged that the soldiers did indeed fire first at the marchers.41 However, the report by Lord Widgery, although it failed to establish that any of the victims was armed, concluded that the Army did not fire first. 42
However opinions differ over the actual course of events, one thing is certain – ‘Bloody Sunday’ represented a massive propaganda victory for the PIRA as the television and press publicized the killings of the Catholic men.43 Southern Premier Lynch recalled the Irish Ambassador from London and emotions reached a peak when the British Embassy in Dublin was burned down by a mob on 2 February. In the wake of internment and what was at best, on Bloody Sunday, the use of ill-disciplined British troops, a whole host of questions were raised over what exactly Westminster was countering through the use of state force and especially what the British Government hoped to achieve politically through such force. In particular, it had become increasingly urgent to reach a political settlement rather than lurching from one crisis to the next, but the military and the political aims did not appear to be syncronized. Hand in hand with military toughness, Westminster continually held out the hope that nationalist aims might some day be met. The Consultative Paper on the Future of Northern Ireland of 1972 stated openly that Westminster did not harbour any wish to impede the realization of Irish unity, if it were to come about by freely given mutual agreement. This meant that the Republican communities were militarily harassed but that politically Westminster was willing to allow them the hope of British withdrawal. This paradox, which legitimized the aim if not the methods of the Republicans, remained at the heart of British policy throughout the 1970s.
The willingness of British politicians to cede, at least in theory, Republican claims is illustrated by the behaviour of Harold Wilson (at this point leader of the opposition) in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday. He was opposed to the use of internment and visited both Northern and southern Ireland during the autumn of 1971 to discuss ‘solutions’ with politicians. He made a speech in which he described a possible fifteen-year period of transition, in which steps could be taken towards a united Ireland. After the events of Bloody Sunday he stepped up this theme, arguing in public that a cease-fire might be possible if some of the internees, who had not yet been tried, were released.44 The command of the PIRA was intrigued by this idea and contacted Wilson's office to arrange talks. In March, Wilson and Merlyn Rees, the shadow Home Secretary, held meetings with three leading members of the PIRA – David O'Connell, who was later to become the Provisionals' Chief of Staff, Joe Cahill, the Provisionals' Commander in Belfast and John Kelly.45 While little came of this meeting, mainly because Wilson as opposition leader had nothing to offer, it indicates an interesting trend in British attitudes towards the ‘terrorists’. Despite the claims of successive British Governments that they do not negotiate with terrorists, they have actively carried out a dialogue with leading Provisional spokesmen. Part of the reason for this was the recognition that without the acquiescence of the PIRA, a settlement would not be possible. Negotiating with the enemy was dangerous and in many ways counter-productive because it fed the Provisionals' belief that at some stage the British would have to include them officially in an open dialogue. In the longer term the PIRA was proved right, but in 1971 the British Government under Heath was not prepared for such a step.
At this juncture there was in fact a battle between Heath and Faulkner over the future conduct of security in Northern Ireland. Faulkner wanted to rearm the RUC and sought the re-establishment of the B-Specials. Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister, refused to allow the RUC a more dominant role and argued that the British Army should be in charge of all security arrangements, including the RUC.46 This proved unacceptable to Faulkner and in March 1972 the British Government announced that in future Northern Ireland would be ruled directly from Westminster through a Secretary of State. The move was regarded as a substantial if indirect victory for the PIRA, for with the abolition of Stormont they had achieved one of their short-term aims: the dissolution of Unionist rule and the recognition that the partition of Ireland was no longer a solution to the Irish troubles.
Direct Rule
The imposition of Direct Rule, under which Westminster assumed complete responsibility for security in Northern Ireland, resulted in a substantial improvement in the position of the British Army in Northern Ireland. The Army felt that Direct Rule gave it a long-term and broad-based political direction that had been lacking from the Stormont Government. Previously, the British Army had found itself in a difficult position, the GOC had taken his military orders from London but overall security instructions, many of which the Army had found to be in conflict with the directives from London, had come from the Northern Irish Prime Minister.47 General Harry Tuzo reported of his tenure as GOC before the abolition of Stormont that he was
in effect a sort of Minister of Defence and Chief of Staff to two people. I worked for the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and I also had to report back to Westminster, and of course I gained all my sustenance from Westminster and was entirely dependent on Westminster for the forces I had, so there were no indigenous forces.48
In this sense, after the imposition of Direct Rule, the position of the Army was improved because it now had only one master.
Direct Rule, however, also created problems for the Army. It had been hoped by Westminster that the removal of the Stormont Government, which had long been a Catholic aspiration, would open the way for a fresh round of political initiatives with the Republicans. Accordingly, the security forces were required to scale down their activities to the level of so-called ‘low profile’ operations. This meant the reduction of hot pursuit by Army patrols, the lessening of street patrols and the diminution of overt surveillance. Such measures, it was felt, were necessary to gain the cooperation of Catholic politicians and the southern Irish Government in discussing possible initiatives. While this was the case, such a downgrading of military activity also enabled the PIRA to operate more freely. New recruits who joined the PIRA in this period were unknown to the British Army, intimidation within the Catholic communities became rife and intelligence sources began to dry up. The Army was also instructed to respect some hard-line Republican areas (known as ‘no go areas’) as beyond their jurisdiction since the presence of the military could be regarded as inflammatory and upset negotiations.49 The high point of PIRA influence occurred in July 1972 when, during a cease-fire with the British Army, PIRA leaders held a meeting with representatives of the British Government in London to try to reach some form of compromise concerning the future of the Province.50 This move starkly demonstrated the ambivalence of the British position towards the Republican paramilitaries. Despite the fact that officially PIRA leaders were designated as terrorists who wished to usurp the state, by negotiating with the leaders of the movement the British Government in many respects upheld the claim of the PIRA that it acted as the voice of the Republican communities. However, these talks failed to reach any successful conclusion since the aims of the two participants were so divergent. Indeed, it is questionable as to whether the leadership of the paramilitaries regarded these discussions in a serious light. After the breakdown of the talks the PIRA resorted to what were by now their familiar tactics of bombing and assassination. The British Government had gambled on the PIRA respecting the cease-fire but this had failed and, indeed, proved to be militarily expensive. The PIRA had in fact used the cease-fire to regroup and reorganize; they returned to the fight after the thirteen-day truce with renewed ferocity.51 In response, the British Army reverted once more to an offensive policy and tougher tactics against Republican areas.
The most dramatic manifestation of this tougher policy was Operation Motorman in July 1972. Operation Motorman was designed to re-establish a military presence in both the Catholic and Protestant areas of the cities; ‘no go areas’ would no longer be tolerated. In a massive show of strength 4,000 extra troops were drafted into the Province, bringing the total number to 21,000 and making the operation the largest that Britain had embarked upon since World War II.52 The operation was a success. British troops established a presence throughout the cities; they dismantled barricades with tanks and established Army units even in those areas regarded as paramilitary strongholds. Following the operation the Army continued to concentrate its energies upon Belfast, maintaining high troop levels by redeploying troops from the border areas to sustain an intensity of concentration.53 The redeployment was, however, at the expense of operations on the border where activities had to be scaled down. The Republican paramilitaries were forced out of the cities to the border region where they waged a rural guerrilla warfare campaign in areas less familiar to the British Army. As a result of this more rigorous approach, by 1974 the Army claimed to have had practically defeated the PIRA in the cities. The Christmas truce of 1974 and the redeployment of PIRA activities to the border signalled a shift in strategy and its short-term demise as an urban guerrilla movement.54
Special legislation and intelligence gathering
The claim of the British Government to have defeated the PIRA at this stage needs to be examined carefully. It raises the question of what ‘victory’ looked like in 1974. In particular, if this was indeed a victory, it had been achieved at a very high cost to the democratic processes in the United Kingdom and the rights of citizens in Northern Ireland in particular. Leaving aside events such as ‘Bloody Sunday’, coercive and undemocratic measures such as ‘special legislation’ and the ‘use of intelligence’ had become part and parcel of British military strategy in Northern Ireland. In particular, the use of ‘special legislation’ proved controversial. Special legislation gave troops extraordinary powers to deal with the PIRA. In 1973 the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act was introduced. This Act gave the Army the power to stop and question any person to establish his or her identity, to arrest and detain for four hours any person suspected of criminal activity, and the power to enter and search houses without warrant. It was reinforced by the Prevention of Terrorism Acts of 1974 and 1976. The powers provided by this legislation were used extensively by the Army. In 1973, for example, 75,000 houses were searched.55
Throughout the conflict the British Government have decreed that the Army act within the normally accepted rule of law, but Northern Ireland is an exception to the rule of law operating in the rest of the United Kingdom. The legal system operating in the Province is far from normal. Diplock courts, which try certain offences, operate without a jury and the writ of habeas corpus is at odds with democratic principles. Townshend, for example, describes the 1973 Emergency Provisions Act as a ‘remarkably coercive measure in the nineteenth-century tradition’.56 Despite this type of criticism, there was general approval in the military of the Emergency Provisions Acts, and some even felt that it did not go far enough. It was argued, for example, that methods such as the compulsory introduction of identity cards in the Province would have made the task of the British Army easier. It was even suggested that recognition of the conflict in Northern Ireland as a war would have benefited the Army by enabling them to implement tougher military measures.57 Yet these measures were not attempted and the 1973 Act itself remained the subject of much debate and criticism. The Act had actually arisen out of the considerations of the Diplock Commission of 1972. This commission (chaired by Lord Diplock) was criticized specifically for designing legislation which suited those responsible for law and order in Northern Ireland (the military and the police) while ignoring the political, social and economic dimensions of the conflict. In particular, it has been argued that the commission took no account of the legal rights of suspects and that this was a damaging omission as it not only alienated the Catholic communities but more importantly ignored many of the original complaints of the Civil Rights protesters about the nature of the regime in Ireland.58 In short, the problem was that while emergency legislation was useful for subduing violence, it did little to reconstruct the underlying causes of rebellion in the Province.59 In fact, even the British military, which regarded the legislation as invaluable in the short term, recognized that it was more problematic in the longer term. The lessons of the use of repression in counter-revolutionary situations is that not only does it encourage support, both active and passive, for terrorist organizations, but it also raises questions about who are the defenders and the attackers.60 In Ireland it raised the question of whom the Catholics should regard as their defenders – the PIRA or the British military? The Catholic communities on the whole in the early 1970s chose the paramilitaries. It was this civilian support for the paramilitaries among the communities of Northern Ireland that was recognized by the Army as a crucial factor in prolonging the conflict. Emergency legislation hardened this resistance to the Army, yet the military were not going to ease the pressure on the PIRA and in fact, through the use of ‘intelligence’, redoubled their efforts to break the support for the paramilitaries.
To accomplish this, however, they needed a great deal of information on local people. Organizations such as the PIRA, which pursue political violence, are, on the whole, characterized by secrecy, mobility and flexibility, with structures and discipline ‘fostered to ensure unswerving obedience to the leadership: offenders against the code being punishable by death’.61 Correspondingly, a crucial requirement in responding to political violence is the development of high-quality intelligence to locate the terrorists. A major development in the Army's campaign in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s was the increasing sophistication of the use of intelligence. In its colonial campaigns the British Army had learnt the value of building up an effective system of gathering information.62 It is no coincidence that by 1974, the year when the Army began to defeat the PIRA, the intelligence network in Northern Ireland was beginning to run smoothly.
In Northern Ireland the Army had initially encountered several difficulties in its attempt to establish an adequate intelligence network. First, the RUC had been responsible for the routine gathering of intelligence, but by 1969 its files were out of date and its intelligence concerning Catholic areas was non-existent.63 Secondly, the Army had taken over responsibility for intelligence operations but felt itself a ‘foreign force’, unfamiliar with the area, the people and the sources available. Despite these initial handicaps, by 1974 the Army had built up an impressive block of detailed information on over 40 per cent of the population of the Province.64 Much of this information was collected through the means of P-tests; people would be questioned concerning their personal details, families, occupation and religious and political affiliations. Random house searches, head checks and mobile foot patrols were used and all the information was then fed into a central computer. The process has been described as follows:
First they would start with the profiles of would be IRA recruits … then requisition the census records of all persons either born in Ireland or with Irish parents … This would be cross checked and brought up to date by payments at the DHSS … plus records of rent… and of car ownership.65
These methods were used by the Army to destroy the paramilitaries by increasing the flow of information to the security forces which was then used to deny members refuge, recruits and finance.
The use of intelligence, like the use of special legislation in a democratic society, is a controversial issue and it became even more so when the Army in Northern Ireland used interrogation as a method to produce information from suspects. During the period of internment without trial in 1971 342 men were interned; twelve of these were subjected to interrogation in depth. This process consisted of the prisoners being deprived of sleep, food and clothing, and being systematically questioned.66 Such methods had been used in the colonies and revealed a great deal of information in situations where intelligence was a major asset,67 but the military failed to realize that Northern Ireland, with a free press and television, was not a Malaya or a Cyprus. Although soldiers such as Clutterbuck might approve of interrogation to achieve specific ends68 it could be a very counter-productive process, especially when, as happened in Northern Ireland, allegations of brutality were publicly made against the security forces.69 A committee headed by Sir Edmund Compton concluded that there had in fact been no brutality committed by the Army, as the interrogators had not intended to inflict pain or suffering.70 However, the publicity helped the cause of the PIRA, especially as the use of interrogation led to an appeal by the prisoners to the European Court of Human Rights which found that the men had been subjected to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ and awarded them substantial damages.71 This was reinforced by the findings of the Parker Report which found the activities of the Army ‘not normally justified’.72 Subsequendy, British Prime Minister Heath decided that the techniques would not be used again, but the damage had been done, not least in some quarters to the reputation of the British Government in Europe. There was some evidence in the British Army campaign in Northern Ireland that some of the military did have a more sophisticated view of the manner in which terrorism could be defeated. Some serving officers, for example, did in fact try to apply lessons gleaned from other conflicts in trying to implement policies aimed at weaning support from the paramilitaries rather than just repressing whole communities. The famous guerrilla fighter, Mao Tse-Tung, likened ‘revolutionaries’ to fish that require water (the population) in which to swim and survive – without that water the fish quickly expire. Terrorists seek to keep that ‘water’ by first posing as the legitimate guardians of the people, exploiting genuine political and social grievances, and secondly, through a policy of intimidation. The PIRA succeeded in securing the loyalty of a percentage of the community which, by inclination, abhored Unionist rule and resented the British presence.73 A major part of counter-revolutionary strategy rests in the struggle to win over that support. In Malaya, the British Army had managed to deprive the rebels of their supporters by resettling the people in ‘strategic hamlets’ and providing them with food and shelter. This meant not only that the rebels could not depend upon isolated villages unfamiliar to the soldiers for refuge, but it also meant that the population had an interest in the success of the Army since it had benefited from the system initiated by the British soldiers.74 This type of strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the Catholic population was advocated by Brigadier Frank Kitson who in the early 1970s was a brigade commander in Belfast. Earlier, Kitson had served in Kenya, Cyprus, Malaysia and Oman, and on the basis of that experience had developed a theory of counter-insurgency tactics which he presented in his book Low Intensity Operations?75
Kitson recognized that one of the keys to defeating the paramilitaries militaries was to win the trust of local communities. He believed that in the city areas of Northern Ireland the Army should work very closely with the local civil authorities to promote the health and stability of an area, to improve community relations and win the support of the local population. This was not an easy task. Some of the Catholic areas were actually run by the PIRA who organized local matters such as housing lists and operated mafia-style gangs to impose order.76 Kitson recommended that this could be countered through the appointments of civilian representatives, along the line of colonial district commissioners, who would be responsible for the area, organizing community matters such as street clearance, lighting and welfare work. These ‘Mr Fixits’, as they became known, would coordinate local government bodies, the population and the Army. This approach was found to be successful in the areas in which it was adopted, for example in Andersontown in 1972.77 This district was regarded as one of the hardest PIRA areas, but after Operation Motorman a high number of PIRA suspects had been arrested with a consequence that the local network was greatly weakened. The area was in very poor condition because for many months local workmen had not dared to enter it to carry out necessary tasks. The Army therefore undertook the responsibility for civil duties such as refuse collection and repairs. In military terms at least for this area, the strategy was successful. During the period from January to June 1973, after the military had taken over some of the civil administration, the number of shooting incidents in the area fell from forty-one to twelve per month and the number of riot incidents decreased from ten per month to none. Of equal importance, as experience in Malaya, Kenya and Vietnam had shown, was that information from the district began to increase.78 It is difficult to assess just how widespread these kinds of policy were in Northern Ireland. Much depended on the local commander of an area, but in general Kitson's ideas were not implemented. Many soldiers felt that the first task was to stop the riots and the terrorists rather than to deal with civil administration.79 Indeed, by the mid-1970s many believed that a hard-line approach backed up by special legislation was working.
The beginning of 1974 was a time of relative optimism for the British forces in Northern Ireland. Not only did the Army believe that it was gaining the upper hand in the struggle with the PIRA, but it seemed, at least to those in Westminster, that Northern Ireland was ready for a new political initiative. On 6 December 1973 the Heath Government had arranged for representatives of the British and Irish Governments to discuss possible initiatives with members of the Unionist Party, the SDPL and the Alliance Party at Sunningdale in Berkshire. The result of these deliberations was the Sunningdale Agreement which was aimed at establishing a powersharing executive consisting of six Protestants and five Catholics. A major aim of those who had created the agreement was to provide the Catholics with a greater degree of control over the affairs of the Province. In January 1974, the Northern Ireland Executive was established at Stormont with Brian Faulkner as chief executive and Gerry Fitt from the SDLP as his deputy. Once more, Westminster included a clause in the agreement that admitted the nationalist goal of Irish unification, stating that if the majority of Northern Irish people should indicate a wish to become part of a united Ireland, the British Government would support that wish. It was ironic, but not surprising, that the ‘Loyalists’ rather than the PIRA destroyed this political initiative.
The Unionists regarded the proposals as a betrayal of their cause and an outright rejection by Westminster of the Unionist raison d'être, the right to be British as well as Irish. They treated the new Executive as if it had no mandate and when Edward Heath called a sudden general election in February 1974 the Unionist vote split between Faulkner's pro Executive faction and the anti-Sunningdale Unionist MPs. The latter won. All the Unionist MPs were opposed to the agreement. The Unionist community itself united against the Sunningdale Agreement and on 14 May organized a Province-wide strike in protest against its implementation. They threatened to bring the services of the Province to a standstill. The Unionists had long been preparing for this crisis as bodies such as the Ulster Workers’ Council, the Democratic Union Party and the paramilitary groups made that threat a reality. It was estimated that 30,000 people did not attend work; postal services were interrupted; electricity supplies were interfered with; Protestant vigilantes roamed the streets enforcing order in their areas. By this stage, the Heath Government had collapsed and Harold Wilson was once again in charge. Wilson discussed with the Chief of General Staff, Sir Peter Hunt, the possibility of British troops being used to break the strike.80 The GOC in Northern Ireland, Sir Frank King, however, was not prepared to use troops to bring the strike to an end and in particular he was not prepared to take on the Unionists. According to some accounts, this view was relayed to Downing Street through the Ministry of Defence and directly aided the Unionist defeat of the powersharing initiative.81 Other interpretations point to the political difficulties that Harold Wilson faced in relation to the crisis. By 24 May the economy in Northern Ireland had been virtually run down. Wilson invited members of the powersharing Executive to London in an attempt to resolve the crisis. What Wilson wanted was a quick result that would not embarrass him politically and allow him to get on with sorting out the mainland economy which itself was convulsed after the wave of worker discontent under the Heath administration.82 During the meeting between Faulkner, Fitt and Wilson, a major misunderstanding arose. Faulkner apparently believed that it was Wilson's intention to back the Northern Ireland Executive with British troops if necessary, and that it would be possible to retake the control of vital services.83 He was sadly mistaken. The day after the meeting in London Wilson launched a major tirade against the Unionists (contrary to Faulkner's advice). He accused them, among other things, of sponging off the British taxpayers. While this speech was mainly aimed at reassuring the British on the mainland that he would not give in to the Unionists, it had the effect in the Province of hardening the strike itself. Wilson was not prepared to use force to break the strike and anyway had tended to believe that Heath's powersharing experiment was bound to fail. Given the solidarity of the strike, the Sunningdale Agreement collapsed and Northern Ireland reverted to Direct Rule.84
Northern Irish Catholic politicians had, during the crisis, argued that the British Army should be used to break the strike and uphold the new Executive. The decision not to use the Army was a controversial one; the Catholic members of the Executive believed that through its inactivity the Army was acquiescing in illegal behaviour. The rationale for non-intervention was that the Army should not be used in what was primarily a civil matter best dealt with by the police.85 This lame distinction barely hid the real reason which was that the British Army was extremely reluctant to become involved in a battle with the Unionists and face a situation in which it was besieged on two fronts, facing not only the PIRA but also the wrath of Protestant paramilitary groups. This apparent sympathy between the military and the Unionists recalled echoes of the past and the traditional support for the Unionist cause which had existed in the British military at the beginning of the century.
Yet the relationship between the British Army and the Unionists in the current conflict has always been complex. Initially, the Protestants welcomed the Army, perceiving it as an additional arm of Unionist power. Lawrence Orr, a prominent Unionist, proclaimed in 1969: ‘we're getting the troops and we're getting them without strings'.86 However, the Unionists were disappointed with the behaviour of the Army, particularly in the phases when the Army adopted a low-profile approach towards the Catholics, as in 1972 and 1975.87 The relationship between the Army and the Unionists in the 1970s, as now, is best described as one of uneasy alliance; the British Army, despite the threats issued by the Protestants, require them as allies. It certainly cannot cope with a situation of continual siege on two fronts. Equally, while the Protestants regard the Army with suspicion, fearing an eventual British withdrawal, they desire its presence not only to defeat the PIRA, but also as a symbol of Westminster's commitment to their cause.
The inactivity of the Army during the 1974 strike and its tolerance of Unionist paramilitary groups once more underlined the belief in the Catholic communities that the Army was fully aligned with the forces of Unionism. Some analysts have argued that this has been a major failing of the British Army in Northern Ireland - that it has not realized that in order to deprive the PIRA of its support within the Catholic population it has to accommodate Republican ambitions.88 It is difficult to envisage exactly how this could have been achieved when the Army has as its mandate in the Province the defeat of the PIRA.
By late 1974 the British Army, which had originally been committed as a temporary expedient in 1969, was deeply immersed in counteracting political violence. However, the Army has found it difficult to adjust to its role. Wilkinson writes that: ‘Internal security duties under the strict limits imposed in a constitutional liberal democratic system conflict fundamentally in many respects with the professional instincts, traditions and ethos of the military.’89
Northern Ireland required a major change in the outlook of soldiers, for it raised the question of whether troops are suited to a strategy requiring the arrest and conviction of terrorists rather than the straightforward elimination of the enemy. Bloody Sunday proved that some soldiers found it difficult to respond with restraint. However, as many commentators have pointed out, taking into consideration the need of the Army to contend with not just the terrorists but also the abuse of both communities, it has behaved better than many other armies would have done. The process of adjustment has not been easy. This, in part, explains why the idea of a hearts-and-minds campaign along the lines envisaged by Kitson was not fully adopted. Some sections of the Army have had difficulty in adjusting to the notion of community service as a weapon in the fight against the enemy. However, the major impediment to the pursuit of a successful strategy in Northern Ireland has been inconsistency in the aims of the Army's political masters. Policy concerning Northern Ireland has fluctuated widely. At one stage Westminster directed the Army to act forcibly against the PIRA, for example during the internment operation of 1971, but when attempts at political conciliation were undertaken, the Army was directed to scale down its operations and the progress made in activities such as intelligence gathering could be lost, as happened after the introduction of Direct Rule in 1972. In such periods, the British Government has even negotiated with PIRA men, the very men who wage war upon the Army. The British Government, unlike the PIRA, has shown no consistency in its strategic aims. Since the beginning of the crisis in Northern Ireland there has been no overriding principle guiding the Army, apart from defeating the PIRA. However, the Army was not even sure that the British Government would not accede to the demands of the PIRA and announce a withdrawal some time in advance, as had happened during the campaign in Aden when the Army was left to deal with rebels who knew they had already won.90
By 1974, despite the view that the PIRA was steadily being defeated, the position of the Army in Northern Ireland was a matter of profound concern to the British Government. There was little desire to have troops indefinitely entangled in the Province over the longer term. It was embarrassing for the Government to have armed troops parading the streets of the United Kingdom. In particular, there was concern that the Army would be forced to undertake the long-term responsibility for law and order, to such a degree that the police would come to depend on that support and be unable to manage again without it. A case has been made that active service in Northern Ireland was extremely useful in training troops, particularly at officer level,91 but the skills needed for a tour of duty in the Province were very different from those required for ordinary duties, and by late 1974 the troops seemed weary of a conflict which appeared unending.92 After the failure of the Sunningdale Agreement a decision was taken by the British Government to attempt to wean British troops out of Ireland.
‘Ulsterization’ or ‘police primacy’ as it was known, was a strategy within which the British Army would gradually begin to shed its responsibility for security in the cities and allow the indigenous forces of the Province, namely the RUC, to take over. The idea had first appeared in April 1974 when the British Government started to consider the notion of ‘normal policing’ for some areas in Northern Ireland. It was strongly backed by the new senior Deputy Chief Constable, Kenneth Newman, who believed that the RUC should be placed in charge of ‘policing’ the communities, but it ran contrary to the Army's view. The Army had rather expended much thought on the imposition of martial law in the Province to strengthen their hand in the fight against the PIRA.
It was hoped that so-called ‘normalization’ would enable the British Army to withdraw troops and, it must be added, maintain a greater ‘distance’ from the conflict with the PIRA and the nationalist communities. Part of the desire to ‘normalize’ the conflict seems in many respects an attempt to remove the ‘British’ element from the conflict. Although this has been openly denied by successive British Governments, it was certainly a consideration in 1974, not least because of the success of the PIRA at operating in mainland Britain.
While the PIRA was being squeezed in the cities in 1974, it turned its attention back to a strategy it had practised throughout the conflict with Westminster – to take the battle to the British mainland. In August 1974 the Provisionals moved to a campaign of bombing the mainland. In October they carried out the Guildford bombings and in November an horrifie attack was made on a Birmingham nightclub. In many respects the PIRA regarded these attacks as successful and as most likely to bring about a British withdrawal. The ‘success’ of the Provisionals' mainland campaign did have some of the desired effect on the British Government as it made it ever more imperative to rearrange the security equation in Northern Ireland. This was the British endeavour during the mid-1970s.
1 Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984 (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 6.
2 Robert Moss, Urban Guerillas (London: Temple Smith, 1972), p. 103.
3 Interview with Major N. Kench, Information Officer, Army Headquarters Lisburn, 30 July 1985.
4 Conor Cruise O'Brien, States of Ireland (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 245.
5 Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 158.
6 Quoted by Christopher Wain, The Listener, 23 August 1984.
7 Quoted by Hamill, op. cit., p. 7.
8 Interview with Jo Haines, quoted in Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 549.
9 Sunday Times Insight Team, op. cit., p. 145.
10 Padraig O'Malley, The Uncivil Wars, Ireland Today (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1983), p. 207.
11 Sunday Times Insight Team, op. cit., p. 144.
12 Moss, op. cit., p. 103.
13 Hamill, op. cit., p. 35.
14 See, for example, Foster's view of Maudling in R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 591.
15 Moss, op. cit., p. 104.
16 Hamill, op. cit., p. 37.
17 Moss, op. cit., p. 102.
18 J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 434.
19 Ibid., p. 434.
20 David Barzilay, The British Army in Ulster, vol. 1 (Belfast: Century Books, 1973), p. 25.
21 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long War, The Emergency in Malaya 1948-1960 (London: Cassell, 1967).
22 On this point, see Paddy Hillyard, ‘Law and Order’ in John Darby (ed.), Northern Ireland: The Background to Conflict (New York: Appletree Press/Syracuse University Press, 1983), p. 37.
23 Hamill, op. cit., p. 60.
24 Hamill, op. cit., p. 64.
25 Interview with Major-General Chiswell, Army Headquarters Brecon, 24 July 1985.
26 Quoted by Hamill, op. cit., p. 63.
27 Hamill, op. cit., p. 70.
28 Hamill, quoted in The Times Literary Supplement (November 1985).
29 Charles Townshend, quoted in ibid.
30 Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London: Macmillan, Second Edition 1986), p. 158.
31 Moss, op. cit., p. 113.
32 Wilkinson, op. cit., pp. 158–9.
33 O'Malley, op. cit., p. 208.
34 Brian Faulkner, Memoirs of a Statesman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), pp. 122–3.
35 Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace (London: Hutchinson, 1995), pp. 124–5.
36 Ibid., pp. 124–5. See also Faulkner, op. cit., pp. 118–19.
37 Coogan, op. cit., p. 131.
38 Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Dewar, The British Army in Northern Ireland (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1985), p. 55.
39 See Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 49–50; and Coogan, op. cit., p. 144.
40 Hamill, op. cit., p. 91.
41 The Guardian, 31 January 1972.
42 Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the events of Sunday January 30, 1972 which led to the loss of life in connection with the procession in Londonderry on that day. By the Rt Hon Lord Widgery, OBE. TD; HL 101, HC 220.
43 See Liz Curtis, Ireland the Propaganda War (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 41–50.
44 Pimlott, p. 593.
45 Ibid., op. cit., p. 593.
46 Lee, op. cit., p. 441.
47 Hamill, op. cit., p. 103.
48 Institute of Contemporary British History, Seminar on Ireland 1970-74, quoted in Coogan, op. cit., p. 108.
49 British Army, PQS2 1981/82. Tutor Background Paper, Northern Ireland.
50 Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (Glasgow: Fontana, 1980), p. 492.
51 Coogan, The IRA, op. cit., p. 496.
52 Dewar, op. cit., p. 66.
53 See Chapter Four.
54 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 160.
55 Kevin Boyle, Tom Haddon, Paddy Hillyard, Ten Years on in Northern Ireland, The Level and Control of Political Violence (London: The Cobden Trust, 1980), p. 27.
56 Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 402.
57 Robin Evelegh, Peace-Keeping in a Democratic Society (London: Hurst and Co., 1978), p. 50.
58 Hillyard, op. cit., p. 39.
59 Ibid., p. 39.
60 Ibid., p. 39.
61 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 137.
62 David Charters, ‘Internal and Psychological Warfare in Northern Ireland’. Royal United Services Institute Journal (September 1977).
63 Ibid.
64 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 160.
65 ‘A Computer Programme To Hunt the Bombers’, The Financial Times 3 December 1974).
66 John McGuffin, The Guineapigs (London: Penguin, 1974), pp. 48–9.
67 Charters, op. cit.
68 Richard Clutterbuck, Protest and the Urban Guerilla (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 142.
69 McGuffin, op. cit., pp. 48–9.
70 The Compton Report, Cmnd 4823 (London: HMSO, 1971), para. 156–60.
71 O'Malley, op. cit., p. 35.
72 The Parker Report, Cmnd 4901 (London: HMSO, 1972).
73 For an assessment of the complexities of Republican support for the PIRA in this period, see J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1969–1992 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993), pp. 240–1.
74 Evelegh, op. cit., p. 48.
75 General Frank Kitson, Low-Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peacekeeping (London: Faber & Faber, 1971).
76 Sunday Times Insight Team, op. cit., p. 238.
77 Lieutenant-Colonel Graham, Low-level Civil Military Coordinator, Belfast, 1970–73, The Royal United Services Institute Journal (September 1974), pp. 80–4.
78 Ibid., pp. 80–4.
79 Hamill, op. cit., p. 42.
80 Martin Dillon, The Enemy Within: The IRA's War Against the British (London: Doubleday, 1994), p. 135.
81 Ibid., p. 135. For a general analysis of the crisis, see also Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (London: André Deutsch, 1975). Fisk quotes sources that indicate that parts of the British Army Officer Corps in Ireland demonstrated a considerable distrust of Socialist politicians, pp. 240–1.
82 See Pimlott, op. cit., pp. 633–4.
83 Ibid., pp. 633–4.
84 O'Malley, op. cit., p. 317.
85 Hamill, op. cit., p. 144.
86 Quoted in the Sunday Times Insight Team, op. cit., p. 142.
87 O'Malley, op. cit., Chapter 6.
88 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 166.
89 Ibid., p. 157.
90 Robert Paget, Last Post, Aden (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), p. 159.
91 Dewar, op. cit., p. 219.
92 Hamill, op. cit., p. 159.