CHAPTER FOUR
By the mid-1970s British troops had been involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland for six years. They had, during that period, turned from protectors of the Catholic communities into a force that was, on the whole, geared to the defeat of the PIRA. Part of the task had inevitably involved taking action against the very people they had been initially deployed to defend. Some progress had been made in dealing with the military situation, not least the Army could claim some success against the PIRA in the cities. But the price of that success had been bought by estrangement from the Catholic communities. This in turn meant that there was little hope of a political settlement. Westminster determined to change the equation with a new security policy which had enormous implications for the military and its role in Northern Ireland.
One of the problems that faced the British Government by the mid-1970s was that the use of troops had in many ways exacerbated the spiral of violence in the Province. From 1969 to 1975 the number of fatalities in Northern Ireland relative to the population was twice that of the losses sustained by Britain during the Boer War and twice that of the deaths suffered by the United States in Korea and Vietnam.1 The British Army had been involved in the conflict for several years and there was no sign of an end to the confrontation. The British Government believed that it was time for a new initiative aimed at counteracting the violence in the Province. A strategy was devised whereby the British Army would no longer be at the forefront of the conflict. The decision was made to scale down military activities and visibly reduce the presence of the Army in an attempt to restore a semblance of normality to the Province and perhaps aid a political settlement.
There were two imperatives for this change in strategy. The first stemmed from the recognition by the British Government that in many respects the political situation had been exacerbated by allowing the military to bear the main responsibility in the conflict with the terrorists. This realization was one common to states in countering political violence. There is always a danger in committing troops for long periods of time; it has been observed that:
the effect is to elevate into full-scale war, movements that are basically on a much smaller scale … the use of the Army imposes a permanent military dimension on the area which raises communal violence to a more permanent and formal level.2
The British Government recognized by the mid-1970s that the Army had become immersed in a situation of continuing violence from which it would not be easily extracted and one in which it had become the major protagonist. A second but connected reason for changing strategy was the belief that the PIRA was steadily being defeated in the cities,3 and that there was now an opportunity to reduce everyday communal violence and civilian dependence upon paramilitary organizations.
The belief that the PIRA was in fact losing popularity appeared to be confirmed by the growth of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement in 1976. Specifically, the organization arose from the violent circumstances of the deaths of three children from the McGuire family in August 1976. The children were killed when a car containing two PIRA men, who had just robbed a bank, mounted the pavement outside their home, running all three down. The driver of the car had been shot by British soldiers pursuing the men. An aunt of the children, Mairread Corrigan, acting upon the revulsion engendered by the incident, founded the peace movement which united moderates from both communities in a campaign for an end of violence in the Province.4 In 1977 Mairread Corrigan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but by then the movement had lost much of its initial emotional impact and died out. In the 1980s a tendency existed to dismiss the peace movement as of little relevance to the Northern Irish conflict,5 but in 1976 its impact was such that it did actually weaken the appeal of the paramilitaries in the Catholic community,6 thus aiding Westminster in its bid to consider new initiatives.
The strategy of ‘police primacy’ was officially announced in a Joint Directive by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1977. It was stated that the roles of the Army and the police were to be reversed — the military would act in support of the police.7 In fact this had been gradually occurring since 1975 when the Bourne Committee had recommended that the police should be prepared once more to take responsibility for the security of the Province. ‘The committee chaired by John Bourne, a civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office, produced a document called The Way Ahead’.8 It envisaged the withdrawal of the Army from those Protestant and Catholic areas regarded as ‘safe’. This also meant that many of the activities of the Army were curtailed and soldiers had to defer to the RUC. For example, if soldiers wished to perform patrols, carry out searches or arrest suspects they had first to obtain permission from the RUC.9 In all but the most ‘hard-line’ of Republican areas, the Army was moved out and the RUC took over and was responsible for countering the PIRA. However, in hard-line Republican areas the Army continued to operate, while the border remained a special case where the military retained its leading role.
The attempt to implement ‘police primacy’ represented the first really coherent and long-term strategy implemented in Northern Ireland since 1969 and as such represented a positive improvement in the position of the Army. In counteracting political violence, rapid or incoherent shifts in policy can aid the opposition as terrorists feed off uncertainty or ambiguity in state policy.10 British policy in Northern Ireland during the 1970s had been full of such contradictions. For example, in 1971 the British leader of the opposition, Harold Wilson, announced a plan for the unification of Ireland within fifteen years, yet when Prime Minister in 1974 did little to prevent the Unionists destroying a power-sharing Executive.11 This type of inconsistency in the political programme was reflected in the strategies the Army was permitted to adopt at any given time. By 1977 the Army had undergone phases in which it reacted very sharply against the PIRA with the use of internment without trial, as in 1971, and phases when it did little more than watch as the British Government negotiated with PIRA leaders and violence escalated in the Province. Special legislation was introduced into the Province in 1973 to allow the Army to deal more effectively with the PIRA, but yet again the British Government continued to negotiate with the PIRA, albeit in secret, in the pragmatic hope that some form of political accommodation could be found. The major benefit of police primacy was that it was designed to make the Army less significant. The British Government could attempt to underwrite a political settlement while no longer actively engaged against one of the communities that would have to accept it. This clarified the British position but literally threatened to repeat history by pitting the two Irish communities in the North directly against each other once again — the Republicans versus the predominantly Protestant security forces.
This of course did create problems that were not unfamiliar in Ireland. Following the breakdown of law and order in Northern Ireland in 1969, the Hunt Committee had investigated the structure of policing in the Province. The findings of the committee had greatly discredited both the RUC and the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). Both forces were criticized as too old-fashioned, and the USC was found to be a sectarian force organized on lines which were not dissimilar to a Protestant paramilitary organization. The USC was subsequently disbanded, while the RUC was reorganized into a force that corresponded to the design of the mainland British police forces.12 To replace the USC the Hunt Report recommended the creation of a part-time military defence. To that end the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was formed on 1 April 1970.13 Men, some with military experience, were recruited locally, and immediately assumed military duties such as patrolling and the guarding of key installations. When the new strategy of ‘police primacy’ was introduced, the UDR, as it was known, had grown in size and importance, and began to replace the regular Army units on duties throughout the Province. This enabled the British to reduce force levels. Indeed, this strategy was implemented so successfully that by 1984 the Army had 7,000 troops stationed in the Province while the UDR boasted 7,500 men.14 One of the major causes of the riots in 1969 had been the fact that the Catholic communities regarded the policing of the Province as a sectarian matter designed to keep them contained and as second-class citizens.15 In the eyes of some Catholics the British policy of Ulsterization has appeared as little more than a reversion to the pre-1969 position, in which they perceived a Protestant police force as bound to act against their interests.16 There was some basis to these fears since the RUC was over 90 per cent Protestant, while the UDR was 98 per cent so. In the first few months of its existence, over half the members of the UDR were formed from the Ulster Constabulary,17 men who had belonged to the force disbanded because of its sectarianism. There was little hope of these forces winning the confidence of the Catholic communities. The issue of who should police the Province raised a stark question: should the Province be primarily policed by the RUC and the UDR, with the obvious problems of religious bias, or the British Army which had also gained the reputation of being anti-Republican?
There was actually no easy answer. Some commentators considered that although the strategy of Ulsterization might enable Westminster to make troop reductions in the short term, from a long-term perspective the policy was dangerous. It was pointed out that if more troops were withdrawn, Northern Ireland would remain policed by a segment of the British Army whose primary loyalty was almost certainly not to Westminster but to Protestant Ulster. The withdrawal of British troops and the implementation of policies vehemently disliked by Protestant Ulster could, it has been observed, pit one segment of the Army against the other.18 While this was the worst-case political scenario there were also other concerns about the strategy, not least as to how the RUC and UDR would fare against the paramilitaries without the British Army. This was the predominant military concern.
During the first seven years of the conflict in the Province the RUC had acted as a back-up force for the Army, which had dictated tactics and directed the fight against the PIRA, and it had been the Army which had suffered the heaviest casualties and been the targets of PIRA attacks. A basic change had taken place by 1977 when the RUC was placed at the fore. It was not, however, an easy transition. In the first year in which the policy was implemented the RUC sustained twice its usual losses19 and suffered its worst attack ever at the hands of the PIRA at the border village of Belcoo in Fermanagh when three policemen were killed.20
Many in the Army believed that the strategy had been rushed and that the British Government was too eager to withdraw troops, leaving the RUC and relatively few troops to counter the terrorists. The Army considered that the RUC was simply not sufficiently trained or experienced to operate on its own. Many experts pointed out that while the police force had more than doubled its size over the previous seven years, it was not a mobile force which could easily be deployed to the areas where it was needed. The RUC had grown in numbers from 3,500 in 1970 to 6,500 in the mid-1970s. The force was organized into sixteen divisions and grouped into three regions: Belfast, the south and the north. Each had an assistant Chief Constable who reported daily to the Chief Constable of the RUC. There were problems within the force though: some police stations were actually overmanned whereas some, such as Newry, were desperately short staffed.21 More importantly, some personnel in the RUC and the UDR were part-time, which meant that they lacked the overall coherence of British Army units which fought the PIRA twenty-four hours a day from established bases. Part-time soldiers and off-duty policemen presented the PIRA with easy targets. Some of these criticisms arose simply from dissatisfaction of many in the Army with the way in which Westminster expected them once again to lower their profile in the conflict against the PIRA and some from professional rivalries between the two security forces. In theory, the two forces had a measure of integration right from the beginning. The Chief Constable of the RUC and the GOC met at least once a week at the Security Policy Committee and the Deputy Chief Constables held regular daily discussions to coordinate policy. Yet there were still problems of confidence between the two; some RUC officers felt that the military were not sufficiently sensitive to local conditions and had a tendency to rush into areas without consideration for longer-term community relations. In addition, many in the RUC believed that the very presence of British soldiers gave the PIRA its raison d'être as the historic enemy. RUC officers also deeply resented the military allegation that they lacked professionalism. Yet some of the criticisms made by the military against the RUC were valid in the mid-1970s — it did lack the experience or training to take over all the anti-terrorist tasks of the Army.
By 1977 the British Army had had nearly ten years of experience in Northern Ireland. Every regiment performed a tour of duty there and the training for units prior to going to serve in Northern Ireland had grown progressively more sophisticated. In the early stages of the conflict soldiers had encountered the violence in Belfast and Londonderry with little training and outdated equipment from the colonial campaigns.22 However, by the mid-1970s before troops arrived in Northern Ireland they were retrained in all basic skills such as shooting, field craft and patrolling. They would then undergo a training course at Shorncliffe, a military centre on the English south coast, to deal with PIRA attacks such as hijacks, vehicle ambushes and hostage-taking.23 It was this experience that had enabled the Army to resist the PIRA. The military felt that without this kind of intense training the RUC would simply let the advantages that had been gained in the battle with the PIRA be dissipated. Such reservations did have some validity but the RUC was not and never had been just an ordinary police force. For example, it already had specially trained units for intelligence work. It was envisaged that the RUC could be strengthened as a quasi-military force. To that end, during 1976 the RUC was equipped with Special Patrol Groups which acted as its anti-terrorist squads. Five regions were given SPGs and police were retained in anti-riot tactics. But this all took time and Army reservations about RUC competence vis-à-vis the paramilitaries were borne out by the increased activity and success of the PIRA. In February 1978 it once more embarked upon a bombing campaign to take advantage of the relative inactivity of the Army on the streets of Northern Ireland. It was a campaign of great ruthlessness, resulting in the deaths of twelve civilians at the La Mon House Hotel in February 1978 and £500,000 worth of damage in Londonderry the next day when the PIRA bombed the Ulster bus depot.24 The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and PIRA also perpetrated other high-profile attacks during the late 1970s. In July 1976, they assassinated the British Ambassador to Eire, Christopher Ewart Biggs, in Dublin while in 1979 the INLA succeeded in killing one of their long-term targets — Lord Mountbatten was assassinated at his holiday home in Mullaghmore, Co. Sligo.25 On the same day the PIRA achieved one of their most notable successes against the British Army itself when eighteen soldiers were killed during an ambush at Warrenpoint. These incidents reflected the actions of a reinvigorated paramilitary organization. Just as the British Army was being withdrawn from an open role vis-a-vis the PIRA it was beginning to enter a more militant and violent phase of the campaign.
The reorganization of the PIRA
The success of the British Army in the mid-1970s had been a cause for concern within the PIRA. During the mid to late 1970s the PIRA was forced to make a searching reappraisal of its strategy and tactics. In particular, the organization wanted to regain the initiative after the cease-fire of 1975. The cease-fire had actually caused problems for the paramilitaries because it had meant that they could no longer target the security forces. Instead, they had had to target ordinary Protestants. This was regarded as less satisfactory and less high profile than their usual activities. The PIRA decided to change its system of operating with the leadership opting to implement a smaller, tighter system of organization. At the start of the 1970s the PIRA had as its main tactic the orchestration of mass civil disobedience on the back of Republican disaffectation. This had meant that large numbers of people were involved which in turn meant that the British Army had had considerable success penetrating the organization. The leadership decided that rather than operate in so-called battalions they would work in cells. These cells consisted of four men and each unit would be specialized in different activities. For example, there were sniping cells, execution cells and bombing cells. The aim was to maximize the efficiency of operations and to eliminate the risk of being discovered.26 By 1979 the PIRA had improved its tactics to such a degree that the level of violence rose dramatically: in that year fatalities incurred by the security forces rose to 113 from eighty-one the previous year.27 A senior Army intelligence officer, Brigadier James Glover, testified to the efficiency of the PIRA in December 1978. His report stated that:
The Provisional IRA (PIRA) has the dedication and the sinews of war to raise violence intermittently to at least a level of early 1978, certainly for the foreseeable future. Even if ‘peace’ is restored, the motivation for politically inspired violence will remain. Arms will be readily available and there will be many who are able and willing to use them. Any peace will be superficial and brittle.28
The report showed that the PIRA had progressed a long way since 1969. It assessed the membership of the PIRA and found that the leadership was ‘intelligent, astute and experienced with a growing technical expertise’.29 Unfortunately for the British Army, the PIRA stole this report from the mail and published it, so demonstrating their ability to outwit the Army.30
During the mid-1970s there was also a shift of personnel within the leadership of the PIRA organization. New men began to emerge within the Northern communities and challenged what was becoming an aged and southern-led leadership. In particular, in November 1976 the first meeting was held of the new national command under the auspices of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams. Also during this period, the PIRA altered its strategy radically to incorporate a new policy. The leadership had accepted that a victory against the British Army would not be accomplished quickly. Rather, a strategy of attrition should be adopted and that alongside the use of violence, legitimate politics should also be adopted. The leadership decided to ‘go political’ by contesting local government seats and taking them up if elected. It was also decided to contest seats for Parliament but not use them if elected. This decision was made public in the wake of the 1981 hunger strikes and the publicity generated by the election of the PIRA man Bobby Sands as a Member of Parliament and his subsequent death on hunger strike. The PIRA summed up its new policy as ‘By Ballot and By Bullet’.31 This represented a significant alteration in both the philosophy and strategy of the organization. In 1969 the PIRA had deliberately renounced the political option, preferring a violent one. Danny Morrison, the director of Sinn Fein, explained that the change was to ‘undermine British propaganda, which states we have no support’.32 Despite the adoption of a political strategy, the PIRA had not renounced the use of violence as its major weapon, but the military leadership took heed of key figures in the movement such as Gerry Adams who, after three years imprisonment for terrorist offences, had rethought PIRA strategy and had begun to warn publicly against a purely military strategy. This in turn led directly to the development of Sinn Fein as the political wing of the PIRA, which tried to use the political system to advance the cause of Republicanism. The attempt to ‘go political’ was a direct result of the British changes towards normalization, but it also arose out of the recognition that the conflict had changed into a long-drawn-out one that required some form of political strategy. During the early 1970s, PIRA leaders had hoped that the British Army would withdraw and had been fuelled in this belief by the willingness of both Labour and Conservative Governments to hold cease-fire talks with the paramilitaries. When it became apparent that this was not the case, they adopted a new doctrine — The Long Way. A political strategy became even more urgent when the British Government embarked upon the second part of the normalization of the Province, known as criminalization.
Ever since the advent of Direct Rule, Westminster had been trying to find ways that would defeat the PIRA but not alienate Catholic opinion to such an extent that a peace settlement was impossible. Part of that process culminated in the findings of the Gardiner Committee which reviewed the emergency legislation in Northern Ireland in 1975. It recommended that methods used by the security forces such as internment should be ended. In addition, the British Government announced in March 1976 that all prisoners convicted of crimes would be treated as ordinary criminals. This was part of a desire to portray members of para military organizations as wrongdoers rather than heroes. Since 1972 paramilitary prisoners had enjoyed a special status which included a number of privileges such as wearing personal clothing rather than prison uniforms. During 1975 the Gardiner Committee stated that these concessions had been a mistake. The different treatment of ‘political prisoners’ appeared to perform two undesirable functions: one was to reinforce a commitment to the Republican cause and a second was to concede that these crimes were different because they were perpetrated in a ‘political’ cause.
However, the ending of the ‘special status’ for the paramilitaries provoked one of the bitterest campaigns of the modern conflict in Ireland. It became known as the H-Block protest. Once the decision had been taken by Westminster to treat the prisoners in an ordinary fashion, new prison facilities had to be designed to accommodate them. New cells were built at the Maze Prison in Long Kesh. The subsequent protest by the prisoners took its name from the H-shape of the buildings. Initially, the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and donned blankets. During 1978 the prisoners escalated the crisis by turning it into a ‘dirty’ protest, and then during October 1980 into a hunger strike.33 By December the strike was abandoned with one of the prisoners at the point of death. The British Government seemed ready to make concessions. However, the concessions were considered by the prisoners as too trivial and new strikes began. On 5 May 1981 the first prisoner, Bobby Sands, died, followed by nine others, until in October the British Government made a number of other concessions, enabling the strike to end. Significantly however, the hunger strikes served only to harden Catholic opposition to the Government and mass demonstrations were again staged on the streets of Belfast against the Government. Indeed, the hunger strikes provided a great deal of publicity for the PIRA and the Republican position in general. It was at this point that Sinn Fein engineered a political breakthrough. This occurred when Bobby Sands was elected as the MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone while on hunger strike. With the death of Bobby Sands, Sinn Fein retained the seat and, apparently on the momentum of the hunger strikes, won 10 per cent of the votes in the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982.34 The new policy of not only continuing the armed struggle against the British Government but also entering the legitimate political arena was distinctly worrying for the British Government who, in the early 1980s, saw the initiative being snatched from it. It should also be added that the policy of criminalization did not appear to result in a lessening of support for the paramilitaries. The ending of internment and the increased use of Diplock courts had consequences which increased Catholic suspicions of the apparatus and operation of law and order. In particular, the difficulties of securing evidence against suspects led to the most brutal methods of interrogation. Indeed, after complaints of brutality, the Government appointed the Bennett Inquiry which led, in turn, to stricter controls being imposed.
The period of the late 1970s and early 1980s saw Westminster attempting to normalize the situation in Ireland. Yet even as Westminster moved in this direction, the alienation of the Catholic communities, and indeed in some cases the Protestant ones, increased. Most paradoxically of all, as the British Government claimed to be moving towards normalization, its military forces were moving into the most intense and controversial role in the Province — fighting a ‘secret’ war against the PIRA.
Covert operations and black propaganda
In response to the activities of the PIRA in the late 1970s the British Army began to intensify its use of special units and covert operations.35 Covert or undercover operations had been used from early on in the conflict with the PIRA. As far as the British military were concerned there were several functions of covert operations.
First, covert operations could be used to pick up information concerning the PIRA. One notable example of such work in Northern Ireland by the British Army was the running of the so-called ‘Four Square Laundry’. Soldiers posed as laundrymen calling in Republican areas. The soldiers would collect clothing which would then be analysed by forensic experts for traces of gunpowder, blood or explosive material. In 1972 this operation was uncovered by the PIRA when it ambushed the laundry van.36 It is difficult to know for certain the full extent of Army involvement in covert operations in the Province. Allegations were made in the early stages of the conflict that soldiers were using massage parlours on the Antrim Road to entice PIRA men or their sympathizers to give information. It was similarly alleged that prostitution rings were used by the British Army to gain information. These allegations were strenuously denied by the Home Secretary of the day, Merlyn Rees.37
A second function of undercover work was to discredit the enemy and gain support for the actions of the security forces in preference to those of the terrorists. To this end the Army may use undercover operations to cause disgust at what were supposedly the actions of the terrorists. A former soldier, David Seaman, alleged in 1971 that special squads, including men of the Special Air Service, were engaged in this work. Units would explode bombs in Belfast but then blame the PIRA for the ensuing damage. He also alleged that the members of the SAS were trained in the use of the Russian AK47 assault rifle, the Armalite and Thompson submachine guns. These were not normally used by the British Army but were favoured by the PIRA.38
A third function of undercover operations, somewhat ironically, was to establish the impartiality of the position of the Army. It has been alleged that the British Army indulged in an assassination campaign in Northern Ireland to project an image of religious conflict and re-establish Britain as the fair party in a dispute between two factions determined upon a course of sectarian murder. It has been written of what appeared to the numerous sectarian killings in the 1970s that ‘most of these murders were either directly or indirectly instigated through pseudo groups’.39 Bloch and Fitzgerald have argued that in their previous campaigns the British Army did not indulge in these activities40 and that these activities in Northern Ireland marked a significant departure. This is a difficult issue to verify. Numerous allegations have been made that it was British soldiers who perpetrated assassinations of leading figures but this is again almost impossible to verify. There is little doubt that covert operations have been undertaken by some sections of the British Army. Yet the use of covert operations has, however, quite often proved counter-productive, certainly in political terms. If revealed, the state can be discredited because, by the very use of such operations, the state is conceding that in order to defeat the insurgents it has to resort to their methods; if, in order to defend the state, democratic principles have to be subverted, in many ways the terrorists have won their battle.41 More critically in Northern Ireland, the use of these operations have not increased the unwillingness of the Republican communities to believe in a British desire for an equitable settlement and have fuelled the conviction in some quarters that nothing has changed in the English-Irish equation.
From 1977 onwards, as the RUC began to take over the major security role in the Province, the Army appeared to turn to more undercover activities. Special operations became an extremely contentious issue. In particular, it was alleged that both the British Army and the RUC were operating a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. This in effect meant that both forces were accused of acting as death squads, targeting members of the PIRA and the other Republican terrorist organization, the INLA. As evidence, those propounding this theory, including Northern Irish Catholic politician John Hume, point to the deaths in 1980 of at least two INLA suspects shot by police in suspicious circumstances.42
The British Army also made great use of what are known as ‘black Propaganda’ tactics of ‘psychological operations’ during this campaign in Northern Ireland. The tactics involved spreading stories concerning the PIRA and were meant to discredit the paramilitaries in the eyes of the world and its own supporters. This was not a recent phenomenon in Anglo-Irish relations. During World War I British propaganda alleged the complicity of the German Kaiser in Irish politics. Later, in 1927, it was also alleged that Lenin and Trotsky pulled the strings of the Irish independence movement in 1921.43 The British Army Land Operation Manual describes the use of psychological operations as follows: ‘the planned use of propaganda or other means to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviour of the enemy, neutral and friendly groups’.44 An early example was the leaking to ITN of a story that the PIRA had used three eight-year-olds to plant a bomb in a pram outside Belfast's Victoria Hospital. The British Press office later admitted this story was a fabrication.45 These tactics were part of the campaign by the Army to win support for its cause and unite the people against the PIRA. To this end, a stream of propaganda was directed at the Catholic community, including leaflets and booklets depicting atrocities committed by the PIRA.46 It is difficult to assess how much impact these operations actually had upon the mainland, although in a survey carried out in 1978 it was revealed that 43 per cent of Catholic people in Northern Ireland regarded the PIRA as motivated by patriotism and idealism.47
By the late 1970s the British Army decided that it was in fact counter-productive to proceed with the use of black propaganda tactics. It realized that its headquarters at Lisburn was becoming known as the Lisburn Lie Machine and a decision was taken to stop the widespread use of false stories.48 But, the more contentious elements of the military campaign were not stopped. Indeed, the military campaign on the border began a new phase from 1976 with the deployment of the SAS into the Province to undertake so-called special operations. A handful of SAS men had been operating on the border since the beginning of the conflict but for the first time Westminster acknowledged their presence and dramatically increased their numbers.49 The SAS operated from a number of bases in South Armagh and along the rest of the border. Officially, their main task is to operate undercover and gather information on the PIRA. SAS men have infiltrated border communities and indeed even the PIRA itself.50 The most infamous example of covert operation by the British was the work of Captain Nairac who in 1974 worked as an intelligence officer in the border region, mixing with the local population. In 1976 the PIRA claimed responsibility for his murder.51 By 1977 approximately 160 SAS men were operating in the border districts and a senior SAS officer was attending all army briefings.52 The major role of the SAS is underlined by the fact that it is one of the few regiments committed full-time to serving in the Province. The full extent of the role of the SAS in the Province is difficult to gauge and the Army is reluctant to go much beyond acknowledging that SAS men are used to set up ambushes and do intelligence gathering.53 Their role has been controversial and allegations have been made that they operate as little more than ‘death squads’, responsible for the deaths of PIRA men on both sides of the border.54 There is little doubt that they are engaged in a ‘secret’ battle with the PIRA that radically departs from normal policing functions. In fact, it might be argued that it is on the border that the British military comes closest to mirroring the historic pattern of British military operations against Republicans. Indeed, some parts of the Army see the border as the area of Northern Ireland which most obviously equates to their training for warfare. The paradox remained that the British Army was more closely engaged in open warfare in parts of Northern Ireland while Westminster was declaring that the Province was been returned to normalcy under the rubric of Ulsterization.
The policy of Ulsterization fundamentally altered the relationship between the Army and the RUC in the cities. While the RUC did indeed begin to operate more effectively in the cities, the border areas were a different matter. Areas in Northern Ireland are graded by the military into different colours, ranging from light grey to black according to the strength of the PIRA and the danger posed to security forces. By 1977, much of the Province was considered to be a shade of grey, denoting the degree of control exercised by the security forces. However, the border areas, in particular Armagh, were still considered to be black. It was in these areas during the late 1970s that major disagreements between the British military and the RUC were apparent over how to police the border. The military had developed a strategy suited to a war situation, in which they lived in enclosed bases and were airlifted in and out after a tour of duty. Soldiers operated from their garrisons, patrolling in special units either by foot or by helicopter. Only rarely were vehicles used in the border areas.55 The RUC, however, still patrolled the border in vehicles, remaining in close contact with the local population and with the Gardai. The RUC felt that it should be immediately available to the Gardai if an emergency arose. This difference in approach between the RUC and the Army has meant in effect that two different strategies are in operation.56 At some points the two forces regarded themselves as in direct competition with each other. For example, in July 1978, a sixteen-year-old boy was killed during an SAS stake out in Co. Antrim. The RUC had failed to provide the military with sufficient information for the stake out in a bid to protect what it saw as its area of operations, while the Army had not informed the police of its intentions as it wanted to protect its specialized tactics.57 It was in order to overcome this type of difficulty in part that Sir Maurice Oldfield was appointed to play the role of supremo of both forces and in particular to coordinate the intelligence-sharing of both security forces. Oldfield had had considerable experience of intelligence work as formerly he had been the MI5 spymaster who had run the Special Intelligence Service from 1965 until his retirement in 1977. The idea of a supremo was directly derived from the colonial experience in Malaysia where a district officer had coordinated the actions of both the police and the Army.58
Oldfleld's appointment did not really alter the problems of policing Northern Ireland in a normal way. In particular, there has been a problem with both the RUC and the UDR and the part-time nature of their occupation. UDR men and women are particularly vulnerable off duty. Unlike the British Army, they do not return to a secure military base. They return home. In the border area this can mean a remote farmhouse or a hamlet vulnerable to attack.59 The PIRA have taken advantage of this weakness and since the late 1970s have begun specifically to target off-duty members of the RUC and the UDR. Between 1981 and 1984 the PIRA killed 130 members of the locally raised security forces, Protestant political figures or local civilians in the border area. It managed to kill less than thirty soldiers in the whole of Northern Ireland during the same period.60 It again represented a shift in PIRA tactics away from the cities to the far more vulnerable border areas and local forces.
In part this may be accounted for by the fact that the RUC and the UDR are easier targets than the British soldiers. However, Protestants living in the areas adjacent to the border suspected a different reason for the PIRA strategy. They believe that the PIRA are operating what amounts to a genocidal sectarian campaign against the Protestant community by killing men who are the only sons or sole earners in a family. They allege that the PIRA is trying to invert history and that Protestants will be driven off the land and then eventually replaced by Catholics who will be left alone. In support of this view they point to cases where only sons farming the estate have been killed.61 The PIRA deny that they operate any such policy but in many cases their assassinations of off-duty policemen or UDR personnel amounts to the same thing. There is little that can be done in such cases as it has been estimated that it would take three soldiers to guard every off-duty policeman, thus proving too expensive both financially and militarily to implement.62
By 1975 it was generally recognized that the PIRA was capable of posing a long-term threat to the security of the Province63 and although the security forces were containing the PIRA in the cities, there were growing problems in rural areas. Indeed, by the mid-1970s it had become apparent that two conflicts were in fact operating in Northern Ireland. Normalization might be possible in the cities but in rural areas there was a very different type of conflict.
The border war
When British troops were first deployed in Northern Ireland in 1969 their primary task was to control the violence in the cities. Belfast and Londonderry provided the stages for confrontation. However, the border area between the North and the south began to assume an increasing importance in British military thinking, not only because it provided a get-away route for the PIRA, but also as an area in which the terrorists chose to engage the Army in another form of engagement — guerrilla warfare.
Experts on terrorism and counter-terrorism argue that the terrain for guerrilla warfare should be carefully selected. According to Taber, ‘The ideal country should be rural rather than urban, mountainous rather than flat, thickly forested rather than bare. The terrain should afford natural concealment and obstacles which hinder military transport.’64 The border area provides almost a perfect environment for rural guerrilla operations. Geographically, it is both mountainous and rural with numerous tiny hamlets and outlying farms. More importantly, the demarcation of the border is confusing. It divides Northern and southern Ireland but also divides the North. For example, Co. Donegal, which is politically part of the Republic, is further north than any point within the six counties of Northern Ireland itself. The border takes little account of physical or cultural geography; the village of Crossmagien, four miles from the border within Northern Ireland, was actually earmarked in 1925 as part of the Republic and it remains avidly Republican and anti-British, as the Army has learnt to its cost.65 The border itself is 420 miles long and runs through whole villages. It actually divides farms and even houses. The village of Pettigoe is divided between Donegal and Fermanagh.66 The area around the border consists of some of the wildest and most isolated territory in the British Isles and at many points it is not actually clear exactly where the border lies. This uncertain borderline, with its 346 official crossing places, mountains and rivers, has enabled the PIRA to vex the British Army. Despite the type of terrain which favours the terrorist, the IRA had failed to mount a successful border war during the 1950s. It had aroused little support among the inhabitants of the rural areas, and terrorists need the support and refuge provided by locals to mount operations.67 During the modern conflict, however, the PIRA have achieved an enduring support along the border. The support of Republicanism was indicated by the fact that it was in the border constituency of Fermanagh that Bobby Sands was elected MP in 1981 while in the Maze jail.68 It has been observed that the motto of the border community is ‘tell them [the security forces] nothing’.69 This has allowed the PIRA to operate with some advantages against the British Army. However, the major explanation for the Army's difficulties in operating on the border has been the existence of a ‘sanctuary’ for the PIRA across the border in the Republic. The PIRA operate from bases in the Republic of Ireland, making forays across the border to engage the military and then retreat south for refuge. It has been argued that the very existence of such a border with a ‘friendly’ government can often result in victory for the insurgents.70
The strategy of the British Army on the border
The Army has had two main tasks on the border. The first is to catch members of the PIRA to prevent them operating on the border and escaping across it. The second is to prevent the border from being used as a route for ferrying ammunition from the south into the North.71 The main concern of the Army during the initial period of the conflict (1969–72) was in dealing with the hundreds of unofficial cross-border roads which had no customs points and were illegal crossing points. It was among these roads that the PIRA operated. The Army decided that in order to prevent the PIRA using the roads and bringing munitions into the cities, the roads should be permanently blocked. To this end the Royal Engineers implanted huge wooden spikes in the roads, but such tactics proved futile as no sooner were the spikes in position than they were removed by the local population. The Army then countered by cratering the roads, but again the local population responded by filling in the holes. It proved to be a very difficult issue as troops could not be employed on a permanent basis on every single country road to ensure that the roads remained impassable.72 As well as proving ineffective in the longer term, these measures served to aggravate the population of the areas north and south of the border who claimed that not only did it hamper their farming activities, but in some cases only served to cut them off from their relatives and friends on the other side.73 In addition, the military attempts to seal the border created friction with the south as such endeavours were not politically acceptable to Dublin. In November 1971, the Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch protested to the British Government.74
At an early stage of the campaign the Army set up bases along the border in the towns of Crossmagien, Forkhill and Bessbrook and from these bases soldiers would patrol twenty-four hours a day.75 In these early days the PIRA operated a double-pronged strategy on the border. It consisted of first trying to provoke the Army into border incidents such as shoot outs. In particular, PIRA members would attack the soldiers engaged in work such as sealing the border roads, firing from positions on the other side of the border. Secondly, the PIRA indulged in the indiscriminate destruction of civilian property, coordinating their attacks with those made in the cities. In particular, the PIRA targeted the border towns of Newtown Butler, Lisnaska and Belleek.76 The idea was to put as much pressure as possible upon the security forces in the hope that the British Government would tire of the conflict. In these early stages the border seems to have been merely used to divert the attention of the British Army away from the cities, which were the primary focus of PIRA activity. The Army mounted patrols of the border to try to prevent the PIRA men escaping south and also to try to root out the hiding areas of the terrorists. Operation Mulberry was undertaken with this intention. During this operation 2,000 troops searched the border counties of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh.77
In 1972 as the British Army undertook its most intense and controversial efforts to defeat the PIRA in the cities, the PIRA began to operate more effectively on the border. It developed a strategy of destroying specific security force targets — in particular the Army vehicles used to patrol the border. The strategy was developed very adeptly. According to some sources:
Attacks were generally carried out close to the border where there were two parallel roads, one of which gave a view of the other. The mine was generally placed in the culvert or drain running beneath the road. It would be detonated from the road closest to the border. and the IRA would get away the few hundred yards to the border.78
In Cyprus the British had had experience of dealing with insurgents who had operated in a similar fashion. For example, George Grivas, leader of the EOKA [Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agonistan] which was dedicated to removing the British presence in Cyprus, had used his troops in two groupings: one operated in the countryside, creating rural incidents to distract the British Army away from the other group operating in the cities.79 The PIRA followed the same strategy successfully and in 1973 the decision was made to withdraw British troops from the border. The primary explanation for this change was that the escalation of violence in the cities following internment called for increased troop levels, but the Army also felt vulnerable on the border and the GOC, Lieutenant-General Sir Frank King, felt that the military was dissipating too many of its resources in an area where it would always be labouring under disadvantages.80 During 1973, the British Army made the cities, in particular Belfast, the centre of its operations.
Yet by 1975, the military importance of the border area had grown significantly. The British Army had to an extent been successful in the cities as a result of the intense concentration on an urban strategy.81 Given the decision by the British Government to allow the RUC the lead in policing the cities in 1975 — the strategy of ‘Ulsterization’ — the Army would be freed up to go back to the border. This had become necessary because during the mid-1970s the PIRA appeared to be concentrating on a rural campaign. In particular, British strategists were worried by the activities of the terrorists in the area of the border known as ‘murder triangle’ or ‘bandit country’. Since the cease-fire of Christmas 1974, the PIRA had killed twenty-six people in the area and was able to mount road blocks at will. Of the twelve soldiers killed in Northern Ireland that year, nine had been killed in South Armagh.82 Sectarian violence had also spiralled quite dramatically; it seemed as if competing groups of Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries were operating in the border areas. Two particularly vicious incidents of sectarian violence made it imperative that the British Army was seen to be acting against the paramilitaries. In July 1975 the Ulster Volunteer Force hijacked the Miami Show Band as they were returning to the Republic after an engagement in the North and all four Catholic members of the band were killed. In retaliation, a group of eleven Protestant workers were hijacked as they returned home from work and murdered by a group claiming to be the South Armagh Republican Action Group.83 This group had never been heard of before, but was generally regarded to be a splinter group of the PIRA.84 At this stage the British Army simply did not have sufficient numbers of troops to contend with the activities of PIRA, or indeed the other paramilitary groups, along the border. Large rural towns are quite easily garrisoned but the small rural hamlets are impossible to watch all the time. The Army had only four companies to cover 400 square miles with its innumerable villages.85 It was apparent that the British Army would never be able to cover the entire border area effectively simply by patrolling and the use of road blocks. Some in the military felt that a solution might be the creation of an artificial border 2,000 metres inside northern territory as this would force the opposition to come into an area that could be more easily defended by the military. A minimum number of soldiers would be based forward but there would be a strong reserve force.86 No matter how satisfactory this solution might have seemed militarily, it was not acceptable politically since it would have meant ceding parts of Northern Ireland to the PIRA. Instead, rather more justifiably, Home Secretary Merlyn Rees sent another battalion to the Province, to reinforce those troops already operating on the border.
The activities of the Army were severely curtailed by their inability to pursue terrorists across the border or retaliate against attacks made from the territory to the south. To counter political violence successfully it might be argued that any state needs the cooperation of its neighbours, but from 1969 to 1973 there was little cooperation, let alone coordination, between the British Army and the southern Irish security forces. The British military was extremely critical of the efforts, or rather what they perceived as the lack of effort, made by the Irish police (the Gardai) or the Irish Army to combat the PIRA.87 However, given the nature of Anglo-Irish relations since independence, it was not really surprising that the Dublin Government was ambivalent over the activities of the British Army in the area bordering the south.
The problem of the south
The very raison d'être of the PIRA, its desire for a thirty-two-county Ireland freed from Westminster, is actually enshrined in the constitution of the Republic of Ireland.88 It was not surprising therefore that in 1969, at the beginning of the conflict in the North, the Government in Dublin supported the cause of the PIRA. At first the south expressed a concern for the Northern Irish Catholic minority protected by a Protestant police force and a British Army which was not perceived as congenial to Catholic interests or ambitions. The solution put forward by Jack Lynch was the same as that of the PIRA. He stated that ‘the reunification of the national territory can provide the only permanent solution for the problem’.89 For many in the south the PIRA represented new heroes in the age-old Irish struggle against the British forces. This attitude was reinforced throughout the 1970s as the British Army changed its role from one of protecting the Catholic community to one of taking the offensive against the PIRA. However, the attitude of the Dublin Government, despite its rhetoric early in the conflict, was not simply a matter of support for the terrorists but was complicated by conflicting interests and emotions. The crisis in the North beginning in 1969 had produced traumas in the south concerning the very nature of the Irish state. On the one hand, a southern Irish and Catholic government could not be seen to condone the activities of the British security forces in the North; on the other hand, Dublin did not want to open up once again the issue of the border and perhaps spark a civil war along the lines of the 1920s.90 A victory for the PIRA in the North would have undermined the stability and the political consensus upon which the south has been built.
These concerns have meant that the Dublin Government has not, during this modern conflict, been consistent in its aims towards the PIRA. For example, the Dublin Government objected most strongly to British actions in the North when internment without trial was introduced in 1971, yet internment without trial had been used widely in the south on numerous occasions. The Dublin Government also opposed the use of the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act in 1973, yet had introduced amendments to the southern Irish Offences Act against the state which were equally severe. Again, the southern Irish Government practically begged Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to make concessions to the hunger strikers in the Maze prison in 1981, but they themselves had made no concessions to hunger strikers in the Port Laoise jail in 1977.91
The Irish Government has found itself in a difficult and complex position. It does not want to see the PIRA challenging the position of the Irish Government but it also realizes that the cause of the PIRA has an enormous emotional appeal to the people of southern Ireland, particularly when the PIRA succeeds in depicting itself as the defender of Catholic rights in the North. Many members of successive Irish Governments have actively sympathized with the aims, if not the methods, of the PIRA and this too has made it difficult for the British Government to persuade the Dublin administration to be as cooperative as it would like over security on the border.
In 1969, field hospitals were set up on the southern side of the border to cope with the hundreds of people who fled across the border into the Republic to escape the violence in the North.92 At this stage the Dublin regime was not prepared to act in conjunction with the British Government against the IRA; a reluctance that lasted up until the imposition of Direct Rule in the North in 1972. The British Government was, at this stage, more willing to open up a dialogue in a bid to ensure cooperation over Northern Ireland. The removal of Stormont and the opening of discussions between Dublin and London meant that the Irish Government could justify acting against the PIRA while also claiming to have some influence on the affairs and future of the minority in the North.93 During 1972 the Irish Government under the Cosgrave-led coalition initiated strong measures against the PIRA in the south. During November 1972, the Irish security forces arrested the PIRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain, and the following February Rory O'Bradaigh, the President of Sinn Fein, was captured.94 A series of repressive actions was also taken in the south. These included greater restraints on state-controlled radio and television which was designed to counter the appeal of the PIRA. This attitude was reflected in the greater cooperation with the British Army over the issue of the border. By the end of 1975 there were two Irish infantry battalions operating south of the border and contact between the security forces had improved considerably.95 The main area where cross-border security was improved was in the communication and exchange of computerized information concerning suspects and the identification by the Gardai of suspects crossing into the North. Both forces operated in close radio contact. Such measures ensured that the border was under constant surveillance. The process was incremental throughout the 1970s but from 1980 Northern Irish police began to travel south to exchange information.96 The south, however, remained wary about cooperating too openly with the British Army.
The 1970s revealed many of the ambiguities of the southern Irish position. While paying lip service to the notion of unity, the Dublin administration has been all too aware of the problems that such a vision entailed. Indeed, throughout the decade efforts were made in the south to reform popular attitudes towards the PIRA. It sought to choreograph fundamental change by depicting the PIRA as a band of murderers, as criminals who have little in common with the litany of old Irish patriots and martyrs. Successive Irish Governments have also pointed to the reality of a future Catholic Ireland with an entrenched and bitter enclave of one million Protestants. Dublin could, in theory, have found itself playing the role of Westminster but without the economic resources or military strength to sustain the position.97 While people in the Republic would have liked British troops withdrawn, Dublin knew that it was in no position to assume total responsibility. Despite this recognition of prevailing realities by Dublin, the old allegiances to the cause of an Ireland freed from British connections still lurked and prevented Dublin from following a consistent path vis-à-vis British forces in Ireland.
Indeed, throughout the 1970s, the British military remained unhappy with the south despite increased cooperation. In particular, one issue that the British Army wished to see employed was that of so-called hot pursuit. This would have enabled Army patrols chasing suspects to cross the border and apprehend suspects and then return them to the North. The necessity of having to stop at the border was extremely frustrating. However, it was never politically feasible and, despite the calls of the military, was never officially implemented. Military strategy on the border was confined by the limitations of the Anglo-Irish relationship and in particular by the reluctance of the south to be seen to be acting openly against Republican groups which had a measure of support from its own population. Throughout the late 1980s both the British and Irish Governments sought to define and redefine their relationship with each other over Northern Ireland. The complexities of the political relationship appear to have escaped the military, who perceived Dublin's actions quite often as hindering them in their fight against the PIRA. Yet, as the new Thatcher administration soon realized in 1979–80, without the south there could be no political settlement.
An assessment of police primacy
The increased use of the RUC and the UDR resulted from the wish of the British Government to see a return to normality in the Province. The strategy had two strands. First, the Ulsterization of the conflict so that the Province itself assumed the responsibility for security. Secondly, the scaling down of the conflict, that is rather than allowing the PIRA members political prisoner status, they were treated as ordinary criminals who had broken the law.98 The Republican response of the H-Block protest marked a new shift in PIRA tactics, with the emphasis placed on pressurizing the British Government to make political concessions through fear of international embarrassment.99
By the early 1980s the RUC and the UDR appeared to be gaining the upper hand in the struggle with the PIRA. Fatalities inflicted upon the security forces had significantly dropped from ninety-seven in 1982 to only thirty-seven in 1985.100 Relations had also improved between the RUC and the British Army. In 1975 the Army had doubted the efficiency of the RUC and had felt that much of its hard-won success against the paramilitaries might have been dissipated by a force that was simply not properly trained. However, by the early 1980s the RUC had shown itself to be capable of taking the leading role, although its position had been the subject of much debate. In particular, PIRA successes, such as those at Warrenpoint, had thrown the notion of police primacy into doubt. In August 1979, after the Warrenpoint attack, the new British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, visited the Province to boost the damaged morale of the security forces and had expressed doubts over the ability of the RUC. She had had to be convinced that police primacy was really the only option if any political progress was to be made in the Province. On 30 August, the new British Government acceded to the wishes of the RUC and increased their numbers by 1,000.101 The position of the RUC also improved at the end of 1979 when GOC Lieutenant-General Creasey came to the end of his service in Northern Ireland. Creasey had disapproved totally of the policy of ‘police primacy’ and had been known to state that he was not going to be run by the RUC.102 He had resented the lowering of the Army's profile and had not willingly implemented the idea of a supporting role for the Army. With his secondment to Oman in 1979 and the appointment of Lieutenant-General Lawson as the GOC, the Army began to play a more supportive, if lesser, role in the urban conflict.103
The mid to late 1970s saw the implementation of a different and difficult strategy in Ireland. This was to move the conflict away from the militarized containment by the Army to a more normal mode of policing by the RUC. This did not really happen. What did occur was that the RUC became more militarized and managed to take control of the cities. The Republican paramilitaries moved the main basis of their operations to the border. This in turn sparked a massive effort by British special forces to eradicate the PIRA in the countryside. The normalization of the Province went hand in hand with the deployment of British special forces in greater numbers. The latter development was to prove extremely controversial and during the next decade involved increasing numbers of soldiers in complex and difficult operational circumstances. Indeed, one of the main ramifications of the use of special forces was to increase the Catholic suspicion of the Army and raise allegations during the 1980s of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. Such developments did little to provide the context for a settlement that might reconcile the communities in the North, despite the fact that during the next few years the British Government increasingly attempted to find a political solution to the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland that would include the Irish Government in Dublin and allow a reduction in the British military input. This became the task of the Thatcher Government in Ireland.
1 C.H. Enloe, ‘The Police and Military in Ulster: Peace-keeping or Peace Subverting’, Journal of Peace Research 15.3 (1978).
2 Charles Douglas Home, The Times (19 December 1973).
3 Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London: Macmillan, Second Edition 1986), p. 160.
4 Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Dewar, The British Army in Northern Ireland (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1985), p. 117.
5 Simon Hoggart, The Sunday Observer (12 August 1984).
6 Dewar, op. cit, p. 117.
7 British Army, PQS2 1981/82. Tutor Background Paper, Northern Ireland.
8 Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984 (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 184. See also Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), pp. 17–18.
9 Ibid., p. 185.
10 Robert Taber, The War of the Flea (St Albans: Paladin, 1971), p. 37.
11 Nicholas Wapshott and George Brock, Thatcher (London: Futura, 1983), pp. 227–9.
12 The Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 160.
13 David Barzilay, The British Army in Ulster, vol. 1 (Belfast: Century Books, 1973), p. 160. See also House of Commons Debate (hereafter HC), vol. 797, cols 401–2, 4 March 1970.
14 Hamill, op. cit., p. 273.
15 The Sunday Times Insight Team, op. cit., Chapter 2.
16 Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (Glasgow: Fontana, 1980), p. 566.
17 Barzilay, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 154.
18 Padraig O'Malley, The Uncivil War, Ireland Today (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1983), p. 217.
19 Statistics supplied by Army Headquarters Lisburn, 30 July 1985.
20 Hamill, op. cit., p. 193.
21 Ibid., p. 226.
22 Hugh Hanning, Ulster, Brasseys Annual (June 1971), p. 748.
23 Dewar, op. cit., pp. 177–207.
24 Coogan, op. cit, p. 480.
25 See J. Bowyer Bell, IRA Tactics and Targets (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1990), pp. 71–3.
26 Coogan, op. cit., p. 581.
27 Statistics supplied by Army Headquarters Lisburn, 30 July 1985.
28 Quoted in Coogan, op. cit., p. 581.
29 Ibid., p. 581.
30 Dewar, op. cit., p. 158.
31 An Phoblact (Republican News), 5 November 1981.
32 Quoted in O'Malley, op. cit., p. 276.
33 O'Malley, op. cit., pp. 264–6.
34 See S. Elliot and Richard A. Wilford, ‘The 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly Election’, Studies in Public Policy 119 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, Centre for the Public Policy 1983).
35 Hamill, op. cit., p. 271.
36 J. Bloch and P. Fitzgerald, British Intelligence and Covert Action (Dingle: Brandon Books, 1983), p. 213.
37 The Scottish Sunday Mail (8 October 1972).
38 Bloch and Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 215.
39 Roger Faligot, The Kitson Experiment (London: Zed Press, 1983), p. 37.
40 Bloch and Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 216.
41 Paul Wilkinson, Political Terrorism (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 37.
42 Shoot to Kill?, International Lawyers Inquiry Into the Use of Lethal Weapons by the Security Forces in Northern Ireland (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1985).
43 Faligot, op. cit., p. 37.
44 British Army Land Operations. Vol. 3 Counter Revolutionary Operations (Ministry of Defence), 29 August 1969, Preface, paras 1–2 and 122, quoted in Liz Curtis, Ireland the Propaganda War (London: Pluto Press, 1984), p. 119.
45 Curtis, op. cit., p. 119.
46 Time Out, 14–20 October 1977.
47 E. Moxon-Brown, ‘The Water and the Fish: Public Opinion and the Provisional IRA’ in Paul Wilkinson (ed.), British Perspectives on Terrorism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp. 41–73.
48 Major Nick Kench, Publicity Officer, interview at Army Headquarters Lisburn, 30 July 1985.
49 Hamill, op. cit., p. 189.
50 Barzilay, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 197.
51 The Daily Mail (7 May 1977).
52 Curtis, op. cit., p. 119.
53 Ibid., p. 97.
54 Patsy McArdle, The Secret War (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1984), pp. 61–5.
55 Barzilay, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 141.
56 Hamill, op. cit., p. 237.
57 Curtis, op. cit., p. 76.
58 Hamill, op.cit., pp. 230, 258. See also J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1969–1992 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993), p. 575.
59 Jim Cusack, The Irish Times (12 December 1984).
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ed Maloney, The Irish Times (21 January 1985).
64 Taber, op. cit., p. 110.
65 Barzilay, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 137.
66 Coogan, op. cit., p. 402.
67 Robert Moss, Urban Guerillas (London: Temple Smith, 1972), p. 93.
68 The Times, 6 May 1981.
69 McArdle, op. cit., p. 6.
70 Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State, op. cit., p. 173.
71 Barzilay, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 137.
72 Ibid., p. 138.
73 McArdle, op. cit., pp. 2–9.
74 Ibid., p. 53.
75 Hamill, op. cit., pp. 184–5.
76 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 140, vol. 2, p. 244.
77 Barry Smith, ‘Bandit Country; Controlling the Borders in Northern Ireland’, War in Peace, vol. 8, issue 88 (1984), pp. 1754–9.
78 Ibid., vol. 1,p. 143.
79 Anthony Burton, Urban Terrorism: Theory, Practice and Response (London: Leo Cooper, 1975), pp. 166–7.
80 Hamill, op. cit., p. 132.
81 Ibid., p. 133.
82 Ibid., p. 186.
83 Ibid., p. 189.
84 Coogan, op. cit., p. 550.
85 Hamill, op. cit., p. 187.
86 Ibid., p. 100.
87 Ibid., pp. 205–6.
88 J. Bowyer Bell, A Time of Terror: How Democratic Societies Respond to Revolutionary Violence (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 230–1.
89 The Irish Times (16 June 1977).
90 O'Malley, op. cit., Chapter 2.
91 Ibid., Chapter 2.
92 Dâil Éireann, vol. 241, col. 1402, 22 October 1969.
93 Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 219.
94 Ibid., p. 219.
95 Ed Maloney, The Irish Times (21 January 1985).
96 McArdle, op. cit., p. 38.
97 Ulster Survey 1, The Economist (2 June 1984), pp. 38–54.
98 Coogan, op. cit., p. 519.
99 R. Tomlinson, W. Robertson and T. Prentice, ‘Orchestra of Death’, The Sunday Standard (10 May 1981).
100 Statistics supplied by Army Headquarters Lisburn, 30 July 1985.
101 See Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles, op. cit., p. 575.
102 Quoted in Hamill, op. cit., p. 260.
103 Dewar, op. cit., pp. 147–63.