CHAPTER EIGHT
Any assessment of the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland is bound to provoke controversy. It has been and remains a highly emotional issue, not least because many have lost their lives, their families or their friends in the violence and, unlike other conflicts, it is not yet over. This work has examined the broad role of the British Army in Northern Ireland. In particular it puts forward the view that the Army has been internal to both the origins and the evolution of the modern conflict. Specifically, it tells a story of how troops have been used in a complicated and volatile conflict during a period in which British policy has not always been clear. It points to the military-political difficulties of policing a ‘local’ conflict with soldiers. More importantly, it argues that the British Army has had to operate in difficult circumstances, particularly since the mid-1970s when a political determination developed in Westminster to downgrade the British involvement in Ireland. The British Army was then caught between a public commitment by the British Government to the Protestant aim of remaining in the United Kingdom and the reality of a virulent Republican form of nationalism which had inexorably worn Westminster down. The role of the Army in the conflict in Ireland therefore can only be understood in the context of what has been essentially a question of managing a partial retreat from Ireland.
The campaign of the British Army in Northern Ireland in the contemporary period has gone through several different phases. This work identifies the first phase, during the period 1969–70, when the primary task of the military was to separate the warring Catholic and Protestant communities. This aspect of the modern conflict is often dismissed, with many commentators downplaying the sectarian nature of the troubles. This book argues that the ethnic nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland is critical and was most obviously displayed in the initial phase.1 The book explains that, in this first phase, British troops acted as a quasi police force, engaged in the prevention and control of riots and the policing of ‘peace lines’ between the Protestant and Catholic communities.2 British troops were actively involved in the protection of the minority Catholic community. However, the conflict changed quite dramatically with the emergence of a splinter group of the IRA under the new fashioning of the Provisionals in 1970. Their subsequent attacks upon the security forces transformed the function of the British Army; it was recast into a role as the opponent of the type of nationalism associated with Catholic Ireland. The conflict then assumed new dimensions – British military-political might against rebellious Catholic Irish insurrection. This, it might be argued, was a clear reversion to pre-partition politics. But there was a significant and new dimension to the conflict in 1969–70. This was that the British Government, after fifty years of indifference to the views of the minority in the Province, was prepared to reform the institutions and policing structures of the Province. This, the book argues, created a uniquely awkward situation for the British Government. Even as troops moved to subdue the Provisionals, alienating the Catholics, the British Government was actively engaged in trying to improve the position of the minority community, not least through its inclusion in government.3 However, as Chapter Two argues, the former task prevented the successful completion of the latter. The dual nature of the British agenda in Ireland after 1970, to subdue the Provisionals but also to reform government to include the Catholics, added to the original ethnic tension in the Province.
In the early 1970s, it was the activity of the British military which attracted most attention and controversy. As Chapter Three explains, the British Army responded to the challenge of the PIRA by abandoning its neutral role and engaging in a formidable counter-insurgency campaign against an urban paramilitary opponent. Yet another layer was thus added to the nature of the conflict – not only was it about managing ethnic conflict, it was also about how best to deal with the armed insurgents who denied the very legitimacy of the state. The British Government chose to respond through military toughness, basing its philosophy on the military experiences in the colonies. Many tactics originally devised for the far-flung reaches of the British Empire, such as Malaysia and Aden, were taken and used in Ireland. Not surprisingly, this turned the Catholic community against the British Army. The introduction of internment without trial in August 1971, for example, saw the complete estrangement of the Catholic community from the security forces.4 Alongside the military toughness, a full range of ‘emergency legislation’ was enacted within the Province to make the task of the Army easier. By the mid-1970s, all of this culminated in some British military success. The Army managed to drive the provisional IRA from the cities of Northern Ireland. Yet, the military did not succeed in fully eradicating the threat from the paramilitaries. More seriously, as Chapter Three demonstrates, the actions of the military made the prospect of any peaceful acceptance of change to the political system in the Province doubtful. Nevertheless, the British Government did try to promote reform in Northern Ireland, not least through the abolition of the Northern Irish Government and the imposition of Direct Rule in 1972. This was an attempt to govern the Province in a more equitable fashion; but Catholic acceptance of such reforms remained tempered by the actions and methods of the security forces.
There is little doubt that the British military made mistakes in this early period. Internment, for example, has been widely commented upon as a disaster, while the behaviour of troops during the internment operation of 1971 was regarded even by military sources as insensitive.5 Yet, while accepting criticism of the military, this work points out that the Army in the early years was in an unenviable position. In the space of a few short years at the beginning of the decade, there were three changes of government in Westminster and Irish policy was riven at this stage with confusing and contradictory direction. This meant that British troops, committed as a temporary expedient in 1969, became immersed in a long-term campaign, but with no apparent political aim apart from the defeat of the PIRA.
The lack of overall coherence in British policy meant that the military, at some stages, played the central role in the conflict. Indeed in certain phases it can be argued that the military took advantage of the lack of political coherence to pursue its own line. In 1974, for example, when the Sunningdale Agreement was implemented to promote powersharing in the Province, it was the British military which helped undermine the agreement. The refusal of military leaders to break the strike organized by the Protestants to wreck Sunningdale, raised serious questions about the power of the military in periods of crisis. For example, should the military have been allowed to side with the Protestants, dictating a policy which effectively scuppered the inclusion of Catholics in the political machinery of Northern Ireland? Should or could the military have been overruled? These were and remain serious questions, but on the whole any clash between the civil and military branches in Ireland was avoided because, as Chapter Three demonstrates, the British Government itself was not completely committed to the Sunningdale process. Nevertheless, this instance remains one in which historians are entitled to ask, what would happen to the Sunningdale Agreement had the Army behaved differently? Not least, it raised the issue of whether the Army was effectively siding with the Protestant community against the imposition of powersharing. It was not a new phenomenon in Ireland. The question of the relationship between the British military and the Protestants had suffered criticism throughout the period of military engagement in Ireland, leading at some points to allegations of collusion to keep Unionists within the United Kingdom. This work argues, in Chapter Five, that this was only ever true of certain parts of the military in the contemporary period.
The failure of the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, if not the military role in it, did however cause a reappraisal in the British side to try to alter radically the security equation in the Province, and if possible reduce the presence of the British troops, in the hope that there would be a concomitant decline in the British involvement in the policing issues of the Province. To this end the strategies of ‘policy primacy’ or so-called ‘normalization’ were devised. This meant that, as Chapter Four explains, the Army relinquished its leading role to the RUC and concentrated, in theory at least, on supporting the indigenous forces. From 1977 onwards, the profile of the Army was reduced in the cities, with the RUC adopting a greater role in policing in the cities. Police primacy did not, however, apply to rural areas. Indeed, in the border areas the Army was increased in strength and adopted ruthless counter-insurgency tactics in a bid to defeat finally the PIRA. Far from lowering the profile of the Army, the use of the SAS in the rural campaign provoked a great deal of controversy.6 The military shift to the border meant a greater attention had to be paid to the views of the southern Irish Government, whose input into the Northern Irish process had since 1969 been marginalized by Westminster.
Despite this, the Government in Dublin had, throughout the period, expressed opinions on the conduct of the British Army in the North. What had particularly soured relations between Dublin and Westminster was the commitment of the southern Government to work towards a unified Republican Ireland. Indeed, even in the late 1970s, with the escalating conflict on the border, the British Government remained adamant that a southern Irish dimension could not be opened up because of this.7 Yet, on the border, because it provided an escape route for paramilitaries, the southern Irish Government was de facto involved in the policing of the Province. There was some cooperation between the Irish police and the RUC, but as Chapter Four illustrates, real agreement on security issues remained problematic for both Governments, and necessarily hinged around the improvement of political relations between Dublin and Westminster. The issue of how far Dublin could be directly involved in the reform of Northern Ireland became one of the central questions of the conflict after 1980.
At the turn of the decade, the British Government remained committed to a strategy of ‘police primacy’ for the Province, despite what appeared to be successes of the PIRA against the RUC in the late 1970s. The ability of the PIRA, and indeed the other Republican paramilitary organization, the INLA, to score notable successes against the British establishment did cause a wobble, but not a lasting impression on British commitment to the policy. Mrs Thatcher was initially doubtful of the wisdom of allowing the RUC to police the Province, especially after the deaths, in separate incidents, of Lord Mountbatten and thirteen soldiers at Warrenpoint in 1979, but she was persuaded to continue the policy.8 One issue that appeared particularly vexing was the seeming inability of the British Army and the RUC to share intelligence information and act in a coordinated manner. Attempts to resolve this issue were only ever partly successful, and professional rivalries continued to exist between the forces working in Ireland. This highlights the problem of trying to operate two security forces in a small area.
As Chapters Four and Five point out, the British Government came under increasing pressure at the beginning of the 1980s to restructure its approach to the Province. This was fuelled in part by the continued ability of the PIRA to operate and attract the sympathy of a proportion of the Northern Irish population. Support for the PIRA had grown during the period of police primacy. Partly this was because, alongside the promotion of the RUC, the British Government had also tried to ‘depoliticize’ the situation in Northern Ireland through a strategy of ‘criminalization’. This meant that prisoners convicted of terrorist offences were treated as ordinary ‘criminals’, without the special privileges and status which had been accorded to them as ‘political prisoners’. The reaction of the Republican prisoners and some parts of the Catholic community to this initiative led to one of the critical turning points of the modern conflict. Prisoners in the H-Block staged a series of protests, including a hunger strike. The success of the hunger strikers in attracting international publicity embarrassed the British Government. In the early 1980s pressure from both Europe and North America mounted in criticism of the handling of the ‘hunger strike’ by the Thatcher administration. One of the lessons of the modern conflict for the British Government was that Northern Ireland was not an area in which controversial strategies could be carried out, as it had in the colonies, without attracting attention. As Chapter Five argues, British leaders were not immune to international pressure. After the hunger strikes, the Thatcher Government did begin to discuss the policing of the Province with the Fitzgerald Government in the south, and the manner in which Dublin might be included in any reform process. All of this indicated a willingness on the British side to redefine the Irish situation. What the Thatcher Government was interested in was a way to decrease tensions, withdraw some, if not all, British troops and reinforce the notion of the conflict as a local one, but also bringing a political settlement closer. As Chapter Five suggests, part of this programme had to include a southern dimension. The Hillsborough Agreement of 1985 was therefore a defining moment for both British and Irish politicians. It not only allowed the southern Irish an institutional role in the affairs of Northern Ireland, but it also redefined the British link to the Province in conditionalterms. Not surprisingly, this fuelled Unionist fears of a sell-out and the period from 1985–90 was characterized by a growth in sectarian violence and the increased activities of Protestant paramilitary groups9 which were determined to force Westminster to allow them to stay in the United Kingdom. Despite hopes that after Hillsborough, the conflict in Northern Ireland could be redefined and contained at low levels, the rise in sectarian violence meant that British soldiers once again increased in numbers on the streets of the Province to help a beleaguered RUC. Chapter Six examines the redeployment of additional military resources into Northern Ireland. British troops were once more engaged in containing the PIRA, but were also policing sectarian attacks between the two communities. In the aftermath of the Hillsborough Agreement it appeared that the role of the Army in the Province was so institutionalized that withdrawal was impossible, if further political progress was to be made. By 1990, it appeared as if a stalemate had been reached in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Yet, this impasse sparked enormous efforts after 1990 to resolve the affairs of Ireland. Much of this determination built on the Hillsborough accord and involved a triangular dialogue between Westminster, Dublin and the ‘power brokers’ in Northern Ireland, namely Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists. The decade between 1985 and 1995 marked the move towards the so-called ‘peace process’ and in particular was characterized by the PIRA’s declaration on 31 August 1994 that it had ordered a complete cessation of hostilities. The shift of Sinn Fein into legitimate politics form part of the core of Chapter Six. Sinn Fein leaders became integrally involved in the negotiation of any future settlement. The sight of former paramilitary prisoners, namely Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as central to the peace process was, and is, for many people an odd and uncomfortable one, yet given the development of the conflict, not unexpected. As the book has demonstrated, the British Government has a long track record of negotiating with Irish paramilitaries. Pragmatically, Westminster has recognized that without neutralizing the support for the paramilitary movement, including its leaders, a lasting settlement is impossible. What the peace process of the 1990s does raise in one of those neat but ironical twists of Irish history is the prospect that the minority of Ireland will now take its place within the majority of Ireland but create a new minority – the Protestants. Yet, even as the exact parameters of the peace process remain unclear, the Army continues to underpin the process, ready for redeployment if necessary.
The early 1990s were a time of enormous change in world politics. The Cold War ended in 1989 with the collapse of Communism, the enlargement of the European Union seems certain to go ahead and the conflict in Northern Ireland remains one from which many lessons can be derived. In particular, the use of the British Army in Northern Ireland has highlighted the problems of a democratic state using its military forces to counter internal political violence.10 These have been identified throughout the book. One problem common to such a case is that the commitment of troops into a situation of communal violence can actually make the conflict worse. This is what happened in Northern Ireland. In 1969, both the Protestant and Catholic communities expected the British Army to act on their behalf. When it became apparent that these hopes would not be fulfilled, communal violence dramatically increased, and the Catholics turned against the Army, thus broadening the dimensions of conflict.11
A second problem, which has generally been identified in situations of internal security duties is that using troops for such duties in a democratic state fundamentally conflicts with the traditional functions of a military.12 For example, soldiers are trained to identify and destroy an enemy. However, in situations of internal policing it is often difficult to know who the enemy is. In 1970 in Northern Ireland the military adopted the attitude that the Catholic community was the enemy. Hence, the use of tactics such as internment. This meant that in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy was set up – the Army targeted the Catholics, who then closed ranks against the Army.
Partly because of these reasons, the British Army found considerable difficulty in adapting to its initial role in Ireland. It was originally committed to what were essentially policing duties but without the training of a constabulary. Policemen and women are trained in their primary function, to arrest criminals, soldiers are not. ‘Errors of judgement’ by the military when they overreacted to provocations led in turn to violent reactions by local communities. Indeed, one of the problems for the Army in Ireland was that its very presence raised uncomfortable memories of the historic role of the British in ‘policing’ Ireland. Hostility became a two-way street; Catholics came to resent the military, but equally the soldiers grew to resent not only the hostility of the Catholic community but also the abuse they often encountered while on duty. This was calculated to increase tension.
Yet, the story of British troops in Ireland is not simply of ‘an Army’ restrained and trying to perform a police function. Parts of the British Army have obviously performed a quite different role from that of ‘policing’. Most notably, the use of special forces in Ireland, in particular the SAS, goes far beyond the remit of ‘normal policing’. The actions of the SAS in its battle against the PIRA in rural areas was reminiscent of counter-insurgency campaigns in the colonies. Indeed, this explains why, in part, the role of the British Army has provoked so much controversy. In the campaign on the Irish border, soldiers have behaved like soldiers. Action has been taken and questions asked later. None of this should be surprising, but given the constantly maintained view of the British Government that Northern Ireland is not a ‘war’, the behaviour of the Army arouses comment. Some actions of the Army have been at variance with the publicly held view, maintained since 1973, that this is a controllable civil conflict. The confusion over whether Northern Ireland is ‘policed’ or ‘soldiered’ creates for the public concern over whether or not a ‘shoot to kill’ policy was, or is, operated in the Province. It has also meant for ordinary soldiers confusion over whether their actions are judged by military or civil standards. It is also noted, during this discussion, that with the enlargement of the European Union, Britain cannot now operate in isolation from European judgements; incidents such as the SAS shootings of paramilitary suspects in Gibraltar are shown to have had broader political ramifications. The conflict in Ireland has become a European issue. Chapters Six and Seven argue that some clarification of the role of the military standards by which it can be judged would be helpful.
The paradox of how to categorize the conflict has remained at the heart of the Irish security situation. It is not a war, but the British have deployed considerable amounts of troops, money and thought in trying to defeat the PIRA.13 The whole range of emergency legislation has been emplaced to deal with the paramilitaries, not least the 1973 Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act which provided the Army with enormous powers. It gave them open-ended permission to enter any premises at any time and to question anybody at any time for up to four hours.14 Such measures lay uneasily with the notion of a limited conflict, but also with the view that the Province was part and parcel of the United Kingdom. Indeed, the enforcement of emergency legislation meant that it was difficult to achieve a political solution that would include the community – the Catholics – most affected by it. This was the security dilemma of Ireland – how to defeat the PIRA yet reconcile the Catholics and soothe Protestant fears of a ‘sell-out’. The Army has had the task of underwriting all three aspects of the conflict.
1 On this issue of ethnic conflict in Ireland, see Arthur Aughey, Under Siege: Ulster Unionism and the Anglo-Irish Agreement(London: Hurst and Co., 1989), pp. 1–12. See also D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland3rd Edition (London: Routledge, 1995), and Steve Bruce, The Edge of the Union(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
2 See, for example, Tactics for Street Riots/Battles, ‘Report on the Study Period by the GOC Northern Ireland HQNI, 22 January 1970, p. 23, held by the tactical Doctrine Retrieval Cell, HQT Avon.
3 Brigid Hadfield, The Constitution of Northern Ireland(Belfast: SLS, 1989).
4 See R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972(London: Penguin, 1988), pp. 590–1.
5 See Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984(London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 60–1.
6 See Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA(London: Faber & Faber, 1992).
7 See Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years(London: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 397–8.
8 J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967–1992(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992), p. 574.
9 See Bruce, op. cit., pp. 238–9.
10 Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State(London: Macmillan, Second Edition 1986), p. 156.
11 See the Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 141.
12 Wilkinson, op. cit., pp. 156–9.
13 Estimating the full costs to the British Government of its garrison in Ireland is difficult and complex. One estimate is from Costs of War and Dividends of Peace,published by West Belfast Economic Forum. It produced a 25-year (1969–94) total cost figure of £18,205 billion. Reproduced in http://wwwvms.utexas.edn/JDAWA/irehist.html.
14 Charles Townshend, ‘The Supreme Law: Public Safety and State Security in Northern Ireland’ in Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel (eds), Northern Ireland and the Politics of Reconciliation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 96–7. See also Gerard Hogan and Clive Walker, Political Violence and the Law in Northern Ireland(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).