Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in The Early Stages of The British Army's Deployment To Northern Ireland

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Getting it Wrong: The Crucial

Mistakes Made in the Early
Stages of the British Army's
Deployment to Northern Ireland
(August 1969 to March 1972)
a
Rod Thornton
a
UK Joint Services Command and Staff College and
King's College London ,
Published online: 22 Mar 2007.
To cite this article: Rod Thornton (2007) Getting it Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes
Made in the Early Stages of the British Army's Deployment to Northern Ireland
(August 1969 to March 1972), Journal of Strategic Studies, 30:1, 73-107, DOI:
10.1080/01402390701210848
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The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 30, No. 1, 73 – 107, February 2007
ARTICLES
Getting it Wrong: The Crucial

Mistakes Made in the Early Stages
of the British Army’s Deployment
to Northern Ireland (August 1969

to March 1972)
ROD THORNTON
UK Joint Services Command and Staff College and King’s College London
ABSTRACT This article considers the way in which a military force committed to
a ‘stabilization’ operation can, through its own mistakes, actually make that
mission much more difficult than it need be. The British Army was committed to
a peace support task in Northern Ireland in 1969 but the errors made by those
within its ranks went a long way in moving that task away from one of peace
support to one of countering a fully fledged insurgency. Through an examination
of the clumsiness displayed by the British Army in Northern Ireland in its initial
period of deployment (August 1969 – March 1972) several parallels can be
drawn with events recently in Iraq. What is more, fundamental lessons can be
learnt from the British experience. These lessons still have relevance today as the
West continues to commit forces to interventionary operations; forces which are
making the same mistakes the British Army did nearly 40 years ago.
KEY WORDS: counter-insurgency, Northern Ireland, terrorism
There have been several post-Cold War interventions by Western forces

in the shape of peacekeeping or peace support operations. There have
also been combat operations either as part of the ‘war on terror’ or in
pursuance of efforts to remove dictators. In all such operations it has
been vital that the initial activities and behaviour – vis-à-vis the local
population – of the troops committed to the intervention do not
compromise long-term mission goals. Such troops cannot afford to
ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/07/010073-35 Ó 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01402390701210848
74 Rod Thornton
‘learn’ by their mistakes; once mistakes are made then, as often as not,
they can be impossible to rectify. One may look at the situation in
relation to the city of Fallujah in Iraq in both 2003 and 2004 as
examples of initial tactical mistakes by United States forces leading to
later problems at the strategic level. Indeed, there are those who
perceive, given the less than adroit way in which – especially – the first
assault of 2004 was handled, that it actually ‘triggered the bloody
insurgency still sweeping Iraq’.1 Such mistakes were mirrored by the
British Army in its ill-considered actions after deployment onto the
streets of Northern Ireland in 1969. These mistakes not only denied
the fulfillment of strategic objectives but also went a long way in
helping to create a fully fledged insurgency campaign.

When British troops were called out to deal with the civil unrest in
Northern Ireland’s two biggest cities, Belfast and Londonderry,2 on
Thursday 14 August 1969, it was supposed to be a distinctly short-term
measure: ‘The troops’, as one government spokesman put it, ‘would be
back in barracks by the weekend.’3 Over 37 years later they are still not
‘back in barracks’. Although much of what came to pass in Northern
Ireland was not the fault of the Army per se, a fair degree of blame for
the eventual outcome can be laid squarely at the door of the Army’s
own failings apparent in the first two-and-a-half years of its
deployment. This article examines the nature of these failings and
their particular consequences.
In looking at this particular period of the British Army’s involve-
ment in Northern Ireland some background is needed as to why troops
came to be deployed in the first place. To begin with, mention must be
made of the fact that in 1921 Ireland had been partitioned by the
United Kingdom (UK) government in London. After a long and bitter
struggle the ‘South’ had achieved its independence in that year as
the (predominantly Catholic) Irish Republic. On the other hand, the
‘North’ (i.e. the six counties with a Protestant majority) became
Northern Ireland (or Ulster, or the ‘Province’) and remained part of
the UK. Northern Ireland maintained a devolved government of its
1
Kim Sengupta, ‘Rumsfeld ‘‘Ignored Fallujah Warnings’’’, The Times, 26 Oct.
2004, 8.
2
The original name of the city is Derry. In the seventeenth century, however, Protestant
immigrants from Scotland changed the name to Londonderry to express their allegiance
to the Crown. Londonderry remains the official name but Catholics always refer to the
city as Derry. British soldiers, to most of whom the distinction means virtually nothing,
also normally do the same, but only for the reason that it has two less syllables than the
alternative! The name Londonderry will be used here because this appears on official
maps and atlases.
3
The Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster (London: Andre Deutsch 1972), 125.
Mistakes in British Army Deployment to Ulster 1969–72 75
own and there was little interference in its affairs from London.4
This Protestant-dominated government (housed at Stormont, near
Belfast) virtually from the start practised quite iniquitous policies
against the Catholic minority.5 Despite such policies, however, Ulster’s
Catholics remained fairly quiescent.6
This was to change, however, as, beginning in the late 1960s, a protest
movement emerged which was inspired by the work of civil rights’
activists in the United States. Catholics began to take to the streets.
Protestant mobs challenged such marches in several areas and violent
clashes ensued. By 1969 the protests were widespread and inter-
communal rioting in Belfast and Londonderry had reached such a pitch
that control was now beyond the capacity of the police (the 3,000-strong
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and its 10,000 reservists – the B-
Specials).7 Thus in August 1969, the Army, under Military Aid to the Civil
Authority provisions, was ordered onto the streets by the government in
London. The troops were drawn from the normally established garrison
of some 2,500 based in the Province. The Army proved successful in
interposing itself between the two factions as a peacekeeper but not
before many factories and several hundred homes, mostly Catholic, had
been torched and thousands of people had been forced to abandon
their homes and flee to their respective sectarian heartlands.8
4
The term ‘United Kingdom’ covers all of Britain including Northern Ireland. The term
‘Great Britain’ excludes Northern Ireland as it only covers England, Scotland and
Wales. The population of Northern Ireland in 1969 was about 1½ million in an area of
some 5,000 sq. miles.
5
One leading IRA figure refers to ‘misrule [by a] single-party sectarian dictatorship’.
Sean MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark 1975), 145.
6
The gerrymandering of political boundaries was a favoured ploy. For instance, 14,000
Catholic voters in Londonderry could only return 8 councillors to the city council while
8,000 Protestant voters could return 12. Additionally, Catholics were allocated inferior
public housing compared to Protestants. Discrimination at places of work was also
evident. For instance, in Belfast the shipyard that built the Titanic, Harland and Wolff,
had 10,000 Protestant workers and only 400 Catholic. Peter Taylor, Brits: The War
Against the IRA (London: Bloomsbury 2001), 17. In the Province as a whole,
Protestants outnumbered Catholics roughly 1.5:1.
7
The RUC was the only UK police force to be routinely armed. In addition to their
normal policing duties, the force also had another, quasi-military, role in terms of
providing security. Uniquely in terms of policing in the UK, the RUC had a reserve
force. Whereas any police force on the mainland could draw, in times of overstretch,
from neighbouring forces, the RUC did not have this facility and had to have reservists
to call upon – especially for riot situations. A.M. Gallagher, ‘Policing Northern Ireland:
Attitudinal Evidence’ in Alan O’Day (ed.), Terrorism’s Laboratory: The Case of
Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Dartmouth 1995).
8
The government wanted troops to move in earlier but senior officers insisted on more
time spent on reconnaissance. The delay meant several hundred more burnt houses and
76 Rod Thornton
Despite the history between the Catholic population of Ireland and

British forces, local Catholic communities actually greeted the Army
effusively; ‘much like the troops who arrived to liberate Paris in 1944’.9
They were seen as neutral and divorced from the Stormont government
and its perceived lackey, the Protestant-dominated police force. The
demoralized RUC now took a back seat and left policing in Catholic
areas of Belfast and Londonderry entirely to the military. Thus the
senior Army commander, the General Officer Commanding (GOC)
Northern Ireland, Lt.-General Sir Ian Freeland, was being told by
political masters in London that, in addition to his military duties, he
was also to ‘command and task’ the police.10
No matter how good they were at imposing calm, obvious difficulties

were apparent in calling troops out to do policing tasks. The issue of
who controlled them was one particular problem. The government in
London (Westminster) did not want the Northern Ireland government
at Stormont to be giving orders to senior officers: Stormont was more
likely to deploy the troops to ‘bash Catholics’ rather than to keep the
peace. But consultations over the use of the Army still had to be held
with ministers from Stormont because London could not ignore what
was, after all, a democratically elected government and one loyal to the
Crown. (Hence the term ‘Loyalist’ which is commonly used to describe
Northern Ireland’s Protestant community. The Catholic community is
commonly referred to as ‘nationalist’.) It must be borne in mind here
also that if London had, at this stage, removed the government in
Stormont (i.e. imposed ‘Direct Rule’) then an outright rebellion by the
Protestants might have occurred. This would have been a degree of
magnitude greater than any campaign of civil rights’ marches set in
train by Catholics. London’s control of its troops thus had to be
conducted via Stormont.11
Patently, there were some difficult command and control issues in
such a set up. But the situation was even more complicated. Freeland
was responsible to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) in London.
However, given the fact that he was also in control of the police force
he then became additionally responsible to the Home Office in London.
several deaths. In Aug. and Sept. 1969 some 3,500 homes had to be vacated, 85 per
cent of which belonged to Catholic families. John Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland
(Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1976), 43.
9
Martin Dillon, The Dirty War (London: Arrow 1991), 26.
10
This was later altered, in order to dilute police ire, so that Freeland ‘coordinated’
Army and police actions. Sunday Times, Ulster, 169. See also Alun Chalfont, ‘The
Army and the IRA’, Survival 13/6 (June 1971), 208–11.
11
See James Callaghan, A House Divided: The Dilemma of Northern Ireland (London:
Collins 1973).
Thus the GOC was responsible to three masters: a prime minister at

Stormont, and ministers at the MOD and Home Office. That precious
commodity in any form of military operation – unity of command –
was never really apparent.12
It is important to note here that it was the Army that was being told by
politicians to ‘sort this bloody mess out’.13 It was not, however, despite
the number of available political ‘overseers’, given any guidance as to
how this should be done. There were actually too many political players
involved for agreement to be reached on what was the best way forward.
(For instance, the Minister of Defence, Denis Healey, and the Home
Secretary, James Callaghan, a future prime minister, did not see eye-to-
eye over the right approach to take in Northern Ireland).14 The general
political consensus therefore was that the line of least resistance was the
one of ‘just leaving it to the Army’. Much of this mentality, of course,
was born of the fact that, since the Army was so used to dealing with
trouble spots from previous colonial commitments, they should ‘know
best’. But the Army was not used to operating in the UK without police
support and without a ‘goal’ or ‘carrot’ or even a ‘plan’ established by
the civil authorities. For example, in the insurgency in Malaya in the
1950s, British forces operated in conjunction with a functioning police
force and worked to a plan that held out the promise of independence
and future prosperity for the people of Malaya. In Northern Ireland
there was no police force from whom intelligence could be obtained and
to whom suspects could be handed over. Moreover, nothing was being
held out – in either political or economic terms – to the put-upon
Catholic community as inducement for good behaviour that troops
could use in the conduct of their colonial-style ‘hearts-and-minds’
campaign. The military were operating therefore without police back-
up and in a policy vacuum. It was for them alone to ‘sort out’.
All this, though, was not so much of an issue in the early days of
Army-imposed calm. However, as the situation deteriorated the lack of
both police intelligence and any form of political or economic ‘carrot’
did make the troops’ mission far more difficult. Given such factors, the
general omens were not good for military personnel in terms of a
successful conclusion of their peace support mission. This being said,
the Army did not help itself. Crucially, the mistakes made by officers
within the Army created a situation that was markedly worse than it
ever need have been.
12
David Charters, ‘From Palestine to Northern Ireland’, in David Charters and Maurice
Tugwell, Armies in Low-Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Analysis (London:
Brassey’s 1989), 200.
13
Taylor, Brits, 48.
14
Sunday Times, Ulster, 169.
78 Rod Thornton
Initially, British soldiers were used purely in peace support and

pogrom-preventing roles in the two big cities. They kept the Catholic
and Protestant bigots apart while talks took place and while the
police service was being reformed – including the disbandment of
the B-Specials; a unit reviled by Catholics and adored by Loyalists.15 At
this stage it needs be said that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – the
body that Catholic communities in the Province had, for many years,
looked to as their guardians where the actions of predatory Protestant
mobs were concerned – ‘was not then deemed to be a problem’.16 The
IRA, indeed, could be seen as almost an ‘ally’ of the Army at this time
since the desire of both was to halt Protestant incursions into Catholic
estates.17
Since the Army was the lead – indeed only – government agency, it
was Army officers who took it upon themselves to shape the arena.
Troops had begun their hearts-and-minds mission, which included
opening Army-run community centres, taking children on trips to the
countryside, running discotheques, delivering ‘meals-on-wheels’ to
pensioners, etc.18 Battalion officers were also very quick to act on
their own initiative in terms of organizing local peace accords and
talking to community leaders – in Catholic areas this would be in the
shape of senior IRA figures.19 Indeed, negotiations in Belfast between
Army officers and IRA leaders led to a ‘back-of-envelope’ treaty that,
when its details came out, actually provoked a Protestant riot in
September 1969.20 Such talks also meant that the Army gained at least
some intelligence about who the movers and shakers were in their areas
of responsibility. Moreover, the Peace Line – or ‘Irish Berlin Wall’ – in
15
The B-Specials (almost exclusively Protestant) were ‘hated and loathed’ by the
Catholic community who alleged that they acted brutally whenever they were utilised.
Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle: The British Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984
(London: Book Club Associates 1985), 11. As one sergeant in the Parachute Regiment
(and himself a Catholic native of Belfast) put it, ‘It wasn’t unknown for them [the
B-Specials] just to take out their pistols and [randomly] shoot at people’. Max Arthur,
Northern Ireland: Soldiers Talking (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1987), 2.
16
Taylor, Brits, 41.
17
‘Certainly at the time the army did not regard the IRA as an enemy but more as an
ally in defending nationalists from Loyalist attack. In the months ahead, in the still
relatively relaxed atmosphere, communication gradually developed between army
officers and IRA leaders’. Ibid., 43.
18
David Charters, ‘Intelligence and Psychological Warfare Operations in Northern
Ireland’, Royal United Services Institute Journal 122/3 (Sept. 1977), 25.
19
One of the IRA leaders in Belfast at this time, Jim Sullivan, took the lead in liaising
with Army officers. Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London:
Corgi 1988), 120–5.
20
Tony Geraghty, The Irish War (London: HarperCollins 1998), 27.
Belfast between Catholic and Protestant areas (which is still there

today) was constructed in 1969 on the orders of no-one higher than the
senior Army officer in situ – General Freeland.21
Officers, however, were working in a ‘vacuum’. They continued to
lack support for what they were doing on the ground. For instance,
Freeland was muzzled by the MOD when he started making comments
about how the lot of the Catholic community could be improved – and
his job thus made easier – by more government investment. He realized
that the Army could not maintain its good relations forever with the
Catholics in the absence of some political changes which would back up
what the troops were doing at the tactical level.22 All any army really
does in a peace support/counter-insurgency campaign is to employ

activities that buy time for other, parallel, political and economic
initiatives to take effect. But in Northern Ireland there were no such
initiatives. The Army was on its own; and because it was on its own
personnel had to be extraordinarily careful about how they behaved.
For the behaviour of the troops became the only standard by which the
British ‘presence’ could be judged. If the Crown’s forces behaved badly
then, in the eyes of indigenous communities, their mission would lose
legitimacy and the legitimacy of the Crown presence itself would be
undermined. The tragedy is that troops did, indeed, behave badly, and
the right of the British to rule in Northern Ireland was thus undermined.
But the Army did have some successes. These, though, relate mostly
to its confrontations with the Protestants. Although soldiers faced
many riot situations in the late summer of 1969, the first really serious
violence directed at the Army came in October. Angry at the fact that
‘their’ police force was being ‘reformed’ (including being disarmed),
Loyalists took to the streets late one evening in the Shankill area of
Belfast and tried to force their way into Catholic areas.23 The Army
deployed three battalions to deal with the situation. These troops then
came under (effective) fire for the first time in the Province. Some 1,000
rounds were fired and 22 soldiers wounded (one policeman was killed).
No rounds were returned by the Army.24 Troops had the right to open
fire (there was a threat to life) but they felt constrained by their
traditional doctrine of minimum force, and by the fact that they were
operating in the UK. They were also conscious of the fact that they had
never previously, in many years of dealing with crowd disturbance
situations in the colonies, had to deal with both rioting and gunfire at
21
Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 24–5.
22
23
Callaghan, A House Divided, 123.
24
80 Rod Thornton
the same time.25 Eventually, after three hours of being shot at and
‘bricked, bottled and petrol-bombed’ orders came from brigade head-
quarters (39 Bde covering Belfast) that – again, for the first time in
Northern Ireland – fire could be returned (66 rounds, two gunmen
killed).26 This proved to be the first and only occasion on which the
Army had any major problems with the Protestant community. The
restraint shown by troops, much of it actually imposed on Freeland by
Callaghan in London,27 went a long way to making sure that there was
no long-term damage done to the Army–Protestant relationship.
Meantime, the Catholic communities were quite content that the
Army was protecting them. Their traditional guardians, the IRA, were
actually loath at this time to use force to stop Protestant incursions into
Catholic areas – whereas the Army had no such inhibitions. The IRA’s
leaders felt that it, as a Marxist organization, should not be interceding
between two sets of working-class groups (Protestant and Catholic) –
no matter what the level of invective and violence.28 The IRA’s mission
should have been – in the eyes of its leadership – to attack the forces of
imperialism, namely the British Army. But it could not, since it was
only the Army that was stopping certain Catholic communities, notably
in north and east Belfast, from being overrun. This made the Army both
necessary and popular among ‘the people’ and meant, therefore, that it
could not be attacked by the IRA. Thus the IRA was passive; against
both Protestants and soldiers: ‘strangely hesitant when it came to
actually doing anything’.29 This lack of action – against the Protestants
in particular – eventually led to a split in the organization in December
1969: the ‘Officials’ (OIRA) remained true to their Marxist cause
while a more aggressively minded faction formed a new group, the
25
In places such as Aden, which the Army had recently left (1967), troops were more
willing to open fire; at the ringleaders of riots, for instance. See, for instance, David
Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and
Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the 20th Century (Oxford:
Routledge 2006), 128.
26
Anthony Deane-Drummond, ‘‘Exceedingly Lucky’’: A History of the Light Infantry
(Bristol: Sydney Jary 1993), 39.
27
The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, refers to Freeland wanting to conduct
weapons searches in Shankill in the aftermath of the riot. Troops were, according to
Callaghan, ‘in danger of over-reacting’. No searches took place on Callaghan’s orders.
28
Taylor, Brits, 39–40. The IRA’s Intelligence Officer at this time (and later Chief of
Staff), Sean MacStiofain, describes the dispute between the leadership, based in Dublin
and at some remove from events, and those members in Northern Ireland itself who
were demanding more action. MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 115–32.
29
Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (London: Quarter
1973), 27.
Provisional IRA (PIRA). PIRA was prepared to take action – alongside

the Army if need be – to defend Catholic areas.30
All may then have remained as sweetness and light between the Army
and both wings of the IRA as all three were geared to looking after the
welfare of Catholic communities.31 They were all, however, competing
to gain the favour of those communities and tensions between them
became inevitable. Moreover, the leadership of PIRA never really
conceived of their organization as being one merely defensive in
character. While their first mission was to protect their own, they also
wanted the British out of Ireland.32 Thinking, though, in the manner of
true insurgents, they, like OIRA, could not begin to attack the Army
while it still had the support of the Catholic population at large. To

move as they would like, PIRA leaders first had to wait until the Army
became unpopular. The head of the Provisionals, Sean MacStiofain,
noted the conditionality apparent: ‘should British troops ill-treat or kill
civilians, counter operations would be undertaken’.33 Thus whether
action was taken or not by PIRA depended on the behaviour of the
Army. But PIRA did want action. Troops, therefore, had to be
provoked into instances of over-reaction; with the PIRA leadership
‘cunningly fashioning tactics to prod the British army into acting as an
army’.34 The aim thus was to get the Army to alienate itself from the
people by its own actions.35 And the Army fell into the trap.
PIRA’s plan went into effect in early 1970. The main catalyst for
action was the ‘marching season’. Marches by both Protestants and
Catholics – with bands and banners and hundreds of followers – were
and are a major feature of life in Northern Ireland. And the marches of
one side, of course, tend to prove deeply provocative to the other when
30
OIRA did not attack troops on duty after July 1970 and declared a complete ceasefire
in May 1972. Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 130; H.M. Tillotson, With the Prince
of Wales’s Own: The Story of a Yorkshire Regiment, 1958–1994 (Wilby: Michael
Russell 1995), 109. Violence, including gun battles in the streets, between OIRA and
PIRA members was not uncommon and several deaths resulted. J. Bowyer-Bell, The
Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967–1992 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan
1993), 195. Both IRA wings wanted to control their own areas often for no other
reason than to have the freedom to carry out racketeering operations. Edgar
O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland: The Heritage of Hate (Novato, CA: Presidio 1981), 139.
31
Even PIRA’s Chief of Staff noted ‘at that stage we were not seeking a confrontation
with the British army’. MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 152.
32
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican
Movement (London: Routledge 1995), 94–5.
33
MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 146. Stress added.
34
Bowyer-Bell, Irish Troubles, 191. See also Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 132.
35
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92. See also Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the
IRA (London: Penguin 2002), 88.
82 Rod Thornton
they pass close to the opponent’s heartlands. As Tim Pat Coogan puts
it, ‘the set piece occasion for hostilities to commence was that familiar
casus belli in Northern Ireland: the march’.36 Many within the Pro-
testant community, especially, felt that it was their inalienable right to
come out onto the streets with pipe and drums to ‘celebrate’ certain
battlefield encounters of the distant past where Catholic armies had
been beaten by Protestant ones (The Battle of the Boyne in July 1690,
for instance). The sensible move, of course, for any government would
have been to ban all marches and thereby remove sources of friction.
However, if any ban were to be imposed by the Prime Minister of
Northern Ireland then he would doubtless have had to resign – his
Protestant power base would no longer have supported him. The

government in London, moreover, felt that it could not impose a ban
because that would bring every Protestant out onto the streets and the
whole Province would grind to a very quick halt (as it was later to do
with the Ulster Workers’ Strike of 1974).
Thus the marching season of 1970 went ahead. The route of one
particular Protestant march through Belfast in Easter of that year (30
March) passed a Catholic estate – Ballymurphy. Troops were deployed
to keep the marchers away from the young Catholic toughs who were
intent on replying to the incitement provided by nearby triumphalist
Protestants. The Army, however, made several mistakes as it inter-
posed. The first point was that the wrong troops were employed. The
Scots Guards (i.e. a battalion-size group) were predominantly Scots-
Protestant in make-up and their sympathies – certainly in the eyes of the
nationalist community of Ballymurphy – could only have been with
their local co-religionists.37 The troops were also faced with a dilemma:
which way were they supposed to face? Towards Catholic or
Protestant? In the end, they turned to face what seemed to be the
most aggressive element, that is the Catholic youths. But this was not
the action of an ‘ally’ or a ‘defender’.
A third problem was that the Army lacked numbers.38 As
governments do, the British government withdrew troops as soon as
36
Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles (London: Arrow 1996), 124.
37
While in England and Wales the difference between Protestant and Catholic barely
registers, in Scotland there are still extant strong sectarian distinctions that occasionally
lead to violence. Taylor, Brits, 44; Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, 86.
38
During this period, troop numbers in the Province varied between 2,500 at the
beginning, then up to 8,500 in 1970, and in early 1971 to 10,000. Overall, troop
numbers could vary quite considerably as it was quite easy to bring in battalions for
just a few days or weeks and then send them back to their home bases in Britain or
Germany. For Operation ‘Motorman’ in July 1972 numbers peaked at 23,000. David
Charters, ‘The Changing Forms of Conflict in Northern Ireland’, Conflict Quarterly 1/2
matters had supposedly calmed down after the peak in rioting in

August 1969 (39 Bde in Belfast has been told to reduce down from
seven battalions to four by January 197039). But then, of course, the
doctrine of minimum force comes under pressure. As one officer put it,
‘minimum force requires maximum numbers’.40
The concomitant of this is that minimum numbers will feel the need
to resort to maximum force. Thus it was in Ballymurphy. Once they
came under pressure from the two sides anxious to get at each other,
the limited number of troops deployed resorted, in the absence of any
other form of riot control, to the use of the only real internal security
(IS) weapon available – CS gas.41 This gas drifted across Ballymurphy
affecting all sections of the community from pensioners to young

babies. It was a strategic disaster: ‘The Army never grasped how
radicalizing in its effect CS was; but that first Ballymurphy riot – when
they fired 104 canisters – was a classic demonstration of the fact. A
weapon so general produces, inevitably, a common reaction among its
victims: it creates solidarity where there was none before.’42
The Army’s actions had thus gone a long way to undermining the
basis of its support among Catholics – in Ballymurphy especially – but
also across the Province more generally. The use of CS, indeed, was a
wonderful recruiting tool for PIRA and the organization now began,
in the Army’s apparent abnegation of its responsibility, to put itself
forward more earnestly as the protector of under-pressure Catholic
communities.43 Interestingly, and in line with IRA policy to let the
Army make itself unpopular with the local population, PIRA gunmen
were not deployed against the CS-firing troops. If they had been,
soldiers could have used their own weapons, rioters would have fled
indoors, and order would have been restored fairly quickly across
(Fall 1980), 32. Other sources, however, have numbers for ‘Motorman’ at 30,000, but
this includes all security forces (i.e. plus members of the military reserve, the Ulster
Defence Regiment (UDR). English, Armed Struggle, 161. In all, there were 38
battalions deployed. Geraghty, Irish War, 72.
39
Peter Harclerode, Para! Fifty Years of the Parachute Regiment (London: Arms &
Armour Press 1999), 286.
40
Brig. K. Perkins, ‘Soldiers or Policemen?’, British Army Review 45 (Dec. 1973), 9.
41
Water cannons were not deployed at this time and baton guns, i.e. those that fired
‘rubber’ bullets, were not available until Oct. 1970. O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 136.
The British invented the ‘baton round’ in 1967 and the original bullets were made of
teak. These were fired from a gun that was originally designed to start aircraft piston
engines! The rubber bullet was replaced in Northern Ireland in 1973 by ones made of
plastic. David Hambling, Weapons Grade (London: Constable 2005), 227–8. CS
(chloro-benzylidene alononitrile) is an irritant gas.
42
43
Ibid.
84 Rod Thornton
Ballymurphy. As it was, in the absence of gun battles, the rioting and

use of CS dragged on for four days; four days in which the Army was
exposed as a destructive, and not a constructive, force: four days which
helped immeasurably in the ‘radicalization’ process.44
The Ballymurphy residents, having lost faith in the Army, began to
adopt their own defence measures to prevent Protestant incursions.
Barricades appeared. These were designed to keep everyone out,
including troops. The Army, down on numbers and wary of exacerbat-
ing tensions, let these ‘no-go’ areas be.45 This, again, fell conveniently
into PIRA’s hands in that, at the same time as they were gaining ground
as representing a sound alternative to the Army, they were granted
added leeway in terms of being able to train, organize and recruit behind
barricades, and thus without interference from Army patrols.46
As the marches of 1970 continued more trouble occurred. The lull
in violence during the winter of 1969–70 became a distant memory.
Rioting again became a nightly occurrence as Catholic and Protestant
mobs attacked each others’ ‘territory’. Much of the rioting in Catholic
areas was instigated by PIRA. Again, the aim was to make the Army –in
its riot-control techniques – employ too great a degree of force against
those it was nominally protecting.47 And while the Army often
conveniently obliged, what is also significant here is the fact that
senior officers at this time were also having some of their shackles
removed in terms of applying even higher levels of force. For James
Callaghan, who, as Home Secretary, had kept a watchful eye on the
possibility of military excesses, was ousted along with the Labour
government in the general election of 18 June 1970.
There was now a Conservative administration. There were two
particular results of this change. The first was that the Conservatives –
as a right-of-centre party and one with strong links to the Protestant
44
Gerry Adams, then commander of PIRA in Ballymurphy (and now President of the
Sinn Fein Party in the Northern Ireland Assembly as well as being a member of
Parliament at Westminster) and a sharp political operator, was able to persuade the
more headstrong Billy McKee, the overall leader of PIRA across Belfast, not to use his
gunmen in Ballymurphy. Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, 88. In many instances
in Ballymurphy, Adams tried ‘to prod the British army into acting as an army’. Colm
Keena, A Biography of Gerry Adams (Dublin: Mercia Press 1990), 44–5.
45
If barricades are negotiated away then troops have to replace them. Residents would
only feel safe if so protected. But having troops on guard at all possible points of ingress
into any estate is heavy on manpower. It also means troops being permanently in static
positions which can attract young ‘hotheads’ or the likes of drunks keen on starting
trouble.
46
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92.
47
J. Bowyer-Bell, IRA Tactics and Targets: An Analysis of Tactical Aspects of the
Armed Struggle, 1969–1989 (Dublin: Poolbeg 1990), 17–18.
political leadership48 – were bound to take a tougher line against Catholic

protest movements. The second result, naturally enough, was that senior
Army personnel in Northern Ireland were granted greater freedom of
action: the Conservatives were more inclined to let the Army do as it
desired. In being allowed a freer hand, officers such as Freeland now had
‘not so many back-seat drivers’.49 This, to Freeland, was a godsend. He
was a typically British counter-insurgency technician: aiming to make life
easier for those who supported the Army (hearts and minds) but a
hardliner when dealing with those who did not accept the ‘beneficence’ of
the British approach. Freeland was ‘an advocate of the flag, of dominating
the battlefield, of massive searches, of cordons, and of numerous
roadblocks and checkpoints’.50 Where once Callaghan had been a check

on such an approach, the new Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling,
played no such role. (In fact, Freeland’s immediate subordinate, the
Commander Land Forces (CLF),51 Major-General Anthony Farrar-
Hockley, was actually warier of this increased freedom from political
control and feared the results of Freeland being allowed too much
scope52). The lack of any thought by Maudling to rein in his senior
officers caused Callaghan some concern: ‘I have no doubt that the absence
of political guidance [for the Army] between June 18 and July 5 led to
much of the trouble during that period. Indeed those three weeks set the
pattern almost irretrievably for the following . . . years’ bloodshed’.53
Callaghan is referring to a period of intense and, in the light of
history, misguided activity by the Army. The first issue for the Army
hierarchy was, again, a lack of numbers. In dealing with rioting in
Belfast on the west side of the River Lagan on 27 June 1970, no troops
were available to protect the Catholic Short Strand enclave in the
predominantly Protestant area east of the river near the shipyards.54
48
The full name of the Conservative Party at that time was the Conservative and
Unionist Party; the Unionists being the Northern Ireland Protestants wanting to
maintain the link – the union – with the rest of Britain. The Conservative Party and the
Unionist Party in Northern Ireland had been working together since at least the time in
1885 when Randolph Churchill (father of Winston), the leader of the Conservative
Party, had gone to Ulster to rouse the Protestants there to resist the calls for Home Rule
(i.e. Irish independence). O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 20.
49
50
O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 143.
51
In 1970 the new command level – CLF – was added so that the GOC was not
weighed down by too many duties.
52
53
Ibid.
54
The general consensus is that the Army lacked numbers. Other accounts refer to the
‘inexplicable’ behaviour of the Army in not providing troops east of the river. Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 89.
86 Rod Thornton
In the absence of the Army, PIRA took over defensive duties (shooting
dead six Protestant ‘invaders’) and gained kudos for itself with the local
nationalist community while the Army, again, lost it.
On 3 July, more goodwill was dissipated as soldiers, acting on a tip-
off, conducted house searches and seized weapons in the Catholic
Lower Falls Road district of West Belfast. This area consisted of a
‘rabbit warren’ of about 50 narrow streets of very small back-to-back
terraced houses. The complaint here was that while the Army was
seemingly ignoring its responsibility to protect Catholics it was, at the
same time, also removing the means – weapons – whereby Catholics
could protect themselves. There was an evident contrast between the
provocation given to Catholics in terms of conducting such searches

and the license given to the Protestants to carry on with their triumphal
marches and the fact that their communities were not subject to the
same house searches. Ill-feeling on the Catholic side became inevitable
in light of this perception and led to an immediate outbreak of rioting
in Lower Falls as the searches of 3 July were being wound up. The
troops involved in the initial weapons’ finds tried to pull back but were
surrounded by hostile crowds. Reinforcements came to their rescue but
when they too were surrounded the resort was, once more, to the use of
CS. The results were the same as in Ballymurphy a few weeks earlier.
This time, though, the riots that erupted had a new added factor as
both OIRA and PIRA elements, for the first time, fired on troops
(almost a year after their introduction into the Province). The Army
shot dead four civilians (all non-IRA members) and one was killed by a
reversing armoured vehicle.55
Troops were forced to abandon Lower Falls and once they had gone
barricades were again erected. The Army’s response now was
conditioned not only by the general pressure from the administration
in Stormont to ‘get tough’ on the Catholic ‘rebellion’ but also by the
new pressure from the recently installed government in London. Where
once Freeland may have been constrained by political interference he
now had carte blanche. Action, in his mind, was called for; he had to
get back into Lower Falls and ‘show them who was boss’. More troops
had been sent to the Province by the Conservatives and these arrived on
the day of the Lower Falls’ operation (bringing numbers in the Province
up to 11,50056). With fresh troops, and armed with the ‘get tough’
edict, soldiers of three battalions, including The Royal Scots, re-entered
Lower Falls on the evening of 3 July. More CS was fired (1,600
canisters) and gun battles ensued in the tight little streets (18 soldiers
55
Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 37. Simon Winchester, In Holy Terror (London: Faber
1974), 68–75.
56
wounded). Freeland then ordered a 35-hour curfew to be imposed.57

Perhaps remarkably he could take this action, namely introducing a
curfew in a part of the UK, without seeking permission from any
political masters to do so. Had he done he would most likely have been
told ‘no’. Even the government in Stormont, with its diehard anti-
Catholic philosophy, would more than likely have refused.58 It was a
huge step to take.
With the streets of Lower Falls clear, and using time-honoured IS
tactics, the Army began a systematic cordon-and-search operation. All
houses in the area were searched. This was actually a departure from
the norm up to that point in that house searches had always been
intelligence-based and limited to those homes suspected of harbour-

ing weapons or fugitives. Widespread searches were traditionally (in
colonial counter-insurgency terms) a sign that the Army wanted to
punish a whole community, not just those who had raised suspicions. It
was an act of domination. As Edgar O’Ballance puts it, the Lower Falls
area for the Army ‘was a ‘‘psycho-social’’ target, ideal for selective
saturation in its cordon-and-search operations, designed as much to
intimidate the population as to unearth arms and explosives’.59
There was a considerable downside to this operation. Freeland may
have made his point and weapons were captured, yes, but ‘the adverse
impact on the Catholic community was out of all proportion to the
success of the Army’s haul’.60 Indeed, it was not just the affront but
also the manner of it. The fact that The Royal Scots, another battalion
overwhelmingly Scots-Protestant in make-up, had been to the fore in
the searches meant that they were never going to be conducted with kid
gloves. Many Catholic homes were ‘trashed’, with a particular target
being statues of the Madonna. The Royal Scots were the wrong troops
to use.61
Added to the whole debacle was the fact that once calm had been
brought to the battle-scarred and debris-strewn streets of Lower Falls
two radical Protestant ministers from Stormont were seen being
paraded around on a gloating sight-seeing tour in the back of an Army
57
From 2200 on Friday to 0900 Sunday. Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town
(Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974), 77. Any longer and people would not be able to go
to church; and people in Northern Ireland had to go to church.
58
Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 37.
59
60
The searches involved 5,000 houses and 2,000 troops and uncovered 107 weapons
and 20,000 rounds. Callaghan, A House Divided, 148.
61
Coogan refers to the guilty regiment as being The Black Watch (again, Scots-
Protestant). In fact they were not involved although present in Belfast at the time.
Coogan, Troubles, 129.
88 Rod Thornton
Land-Rover. While the Army had to display to Stormont ministers and

to the Protestant majority in general that it was ‘doing something’, the
insult to the Catholic community was immense.62 The Army, it seemed,
had not only lost its impartiality but had actually ‘changed sides’.63
On top of such errors of judgment by officers was the fact that
aggressive action had been taken in an area, Lower Falls, where,
unbeknownst to military intelligence, OIRA held sway, and not PIRA.
Troops had found OIRA weapons, which OIRA had never actually
intended to use given its political stance and the fact that its leaders had
been unprepared to pick a fight with the Army. But now OIRA had to
take up arms; it had to move to defend its territories against the Army
otherwise it would lose influence in the likes of Lower Falls to the more
aggressively minded PIRA. It was PIRA that had sent gunmen into the
area and its members had used their weapons.64 Thus senior Army
officers, through their ineptness and desire to ‘dominate the battle-
space’, had brought upon their troops the ire of both wings of the IRA.
The notion of ‘Divide and Rule’, which previous generations of officers
in the colonies had used so effectively, had been forgotten in the clumsy
urge to impose the Army’s will.
The Sunday prior to the Lower Falls riots an Army officer had
marched his men unarmed to a service at a local Catholic church. It
would never happen again.65 What had been a ‘success’ in military
terms was, in political terms, a ‘disaster’.66
The general angst caused by what Callaghan refers to as the Army’s
‘over-reaction’67 during this particular weekend added grist to the mill
in terms of undermining the good relations that the Army had initially
tried so hard to build up: ‘sullen Catholic acceptance of the Army now
changed to outright communal hostility’.68 There was no way back.
Lacking the firm basis of a ‘goal’ enunciated by political masters, the
only thing that the Army could point to in order to gain the support of
the Catholic people was the behaviour of its soldiers and the good
works they carried out. Thus once the image of the Army was tarnished
then there was nothing to prevent a downhill slide. A hearts-and-minds
62
The Irish nationalist writer Eamonn McCann records one ‘mild mannered’ Catholic
woman’s response to watching this event on television: ‘crying with impotent rage she
stuttered: ‘‘The bastards, the rotten, lousy English bastards’’’. McCann, War and an
Irish Town, 77–8.
63
Callaghan, A House Divided, 148; Sunday Times, Ulster, 210–20.
64
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92. Coogan, Troubles, 129.
65
Taylor, Brits, 51.
66
67
68
Ibid., 221.
campaign can only work when built on the firm foundations provided
by economic and political incentives. Catholic communities across
Belfast – and many were to follow later in Londonderry – now looked
on the Army as a foreign interloper intent on doing them harm. For
both wings of the IRA the main focus of their defensive measures now
became centred on the Army, and not on Protestant mobs. Addition-
ally, a crucial tipping point had been reached. Given the increasing anti-
Army sentiments, PIRA could now move to the more aggressive stance
of an insurgent force. It began to present itself not only as the
organization that would defend Catholics, but also as one which could
take action as a military arm to force British troops to leave Irish soil.69
And it was a popular move: levels of recruitment became ‘dizzingly

fast . . . as the movement grew from fewer than a hundred activists in
May–June [1970] to nearly 800 by December’.70
PIRA leaders, armed now with this degree of legitimacy from their
own people, began a bombing campaign in October 1970 (by early
1971 Belfast was having, on average, five bombs a night).71 On one
level this campaign was designed to make the Province ungovernable
both for the authorities at Stormont and in London.72 On another level
it was designed to tie down Army resources in dealing with PIRA’s
bombs and their aftermath. Troops would then be too busy to venture
into Catholic areas; either acting as protectors of the residents or in
putting pressure on PIRA activists.73 And the tactic of trying to make
the Army even more unpopular by pushing troops into excesses still
continued. Children were actively employed as petrol bombers and in
throwing gelignite bombs in the ‘hope’ that the Army would shoot
them and thus alienate yet further moderate Catholic opinion.74
Another ploy designed to poison minds against the Army – and
specifically against certain battalions that were popular locally – was
the supplying of bogus intelligence to soldiers about certain – innocent –
individuals. These would then be wrongly arrested raising levels of
local antipathy.75 On the back of such schemes the PIRA leadership
69
70
71
72
A total of 153 bombs between Oct. and the end of 1970. In 1971 there were 1,515
bombings, 1,756 shootings and 44 soldiers killed. In 1972 the figures, respectively,
were 1,853, 10,628 and 108. David Barzilay, The British Army in Ulster, Vol. 4
(Belfast: Century Books 1981), 226.
73
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 99; O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 153.
74
Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns: Republican Strategy and the
Provisional IRA (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press 1998), 62–92.
75
O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 139. Petrol bombs could prove lethal and soldiers had
a stated right to shoot those throwing them. A soldier was killed by a petrol bomb on
90 Rod Thornton
was, by the beginning of 1971, feeling strong enough to authorize

actual attacks on British soldiers themselves.76 PIRA and the Army
had thus moved from being ‘allies’ to being enemies in a few short
months.
With the IRA coming out so openly as opponents of Stormont and of
the forces of the Crown, the pressure from prominent Protestant
politicians for the Army to ‘do something’ increased. Among other
snipes, such figures criticized the Army for its lack of intelligence about
the IRA. This was, in large part, true. The Army had focused its early
intelligence-gathering effort, not on the IRA but on Protestant groups
since they initially appeared to be the greater threat.77 In Catholic areas
there had been some low-level intelligence garnered by foot patrols and
by officers in talks, but overall there was little to work with, especially
since the police, smarting at the usurpation of their role by the Army,
were very reluctant to hand over any intelligence of their own. (Indeed,
the information held by the RUC’s Special Branch – akin to the
American FBI – was only ever supposed to be passed to one person
outside the Special Branch: i.e. the Prime Minister of Northern
Ireland!78). Here we see one of the weaknesses of operating in Ulster
without a police force to help out. In previous colonial IS missions
the Army had always had a police force – staffed mostly by British
officers – to provide it with intelligence. Troops would then act on such
police intelligence. But in Northern Ireland, the Army had no such
assistance.79
In February 1971, in a seeming fit of pique to show that the Army
did indeed have the requisite degree of intelligence, the CLF, Farrar-
Hockley, publicly named the IRA leaders with whom the Army had
previously been in negotiations. This was supposed to impress the
critics. But it also provided PIRA leaders with yet more ammunition to
say to ‘their’ people that the Army could not be trusted.80 The day after
Farrar-Hockley’s announcement the first British soldier was killed on
28 Feb. 1971. These bombs tended to be thrown only at vehicles, and in light of this
danger in certain areas vehicle patrols were discontinued to be replaced by foot patrols
only. There is a preference in the British Army for soldiers to remain exposed in light
vehicles in order to increase their ability to react to threats. Arthur, Northern Ireland:
Soldiers Talking, 72.
76
M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 94–5.
77
78
Anthony Deane-Drummond, Riot Control (London: Royal United Services Institute
1975), 60.
79
Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came in From the
Cold (London: Gollancz 1996), 221.
80
operations in Northern Ireland (shot by an IRA sniper in Belfast – 6

February 1971).81
With a terrorist campaign now in full swing the Army lacked a
response plan. Moreover, how could they make one without political
direction from above? Political masters, for their part, scrabbled
around for a solution. And they looked to precedent to help shape
action. This came in the form of internment. Internment (the
incarceration without trial of suspected terrorists for long periods)
had been used before in Northern Ireland to stifle an IRA campaign in
the 1950s.82 Internment was a means of bypassing one of the
fundamental problems in tackling IRA terrorism: the lack of people
prepared – because of intimidation – to stand up in court and give

evidence against those charged with terrorism and terrorist-related
activities. With internment, the legal niceties were not required. And
while government ministers in London were wary of internment’s re-
introduction, to Protestant ministers in Stormont it seemed the only
solution. The latter were straining at the leash to ‘put the boot in’ to the
IRA and its supporters and they had to be offered something to hold
them back.83 Internment was the offer. Thus London agreed to
introduce internment but not before garnering a quid pro quo from
Stormont by insisting that marches be banned. To Protestant politicians
this was perfectly acceptable since they could say to their constituents
that internment was a fair swap for the loss of the right to march.84
History, however, does not always provide solutions that work in
contemporary contexts. In the 1950s internment was successful because
the Irish Republic had also taken part in the operation and had arrested
IRA members on its side of the border. This time around, though,
ministers in the Republic, angry at the treatment being meted out to the
Catholic minority in the north, were not going to be so amenable. An
escape route thus beckoned for those slated for any round-up by the
authorities in Ulster.
Most Army officers, already conscious that their hearts-and-minds
campaign was failing, feared the worst from the introduction of
internment and were keen to avoid it.85 Prior to its introduction, one
81
David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Lost Lives:
The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern
Ireland Troubles (Edinburgh: Mainstream 1999), 64. Ironically, the first six soldiers to
die in Northern Ireland were all Catholic. O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 139.
82
Taylor, Brits, 64.
83
Bowyer-Bell, Irish Troubles, 198.
84
85
92 Rod Thornton
former Army officer and a recent Foreign Office minister, Alun

Chalfont, warned against it:
From the military point of view, mass internment makes the

gathering of intelligence even more difficult, although much in-
formation can be gained by a well-planned programme of inter-
rogation after internment. Politically, internment must always
be a last resort, since it offends the susceptibilities of everyone
concerned with civil rights, provokes violent reactions from
terrorists still at large, and in any case even terrorists cannot be
interned for ever and would presumably pose a renewed threat as
soon as they were released.86
The head of the Army, the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir
Michael Carver, was also concerned, and would only countenance
internment as a ‘last resort’.87 Freeland, who had retired early from the
Army having attracted the antipathy of both Protestants (for disarming
the RUC) and now Catholics (for his hardline attitude), was replaced
as GOC by Lt.-General Sir Harry Tuzo. Tuzo was also opposed to
internment.88 He was, though, coming under pressure from the
Conservative government. The Defence Secretary, Lord Carrington,
told Tuzo in July 1971 that ‘Either the Army came up with an
alternative policy to internment or Faulkner [the hardline Protestant
Northern Ireland Prime Minister at Stormont] would have to have his
way’.89
Thus internment went ahead; an operation that, given its likely stra-
tegic outcome, was colourfully described by one battalion command-
ing officer (CO) as ‘lunacy’.90 Other officers were simply ‘furious’.91
The Army, therefore, while fearing the consequences, was forced to go
along with the general political mood. Even the Army, however, did not
foresee the degree of antipathy that internment’s introduction would
actually bring about among the nationalist population.92
It is essential that any measure – that may be seen as ‘controversial’
in counter-insurgency terms – be carried out with skill and with
intelligence; in both senses of the latter word. The British Army’s
86
Alun Chalfont, ‘The Army and the IRA’, 208.
87
Michael Carver, Out of Step; The Memoirs of Field Marshal Lord Carver (London:
Hutchinson 1989), 407.
88
89
Ibid., 263.
90
Taylor, Brits, 67.
91
92
operation to gather up those slated to be internees lacked both skill

and intelligence. It lacked skill in that it was obvious to both PIRA and
OIRA leaders that, throughout the summer of 1971, the Army was
building internment camps and making dry runs in terms of ‘practising’
its swoop-and-arrest techniques at a small number of domestic
addresses.93 By the time of the actual internment operation in the
early hours of 9 August 1971 many IRA members were not at home;
having already fled to the Republic.94 The Army also lacked the right
intelligence. Having developed no real sources of its own it had to rely
on those of Special Branch (which by now was talking to Army
officers!95). Their intelligence, however, was focused on OIRA
members from several years back and had not taken account of the
new PIRA elements. Thus, with out-of-date information, troops were
guilty of seizing men who had not been active for many years, of
storming into houses which had long been empty, and even of visiting a
new road bridge where one suspect’s house was supposed to be!96 Not
many of PIRA’s members were actually picked up (only 55 of the 342
arrested).97 It was all very clumsy.
The swoop, moreover, was focused purely on the Catholic
community since Special Branch had not bothered to gather informa-
tion on their own particular ‘people’: that is, the Protestants.98 Thus
unruly elements on that side of the sectarian divide were ignored
because no names were made available to the Army (and even if they
had been elements within the RUC would have tipped them off). Of the
342, not one was a Protestant.99 The efficacy of the whole operation
was thus compromised because of RUC partiality. Catholic sensitivities
were hardly ameliorated, moreover, when in order once more to exhibit
the fact that the Army was actually ‘doing something’, its trucks full of
detainees were re-routed through Protestant areas on their way to
detention centres.100
The storm then broke. The sense of injustice derived from internment
and the impression that the Army was so clearly following Stormont’s
93
Taylor, Brits, 66.
94
Ibid.
95
Police officers from Scotland Yard arrived in 1970 to improve Special Branch’s
professionalism. Roger Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in Ireland: The Kitson
Experiment (London: Zed Press 1983), 98.
96
Deane-Drummond, Exceedingly Lucky, 61.
97
98
Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, 219.
99
Taylor, Brits, 67.
100
O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 150. Of the 342, 105 had to be released within
48 hours.
94 Rod Thornton
line drew thousands of nationalists onto the streets to protest. Over the
next two days, 23 people died including a Catholic priest, and pogroms
produced a radical population shift as people sought out their own kith
and kin.101 Several thousand Catholics even took refuge in the Republic
in camps set up by the Irish Army.102 To deal with the situation, troop
numbers rose from 11,900 in August to 15,500 by October.103 In the
five months leading up to internment, there had been 382 bombings,
and 10 soldiers killed; in the five months after the figures were 1,022
and 33 respectively.104
Fuel was added to the fire as the interrogation techniques employed
by the Army (and Police) on 12 of the internees became common
knowledge. While not involving physical abuse, the sensory deprivation

methods employed were considered, not just by the Catholic popula-
tion but also by the world at large, to be deeply unsavoury.105 These
techniques, however, were not authorized by the Army’s own
hierarchy. Authorization actually came via government ministers
working through the MOD’s Director General of Intelligence (DGI) –
a colonel. The actual head of the Army, General Carver (to whom the
DGI did not have to report), later wrote that he did not know these
techniques were being used and ‘would not have’ allowed their use had
he known. Tuzo also seems to have been unaware of the nature of the
interrogation methods.106 The Army top brass seem to have lost control
of one of the most fundamental of its tools in counter-insurgency terms,
namely the arm tasked with generating intelligence from interrogations.
This incident clearly has contemporary echoes in Iraq.
After internment and in the wake of the revelations concerning
interrogation methods, the standing of the UK in the world fell
precipitately. It was berated by the European Commission on Human
Rights, and became subject to unfavourable publicity in the United States.
Indeed, one of the more telling consequences here was the beginnings of
major financial support for the IRA from sympathetic Americans. PIRA’s
101
In total 7,000 Catholics and 2,000 Protestants were forced from their homes.
Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, 101.
102
Callaghan, A House Divided, 168–9. Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 61.
103
104
Carver, Out of Step, 412.
105
Soldiers captured during the Korean War came back with experiences of being
‘questioned’ by the Chinese using sensory deprivation techniques (Farrar-Hockley,
indeed, was one such prisoner). These were applied by the British themselves during
several colonial campaigns. Interestingly, such techniques were never written down
anywhere by the Army, merely being passed on orally at the UK’s interrogation centres.
Taylor, Brits, 65.
106
Carver, Out of Step, 411.
coffers grew. The Army actions, no matter how much the mainstream
Army had been against both internment and the interrogation methods,
resulted in the creation of a much more difficult mission. Troops faced a
decreased level of legitimacy and an increased level of animosity on the
streets. They also faced an increasingly hostile media – both domestic and
international – and a PIRA that was now stronger; having now added a
new source of funding to its already mushrooming number of recruits.107
All this having being said, however, the actual interrogation of
internees proved to be quite fruitful. Although the Army’s techniques
had attracted controversy, they were actually effective; both on those
who had been the targets of such methods and on those who feared
being subject to them. Here PIRA’s natural urge to bring to bear its
propaganda machine in highlighting the ‘torture regime’ actually
played into the hands of the Army: the worse PIRA made it sound the
more fearful anyone detained in the future became. They then tended to
‘sing like canaries’ once they had been picked up.108 From the 12
originally ‘interrogated in depth’ information emerged on about 700
members of PIRA and OIRA and on those guilty of some 85 unsolved
murders. Many weapons were also found. Additionally, several of
those gathered in the internment sweep were given their freedom in
return for a flow of subsequent information as ‘moles’.109
One of the particular consequences of the protests against internment
was the appearance of an increased number of barricades in both
Belfast and Londonderry. As the number increased so did the size of the
no-go areas in which the writ of the established government did not
run, from which the Army was excluded, and in which PIRA could
organize, recruit, train, intimidate, and carry out its racketeering
operations without hindrance.110 The question for the Army was
whether to remove the barricades and re-impose order or to let them be
and allow them to disappear in the fullness of time (as they had back in
the winter of 1969–70), thereby avoiding bloody confrontation.
Removing such barricades had always to be a matter of assessing
each situation on its merits. In Belfast, the capital, with a 3:1 Protestant
majority,111 and with Stormont pressure so close and palpable, senior
107
Charters, ‘Intelligence’, 24.
108
Ibid.
109
Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, 220. The controversial interrogation
techniques were discontinued in March 1972 because of the outcry.
110
Maj. O.J.M. Lindsay, ‘Do Not Pass ‘‘Go’’: Ulster 69’, British Army Review 34
(April 1970), 45.
111
The percentage of the total population of Belfast which was Catholic was 26 per
cent. Protestants composed 72 percent of the remainder. Figures from 1971 census
quoted in Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland, 30.
96 Rod Thornton
Army commanders took the view that Crown authority had to be re-
imposed. Brigadier. Frank Kitson, the commander of 39 Brigade in
Belfast (and renowned counter-insurgency ‘expert’), wasted no time in
having the barricades removed.112 Belfast was thus run, as the current
head of the British Army (as of July 2006), General Sir Mike Jackson,
put it, ‘in a no-nonsense way’.113 Moreover, Kitson cut off any further
talks between his officers and representatives of PIRA/OIRA. His
philosophy was: ‘we beat the terrorists before we negotiate with them’.
In Belfast it all seemed to work in terms of quieting down the
trouble.114
However, Army attempts to repeat its Belfast approach in the other
big city, Londonderry, were to result in dire strategic consequences. In

Londonderry the situation was different from that in Belfast. This city
was less crucial in terms of the overall situation in the Province; it could
be left to its own devices. It was predominantly Catholic (2:1)115 – and
therefore potentially more volatile – but support for the IRA was
actually less tangible than in Belfast. Here then a different, less
aggressive, approach was deemed necessary by Army officers serving
in the city with 8 Brigade. Indeed, reasonable relations had, prior to
mid-1971, existed between officers and PIRA/OIRA representatives
and there had not been the breakdown in relations seen in Belfast. As
part of a general city-wide policy of ‘containment’, Army maps of
Londonderry, indeed, had lines on them over which troops were not
supposed to stray. No-go areas were an accepted fact and respected.116
Troops, moreover, in Londonderry normally dealt with riot scenarios
in a different way than did those of 39 Brigade in Belfast. Whereas units
in the latter city would deal swiftly and harshly with outbreaks of
rioting; in Londonderry, as part of ‘containment’, units allowed rioters
to let off steam and for the almost daily disturbances to run their
course – so long as there were no breakthroughs into the commercial
112
Taylor, Brits, 83. Kitson had just returned to duty from Oxford University where he
had written his rather controversial treatise on counter-insurgency warfare, Low
Intensity Operations (London: Faber 1971). Kitson was another officer who had been
against internment. While in command of 39 Bde Kitson introduced Army undercover
measures which were bent on ‘terrorising the terrorists’. Ever a controversial figure,
Kitson was removed from his post quite early and rumours abound as to why. He
eventually became C-in-C UK Land Forces. See Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in
Ireland.
113
Taylor, Brits, 77.
114
Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in Ireland, 64.
115
Catholics made up 64 per cent of the city’s population, Protestants 28 per cent.
Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland, 30.
116
heart of the city. It was all pretty amicable; both rioters (the ‘Young
Derry Hooligans’ – YDH) and the soldiers looked upon their engage-
ments as some form of late afternoon sport where few were ever
badly injured: the Army had shot no-one in Londonderry for the whole
of the almost two-year period (1969–71) it had been there.117 Again,
there was little support for the IRA. Indeed, ‘in the spring of 1971 the
Provisional IRA in Derry for practical purposes did not yet exist’.118
This generally ‘relaxed’,119 ‘quiescent’ situation, however, was said
by the Army to have ‘changed overnight’ after two rioters (deemed to
be petrol bombers) had been shot dead by soldiers on 8 July 1971. Such
shootings were considered by locals to be unwarranted and, once more,
to be an illegitimate ‘over-reaction’. These deaths, indeed, marked the

same type of tipping point that had occurred earlier in Belfast and
empowered PIRA to launch a more aggressive campaign in London-
derry itself.120
The situation in Londonderry became even worse a few weeks later
when internment was introduced. More barricades went up. But whereas
in Belfast the barricades were removed expeditiously in Londonderry they
could not; the softly-softly approach would not allow it.121 With new
barricades in place the city soon came to a ‘standstill’122 and soldiers,
indeed, began to come under fire from the cover they provided.123 And
soldiers began to die (the first in Londonderry on 10 August 1971). Thus
attempts even here had to be made to break down the barricades and
reassert authority. Army operations in this regard were fairly successful.
Unlike in Belfast, however, certain no-go areas were still left to PIRA/
OIRA control lest the city generally become ungovernable.124
117
Ibid., 7.
118
McCann, War and an Irish Town, 87.
119
Ibid.
120
Taylor, Brits, 83. The quotations are from a secret Army report released for the
Saville Inquiry (the second inquiry into ‘Bloody Sunday’ – see also note 138) and
written by the CLF who replaced Farrar-Hockley – i.e. Maj.-Gen. Robert Ford – to his
GOC, Lt.-Gen. Sir Harry Tuzo: ‘Future Military Policy for Londonderry. An
Appreciation of the Situation by CLF, 14 December 1971’.
121
122
J.D.M., ‘Op Huntsman’, Royal United Services Institute Journal 117/3 (Sept. 1972),
25.
123
124
Interestingly, the initial assaults on the barricades and into the no-go areas of
Londonderry were left to two artillery regiments acting as infantry (45 Medium Regt
and 5 Light Regt). Although infantry battalions were available it was felt that they
could not do a better job. This use of combat support and combat service support units
in the standard infantry role marks out the British Army’s involvement in Northern
Ireland. J.D.M., ‘Op Huntsman’, 25–30.
98 Rod Thornton
The restrained approach, however, seemed neither to dampen down

the rioting nor PIRA violence in Londonderry. Thus by October 1971 it
was decided that the Army should adopt a tougher line in dealing with
the security problems in this particular city as well. But 8 Brigade
wanted to do so as subtly as possible in order to ‘to keep Derry out of
the headlines’.125
Now came the final mistake by the Army in this initial period of its
intervention in Northern Ireland. Here were two cities – Londonderry
and Belfast – which had different sectarian make-ups, with a different
ethos vis-à-vis support for PIRA among the Catholic communities, and
with different strategic importance. Internal security methods could not
be the same in both. It was a case of ‘know your enemy’ and of

employing the right tactics to use against them. Nuance needed to be
employed; it could not be a case of saying that ‘one-approach-fits-all’.
This, however, is exactly the tack taken. Eventually, the same tactics
that had been used in Belfast were exported to Londonderry with
devastating results.
The problem was that senior officers at Army HQ in Lisburn (where
HQ 39 Bde was co-located) assumed, since a tough line had seemingly
worked in Belfast, that it would also ‘work’ in Londonderry. The YDH
would be put in their place and ‘sorted out’ by the replacement of the
almost laissez-faire attitude of the Army battalions in Londonderry
with a harder-line mentality. Thus the 1st Battalion The Parachute
Regiment (1 Para) was sent from Belfast to Londonderry in January
1972. This unit, the ‘resident’ battalion in Belfast,126 had been very
much in the vanguard of the tougher approach adopted by 39 Brigade.
The Parachute Regiment127 was generally seen to inculcate in its
soldiers a psyche that left them unsuited to operations in Ulster. As Mark
Urban put it, there was evidence that ‘airborne soldiers are more violent,
less likely to consider the consequences of force and less likely to propose
alternative solutions to problems than men of other regiments’.128 Their
use in the urban policing role on a day-to-day basis in Northern
Ireland was considered in many quarters to have had ‘disastrous
125
Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 85. See also Bloody Sunday, 1972: Lord Widgery’s
Report of Events in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972 (London:
Stationery Office 2001), 4.
126
The Army employed a system of resident battalions, who would spend two years in
the Province (accommodated in barracks and accompanied by families), and
‘roulement’ battalions who would be present for a period of usually 4½ months
(‘ersatz’ accommodation and unaccompanied), and stationed in the ‘harder’ areas of
cities and in rural ‘bandit’ country.
127
The Parachute Regiment was and still is made up of three battalions.
128
Mark Urban, Big Boys’ Rules (London: Faber 1992), 172.
results’.129 This is hardly surprising given the fact that, for instance, one
parachute officer could opine that ‘we don’t seem to have the hang-ups
about using force of the most vicious kind whenever possible’.130
Certainly, many members of line infantry regiments were unsure as
to the efficacy of the ‘Paras’ in Northern Ireland. By 1972 several COs
of line regiments had already expressed their displeasure at the fact that
much of their good work on the hearts-and-minds’ front with the
Catholic population was being undone by the ‘rough and undiscrimi-
nating’ behaviour of the Parachute battalions. One line officer saw
them as ‘little better than thugs in uniform’ who were a ‘menace and a
liability’.131 Another thought his men ‘temperamentally better suited to
facing up to foul-mouthed abuse and pelting . . . than the so-called

‘‘elite’’ units’.132 Ordinary soldiers likewise seemed not to be impressed
by the Paras behaviour, seeing much of their activities as ‘bad
soldiering’.133 One soldier of the Royal Green Jackets, on seeing the
crowd-control behaviour of the Paras after their arrival in Londonderry
in that January 1972, commented, ‘Christ, we’re here to stop
protesters, not kill them.’ His CO, moreover, was more prepared to
offer such protesters ‘tea and buns’ rather than inflict injuries.134
The Paras, for their part, would say that their ethos in riot control
situations was to engage in what one writer refers to – perhaps
euphemistically – as, ‘positive action and maintaining momentum into a
crowd’.135 It was just this attitude, however, that led to the worst mistake
of the Army’s entire campaign in Northern Ireland: ‘Bloody Sunday’.
With Stormont having banned marches it was fairly inevitable, when
the Catholic civil rights’ movement organised a 7,000-strong march to
pass through Londonderry on Sunday, 13 January 1972, that there
would be trouble. The Paras now present in the city would not tread
lightly in dealing with this ‘illegal’ act. When the march was prevented
by Army barriers from entering the city’s central area some stone-
throwing ensued against troops. Whereas the Londonderry battalions
would normally stand firm and take the barrage, the Paras on duty
acted ‘positively’. Their ‘momentum meant that they chased the YDH
129
Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars: Counter-Insurgency in the 20th Century
(London: Faber 1986), 71.
130
Lawrence James, Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire, 1919–1985 (London:
Brassey’s 1988), 218.
131
Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, Aren’t They? (London:
Fourth Estate 2000), 83.
132
James, Imperial Rearguard, 218.
133
Pringle, Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, 83.
134
Ibid., 17.
135
Harclerode, Para!, 287.
100 Rod Thornton
into areas where they had been ordered not to go and where they
were to shoot dead 14 people – none of whom could be proved to
have been handling weapons or to have been members of the IRA.
The involvement of OIRA and PIRA and exactly who shot first is all a
matter of conjecture.136 The point is that the Paras overstepped the
mark. The word used, again, is ‘over-reacted’.137
The fallout from this incident was immense. Further world-wide
opprobrium was heaped on Britain and its army. The stock of PIRA
rose considerably in a city where it had not previously been prominent.
Many young men, this time in Londonderry, flocked to join its ranks.
The city was now, despite all the previous precautions, lost to the
Army. Troops were also removed from the streets all over the Province
as a low-profile was adopted so as not to exacerbate tensions yet
further. A great deal of intelligence-gathering and hearts-and-minds
opportunities were thus lost. Two public inquiries into the events of
Bloody Sunday followed; one of which is still going on at a cost so far
of several hundreds of millions of pounds.138
One Army officer said he thought it was ‘mad’ to employ the Paras
against civil rights’ marchers – however illegal – and he was probably
right.139 Different counter-insurgency situations call for different
approaches and different situations call for troops of different calibre
and psychology. Any ‘approach’ to operations must be configured on
the supposition that it cannot be applied everywhere and in all
contexts. Plans must always be flexible enough to take into account
that the enemy will have different characteristics in differing locales and
will thus require different measures to be employed with what Sun Tzu
would call the ‘acme of skill’. Such skill is especially necessary in
dealing with insurgent activities where the insurgents, seeking to garner
public support, will be encouraging over-reaction by security forces as
part of their general strategy. The British Army, or rather elements of it,
lacked such skill in early 1972.
This article has referred to various mistakes made by both the British
government and its army in the early months of what became known as
the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Mistakes, of course, can often be
explained away or rectified to some degree by an adroit public relations
machine; they can be ‘spun’. However, what added to the public
136
Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, 110; O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns, 82;
Geraghty, Irish War, 54–66; Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA
(London: Macmillan 2003), 151.
137
Geraghty, Irish War, 64. Geraghty is an Irish ex-Para.
138
George Jones and Jonathan Petre, ‘Bloody Sunday Inquiry: Full Cost £400 million;
July 7 Bombings: No Inquiry, ‘‘Too Expensive’’‘, Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2006, 1.
139
Taylor, Brits, 91.
relations (PR) disasters of internment and Bloody Sunday was the fact
that the Army in this initial period had no functioning public relations
(PR) system. Officers were far too blasé when it came to ‘spin’. This led
to two particular faux pas. The first was a crime of omission, that is
doing nothing. The supposition was that whatever the Army did had,
by definition, to be right and proper: ‘the Army doesn’t do bad things,
our opponents do’ - so why, the reasoning ran, was it necessary to have
someone spell out what was blindingly obvious? The Army, for
instance, would always avoid making comment when faced with false
IRA claims about ‘brutality’ or whatever because officers felt that ‘the
truth will come out naturally’: people should wait for any inquiries to
run their course – even if that took months. The Army thus let IRA
propaganda settle and did not refute it; much to their loss. PIRA, on
the other hand, did have an understanding of the power of PR. Its
leaders knew, for instance, that internment was coming and had a
plethora of ‘atrocity’ stories ready to run as soon as the operation went
into effect.140
The second crime was one of commission: sometimes Army
spokesmen would be too quick. On several occasions in this early
period officers, in the aftermath of incidents, had been caught not
telling the truth to the media (and thus to the people of Northern
Ireland) because the immediate knee-jerk response was to protect
soldiers and reel out the line that ‘we don’t behave like that’. For
example, in the ‘battle’ in Lower Falls mentioned earlier (July 1970) the
Army initially said they had only fired 15 rounds, when it emerged later
that they had actually fired nearly 1,500!141 And in the immediate
aftermath of Bloody Sunday officers were quick to point out, wrongly,
that all those shot had been members of the IRA. Of course, the
thinking ran, soldiers could not possible have shot unarmed civilians.
But some of them did.142 Here it must be stressed that if the forces of
authority give out just one bald fact that can, in future, be shown to be
untrue, then the whole edifice of trust and belief in those forces – and
thus in any hearts-and-minds’ campaign – can be undermined. The
Army was therefore, in this early period of its deployment in Northern
Ireland, not only making mistakes, it had no available PR machinery
that could in any way ameliorate or explain away such mistakes.
140
See Lt.-Col. D.J.A. Stone, ‘‘‘Out of the Shadows . . . ’’: The Re-emergence of the
United Kingdom’s Military Psychological Ops Capability Since 1945’, British Army
Review 114 (Dec. 1996), 3–12.
141
Winchester, In Holy Terror, 71. Moreover, the Army was only using single-shot
semi-automatic rifles.
142
Brig. G.L.C. Cooper, ‘Some Aspects of the Conflict in Ulster’, British Army Review
43 (April 1973), 77.
102 Rod Thornton
This, of course, helped PIRA immeasurably in its search for the ‘tipping
point’ that would allow it to move to the offensive.143
This is not to say that individual battalions did not employ their own
psychological operations (psyops) campaigns. But there was no overall
policy into which they could all fit.144 Here the Army itself was not able
to provide an overarching pysops campaign because Northern Ireland
was part of the UK, and thus any campaign could only be directed by
the government in London. And such direction, of course, was totally
absent in the early years of the Army’s deployment.145
After Bloody Sunday, the government in London, faced with a bleakly
deteriorating security situation, did finally take the action that it had
long delayed. On 24 March 1972 Direct Rule was imposed. This meant
that Stormont would be dissolved and that henceforth the Province
would be run from Westminster. The opinions of the Protestant-
dominated local administration could now be bypassed. For the most
part, given the scale of the terrorist campaign that developed throughout
1972 (see notes 72 and 150), the Protestant community as a whole
accepted the loss of ‘their’ seat of power. To keep any Loyalist protest
movements in check, though, Westminster had to constantly remind the
Protestant community that Direct Rule did not mean the Province
would one day be handed over to the South.146
Direct Rule had two specific results which aided the Army. The first
was that the situation radically improved in that unity of command had
been created and that this command – the civilian master in the shape
of the government in Westminster – was now far more interested in
solving the problem of Northern Ireland.147
The second positive was that support for PIRA waned across many a
Catholic community and pressure began to build from across the whole
of Ireland for PIRA to lay down its arms; the struggle should now be
over – since Stormont and all its works was no more.148 But PIRA was
not about to go quietly, and took the view that since the British were
still in power then more violence was called for, not less. If one level
of violence had brought the power of Stormont to an end then
an increased level should bring Westminster rule to an end as well.
143
O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns, 62–92.
144
Charters, ‘Intelligence’, 25.
145
Stone, ‘Out of the Shadows’, 5.
146
See Peter Neumann, Britain’s Long War: British Strategy in the Northern Ireland
Conflict, 1969–98 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), Ch. 4.
147
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland
(Harlow: Longman 1997), 63.
148
MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 241. O’Ballance, Terror in Ireland,
171–2.
Moreover, PIRA hoped to improve their position vis-à-vis nationalist

support by using their terror campaign to provoke a Protestant
backlash that would be targeted at Catholics. Such victims would then
seek the protection of the Provisionals and their star would again be in
the ascendant. However, PIRA’s strategy of increased violence actually
played into the Army’s hands. Given the level of atrocities committed
the general population of Northern Ireland seemed to accept that an
increased military response was acceptable in reply (and the vast
majority of the Loyalist population recognized that it should be left to
the military). Troop numbers were increased, and the final no-go areas,
principally in Londonderry, were removed in Operation ‘Motorman’
on 31 July 1972. This involved some 30,000 troops (see note 38). PIRA
were now denied their training grounds and safe areas and many an
IRA member was forced to flee to the South.
Additionally, the greater numbers of troops now committed to the
Province provided for an increased level of surveillance, intelligence-
gathering, and for a footprint on the ground that dramatically curtailed
PIRA operations. For instance, in the three weeks before ‘Motorman’
there were 2,595 shooting incidents across the Province, while in the
three weeks after there were only 380.149 By 1974 the Army was
claiming a ‘victory’ in Northern Ireland as PIRA was forced to wind
down its campaign.150 ‘Victory’, though, is probably too strong a
word. But through the later 1970s better psyops,151 better intelligence
gathering,152 and more adroit use of covert operations, most notably by
the Special Air Service from 1976, kept PIRA violence in check. As John
Newsinger notes more correctly, ‘while the IRA were not defeated, they
were contained’.153
That, for the British was enough; there had long been the sense that
all that was required in Northern Ireland was, quoting Reginald
Maudling, the Home Secretary in 1971, to ‘achieve an acceptable level
149
Neumann, Britain’s Long War, 80.
150
Kennedy-Pipe, Origins of the Present Troubles, 64–5. The figures tell the story of the
trail-off in violence: in 1971, 43 (regular) soldiers died against 54 terrorists; in 1972,
103 and 98 respectively; 1973, 58 and 42; 1974, 28 and 21; 1975, 14 and 20; 1976, 14
and 21; 1977, 15 and 10; 1978; 14 and 8; 1979, 39 and 3; 1980, 8 and 5. Barzilay, The
British Army in Ulster, Vol. 4, 226–31. Perhaps an interesting point here is the fact that
more British soldiers lost their lives than terrorists. Some, such as Martin van Creveld,
put eventual British ‘success’ down to this factor of restraint. It is almost the opposite of
a ‘body count’ mentality. Creveld at conference at Royal Norwegian Naval Academy,
Bergen, 14 May 2004.
151
Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in Ireland, 64–70.
152
Ibid., Ch. 2.
153
John Newsinger, British Counter-Insurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland
(Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), 181.
104 Rod Thornton
of violence’.154 This, the British Army, with increased help from the
Royal Ulster Constabulary as ‘police primacy’ was restored in 1976,
managed to do. Latterly, for the security forces in Northern Ireland, it
was never really about ‘winning’, merely not losing.
Terrorist acts continued, of course, for the next 30 years but there
was a gradual trailing off and then a sharp decline with the peace
accords of the 1990s (including the Good Friday Agreement of 1998
that led to the end of hostilities, to all intents and purposes). The last
soldier to die, Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, fell from a sniper’s
bullet in South Armagh in February 1997.
Conclusion
The early years of the British Army’s involvement in Northern Ireland
are marked by crucial errors that had major strategic consequences. In
many ways, the Army and its senior officers may be excused given that
they were being asked by a government to do a difficult job in the
absence of the political and economic support that is an essential part
of any ‘stabilization’ operation. Troops on the ground can never
indefinitely hold the ring in terms of peace support without incentives –
carrots – being offered. As Kitson put it in a paper he wrote when in
command of 39 Brigade: ‘unless some general policy guidance is given
on the long-term situation our operations are very likely to seriously
prejudice the future’.155 And he was right. Whenever military forces
try to maintain order in a civil context they will find themselves in
situations that will tax their skills and where their legitimacy will be
open to question. And they will be in positions where they will be sorely
tempted to introduce measures – while they may restore order tactically
and be ‘correct’ according to the military lexicon – that can lead to
failure in strategic terms. One major in the King’s Own Scottish
Borderers neatly sums up the issue: ‘there was always a conflict between
the short-term military goal, which could always be achieved, and the
cost in the longer term’.156
But many of the mistakes the British Army made in Northern
Ireland – related mainly to its ‘ill-discipline’ and ‘over-zealousness’ –
were avoidable.157 As any clever asymmetric adversary would aver,
the aim is to let the powerful undermine themselves through their
own mistakes. Those responsible in the British Army failed to see this.
Absent its mistakes, the Army could have bought time that would have
154
155
Quoted in Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 133. Stress added.
156
Arthur, Soldiers Talking, 65.
157
Dillon, Dirty War, 27.
allowed scope for wiser counsels to establish their influence in

Northern Ireland. Instead the Army’s clumsiness brought to promi-
nence with indecent haste a formidable and clever adversary in the
shape of the Provisional IRA.
It is vital, whenever an occupying force moves in to any particular
area, that its first and foremost aim is to gain and maintain the support
of ‘the people’; all else in ‘stabilization’ terms follows. This is a
principle, however, easy both to forget and to compromise. The
support of the people can readily be lost unless adequate preparatory
training is conducted and unless adequate precautions are taken both
before and during deployment. Adequate intelligence needs to be
gathered both on individuals and organizations; including on those

who may not at first appear to be a threat. Impartiality must be
scrupulously observed; troops must be seen to be even-handed. Officers
must resist the temptation to score points and to ‘look good’. Displays
of triumphalism must be avoided for they invariably cause offence in
some quarter.
Regional commanders responsible for ‘stabilization’ efforts must be
in command of all the military forces that operate in their area. Again,
unity of command is crucial. But unity of command must not exclude
input from those who may, in fact, have a greater handle on political
nuances. Officers must not be too quick to dismiss interference by
political masters in operational matters. Civilian input can prove
positive. Officers should also always be aware that PR is vitally
important, not least in the way that the truth must always be told; no
matter how unpalatable. Lies will always come out eventually, and lies
cannot be part of an operation that puts such reliance on public
support. Troops must always appear as trustworthy.
The British Army obviously became more skilled in counter-
insurgency terms as the campaign in Northern Ireland went into the
1970s and 1980s. But it was a case of locking the stable door after the
horse has bolted. The die had been cast. The damage had already been
done, and the later improvements were mere sticking plasters that
could only hold until peace had been negotiated with the PIRA leaders
in the 1990s. The operation in Northern Ireland was ‘lost’ by mistakes
made in the initial period of deployment. The lesson is, do not make
such mistakes in the first place.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses his gratitude for the support offered, in the
writing of this article, by the Office of Force Transformation, US
Department of Defense, and the UK Ministry of Defence. Thanks also
to an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
106 Rod Thornton
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Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in The Early Stages of The British Army's Deployment To Northern Ireland

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Stellenbosch]

On: 08 October 2014, At: 14:00

Journal of Strategic Studies

Getting it Wrong: The Crucial

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390701210848

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Getting it Wrong: The Crucial

to Northern Ireland (August 1969

KEY WORDS: counter-insurgency, Northern Ireland, terrorism

There have been several post-Cold War interventions by Western forces

helping to create a fully fledged insurgency campaign.

Despite the history between the Catholic population of Ireland and

No matter how good they were at imposing calm, obvious difficulties

Thus the GOC was responsible to three masters: a prime minister at

Initially, British soldiers were used purely in peace support and

Belfast between Catholic and Protestant areas (which is still there

does in a peace support/counter-insurgency campaign is to employ

Provisional IRA (PIRA). PIRA was prepared to take action – alongside

while it still had the support of the Catholic population at large. To

Protestant power base would no longer have supported him. The

matters had supposedly calmed down after the peak in rioting in

affecting all sections of the community from pensioners to young

Ballymurphy. As it was, in the absence of gun battles, the rioting and

political leadership48 – were bound to take a tougher line against Catholic

roadblocks and checkpoints’.50 Where once Callaghan had been a check

provocation given to Catholics in terms of conducting such searches

wounded). Freeland then ordered a 35-hour curfew to be imposed.57

intelligence-based and limited to those homes suspected of harbour-

Land-Rover. While the Army had to display to Stormont ministers and

And it was a popular move: levels of recruitment became ‘dizzingly

was, by the beginning of 1971, feeling strong enough to authorize

operations in Northern Ireland (shot by an IRA sniper in Belfast – 6

prepared – because of intimidation – to stand up in court and give

former Army officer and a recent Foreign Office minister, Alun

From the military point of view, mass internment makes the

soon as they were released.86

operation to gather up those slated to be internees lacked both skill

knowledge. While not involving physical abuse, the sensory deprivation

big city, Londonderry, were to result in dire strategic consequences. In

to be an illegitimate ‘over-reaction’. These deaths, indeed, marked the

The restrained approach, however, seemed neither to dampen down

be the same in both. It was a case of ‘know your enemy’ and of

facing up to foul-mouthed abuse and pelting . . . than the so-called

Moreover, PIRA hoped to improve their position vis-à-vis nationalist

allowed scope for wiser counsels to establish their influence in

gathered both on individuals and organizations; including on those

Newsinger, John, British Counter-Insurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke:

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