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)

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

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.

Notes

¹Kim Sengupta, ‘Rumsfeld “Ignored Fallujah Warnings”’, The Times, 26 Oct. 2004, 8.

²The 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.

³The Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster (London: Andre Deutsch 1972), 125.

⁴The 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.

⁵One leading IRA figure refers to ‘misrule [by a] single-party sectarian dictatorship’. Sean MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark 1975), 145.

⁶The 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.

⁷The 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).

⁸The 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 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.

⁹Martin Dillon, The Dirty War (London: Arrow 1991), 26.

¹⁰This 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.

¹¹See James Callaghan, A House Divided: The Dilemma of Northern Ireland (London: Collins 1973).

¹²David 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.

¹³Taylor, Brits, 48.

¹⁴Sunday Times, Ulster, 169.

¹⁵The 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.

¹⁶Taylor, 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.

¹⁸David Charters, ‘Intelligence and Psychological Warfare Operations in Northern Ireland’, Royal United Services Institute Journal 122/3 (Sept. 1977), 25.

¹⁹One 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.

²⁰Tony Geraghty, The Irish War (London: HarperCollins 1998), 27.

²¹Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 24–5.

²²Sunday Times, Ulster, 199.

²³Callaghan, A House Divided, 123.

²⁴Sunday Times, Ulster, 165.

²⁵In 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.

²⁶Anthony Deane-Drummond, “Exceedingly Lucky”: A History of the Light Infantry (Bristol: Sydney Jary 1993), 39.

²⁷The 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. Callaghan, A House Divided, 124.

²⁸Taylor, 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.

²⁹Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (London: Quarter 1973), 27.

³⁰OIRA 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.

³¹Even 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.

³²M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge 1995), 94–5.

³³MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 146. Stress added.

³⁴Bowyer-Bell, Irish Troubles, 191. See also Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 132.

³⁵M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92. See also Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin 2002), 88.

³⁶Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles (London: Arrow 1996), 124.

³⁷While 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.

³⁸During 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 (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.

³⁹Peter Harclerode, Para! Fifty Years of the Parachute Regiment (London: Arms & Armour Press 1999), 286.

⁴⁰Brig. K. Perkins, ‘Soldiers or Policemen?’, British Army Review 45 (Dec. 1973), 9.

⁴¹Water 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.

⁴²Sunday Times, Ulster, 204.

⁴³Ibid.

⁴⁴Gerry 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.

⁴⁵If 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.

⁴⁶M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92.

⁴⁷J. Bowyer-Bell, IRA Tactics and Targets: An Analysis of Tactical Aspects of the Armed Struggle, 1969–1989 (Dublin: Poolbeg 1990), 17–18.

⁴⁸The 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.

⁴⁹Callaghan, A House Divided, 144.

⁵⁰O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 143.

⁵¹In 1970 the new command level – CLF – was added so that the GOC was not weighed down by too many duties.

⁵²Callaghan, A House Divided, 145.

⁵³Ibid.

⁵⁴The 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.

⁵⁵Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 37. Simon Winchester, In Holy Terror (London: Faber 1974), 68–75.

⁵⁶Callaghan, A House Divided, 149.

⁵⁷From 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.

⁵⁸Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 37.

⁵⁹O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 135.

⁶⁰The searches involved 5,000 houses and 2,000 troops and uncovered 107 weapons and 20,000 rounds. Callaghan, A House Divided, 148.

⁶¹Coogan 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.

⁶²The 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.

⁶³Callaghan, A House Divided, 148; Sunday Times, Ulster, 210–20.

⁶⁴M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 92. Coogan, Troubles, 129.

⁶⁵Taylor, Brits, 51.

⁶⁶Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 39.

⁶⁷Callaghan, A House Divided, 147.

⁶⁸Ibid., 221.

⁶⁹M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 93.

⁷⁰Sunday Times, Ulster, 221.

⁷¹M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 93.

⁷²A 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.

⁷³M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 99; O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 153.

⁷⁴Malachi O'Doherty, The Trouble with Guns: Republican Strategy and the Provisional IRA (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press 1998), 62–92.

⁷⁵O'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 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.

⁷⁶M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 94–5.

⁷⁷Sunday Times, Ulster, 261.

⁷⁸Anthony Deane-Drummond, Riot Control (London: Royal United Services Institute 1975), 60.

⁷⁹Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain's Spies Came in From the Cold (London: Gollancz 1996), 221.

⁸⁰Sunday Times, Ulster, 236.

⁸¹David 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.

⁸²Taylor, Brits, 64.

⁸³Bowyer-Bell, Irish Troubles, 198.

⁸⁴O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 149.

⁸⁶Alun Chalfont, ‘The Army and the IRA’, 208.

⁸⁵Callaghan, A House Divided, 164.

⁸⁷Michael Carver, Out of Step; The Memoirs of Field Marshal Lord Carver (London: Hutchinson 1989), 407.

⁸⁸Sunday Times, Ulster, 265.

⁸⁹Ibid., 263.

⁹⁰Taylor, Brits, 67.

⁹¹Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 63.

⁹²Sunday Times, Ulster, 269.

⁹³Taylor, Brits, 66.

⁹⁴Ibid.

⁹⁵Police 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.

⁹⁶Deane-Drummond, Exceedingly Lucky, 61.

⁹⁷O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 149.

⁹⁸Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, 219.

⁹⁹Taylor, Brits, 67.

¹⁰⁰O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 150. Of the 342, 105 had to be released within 48 hours.

¹⁰¹In total 7,000 Catholics and 2,000 Protestants were forced from their homes. Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, 101.

¹⁰²Callaghan, A House Divided, 168–9. Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 61.

¹⁰³O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 154.

¹⁰⁴Carver, Out of Step, 412.

¹⁰⁵Soldiers 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.

¹⁰⁶Carver, Out of Step, 411.

¹⁰⁷Charters, ‘Intelligence’, 24.

¹⁰⁸Ibid.

¹⁰⁹Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, 220. The controversial interrogation techniques were discontinued in March 1972 because of the outcry.

¹¹⁰Maj. O.J.M. Lindsay, ‘Do Not Pass “Go”: Ulster 69’, British Army Review 34 (April 1970), 45.

¹¹¹The 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.

¹¹²Taylor, 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.

¹¹³Taylor, Brits, 77.

¹¹⁴Faligot, Britain's Military Strategy in Ireland, 64.

¹¹⁵Catholics made up 64 per cent of the city's population, Protestants 28 per cent. Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland, 30.

¹¹⁶O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 150.

¹¹⁷Ibid., 7.

¹¹⁸McCann, War and an Irish Town, 87.

¹¹⁹Ibid.

¹²⁰Taylor, 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’.

¹²¹O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 150.

¹²²J.D.M., ‘Op Huntsman’, Royal United Services Institute Journal 117/3 (Sept. 1972), 25.

¹²³O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 144.

¹²⁴Interestingly, 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.

¹²⁵Hamill, 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.

¹²⁶The 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.

¹²⁷The Parachute Regiment was and still is made up of three battalions.

¹²⁸Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules (London: Faber 1992), 172.

¹²⁹Charles Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars: Counter-Insurgency in the 20th Century (London: Faber 1986), 71.

¹³⁰Lawrence James, Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire, 1919–1985 (London: Brassey's 1988), 218.

¹³¹Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, Aren't They? (London: Fourth Estate 2000), 83.

¹³²James, Imperial Rearguard, 218.

¹³³Pringle, Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, 83.

¹³⁴Ibid., 17.

¹³⁵Harclerode, Para!, 287.

¹³⁶Moloney, 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.

¹³⁷Geraghty, Irish War, 64. Geraghty is an Irish ex-Para.

¹³⁸George Jones and Jonathan Petre, ‘Bloody Sunday Inquiry: Full Cost £400 million; July 7 Bombings: No Inquiry, “Too Expensive”‘, Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2006, 1.

¹³⁹Taylor, Brits, 91.

¹⁴⁰See 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.

¹⁴¹Winchester, In Holy Terror, 71. Moreover, the Army was only using single-shot semi-automatic rifles.

¹⁴²Brig. G.L.C. Cooper, ‘Some Aspects of the Conflict in Ulster’, British Army Review 43 (April 1973), 77.

¹⁴³O'Doherty, The Trouble with Guns, 62–92.

¹⁴⁴Charters, ‘Intelligence’, 25.

¹⁴⁵Stone, ‘Out of the Shadows’, 5.

¹⁴⁶See Peter Neumann, Britain's Long War: British Strategy in the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1969–98 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), Ch. 4.

¹⁴⁷Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland (Harlow: Longman 1997), 63.

¹⁴⁸MacStiofain, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 241. O'Ballance, Terror in Ireland, 171–2.

¹⁴⁹Neumann, Britain's Long War, 80.

¹⁵⁰Kennedy-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.

¹⁵¹Faligot, Britain's Military Strategy in Ireland, 64–70.

¹⁵²Ibid., Ch. 2.

¹⁵³John Newsinger, British Counter-Insurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), 181.

¹⁵⁴Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 84.

¹⁵⁵Quoted in Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 133. Stress added.

¹⁵⁶Arthur, Soldiers Talking, 65.

¹⁵⁷Dillon, Dirty War, 27.