‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article exposes some of the problems of ‘classical’ British ‘hearts and minds’ counter-insurgency theory of the sixties by applying it to the Northern Ireland conflict. The four requirements of counter-insurgency theory were: demonstrating ‘political will’ to defeat the insurgents as the key to victory; the importance of ‘the battle for hearts and minds’ of the affected population; ‘police primacy’ over the army in defeating insurgents; and the importance of civil-military coordination to bring together all the elements of a successful counter-insurgency campaign. Five problems are identified with ‘classical’ counter-insurgency theory. First, counter-insurgency theory emphasises the role of the government in defeating insurgency but does not draw attention to the tensions this can create between the political and military elites and the possible consequences for democracy. Second, the theory is found to be ambiguous and open to highly divergent interpretations, in particular on the use of force. Third, there is a tendency to overgeneralise from Britain's historical experience which does not do justice to the complexity of particular conflicts. Fourth, this leads to a tendency to apply ‘lessons’ which are not appropriate to the context. Finally, counter-insurgency theory has been unable to account for the relative success of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Key Words:

• Counter-insurgency
• Northern Ireland
• Hearts and Minds

Notes

¹I am very grateful for the comments of Brigadier Neil Baverstock, Colonel David Benest, Dr Huw Bennett and Professor Brice Dickson on this article. Responsibility for the views and errors in this article are entirely my own.

²The term ‘British’ is a shorthand to refer to those living in Great Britain, this should not be taken to imply that there are not British people living in Northern Ireland.

³T.R. Mockaitis, British Counter-Insurgency, 1919–60 (London: Macmillan 1990).

⁴M. van Creveld, The Changing Face of War, Lessons of Combat, From the Marne to Iraq (Novato, CA: Presidio 2007).

⁵Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning (London: Faber 1967); Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (London: Chatto & Windus 1967) and No Exit From Vietnam (London: Chatto & Windus 1969); Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War (London: Cassell 1967); Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations (London: Faber 1971). Compare to Land Operations, Volume III – Counter Revolutionary Operations, Part 3 – Counter Insurgency (London: MOD 1970).

⁶Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 146; see also Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning.

⁷Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 63.

⁸Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 56.

⁹Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, 176.

¹⁰Ibid., 166.

¹¹Robin Evelegh, Peace Keeping in a Democratic Society: The Lessons of Northern Ireland (London: Hurst 1978), 47.

¹²Paul Dixon, ‘“A House Divided Cannot Stand”: Britain, Bipartisanship and Northern Ireland’, Contemporary Record 9/1 (Summer 1995), 147–87.

¹³Paul Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam Syndrome”? Public Opinion and British Military Intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia’, Review of International Studies 26/1 (Jan. 2000), 99–121.

¹⁴Brig. W.F.K. Thompson, ‘Northern Ireland to 1973’, Brassey's Annual (London: Brassey's 1973), 70.

¹⁵Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2008).

¹⁶Joe Haines, The Politics of Power (London: Jonathan Cape 1977).

¹⁷Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 176–7.

¹⁸Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, 177.

¹⁹Martin Dillon, The Enemy Within (London: Bantam Books 1996), 156, 159. The negotiations were kept secret from the Army because it was felt some would disapprove, 154.

²⁰M. Carver, Out of Step: Memoirs of a Field Marshal (London: Hutchinson 1989), 423.

²¹Henry Patterson, ‘British Governments and the Protestant Backlash 1969–74’, in A. O'Day (ed.), Ireland's Terrorist Dilemma (Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff 1986).

²²Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle, The Army and Northern Ireland 1969–85 (London: Methuen 1985), 108–10.

²³Paul Dixon, ‘Rethinking the International: A Critique’, in M. Cox et al., A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester UP 2006), 414–15.

²⁴ Daily Mail, 3 May 2001.

²⁵M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge 1995), 101, 135, 137.

²⁶Dixon, Northern Ireland, 114–18.

²⁷Maria Maguire, To Take Arms (London: Macmillan 1973), 74; Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam Syndrome”?’.

²⁸Dixon, Northern Ireland, 159–64.

²⁹Ibid., 161–2.

³⁰Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 168.

³¹Ibid., 167.

³²Ibid., 169.

³³ Operation Banner: An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland, Army Code 71842 (July 2006), 2–5/6, 8–8.

³⁴ The Times, 18 Sept. 1970.

³⁵Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin 1972), 221.

³⁹Evelegh, Peacekeeping in a Democratic Society, 29, see also 41, 71, 72. David Benest refers to the period 1971–76 as a ‘colonial strategy’ by the British, David Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, in H. Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge 2006), 137.

³⁶Paddy Hillyard, ‘Political and Social Dimensions of Emergency Law in Northern Ireland’, in A. Jennings (ed.), Justice Under Fire (London: Pluto 1988), 197.

³⁷C. Ackroyd et al., The Technology of Political Control (London: Penguin 1977), 41.

³⁸John Newsinger, ‘From Counter-Insurgency to Internal Security: Northern Ireland 1969–1992’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 6/1 (Spring 1995), 96.

⁴⁰ Operation Banner, 2–7.

⁴¹Committee on the Administration of Justice, War on Terror: Lessons from Northern Ireland (Belfast: Committee on the Administration of Justice 2008), 20.

⁴²Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 56–8, 64.

⁴⁴Committee on the Administration of Justice, War on Terror, 39.

⁴³M. Urban, Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle against the IRA (London: Faber 1992); Jon Tonge, Northern Ireland (Cambridge: Polity 2006).

⁴⁵Anthony Jennings, ‘Shoot to Kill: The Final Courts of Justice’, in A. Jennings (ed.), Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto 1988), 104.

⁴⁶Michael J. Cunningham, British Government Policy in Northern Ireland 1969–89: Its Nature and Execution (Manchester: Manchester UP 1991), 62.

⁴⁹‘“A Senior Officer”, Military coups: Could it happen here?’, The Spectator, 17 Aug. 1974.

⁴⁷Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 103.

⁴⁸Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 106–7.

⁵⁰ Operation Banner, 2–80.

⁵¹Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 104.

⁵²Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 110.

⁵³Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam syndrome”?’; Susan Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency 1944–1960 (Leicester: Leicester UP 1995).

⁵⁴Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, in Strachan, Big Wars and Small Wars, 128–9.

⁵⁵Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 178–9.

⁵⁶Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 78.

⁵⁷W.H. Van Voris, Violence in Ulster (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusets Press 1975).

⁵⁸ The Guardian, 10 Nov. 1995.

⁵⁹Duncan Campbell, ‘Still Dark in Paranoia Gulch’, New Statesman and Society, 9 Feb. 1990.

⁶⁰D. Miller, Don't Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media (London: Pluto 1994), 78–9, 81.

⁶¹Tony Gallagher, ‘Justice and the Law in Northern Ireland’, in R. Jowell et al. (eds.), British Social Attitudes, 8th Report (SCPT 1991/92), 68–9.

⁶²Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland’, 119.

⁶³R. Rose et al., ‘Is There a Concurring Majority about Northern Ireland?’, Strathclyde Papers in Public Policy (1978), 27.

⁶⁴George H. Gallup, Gallup Political Index 1935–97 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources 1999).

⁶⁵Gallup, Gallup Political Index.

⁶⁶ The Times, 2 Feb. 1972.

⁶⁷Gallup, Gallup Political Index.

⁶⁸Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam Syndrome”?’.

⁷⁰Ackroyd et al., Technology of Political Control, 104.

⁶⁹D. Charters, ‘Intelligence and Psychological Warfare Operations in Northern Ireland’, RUSI Journal 122/3 (Sept. 1977), 25.

⁷¹John Pimlott, ‘The British Army: The Dhofar Campaign, 1970–75’, in Ian F. W. Beckett and J. Pimlott (eds.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency (New York: St Martin's Press 1985), 22; Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 157, 175.

⁷²M. Dewar, Brush Fire Wars: Minor Campaigns of the British Army since 1945 (New York: St Martin's Press 1984), 183.

⁷³Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 103.

⁷⁴Ibid., 108, 110.

⁷⁵Russell Murray, ‘Killings of Security Forces in Northern Ireland 1969–81’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 7/1 (1984), 44; Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 163–4.

⁷⁶Brig. G.L.C. Cooper, ‘Some Aspects of Conflict in Ulster’, British Army Review 43 (1974), 73.

⁷⁷Dewar, Brush Fire Wars, 147.

⁷⁸Gen. Sir Richard Gale, ‘Old Problem: New Setting’, RUSI Journal 117/1 (March 1972), 43.

⁷⁹ Operation Banner, 7–2.

⁸⁰Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 92.

⁸¹Merlyn Rees, Northern Ireland: A Personal Perspective (London: Methuen 1985), 51; Urban, Big Boys' Rules, 15.

⁸²Keith Jeffrey, ‘Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency Operations: Some Reflections on the British Experience’, Intelligence and National Security 2/1 (Jan. 1987), 126; Charters, ‘Intelligence and Psychological Operations in Northern Ireland’, 23.

⁸³D. Anderson and D. Killingray (eds.), Policing and Decolonisation: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1917–65 (Manchester: Manchester UP 1992), 6.

⁸⁴See, for example, Cyprus and other contributions in Anderson and Killingray, Policing and Decolonisation.

⁸⁵Bernard Donoughue, Prime Minister: The Conduct of Policy under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan (London: Jonathan Cape 1987), 129; Urban, Big Boys' Rules, 51–2.

⁸⁶Memo by Lt.-Col. J.L. Pownall on the UDR, 1972, quoted in the Irish News, 5 Aug. 2008. See also ‘Subversion in the UDR’, <http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/publicrecords/1973/subversion_in_the_udr.pdf>.

⁸⁷ Irish News, 15 May 2006.

⁸⁸Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 149; Carver, Out of Step.

⁸⁹Rees, Northern Ireland, 90; Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return (London: Andre Deutsch 1975), 203–4; Donoughue, Prime Minister, 129.

⁹⁰RUSI seminar, ‘The Role of the Armed Forces in Peace-keeping in the 1970s’, 4 April 1973, quoted in Ackroyd et al., Technology of Political Control, 109.

⁹¹I am grateful to Brig. Baverstock for pointing this out.

⁹² Operation Banner, 8–4, 8–14.

⁹³It should be remembered that there have been developments in British counter-insurgency theory since the 1960s.

⁹⁴Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, 140 is also critical of this tendency.

⁹⁵Dixon, Northern Ireland, Ch. 10.

⁹⁶ The Observer, 24 Feb. 2002.

⁹⁷Dixon, Northern Ireland, Chs. 8–10.