Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq
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Another important component of the army operating in Northern Ireland was the various special units which operated directly for army headquarters in Lisburn. The action component of this force was the Special Air Service (SAS), who were capable of conducting reconnaissance, surveillance, and combat operations against the paramilitaries. The British also formed special intelligence units in support of their operations. The first was the Mobile Reconnaissance Force. These forces were taken from the regular army battalions serving in Northern Ireland, but dressed in civilian clothes, and given some special training. They operated in support of the regular army battalions. Another special intelligence unit was 14 Intelligence Company. This company was formed by volunteers who received intense special training and worked undercover in Northern Ireland doing reconnaissance and surveillance. They operated only in civilian clothes and their operations were closely coordinated with the SAS.
Peacekeeping
“The Troubles” began in Northern Ireland in 1968 as a relatively benign peaceful movement led by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) advocating for civil rights for the Catholic minority. This movement was used as a vehicle by political activists including the IRA to promote their own broader agendas. However, in 1969 it remained a relatively peaceful protest movement that had, as its objective, fairly legitimate demands regarding Catholic suffrage and representation. A disproportionate response to the movement by Northern Ireland’s Stormont government eventually escalated the political movement to an armed clash between the paramilitaries and the British security forces. In the early years of this clash, 1968 to 1971, the British government and military pursued a peacekeeping strategy with the objective being to calm the emotions of both the Catholic and Protestant communities and quickly return the country to normal non-violent political activity. This objective failed due to hesitant decision-making by the national leadership, intransigence on the part of the Northern Ireland government, and poor decisions by the British leadership.
The civil rights movement began in late 1968 with several peaceful marches. However, in October 1968 a civil rights march was staged in Londonderry without a permit from the government. The RUC was on hand and broke up the march with water cannons and police reservists. In January 1969 a more substantial march was organized by the People’s Democracy group, a more radical student-based civil rights organization. That march was attacked by loyalist mobs while the RUC stood by and failed to intervene. Over 80 marchers were injured. Marches and violence continued through 1969. During that period, the non-violent civil rights movement was failing, the Stormont government appeared unable or unwilling to promote institutional reform, and the RUC were not acting to prevent violence, and in some cases instigated it, losing any legitimacy it had had with the Catholic community. Events culminated in the summer of 1969 with annual loyalist marches. In the summer of 1969 various officials warned that they would be provocative but they were nonetheless authorized by the government. The marches were seen as triumphal by the Catholic community. In August a march by loyalists in Londonderry was interrupted with rocks and bottles thrown by Catholic youths. The RUC intervened and pursued the Catholic mob into the Catholic Bogside neighborhood of Londonderry where the police were met by rocks, petrol-bombs, and barricades. Over the course of three days, riots spread from Londonderry to Belfast and the RUC’s resources were overwhelmed. The RUC responded to the riots with mobilized police reservists and all the weapons in their armory, including armored cars and machine guns. Loyalist mobs ransacked isolated Catholic communities, burning homes and forcing the residents to flee. As the violence escalated, the Stormont government was forced to call on London to authorize the British Army to support the police. On August 15, 1969, the army was ordered to Northern Ireland.
The British Army arrived in Northern Ireland with no strategy and little knowledge of the local situation. The Catholic community’s perception of events in the summer of 1969 was that it was being attacked physically by the loyalist majority, that the Stormont government and RUC colluded in the attacks, and that the likelihood of political reform was remote. The Protestant community’s perception of the situation was vastly different. Loyalists believed that the Catholic community and the IRA had embarked on the first step in a campaign to bring down the government, they also believed the Stormont government was ineffective, and local loyalist paramilitaries were the only alternative to stop the continued chaos perpetrated by the Catholics. The objective of British Army operations was to separate the two sides, to provide security, and allow local conditions to return to normal. The army was welcomed by the minority Catholic community and perceived as protectors of the minority from the large hostile Protestant mobs. The only problems with the British Army’s plan was there was no political strategy designed to remove the grievances of the minority community, and they were not legally neutral in the conflict – ultimately the army was legally and politically allied with the Stormont government and the Protestant majority.
To this point in the conflict, the summer of 1969, the IRA had not taken an active role in the violence that had occurred. That violence resulted in seven deaths and was perpetrated mostly by unorganized Catholic youth on one side, and much better organized loyalists, including the RUC, and the notorious RUC reservists, the B Specials, on the other. For their lack of involvement, the IRA was chastised and ridiculed by both communities. The slogan “IRA – I ran away,” was used to taunt the IRA. These events highlighted divisions within the IRA between those who saw the organization primarily as a political organization and those who saw it as an army. Ultimately, the latter group split from the original and formed the Provisional IRA, whose initial objective was to provide organized armed resistance on behalf of the Catholic community in response to the type of rioting that occurred in the summer of 1969.
For its part, the British Army was largely successful in bringing the violence under control through the remainder of 1969. Both sides respected the army’s presence, and the army established informal relationships with leaders in both communities in order to limit misunderstandings and achieve some cooperation toward a peaceful common goal. Checkpoints and army barriers were established to keep the two communities separate. Army operations concentrated in the most potentially volatile areas: Londonderry and Belfast.
As 1969 rolled over into 1970 it seemed that the initial deployment of the army was successful. However, the army had no control over, and little influence on, national politics in London, or even more importantly, with the Northern Ireland Stormont government. Though the army perceived its mission as a neutral peacekeeper between the two sectarian communities, in reality the reason for the army’s deployment was to support the police activities of the Stormont government. Thus, the army was legally not a neutral player but rather an extension of the British government, and, more important, also an extension of the sectarian Stormont government. This political situation quickly undermined the army’s position relative to the Catholic community as a protector of the minority.
Through 1970 tensions increased between the two Northern Irish communities. The Northern Ireland government was not able to reform to meet the legitimate demands of the Catholic community. The Catholic community protested the lack of reform. Protestant agitators pressed the government to meet protests with force. The British government refused to intervene decisively and in 1970 the British national elections brought in a new governing party with a more conservative policy toward the situation in Northern Ireland. Finally, the PIRA became active and assumed the role of protector of the Catholic community. In June riots occurred in Belfast in which the British Army did not intervene. The PIRA and Protestant groups got into a gun battle in which six people were killed. In response to the rioting and violence in Belfast the British Army imposed a curfew on the Catholic Falls Road neighborhood of Belfast and conducted extensive house-to-house searches for PIRA members and weapons. The searches turned up numerous weapons but were conducted in a completely arb
itrary manner, destroying property and belongings, and totally alienating the Catholic community. The curfew and search broke the trust between the army and the minority community. In 1970 the PIRA began its first bombing campaign using homemade bombs to intimidate the Protestant community and register its displeasure with government policy. Numerous bombers were killed in the act of making and in placing the bombs. The bombing campaign was not very effective and bombing had not yet become the main weapon of the PIRA.
Counterinsurgency
The sectarian violence escalated in 1971 as the PIRA took the offensive against the British Army and the Stormont government. The first British soldier killed in the conflict was shot by a PIRA sniper in February of that year. Through the year, the PIRA steadily stepped up attacks against the British Army and the Protestant community. Rioting broke out frequently in response to British Army searches for weapons and PIRA members. The confrontations between the British Army, the Catholic community and the PIRA became increasingly violent. Another deliberate bombing effort was made by the PIRA beginning in March 1971. This one was very effective. By August the PIRA had detonated over 300 explosive devices and injured over 100 individuals, most of them civilians. Over the course of 1971 the death toll steadily mounted: 88 civilians were killed; 98 suspected members of the IRA and associated republican groups died; 21 members of loyalist paramilitary groups were killed; and 45 members of the security forces (including the British Army and the RUC) were killed in operations.
PIRA operations began to take on a particularly brutal character in 1971. Catholic girlfriends of British soldiers were abducted and tarred and feathered. In March three young off-duty British soldiers were lured from a pub on the promise of attending a party and meeting girls. They were abducted, taken to a remote roadside, and executed by a pistol shot to the head. In December a prominent Protestant politician was assassinated in his home by the IRA. A concentrated PIRA bombing campaign in the summer of 1971 saw a series of 20 bombs detonated in heavily trafficked areas of Belfast over a 12-hour period. Not all of the violence, however, was waged by the republican paramilitaries. The loyalist paramilitaries were very active throughout 1971 as well, and on December 4 detonated a bomb in McGurk’s Bar in Belfast killing 17, and injuring another 17. It was the worst single bombing attack of the entire conflict and the target was not affiliated with the IRA. The frequency and brutality of the violence of 1971 led to one of the most detrimental and controversial operational decisions of the conflict: the British government’s decision to implement internment.
Political pressure from the Protestant civilian population on the Stormont government to take decisive action against the PIRA increased steadily and significantly throughout 1971. The options for the government were somewhat limited. The British Army and the RUC were already fully deployed and taking aggressive measures against the republican paramilitaries. The final option was the internment of suspected paramilitary members. This tactic – mass arrests and confinement of known or suspected PIRA members –had been used with great success against the IRA in the 1950s. The national government gave Stormont permission to use the British Army to execute internment over the objections of both the army and the RUC. The objections, however, were because of a lack of preparation rather than a policy disagreement. Thus, on August 9, 1971, the British Army and the RUC conducted raids all across Northern Ireland as part of Operation Demetrius, to arrest and detain without trial suspected members of paramilitary groups.
The internment policy failed both as a tactic and as a strategy for numerous reasons. Tactically the operation was largely a failure. The intelligence files outlining the organization of the republican paramilitaries were hopelessly out of date. Thus, very few of the 342 people arrested in the initial raids were actually active paramilitaries. The IRA claimed that virtually none of its people were arrested. Word of the impending raids had leaked and many paramilitary leaders went into hiding. Over 100 designated arrestees escaped the British net. No Protestant paramilitary members were targets, thus the raids appeared purely sectarian. The response of the Catholic community was completely unanticipated. All of Northern Ireland erupted in some of the most intense violence of the entire conflict: over 7,000 Catholics fled their homes; a few thousand Protestants did likewise, burning their homes to the ground as they fled; thousands of cars were looted and burned; hundreds of people were injured; and 24 people were killed. The death toll included two British Army soldiers, two IRA members, and 14 Catholic civilians and six Protestant civilians. A Catholic priest was shot and killed by the British Army as he was administering the last rites to a dying man in the street. Catholic relations with the British government and the Protestant community reached a new low. Over the remaining months of 1971 the violence continued unabated, and would increase in intensity into 1972.
The results of internment were even more devastating for British strategy in Northern Ireland. In addition to local conditions worsening, British policy was internationally condemned. Incarceration without trial, particularly erroneous incarceration, was offensive to Britain’s European neighbors. International support for the Catholic cause increased tremendously. Harsh interrogation techniques also brought international condemnation and accusations of torture and human rights violations from the international community. The Republic of Ireland was brought firmly into the conflict on the side of the Catholic community as over 2,000 Northern Irish Catholics fled as refugees across the border, and mobs in Dublin burned the British embassy to the ground. The internment policy brought almost no tactical gains to the British but caused huge tactical and operational problems as violence escalated. It also focused international attention and condemnation on the internment policy specifically and Britain’s overall policy in Ireland in general. Finally it became a rallying cry for the Catholic minority to further resist British and Protestant rule, and proved to be a huge boon to IRA recruiting and popularity among the Catholic population.
The conflict in Northern Ireland entered its fourth year in the midst of an accelerating cycle of attack and counterattack involving republican paramilitaries, loyalist paramilitaries, and the security forces, with the civilian population trapped between the combatants. While the violence accelerated, Catholic protest marches against the injustice of both Stormont and British policy continued unabated. These marches, however, had subtly changed in purpose. While in 1968 and 1969 their primary purpose was to highlight the legitimate grievances of the Catholic minority in a non-violent manner, they now became an important tool of the republican paramilitaries. The marches were designed to create confrontation with security forces. Under the cloak of these confrontations the PIRA could attack the security forces and provoke a violent response. This created the perception of a Catholic community closely tied to the IRA in common cause against the security forces, which gained for the PIRA the aura of defending the community against aggressors, and facilitated IRA recruiting.
The major confrontation between the British Army and the Catholic community over internment occurred in January 1972 and became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The event began as a Catholic civil rights march in Londonderry on January 30, 1972. British troops deployed to control and contain the protests, PIRA members were present within the protest group, and as violence escalated to throwing rocks at the army the army responded by opening fire. Control of the British soldiers, mostly members of the British Army elite parachute regiment, broke down and they opened fire on the crowd and killed 14 civilian protestors, of whom seven were teenagers. In addition 13 others were wounded by army fire. Extensive investigation of the incident could not provide evidence that the IRA fired on the British troops first, or that the marchers were unusually provocative. The event provided increased impetus to the sectarian division of the population and the intransigence of both sides. It also further increased the attractiveness of the IRA among the general Catholic population and perpetuated the cycle of escalating violence that began in 1971. Also, prompted by “Bloody Sunda
y,” the British government under Prime Minister Edward Heath lost confidence in the Stormont government to solve the security situation and reform the political situation. In March 1972 the British government dissolved the Northern Ireland parliament and installed direct rule of the country from London.
The IRA’s response to “Bloody Sunday” was “Bloody Friday,” on July 21, 1972. In an 80-minute period the PIRA exploded 22 bombs across Belfast, killing nine people and wounding 130. Most of the killed and injured were innocent civilians. The “Bloody Friday” bombings were part of an extensive bombing campaign that saw over 1,300 bombings over the course of the year. The response of the British government was Operation Motorman, designed to restore government control of and presence in Catholic neighborhoods which had been barricaded since 1970, and thus eliminate sanctuaries for the PIRA.
Operation Motorman was a massive military operation that involved 29 British Army battalions and over 25,000 troops. The army moved into Catholic neighborhoods in the early hours of July 31, 1972, against rock- and petrol-bomb throwing mobs. However, the size and speed of the operation rapidly intimidated the Catholic community and the British Army was firmly in control of the areas by nightfall. The IRA chose not to resist the operation and instead focused on ensuring that its leadership escaped capture. The British Army shot four people in the course of the operation, all in Londonderry, killing one known IRA member and one civilian, and wounding two civilians. During the course of the operation the army deployed several engineer combat vehicles to crush barricades. This was the only time during the conflict that the British deployed heavily armored combat vehicles to Northern Ireland. After opening up the Catholic neighborhoods, the army did not leave. Instead, it built protected patrol bases in the republican enclaves to ensure that the neighborhoods were firmly and permanently under government control. Operation Motorman was successful in permanently restricting the PIRA’s freedom of movement in Northern Ireland, eliminating what were sanctuaries from police and army interference and observation, and increasing the army’s and the police’s ability to gather intelligence. Notwithstanding the success of Operation Motorman, 1972 was the most violent year of the entire campaign with a total of 479 people losing their lives.