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Because these methods had been part of the army’s interrogation training for almost two decades and were never subject to any political approval, Ministers almost certainly knew nothing about them and therefore were not in a position to authorize them or otherwise.6 No doubt military intelligence chiefs thought that since they had been in use for years and proved highly effective, there was no reason to question their use in Northern Ireland. There is no indication that the fact ever occurred to them that the province was part of the United Kingdom and not some far-flung outpost of Empire.
The English Intelligence Centre, a secret army establishment then situated at Maresfield at the edge of the Ashdown Forest in Sussex, was the storehouse of intelligence principles and practice where ‘in-depth’ interrogation and the Five Techniques were taught.7 In April 1971, the month that echoed to the sound of 38 explosions signalling that the IRA was stepping up its bombing campaign, army officers from the English Intelligence Centre went to Belfast for the secret security seminar in which they explained to their RUC colleagues how the strict rules under which policemen had traditionally conducted interrogations could be relaxed. I understand that despite what has been reported, the Five Techniques were not actually taught. The plan was for RUC Special Branch officers to carry out the actual interrogations with military intelligence officers from the Centre present in the control room throughout them.8 The Five Techniques themselves were administered by military intelligence officers with some assistance from uniformed policemen. All the army and police now required from the Government was the green light for internment. As the security situation deteriorated through the spring and early summer, the question was not whether internment would be introduced but when.
By the beginning of August 1971, ten soldiers and five policemen had been killed but the statistic does not reflect the anarchy that unionists believed the IRA was causing. Since the beginning of the year, there had been over 300 explosions, 320 shooting incidents and over 600 people treated in hospital for injuries.9 Faulkner had persuaded the British Government of the need for internment, and once that was done, the operation was almost a fait accompli. The military, however, and some members of Special Branch remained sceptical, given the shortcomings of the available intelligence. Although the IRA leaders were known (Farrar-Hockley’s accusatory finger having driven several into hiding), for internment to be successful, the targeted suspects had to be sleeping peacefully in their beds when the army came calling, totally oblivious to the fact or timing of the internment swoop.
It was a fond hope. ‘Operation Demetrius’ was to be carried out by the army not the police. The RUC were to supply the suspects’ names and addresses and 3,000 troops were going to ring their bells or knock on – or kick in – their doors. The army being the army, meticulous plans had to be laid and the operation rehearsed as thoroughly and clandestinely as possible. Although this did not involve soldiers tip-toeing through the night and making phantom knocks on doors, it did entail a degree of unaccustomed movement. The IRA, who had expected internment to be introduced five months ago when the three Scottish soldiers were killed, knew it was only a matter of time and were watching the army’s every move.
And its moves were hardly subtle. On 23 and 28 July the army mounted a number of extensive search operations, arresting about 90 suspects,10 with the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, declaring that a state of ‘open war’ now existed between the IRA and the British army, Questioned about the possibility of internment, Maudling said, not surprisingly, that no advance notice would be given.11 ‘Paul’ was astonished that the army made its intentions so obvious. ‘They went through a series of dry runs as it were. The leaders of the Provisionals were all old-time IRA personnel and they watched all the signs and were able to analyse them. They knew exactly what was happening and almost down to the day. Hence all the leaders were not rounded up.’
Brendan Hughes, who was to become the IRA’s Belfast Brigade commander, had seen all the warning signs. At the time of internment he was a senior member of ‘D’ company of the Provisionals 2nd Battalion that covered the Lower Falls. Because of his swarthy complexion, he was known as ‘Darkie’. Like most of his associates in the IRA leadership, he did not need telling that the swoop was coming. ‘The military operations carried out by the IRA were increasing daily and everyone was talking about the possibility of internment,’ he told me. ‘Ten days before it came in, the British army swamped a lot of areas in West Belfast and to us it looked like an information-gathering operation.’
At 4.15 a.m. on Monday 9 August, 3,000 troops swooped on nationalist areas throughout the province. The deafening sound of dustbin lids echoed round Belfast as women warned their menfolk that the army was coming and internment was in. Three hundred and forty-two republican suspects were arrested and, critically, not one Protestant. There were no Protestant names on the Special Branch lists despite the fact that the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force had been active, although not on a scale comparable with the IRA. Farrar-Hockley offers a simple explanation. ‘It was a reflection of the fact that at many levels and in many branches in those days within the Royal Ulster Constabulary there were people who were partial to one extent or another, in many cases, to a considerable extent. I hasten to say that that was not true at the top level.’ In other words, many rank-and-file members of the RUC saw themselves as being on the same side as the Protestants.
Internment, as nationalists justifiably pointed out, was entirely onesided. Any credible claim the ‘Brits’ still had to being even-handed was shattered in the small hours of that morning. Unionists were jubilant at the sight of scores of suspected terrorists being marched off to the Long Kesh internment camp that was now ready and waiting. The problem was that most of those arrested were the wrong people (105 suspects were released within two days)12 and the IRA’s leaders had gone. To many of the soldiers who carried it out, the whole operation was a fiasco. Brian, the Lieutenant-Colonel who commanded the 1st Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment, did not mince his words:
It was a complete disaster. It turned a large number of the nationalist population, who at that time had been firmly on our side and very sensibly so, against us. To my simple mind, as a regimental soldier, it was lunacy. What it did was put a few people inside who probably didn’t matter very much and it didn’t intern the people who did matter. It also meant that what little information we were getting at that time just totally dried up. The nationalist population didn’t trust the security forces any more and, to my mind, in any internal security operation – and that’s what Northern Ireland was – hearts and minds are the most important part of it. And internment destroyed it.
Kitson himself supported the theory of internment on the grounds that it took bad men who could not be charged off the streets but he believed that it had to be carried out with extreme care and precision. Clearly the way it was conducted in August 1971 would not have met those criteria. He is said to have been amazed at the timing and at the impractical and ridiculous way in which it was carried out. At the time of the operation, Kitson himself was on holiday and appears to have been given an assurance that nothing would happen until he was back in the province. For whatever reason, perhaps because of the intense political pressure from Stormont, any assurance that may have been given was not kept. Kitson and his senior officers resented being asked to dance to the unionist tune when it risked undermining what they were trying to do. Alienating the whole nationalist community by taking away their fathers and sons in the small hours of the morning and locking them up without charge did not fit in with Kitson’s strategy.
Sir Robert Andrew, who later became Permanent Under Secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, was Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary, Lord Carrington, at the time of internment. He has no doubt that it was political pressure from Brian Faulkner and the Stormont Government that persuaded a reluctant British Government and army to act in the draconian way that it did.
I think most people in Whitehal
l who were involved had grave doubts about it. Possibly if the British Government had been in direct control, as we were of course a little bit later on, it wouldn’t have happened. The biggest problem was what do you do with these people once you’ve arrested them. By definition, you haven’t got evidence which would stand up in a court of law so you can’t bring them to trial. You either have to keep them inside indefinitely, which would be the subject of much criticism, or eventually you have to let them go as they had to do in the end. So I think the policy was a failure.
But there was a plan within a plan, known only to a tiny handful of people, which was to cause even greater political embarrassment to the Government and alienate the nationalist community even more. The lessons of April’s secret security seminar were put into practice. Eleven IRA suspects were singled out for special in-depth interrogation at secret centres within British army bases. Even thirty years after the event, it is extraordinarily difficult to pin down who was responsible for making the decision and then carrying it out. Those I spoke to either said they did not know it was happening or, if they did, they were not responsible for it. The buck is passed with alacrity. It is not surprising as the way suspects were treated during ‘in-depth’ interrogation in the wake of internment remains, for the ‘Brits’, one of the most politically embarrassing episodes in the whole of the conflict.
The eleven specially selected detainees became colloquially known as the ‘guinea pigs’ and were subjected to the Five Techniques. The only sustenance they received during their ordeal was a chunk of bread and a pint of water every six hours.13 They were made to stand against the wall for a total of 245 hours, with each period lasting between four and six hours.14 There were, however, rules laid down by the Government in a general Directive as to what was and was not permissible during interrogation. ‘Violence to life and person, in particular mutilation, cruel treatment and torture’ were prohibited, as were ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment’. On paper that all sounds liberal and humane but the application of those principles was called into question by the qualification that followed. ‘The precise application of these general rules is inevitably to some extent a matter of judgement on the part of those immediately responsible for the operations in question.’15 It was tantamount to giving interrogators carte blanche to interpret the rules as they saw fit. Given the increasingly savage nature of the IRA’s campaign, it is not surprising that the interpretation was generous. To the ‘Brits’ in the violent summer of 1971, the end clearly justified the means.
Farrar-Hockley, who was himself a prisoner of war in North Korea, does not subscribe to the view that internment was a disaster and counterproductive. He and the GOC, Sir Harry Tuzo, had originally been in favour of selective internment: picking up certain individuals on whom there was good intelligence, interning them for anything between six weeks and six months, and then letting them out and taking in a fresh batch of suspects. He believes the idea was rejected ‘for political reasons’. Although he draws the line at the use of some methods, he makes no apology for subjecting the enemy suspects to rigorous interrogation. ‘The IRA call themselves soldiers and say they’re carrying out warfare so they must be prepared to be frightened if they’re captured and interrogated.’ He also refutes the allegation that no intelligence was gained and that everything about internment was bad. ‘The dozen or so people who were taken, and not by any means the most junior in the ranks of the IRA, were described by those who were carrying out interrogations as “singing like canaries”. It’s something I’ve seen in other operational situations across the world. People were shaken and shocked out of their environment and for one reason or another they begin talking and can’t be stopped. So in that sense a lot of very good information, though of course of relatively short-term value, was obtained.’
Liam Shannon, a Belfast republican, was subjected to the Five Techniques two months after internment. He was arrested by an army foot patrol at about 10 p.m. on the evening of 9 October 1971 as he was walking home with his wife. He was taken to Springfield Road police station and then to Girdwood Park, the Territorial Army centre that was used as the Belfast Regional Holding Centre for the detainees. He was eventually driven to Palace Barracks, Holywood, just outside the city, where he was kept for 48 hours. There he says he received ‘continual beatings’. He was then taken back to Belfast to Crumlin Road gaol where he was marched into the Governor’s office and given ‘a removal order’ which Shannon interpreted to mean that he could be removed at any time to a place where his presence may thought to be ‘in the interests of justice’. He was then put into a helicopter and taken away for in-depth interrogation.
The helicopter landed at what Shannon thought was some kind of military installation. He was examined by ‘a man in a white coat’ whom he assumed to be a doctor and then given an outsize boiler suit to put on. He told the doctor that he had already been quite badly beaten since his arrest and showed him the bruising on his back and legs. After this ‘two athletic looking chaps in jeans, T-shirts and trainers’ came into the room and made him stand spread-eagled against a wall with a hood on his head. They would almost certainly have been soldiers as the army did the softening-up whilst the RUC carried out the interrogations. I asked Shannon how long he had been made to stand in this position.
With this type of interrogation, you just start to go off your head. Time means nothing. The tiredness was greater than anything else. I collapsed several times because I couldn’t stand it any longer. I was bundled against the wall again. I received a few slaps. I tried to remonstrate with the people but to no avail. The hood was tied tightly and securely round my neck. It was like a canvas bag and the strings were tied round the epaulettes [of the boiler suit]. Then they started the Five Techniques. The ‘white noise’ I can only describe to be like compressed air or steam hissing from a pipe. The degree varied from time to time. Sometimes it was soft and at other times it got very loud, almost ear-piercing. It was terrible. You completely lost it altogether.
Shannon says that the only time the hood was removed was for the actual interrogations which he described as being like ‘something you see in films about the KGB’.
This massive bright light was shone in your face. The hood was pulled off and there was this person behind a desk. You were sitting on a chair, you couldn’t move, this bright light was cutting the eyes out of you. They then fired questions and allegations at you.
What sort of questions did they ask?
Was I in the IRA? Who did I know in the IRA? What did I do? Did I know where guns or bombs were? All these questions were just spat at you.
Shannon said it was impossible to tell who his interrogators were as the lights were so dazzling when the hood was off. I asked him about their accents. He remembers that some were English and others were Irish. The hood was then put back on and he was made to stand against the wall again. The process was repeated for what Shannon says was seven days.
At the end, I was completely disorientated. I didn’t know where I was or how long I’d been there or anything else. The first thing I remember was them bringing me back into a room and removing the hood up to my nose. I was given a plastic cup of water and a slice of dry bread. That was it for the seven days. I had grown a beard within seven days inside this hood. Whether it was the heat or what I don’t know. That was my condition. The water was fantastic to drink.
Shannon says he had nothing to tell them. He was then interned. Five years later, he was awarded £25,000 compensation for his ordeal. ‘It wasn’t near what it should have been, for what they put us through,’ he said ruefully. ‘No amount of money could ever compensate for that.’
The Heath Government established an inquiry under the Ombudsman, Sir Edmund Compton, on 31 August 1971, which carried out its mission with remarkable speed given the political furore the allegations had caused. The Government had already started attacking the BBC for its reporting, which Lord Carrington described as fal
ling ‘below the standard of fairness and accuracy which we are entitled to expect’.16 The enquiry team visited Northern Ireland over the period 1 September–26 October, which means that Liam Shannon was probably being interrogated at the very time Sir Edmund and his colleagues were conducting their investigation. Cynics would say that there was no let-up in the use of the Five Techniques even though an enquiry was being conducted because the interrogators and those in authority above them knew they had nothing to fear. Fortunately for the Government, when the report was published on 16 November 1971, Compton concluded that there had not been torture or ‘physical brutality as we understand the term’. Nevertheless, he observed that there had been ‘a measure of ill-treatment’.17
The day that the Compton report was published, the Government announced a further inquiry by three Privy Counsellors under Lord Parker of Waddington to consider whether these interrogation techniques required amendment. The other Privy Counsellors were Lord Gardiner and Mr John Boyd-Carpenter. The Committee’s deliberations were equally swift and published in its report less than three months later, on 9 February 1972. It concluded that the use of the Five Techniques on eleven suspects in August 1971 after internment, and on a further two in October (one of whom would almost certainly have been Liam Shannon), had produced new information ‘as a direct result’. In other words, the Five Techniques had worked, bearing out Farrar-Hockley’s conviction that internment was not a waste of time and that internees ‘sang like canaries’. These were the ‘results’ listed by the Parker Committee.
1 The identification of a further 700 members of both IRA factions and their positions in the organizations.