by Peter Taylor
When Steele arrived in Northern Ireland, the situation was bleak. The reforms had not stopped the violence nor prevented thousands of Catholics from giving their support to the IRA. The army may have thought it was winning the war with an increasing number of arrests and seizures of weapons and explosives but its efforts seemed to have had only a marginal impact on the IRA. Most worrying of all for Steele and his boss, Howard Smith, and the other officials around them, was the perception that the ‘Brits’ had lent their army to Stormont to carry out the Protestants’ bidding. It was a perception held not just in the nationalist community but in the world at large, in particular across the Atlantic. ‘It was assumed this was with the blessing of the British Government, which it certainly wasn’t, and so indirectly we got blamed for activities that we in fact were critical of.’
It became clear towards the end of 1971 that the answer was to do what the Wilson Government had fatally failed to do in August 1969, and that was to suspend the Stormont parliament and introduce Direct Rule from Westminster. The ‘Brits’ and not the ‘Prods’ would then be running the province. Steele dismissed the traditional arguments against Direct Rule that had always been wheeled out before: that there would be uproar in Ulster and Protestants would never wear it; that they would see it as the first step on the road to a united Ireland; that officials could never persuade Ministers; and that there would be convulsions in the Conservative and Unionist Party, whose name clearly indicated the umbilical link between the two. Still he harboured doubts, given the huge risks involved in taking a step that would turn fifty years of history on its head. Steele was finally reassured, however, that it would be politically possible when he was having a drink one evening with a senior official from the Northern Ireland civil service and Philip Woodfield, the civil servant from the Home Office with special responsibility for Northern Ireland. The conversation inevitably let to a discussion about what to do next. The eminent Northern Ireland civil servant stunned his companions when he told them that Westminster would have to bring in Direct Rule. It was music to Steele’s ears. ‘When a senior Northern Ireland civil servant with years of working for a unionist Government, who was himself a “Prod” and a unionist, says this, then you start sitting up and taking notice,’ he said. Direct Rule seemed the only way forward, and by far the best way of making a fresh start. The problem was when to do it.
Chapter Seven
‘Bloody Sunday’ – The Build-up
August 1971–January 1972
Although Kitson’s Belfast battalions and 1 Para seemed to have Belfast under control in the sense that it had been made robustly clear that the IRA would not be allowed to establish ‘no-go’ areas anywhere in the city, the situation seventy miles away in Derry was very different. Here, in what was known as ‘Free Derry’, barricades had become an established feature on the shattered landscape and remained firmly in place. By the end of 1971, there were twenty-nine of them, sixteen of which were impassable even to the army’s one-ton armoured vehicles.1 Both the Provisional and the Official IRA flourished behind them, flaunting themselves for the media by staging roadblocks with masked men and guns. Unionists were outraged as the IRA cocked a snook at the Queen in a part of Her Kingdom where Her writ did not run. Local businessmen, most of them unionists, who owned the shops and offices in the city centre also grew increasingly angry as the daily tea-time confrontation between the local hooligans and the army grew ever closer to their premises. The rendezvous for the afternoon ritual, at the point where William Street runs down from the Creggan into the city centre, was known as ‘aggro corner’. Shops were also being fire-bombed with small incendiary devices concealed in bags and carried by junior IRA foot soldiers who easily evaded army detection and planted them in places likely to cause maximum destruction. The army was convinced that shoppers from the Bogside and Creggan estates often connived in the process. Derry’s mainly Protestant business community calculated that the rioting and disorder had already caused £4 million worth of damage and now, as it came ever closer to the commercial heart of the city, they feared it would soon cost much more. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilford and his men in Belfast saw the tea-time ritual on the television and watched in horror.
I wasn’t pleased at all that British soldiers could line up behind plastic shields and just stand there and let people throw rocks at them and do nothing whatsover about it. We thought it was a peculiar way for soldiers to behave. They just stood there in the road like Aunt Sallies and never went forward. It was quite horrifying. I actually said publicly that my soldiers were not going to act as Aunt Sallies. Ever! We did not carry shields. We did not wear cricket pads. As far as I was concerned, it was not a game of cricket that we were indulging in.2
To Wilford’s disgust, he found there was actually a demarcation line between the army that was protecting the city centre and the ‘Derry Young Hooligans’, the DYH in army shorthand, who made their tea-time sorties from Free Derry. It was literally a series of big, black dots on the military map of the city and was known as ‘the containment line’. When Wilford’s Adjutant first set eyes on it, he was appalled. There were no maps in Belfast with big, black dots. ‘On one side of the line were the nationalist areas where people did what they wanted. The line said, “We stop them here.” The map was a clear statement of that philosophy.’
The army had pursued a policy of containment since internment in the hope that, after the supposed removal of republican troublemakers from the streets, things would quieten down and the ‘moderate’ nationalists represented in Derry by John Hume and the SDLP would prevail. The situation was delicately poised. Hume and his colleagues had maintained their support within the nationalist community in the city by withdrawing from the Stormont parliament after the army had shot dead two local young men, Seamus Cusack (28) and Desmond Beattie (19), on 8 July 1971 during rioting in the Bogside.3 In conflicting accounts that were to become all too familiar in the years ahead, the army said they were gunmen and local people said they were not. For Hume to have acted otherwise would have destroyed his credibility and jeopardized his power base. The army says the situation ‘changed overnight’ and dates the beginning of the IRA’s campaign in Derry from that point. Prior to that, it regarded the IRA in the city as ‘quiescent’.4
A month later, on 10 August, the day after internment, an IRA sniper on the Creggan estate shot dead Bombardier Paul Challenor (22) of the Royal Horse Artillery. He was the IRA’s first army ‘kill’ in Derry. His wife had given birth to their first child a month earlier. His mother sent a bitter open letter via her local paper to the people of Northern Ireland. ‘You say you are all Christians,’ she wrote. ‘For God’s sake start acting like Christians. I wish you could see the grief that my son’s death has caused in my house and in his wife’s home.’5 Her words would have echoed the feelings of many people in England.
Ten days after the killing of Bombardier Challenor, the GOC, Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Tuzo, and his Commander Land Forces, Northern Ireland, Major-General Robert Ford, visited Derry with the UK Representative at Stormont, Howard Smith. It was a high-powered ‘Brit’ military and political delegation to review the situation in the city and see if they could prevent it becoming like Belfast where the IRA was doing most of its killing. They met a group of local ‘moderate’ nationalists opposed to violence, and agreed to lower the military profile in the city in the hope that ‘moderate opinion would win the day’. There were to be no routine army patrols in the Bogside and Creggan and no military action unless the army was attacked or soldiers had to make arrests or carry out searches. There was a tacit understanding that this period of ‘détente’ would last about a month. In fact it lasted until mid-November. But its expectations were not fulfilled. In the five months between the killing of Cusack and Beattie and mid-December 1971, the army in Derry lost 7 soldiers and suffered 15 casualties; it had 1,932 rounds fired at it by the IRA and fired 364 rounds in return; it faced 180 nail bombs and had to deal with 211 explosions.6
Clearly ‘détente’ was not working and, according to Major-General Ford, it had only ‘enabled the extremists to increase their hold on the Catholic community and to recruit and train more volunteers’. On 14 December 1971, Ford wrote a remarkable memorandum, marked ‘Secret’, to his boss, Lieutenant-General Tuzo. He copied it to nine other senior military personnel in the province, including the army’s Director of Intelligence, so that the military hierarchy was left in no doubt about his feelings. It was the bleakest of assessments of the situation in Derry at the end of 1971 and provides a chillingly authentic insight into the British military mind at this vital juncture in the conflict. He wrote: ‘At present neither the RUC nor the military have control of the Bogside and Creggan areas, law and order are not being effectively maintained and the Security Forces now face an entirely hostile Catholic community numbering 33,000 in these two areas alone.’7
Ford calculated that the opposition consisted of around 500 ‘hooligans’, with a hard core of around 250, and 100 IRA men, around 40 of whom were active gunmen. He said it had become almost impossible for the army to achieve the element of surprise as there were now ‘sentries and searchlights on all major obstructions during hours of darkness and an efficient alarm system of sirens, hooters and car horns’. Ford’s assessment was correct: the IRA had not been idle during the period of ‘détente’.
Given that the likelihood of ‘moderate’ nationalists overcoming this ‘extremist and revolutionary element’ was zero, Ford concluded that military action was required ‘to establish control and stability and enable the political situation to evolve’. He outlined three options. The first was to revert to the previous policy of containment but with a more offensive attitude. This meant keeping fingers crossed that somehow the moderates would prevail and normality would at some stage be restored. There were, however, considerable disadvantages to this not quite so ‘softly, softly’ approach. It would encourage the IRA, sap army morale and anger Stormont and the local Protestants. But above all, it would not restore law and order but simply continue the stalemate.
The second option, now that an extra Battalion was available, was a tougher approach, involving ‘arrest, search and barricade-clearance operations interspersed with fighting patrols’. Its advantages were that it broke the stalemate, put pressure on the gunmen, improved morale and ‘mollified the local Protestant hard-liners’. Its disadvantages were that it did not restore law and order since the army would have no permanent presence in the Bogside and Creggan which were still dominated by the IRA; but above all, given the ineffectiveness of baton rounds and the problems caused by CS gas, it made the use of ‘ball ammunition’, i.e., bullets, ‘more likely’ in situations where a few soldiers are ‘assaulted by organized mobs numbered in hundreds. This in turn raises the question of opening fire on “unarmed” mobs, whose strength lies not in fire-power, but in numbers and brick power.’ Ford had no illusions about the mood of the Bogside and Creggan. ‘There are indications that the hate, fear and distrust felt by the Catholic community for the security forces is deeper now than at any time during the current campaign.’
The third option was draconian and would have been welcomed by local Protestants and those in the military who wanted to get stuck in and show the IRA who was really in control. This envisaged a military thrust across the ‘containment line’, penetration of the hostile areas and the establishment of a permanent army presence with sufficient numbers to ensure the rapid restoration of law and order in the Bogside and Creggan. The advantages were self-evident, with the bonus that in due course the population might come to regard the army as ‘the lesser of two evils and co-operate in the destruction of the IRA’. The disadvantages, however, were frightening and, in the light of what was to happen, uncannily prophetic. ‘The risk of casualties is high and apart from gunmen or bombers, so-called unarmed rioters, possibly teenagers, are certain to be shot in the initial phases. Much will be made of the invasion of Derry and the slaughter of the innocent.’ Because of the huge risks involved, Ford emphasized that the decision to go for this third option would have to be an ‘entirely political one’. In his view, although it was ‘the correct military solution to the problem of restoring law and order in Londonderry, the drawbacks are so serious that it should not be implemented in the present circumstances’. It is important to note that Ford ruled it out. A week later, Lieutenant-General Tuzo said that he was quietly confident of defeating the IRA.8
Ford’s controversial assessment concluded with his personal recommendation that, despite all its shortcomings, the first option, suitably beefed-up, was the most sensible course, if not the most militarily desirable. He called it ‘course 1 ½’. This meant that the stalemate would continue and no one would be happy except the IRA. The assessment would have come as no surprise to Prime Minister Heath, who had received a similar briefing in October, outlining almost identical options, from General Sir Michael Carver, the Chief of the General Staff of the army at the Ministry of Defence in London. Carver informed Heath that ‘it may become imperative to go into the Bogside and root out the terrorists and the hooligans’ but warned that ‘the timing, political implications and local reaction to such an operation would have to be carefully judged’.9
On 23 December, Heath paid a surprise ten-hour visit to Northern Ireland and in his Christmas message, broadcast on local television, assured the people of Northern Ireland of Britain’s determination to end the violence.10 In his Christmas message, Brian Faulkner echoed Heath by giving ‘a guarantee that there will be no let-up whatsoever in the drive that is under way to combat the terrorists’. Thus by the end of 1971, there is no doubt that the army was at least contemplating draconian measures to restore law and order in Derry and the governments at Westminster and Stormont knew of them. On 29 December, another soldier, Richard Ham (20), a gunner from the Royal Artillery, was shot dead by an IRA sniper whilst on foot patrol in Derry. His mother had offered to buy him out of the army several times, but he had refused.11
Ford visited Derry again on 7 January 1972 and reported back to Tuzo in an even more pessimistic memo marked ‘PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL’. He had met Brigadier Andrew MacLellan, the Commander of 8 Brigade that covers the Derry area, Lieutenant-Colonel James Ferguson, the Commanding Officer of the 22nd Light Air Defence Regiment, Royal Artillery, which covered the Bogside, and Chief Superintendent Frank Lagan, the senior RUC officer in charge of the city. Lagan was a Catholic and as such nearly unique in the upper echelons of the almost exclusively Protestant force. Lagan and the generals did not always see eye-to-eye. Lagan knew Derry and its people like the back of his hand. The generals knew their maps.
Ford was ‘disturbed’ by the attitude he encountered at the meeting.12 They told him that there had been no let-up in the daily ‘yobbo’ activity and, more worryingly, ‘The Front’ of teenage arsonists was pushing further forward and even more streets and shops would ‘go up’ unless there was a change in military policy. Ford was not pleased to hear from his commanders that no foot or vehicle patrols were operating around the entrance to the Bogside lest they present themselves as targets for snipers from the Rossville Flats, the huge blocks that dominate the entrance to the Bogside. He was told that even if soldiers made sorties in the army’s armoured personnel carriers (APCs), they ran the risk of being surrounded by ‘yobbos’, forced to dismount, and becoming sitting ducks for snipers once again. Clearly the first ‘option’ that Ford had favoured a few weeks earlier did not appear to be working.
Ford also met the city centre traders who clearly gave him an earful in terms of ‘the usual pessimistic message’. Under the circumstances, there was no reason for the message to be otherwise. He tried to soothe them ‘with the usual encouraging talk about the province as a whole’ but seems to have made little headway. He came away with their message ringing in his ears. ‘… they want as a minimum the Rossville Flats cleared (5,000 people live in them and a soldier has never entered them in the history of Londonderry) and ideally the
Creggan and Bogside occupied. They also wanted curfews and shooting on sight.’
Ford told Tuzo that it was clear from his visit to Derry that although the situation was difficult, it could be dealt with ‘using normal I.S. [Internal Security] methods and equipment’. There was one problem, however, that he feared might not be susceptible to normal I.S. methods, at least not those used in the United Kingdom. He then wrote the following extraordinary two paragraphs. The first, in a startling admission, outlined the day-to-day reality the army faced.
However, the Londonderry situation is further complicated by one additional ingredient. This is the Derry Young Hooligans (DYH). Gangs of tough teenage youths permanently unemployed, have developed sophisticated tactics of brick and stone throwing, destruction and arson. Under cover of snipers from nearby buildings, they operate just beyond the hard core areas and extend the radius of anarchy by degrees into additional streets and areas. Against the DYH – described by the People’s Democracy [a left-wing student civil rights organization] as ‘Brave fighters in the Republican cause’ – the army in Londonderry is for the moment virtually incapable. This incapacity undermines our ability to deal with the gunmen and bombers and threatens what is left of law and order on the West Bank of the River Foyle.
The second paragraph dealt with the extreme and potentially explosive way of dealing with the Derry Young Hooligans.
Attempts to close with the DYH bring the troops into the killing zone of the snipers. As I understand it, the commander of a body of troops called out to restore law and order has a duty to use minimum force but also he has a duty to restore law and order. We have fulfilled the first duty but are failing in the second. I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ring leaders amongst the DYH, after clear warnings have been issued. [Author’s emphasis]
