The Army in Ulster

Fortnight Publications Ltd.

The Army in UlsterSource: Fortnight, No. 61 (May 4, 1973), pp. 5-7Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25544560 .

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FORTNIGH'I 5

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It is almost impossible to find out the truth about individual incidents in which Army misconduct has

been alleged. 'Eyewitnesses' in Catholic enclaves are

under pressure, or even direct threat, to back up IRA

propaganda claims. The Army press officers are also

under pressure to cover up or put the best face on

'accidents' when they occur. But each unresolved

allegation serves to bolster support and recruitment

for the terrorists. Has the time come for the Army to

adopt a different strategy in the propaganda war, as in

the real war, against Terrorism?

When the Army arrived in Derry and

Belfast in August 1969 it was openly welcomed by the Catholic population. But

senior officers warned us that the

honeymoon period could not last

indefinitely, and that any delay in

reaching a political settlement could have

serious results. The Army, it was said, was

not suited to a long term peace keeping

operation. Among all the confident

predictions from senior Army commanders

of the imminent collapse of the terrorist

campaign, this single cautious prediction

has been the only one to prove true. After

almost four years of Army occupation, and

almost two years ot almost complete

freedom to arrest and intern any person.

the IRA appears to be as strong as ever it

was in its ability to inflict bomb damage and kill individual soldiers. But the same

confident predictions continue to be

poured out by politicians and the army commanders. The time has come to ask

whether there is not some fundamental

error of strategy in the Army's approach to its job in Northern Ireland.

The get-tough-with-terrorists policy The usual answer which is given to this

kind of question is that it has been the get

tough- with-terrorism tactics adopted since

the summer of 1970 when the new lory

Government took office which have

caused all the trouble. This is probably an

accurate historical statement. The build

up in IRA strength almost certainly stems

from the dismal failure of the occupation

and curfew of the Lower Falls area in

1970. and the continuing harrassment of

Catholic enclaves in West Belfast and

Derry which persisted over the ensuing winter and spring, and culminated in the

disaster of indiscriminate internment in

August 1971. There can be little doubt and throughout this period the British

Army was the best recruiting officer the

IRA ever had, and that the internment

operation and the proven maltreatment or

torture of those arrested and interrogated

did more than any single act to build up the strength of the Provisionals.

It does not follow that a policy of

withdrawal to barracks to permit the

political settlement to get under way

would now succees as it might have done

then. The Provisional IRA was created

and given lasting strength by the Army's own tactical errors of the first two years. It

is determined to continue the battle to

force a British withdrawal, regardless of

the near certainty of a bloody

confrontation with the Protestant

extremists if they succeed. The

experiment of withdrawing from the

Bogside and Creggan, urged on the Army

by John Hume and others and given a

final political blessing by Harold Smith, the permanent UK representative in

Belfast prior to direct rule, was a dismal

failure. The IRA was strong enough by then to impose its will on the inhabitants

there, to create the no-go areas and use

them as a base for offensive operations

elsewhere. There is no reason to suppose

that the same would not happen again if

the Army did withdraw on any substantial

basis. There seems to be no real

alternative to the present policy of

intensive patrolling and selective searches,

relying on tip-offs through the confidential

phone and other forms of intelligence.



6 FRIDAY, 4th MAY, 1973

A change of tactics?

If the security war cannot simply be called off, there is a strong case for a basic

change in tactics. There is no doubt that

certain regiments, notably the Paratroops, are deliberately maintaining a tough

policy. The reports of continuing harrassment in the Ardoyne and other

areas have been backed up by reliable and

independent sources, not open to the

allegation of tacit sympathy for the Provisional propaganda machine, notably the local Labour MP, Vivian Simpson. Such behaviour may look successful.on the surface, by cowing the local population into an appearance of submission. But like

the earlier get-tough tactics it is much

more likely to strengthen the long-term prospects of the IRA by bringing in new recruits who have themselves or through their associates had first hand experience

of ill-treatment at the hands of the Army. If the Army wishes to rely on the confidential phone and other tip-offs it

must go out of its way not to risk

antagonising the non-terrorist population. A second change in tactics concerns the

use of plain clothes patrols and the

shooting of IRA suspects. There have

been a number of cases in which plain clothes patrols have been admitted to have

been responsible for the shooting of

civilians. At the inquest on December 21

into the death of McVeigh in Andersonstown on 13th May, 1972, it was

admitted that the shots were fired by Army personnel though all previous statements had laid the incident at the

hands of Protestant murder squads.

Similarly in the case of the group of taxi

drivers shot on the Glen Road on June 22nd 1972; two Army men have been

charged with illegal possession of weapons and attempted murder arising out of this

incident and are awaiting trial. Criminal

guilt is a matter for the courts, but the

actual involvement of the men does not

seem to have been denied. Cases like

this?and there are many more allegations which have not been established or

admitted either way, notably those

supposedly involving the notorious Special Air Services unit, as reported in Hihernia

and the Andersonstown News last

month?in which the legality of Army tactics is highly doubtful, only serve to

build up the strength of the terrorists.

There can be no justification for plain clothes Army personnel to tour around

troubled areas shooting suspected terrorists, which in crude terms is what

this policy involves.

The same applies to cases in which

uniformed patrols have shot admitted

terrorists. The two most notorious

incidents have been the shooting dead of Joe McCann in the Markets area in April last year, and the shooting of Edmund

O'Rawe in the Lower Falls last week.

Both were admitted to be senior IRA officers, but equally neither appears to

have been involved in offensive operations at the time. McCann was apparently

spotted walking along the street and

gunned down when he failed to stop. O'Rawe was escaping over a wall after an

Army raid, and was allegedly unarmed.

Here again the legality of shooting to kill at common law, regardless of what it says in the Yellow Card, is open to doubt. But

there is no doubt that McCann has become almost as potent a force by his

death and 'martyrdom* as he was alive.

The tactical gain of eliminating IRA officers in this way is again offset by the

longer term effects on recruitment and

replacement. The change of tactics which these

arguments suggest is simply this, that the idea of defeating the IRA by rounding up

or otherwise 'disposing of all its officers is

self-defeating. The cost in terms of

communal antagonism of incidents like

those mentioned, which the policy of

defeating the terrorists in military terms

inevitably lead to, is greater than the gain. There are currently more than 400 young

IRA 'officers" in the detention camp at

Long Kesh, renamed the Maze Prison but

otherwise unchanged. The Army is

continually claiming that the command

structure of the Provisionals is so depleted by this that it cannot continue much

longer. And yet the terrorist campaign continues more or less unabated. The

truth is that there is a more or less

inexhaustible supply of new 'officers' to

take the place of those arrested or shot as

long as the war on the Catholic enclaves is

continued in its present form. The only real prospect, as Mr. Wilson argued a

couple of years ago now, is to make the

Provisional IRA fade away, not to defeat

it by arresting or killing all its members. Because in the process of doing so you

create replacements.

The propaganda war

There is also a strong case to be made

for a change of tactics in the propaganda war. For a long period it was Army policy to cover up their mistakes, and to make

what propaganda they could, out of those

of the terrorists. Nothing else can explain

the highly questionable stories put out by the Army press office in cases such as that

involving the shooting of a deaf mute in Strabane in 1971. What appears to have

happened on all accounts is that the man

was running round brandishing a rubber

bullet in a small riot, and was mistaken for

a gunman. But the Army insisted on

maintaining that no mistake had occurred.

A similar policy was pursued in the much

more significant cases of Cusack and

Beattie shot in Derry just before the internment exercise in July 1971. The refusal to institute an inquiry led in that case to the withdrawal of the main

political opposition party from Stormont and thus indirectly to the long drawn out

period of direct rule. The most serious case of all was the

thirteen shootings on Bloody Sunday in

Derry in January 1972. It is widely agreed in legal circles that Lord Widgery"s report revealed a number of cases in which the

shooting could not have been justified at common law. And yet a political decision

at the highest level was apparently made to block any criminal proceedings. The

policy of covering up in such cases leads

only to an increased determination on the

side of the terrorists to continue the war

to avenge their comrades. The statement

by the Provisional Command in Derry on the return of the Royal Anglians last

month to the effect that there were a

number of old scores to be settled is just one example of this. If the forces of law

and order do not seek to see that the

battle is fought according to civilised rules, then the terrorists will carry out

their own form of 'justice*. None of this is intended to deny that

the British Army is working under

incredibly difficult conditions. The risk of

being shot at in the Catholic enclaves

while on patrol is high, and the soldiers are naturally very wary. The temptation to

shoot at anything suspicious is very great. Accidents do occur. In addition the IRA

are adept at creating a false picture of

what has happened in individual incidents. Statements made by local residents'

simply cannot be believed, whether those

who make them are IRA sympathisers or

just terrorised into telling an acceptable

story. The allegations over the shooting of

young Anthony McDowell in cross-fire

last week in Ardoyne are a case in point: the Army says that the boys uncle

changed his story under pressure from

local IRA men to throw the blame on the

Army. That may well be so. But the

Army's case was not helped by a counter

allegation from their own press office that

he was killed by an Armalite bullet, a clain

which has subsequently been withdrawn.

The upshot of cases like this, in which the Army involves itself in a straight

propaganda war against the IRA, seeking



to discredit the terrorists with the same

disregard for careful consideration of the

evidence, is simply a total lack of confidence in the truth of Army claims in

general. If any progress is to be made in this sphere the Army must work to much

higher standards of accuracy. And it must

be prepared to produce the evidence for an independent assessment.

Complaints procedures The complaints procedure operated by

the Army is open to similar objections. Only last week Mr. Whitelaw issued a

press release discounting allegations

against the Army and claiming that

"machinery exists for the fullest

investigation of any complaints against the

security forces". The true situation is as

follows: There are two procedures. The

first concerns damage to property in the course of Army searches and the like. In

these cases the complainant fills in a form

in triplicate which is then investigated by the Military Police, and any damage done is in theory promptly compensated. In the

case of allegations of physical maltreatment or unjustified shootings the

complainant must go much further

however and bring a criminal complaint

against the soldiers concerned. Here too

the Army side of the case is investigated by the Military Police, and only the civilian side by the civil police. The

reports of both sides of the investigation then go to the Northern Ireland Office and only if approved there are they passed on to the newly appointed Director of Public Prosecutions for prosecution.

These procedures are scarcely the kind

to instill public confidence. In both cases the primary investigation of the Army side of the case is by Army men. And it is

widely admitted even in official circles that the criminal complaints procedure is bound to take many months to follow

through. In the case of the Glen Road

shooting, referred to above, the accused

did not come before the court for six

months, and the case is still pending, more

than nine months after the actual incident.

And since the case must be proved beyond all reasonable doubt the prospects of success are slim. In one case, heard on

March 17th this year, involving allegations of ill-treatment of a man detained for

questioning it was tacitly admitted that someone must have beaten him up; but

the police and army suspects were both

eventually cleared on the ground that they had not been sufficiently identified. This

may have been justice, but is scarcely

satisfactory for the complainant.

A new security tribunal

One possible answer to some of these

problems would be the appointment under the proposed new Emergency Powers

(N.I.) Act of a permanent tribunal to hear cases involving allegations against the

security forces. Such a body with its own

independent investigators, could look into

all cases in which there is a serious conflict of evidence both with a view to

establishing the facts and to making any necessary award of compensation. Clearly

the process would be expensive. But if it was able to deal effectively with the various incidents which at present serve

only to exacerbate the confrontation

between the Catholic enclaves and the

Army, with each side sticking doggedly to

its own story, it would be worth it. The

principle of independent investigation has

been accepted for cases of detention

without trial. Until it is also accepted for

the day to day incidents which inevitably occur there is unlikely to be any substantial progress in winning the

propaganda war any more than in the

ultimate defeat of terrorism.

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The Army in Ulster