Some men fire, some not

13 Mar

A review by Fergus Smith of Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975 by Huw Bennett. 3516 words.

Huw Bennett., 2024, Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966-1975, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 978-1—107-13638-0, £25.00 UK, $29.95 US

Imagine you are a soldier in a Scottish infantry battalion in 1970. You are eighteen years old and have only been serving for a matter of months. Throughout your life, the United Kingdom has been withdrawing from Empire and there’s a sense, particularly from Kenya and Aden, that the final convulsions were ugly, brutish, and shameful. But you remain of the belief that the army is a force for good, not least because it provides employment for a young man of your background.

Throughout your basic training there has been a growing civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, echoing others around the world. The province is merely an hour by ferry from your shores. In the past year, just as you entered and completed basic training, the civil rights movement, a peaceful and democratic attempt to gain better living and working conditions for Roman Catholics in a climate structurally biassed towards Protestants, has become increasingly violent. It now fills the TV screens and front pages and your battalion has been hastily sent to Belfast to support the British Army’s mission to provide military aid to the civil power. Your exact purpose is a little woolly and changes from day to day. Over the Easter weekend you are keeping violent Catholic and Protestant mobs apart in the Ballymurphy and Springfield estates in West Belfast. Being Scottish, you are familiar with issues of sectarianism. Your football team has a religiously derived fan base. But whatever your sympathies, you are shocked by the inter-ethnic vitriol in what should be an ordinary, industrial British city. The Protestants’ trumpeting of their traditions and fealty to the British state, and the Catholics’ legitimate appeal for social equality, seem oddly incompatible and therefore intractable. During the Easter riots you are pelted by stones, bottles, and petrol bombs. Your mates are hurt. Your tactics, derived from colonial era practices, are only partially effective. You carry a powerful 7.62mm rifle, and have been briefed on the conditions under which you can open fire, but you question whether it is right to shoot your own citizens. Whatever their denomination, they are Christians brought up with the same broad cultural assumptions as yourself.

No matter what decisions you make, they will be wrong. If you favour one side, the other will cry foul. If you fire, you will be using an unnecessary level of force. If you don’t, you will compromise the army’s impartiality.

As Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote, "All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory"[1]. Years after your emergency deployment at the start of what became Operation Banner, what you did that Easter weekend is picked apart, probed, and criticised by others and you are forced to reconcile personal memories with those of the commentator.

Huw Bennett’s detailed analysis of how military strategy evolved during the early years of the ‘Troubles’ is a courageous attempt to provide an even-handed assessment of what the major protagonists did and why. It breaks the period up into sensible chunks: the initial deployment beset by the doctrinal ‘baggage’ of colonial wars; the army’s short-lived honeymoon in which it won then lost the respect of both sides; a change of British government exposing the absence of a coherent North Ireland policy; the mass shooting of Bloody Sunday; the increase in violence by all belligerents and imposition of direct rule from London; and the evolution of the conflict into something protracted and unwinnable that grumbled on for nearly thirty years.

As such, this book is structured around key events, most obviously Bloody Sunday in January 1972, itself the subject of a 12-year public inquiry that resulted in the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, apologising for the actions of the Army and the British Government. This structure is not unexpected. Irish history is often presented as event-centric, as opposed to period-centric, like England, or theme-centric, like the United States. Certainly events, or their interpretation and memorialisation, dictate how the Northern Irish relate their own past.

Bennett is an erudite and confident academic unafraid to tackle murky historical issues. His other major works include a study of the British handling of the Mau-Mau rebellion in colonial Kenya in the early 1960s. He was an expert witness during a legal claim made in 2013 by 5,000 elderly Kenyans who were tortured during the emergency. The result of the case was a payout totalling £20 million and a growling public apology by the Foreign Minister, William Hague. Although he doesn’t recognise the problems inherent in an event-centric study - what constitutes an event? who decides? - he avoids other single issue lenses that might be applied to the subject: a post-colonial approach in the ‘the global atmosphere of rebellion in the late 1960s’[2], a legalistic analysis, or viewing the conflict as an inter-ethnic insurgency requiring a counter-insurgency response. Interestingly, he does not consider the issue of class on sectarian dynamics as described by Peter Shirlow[3].

There are several aspects of the work worthy of praise. In particular, the insightful descriptions of leaders’ thought processes as they sought to define a way forward while never fully understanding what the other parties’ goals might be. This is Bennett’s ‘dynamic’ description of historical contingencies and the choices key players had to make. For example, during the short period in which the army’s offer of protection to Catholics was welcomed, Bennett notes that ‘Rather than British Army repression providing the crucial spur to republican aggression, the army's successful offer of protection from 17 September gave Republicans a simple choice. They could admit their own redundance and disappear, or make a fighting comeback.’[4]

Bennett ably situates his narrative within a wider political climate. During the period in question, the UK government changed twice, from Labour to Conservative then back to Labour. The events in Northern Ireland often took a back seat behind Britain’s intention to join the European Communities, a forerunner of the European Union. With the collapse of Empire, Britain was investing heavily in its commitment to NATO and the cold war threat of a Russian invasion of Germany. Troop deployments to Ulster had to be reconciled with the manning requirements in the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR)[5]. They also had to be reconciled with the maintenance of soldiers’ and families’ morale. The section on how Germany-based soldiers suffered a significant drop in pay when they deployed on emergency tours to Northern Ireland is particularly interesting[6].

They key thrust of the argument is well supported and evidenced. The government’s focus on wider strategic concerns led to Northern Ireland being largely ignored. This resulted in the absence of an intelligence gathering apparatus which prevented ministers from being fully sighted of the threat from Loyalist (Protestant) extremists and the extent to which they would force their hand to remain in the United Kingdom. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were overwhelmed by Catholic violence at the start of the Troubles and later colluded with murderous Loyalist extremists. The British government misread Republican (Catholic) goals and were dismayed by the political naivety of the IRA interlocutors. The book stresses the porous boundaries between the Loyalist communities (home to a sizeable number of skilled army veterans) and the British state, explaining Catholic distrust. The use of mass arrest, extra-judicial imprisonment (internment), and ‘deep interrogation’, served to fill an intelligence vacuum but at the cost of exacerbating resentment and enhancing the IRA’s recruitment activity. In all these cases, the most telling evidence comes from witness statements: a soldier’s diary or letter home articulating in simple language that they actually enjoyed facing riots[7], the carnage that would result if they withdrew[8], and the narrow, jaundiced understanding of the Ulster people by English officers and politicians[9]. The concluding chapter, which unites all the strands of the argument, does so in a thoughtful and considered tone.

There can be no doubt that Bennett has read widely and tenaciously trawled through endless archives to unearth dusty, declassified boxes of sub-committee minutes. His narrative is sprinkled with documentary witness testimony. In fact, there is so much background information thrown in that the writing becomes, at times, distracted and skittish. A more thorough edit might have withheld much of the chatter as background information.

Finally, and of critical interest to British Army veterans, all of whom maintain a close eye on legal cases against their number, not only from Northern Ireland but also Iraq and Afghanistan, the book is keen to stress key facts[10]:

‘Despite allegations about veterans being persecuted, since 2011 the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for Northern Ireland has brought cases against six military veterans for conflict legacy offences, compared to twenty-one against ex-paramilitaries. In May 2021 criminal proceedings against two former paratroopers for shooting dead Joe McCann in 1972 collapsed, owing to problems with the prosecution's evidence. In February 2023 David Holden became the first ex-soldier to be convicted of a Troubles-related killing since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. A judge imposed a three-year suspended sentence for the manslaughter of Aidan McAnespie, who was shot at a check-point in County Tyrone in 1988. The judge criticised Holden for giving ‘a dishonest explanation to the police and then to the court’. The prospects for securing convictions in other historical cases are uncertain even as the victim's quest for justice is unimpeachable.

The book’s primary aim is to explore how British military strategy was made and describe its implications. It delves into the evolution of these strategies as a dynamic aggregation of thought processes often starved of the information necessary to construct effective policy. It argues that the level of violence was a result of belligerents being blind to the others’ ability and willingness to escalate and it assesses continuity and change in military strategy over the six year period, demonstrating that this was often the result of ground-up action by soldiers on the streets.

In the first instance, as an analysis of strategy, it is odd that there is no specific definition of what military strategy is or who such strategists are. This is the principle problem with the work and the primary reason its aim is only partially achieved. The entire work relies on an assumption, derived from an introductory level book by Lawrence Freedman[11], that strategy can be understood as the pursuit of power. This blatant omission leads to some confused thinking in which ‘military strategy’ is shown to be missing from events or not adhered to. In Bennett’s mind, strategy is a tangible entity drawn down by community leaders into a set of actions. In actual fact, as the book actually shows, strategy was, throughout this period, continually emergent.

In the chaos of the early years no side was able to articulate what its goals were beyond a broad statement of principle. The Provisional IRA was a Belfast institution seeking to protect their community. They were not yet the paramilitary wing of the leftist political movement that became Provisional Sinn Féin, who were committed to a united Ireland. The Protestant community, with its thundering rhetoricians such as the Reverend Ian Paisely, was better able to state clearly that they wished to remain a part of the United Kingdom. But the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), an extremist Protestant paramilitary, fired on the army as it did Catholics. The British government was distracted by European issues and initially wanted to avoid direct rule from London, only relenting in order to assuage the rising violence in 1972.

The author was, at one stage, an instructor at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, the university in which the British Army’s future generals are tutored. In addition, he has taught strategy and international relations modules at Cardiff, Aberystwyth, and King's College London. It is odd, therefore, that he does not situate his analysis within the British doctrinal definition of strategy and how it relates to national policy, grand strategy, operational art, and battlefield tactics. Had he done so, it might have been less of a surprise that national policy is very often the result of the decisions a young soldier has had to make during a riot or while manning a checkpoint along the border.

That soldiers often make painfully complex battlefield decisions is not in doubt. That these decisions can be immediately amplified and communicated around the world in near real time, forcing politicians to make statements at a press conference, has become a feature of modern soldiering. Consider the men who held the cordon around Kabul airfield during the chaotic end of the Afghanistan campaign while civil servants struggled to decide who got a passport, who would be evacuated, and who not. The men holding the wire were the ones deciding who would be allowed through the cordon to see the immigration officials. Therefore British foreign policy most accurately sat in the hands of a private soldier or Junior NCO[12]. The same was true in Belfast in those early years. Generals and Brigadiers sought to understand the wishes of community leaders in their respective areas of operation but the decision to hold or open fire was always an individual’s perception of the risk posed to himself or others. Much of the book’s criticisms of ‘military strategists’ is, in reality, and observation of an organisation desperately trying to learn how to cope with opposing domestic antagonists when all their training and experience had, to date, been overseas and colonial in nature. The most telling quotes are from young soldiers seeking to be good citizens. Here is Marine Goulds:

‘…it is now my opinion that we have to be here, that if we withdraw all the British forces from Ulster the people of this country would suffer far greater than they have done in the past five years. Because of this we have to stay whether we, or any minority, like it or not.’[13]

The work seeks to be balanced[14]. It claims that it doesn’t blame the British government for the absence of strategy, or the army for repressive strategies (such as internment), or both for being reactive to the initiatives of others. But it does all of these and, since primary data of IRA thought processes is rare and difficult to access, there is an inherent bias against both the army and the state. The argument centres around Bloody Sunday as the pivotal event in this period of the Troubles. This may be true but the author’s tendency to slip into hyperbole, using words such as massacre and atrocity, belies his academic objectivity. The keen eyed will also note his preference for the term Derry over Londonderry and all that such choices imply. He admires regiments that hold their fire even when they are taking casualties and is deeply critical of others, specifically the Parachute Regiment, who do not. The writing is soured by waspish rhetorical hindsight, for example that General Carver, then Chief of the General Staff (head of the Army), should have done more to deal with poor leadership and military crime in the wake of Bloody Sunday[15], or that Reginald Maudling, then Home Secretary, ‘told reporters that Irish Republican Army (IRA) activities could be reduced to an “acceptable level”. By the end of 1975, 1,502 people had died in the conflict.’[16]

Compounding these pointed flourishes, and despite Bennett’s focused research, there is a sense that he has situated the appreciation rather than appreciated the situation. He draws out snippets of information that fit his world view as though interpreting the picture on a partially completed jigsaw. He does not seem to recognise that the text in regimental magazines is not a reliable strategic record but a tongue-in-cheek witticism for an internal audience. Rather than relying exclusively on documentary evidence, the book would have been enhanced by first-hand primary data, meaning oral history interviews. This would have provided greater balance and, perhaps, a deeper understanding of battlefield pressures and regimental cultures.

Bennett goes to considerable lengths to describe the common law justifications under which soldiers were first deployed and then allowed to use armed force. These were codified in the rules of engagement or ‘yellow card’ that all soldiers had to carry. But Bennett is unwilling to be drawn into questions of jurisprudence and hence there is only scant reference to the legal frameworks - the Special Powers Act, the Emergency Powers Act, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act – that underpinned the soldier’s right to pull the trigger.

There are several irritating stylistic habits throughout the book. Paragraphs start on one subject to veer dramatically into another. Chapters contain evidence that feels contradictory, forcing one to dig hard for the point being made. End of chapter summaries contain statements that have not been previously argued. This is most apparent in the final conclusion which states that ‘the MOD tried to minimise the political fallout from abuses by soldiers by paying off claimants out of court…’[17]. If true, this would be worthy of investigation in its own right. Following the conclusion which, barring this issue, is an excellent summary of an important book, there is an entire chapter dedicated to bemoaning how regimental museums, the national archives, and the MOD have not opened up their archives for Bennett to rake over. One gets a sense of presumptuousness hiding behind a flag of ‘intellectualism’. The author states that the Freedom of Information Act grants the government ‘considerable latitude to decide what constitutes “the national interest”’[18] while ignoring the fact that he is, as the writer of this work, making the same decisions in every sentence. He does not see the irony. The middle chapters are decorated with unexplained diagrammes detailing the number of explosions or shootings per month but there are no organograms specifying who is whom or the revisions, over time, to the yellow card.

These criticisms apart, the author does recognise that the ‘regiment that shot down unarmed protesters in Derry also produced a soldier who gave his life by using his body to shield civilians from a PIRA bomb’[19]. Bennett does not say that this man, Sergeant Michael Willetts, was posthumously awarded the George Cross but he accepts that he does not understand the regimental system and that each battalion has a culture, and willingness to accept and apply force, of its own.

Full disclosure: inspired by the Falklands War, I wanted to join the Parachute Regiment from boyhood. Knowing any military service would mean Northern Ireland, I chose Queen’s University in Belfast for my bachelor’s degree because I wanted to understand the people before going back ‘in green’. On my first day in battalion, three young soldiers were jailed for killing a joyrider during the last Belfast tour. I finally deployed there in 1997, towards the end of Operation Banner. Bloody Sunday took place the year before my family moved to Scotland from Kenya, where they had lived since the 1920s. My father, a sergeant in the Kenya Regiment, a colonial unit originally intended to fight in Korea, fought against the Mau-Mau. His parents owned an isolated farm near Eldoret and my grandmother kept a salmon gaffe by her bedside throughout the emergency and until the end of her life. The jacket of Bennett’s book contains a supportive quote by Professor Helen Parr, who was my PhD supervisor and an inspiration to my own research. The book is edited by two esteemed academics, one of whom, Professor Sir Hew Strachan, was immensely helpful when I started out as a writer.

With this background, and all the implicit biases, you might expect me to hold deep reservations about Bennett’s work. In truth, and despite the criticisms above, I don’t. I admire his attention to detail, the approach, and his implied acceptance, in the end, that he is unable to understand what makes some men fire and some not. This book is a credible attempt to provide a coherent history of the early years of the Troubles and it does so in an interesting and unusual way, showing how strategy evolves as situations change.

But the question remains: if you had been a first-tour Scottish soldier trying your best to quell a riot between sectarian mobs in 1970, and if you had made a decision that ended another man’s life, you may well be keen to read a detailed history of those times to help you understand what happened. Would this book help you do so? Possibly, but not in the way the author intended. Reading it, you would probably suck your remaining teeth concerned that you are, in your final years, being misrepresented.

[1] Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War in https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7916592-it-proceeds-from-the-idea-that-all-wars-are-fought [viewed January 2025]

[2] Page 60

[3] See Peter Shirley, 2012, The End of Ulster Loyalism? Manchester, 230 pp., £16.99, 978 0 7190 8476 8

[4] Page 50

[5] P199

[6] P251

[7] P52

[8] P3

[9] P74

[10] P3

[11] See: Lawrence Freedman, 2013, Strategy: A History, Oxford University Press, Oxford

[12] See the Channel 4 three-part TV documentary, Evacuation, 2023