Driving up west Belfast’s Divis Street last week, the scene of the fierce
sectarian rioting that triggered the deployment of British troops 38 years
ago, I noticed a gap in the murals that have adorned its walls for so many
years, a visual barometer of the changing climate of the times.
I wondered if the creative talents of Sinn Fein’s art department were already
preparing to fill the space with a fresh mural depicting the withdrawal of
British forces. At midnight last Tuesday the army brought down the final
curtain on the longest campaign in its history. There was no great ceremony,
no Last Post, no rolling up of the Union Jack as in Aden 40 years earlier.
The army slipped out of the province in carpet slippers.
Driving on up the Falls Road I passed the narrow streets around the Clon-ard
monastery where Catholics had come under Protestant attack in that hot
August of 1969. I remember talking to soldiers about their experiences when
they first arrived to keep the two sides apart and prevent a feared Catholic
pogrom. Many of the troops barely knew where Northern Ireland was or
understood the bitter sectarian divisions that had flared into violent civil
conflict in this far corner of the United Kingdom. They were welcomed like
heroes. “I felt like a knight in shining armour,” one of them told me. “Tea
and an endless supply of buns were the order of the day.”
Within months the honeymoon was over and tea and buns were replaced with
rocks, petrol bombs and bullets. Soon the army became the enemy, as a result
of a series of misjudgments and catastrophic errors, largely through
ignorance and blind reliance on the unionist government at Stormont against
whom the civil rights campaign had been initially directed.
A disastrous curfew was placed on the Falls Road, alienating the very people
who had welcomed the soldiers with open arms. Internment was introduced in
1971, carried out by the army as young and old were dragged from their beds
and carted off in the early hours of the morning.
To make matters worse, a handful of suspects were subjected to controversial
interrogation techniques previously used by the army in colonial situations
in Malaya, Kenya and Aden, including hooding, wall standing and exposure to
an incessant high-pitched “white” noise. The techniques were subsequently
deemed to be illegal. But worse was still to come.
On January 30, 1972, paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed civil rights marchers
in Londonderry on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”.
It was undoubtedly the darkest day in the army’s 38 years in the province, and
in the eyes of many nationalists it completed the transformation of the
troops from knights in shining armour to a murderous army of occupation.
In the bitter and bloody years that followed, army commanders emphasised the
need to win “hearts and minds” in order to win the war, but the message fell
on many deaf ears out on the ground as squaddies saw their mates shot, blown
up and maimed by an ever more effective IRA.
No love was lost on either side. “Grab ’em by the balls and hearts and minds
will follow” was a sentiment I heard from soldiers on the streets. “Chris”
gave me a graphic description of what that meant after he had intercepted a
gunman who had tried to kill him: “I did give him a good thumping. His
genitals were black and blue for a while. I think I must have cracked a
couple of his ribs. But that was the way you treat terrorists.”
Many of these early mistakes and abuses the army now recognises and puts down
to a long and difficult learning process.
This is only one side of the story. The problem is that it’s the side on which
Sinn Fein concentrates as it air-brushes the IRA’s own history. What about
“Bloody Friday” in 1972, when IRA car bombs in Belfast killed nine? The
Kingsmill massacre in 1976 when an IRA unit in south Armagh gunned down 10
Protestant workers returning home in a minibus? The La Mon restaurant
bombing in 1978 when an IRA incendiary bomb killed 12 Protestants?
Enniskillen in 1987 when an IRA bomb killed 11 Protestants during the
Remembrance Day ceremony? And these are but a few.
I ended my drive up the Falls Road at the Whiterock community centre on the
fringe of the once notorious Ballymurphy estate where soldiers used to
patrol at their peril. I had come to take part in a BBC Radio Ulster Talk
Back discussion on the final withdrawal of British troops. The new normality
hits you between the eyes. Unarmed officers of the RUC’s replacement, the
Police Service of Northern Ireland, stood at the door, smiling in the
sunshine. Inside was Gerry Kelly, Old Bailey bomber from 1973 and Maze
escapee 10 years later, sandwiched between two former British soldiers. All
were chatting without animosity as they reminisced about the “war”.
Although republicans would vehemently deny it, the army did play its part in
helping us to reach this year’s historic political settlement. At its most
basic, the army prevented the IRA achieving its original goal of driving the
“Brits” into the sea and reunifying Ireland. This was its agenda when Martin
McGuinness and Gerry Adams were part of the IRA delegation that met William
Whitelaw, the Northern Ireland secretary, in 1972 for secret talks in
London. Then there was no hint of compromise in the air.
The critical point in the army’s campaign were the years that followed the IRA
hunger strike of 1981 when 10 prisoners died. Sinn Fein was on the political
rise and the IRA had more arms than it could handle – 130 tons courtesy of
Colonel Gadaffi of Libya. That was when the SAS and other undercover units
made it clear that the Brits were not prepared to let the IRA win. In 1987
the SAS ambush at Loughgall wiped out eight members of one of the IRA’s most
experienced units. I remember Sir Robert Andrew, permanent undersecretary at
the Northern Ireland Office at the time, telling me of his satisfaction that
“we had won one”.
The SAS killing of three members of another IRA unit in Gibraltar the
following year drove home the message. Both operations were the result of
vastly improved intelligence from penetration of the IRA. Overall the army’s
special forces kept the IRA at bay, with the result that both sides
privately accepted that there was a military stalemate. Such were the
necessary conditions that preceded the long and tortuous peace process that
culminated in the historic agreement at Stormont earlier this year.
What of the cost? More than 3,500 people lost their lives in the conflict and
Britain put civil liberties on hold in the name of defeating terrorism. All
sides suffered horrendously before peace finally came.
What of the lessons? It’s easy to say they have been learnt and applied in the
very different theatres where the army is now involved: Iraq and
Afghanistan. But Basra is not Belfast. Initially the army patrolled its
dusty streets without helmets but these were soon put back on again as the
local militias turned against them, their support boosted by allegations of
abuses by the army during interrogation and elsewhere.
It seems like déjà vu: soldiers don’t make good policemen. In Afghanistan it’s
difficult for soldiers to win hearts and minds when they’re trying to
eradicate the heroin poppies from which local farmers and their families
make their living. In fighting terrorism and political violence, “hearts and
minds” needs to be more than a well meaning slogan, not least when it comes
to countering Islamist extrem-ism on the streets of Britain.
The government knows that gaining the support of communities, be they
nationalists in Northern Ireland or Muslims in Britain, is the key to
countering terrorism and isolating the enemy, real and potential. But as the
army’s 38 years in Northern Ireland have shown, it’s easier said than done.
Peter Taylor has reported the Irish conflict for 35 years for ITV and the
BBC and is the author of Provos, Loyalists and Brits
