Then, in 1977, two new senior military officers who shared Mason’s convictions were appointed to Northern Ireland. Both Lieutenant General Timothy Creasey, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), and Major General Dick Trant, Commander Land Forces (CLF), believed that increasing undercover operations offered the chance to cut Army casualties. Further, they would – they believed – intimidate the IRA, increase the success rate of court prosecutions by obtaining more detailed intelligence about suspects, and restore the morale of the uniformed soldiers and police officers who were relatively vulnerable as targets for bombers and snipers. The two senior officers signalled their intention to intensify undercover operations in a series of press leaks during 1977.
Enthusiasm for the new strategy seemed a little more muted on the police side. Kenneth Newman, appointed Chief Constable of the RUC in 1976, had a critical attitude towards some SAS operations. Steeped in the principles of minimum force during his long and varied police career, Newman let it be known that, while he admired the professionalism of the SAS, he believed it was best reserved for operations that allowed ample preparation and rehearsal, preferably also in rural areas. Operations which involved the deployment of SAS soldiers, often at night, in strongly republican areas following vague tip-offs from informers, precluded the opportunity for either.
Nevertheless, Newman was prepared to agree to the new policy – despite his misgivings – because he understood the critical importance of improving surveillance and intelligence-gathering if his force was to combat the paramilitaries effectively. Besides, the overt presence of the Army on the streets and in the estates was a source of resentment among the nationalist community; the reduction in visible Army activity which covert operations would bring also served his purposes.
John (Jack) Hermon, Newman’s senior deputy and later successor as chief constable, was also perturbed about extending SAS operations, according to a senior officer who worked with him at the time. Particularly in Hermon’s case, however, these reservations may have had more to do with jealously preserving the principle of Police Primacy established in 1976 – which gave the RUC ultimate control of security forces activity in Northern Ireland – than with a squeamishness about undercover operations as such. Under Hermon’s leadership the RUC was to develop an expanded array of specialist units with covert surveillance and firearms capabilities.
These, then, were the key figures around the table at weekly meetings of the Northern Ireland Security Policy Committee. Mason, Creasey, Trant, Newman and Hermon all favoured a more aggressive role for undercover forces in the administration of security policy in Ulster. But while there was a consensus about the benefits of countering the IRA in a more effective but less visible way, there were deep differences over other areas of policy. The most significant disagreements involved the questions of who should take overall control of the security effort, and how an integrated structure for the sharing of intelligence could be created. The failure of the security establishment to resolve these issues, stemming from distrust and rivalry between the Army and the RUC, was to plague the whole anti-terrorist campaign.
2The Security Establishment
By the late 1970s the social and political landscape of Northern Ireland had been transformed by a decade of sectarian violence. A large standing military and police establishment had developed, charged with keeping order in a region with a population of 1.5 million people.
The Army had been deployed in Ulster in August 1969 after the police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, had proved unable to control local rioting. As a medium-size provincial police force the Royal Ulster Constabulary had lacked the means to deal with an increasingly violent nationalist insurrection and loyalist counter-violence. The RUC lost responsibility for maintaining public order to the Army; and the need to contain the unrest led politicians to violate many of the principles on which the rule of law is based in Britain.
In August 1971, the policy of internment without trial was implemented, which led to large-scale round-ups of people suspected of terrorist connections. Internment proved highly controversial because the intelligence on which it was based was so poor – a great many people with no connection with terrorism were held, whereas many senior members of the IRA escaped – and because it constituted an admission that the security forces were short of any evidence which could be presented in court against the suspects. Holding people in this manner further alienated the nationalist community. The introduction of Special Category status in June 1972 for convicted terrorists was meant to soothe local feelings by allowing paramilitary groups extra privileges in jail. In fact, by allowing the terrorists to claim they were prisoners of war, Special Category status marked yet another violation of normal law in the rest of Britain.
Northern Ireland’s devolved Parliament at Stormont, which had considerable autonomy before the Troubles, was dissolved early in 1972 to be replaced by direct rule from London with all executive powers invested in the newly appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The politicians believed the embattled people in Ulster would consider this system fairer.
The RUC had emerged deeply shaken from the early years of the Troubles. The Hunt Report, an official government inquiry, published in October 1970, had blamed the force for mishandling the republican disturbances in August 1969 in Londonderry (Deny to nationalists). Decision-makers in Whitehall believed nationalist passions would be soothed if the RUC was reduced virtually to a force of unarmed warrant-servers.
Army numbers peaked at around 22,000 in 1972, at the height of the Troubles, when soldiers went into the republican heartlands of Londonderry and Belfast to break up the paramilitaries’ ‘No Go Areas’. The virtual collapse of the police and the desire of Army commanders not to inflame matters had allowed sectarian extremists on both sides to claim control of large areas of Belfast and Londonderry. But 1972 also saw a growing awareness in Whitehall that the Army’s role would have to be reduced in the long term. The shooting by
