There is a feeling among some in the security forces that occasional ambushes are necessary because the many members of the IRA will not be deterred by prison sentences. They dispute Northern Ireland Office statistics which indicate that the rate of reconvictions for terrorist offences is much lower than that for common crime. The majority of those killed by the SAS during recent years were not men who had failed to be deterred by a spell in prison. Of the twenty IRA men killed by the SAS and 14 Company between 1983 and 1987, only six had previously been convicted for terrorist offences. In 1978 Brigadier Glover, in his report on terrorist trends, said that members of IRA units usually had ten years’ experience of terrorism. The success of the security forces in putting them away meant that by the 1980s the Provisionals were dependent on less experienced volunteers. The average age of those killed between 1983 and 1987 by the SAS was twenty-three years old, while five were in their teens.
Some soldiers claim that ambushes have restored tranquillity to an area for a measurable period. Undoubtedly the level of sectarian killing in south Armagh did diminish in the months after the arrival of the SAS in 1976. But after a few months of wait-and-see the activities of the IRA against the security forces in the area returned to their previous high levels.
Successive ambushes in Tyrone during the 1980s appear to have had no noticeable effect on the level of terrorist activity there. The IRA killed seven people in east Tyrone and north Armagh in the two years before the 1987 Loughgall ambush, and eleven in the two years following. Security did not improve: the IRA carried on killing and the SAS mounted further ambushes. Two IRA men were shot dead by the SAS near Loughgall in 1990 and three Provisionals belonging to an east Tyrone unit were killed in the village of Coagh in 1991. In 1990 the IRA succeeded in destroying the half of Loughgall police station that was still standing after the 1987 incident.
If the impact of ambush operations on the level of terrorist violence is debatable, what of its cost? The SAS has killed six people by mistake since it was committed to Ulster. Is the death of six bystanders too high a price to pay for the deaths of twenty-five terrorists? Even some members of the SAS confess they believe it is. And does the death of terrorists create a desire for revenge and so contribute to the level of violence?
A friend of the Loughgall IRA group returned to terrorism and was arrested in West Germany. A brother of one of those killed there was subsequently accused of kidnapping a woman alleged to have been the informer who made the ambush possible. I have also been told of the cousin of someone killed by accident by the SAS who became involved in terrorism out of a desire for revenge. It is, of course, impossible to prove that these people would not have become involved in terrorism anyway.
If the security benefits of ambushing terrorists are questionable, and such operations may lead to the deception of courts and the killing of bystanders, why do ministers allow it? In part this can be explained by the politicians’ lack of real power over these forces. But it is also due to the fact that public opinion in Britain, desensitized by years of terrorism, tends to care little for the lives of its perpetrators.
The activities of 14 Intelligence Company, the special Army surveillance unit, have shown that it is possible to conduct large numbers of covert operations without ambushing, but also that a small number of accidental confrontations are inevitable in this work. Four members of the unit were killed by the IRA between 1974 and 1984. In cases where IRA or INLA terrorists have been killed by 14 Company operators the threat has generally been very apparent. The most imporant exceptions to this have been the killing in January 1990 of three robbers carrying replica firearms at a bookmaker’s shop in west Belfast and the shooting of Brian Robinson, a UVF terrorist, in 1989.
Although I have not been able to investigate these incidents fully, I believe the evidence points to both of them being the result of decisions taken by the surveillance operators on the spur of the moment rather than being pre-planned ambushes. The actions of the 14 Company operators in these two incidents appear all the more unusual given the fact that ambush work is very clearly reserved for the SAS, and during the period 1976 to 1987 the Company’s members appeared to act only in self-defence.
The intelligence contest in Ulster has been pursued at a moral cost to many of those involved. Sources have been deceived and lost their lives due to the incompetence of their handlers. Detectives have had to allow attacks to go ahead to deflect suspicion from their sources. But there seems little doubt that the gradual improvement in the security of Ulster would have been impossible had the police and Army not immersed themselves so completely in the world of agent-running and treachery. Improved intelligence increases the amount of arms seized, reduces the level of inconvenience to the nationalist community at large and results in more convictions. Nobody who believes that terrorism should be checked can really argue that informer intelligence should not play a key part in such a campaign.
About twenty-five people active in the IRA were named as informers between 1976 and 1987. This includes those killed by the organization itself and supergrasses. Many others have declared their treachery to the Provisionals and have been pardoned, have been taken into protective custody, or have ceased to provide intelligence but remained
