Bloody Sunday: Error or Design?

2012

writes that the events of Bloody Sunday and the 'shock' of concentrated violence in the early phase of the Northern Ireland conflict reverberated and shaped the conflict for the following decades. However, the violence also led to the start of a process that would result in the Good Friday Agreement.

History Ireland, 2010

The Saville report is highly critical of the immediate commander of 1 Para, Colonel Derek Wilford, for ignoring restraining elements in his orders and precipitating the deaths of 13 innocent people in Derry on 30 January 1972. But, asks Niall Ó Dochartaigh, was Wilford really out of step with elements higher up the chain of command? The most illuminating evidence that we have of high level military decision-making in relation to Bloody Sunday is contained in a series of interviews conducted in 1983 and 1984 by Desmond Hamill for a book that he was writing about the British Army in Northern Ireland....

This dissertation aims to determine whether the response of the British security forces to insurgency and terrorism in ‘the Troubles’ was legal, or whether the response constitutes a ‘dirty war’ – a conflict in which illegal practices are widespread, systemic or politically sanctioned. It examines both the legal actions and the illegal practices undertaken by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the British Army and the other involved security agencies, and forms an analysis of the nature, reasoning, prevalence and outcome of these practices. It is accompanied by an assessment of the responsibility and accountability of the British government and security community during the post-‘Troubles’ years. This study draws upon a wide variety of sources, including very recently published evidence, which sheds new light into the willingness of these agencies to admit guilt for illicit practices.

2000

The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare

Those seeking to engage in warfare against organised governments in the 21st century are increasingly relying on such governments being unable to respond in an appropriate manner. The latter half of the 20th century in Northern Ireland is a perfect example of a ruling authority modifying its approach to the security issues it was confronted by throughout the conflict. “The Troubles”, as the three decades of guerrilla warfare has now become known, was dealt with by the British establishment through three specific policies – all of which saw changes implemented during the first ten years of the landmark conflict. These were: the implementation of Direct Rule, the so-called “Normalisation” of asymmetric warfare, and the reliance on the local paramilitaries over the British Army. All of these policies can be seen to have failed in particular ways, although careful examination shall explain the logic behind these shifts in British reactionary policy and their effects in the regions of th...

Information available regarding the use of the ‘military instrument’ by loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland tends to be addressed journalistically. This article states that there is a need for a reinterpretation of loyalist activity employing a synthetic method. It is hoped that the utilisation of the ‘strategic approach’ will provide this new, academic understanding of loyalist terrorist organisations. Essentially, the strategic approach is concerned with tracing the line of thinking of political actors to comprehend how they propose to achieve their objectives. Emerging as an offshoot from public choice economics, it shares assumptions found in game, drama and rational choice theory. Due to the early hypothesis stage of this research this article will not present findings as such, but will offer an alternative approach and invite comments.

This article argues that state violence in Northern Ireland during the period 1970-1976 - when violence during the Troubles was at its height and before the reintroduction of the policy of police primacy in 1976 - was on a greatly reduced scale than that seen in British counterinsurgency campaigns in the colonies after the Second World War. When the Army attempted to introduce measures used in the colonies – curfews, internment without trial – these proved to be extremely damaging to London’s political aims in Northern Ireland, namely the conciliation of the Catholic minority within the United Kingdom and the defeat of the IRA. However, the insistence by William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1972-1972), on ‘throttling back’ – the release of internees and the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on the use of violence by the Army – put a serious strain on civil-military relations in Northern Ireland. The relatively stagnant nature of the conflict - with units taking casualties in the same small ‘patch’ of territory without opportunities for the types of ‘positive actions’ seen in the colonies - led to some deviancy on the part of small infantry units who sought informal, unsanctioned ways of taking revenge upon the local population. Meanwhile, a disbelieving and defensive attitude at senior levels of command in Northern Ireland meant that informal punitive actions against the local population were often not properly investigated during 1970-1972, until more thorough civilian and military investigative procedures were put in place. Finally, a separation of ethnic and cultural identity between the soldiers and the local population - despite being citizens of the same state - became professionally desirable in order for soldiers to carry out difficult, occasionally distasteful work.

Media, War & Conflict Vol. 5(2), 2012

Drawing upon theories of social and cultural memory, commemoration, and memory politics, this article explores how two British documentary dramas -Greengrass's Bloody Sunday and McDougall and McGovern's Sunday (both 2002) -re-enact the events of Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, where British paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed demonstrators and wounded another 14. Moving from a textual analytical focus to a historical contextualization and recontextualization of the two films, I argue that Sunday and Bloody Sunday adopt different narrative and temporal frames and, as a consequence, expose competing perspectives on the question of preconditions and responsibilities for the atrocity. In connecting both films to the Saville inquiry's final report published in 2010, I sketch out how they relate to an emerging historical mainstream discourse. I conclude that the differences exhibited bear witness to the impossibility of ultimately arresting constant discursive renegotiations of shared pasts -every (historical) vision seems to imply certain blind spots.

This article examines the murder of two British Army corporals by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in March 1988. In doing so it reveals much about the micro dynamics of the political violence which occurred during the Northern Ireland conflict. The central theoretical contention of the article is that most human beings are not particularly good at violence, and for the most part, irrespective of motive, can only participate in such actions when they have what is defined as attacker advantage. The attacker advantage principle stipulates that on most occasions when most humans feel it necessary or choose to resort to offensive violence, they do so on the premise of having the advantage, or a perceived advantage, over their intended target.

This article examines the British Army's deployment in support of the civil power in Northern Ireland. It argues that the core guiding principles of the British approach to counterinsurgency (COIN) - employing the minimum use of force, firm and timely action, and unity of control in civil-military relations - were misapplied by the Army in its haste to combat Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorism between 1971 and 1976. Moreover, it suggests that the Army's COIN strategy was unsuccessful in the 1970s because commanders adhered too closely to the customs, doctrine, and drill applied under very different circumstances in Aden between 1963 and 1967, generally regarded as a failure in Britain's post-war internal security operations. The article concludes with a discussion of the British government's decision to scale back the Army's role in favour of giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary primacy in counter-terrorist operations, a decision which led ultimately to success in combating IRA violence.