Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict

by David McKittrick

The months that followed are remembered as being particularly grim and destabilising as the confrontation continued, with neither the government nor the hungerstrikers prepared to give way. With hindsight, it is clear that each deeply misunderstood the other: Thatcher never came close to grasping the IRA’s psychology, while some republicans persisted in believing that she was bound to give in eventually.

The unyielding attitude of both sides resulted, between May and August 1981, in the deaths of a total of ten hungerstrikers, seven from the IRA and three from the INLA.

The families began to realise that the government would not concede, and to conclude that the deaths of their husbands and sons were both inevitable and futile. An increasing number of families took action once their sons had lapsed into the coma which normally preceded death, asking the authorities to medically revive them. In October the hungerstrikers called off the protest, thwarted by their families rather than by the government or the prison authorities. Within days Prior eased regulations to allow prisoners to wear their own clothes at all times and made limited concessions on the other demands.

The original feeling among republicans was that they had suffered a huge defeat in the hungerstrike. One prisoner wrote: ‘Despite my relief that no one else would die, I still felt gutted because ten men had died and we had not won our demands. My morale was never as low.’ Thatcher had taken on the IRA head-on and in the end their willpower cracked while hers did not. She said at one point, ‘Faced with the failure of their discredited cause the men of violence have chosen in recent months to play what might be their last card.’

Yet the hungerstrike was to bring republicans many gains. The ten deaths effectively put an end to the criminalisation argument. The hungerstrike had not technically achieved special category status but in effect it had achieved something much more potent: political status. There could have been no more definitive display of political motivation than the spectacle of ten men giving their lives in an awesome display of self-sacrifice and dedication. It was possible to view this as outlandish fanaticism, and many did; but it was not possible to claim that these were indistinguishable from ordinary criminals. The hungerstrikers thus won political status in the eyes of the world.

Radicalised recruits flocked to the IRA and Sinn Féin, swelling the ranks of both and laying the foundations for both further violence and an infiltration of the political system.

The years after 1981 saw a variety of political and security initiatives as London and Dublin sought to cope with the aftermath of the traumatic hungerstrike period. The IRA once again returned to bombing targets in England, while the security forces attempted to counter them with new military and legal measures. Loyalist killings went on at a relatively low level, while 1982 saw the violent end to the violent career of one of the most notorious loyalist killers.

Although the number of IRA killings fell slightly, the organisation carried out major attacks in Britain. Two attacks on a single day in July 1982 killed a total of eleven soldiers in two London parks, one of the highest military casualty tolls of the troubles. The first device was detonated as a troop of soldiers in full regalia made their way on horseback through Hyde Park on their way from their Knightsbridge barracks to Whitehall. Four soldiers died.

A few hours later a bomb went off in Regent’s Park as military bandsmen performed a lunchtime concert at an open-air bandstand. The device, which had been placed under the bandstand, killed seven soldiers.

Another IRA attack in London came in December 1983, when a bomb left in a car outside Harrods department store exploded seven days before Christmas while the area was thronged with shoppers. The explosion, which killed six people, was generally regarded as a setback for the IRA because of its civilian death toll.

In the course of the troubles loyalists were responsible for the deaths of just over one thousand people, most of them civilians.

The security forces reacted to the continuing violence in a number of ways. The RUC created its own SAS-style unit, training its men for violent encounters with the IRA and INLA. Known as E4A its approach was based, in the words of a senior police officer, on ‘speed, firepower and aggression’. All these characteristics were on display when, in three separate incidents in a period of a month, E4A members shot and killed five men and a youth, all in County Armagh. Three were IRA members, two were in the INLA and one was a civilian. Some of these were clearly dangerous men, but all those killed were unarmed when shot.

Another significant development in the first half of the 1980s was the police use of supergrasses, which for several years inflicted considerable damage to both republican and loyalist groups. The supergrass system entailed persuading former members of such groups to testify against their alleged former associates, in exchange for a new life outside Northern Ireland. Immunity from prosecution was sometimes granted, along with payment of substantial sums of money.

At least twenty-five supergrasses emerged during this period, providing information which led to the arrests of nearly 600 suspects. At one stage around 230 men were held in prison on their evidence. The courts were initially enthusiastic about the supergrass phenomenon. In one case a judge described aspects of a supergrass’s testimony as ‘unreliable, false, bizarre and incredible’ but then went on to convict defendants on the basis of other parts of his evidence.

The classic security force problem throughout the troubles was that they believed that through their intelligence agencies they knew a great deal about who the leaders of paramilitary groups were, and who had ordered or carried out many killings and other offences. As in other countries, however, their difficulty lay in converting intelligence into evidence which would stand up in a court of law. The supergrass tactic seemed to offer a mechanism for achieving this. As time passed, however, the legal and political controversy grew and judges became more cautious about convicting.

Yet the system began to fall apart as judges signalled their dissatisfaction with it, and most of those charged, including Steenson, eventually walked free. Appeal courts overturned a number of verdicts, and as more and more cases collapsed the system was eventually abandoned.

The next initiative of the Thatcher years was much more far-reaching, more carefully thought out and in the end would come to be seen as a watershed, both in terms of Anglo-Irish relations and in changing the course of the troubles. It would produce the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which in many ways broke the mould of London–Dublin relations.

As a result they transformed Sinn Féin from little more than a flag of convenience for the IRA into a political organisation with a life of its own. Many republican sympathisers who baulked at joining the IRA, or had been through its ranks and did not wish to return, were prepared to work for it politically.

In four elections between 1982 and 1985 Sinn Féin averaged around 12 per cent of the total vote and 40 per cent of the nationalist vote, establishing itself as the fourth largest party and a political force which could not be ignored. Its best performance came in 1983 when it took more than 100,000 votes and, in a victory of great symbolic significance, had Gerry Adams elected as Westminster MP for West Belfast.

At that moment many republicans believed that the new strategy of combining IRA violence and political activity offered a route to victory, and enthusiastically set about building up Sinn Féin.

The main British aim at this time was to contain a dangerous situation and restore as much stability as possible.

Withdrawal was not favoured because it would inevitably be viewed as a defeat for Britain at the hands of terrorism, and because in any event it could result in a level of violence worse than anything yet experienced.

Anglo-Irish relations had often been difficult and many more rocky periods lay ahead; but the mid-1980s represented an important turning point in that Dublin, and important figures in London, came to see the Northern Ireland question as a common problem which was best managed jointly.

While constitutional nationalism was intent on making progress through peaceful negotiations, the IRA went on prosecuting its war. In one of many incidents nine RUC officers, two of them women, were killed when an IRA mortar made a direct hit on an RUC canteen in the grounds of the police station in Newry, County Down. Then in October 1984 a bomb meant for Margaret Thatcher exploded at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative party conference. The blast, which took place in the early hours of the morning, demolished much of the façade of the old building. It missed its primary target, the prime minister, but killed five other people including an MP and the wives of three more Conservatives. A chilling IRA statement addressed to Thatcher said: ‘Today we were unlucky, but remember, we have only to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no war.’

The document Thatcher and FitzGerald formally signed in Hillsborough, County Down, in November 1985 was by any standards a historic one, giving the Republic as it did a significant consultative role in the running of Northern Ireland.

The agreement opened with a statement by the two governments that any change in Northern Ireland’s status could only come about with the consent of a majority of its people.

Thatcher herself tended to regard the accord as a security initiative rather than a historic new beginning. Howe later reflected: ‘It took a gigantic struggle by many far-sighted people to persuade her; but although her head was persuaded, her heart was not.’

It represented in fact an unprecedented new partnership between London and Dublin: in the years which followed that partnership had tense and difficult moments during many political and security crises, but though battered it was not broken.

Unionist opposition to the agreement was so deep that it lasted for years, with protests ranging from political boycotts to mass rallies, demonstrations, and an increase in loyalist killings. Unionists objected not just to the text of the agreement but also to what a Protestant clergyman described as ‘all the stuff in there between the lines’. Many nationalists also believed, or at least hoped, that they detected a barely concealed agenda on the British side, with London signalling that it did not forever expect to be in charge of Northern Ireland.

Unionist politicians boycotted government ministers, and there was much rhetoric threatening the use of force. The fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their seats to force by-elections, a move that backfired when one of the seats was lost to the SDLP. A loyalist ‘day of action’ brought much of Northern Ireland to a standstill, but many Protestants disapproved of the widespread intimidation and riots which accompanied it.

The agreement survived it all. Historian Alvin Jackson summed up: ‘The Unionists had once again backed themselves into a tactical dead-end in order to demonstrate the intensity of their convictions. Unionist tardiness and negativism had led inexorably towards marginalisation and humiliation.’ The Unionist trauma was obvious, but the agreement posed great challenges for republicans too. They recognised it as a major departure in British policy, but debated long and hard about its exact significance.

When republicans contemplated the Anglo-Irish Agreement they were in the first instance most worried about its security aspects. The agreement was accompanied by new moves such as the erection of a string of watchtowers aimed at curbing IRA activities along the border, particularly in south Armagh. Republicans worried too that friendlier London–Dublin relations would bring a new level of isolation for republicanism and perhaps an erosion in the Sinn Féin vote.

The IRA had seen itself as engaged in an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist freedom struggle. Suddenly, however, the supposed imperialist power had made an important move which cast it in a new light. This raised the issue, in more thoughtful republican minds, of whether a continuation of violent action represented the best way ahead. A senior Sinn Féin source later said privately: ‘We saw the coming together of Dublin and London, and this proved London could be shifted. The fact that Britain moved unilaterally was pivotal. They hit the Unionists a kick in the balls, saying to them, “We’ve tried to work with you but that failed.” That didn’t go unrecorded in republicanism.’

In November 1986, the desire to modernise republicanism to keep abreast of such developments brought Sinn Féin to drop its age-old policy of refusing to take seats in the Dáil.

Gaddafi had provided guns and money to the IRA in the early 1970s but his interest appeared to have cooled until 1984, when his relations with Britain sharply deteriorated. As a result he renewed the relationship, giving the IRA large stocks of modern military hardware. Four separate shipments of arms made their way from Libya to Ireland in the mid-1980s, bringing the IRA around a thousand rifles together with fearsome weapons such as Semtex plastic explosives, heavy machine guns firing armour-piercing rounds which could cut through even protected police vehicles, SAM-7 missiles and anti-aircraft guns capable of downing helicopters and planes, and even flame-throwers. The authorities knew nothing of the Libyan link, which amounted to the worst British intelligence lapse for decades. Both the IRA and Libya itself were under surveillance from a battery of security agencies, yet all the resources of the RUC, military intelligence, MI5 and MI6 had failed to uncover the Libyan connection.

The new weapons meant the IRA was able to step up its violence, not just in Northern Ireland but also in England and Europe. The Libyan armament was brought into play only gradually, but as it came into greater use the IRA killing rate rose from thirty-seven in 1986 to fifty-eight in 1987 and sixty-six the following year. The IRA aim was to reverse the pattern of security force casualties, for more RUC and UDR personnel, sometimes called the ‘Ulsterised’ security forces, were being killed than were regular British troops. In the years 1985 to 1987, for example, nine regular soldiers were killed compared to seventy-one police and UDR members. The republicans coldly set out to kill more British troops, calculating that this was the way to increase the impact of their violence.

At the same time the security forces hit back against the IRA with SAS ambushes. The most notable of many such incidents took place in May 1987 when eight IRA members were killed as they attacked a small RUC station in the County Armagh village of Loughgall. The heavily armed IRA unit was attempting to blow up the part-time station when waiting SAS soldiers opened fire on them, inflicting what was in terms of lives lost the worst single setback during the modern history of the IRA. Several of those killed were regarded as being among the IRA’s most proficient and most dangerous members.

The year 1988 brought no statistical rise in violence, but it included some terrible incidents which have remained in the memory of many who lived through them. One sequence in particular, in March of that year, will always be associated with one of the darkest and most traumatic periods of the troubles, when for a time violence seemed to be spiralling completely out of control. The sequence began not in Northern Ireland but in the British possession of Gibraltar. In the first week of March three IRA members, one of them a woman, were shot dead in disputed circumstances by the SAS in what came to be regarded as one of the most controversial incidents of the troubles.

Many thousands more attended the funerals in west Belfast, but in Milltown cemetery mayhem broke out when to general amazement a lone loyalist gunman, Michael Stone, launched an attack on mourners. After much initial confusion Stone, a stockily built man with long hair and a moustache, was to be seen firing a handgun and throwing hand grenades towards the gravesides. He then jogged towards a motorway several hundred yards away, pursued by hundreds of men and youths. On his way he periodically stopped, firing shots and throwing grenades to hold back his pursuers, killing three of them.

More was to follow. One of those killed by Stone was a member of the IRA, and as his subsequent funeral made its way to Milltown a car carrying two British army corporals unaccountably drove into the cortège. Mourners besieged the car, assuming that its occupants were loyalists intent on a repeat attack. Dozens of them rushed forward, kicking the car and attempting to open its doors. Both the soldiers inside the car were armed, and one climbed partly out of a window, firing a shot in the air which briefly scattered the crowd. The crowd surged back, however, again attacking the vehicle, and the corporals were eventually pulled from the car and punched and kicked to the ground. They were then dragged into a nearby sports ground where they were again beaten and partially stripped. Finally they were driven to a patch of waste ground and shot dead.

The violence was unremitting. For one thing the loyalist killing rate rose sharply, from only 5 deaths in 1985 to a total of 62 in the following three years, as both the UDA and UVF increased their activity in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

As always, however, republican violence attracted more attention than did loyalist killings. The IRA was active on many fronts, causing the deaths of a substantial number of Protestants whom it claimed were loyalist extremists involved in violence. Some were but some were not.

Some months later, in February 1991, the IRA staged one of its most audacious attacks in England. The target was originally Margaret Thatcher, but by the time the incident took place she had been replaced as prime minister by John Major. He was chairing a meeting of ministers during the first Gulf War when a number of mortar bombs rained down in the vicinity of 10 Downing Street.

The rest of 1991 brought more IRA attacks in Britain, more killings of IRA members by the SAS and an increase in loyalist activity.

Then in April came an IRA attack in London which had an extraordinary effect. Two bombs set off in the City of London, Britain’s financial heartland, actually inflicted more financial damage than all the 10,000 bombs which had ever gone off in Northern Ireland. When the smoke and dust cleared it was found that the two bombs had caused more than £700 million of damage. The total paid out in compensation in Northern Ireland at that point was just over £600 million. The device had been placed near the Baltic Exchange and the tall buildings around it created a canyon-like effect, preventing the blast from escaping and instead funnelling it into surrounding buildings.

The scale of the Baltic Exchange damage opened a new avenue, the possibility of inflicting serious damage on the entire British economy.

Political activity did not produce any significant progress and violence went remorselessly on. And, as always, there were innocent victims. One of the saddest incidents came in Warrington, near Liverpool, when two IRA bombs placed in litter bins in a shopping precinct killed two young children and injured 56 other people.

The IRA, undeterred, within weeks staged another huge bombing in the City of London, repeating their Baltic Exchange attack of April 1992 by setting off a large bomb at Bishopsgate in the heart of the financial district.

Yet even as death and destruction continued at a high level, subterranean talks were going on. What became known as the peace process began to surface.

Most of the 1990s would be dominated by what came to be known as the peace process, which was to change the face of Northern Ireland politics and Anglo-Irish relations. It was a highly controversial enterprise regarded with the utmost suspicion by many as it threaded its way along a long and tortuous course. One of its starting points was the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which led to a gradual but important rethink in republican ranks.