The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

They appealed against their £20 fine and the Northern Ireland High Court upheld their action and ruled that under Section 38 (1) of the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, Northern Ireland, Section 4 of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act had been contravened. This prohibited the Parliament of Northern Ireland from legislating on matters affecting the army, navy and other armed forces of the Crown.

The net result of the decision was to render all acts of the British Army illegal during their operations – on the orders of Faulkner’s Joint Security Council – in searching people, entering their homes and arresting them during internment.

‘Large extra powers were conferred on Stormont which may now pass any law it pleases to increase the powers and indemnity of the army.’

Early in February it appeared that he was tending towards a solution which involved more Catholic representation in Stormont.

However, as the potential for violence increased, particularly the threat from Vanguard and other Loyalist groupings, Heath veered over to a more radical approach.

Faulkner was informed at this meeting that unless the Six Counties were brought under control quickly London would assume direct rule, suspending Stormont.

At this juncture, at least, the attempt to replay the Orange Card was to backfire.

The entire law-and-order apparatus of Northern Ireland – the police, prosecution, the courts, judges and prisons – was to be transferred to Whitehall.

The United Kingdom government remained of the view that the transfer of this responsibility to Westminster was an indispensable condition for progress in finding a political solution to Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland government’s position therefore leaves them [the UK government] with no alternative to assuming full and direct responsibility for the administration of Northern Ireland until a political solution to the problems of the province can be worked out in consultation with all those concerned.

‘Northern Ireland is not a coconut colony and nobody and no coconut commission will be able to muster any credibility or standing.’

Decoded it said: ‘We are superior to our neighbours in the Republic, and of course to the Catholics in our midst. We are British, but you British are incapable of understanding us. Very well, you may not be able to live with us, but you will find you cannot live without us.’

In a word, the Loyalists were brought face to face with the contradiction of Loyalism: how to proclaim oneself loyal to the Crown and maintain that posture without coming into conflict with decisions by the Crown or its agents with which the Ulster Loyalist profoundly disagreed.

One felt like someone whose family house, in which the family had lived for umpteen generations, was being taken over and I was actually the caretaker because my boss was ill.

there wasn’t the slightest doubt that all of us at the end of the day were going to answer to the Lord or the Queen in parliament and that was that and we would plug into the new machinery and we would do our best under it.

The word used in the Bill was not suspension but prorogation and Whitelaw from the outset made it clear that he regarded the suspension of Stormont as an opportunity for a new beginning from which peace and reconciliation might flow.

This was not how the action was regarded in Northern Ireland. The Catholics by and large took the suspension of Stormont as a triumph.

The Protestants of course regarded it as their corresponding defeat and initially the Protestant reaction was the one with which London had most visibly to contend.

In less obvious association with them, there stood in the wings the UDA, which set up no-go areas paralleling the Catholic ones in Belfast and Derry and indulged in undercover activities that led to the deaths of several Catholics.

The ‘pitchfork killings’, which shocked Co Fermanagh in 1972, were not in fact committed by Loyalist paramilitaries, but by members of the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

‘Why have they not started to hit back in the only way these Nationalist bastards understand? That is, ruthless, indiscriminate killing… if I had a flamethrower I would roast the slimy excreta that pass for human beings.’

It might not go so far as that but it could go so far as killing. It would be similar to the situation in the 1920s where Roman Catholics identified in Republican rebellion could find themselves unwelcome in their places of work and under pressure to leave their homes.

Because one of these days, if and when the politicians fail us, it may be our job to liquidate the enemy.

Catholic carriers throughout the province offered the use of their vehicles to help Catholics move out in the event of the expected Doomsday situation.

Craig said that he was prepared ‘to shoot to kill’ to keep Ulster British, and went on: ‘When we say force, we mean force. We will only assassinate our enemies as a last desperate resort when we are denied our democratic rights.’

But while it would be true to say that Craig and others’ bloodcurdling utterances failed largely because the bulk of the Unionist population had no real stomach for UDI, or for large-scale acts of treason to the Crown, to which they professed loyalty, there was also an element of intimidation which proved the determining factor in dictating a softly-softly approach by the army.

the army decided that it could not afford to open a second front against Protestant paramilitaries and risk turning to be shot in the back by the IRA as they faced a new foe.

The close undercover relationships between the Loyalist paramilitaries and the army incline one to look a little sceptically at claims that these simply either did not exist or were the activities of rogue elements.

It sought to act, but was only able to cage the beast; the secret of its destruction had been lost with its birth.

The UDA throughout the entire period would provide a useful source both of intelligence and of surrogates willing to perform actions for which the army did not wish to see any smoking guns left lying around.

The march passed off peacefully enough but it was a clear indication that a widescale revolt was under way on the part of the Nationalists as a whole.

Using often unstable gelignite which blew their own operatives up almost as regularly as it did the selected victims, they attacked ‘economic’ targets, as well as security forces.

that there was a most clear-cut dichotomy between the role of Paisley and those of ‘the political leadership on the other side of the sectarian divide’, such as John Hume and Gerry Fitt,

There would have been no deaths in Londonderry on 30th January if those who organised the illegal march had not thereby created a highly dangerous situation in which a clash between demonstrators and the security forces was almost inevitable…

At one end of the scale some soldiers showed a high degree of responsibility: at the other… firing bordered on the reckless…

none of the deceased or wounded is proved to have been shot while handling a firearm or a bomb.

The army continued to maintain its official line that those shot had either been handling weapons or explosives

Dublin, for example, quietly restored diplomatic relationships with London and the SDLP began casting around for methods of getting back into talks.

The party issued a statement calling on everyone who had withdrawn from public bodies and entered into a campaign of civil disobedience to abandon this ‘as a demonstration of their determination to bring about community reconciliation’.

At the time there was a hunger strike for political status in progress in Crumlin Road jail amongst the Provisional prisoners.

there were widespread fears in Belfast as to what would follow in the way of rioting should he die.

The Provos wanted two concessions before meeting Whitelaw for negotiations: firstly, an acceptance of the prisoners’ political status demands; and secondly, the release of Gerry Adams – who even then, at the age of twenty-five, had become a leading figure in the Provisionals – to take part in the negotiations.

When O’Conaill heard that the deal was in place, he responded without equivocation: ‘You have got a ceasefire at midnight on 26 June.’

but he later came to view the concession of Special Category status as a mistake.

For the first time since Michael Collins had negotiated across the table with Lloyd George in Downing Street, the British Government were meeting the IRA.

at that stage unbridgeable gaps, between the Provisional and Conservative stances.

On the one hand, ever since the fall of Stormont, rumours had been circulating in the British press, largely well founded on forthright after-dinner, off-the-record comments by prominent Tories, that the only solution, long-term, for the Irish issue was unity. In practice these same politicians had no intention of attempting anything so drastic.

Whitelaw, at that stage, was a newcomer who knew very little about Ireland bar what he had picked up on two golfing trips ...

A vast cultural divide lay between Whitelaw and his aides, Channon, Woodfield and Stephen, and the IRA men.

The meeting was a non-event. The IRA’s leaders simply made impossible demands which I told them the British government would never concede.