Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
8 - ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The major part of violence is created and maintained by Britain. All other violence is a counter to the state violence of the security forces. The real terrorists are the UDR and the Police.
(Republican Owen Carron, Westminster MP, Irish News, 22 August 1981; in Wright 1990, p. 32)Introduction
The previous chapter examined British counter-terrorism policies and practices in Northern Ireland without considering the accusation, often levelled against the British government by the nationalist community, that some of these policies and practices individually, or all of them collectively, constitute terrorism – that is, state terrorism. It is just as frequently assumed that if terrorism is morally wrong, then terrorism practised by the state is necessarily even worse. To evaluate this accusation of state terrorism and the moral judgement commonly attached to it, reasonable answers must be given to three fundamental questions: (1) What is ‘state terrorism’? (2) To what extent has the British government engaged in state terrorism in Northern Ireland? (3) Is state terrorism necessarily morally worse than terrorism practised by non-state agents? Answering each of these questions will require examining a number of subsidiary issues as well, including the vexed question of whether, or to what extent, loyalist terrorism should be regarded as state-terrorism-by-proxy. I will argue that state terrorism has occurred in Northern Ireland, but there is little evidence to suggest state terrorism has been pursued as a policy.
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- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008