During the summer of 1970 the British Army’s tactics in Northern Ireland unmistakably shifted into a more aggressive gear. Responsibility is frequently pinned upon Edward Heath’s administration, elected in June. This chapter argues for continuity across the electoral divide as Heath pursued the reform agenda demarcated by his predecessor, Harold Wilson. This chapter refutes the notion that loyalist groups were largely irrelevant in British strategy. Even before the general election, fear of loyalist rebellion deterred strategists from impartially addressing violence from wherever it came. Fear of loyalism fused with over-confidence about the army’s ability to attack and suppress republicanism. From May 1970 the British Army launched a preventative assault on republicans, to ward off the danger of civil war by eliminating the only belligerent deemed defeatable. After the Conservatives gained power, the government sent HQ Northern Ireland additional manpower to pursue the offensive with greater vigour. The major curfew operation in the densely populated Catholic Falls Road area in Belfast in July is placed within the broader context of the assault on the IRA. When the first soldier was killed in February 1971, Prime Minister Heath felt public opinion in Britain now expected republicanism to be crushed.

It is well known that Britten visited the Soviet Union on five occasions between 1960 and 1971 and established warm friendships with members of the Soviet musical elite: Dmitri Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Galina Vishnevskaya. Using a range of declassified archival material, this article places this engagement in the wider historical context of Anglo-Soviet political, commercial, and cultural relations, from the wartime alliance with Stalin to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It considers the operation of the Anglo-Soviet Cultural Agreement, alongside the importance of individuals such as the impresario Victor Hochhauser and a sequence of supportive British ambassadors and cultural attachés. It also examines the role of the British Council on the ground and some of the constraints placed upon this cultural engagement through resourcing and the rules of the political game. Finally, it assesses engagement beyond Britten’s lifetime, in the light of the visits of pop artists such as Sir Cliff Richard and the Bootleg Beatles to the Soviet Union and the first performances of works hitherto taboo, such as Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Between August 1969 and March 1972, the British government focused on reforming but maintaining unionist-majority rule at Stormont to appease both unionists and nationalists. Fear of provoking a civil war and getting entangled in Northern Irish politics - which counted for little at Westminster - explains the British government’s reluctance to attempt significant reforms prior to 1972. In addition, Edward Heath’s government was reluctant to negotiate and grant significant concessions to violent opponents of the state. Yet allowing Stormont to delay and dilute reforms and to influence British security policy dragged the British Army into conflict with the nationalist population. As nationalist anger increased, the non-violent Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) pulled out of Stormont in the summer of 1971. IRA activities increased. Escalating violence eventually forced the British government to suspend Stormont and assume direct rule. By March 1972, the British government had realised that the IRA could not be militarily defeated, and tried instead to reduce violence to 'an acceptable level' to enable political solutions to emerge. But IRA violence continued and influenced both the SDLP and British government to talk to the IRA in June 1972.

The IRA called a ceasefire from June to July 1972 primarily because it was keen to negotiate from a position of strength. Equally, various IRA leaders recognised the need for a negotiated political settlement. The IRA demonstrated their desire to engage in dialogue with the British government in early March 1972, when leading IRA members held secret talks with Leader of the Opposition Harold Wilson. This chapter also suggests that the British government were partly responsible for the collapse of the 1972 ceasefire. The British government never outlined the boundaries of a potential political settlement to the IRA. Neither did they try to politicise the republican movement by legalising Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland. The IRA contributed to the ceasefire’s failure too. Despite sizeable support levels in working-class nationalist areas, they had no political mandate from which to encourage the British government to provide concessions towards the republican position.