Political activists during the Northern Ireland Troubles employed racialized rhetoric, comparing the plight of Catholics to that of African Americans. This strategy aimed to frame the conflict for global audiences, establish transnational networks, and gain local support by invoking solidarity with the Black struggle. Some radicals within the movement even embraced the ideology of the Black Panthers and advocated for a similar Catholic Power movement. In contrast, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) took a different approach, using racialized language to portray their conflict with Britain as an anti-colonial struggle and aligning themselves with Africa. However, this Third Worldism approach inadvertently reinforced colonial power dynamics through their choice of rhetoric. Loyalists, on the other hand, openly acknowledged their perceived privileges as white individuals. For instance, when soldiers opened fire on Protestant rioters, loyalists reminded officers of their shared racial identity by stating, we are not wogs. This chapter argues that activists on both sides of the conflict employed racialized language in complex, contradictory, and ambiguous ways. They strategically utilized racial rhetoric for political gain, even in situations unrelated to the start of the Troubles.

Chapter 2 explains how the British Army’s ‘honeymoon’ period in Northern Ireland came to an end by May 1970, and how these early months entrenched certain ideas about nationalist and unionist communities in British strategic thinking. The chapter argues the army succeeded in partially repairing trust between Catholics and the state, but that this proved highly destabilising. Strategists under-estimated lingering anger over the events in August 1969 and exaggerated their ability to control tensions. The decision to concentrate soldiers in predominantly Catholic areas and leave the police in Protestant areas gradually made the army appear biased. Tougher action, when it came, looked like it was happening only against one section of the community, whilst the army’s ability to understand Protestant militants was limited and strategists in any case wished to avoid any confrontation from that quarter. The Provisional IRA’s offensive began around Easter 1970, before the British Army adopted a more aggressive stance. By permitting provocative Protestant marches in Belfast the British began to lose the Catholic goodwill so carefully gained by army battalions in the preceding months. The British response to rising republican violence can only be understood in the context of the expectations about loyalist reactions.

The British strategy from late 1972 aimed to solve the conflict politically by drawing moderate nationalists and unionists into the centre ground, while degrading the Provisional IRA militarily. In May 1974 the strategy unravelled when the Ulster Workers’ Council strike destroyed the power-sharing compromise. This chapter explains how the Northern Ireland conflict became intractable before the strike. The British Army lacked the capacity to overcome the Provisional IRA militarily, and the decision to appease loyalism backfired. The UVF and UDA were emboldened to the point where their violence strengthened republicanism. This chapter shows how tactical adaptation allowed the Provisional IRA to survive. The army lacked enough troops to impose a force concentration powerful enough to crush republican resistance. The army’s operational approach centred around targetting the Provisional leadership, which did limit the Provisionals’ full offensive potential. However, the Provisional IRA replaced lost leaders and reconstituted itself again and again. The chapter also describes the army’s response to the constant flow of criticism about soldiers. Community relations projects convinced soldiers their presence was valued; they under-estimated the hostility directed at them as coming from a vocal minority. An obsession with propaganda made it difficult to discern when complaints were genuine or bogus.

On 23 March 1972 the British cabinet suspended the Northern Ireland parliament, scaled down military operations, and prepared to negotiate with nationalists and republicans. This chapter asks why it took Heath’s government so long to strategically adapt, and what the delay resulted in. A straight causal line is often drawn between internment, Bloody Sunday and direct rule from London being imposed. Bloody Sunday, when the Parachute Regiment shot dead thirteen unarmed protesters during an anti-internment march on 30 January, is considered to have happened in the context of a policy vacuum, or amidst frenetic efforts to secure peace. This chapter argues that the persistence of an offensive strategy intended to defeat the IRA and force nationalists to accept minor constitutional reforms contributed to Bloody Sunday. The direct-rule decision is frequently attributed to the fallout from Bloody Sunday. But the thinking and planning necessary for strategic adaptation had already taken place. The offensive strategy endured for weeks longer because ministers decided to delay direct rule. The massacre propelled large numbers to join the IRA, a recruitment glut essential for the expansion in violence seen during 1972. Those new recruits proved effective because IRA strategy and tactics had already changed before Bloody Sunday.

This chapter analyses British strategy once direct rule had been imposed from London, and covers the period up to September 1972, when talks between the political parties happened without the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. The chapter documents the efforts by the army to buttress Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw’s quest for peace. Discontent lingered amongst elements in the security forces over restraint in fighting the IRA. Low-level brutality continued, particularly in tough regiments. In July the British government and the Provisionals held secret negotiations. Beforehand, republicans and loyalists targeted civilians to shape the impending dialogue. Senior figures in the Ministry of Defence believed loyalist attacks on Catholics might encourage republicans to modify their demands. Loyalist mobilisation probably convinced the government not to give anything away to republicans. These events, and the success of Operation Motorman in re-entering republican areas, persuaded the army to go back on the offensive against the Provisionals. In doing so they committed to retaining internment, expanding interrogation and adopting a modus vivendi with loyalists. These choices allowed the force level in Northern Ireland to be brought down, as demanded by the commitment to NATO, and swelling discord about repeated deployments on a deeply unpleasant mission.

British strategists came to accept permanent conflict in Northern Ireland because they could only imagine things being worse without them. Preparing for the long haul meant getting the army force level to a sustainable level. From mid 1973 senior officers expressed anxieties about what the repeated tours were doing to their men. Morale-sustaining measures played some part in ameliorating the fatigue. This chapter examines the debate about reductions in the military commitment as the context for understanding the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in May 1974, which condemned Northern Ireland to conflict for decades to come. The chapter argues the Ministry of Defence discouraged the Northern Ireland Office from asking for the reinforcements needed to suppress the strike. By delaying, emphasising police unreliability and presenting a catastrophe as inevitable, the ministry kept the force level down. A major arrest operation towards the end of the strike showed loyalist insurrection to be a less worrisome prospect than commonly feared. An intractable conflict was tolerable to the cabinet as in 1973–5 the character of the violence turned less ‘British’ and more ‘Northern Irish’. Successive London administrations gave confidence to those who opposed political change by the strategy of limited containment towards violent loyalism.

This chapter traces the origins of the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the mid 1960s, depicting the British government’s ignorance about the Province and reluctance to get involved. The chapter assesses the development of British military thinking about insurgency, arguing the army reflected on the lessons of the decolonisation wars, and realised the tactics used in the colonies would not be suitable in the future. The army’s deliberate intellectual decolonisation before 1969 made it much harder for soldiers to accept later on that others might perceive their actions to be inherently colonial. The chapter shows how the Ministry of Defence began to consider what might happen if the disputes on the streets of Northern Ireland got more serious. From an early stage, defence planners and ministers feared a civil war, and this fear shaped decision-making for years to come. Northern Ireland was viewed by the British as a home nation, therefore deserving support, but also deeply alien in political and social terms. The government’s decision to delay sending in the army for as long as possible made the task of restoring order more difficult, as the local police force’s credibility evaporated, and Catholic communities looked beyond the state for protection.

Introducing internment in August 1971 broke ancient prohibitions against detention without trial and forcible confessions, and incited a fervent reaction across Northern Ireland. Rather than viewing internment in isolation, this chapter evaluates the implications of Prime Minister Heath granting the army permission to wage war against the IRA. The wartime mindset began to take hold because initial operations appeared to be successful. Even as the Provisionals escalated their violence, soldiers retained some sympathy for the Catholic population, and thought of their own approach as discriminate. An arms amnesty, searches and arrests provided plentiful statistical evidence to feed the optimistic mood. Improvements to the military intelligence system gave credence to General Tuzo’s wish for gradual, low-key attrition of the IRA, especially targeting the Provisional leadership. This chapter argues the turn towards repression built slowly, and derived as much from the nature of British common law, Britain’s global commitments and London’s calculations about blame politics, as it did from fears of a loyalist backlash. The growing hurt done to those adjacent to the targets of the military failed to register as meaningful enough to force any major re-think in strategy.

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.

No account of the global convulsions of Britishness in the decades after the Second World War can ignore the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the late 1960s. This chapter sets out to tie this explosive episode into the global dynamics of the break-up of Greater Britain in two key respects. First, the climate of acute adveristy for colonialism worldwide provided ample encouragement and legitimacy to the ‘anti-colonialist’ credentials of militant nationalism. And second, and more significantly, the reaction of the Unionist majority cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider repercussions of Britain’s imperial endgame. The spectacle of a British government turning its back on longstanding moral commitments abroad (from East of Suez to Rhodesia, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands) only heightened suspicion that Protestant Ulster would be next in line. Ultimately, it was as much to combat English incomprehension of their plight that Protestant Loyalists resorted to a beleaguered militancy as the touchstone of their Britishness, unwittingly distancing themselves further from their ‘mainland’ counterparts.