The Lessons of Northern Ireland
Jonathan Denby
British solder stands on a corner in Belfast, Northern IrelandFor centuries Great Britain controlled one of the largest empires the world has ever known. Through the cunning use of military might and co-option of its conquests, the imperial island nation effectively dominated large parts of the Americas, Africa, India, China, India, Oceania, and later the Middle East. However, well before these territories came under the sway of the Union Jack, there existed Britain’s first and oldest colony, Ireland. For more than eight-hundred years, Britain colonized Ireland and subjected the Irish people to one of the most repressive military occupations a people has ever faced. This occupation continued to the end of the twentieth century with the occupation of Northern Ireland. The story of that occupation—and what infamously became known as “The Troubles”—is an important story to examine in this day and age of insurgency and terrorism. Hopefully, something can be learned from Britain’s tragic involvement in Northern Ireland, particularly by those powers that are currently experiencing the pain and sorrow of military occupation.
The war that shook Northern Ireland for over forty years had its roots long before in another time—1923. That was the year that the Irish War of Independence against Britain came to a close, which resulted in the Irish Free State. Unfortunately, the conclusion of hostilities also resulted in the partition of Ireland into the North (which remained under the direct control of Britain) and the South (the Free State). The reason given by Britain’s rulers for the partition was that a small Protestant majority inhabited Northern Ireland and they were afraid that this population, which historically was tied to Britain, would be subjected to severe discrimination in a united Ireland dominated by the larger Catholic population. However, by keeping dominion over Northern Ireland, Britain ensured both that its large Catholic minority would be subjugated and that future conflict would be inevitable.
The fears of the British concerning what treatment Protestants would face in a united Ireland instead became the daily reality for the Catholic population in the North. The Protestant majority and the state security forces—namely the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the B-Special militias, and later the British Army—subjected Catholics to wanton discrimination and harassment. Catholics were systematically kept out of political power through gerrymandering and other tactics; they were denied employment while Protestants were given good jobs; they were denied adequate public housing and were forced to live in decrepit slums; many Catholics of fighting age were monitored and arbitrarily detained by the security forces on suspicion of membership in the Irish Republican Army (which was conducting a guerrilla campaign in the border region at that time); and, finally, they were subjected to sectarian violence by rioting Protestant mobs and paramilitaries.
In August of 1969, the worst of this mob violence broke out in the cities of Belfast and Derry. In one single week militant Protestants burned entire Catholic neighborhoods to the ground in Belfast, killing 7, injuring 750, and displacing 1,505 Catholics—all while the security forces stood by and watched. As a result of the rioting, two important events happened. First, Britain made the fateful decision to send troops to reoccupy Northern Ireland in an attempt to separate the two feuding sects. Secondly, on the Catholic side, the Protestant violence resulted in the formation of the Provisional IRA.
Known popularly as the Provos, the Provisional IRA’s initial objective was to secure Catholic areas across Northern Ireland and protect them from Protestant violence. However, it was not long before the British Army—which had initially been greeted by the Catholic population with open arms—began to aid and support their Protestant brethren in the repression of Catholic areas. In response, the Provos took up arms against the occupying British and what began as a civil war between two feuding sects was now, at least for the Catholic population, a war of national liberation.
The early 1970s would see the worst violence in The Troubles, as this war came to be called. The IRA, its ranks swelled by continual British repression, carried out daily attacks on British troops and Protestant paramilitaries across Northern Ireland. Car bombs (a modern weapon pioneered by the IRA) were detonated in Protestant neighborhoods. Fierce gun battles raged between IRA and British troops in Belfast, RUC and British bases came under attack in rural areas like Armagh, and terrible rioting broke out in the cities and large towns accross Northern Ireland.
The British response to this descent into chaos was more repression. The Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland government at Stormont, with the backing of Britain, introduced the old tactic of internment without trial. Thousands of Catholics, most having no connection to the IRA whatsoever, were arrested and interned at prison camps like Long Kesh. There, they were subjected to harsh interrogation by RUC and British intelligence officers. The result was predictable: those internees who before had no connection to the IRA came out of places like Long Kesh dedicated and trained operatives.
Then, on January 30, 1972 came an event that would propel the violence of The Troubles to new and deadly heights. During a Catholic civil rights demonstration in the city of Derry, British paratroopers opened fire on innocent protesters, hitting twenty-six and killing thirteen. Bloody Sunday, as this event came to be called, radicalized many Catholics who had theretofore sat on the sidelines of the conflict. Ivan Cooper, leader of the civil rights march on Bloody Sunday, famously summed up the situation following the massacre: "I'd like to say to the British government- you know what you've done, don't you? You've destroyed the Civil Rights Movement. Tonight, young men will be lining up to join the IRA, and you will reap a whirlwind." And he was right.
Bloody Sunday led to an explosion of support for the IRA. The British could not have done anything more than what they did in Derry to strengthen their adversary. Money and weapons poured in from the Irish-American community. Attacks sky-rocketed as the IRA unleashed its new arsenal and recruitment base against the British forces and Protestant paramilitaries. In fact, most of the deaths of The Troubles occurred in the immediate years following Bloody Sunday.
IRA GunmanThe British again made a major mistake when in 1981 they allowed ten IRA activists to starve themselves to death in prison. Those who carried through to the end of the hunger strike were celebrated as martyrs throughout the Catholic community. The funeral of Bobby Sands, the leader of the hunger strikers, was attended by over 100,000 people in West Belfast. Again, the IRA was strengthened as support poured in from all over the world, including support in the form of large amounts of modern weaponry from Colonial Gaddafi’s Libya. The next ten years would see a high level of violence as a better-equipped and better-organized IRA fought the British to a stalemate.
In hindsight, it is truly amazing that the IRA managed to survive and fight for so long against such incredible odds. Through most of it existence the IRA had, at any given time, no more than a couple hundred dedicated operatives fighting the British occupation in Northern Ireland. Behind them stood thousands of active sympathizers—both in the North and in the Irish Republic—who offered logistical and financial support. And behind them stood the larger Irish Catholic population whose attitude toward the IRA swung back and forth between wholehearted support to rejection over some of the dirtier tactics employed by the organization. But arrayed against the insurgents was a British occupation force of more than 30,000 professional troops, which was supported by the entire British intelligence community. Bolstering this force were thousands of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police, and hundreds of Unionist paramilitary soldiers.
For more than four decades the IRA managed to effectively fight this coalition amassed against it for a number of reasons: 1) the behavior of the British and Northern Ireland security forces alienated the Catholic population to such a degree that the IRA had the necessary level of support to wage an effective insurgency 2) the IRA had available the South of Ireland as a protected base-area to equip itself, train its personnel, and plan operations 3) the IRA had a large international network of logistical and moral support stretching from Libya to the eastern cities of the United States 4) the cell structure adopted later by the IRA made the organization difficult to penetrate, at least at the unit level 5) Gerry Adams, the unofficial leader of the IRA and later Sinn Fein, manage to conduct an ingenious campaign of secret diplomacy between the IRA, the British, and the Republic of Ireland that not only led to peace but kept the organization intact.
One of the key lessons of the conflict of Northern Ireland should be that when confronted with an insurgency, an occupier will rarely win militarily—the only solution, then, is political. It eventually dawned on both sides that there would be no clear victors. The British and Unionists could not annihilate the IRA, nor could the IRA expel the British and take over the state. The only possible solution then was negotiation, which occurred at first in deep secrecy and then openly with many parties involved, including the United States.
It ought to dawn on the United States today that it cannot win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by military force. The experience of Northern Ireland shows that military might is a very blunt instrument, and when directed against a population a radicalization effect occurs that eventually leads to (and fuels) insurgency. This has happened on a wide scale in Iraq where over four thousand Americans have died battling a sophisticated insurgency that formed as the direct result of the occupation. The only possible resolution to this war, just as in Northern Ireland, will be political, involving all levels of diplomacy and negotiation. The British and IRA took over forty bloody years to discover this fact. Hopefully it takes the United States much less time.
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