Chapter 5
Northern Ireland: Breakdown of Settler Rule, 1969–1972

From 1921 until the late 1960s, the British metropole took little interest in Northern Ireland's internal affairs, much as the American federal government earlier turned a blind eye to racial domination in the American South. In Ulster as in the American South during the 1960s, it took widespread disorder and violence to convince the metropolitan government to reconsider its comfortable isolationism and assert its authority over the dominant regional caste, in support of the minority.

Already in the mid-1960s the British curtain of silence regarding Northern Ireland was beginning to lift. Questions were being raised by Labour MPs who

were concerned with the very great increase in financial assistance from the Westminster Exchequer to Ulster, and without constitutional reform and more liberal policies it was becoming more difficult to justify to MPs, and to some members of our Cabinet, the large sums we were being asked to vote.^[1]

(Westminster subsidized the Ulster budget—$240 million in 1968—to improve social services.)

Labour politicians previously had been as hesitant as the Conservatives to question arrangements in Ulster, but the 1964 British election brought in a number of progressive Labour and Liberal MPs who were ready to open debate on Northern Ireland. In April 1965 they formed the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, to investigate allegations of dis-

[1] Harold Wilson, The Labour Government: 1964–1970 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and Michael Joseph, 1971), p. 270.

crimination, propose changes in Ulster's electoral laws to conform with those in Britain, and extend the Race Relations Bill to Northern Ireland.^[2] Attempting to initiate debate on these issues in the House of Commons, these MPs were repeatedly ruled out of order on the grounds that such matters were the proper concern of Stormont alone. Unsuccessful in Parliament, the campaign nevertheless drew the attention of British elites to communal inequalities in Ulster. By the late 1960s the Labour Government itself began to press for reforms.

Earlier in the decade, a rare change occurred at the top of the Ulster Government. In 1963 Terence O'Neill became the fourth prime minister of the province. Like his predecessors, he was a member of the Orange Order and shared the standard Protestant prejudices against Catholic "Fenians" and "papists." But he was also the first moderate premier, prepared to consider limited reforms in the settler order that were partly driven by an awareness of the country's economic exigencies. Only through greater economic planning and infusions of foreign capital could the decaying industrial structure be modernized and the economic decline of the late 1950s reversed. Economic modernization was linked, he believed, to reforms in the treatment of the Catholic minority.^[3] He cultivated contacts with moderates among Catholics—visiting Catholic schools, meeting with priests—and displayed less tolerance for Protestant extremism. O'Neill was also more amenable than his predecessors to détente with Ulster's irredentist southern neighbor; in 1965 he held an unprecedented meeting with the prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, Sean Lemass.

Largely cosmetic, O'Neill's initial gestures affected neither the socioeconomic position of Catholics nor Ulster's sectarian security system.^[4] But his early years in office were important because he embodied the promise of meaningful reform, without delivering. Like the efforts of Whitehead in Rhodesia and Botha in South Africa, O'Neill's reform efforts mobilized and radicalized the subordinate population and precipi-

[2] Vincent E. Feeney, "Westminster and the Early Civil Rights Struggle in Northern Ireland," Eire-Ireland 11, no. 4 (1976): 3–40. The property qualification for voting in municipal elections was abolished on the mainland in 1947 but remained in effect in Ulster, where about one-quarter of those eligible to vote in Westminster elections were ineligible to vote in local elections (Richard Rose, Governing Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective [Boston: Beacon, 1971], p. 441).

[3] Kevin Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1982), p. 79. O'Neill was successful in attracting several multinational corporations to Ulster (Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State [London: Pluto, 1976], p. 229).

[4] See Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, The British State and the Ulster Crisis: From Wilson to Thatcher (London: Verso, 1985), pp. 15, 17.

tated bitter opposition within the ranks of the dominant caste to the prime minister's "deviations."

Ever since the 1920s the Catholic minority had been politically inactive and acquiescent to the status quo. While harboring grievances, it was not ready to support armed struggle against the state. The failed revolt of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1956 to 1962 was the exception that proved the rule, since it could not attract Catholic support. In the mid-1960s, however, Catholics began to push for the redress of grievances. Dissatisfied with the poor record of Catholic political parties (the Nationalist party and the Northern Ireland Labour party) in securing minority rights, Catholics began to build new organizations as O'Neill catalyzed their rising expectations. The Campaign for Social Justice, formed in 1964, and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, in 1967, launched a civil rights movement inspired in part by its American counterpart.^[5]

These were moderate, middle-class organizations seeking equal rights and social integration. The Campaign for Social Justice focused on socioeconomic discrimination. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association disputed gerrymandered electoral boundaries and property qualifications in local governmental elections; it called for antidiscrimination legislation, a mechanism to handle citizens' complaints against governmental departments, impartial allocation of public housing, disbanding of the Ulster Special Constabulary, and repeal of the Special Powers Act. Significant as they were, these demands hardly challenged fundamental political and constitutional structures. Missing from the original agenda were some of the most divisive issues: the constitutional status of the province, the Unionist monopoly of power, the existence of the border, and British claims of sovereignty over the province. Only later did militant groups enter the civil rights movement with more radical, nationalist aims (such as abolishing the border); the IRA resurfaced in December 1969 to defend Catholics against Protestant assailants but did not engage in killing until 1971.^[6]

Initially, the civil rights movement had greater impact in antagonizing the Protestant community than at extracting reforms from Stormont or Westminster. Loyalists defined the civil rights groups as a front for the

[5] For a comparison of the American South and Ulster, see Richard Rose, "On the Priorities of Citizenship in the Deep South and Northern Ireland," Journal of Politics 38, no. 2 (May 1976): 247–91.

[6] Stephen W. Beach, "Social Movement Radicalization: The Case of the People's Democracy in Northern Ireland," Sociological Quarterly 18 (Summer 1977): 305–18.

IRA and their protest marches as an affront to Protestant supremacy.^[7] At the same time, Catholic protests added fuel to popular Protestant outrage over "O'Neillism," or official appeasement. Protestants branded O'Neill and the reformist wing of his Government as "the enemy within" and the apparent drift of executive policy as a threat to undiluted settler supremacy and the existence of the Protestant state.^[8] The threats were not just political: reforms in the socioeconomic order were anathema to working-class Protestants, who feared competition from Catholics for jobs and housing. Protestants surveyed in 1966–1967 rejected the legitimacy of Catholic grievances; only 18 percent thought Catholics were "treated unfairly." In contrast, 74 percent of Catholics believed the minority had suffered unfair treatment and 55 percent supported protests against discrimination. Since the settlers did not perceive that the minority was treated unfairly, they saw no need to endorse mechanisms to ensure fairness. Only 23 percent of Protestants felt the government should pass a law making it illegal to refuse a job or housing to Catholics because of their religion.^[9] Rather paternalistically, O'Neill lamented this failure to appreciate the benefits of socioeconomic concessions:

It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants.... But if a Roman Catholic is jobless and lives in the most ghastly hovel, he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance.^[10]

Catholic mobilization and the regime's perceived kid-gloves response enraged Protestant extremists, who (like their white counterparts in the American South and South Africa) launched a countermovement to block all concessions to the minority. Civil rights demonstrations and marches met Protestant counterdemonstrations and ended in several violent clashes and savage police attacks. The first bloody encounter in Londonderry on 5 October 1968 convinced London to press for immediate reforms. The second major incident occurred on 4 January 1969 at

[7] Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987), p. 52. The Scarman Tribunal found that the IRA had not planned or organized the 1969 disturbances and that its involvement was "slight" ([Scarman Tribunal] Violence and Civil Disturbances in 1969: Report of a Tribunal of Inquiry, Cmnd. 566 [Belfast: HMSO, 1972], p. 16).

[8] Kelley, Longest War, p. 94.

[9] Rose, Governing, pp. 481, 484, 497. Strikingly similar, a survey of Israeli Jews noted that 75.2 percent were reserved about or opposed a law that would punish discrimination against Arabs in jobs and housing (Sammy Smooha, "Jewish and Arab Ethnocentrism in Israel," Ethnic and Racial Studies 10, no. 1 [January 1987]: 14).

[10] Quoted in Farrell, Orange State, p. 256.

Burntollet bridge, when civil rights marchers were ambushed by a group of Loyalists, including off-duty members of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Later that day, the police stormed the Catholic Bogside district in Londonderry and went on a rampage. On subsequent occasions Loyalist mobs, with police support, invaded Catholic enclaves in Belfast and engaged in arson and shooting. Catholic rioting broke out later in 1969, rioting that seemed to the Government altogether sinister; a new premier claimed that the rioters sought "to overthrow a Government democratically elected by a large majority."^[11] The Scarman Tribunal's investigation of the riots in the summer of 1969 flatly refuted this contention: "There was no plot to overthrow the Government or to mount an armed insurrection."^[12] The tribunal found the Royal Ulster Constabulary seriously at fault during six major incidents.

The backlash among Protestant citizens had sympathizers within Stormont and the Cabinet. O'Neill encountered stiff opposition to reforms from a number of hard-line Protestant politicians, and the Unionist back bench at Stormont staged several abortive revolts against him. The most strident hard-liner in the Cabinet was the chief of the security system, Minister of Home Affairs William Craig. Craig described the civil rights movement as a "bogus" front for violence and subversion and argued that reforms were a serious mistake. (The Cameron Commission, examining the causes of the violence of 1968–1969, concluded otherwise: the movement's grievances had a "substantial foundation in fact.")^[13] Craig appeared to condone violence by Loyalists and (along Rhodesian lines) publicly floated the idea of a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain; for this he was dismissed by O'Neill.

When Harold Wilson remarked to O'Neill that "Northern Ireland is rather like Rhodesia" O'Neill responded, "Maybe it is, but I do not intend to be the Garfield Todd of Northern Ireland."^[14] (Todd had succumbed to a Cabinet revolt against his reformist moves in 1958.) Ironically, O'Neill suffered the same fate. In Ulster as in Rhodesia,

[11] James Chichester-Clark, quoted by the Scarman Tribunal, p. 10.

[12] Scarman Tribunal, p. 10.

[13] The Cameron Commission identified causes of the violence of 1968–1969; they mirrored the grievances of the civil rights movement (housing discrimination, electoral gerrymandering, the USC, the Special Powers Act) and included Protestant fears of threats to Unionists' control of the state ([Cameron Commission] Disturbances in Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 532 [Belfast: HMSO, September 1969], Lord Cameron, Chair).

[14] Terence O'Neill, The Autobiography of Terence O'Neill (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972), p. 83.

power tended "to gravitate towards those who [were] least ready for change."^[15]

O'Neill's resignation in April 1969 was but the most striking symptom of the rapidly eroding Unionist cohesion. The fragmentation of the state and the corresponding divisions within the Protestant community were at least as serious as the mobilization within Catholic circles at the time. The debates in Cabinet and Parliament revolved around the direction the regime should take: toward limited concessions and institutional reform, or back to traditional sectarianism. In both scenarios the vital interests of the settler community would stand; nothing would alter the status of the border or the Unionist-dominated state. The debate centered on how best to safeguard these interests. As in Rhodesia in the early 1960s, the enlightened Unionist faction could not prevail over the absolutists: the arguments for renovated settler rule were lost on a caste convinced that the minority would exploit any concessions as a stepping stone to a united Ireland. In turn, Loyalist intransigence suggested to Catholic forces that the settler state was beyond redemption: powerful Protestant forces seemed ready to fight any hint of political modernization under the traditional battle cry, No Surrender!

Rose argues that a "minority cannot fragment its opponents by its own efforts."^[16] The civil rights movement did not by itself precipitate Unionist fragmentation, as is commonly assumed.^[17] Only after the Unionist monolith had begun to show cracks did the mobilization of subordinate forces gather impetus. O'Neill's modernist innovations and the brief eclipse of traditional hard-line policy raised Catholic expectations and provoked a right-wing Protestant backlash inside and outside the state. Unionist divisions opened space for Catholic protest and gave their demands increasing salience.

In contrast to Rhodesia where the Rhodesian Front's victory over the Whitehead Government in 1962 eased frictions within the state, reunified the settler community, and stifled black unrest, the replacement of O'Neill accelerated both state fragmentation and the mobilization of Protestant and Catholic militants. These contrasting outcomes can be explained in part by the differential role of the metropole. In Rhodesia, as we have seen, the lack of sustained pressure from Britain frustrated

[15] Colin Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 36.

[16] Rose, "Priorities," p. 266.

[17] Michael MacDonald, Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland (New York: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 76–77.

black expectations and removed one potential source of settler fragmentation. Britain's involvement in Ulster helped to crystallize grievances, raise expectations, and spark protests among Catholics. It showed that the settler state's authority in Ulster was not absolute. And it outraged a hard-line section of the Protestant community, already horrified at the specter of Catholic mobilization and the Unionist regime's apparent surrender to British and Catholic demands. The changing balance of forces produced a full-scale crisis of authority and order that led to British rule in 1972.

Labour's Abortive Reforms

Despite Northern Ireland's growing unrest, the metropole's policy of least interference was paramount. Although in 1969 Harold Wilson had condemned the "nearly fifty years of... unimaginative inertia and repression of successive, unchallenged and... unchallengeable Ulster Unionist Governments," the Labour Government was reluctant to intervene.^[18] The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, revealed: "The advice that came to me from all sides was on no account to get sucked into the Irish bog."^[19] Another minister, Roy Jenkins, told the Cabinet: "If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that the English cannot run Ireland."^[20] Callaghan's Conservative successor as Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, took an even more pessimistic view: "I realized the virtual hopelessness of any attempt by reason to bring peace and reconciliation to this suffering and tortured people."^[21]

Labour policy from 1968 to 1970 centered on encouraging the Unionist Government to accept a reform program without replacing established political institutions. Callaghan was quite explicit:

As no reliable alternative instrument of government existed, it seemed to me to be better to win the agreement of the Ulster Unionists to what was necessary than to use the power of Parliament to dismiss them. I had no confidence that if the Ulster Unionist Government were replaced British intervention would make the situation better in the long run. These are quicksands for the British.^[22]

[18] Wilson, Labour, p. 692.

[19] James Callaghan, A House Divided: The Dilemma of Northern Ireland (London: Collins, 1973), p. 15.

[20] Quoted in Sunday Times Insight Team [hereafter Insight], Northern Ireland: A Report on the Conflict (New York: Vintage, 1972), p. 105.

[21] Reginald Maudling, Memoirs (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1978), p. 180.

[22] Callaghan, House Divided, pp. 24–25.

In Cabinet, Callaghan and Denis Healey expressed the view that "our whole interest is to work through the Protestant government. The Protestants are the majority and we can't afford to alienate them."^[23] London believed that Stormont could become a beacon of reform—despite its past record—and that Westminster would not need to suspend the regime or legislate over its head. For Wilson, "Only speedy reform could avert irresistible pressures for legislation at Westminster... intervening in Irish affairs; none of us wanted that."^[24] The Cabinet's desire to avoid legislative intervention in Ulster was critical, since there was no mechanism for metropolitan judicial intervention like that of the American federal courts during the civil rights movement.

London's overriding concern was to avoid taking direct political control of the province. British policy, one minister noted, "amounted to doing anything which would avoid direct rule."^[25] Accordingly, the Labour Government simultaneously urged reforms on the Unionist Government and reassured it. The aims were to salvage Stormont's credibility as the legitimate center of authority, restore "a sense of self-confidence in the Ulster Unionist Cabinet," and fortify the coercive capacities of the regime (e.g., with the British army in 1969).^[26]

This faith in, and practical reliance on, the Unionist regime was itself at the heart of the problem. Already in September 1969, the Cameron Commission's report, Disturbances in Northern Ireland, had linked unrest to the Unionist party's permanent monopoly of state power, which had made it "insensitive" to criticism and pressures for reform.^[27] Had the British Government itself been more sensitive to the political climate in Northern Ireland and the strength of Unionist resolve to defend the existing order, it might have shown less optimism about the possibilities for funneling reforms through established political institutions. This strategy was destined to backfire in a context where ascendant supremacist forces defined reforms as unwarranted and deserving of fierce resistance.^[28]

This did not mean that nothing changed in Ulster. Even limited British intervention was a sharp departure from the past and Stormont-

[23] Former British Minister Richard Crossman, quoted in Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome Business: The Labour Party and the Irish Question (London: Pluto, 1982), p. 108.

[24] Wilson, Labour, p. 672.

[25] Quoted in Insight, p. 103.

[26] Callaghan, House Divided, p. 70.

[27] Cameron Commission, p. 12.

[28] Mary Holland, "Lessons of Direct Rule," New Statesman (London), 23 March 1973, p. 401.

Westminster relations altered significantly. In London a new Northern Ireland department in the Home Office was formed, which gave the province a higher profile. Joint Ulster-English working bodies were created to sort out various problems. Commissions of inquiry were established to make recommendations on controversial issues. A Ministry of Community Relations was created to foster intercommunal harmony. And universal adult suffrage was introduced in local council elections. By 1971 all the original demands of the civil rights movement had been met, except repeal of the Special Powers Act.

Security arrangements were also affected by metropolitan intervention. Between 1969 and 1972, responsibility for internal security in Northern Ireland was shared between the Unionist and British Governments. In 1971, a Joint Security Committee (JSC) was created to coordinate security, with representatives from both states: the British army commander, the Chief Constable, the Unionist premier and two other ministers, and a British Government representative. Committee members had different outlooks and motivating interests but shared a commitment to restabilizing the province.^[29]

The new British voice in security decision making did not guarantee structural innovations; liberalization depended on a complex set of considerations:

• desired changes in security institutions would be balanced against Britain's foremost interest in maintaining political stability and combating violence;

• reforms were most likely to materialize if they could be channeled through the Unionist Government, not unilaterally imposed by the metropole;

• reforms would be postponed if they appeared to raise the already troubling level of right-wing political opposition (from Cabinet members, the Unionist back bench, Loyalist extremists outside the party, and the regime's own "atavistic grassroots supporters")^[30] and undermine the incumbent moderate Unionist leaders.

[29] The prime minister and his Cabinet colleagues needed to assuage Protestant constituents and dissident Unionist MPs; the Chief Constable struggled with police morale, Catholic distrust of the force, and the sensibilities of the Protestant community; the British army commander needed sufficient military resources to suppress disorders but also sought to return security duties to the police and reduce the army's presence in the province; the British representative sought to ensure reforms of security structures with minimum British involvement (Rose, Governing, pp. 172–74).

[30] The quoted phrase is Harold Wilson's (Labour, p. 270).

More thoroughgoing change in political and security arrangements would have required more direct British control over the state machinery. London was loath to take this on.^[31]

The Labour Government was also reluctant to commit troops to active duty in Northern Ireland.^[32] Callaghan predicted that protracted deployment of soldiers would make political intervention "inevitable" and that the army would become tainted by its association with the Unionist Government.^[33] But in August 1969, as order broke down and Protestants attacked Catholic sections of Belfast and Londonderry, British troops were sent in. London hoped that military intervention would quickly restore order and obviate direct political control of the province.^[34]

The problem of impartially maintaining order often arises in the course of third-party military interventions in societies troubled by communal conflicts. A recent case in point involves the peace-keeping force of Indian troops in Sri Lanka: intended to protect the Tamil minority from the Sinhalese majority and from local security forces, it rapidly degenerated into a brutal occupation force for Tamil civilians and insurgents (the Tigers).^[35]

British troops in Northern Ireland initially assumed a peace-keeping role, mediating between the two local antagonists. Catholics welcomed the soldiers, who brought relief from the attacks of Loyalist mobs and whose presence seemed to confirm the Unionist political system's utter bankruptcy. The honeymoon lasted several months. But the army's official "duties in aid of the civil power" (i.e., the Unionist Government) and its routine operations gradually earned it a reputation of bias in favor of the Protestant community. Increasingly thrust into highly charged confrontations with Catholics and having little grasp of legal niceties, British soldiers acted with the same insensitivity toward civilians that had discredited the Unionist police forces: indiscriminate raids on Catholic premises, ruthless responses to demonstrations and public disturbances, and daily street harassment. The cumulative effect of these

[31] In 1968 Callaghan had drawn up contingency plans to take over the Northern Ireland Government (House Divided, p. 23).

[32] Three thousand British troops were already garrisoned in Ulster on standing military duties.

[33] Callaghan, House Divided, pp. 21, 27.

[34] Bew and Patterson, The British State, p. 21.

[35] Over seven thousand Sri Lankan civilians have died in the fighting since 1983. Like Ulster's Catholics, the Tamils have experienced discrimination (in education, employment, and land settlement) under Sinhalese domination since independence in 1948; a majority of Tamils support the Tiger guerrillas (see William McGowan, "India's Quagmire in Sri Lanka," The Nation, 25 June 1988, pp. 896–99).

practices was to further radicalize and alienate Catholics from the Ulster and British governments alike and deepen communal hostilities.

The commitment of British troops relieved the intense pressures on the police and opened an opportunity for reforms. The Royal Ulster Constabulary's gross mishandling of its responsibilities for public order and riot control led to unprecedented scrutiny from the metropole and condemnation or calls for dismantling the force from Catholics. A 1969 inquiry by British officers Robert Mark and Douglas Osmond criticized the poor leadership in the RUC, the excessive autonomy of the Inspector General, the outdated police intelligence system, the fortress appearance of RUC stations (forbidding and inaccessible to the public), the lack of a system for complaints and a public relations branch, and the RUC's obsession with the IRA to the exclusion of Protestant militants.^[36] (The RUC claimed that the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force did not exist and that the police had "no records on loyalists.")^[37]

Later in 1969 the Hunt Committee's investigation of the police recommended, inter alia: dismantling the Ulster Special Constabulary (or B-Specials); greatly increasing RUC personnel; disarming and demilitarizing the police; setting up a Police Authority to which the Inspector General would be accountable; introducing a system for public complaints; enlisting Catholics; improving training in riot control; repealing much of the Special Powers Act; and removing criminal prosecution from police jurisdiction.^[38]

That the British Government officially accepted these proposals did not mean that the authorities put them immediately into practice.^[39] Many of the Hunt Committee's recommendations were delayed, diluted, or later reversed. Catholics continued to form a small fraction of police recruits; a separate system of prosecution was delayed until 1972; and the SPA was repealed only in 1973. Sensitive to Protestant concerns and considerations of police morale, the Government balanced the committee's liberalizing recommendations by an immediate infusion of personnel and material resources into the RUC.^[40]

[36] Callaghan, House Divided, pp. 54ff.

[37] John McGuffin, Internment (Tralee, Ireland: Anvil, 1973), p. 84.

[38] [Hunt Committee] Report of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 535 (Belfast: HMSO, October, 1969), Lord Hunt, Chair.

[39] Callaghan was hesitant to take control of the RUC, fearing its reaction. If it refused to serve, Britain had insufficient U.K. police available to replace it, and the British Police Federation objected to its members' serving under the Unionist Minister of Home Affairs and enforcing the Special Powers Act (Callaghan, House Divided, pp. 19, 22).

[40] Gill Boehringer, "Beyond Hunt: A Police Policy for Northern Ireland of the Future," Social Studies 2, no. 3 (1973): 404.

The Hunt report nevertheless challenged the sectarian style of policing. Its key recommendations were received bitterly in the Protestant community, whose antimodernist orientation to law and order held firmly that reforms were dangerous to Protestant security and tantamount to appeasement of Catholics. Unionist officials were predictably shocked by the report. The Cabinet agreed to abolish the USC only when Callaghan threatened that Westminster would legislate over its head.^[41]

Protestants viewed the proposed abolition of the USC and reform of the RUC as part of a sell-out by British officials, whom they considered gullible to Catholic propaganda about the forces of order. The publication of Hunt's plan for dismantling the USC was greeted with two days of Protestant rioting during which sixteen soldiers were wounded and one police officer killed. This was just one occasion when Protestant lawlessness in the defense of settler law and order warned the British Cabinet not to push its reforms in the security sphere too far.

In order to reduce Protestant furor over the loss of the USC, two new security forces were created, the Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR) and the RUC Reserve (RUCR). Formed in 1970, the UDR was to bear no resemblance to the sectarian USC and to operate instead as a normal regiment responsible to the British army commander. The composition of the regiment undermined this goal.^[42] The British Minister of Defense for Administration, Roy Hattersley, had stated in 1969 that the USC was "composed of a majority of men who have given good and honourable service to Northern Ireland and they will be welcome into the [UDR]."^[43] Because of their experience and knowledge of local conditions (and a lack of alternative recruits), former USC officers were urged to apply to the new force. Some 50 percent of initial recruits were USC men who continued to embrace decidedly Unionist visions of order; the army's screening procedures were loose enough to allow fiercely anti-Catholic elements into the UDR. Over the years, a number of UDR men have been linked to illegal paramilitary organizations, and others have been convicted of crimes, including sectarian murders.

The Hunt Committee recommended that the police be relieved of paramilitary duties, since "any police force, military in appearance and

[41] Arthur Hezlet, The "B" Specials: A History of the Ulster Special Constabulary (London: Tom Stacey, 1972), p. 223.

[42] See Derek Brown, "In Defense of Ulster," Fortnight, 6 February 1976; Ed Moloney, "The UDR: Nine Years of Killings and Controversies," Hibernia (Dublin), 29 March 1979; Barry White, "The UDR," Belfast Telegraph, 1 April 1980.

[43] Irish News (Belfast), 13 November 1969.

equipment, is less acceptable to minority and moderate opinion than if it is clearly civilian in character."^[44] Inside the Royal Ulster Constabulary there was sentiment in favor of demilitarization and disarming: in 1969 the Central Representative Body of the RUC had sent a memorandum to the Hunt Committee expressing a "desire to abandon all military aspects of our present duties."^[45] RUC constables were split on the question of arms: a 1970 poll found that 1,196 opposed and 1,085 favored retaining arms.^[46] Chief Constables Young and Shillington felt that the army should be the sole armed force and that disarming the police might indeed have positive effects. The policy was put into effect briefly in 1970–1971; the Chief Constable's report for 1970 stated, "Relieving the Police of their former paramilitary duties has to some extent reduced the tension and hostility which existed in some areas."^[47]

British plans to enhance the accountability of the RUC met with only partial success. Following Hunt's recommendation, a Police Authority was created in June 1970 to improve accountability and the handling of complaints alleging indiscipline and brutality. Yet the authority spent most of its time on recruitment, budgetary matters, and equipment and buildings; it deferred the larger policy issues and the question of accountability.^[48] The RUC and the Ministry of Home Affairs encouraged the authority's reluctance to take an active role in major police matters. One report on the police pointed to "the obduracy and determination of the senior officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to manipulate the Police Authority and render it futile.... The Police Authority was simply another department of the Ministry of Home Affairs."^[49] The 1970 Police Act stipulated that the authority's members should represent the community as a whole, yet most of its initial senior staff came directly from the Ministry of Home Affairs and failed to reflect minority interests.

The Chief Constable retained full control of operational matters—such as deployment and handling of specific disturbances—although politicians did not always respect these boundaries. As the Chief Constable later revealed, "My biggest difficulty was to try to convince politi-

[44] Hunt Committee, p. 21.

[45] "Ulster's Police Force Speaks Out," The Newsletter (Belfast), 6 September 1969.

[46] Poll by the Representative Body of the RUC, cited in Rose (Governing, p. 147).

[47] Chief Constable, Chief Constable's Annual Report (Belfast: Police Authority, 1970), p. 1.

[48] Police Authority for Northern Ireland, The First Three Years (Belfast: Police Authority, 1973).

[49] Central Citizens Defense Committee, Northern Ireland: The Black Paper: The Story of the Police (Belfast: CCDC, 1973), pp. 23, 24.

cians at Stormont and from Britain that they had no authority to interfere with police operations. It was often very difficult to convince the Unionist politicians of this."^[50]

Internal organizational changes were made to rationalize and expand police capacities. In 1970 a Community Relations Branch was formed and the Press Office enlarged to improve public relations; an Operations Department was set up to coordinate and oversee the policing of public disorders, with a Security Branch specializing in security duties and prevention of sabotage.

Little progress occurred in policing during this period. The RUC continued to act in a visibly partisan manner;^[51] constables were rearmed in 1971; overwhelmingly Protestant, it enforced the controversial security laws of the Unionist Government with little accountability. There are various explanations for the lack of more fundamental reforms, beyond organizational resistance to change: London's desire to bolster the incumbent Unionist regime; official fear of a Protestant backlash against sweeping reforms; and political violence, particularly from the IRA.

These considerations conditioned the possibilities for other security-related reforms. Repeal of the Special Powers Act was one that the civil rights movement demanded and the Hunt report recommended except for a "few essential provisions."^[52] Anticipating British pressure to eliminate all special powers, Attorney General Basil Kelly proposed repeal of most of the SPA (retaining internment powers). But the British Home Secretary refused: the increasing street violence and the overwhelming Loyalist support for the act militated against repeal.^[53]

Not only did the Northern Ireland Government retain the SPA, it passed additional security legislation: the Public Order (Amendment) Act, which restricted processions and served to prohibit civil rights marches while Protestant parades continued unabated; the Prevention of Incitement to Hatred Act, which outlawed acts designed to stir up hatred or arouse fear in a section of the public; and new regulations under the SPA.

Although many reforms proposed for the security system were limited or postponed indefinitely, they shook popular Protestant confidence in the incumbent regime—which the settlers resented for accepting Lon-

[50] Interview with author, 2 August 1984.

[51] Andrew Boyd, Brian Faulkner and the Crisis of Ulster Unionism (Tralee: Anvil, 1972), p. 73.

[52] Hunt Committee, p. 35.

[53] Peter Kellner and Christopher Hitchens, Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten (London: Cassell, 1976), p. 107; Insight, p. 200.

don's demands—and fractured the ruling party. While O'Neill's initial concessions and Britain's efforts at reform divided the Unionist Government from its Protestant supporters, they ignited Catholic demands for broader changes. This untenable situation was alleviated by the 1970 Conservative electoral victory in Britain, which marked a more favorable metropolitan posture toward the Unionists.

Tory Laissez-Faire

Both Labour (1966–1970) and Conservative (1970–1974) administrations backtracked on the original reform program in their efforts to prevent extremists from toppling moderate Unionist regimes.^[54] Common to both Labour and the Tories was a fear that Ulster might install an extreme right-wing regime or that a popular Protestant uprising might erupt, thus making Britain's posture of reform by remote control untenable. Home Secretary Callaghan wrote that the "principal achievement" of Labour's intervention was to extend "Westminster influence" without provoking a "crisis" such as a revolt by the Northern Ireland Cabinet.^[55] Labour's goals had necessarily affected its critical decisions. As a case in point, Harold Wilson wanted to ban a march by the Protestant Apprentice Boys in August 1969 but granted permission for fear that an "Orange backlash" would sweep away the "insecure" Government.^[56] The march resulted in two days of serious rioting in Londonderry. By Wilson's admission, the existence of "extremist right-wing pressure" remained of "acute concern" to the Labour Cabinet right through the election of 1970 when the Tories came to power.^[57] The concern was not limited to the possibility of a right-wing takeover of the Government but included that of a massive Protestant rebellion in the streets. Tory Home Secretary Maudling was speaking for Labour and Conservative ministers alike when he declared that "a Protestant backlash was the great danger we all feared."^[58] As Chapter 7 shows, the threat of a massive Protestant revolt remains a powerful constraint on British policy in Ulster.

Both Labourites and Conservatives, therefore, entered into a marriage of convenience with Unionist regimes, and the principal determinants of

[54] The Unionist party was becoming "difficult to handle" and prone to rebellion against the leadership (Brian Faulkner, Memoirs of a Statesman [London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978], p. 87).

[55] Callaghan, House Divided, p. 99.

[56] Wilson, Labour, p. 692.

[57] Ibid., p. 771.

[58] Maudling, Memoirs, p. 184.

British policy outlined above characterized both administrations. But the Conservative victory in 1970 did signal a more detached metropolitan posture and a more sympathetic approach to the Unionists.

Two special factors conditioned the Conservative approach. First, the traditional alliance between the Unionists and Conservatives at Westminster encouraged the Conservatives to yield to Unionist demands; the constructive engagement of Labour gave way to a more isolationist orientation on the part of the Tories. As O'Neill's successor, James Chichester-Clark (1969–1971), remarked to this writer, "The Tories liked to distance themselves from us" and as a result interstate relations became "more relaxed."^[59] The essence of the change was captured by former British Minister Hattersley:

It is not surprising that Stormont prejudices and opinions now fill the vacuum left by Whitehall's negative response to the events of the past year. The balance of power has shifted in Belfast.... Stormont runs Northern Ireland virtually alone.^[60]

Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson concurred: "One element in a gravely deteriorating situation is the growing appearance of a British Government departing from its position of neutrality and accepting a state of alliance with a single Ulster faction."^[61]

Although Hattersley and Wilson may have had partisan motives for their critiques, their conclusions appear justified in light of the Heath Government's actions. Heath displayed little concern with the Ulster crisis;^[62] and Home Secretary Reginald Maudling "was continually counseling against the need for any action at all"^[63] Both Heath and Maudling exercised less guidance than their Labour predecessors over the British officials stationed in Northern Ireland and over the local Unionist administration. By default, imperial inertia from 1970 to 1972 allowed power to revert to the settler elite. Northern Ireland Cabinet members did not hesitate to seize this opportunity to "reassert their independence," especially under the premiership of Brian Faulkner (1971–1972).^[64]

[59] Interview with author, 14 August 1984. Chichester-Clark is now Lord Moyola.

[60] Roy Hattersley, "Does Maudling Dance to Faulkner's Tune?" Guardian, 25 August 1971, p. 10.

[61] "Wilson Warns Heath" New York Times, 5 September 1971.

[62] Margaret Laing, Edward Heath: Prime Minister (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1972), pp. 221, 224.

[63] Henry Kelly, How Stormont Fell (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972), p. 132.

[64] Callaghan, House Divided, pp. 177, 96.

Favoring "a more laissez-faire approach to security matters" the Heath Government yielded to Unionist demands and thereby helped to decelerate Labour's reform program.^[65] The growing influence of Northern Ireland officials over security policy was reflected in the balance of power inside the Joint Security Committee.^[66] Friction between British and Ulster members continued;^[67] but the committee became, as Faulkner stated in February 1972, increasingly an arena within which "the vital interests of the Unionists must be acknowledged."^[68]

A second factor conditioning the Conservative approach to the crisis was the intensifying political violence in 1971. The number of deaths increased seven times from 1970 to 1971 (climbing from 25 to 174) and the number of reported incidents of shooting and bombing soared (from 383 to 3,271). This violence fueled loyalist demands that the USC be revived (the UDR was not enough); that more British troops be deployed; that they make more liberal use of their weapons; and that they occupy Catholic enclaves to root out insurgents.^[69] Demands to unleash the army coincided with the first deaths of soldiers in 1971: 43 were killed. Whitehall eventually gave in to the loyalist pressure; during the Conservative administration the RUC was rearmed, the army invaded Catholic ghettoes, a massive internment exercise began (see below), and the military presence increased to an unprecedented 22,000 troops. The partial British control over the army under the Labour Government (from the Ministry of Defense and army generals) clearly relaxed under the Tories. It was not much of an exaggeration to claim, as former minister Hattersley did, that under the Tories the army became an "instrument of the Unionist hegemony."^[70] Although the settlers no longer monopolized the machinery of state coercion and certainly did not get every initiative they wanted from London, repressive power was increasingly mobilized on their behalf.

Former Prime Minister Wilson had taken the view that reform was necessary as a shock absorber for repression: "There is no future in a policy based on the repression of violence alone unless that is accompa-

[65] Derek Birrell and Alan Murie, Policy and Government in Northern Ireland: Lessons of Devolution (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1980), p. 68.

[66] Callaghan, House Divided, p. 144; Hattersley, "Faulkner's Tune?"; Birrell and Murie, Devolution, p. 68.

[67] Former Chief Constable, interview with author, 2 August 1984.

[68] Quoted in Boyd, Faulkner, p. 74.

[69] See John Whale, "Ulster: The Slide toward Direct Rule" Sunday Times, 21 March 1971.

[70] Hattersley, "Faulkner's Tune?"

nied by an active or intensified search for a political solution."^[71] Although Labourites had held that reforms would help defuse Catholic unrest and thus allow Whitehall to minimize direct British intervention, Tories favored greater repression as a means to the same end. The Conservative party wanted Catholic militants and the IRA suppressed at all costs; it strongly opposed the use of concessions to mitigate the problem.^[72] Insisting that "concessions ... merely result in claims for more," Home Secretary Maudling cautioned that "a Protestant backlash ... could so easily be sparked off by the argument that the more concessions you made to the Catholics, the less result you got for them."^[73]

These views seemed to contradict Maudling's claim that Tory policy was "a difficult balancing act" between the demands of the minority and majority communities.^[74] In fact, policy making and implementation were sharply skewed in favor of the Protestant side between 1970–1972. Maudling described the logic behind the Conservative Cabinet's thinking:

If ... vigorous actions were not taken and, in particular, if it were alleged that the Security Forces would like to do these things but were being held back by the politicians, then there was always the danger of a violent Protestant reaction, and ... the Protestants could be just as violent as the Catholics, and they were far more numerous.^[75]

A violent and massive Protestant rebellion was dreaded not simply for the domestic damage that would result but also because it would force greater metropolitan military or political intervention, both of which Whitehall still hoped to limit. Indeed, "the necessity of avoiding a confrontation with the Protestants, with its implication of greater military involvement, appears to have become by 1970 the major influence upon government policy."^[76] In order to minimize its involvement in the province and placate the Protestants, the Conservative Government was decidedly more willing than Labour to approve various forms of repression.

The most spectacular act of mass repression was the internment operation that began on 9 August 1971. (Internment without trial allowed

[71] "Wilson Warns Heath."

[72] Laing, Heath, p. 220.

[73] Maudling, Memoirs, pp. 183, 184.

[74] Ibid., p. 182.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland: 1921–1972 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), p. 183; Rose, Governing, p. 109.

the detention of suspects on suspicion alone where evidence of wrongdoing was lacking.) In the initial sweep 342 individuals were arrested, only a fraction of whom had any connection to the IRA. In the first six months of internment, 2,357 people were arrested, two-thirds of whom were, according to McGuffin, "completely innocent men" who were released after interrogation.^[77] The Chief Constable later reflected on this embarrassing failure rate: "One reason internment went wrong was that our information on who should be interned wasn't up to date."^[78] Ironically, one important by-product of the detention and interrogation exercise was to update and increase the number of intelligence dossiers on members of the minority community.

A watershed in the crisis of order and authority, internment was highly counterproductive. (1) It caused a sharp escalation of violence and intercommunal tension. (2) It radicalized and mobilized Catholics, who staged mass antiinternment marches and rallies. (3) Its implementation by the British army drove the final wedge between the Catholic community and both the British and Unionist regimes.^[79] Catholics believed that the Conservative government had completely forsaken them for the settler caste. (4) It brought the IRA floods of new recruits. (5) Used into the mid-1970s against individuals suspected of involvement in the IRA, detention without charge or trial made political prisoners of these suspects. Internment thus enhanced the moral standing of the IRA.

Internment was a military operation in pursuit of political aims, introduced against the advice of the police and military chiefs.^[80] Faulkner's Cabinet had convinced Heath that the operation would strengthen it against both Catholic opposition and the Unionist right wing. Faulkner indeed took advantage of internment to consolidate his power in Unionist circles but failed to shore up the regime's authority.^[81]

Generally, Faulkner played a more dictatorial role in security matters than his predecessors. He rarely consulted the entire Cabinet on important security matters despite frequent requests from ministers for greater consultation.^[82] His ability to dictate security decisions was evident in other areas:

[77] McGuffin, Internment, p. 87.

[78] Interview with author, 2 August 1984.

[79] Kevin Boyle, Tom Hadden, and Paddy Hillyard, Law and State: The Case of Northern Ireland (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975), pp. 145, 147.

[80] McGuffin, Internment, p. 86. 81.

[81] Boyd, Faulkner, pp. 69, 81.

[82] David Bleakley, Faulkner: Conflict and Consent in Irish Politics (London and Oxford: Mowbrays, 1974), pp. 83, 96–97.

From August 1971 to February 1972 Faulkner was given his head, and army, not to say Ministry of Defense, opinion was systematically overruled. This was certainly the case with respect to internment and the toleration of the UDA [the Ulster Defense Association, a Protestant vigilante group], and it seems likely also to have been behind the loosening of UDR recruiting standards and the reorganization of the force on local lines.^[83]

That the Unionist Government regained much of its control over security and political affairs in 1970 did not necessarily take the steam out of Protestant protests over security policy. Support was growing for extremist leaders such as Ian Paisley, who for years had been fomenting popular outrage over official "appeasement" of Catholics; he was elected to Stormont and Westminster in 1970. The Paisleyites became a thorn in the Cabinet's flesh just as right-wing whites in South Africa troubled the Botha regime. In Northern Ireland, the right wing left its mark on security policy, as Prime Minister Chichester-Clark remarked:

One-third of the Unionist party were head cases. They wanted the security forces sent into Catholic areas to shoot them. They applied pressure to do something crazy all the time. The extremists had a big effect; they pushed Cabinet further than we normally would have gone. The Paisleyites always were a contributing factor in each security situation. We were concerned with our electoral position; some moderates were put out by the right wing in the 1970 election.^[84]

Unionist regimes simply could no longer take Protestant support for granted, even during the Faulkner regime. The most hard-line premier in years, Faulkner insisted on the military defeat of the IRA and the suspension of political initiatives; even so, his actions did not satisfy the Paisleyites.^[85]

Having lost the confidence of many Protestants as well as control over the Catholics, the last three Unionist regimes fared only marginally better in satisfying the third imperative of settler rule, keeping the metropole at bay. Relieved at the less intrusive style of the Tory Government, the Unionists tried to expand their political autonomy and keep London's military support. Unionists of all stripes were anxious over the possibility that this military support might lead to direct British rule or, worse, to the doomsday scenario of a reunited Ireland. But they could

[83] Bew, Gibbon, and Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland, p. 183.

[84] Interview with author, 12 August 1984.

[85] Faulkner wrote: "I argued that to attempt some constitutional innovation of a major nature while IRA violence continued would be seen as setting democracy aside to appease the IRA.... Political progress was simply not possible in a climate of terrorism and violence" (Memoirs, pp. 144, 121).

see no alternative to accepting the Crown's military aid while resisting political interference, despite the lessons they might have learned from Kenya's similar experience during the Mau Mau disturbances.

In a cruel reprise, the same dynamic that had propelled O'Neill out of office acted on his successors. Try as they might to shore up state power and reestablish order, each of the last three Unionist premiers could not strike a balance between the contradictory pressures of Protestants, Catholics, and the British Government.

Conclusion

The last three Unionist regimes reluctantly accepted certain reforms (but resisted others) in exchange for continued devolved power. Like most other settler states, the Unionist state proved reformable only within narrow bounds. In a society with deep communal cleavages, institutionalized settler hegemony, and a bitter history of repression and resistance, the regime could not suddenly promote egalitarian political and social changes and remake the security system. Northern Ireland's settler governments were not seriously committed to this enterprise, nor was the Unionist population prepared to allow them to pursue it.

The constraints imposed on the state by the settler community clashed with the demands of the metropole. With inadequate coercive resources, each Unionist regime needed Britain's help to maintain order but feared Britain's response to the palpably sectarian practices the Protestants demanded. It could not defend settler supremacy with the flexibility that Rhodesia had after 1965 or that fully independent settler states such as South Africa and Israel have. The previous chapter showed how a Rhodesian regime left to its own devices fortified its security system; British intervention in Ulster from 1969 to 1972 checked a similar expansionist tendency. Metropolitan involvement—however limited—signaled a decisive break with customary British-Ulster relations. The irony is that the settler regime had invited Britain in to restore order but, much to Protestants' chagrin, the metropole overstepped its assigned role and intruded in vital matters previously monopolized by the settlers. If the Conservative Government allowed Unionist Cabinets greater leeway from 1970 to 1972 than its Labour predecessor had, it continued to interfere in domestic affairs in a manner that ultimately proved disastrous for settler rule. Failing to safeguard its autonomy from the metropole, the Unionist state mortgaged its future.

Yet the evidence presented in this chapter points to the resilience of Northern Ireland's security apparatus as the Catholics and the British pressed for reforms. The Unionist ethos, relative autonomy, and sectarian practices of the RUC and the Home Affairs Ministry were unaffected by Britain's reforms. Criminal prosecutions remained in police hands and the Special Powers Act survived for use in repressive experiments such as internment. The British army developed a reputation as an occupation force in Catholic areas and a defender of the Unionist state. Despite some institutional innovations, the maintenance of law and order meant, as in the past, Unionist law and Protestant order .

We have seen that a complex array of settler and metropolitan interests kept the essential features of the repressive order intact. Moreover, with a Unionist regime in office and reactionary Protestant forces in civil society, Britain lacked the capacity to overhaul state institutions and normalize Ulster's affairs by remote control. Serious reconstruction of the security system would have meant terminating Unionist rule, something the metropole wished to avoid at all costs. Direct military and political intervention is rarely the preferred option. As Callaghan explained, "The lessons of Cyprus dominated all our minds at this time: how easy it was to get into such a situation and how difficult to get out."^[86] In Ulster, reforms remained altogether secondary to Britain's primary aim: restabilization with minimal direct involvement in the province .

The metropole's posture was shaped by several secondary considerations as well: a commitment to the principle of self-determination reflected in the trappings of Westminster majoritarian democracy; an obligation to those who had been loyal to the Crown;^[87] and the conviction that "no reliable alternative instrument of government existed."^[88] Only late in the day did the British Cabinet "come to learn that the Westminster pattern of democracy, which suits us so well, is not easily exportable."^[89] An alternative democratic arrangement would be required. Consequently, power sharing replaced majority rule as the cornerstone of British constitutional engineering in Ulster.

London's restrained approach to the Loyalist population was also arguably influenced by its failure to handle another settler population—

[86] Callaghan, House Divided, p. 60.

[87] The 1949 Ireland Act affirmed that the obligation would not be cut "without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland"; the 1973 Northern Ireland Constitution Act reaffirmed it, granting U.K. status to Ulster until a majority vote expressed otherwise.

[88] Callaghan, House Divided, p. 24.

[89] Maudling, Memoirs, p. 185.

Rhodesia's whites—and fears of another unilateral declaration of independence. Protestant hard-liners were indeed threatening this course of action, which London did not dismiss as meaningless posturing. Unlike Rhodesia, a unilaterally independent Ulster would be a thorn much closer to the metropole's nerves—creating tensions between London and Belfast and with Dublin, perhaps precipitating Dublin's intervention on behalf of the Catholic minority.

The events in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1972 demonstrate how quickly a settler political system can collapse when all three pillars crack. Metropolitan intervention—however minimalist—catalyzed settler fragmentation and minority mobilization. Each development, in turn, contributed to political instability and violence: the British army served rough justice to Catholics; militant Protestants broke from the settler bloc and engaged in sectarian violence; and Catholics reacted to both groups with defensive violence, which later turned offensive. These interacting processes undermined the authority and credibility of three successive settler governments and opened the way for direct British rule of this divided society.

Illustrating the metropole's evolution from an arbiter to a principal in the conflict, British troops fired on Catholic demonstrators, killing thirteen, on Bloody Sunday. This incident in January 1972 precipitated the announcement of direct rule in March. In acting unilaterally, the metropole consulted neither Protestant nor Catholic leaders. Unlike Zimbabwe's case, Northern Ireland's transition to postsettler rule was made chiefly from above and without, albeit with Catholic support. The peculiarities of this transition conditioned state-society and intercommunal relations under the new order. British rule since 1972 has had mixed results: its direct control of the security sector facilitates liberalization but Britain contributes—by its very presence and actions—to communal polarization and political violence that, in turn, limit the scope of liberalization. Chapter 7 examines these problems.