Soldiering Against Subversion. Dan Harvey
time since ‘The Emergency’ that a full battalion was on the ground. There were between 600–700 men in Camp Arrow. Our equipment was outdated, we had no combat uniforms, no wet gear, no sleeping bags and our radios were primitive. The helmets were of First World War era and our webbing was from the Second World War times – in a word ‘ridiculous’.
Notwithstanding, we were mentally prepared and very willing to cross the border, especially when the support weapon ammunition arrived. Within a few days delegations came from Derry, two separate groups, the first wanting weapons – to whom we replied that we had no authority to give them any. The second was a larger group; they shouted and roared at us disparagingly for not going into Derry. We had a concern for how our fellow nationalists were being treated, brought up as we were on a definite dogma that the ‘Irish’ were nationalists only, and felt that we had justification to go in. It was all very polarising and upsetting.
Time passed, the weather deteriorated, the excitement waned, [and] there was less and less contact with and between Command and Brigade Headquarters and ourselves. Some discontent emerged among those of the First Line Reserve, especially those who had come back from England. They wished to return home but were refused permission. The weather deteriorated into October and units rotated up those unit personnel who had yet to come to the border until the companies from the South and the East went back to their commands, leaving the 6th Battalion only in situ in Camp Arrow.
The tents began leaking, the morale deteriorating somewhat and in early December the field hospital returned to Custume Barracks, Athlone. When this was pulled out we moved into Rockhill House, from which we patrolled along the border with the Garda. We received visits and inspections from higher headquarters but there was an unrest stirring within due to a lack of information on what was likely to happen and this was driving us mad.
We rotated back to Athlone in mid-December and were very glad that the Second Line part-time reserve, the FCÁ, were allowed to do Barrack guard duties; this was a great relief to us. The Battalion gradually identified people from the border areas who wanted to go there in proximity to where they were originally from. It took a year to a year and a half to settle down. It was a critical time in the army because we did not know what was going to happen.
CHAPTER 3
The British Army Blunders
With severe and prolonged rioting in Derry, Belfast and elsewhere across the Six Counties, the Irish army was already moving towards the border. The British Prime Minister took the decision to hurriedly draft in British army elements from the mainland to reinforce the token military presence garrisoned there and together they patrolled the streets across Northern Ireland to prevent a breakdown of law and order. At 5 pm on 14 August 1969, 300 British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, the Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire, reinforced by a Company of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales, having earlier arrived in Northern Ireland on the HMS Sea Eagle, entered the Bogside in Derry. Meanwhile, three companies of the 2nd Battalion, the Queen’s Regiment, and two companies of 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales, deployed into Belfast.
The following day, Brigadier Peter Hudson, Officer Commanding 39th Infantry Brigade, toured the areas and determined reinforcements were required. Later that same day the first elements of the 3rd Battalion, the Light Infantry, began to arrive. ‘Operation Banner’, the British army campaign in Northern Ireland, was underway. By early September, 6,000 British troops were in Northern Ireland.
They were there to quell any further intercommunal violence and at first were welcomed and accepted in the embattled Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry; their presence even perceived as likely to back the political reforms insisted on by London. In mid-October 1969, the decision was taken to disband the B-Specials and replace it with the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). This, however, was to be a part-time element of the British army. The Unionists were deeply shocked, but it was deemed that the B-Specials represented Protestant repression and needed to be reformed. However, the move enraged Protestants, resulting in serious rioting along the Shankill Road area. Shots were fired at the British army and over twenty soldiers were wounded overall after riot squads moved in and made arrests. The British army presence in the North was regarded as a huge relief by Catholics, who happily furnished tea and biscuits to the troops. This honeymoon was not to last, however, and the pre- and post-Christmas period was to prove to be the lull before the gathering storm.
During Easter 1970 (1 April) at the edge of Belfast’s Catholic Ballymurphy housing estate, trouble broke out between two sets of rural groups and the Royal Scots intervened between them. However, instead of ‘holding the line’ between both sets of protagonists, they waded in against the Catholic residents with batons and indiscriminate volleys of CS gas to quell the stoning, rioting behaviour and continuing disorder. If not a key turning point, it was perhaps the beginning of a radicalising moment whereby nationalists began to view the British army as an instrument to perpetuate the status quo in favour of Protestant loyalists; a view reinforced on 27 June by their non-interference, despite requests in advance to do so, in the Catholic Short Strand enclave amid an armed attack by a loyalist mob, a defence which included the armed protection of St Matthew’s Church – an event in the sub-culture of the Troubles that marked the rebirth of the IRA. Earlier that month was also to see a change of government in Westminster when the Conservative Party under Edward (Ted) Heath came to power.
Traditionally, the Conservatives were more closely allied with and supportive of the Unionists, and the Stormont Government in Northern Ireland now found themselves with the twin advantages of being fully supported by London and with British troops at their disposal. Brian Faulkner, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, favoured the prioritising of security to that of political reform, and as a result the British army, at the behest of the Unionists, were directed to nullify the fledgling IRA. This push for harder security measures addressed the symptoms rather than the root cause of the Troubles, and was to later include internment without trial of over 300 people suspected of being involved with the IRA.
When the Troubles initially broke out in August 1969, the IRA had few members, fewer guns and hardly any money. The organisation was unable to adequately defend Catholic areas against the ‘Protestant Pogrom’, as it was considered in some quarters. Those few remaining individuals were taunted by graffiti daubed on walls publicly denouncing and condemning the IRA as standing for ‘I Ran Away’. Discouraged, and disheartened after the failure of ‘Operation Harvest’, the border campaign from 1956 to1962, the leadership had taken to the pursuit of a more political campaign advocating the merits of advancing a Marxist–leftist policy. After August 1969 a more militant element emerged, and in December 1969 there was a split in the organisation resulting in the pre-existing, more politically inclined, ‘Official’ IRA and the more extreme, militantly active ‘Provisional’ IRA. A strained stand-off existed between the Provisional IRA (PIRA) and the British army; though this was actually part of the Provisional’s strategy of ‘phased or staged engagement’.
The first engagement – defensive in nature and an opportunity to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Catholic community in Belfast – occurred on the evening of 27 June 1970, when a loyalist Orange Order band and their supporters marched through the Short Strand/Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. On their return from the main parade, violence erupted as the march entered the Catholic Springfield Road area.
The River Lagan, the Newtownards and Albert Bridge Roads enclosed the district on three sides and existing within the boundary was a hugely outnumbered Catholic enclave. Theirs was an uncomfortable existence and the spectre of conflict often hung over them. Protection was problematic and withdrawal was difficult, and if attacked they knew they simply had to stand their ground. With the British army and RUC deployed nearby, but unhelpfully not intervening, it fell to those within to prevent being burned out of their homes. Armed PIRA men moved into positions distributing themselves throughout the district, including taking up the advantageous aspect afforded by the tall tower steeple of St Matthew’s Church, granting them excellent fields of observation and fire.
When repeated, determined incursions by loyalist mobs were in progress, those in the steeple responded with unyielding defence. The five-hour firefight prevented the Protestant mob from being able to position themselves to hurl petrol bombs. The march had become a riot then