The Royal Ulster Constabulary is not simply a police force in the
ordinary sense of the term. Intermittently since the early 1920s, and
consistently since the late 1960s, the RUC has been occupied in trying
to crush guerrilla opposition to the state. This involves both a quasi-
military campaign against the guerrillas themselves and repression of
those sections of the civilian population which support the guerrillas.
Both tasks require the use of methods different in kind and intensity
from those employed in ordinary policing. Except for a brief period in
the early 1970s, the police in Northern Ireland have always been
heavily armed. Their present equipment includes automatic weapons
and armoured land-rovers.

We shall not here attempt a comprehensive analysis of the diverse
strategies and techniques used by the RUC today in their anti-guerrilla
campaign. Rather, we shall focus on two aspects which deserve special
mention. These are: 'shoot to kill' and plastic bullets.

'Shoot to kill'

Through much of the present conflict there have been persistent
allegations that the Crown forces in Northern Ireland have engaged in
'dirty tricks', including the assassination of troublesome opponents.
These allegations have always been denied by police, army and
government, but on occasion, there has been substantial evidence to
support them.

One notorious case occurred towards the end of 1982 when six Cath-
olics were killed by undercover police in three separate incidents. The
police were part of the secret E4A squad which had been especially
created to engage in covert operations against paramilitaries. Of the six
Catholics, two were members of the Irish National Liberation Army
(INLA), three were from the IRA and one was completely uncon-
nected with any paramilitary organization. All were shot dead in
highly controversial circumstances: five were certainly unarmed, and
all could have been captured alive.

A suggestion that there was some unease, even at official levels, was
first indicated when four of the police involved in these killings were
prosecuted in the Diplock courts. However, one was acquitted in early
April 1984 and three more at the beginning of June. In the latter case
the defendants were exonerated by the presiding judge, Lord Justice

Casualties of War 59

Gibson, who said, in his summing-up on 5 June 1984, that the three
police officers were 'absolutely blameless' and commended them for
'their courage and determination in bringing the three deceased men
to justice, to the final court of justice'. After the immense criticism
produced by these comments, Lord Justice Gibson, in a very unusual
move, issued the following statement from the Bench:

I would wish most emphatically to repudiate any idea that I would approve or
that the law would countenance what has been described as a shoot-to-kill
policy on the part of the police.

Nevertheless prosecution had not ended the affair. The mysterious
circumstances of the six deaths, plus mounting evidence that the
police had falsified or concealed information, produced a continuing
uproar. Between the two acquittals, the government set up an inquiry
to investigate the alleged police cover up. However, the British police-
man, John Stalker, who was appointed to head the inquiry was con-
fronted with massive obstruction within the RUC. He was then,
himself, the target of corruption allegations and removed from the
inquiry. Though subsequently cleared of any malpractice, Stalker was
never allowed to return to his Northern Ireland investigations, and
shortly after resigned from the police force.

Between 1982 and 1986 more than 30 people, 18 of them unarmed,
were shot dead by the police and the army. Though few were left
in any doubt that some measure of 'shoot to kill' policy had been
followed, it was never established whether such policy was officially
sanctioned at top level, or was simply a grass-roots initiative within the
police force. Amnesty International called, unsuccessfully, for an
independent judicial inquiry, citing as cause for concern, not only the
deaths, but the delays of several years before inquests into these deaths
were held.

From 1987 onwards the scale of such suspicious killings by the
security forces has escalated significantly. Eight IRA members who
were surrounded by the army and police in an incident at Loughgall
were all shot dead, having apparently been given no opportunity to
surrender. In early 1988 an unarmed Sinn Féin sympathizer on his
way to work was killed by a soldier at a border checkpoint. The army
described the shooting as accidental. A few weeks later, three unarmed
IRA members were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar. Local civilian
eyewitnesses stated categorically that the three were given no chance
to give themselves up and were deliberately finished off at close range
while lying wounded on the ground. If the testimony of these local

As well as tackling the IRA and other paramilitary forces, the police in
Northern Ireland also have the job of controlling the local communities
from which these forces come. Hostility to the British government is
often widespread in these communities, especially in the Catholic
working-class ghettoes. This hostility is expressed through civil
disorder and rioting, to which the police response is sometimes very
brutal.

A common weapon used by the police for quelling disorder is the
plastic bullet, which itself replaces the earlier rubber bullet. Plastic
bullets have been used on a staggering scale. For example, in the space
of a single month during the hunger strikes - May 1981 a total of
16,656 plastic bullets were fired in Northern Ireland. And though
described as a method of crowd control, plastic and rubber bullets can
be lethal.

Since 1972 plastic bullets have killed 16 people in Northern Ireland
and seriously injured many more. All except one of those who died
were Catholics; six were aged 14 or under; and at least five were
expressly declared by inquests not to be involved in rioting. Only once
has a police officer been prosecuted for such a killing: when Catholic
John Downe was shot at close range by an RUC man during a demon-
stration in Belfast. Uniquely in that instance, the entire event was
shown on television. However, when the police officer, who was
charged not with murder but with manslaughter, came before a
Diplock court, he was acquitted.

Deaths, injuries and bombings

Detailed statistics on violence in Northern Ireland are given in
Appendix 4. The general picture is as follows. Since 1969, in occur-
rences connected with the present conflict, there have been over
30,000 shooting incidents, 8,000 explosions, 6,000 malicious fires and
12,000 armed robberies inside Northern Ireland.

There have been hundreds of casualties in bombing incidents in

Casualties of War 61
Britain and the Republic of Ireland, while within Northern Ireland
itself over 2,500 people have been killed and 26,000 injured. These
figures are large in themselves; when viewed as a proportion of the
small population of Northern Ireland they are immense. Violence on
such a scale in mainland Britain would mean around 90,000 deaths
and 900,000 people injured.

Both the nature and scale of violence have fluctuated considerably.
The peak was in 1972 when fighting between the IRA and the British
Army was at its most intense, and Loyalist groups were at their most
active in killing Catholic civilians. In the space of this one year, 467
people were killed, of whom 146 were members of the security forces
(mainly British soldiers), 75 were paramilitaries (mainly Provisional
IRA) and 246 were civilians (mainly Catholics). Since 1972 the scale
of violence has diminished and during the 1980s the death toll has
averaged around 76 a year. This total can be broken down roughly as
follows: Royal Ulster Constabulary 15, Ulster Defence Regiment 9,
regular British Army 8, paramilitaries 10 and civilians 34.

These figures indicate two main things about the current state of the
conflict. To begin with, apart from occasional very major incidents
such as the Warrenpoint and Droppin' Well explosions in 1979 and
1982 respectively, relatively few British soldiers have been killed in
recent years. Most casualties amongst the security forces are accounted
for nowadays by the locally recruited RUC and UDR. This is very
different from the early 1970s when British Army casualties were
heavy.

What has produced the change is Britain's Ulsterization policy.
Under this policy British troops have been withdrawn from action
wherever possible, and security put into the hands of locally recruited
forces, especially the police, who have been rearmed and placed in the
front line. The implications of the figures for RUC deaths are start-
ling. If these deaths continue at the rate observed in the mid-1980s,
then the average career policeman in Northern Ireland will have nearly a
1 in 20 chance of being killed by the IRA during his period of service. (This
assumes that there are 10,000 male full-time members of the RUC,
30 years of service for the average career policeman and 15 policemen
killed a year.) If serious injuries are also taken into account, the risk is
higher still. To be a policeman in Northern Ireland today is clearly to
be in a dangerous profession. The decline in regular British Army
deaths and injuries may be a gain for the people of mainland Britain,
but it means a new burden for Northern Ireland Protestants who
provide the personnel for the local security forces. Relative to popu-

62 Casualties of War

lation, 50 per cent more Protestants have been killed in the security forces
between 1969 and 1988 than the USA lost during the entire Vietnam War.
The second striking feature about the statistics is the small number
of paramilitary deaths in recent years. Apart from some exceptions,
like the raid on the Loughall Police Barracks in 1987, few para-
militaries are killed in action nowadays. This is mainly because of the
lower scale of violence in recent years, and also the greater profession-
alism of the IRA.

The second feature to note is the reduction in civilian casualties.
This is partly due to the decline in purely sectarian killings by Loyalist
paramilitaries, and partly to the greater effort the IRA leadership has
made in recent years to minimize civilian casualties. These efforts, it
must be said, have not prevented some appalling incidents, such as the
massacre at Enniskillen, when eleven innocent bystanders were killed
by an IRA bomb on Remembrance Sunday in 1987.

The general picture can be summarized as follows. The situation of
virtual insurrection of the early 1970s has given way to a prolonged
war of attrition between dedicated professionals. The British Army
now plays only a supporting role in this conflict and the main protag-
onists are all local: on one side the IRA, whose members are virtually
all drawn from the Catholic community; and on the other side the
RUC and UDR, whose personnel are mainly Northern Ireland Prot-
estants in the service of the British Crown. In the shadows stand the
Protestant paramilitaries, who launch sporadic forays into Nationalist
areas where their victims are mainly Catholic civilians. Compared to
the early 1970s, the violence is no longer so dramatic; the number of
civilian victims is greatly reduced; and the bulk of the casualties are
people from Northern Ireland.

Even so, it is still significant in both human and political terms.
Quite apart from the suffering it represents for the people of Northern
Ireland, this violence prevents a return to anything like normality in
the province and places a permanent question mark over its future.

Casualties of War 63
In addition to people formally charged with offences, a vast number
are detained and released after questioning.

While statistics regarding numbers detained are not complete, the
information that is published does give a fair idea of the scale of the
detention process. Over the period 1975-86, 44,273 persons were
detained in Northern Ireland under the Emergency Provisions Act, of
whom 40,933 were later released without charge. Over the same
period, a further 6,968 persons were detained in Northern Ireland
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, of whom approximately 4,700
were not charged with any offence. The number of detentions has
fallen in recent years, but even so it remains very high. In 1986 the
total number of people held in Northern Ireland under the two Acts
was 2,279, of whom the overwhelming majority were later released
without charge.

Some of the people who are detained without subsequently being
charged are suspected of illegal activities, but many others are held
merely for interrogation. It is thought they may have information of
value to the authorities. Indeed, the enormous disparity between
numbers detained and numbers charged suggest that detention is
being used for two main purposes: to enable 'fishing expeditions' by
the authorities; and as a mechanism for harassing or intimidating
people hostile to the regime.

In England and Wales during 1986, 59,481 persons, mostly Irish,
were detained at ports of entry under the PTA. This was an increase
of more than 4,000 on the previous year. However, a mere handful
were actually charged with any offence. In addition, within mainland
Britain, a total of 6,246 persons were detained during the period
1974-86 under the PTA in connection with Northern Ireland. Of
these only 528 were charged with an offence. In the mid-1980s deten-
tions in mainland Britain under this Act have varied in the range
150-200 a year.

64 Casualties of War

prison officer to see if she is carrying any forbidden article. Menstru-
ating women are ordered to remove their tampons or pads, and if they
refuse their sanitary protection is forcibly removed and inspected.
There has always been strip searching in Northern Ireland, but its
use has been greatly intensified since November 1982 when it was
made routine in Armagh gaol. Since that date something like 3,000
strip searches have been carried out at Armagh, where at any one time
the prison population is approximately 40. Republican women have
also been repeatedly strip searched in other prisons. The most striking
case was perhaps that of Martina Anderson and Ella O'Dwyer who
were each strip searched almost 200 times between January and May
of 1986 while on remand in Brixton Prison.

The intensive use of strip searching is justified by the authorities on
security grounds, as a vital safeguard to prevent the importation of
such items as weapons, explosives and keys into prisons. Critics, on
the other hand, argue that strip searching is deliberately intended to
punish and degrade prisoners. Whatever the motive behind it, there is
no doubt that the practice of strip searching is extremely humiliating
for the prisoners concerned, and has profound psychological effects,
especially when it occurs during menstruation, or when it is frequently
repeated.

Criminalization

Paramilitaries in gaol in Northern Ireland, whether Loyalist or
Republican, see themselves as 'political' prisoners or prisoners of war,
who have risked their lives and sacrificed their liberty for their beliefs.
This is also a common view in the communities from which they
come. Between 1972 and 1976 the same view was also accepted by the
British government, which gave such prisoners 'special category'
status. This meant that they could wear their own clothing, maintain
their paramilitary organization and command structure, and that their
officers were recognized by the prison authorities.

However, as we saw in chapter 4, special category status for new
prisoners was abolished in 1976. Since that time, paramilitary person-
nel entering gaol have ceased to be treated as prisoners of war; now
they are treated as ordinary criminals. This policy of 'criminalization'
struck directly at paramilitary prisoners' sense of dignity, and
weakened the mutual support system which their tight paramilitary
organization had provided. It was fiercely resisted through a series of

Paramilitary prisoners face extremely long sentences, and have great
difficulty in obtaining release. In May 1986 there were 133 Repub-
licans serving life sentences in Northern Ireland, and another 23
'SOSP' prisoners. The latter are prisoners who were under 17 at the
time of their alleged offence and hence too young to receive a formal
life sentence. Instead they were detained at the 'Secretary of State's
Pleasure' - which in practice means a sentence of life. It should be
noted that the great majority of life and 'SOSP' prisoners were arrested
and/ or convicted between 1976 and 1979. This was the time when
allegations of police beatings to produce confessions reached a peak.
Though investigation practices were subsequently reformed following
the recommendations of the Bennett Committee (see p. 55), convic-
tions dependent on confessions which were secured during that period
were allowed to stand.

For paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland a life sentence is
typically much longer than is normal for ordinary criminals. The
latter are, on average, released after eight to ten years, in contrast to
many Republican prisoners (and a few Loyalists) who have been in
gaol for 15 years already, and are likely to remain there for more years
to come. The source of this disparity lies in government policy that
paramilitary life prisoners should only be released if they completely
renounce their political beliefs.

One group of paramilitary prisoners who deserve special mention
are those in gaol in mainland Britain. In 1986 there were 37 Repub-
lican prisoners in this category. There were also 11 prisoners whom
the IRA claims were framed by Britain in connection with events like
the Birmingham and Guildford bombings (and over the accuracy of
whose convictions there is widespread doubt in establishment circles).
There are also a number of Loyalist prisoners on the mainland. Of the
Republicans, 23 are serving life sentences and the remainder sentences
of 20 to 25 years.

Keeping paramilitary prisoners in Britain when their families still
live in Northern Ireland, causes immense hardship. Their relatives,
most of whom are very poor, are put to great expense and difficulty

66 Casualties of War

when making visits. This burden is increased by the practice of moving prisoners around the country without notice and keeping them for prolonged periods in solitary confinement. The policy towards paramilitary prisoners contrasts strongly with the compassionate treatment received by British soldiers charged with serious offences in Northern Ireland. They are routinely returned to Britain to serve their sentences. Indeed, the only regular soldier to be convicted of murder while on duty in Northern Ireland, was rapidly transferred to a prison in Britain, and though sentenced to life imprisonment was released on parole within 21⁄2 years and returned to his regiment.

Censorship

The record of the British media in covering events in Northern Ireland
has been a sorry one. Ranging in their approach from the superficial to
the positively misleading, both the newspapers and the broadcasting
services have done little to clarify the reasons for the conflict. They
have presented the differences between Northern Ireland's two com-
munities as a curious, archaic, tribal struggle between people who
cannot live peaceably beside each other as normal people supposedly
do. The paramilitaries, especially the Republicans, are shown solely as
murdering madmen with no respect for human life or the rule of law.
Overall, media coverage has concentrated on violence and 'terror'
shorn of any political context - and hence of any rational basis, and of
any hope of its ending.

In part the distorted and inadequate media presentation of Northern
Ireland is due to the views of journalists and those directly controlling
broadcasting and the press. However, it also reflects the degree to
which media - in particular television - coverage is shaped by govern-
ment demands. Over the years both the BBC and the IBA have
repeatedly bowed to political pressure to modify programme content.
The best known and most public example of television censorship
occurred in 1985 when a film in the BBC series Real Lives was with-
drawn following representations by the government. In this film,
Martin McGuiness, a leading member of Sinn Féin, and Gregory
Campbell, a prominent Loyalist, were interviewed at length. The
home secretary objected strongly and the BBC's governors withdrew
the programme even though it was already complete and advertised in
the Radio Times. However, following a widely supported protest
strike by BBC journalists, the governors backed down and agreed to

Casualties of War 67 put on a modified version of the film in which Martin McGuiness was shown in a more unfavourable light.

Yet the Real Lives incident is only the most publicized in a long
series. Since 1968 some 50 major programmes have been banned,
delayed, cut or altered in accordance with government objectives, for
the most part without the public knowing that any of these interven-
tions have occurred. Most affected have been news or current-affairs
programmes (including This Week, Tonight, Panorama, World in
Action, 24 Hours, and also a large number of documentaries), but other
programmes have also fallen foul of the censorship process. Thus, in
1981, BBC's Top of the Pops was forbidden to screen a video which
included a collage of street scenes from Northern Ireland (described by
The Times as 'utterly uncontentious'). Several plays have also been
delayed or dropped.

The rules governing the screening of television programmes about
Northern Ireland are contained within two documents. BBC pro-
grammes must be dealt with according to the Corporation's News and
Current Affairs Index (see Appendix 6), while those on ITV are subject
to the Independent Broadcasting Authority's Official Guidelines. Both
of these documents specify that all programmes dealing with Northern
Ireland must be 'referred upwards' for approval by top-level manage-
ment. No other political topic is subject to such rigid oversight. It amounts
in effect to a form of managerial censorship, and ensures the content of
programmes is centrally controlled and coverage of Northern Ireland
determined in accordance with government priorities.

This does not quite result in Republicans being kept off TV screens
altogether. However, their appearances are rare, and when they do
appear, the manner in which they and their views are presented
is never positive, and generally very unsympathetic. Senior BBC
personnel have stated explicitly that it is Corporation policy to give
Republican spokespersons a hard time, and to treat them as 'hostile
witnesses'. Republican interviewees are subjected to hostile question-
ing, repeated interruptions and sharp contradiction. In addition they
are always balanced by a countervailing view. By contrast, pro-British
politicians are frequently interviewed; they are rarely met with
hostility; and it is normal practice that no rebuttal is included from the
Republican side.

None of this is surprising. No state engaged in military struggle
allows genuinely unpartisan coverage of their opponents' viewpoint.
However, it does underline how the conflict in Northern Ireland
makes nonsense of the supposed independence of the British media.