State Crime: 'Bloody Sunday' and the Troubles

Ultimately, the struggle between democracy and terrorism is one for legitimacy and maintaining the latter is strategically more important for democratic governments than winning short-term victories through tactical 'quick fixes' which might seem effective but turn democracies into something that begins to mirror the terrorist opponent. (Schmid 1992:14)

STATE CRIME

This book recounts how the British state dramatically failed and in so doing committed crimes. In Northern Ireland it shot its own citizens, lied about it and blamed the victims. But then, states frequently misbehave when threatened, rashly choose 'quick fixes' and readily take the path of repression. This may only foster an escalation which proves counter-productive and leads the state, as Schmid intimates above, to resemble the opponent it reviles. For if insurgent terrorism provides a natural experiment in how the democratic state responds to a significant threat, with a sort of Milgram for the mighty, then the British state demonstrably abandoned its expressed principles and broke the law during the 30 years of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland (1968–98). Of interest is what this specific case conveys about state deviance more generally.

Here I shall outline the context of that bitter conflict within the UK and shall expand on the intricate strands and major incidents later. This context is necessary for readers from other societies who perhaps vaguely recall specific incidents but are unfamiliar with the background; but also for a new domestic generation for whom the Troubles are but diminishing history. And it is particularly important to use the distance since the end of hostilities with the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 to stand back and emphasise the key role of the state. Why did a part of the UK slide into 30 years of strife with much suffering and destruction; why was the state seemingly impotent to halt this process and find a political solution; and, crucially, in what ways did the state itself play a dubious if not illicit role in the conflict? The criminological importance of this analysis is that it provides a case study of state crime as defined by Green and Ward (2004:2) as 'state organisational deviance involving the violation of human rights', and in which the British state is in the dock.

The fundamental starting point is that in its principles, values and institutions the democratic state promises legality, justice, accountability, redress for citizens, limitations to its use of force and access to power by fair means. It is precisely the blatant absence of these within a number of despotic states that sparked the current rash of rebellious insurgency in Arabic societies in North Africa and the Middle East. For decades dictatorial regimes have employed secret police, brutal incarceration, torture, execution without trial, pervasive surveillance and a constant barrage of propaganda to impose their will on the people. In early 2011, starting in Tunisia but spreading rapidly to neighbouring countries and the Middle East, mass demonstrations suddenly took to the streets demanding basic democratic rights. The initial conditioned response of such repressive regimes has been for the security forces to shoot indiscriminately at demonstrators and to use gross violence against its own citizens. Television and internet viewers have been horrified by this wanton violence as the new media afford us instant, frontline images of the carnage; and world leaders have lined up to condemn the killings by state-led forces.

Yet for many people that is effectively what happened on Sunday 30 January 1972 in Derry in Northern Ireland at what became known as 'Bloody Sunday', with the British state employing illegitimate violence against its own citizens.

BLOODY SUNDAY

On that day the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) planned a peaceful demonstration to protest against the imposition a year before of internment without trial which had disproportionately affected 'nationalists' rather than 'loyalists'. Those organising the march were not expecting any trouble although demonstrations had often turned violent in the past. The two 'republican' paramilitary organisations, the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), had previously not mounted operations during demonstrations to avoid alienating public support if civilian casualties were attributed to them. But both would typically be present at demonstrations and be armed as 'protection'. There was also no doubt that Northern Ireland was a dangerous environment for the 'security forces'; since 1969 they had faced shootings and bombings resulting in casualties and fatalities (Geraghty 2000).

I shall refer to the conventional police and army units in Northern Ireland as the 'security forces'; the intelligence units of the police and Army as the 'intelligence agencies'; the central government's Security Service (MI5) as the 'Intelligence Service'. The police and Army also made use of covert, proactive units that I call 'counterinsurgency units' (CIUs). I shall refer to the entire control apparatus as the 'security community'.

For this particular day, however, the two IRA movements stated that they would refrain from hostile activity. The march had originally been banned but was allowed to reach the outskirts of the city centre, where its path was blocked by barriers manned by army units to prevent it spreading into the centre. The estimate of the number of demonstrators is 10–20,000 according to the exhaustively documented Saville Report (2010), which is the essential mine of detail for this event. The Saville Inquiry dealt both with the Sunday itself and with the build up to it. It is plain that there were complex, shifting processes at the political and security levels taking place that need to be located in the context of that period. However, the conclusions of the Inquiry ring crystal clear and are indisputable.

The Army had become the primary agency for maintaining security and public order in Northern Ireland in place of the much-troubled police force, the RUC (Ellison and Smith 2000; Weitzer 1995). The Army was not seriously trained for dealing with public order disturbances, but most units had learned to adapt to this challenging situation. However, there was concern about a perceived deterioration in the security situation while the tolerance of the so-called 'no-go' areas, controlled by the IRA in Belfast and Derry, had not led to a diminution in violence. The iconic mural 'You are now entering Free Derry' was, to some, an affront to the...