Low Intensity Operations

<p>Bloody Sunday

A new study of the events leading up the Bloody Sunday

killings in Northern Ireland, ‘Bloody Sunday: Error or Design?’

by Niall Ó Dochartaigh, concludes:

‘ ...the killings were the outcome of a calculated

confrontation carried out in the face of strong opposition

from some elements within the security forces. At the

heart of these events is a clearly planned

confrontational initiative devised by one of the most

senior military commanders in Northern Ireland. At the

very least, a foreseeable consequence of the operation

was the killing of civilians. If those involved in devising

and implementing this confrontation calculated that they

could act as they did with impunity, the Widgery tribunal

proved their assumptions correct. The British

Government may not have planned and approved a

massacre in advance, but they sanctioned it in

retrospect.’

The essay shows – no two ways about it, shows – that

General Ford, Commander Land Forces in Northern Ireland,

supported by Brigadier Frank Kitson and others, decided that

they should stop pussyfooting about, sod the peace-keeping

and instructions from the government, and shoot some

people.

Why has this article not produced major ink since its

publication? Is the article’s implication, that the responsibility

for the thousands of deaths and the billions of pounds worth

of destruction lies in part with the British Army and the

politicians who failed to control it, too difficult for the major

media to accept?

‘Bloody Sunday: Error or Design?’ is published in the

130 Summer 2010

March 2010 issue of Contemporary British History, volume 14,

no. 1, pp. 89-108. It can be purchased on-line at

<www.informaworld.com/>.

Psy-ops in Northern Ireland

Not unrelated to Bloody Sunday, in as much as the British

state’s colonial psy-ops techniques, introduced into Northern

Ireland after the shootings helped provoke a kind of

insurgency, the BBC broadcast on 22 March a radio

documentary, ‘The spin war in Northern Ireland’ about the

British state’s psychological operations in Northern Ireland.

This may still be available via iPlayer but if not a text,

containing bits of the programme, was published on the BBC

News website at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8577087.

stm>. It included this:

‘There have long been claims that elements in the Army

and British government were behind a widespread

propaganda campaign throughout the early 1970s -

mostly aimed at undermining the IRA.’

Nearly 30 years after this story was first discussed, when we

know a great deal about the operations and personnel, the

BBC is still talking about ‘claims’. How much evidence will it

take before this is simply reported as fact?</p>