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Notes
1 Specifically, they were charged with/convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. 1961, 1962(c), 1962(d), 2113(a), 2113(d), and 2113(e). See U.S. v. Mutulu Shakur, a/k/a “Doc,” a/k/a “Jerel Wayne Williams,” and Marilyn Jean Buck, a/k/a “Carol Durant,” a/k/a “Nina Lewis,” a/k/a “Diana Campbell,” a/k/a “Norma Miller” (88 F.2d 234 (October 20, 1989)).
2 The motion was filed “on November 2, 1987, just before jury selection began.” U.S. v. Marilyn Buck, U.S. v. Mutulu Shakur (Nos. 84 Cr. 220-CSH, SSS 82 212-CSH, SDNY), Memorandum Opinion and Order, July 6, 1988 (590 F. Supp 1291 (1988)) p. 1392. Hereafter cited as July 6 Memorandum.
3 For background, see Akinyele Umoja’s “Straight Ahead: The Life of Resistance of Dr. Mutulu Shakur,” herein. For a distillation of popular reportage, see John Castellucci, The Big Dance (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1986).
4 For background on the RNA, see Umoja, “Straight Ahead.” Also see Chokwe Lumumba’s affidavit, dated October 31, 1987, https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Mutulu_Shakur/513.mutulu.shakur.vs.us.supreme.district.court.10.31.1987.pdf (accessed 11 September 2022)
5 For background, see Natsu Taylor Saito, “Who Is a Prisoner of War?,” herein. The question arises as to why Buck, too, did not claim PoW status. After all, she’d escaped from prison in 1977 after being convicted four years earlier of procuring arms for the BLA, was frequently described in the media as its “only white member,” and was (mis)characterized by the FBI as its “quartermaster.” Buck was a member of the Revolutionary Armed Task (RATF) a clandestine alliance of New Afrikan revolutionaries and white anti-imperialists. She also participated in other acts of anti-imperialist solidarity with the Black Liberation and Puerto Rican independence movements. See, e.g., Margalit Fox, “Marilyn Buck, Imprisoned for Brink’s Holdup, Dies at 62,” New York Times (August 5, 2010; available at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/nyregion/06buck.html).
6 Oral arguments were heard on November 25, 1987, and the “further written exposition” submitted by Shakur on November 26 concerned the political offense exception.
7 The prosecutors simply “characterized Shakur’s motion as frivolous, submitted no brief, and stood mute at oral argument.” July 6 Memorandum, p. 1294.
8 Of particular relevance in the context at hand, see Jordan J. Paust, “The Human Right to Participate in Armed Revolution and Related Forms of Social Violence: Testing the Limits of Permissibility,” Emory Law Journal 30 (1983): 545–81; Jordan J. Paust, “Aggression Against Authority: The Crime of Oppression, Politicide, and Other Crimes Against Human Rights,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 18, no. 2 (1986): 283–306.
9 Assistant U.S. Attorney Kerri L. Martin, Affidavit and Attachment, U.S. v. Mutulu Shakur (SSS 82 Cr. 312 (CSH) and U.S. v. Marilyn Buck (84 Cr. 220), March 23, 1988. Attached is the 36-page response—hereafter cited as “Exhibit A”—prepared by Abraham D. Sofaer, Legal Advisor to the U.S. Department of State; Michael J, Matheson, Deputy Legal Advisor; Edward R. Cummings, Assistant Legal Advisor for Politico-Military Affairs; W. Hays Parks, Chief of the Judge Advocate General’s International Law Branch, Department of the Army; and Albert H. Dyson, Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense.
10 “Exhibit A,” p. 2.
11 At issue in this regard was the Supplementary Convention to the 1972 U.S./British Extradition Treaty (28 U.S.T. 227, T.I.A.S. No. 8468), signed on June 25, 1985, “effectively eliminat[ing] the political offense exemption” therein. Abraham D. Sofaer, the lead author of “Exhibit A,” had also been the principle State Department advocate of the Supplementary Convention when testifying before Congress in 1985. See Christopher L. Blakesley, “The Evisceration of the Political Offense Exception to Extradition,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 15, no. 1 (1986-1987): 105–24.
12 A highly relevant example is that of the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence (COINTELPRO) operations designed to “disrupt, discredit and destroy” the Black Panther Party and other elements of the Black Liberation Movement from 1967 to 1972. Although a Senate investigating committee officially concluded in 1976 that COINTELPRO as a whole was illegal and that myriad criminal offenses had been perpetrated in its implementation, no FBI agent was ever charged or prosecuted—much less imprisoned—as a result. See “COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens” and “The FBI’s Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party,” both in U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans (Washington, DC: 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 1976), pp. 1–69, 185–224. Also see Ward Churchill, “‘To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy’: The FBI’s Secret War Against the Black Panther Party,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy, ed. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 78–117.
13 “Exhibit A,” p. 15. Shakur had cited Article 4 of the 1949 Convention on PoWs (6 U.S.T. 3318, T.I.A.S. No. 3364).
14 UN General Assembly Resolution 3103, Basic principles of the legal status of the combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and alien régimes, December 12, 1973 (A/Res/3103, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1c955.html). Hereafter cited as UNGA Res. 3103.
15 See Saito, “Who Is a Prisoner of War?”
16 As the respondents mention in passing, “Protocol I…provides in Article I [4] that [anticolonial/antiracist] conflicts be deemed to be international.” “Exhibit A,” p. 31.
17 Ibid., p. 17. This assertion was categorically false. The U.S. most certainly was “a party to” several “international armed conflicts” at the time, notably in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. See generally, Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988) and George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003).
18 “Exhibit A,” pp. 17–18.
19 Quoted in “Exhibit A” at p. 8.
20 “Exhibit A,” p. 10.
21 Ibid. On p. 7, the respondents observed that on January 29, 1987, President Ronald Reagan informed the Senate that he would not submit Protocol I for ratification, despite the U.S. having been among the original signatories, because his administration viewed the law as “fundamentally and irreconcilably flawed” with respect to the standing accorded to combatants engaged in wars of national liberation. See U.S. Senate, Message from the President of the United States Transmitting The Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Victims of Noninternational Armed Conflicts, Concluded at Geneva on June 10, 1977 (Washington, DC: 100th Cong., 1st Sess., January 29, 1987).
22 “Exhibit A,” p. 11. In fact, Article 1 (2) of the Protocol states that customary international law governs matters involving armed conflict not already addressed in the Geneva Conventions and elsewhere. This can be/has been interpreted as indicating that its purpose was to address such matters, thereby codifying customary law. See, e.g., Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6–7.
23 “Exhibit A,” p. 11; quoting U.S. Navy, Law of Naval Warfare (NWIP 10-2, Sept. 1955), pp. 2–3.
24 “Exhibit A,” p. 12.
25 Ibid.
26 Judge Haight appears to have been sufficiently uncomfortable with the government’s position, that he wondered how many countries had ratified Protocol I. Unfortunately, his curiosity extended no further than to check a law review article published in 1981. This put the number at only 15—as of October 1980—a tally Haight saw as a “slight acceptance,” falling far short of any “general assent in international law.” Had he bothered to call across town to the UN headquarters for current information, however, he’d have found that by 1988 the number had climbed to 72 and was growing steadily (a further 13 countries ratified Protocol I in 1989). Today, of the 193 UN member-states, 172—including every NATO country except the U.S. and Turkey—have done so. See July 6 Memorandum, p. 1302. Also see Treaties, Ratifications and Commentaries: Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977 (Available at https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=470#topTable).
27 In a footnote on p. 18 of “Exhibit A,” the respondents pointed to a pro forma directive issued in 1968 by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), to the effect that prisoners should be treated as PoWs until such time as a “competent tribunal” composed of “not less than three officers” had met to determine their proper status. Suffice it to say that this almost never happened, partly because prisoners taken by U.S. forces were typically turned over to the South Vietnamese army almost immediately, partly because U.S. troops routinely ignored—or were never informed of—the directive. For a glimpse of how prisoners were actually treated by U.S. forces, as well as the Judge Advocate General’s conspicuous failure to prosecute known offenders, see Deborah Nelson, The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes (New York: Basic Books, 2008), esp. the official summaries appended thereto.
28 There were actually two IRAs during the early ’70s, and others emerged later in the conflict. The Provos split off from the Dublin-headquartered “Official” IRA in 1969, because of the latter’s reluctance to support armed struggle in Northern Ireland. In 1974, a second group, calling itself the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), also split off from the Official IRA for much the same reason. On the initial split, see Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 66–7; on INLA, see Henry McDonald and Jack Holland, I.N.L.A.: Deadly Divisions (Dublin: Poolbeg Books, [3rd ed.] 2010), 33–40.
29 For background, see Lumumba affidavit. Also see Gerald Horne, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018).
30 See Cyril Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars (London: Methuen, 1950); Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565-1576 (Dublin: Harvester Press, 1976); M. E. Collins, Conquest and Colonization: The History of Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1969).
31 There is a copious literature, both popular and purportedly scientific, characterizing the Irish as “white chimpanzees,” “bestial” and “ape-like,” much closer to Cro-Magnons than to fully evolved humans. In his 1862 Races of Britain, John Beddoe, future president of the British Anthropological Institute, pronounced them to be “Africanoid” and included Celts more generally in the book’s “Index of Negrescence.” See generally, L. Perry Curtis Jr., Anglo-Saxons and Celts: Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (Bridgeport, CT: University of Bridgeport Press, 1968) and Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1971).
32 A prime example is that during Oliver Cromwell’s drive to complete the pacification of Ireland during the 1650s, 10,000 or more Irish insurgents, dissidents, and other “undesirables” were sentenced to serve terms of 10 years or more performing forced labor in the cane fields of Barbados. There, they worked side-by-side with and under the same conditions as the growing number of enslaved Africans. See Hilary Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987) esp. p. 6; Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997), esp. p. 241; Nini Rogers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1612-1865 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), esp. pp. 37–38.
33 See generally, Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001); Sean Cahill, “The Politics of the Irish Language Under the English and British Governments,” Proceedings of the Barra Ó Donnabháin Symposium 2007 (available at https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/irelandHouse/documents/0111-0126_PoliticsOfTheIrishLanguage.pdf); Hans Pawlisch, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
34 From the Elizabethan era onward, Crown policy in Ireland was to confiscate land owned by Catholics, awarding it mainly to English nobles and their Protestant Scottish counterparts. By 1870, over half the country—including virtually all the prime farmland—was in the hands of fewer than 750 families. The Irish themselves were largely left destitute, reduced to renting a windowless single-room dwelling on a 10-acre plot upon which they depended for subsistence, or, worse, to become “cottiers” providing labor to a renter in exchange for a “conacre” (essentially a garden plot). During the early 19th century, over 3 million of the island’s 5.7 million people were living on a diet consisting almost entirely of potatoes; male life expectancy was barely 40 years. While an exodus of “Paddys” seeking to escape these conditions was already pronounced, it became a torrent during the “Great Hunger” of 1845–52 (also known as the “Potato Famine”), when annual potato crops were destroyed by a blight. At least a million people died of starvation and linked diseases in those years, while upwards of 2 million immigrated. By 1900, Ireland’s population, which reached 8 million in 1841, had fallen to 4.4 million, a loss from which it has never recovered. See Cathal Póirtéir, The Great Famine (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1995), esp. pp. 19–20; James S. Donnelly Jr., The Great Irish Potato Famine (Thrupp, Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2001), esp. p. 181; David Ross, Ireland: History of a Nation (New Lanark, UK: Geddis and Grosset, 2005), esp. p. 226. Also see generally, Michael J. Winstanley, Ireland and the Land Question, 1800-1922 (London: Routledge, 1994); Donald Akenson, The Irish Diaspora: A Primer (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1993); Tim Pat Coogan, The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012).
35 See Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of American Fascism (New York: International, 2022), 51–2; Bruce Nelson, Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 80–1; Lee Jenkins, “Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork,” Irish Review no. 24 (Autumn 1999): 80–95. Kristine Kinealy, ed., Frederick Douglass and Ireland in His Own Words, Vol. II (New York: Routledge, 2018), esp. pp. 67, 72.
36 Grassroots resistance in various forms was continuous. Major upsurges of armed struggle occurred from 164 to 153, as well as 1798, 1803, 1848, and 1867. See generally, John Gibney, The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013); Thomas Packenham, The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 (New York: Penguin Random House, 1972); Christine Kinealy, Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009).
37 See Alan Ward, The Easter Rising: Revolution and Irish Nationalism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003); Charles Townsend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
38 Cyril Briggs, “Heroic Ireland,” The Crusader (February 1921), p. 5. That Briggs, a professed “Bolshevist,” would offer this assessment so soon after the Bolsheviks’ own October Revolution in Russia speaks volumes. On the relationship between the ABB and the IRB, and the ABB being viewed as “Black Fenians,” see Nelson, Irish Nationalists, 201–2; Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 53.
39 See Nelson, Irish Nationalists, 193–99; Matthew Pratt Guteri, “The Irish Rebellion That Resonated in Harlem: Black Intellectuals Expressed Solidarity with the Easter Rising Revolt against British Rule,” New Republic (March 25, 2016; available at https://newrepublic.com/article/132042/irish-rebellion-resonated-harlem); Maurice J. Casey, “Claude McKay and the Irish Revolution” (April 17, 2018; available at https://mauricejcasey.com/2018/04/17/claude-mckay-and-the-irish-revolution/).
40 See Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2002); Joseph McKenna, Guerrilla Warfare in the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921 (Jefferson, NC: McFarlan, 2011); Jason K. Knirck, “The Dominion of Ireland: The Anglo-Irish Treaty in an Imperial Context,” Éire-Ireland 42, no. 1 (2007): 229–55.
41 As IRA strategist cum negotiator Michael Collins put it, the treaty did not free Ireland, but afforded it “the freedom to achieve freedom.” See Matthew Heintz, “The Freedom to Achieve Freedom: Negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty,” Intersections Online 10, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 431–51 (available at https://depts.washington.edu/chid/intersections_Winter_2009/Matthew_Heintz_Anglo-Irish_Treaty.pdf).
42 The Free State’s entry into the Commonwealth as an “autonomous Community of the British Empire” followed from the Balfour Declaration issued at the conclusion of the British Imperial Conference in London in December 1926. See Sir Peter Marshall, “The Balfour Formula and the Evolution of the Commonwealth,” The Round Table 90, no. 361 (September 2001): 541–53.
43 From the outset, the plan in Ulster was to drive the predominantly Catholic Irish off the land altogether, replacing them with Protestant settlers, some English but mainly Scottish Presbyterians. By 1720, the latter were an absolute majority of Ulster’s population. See Jonathan Bardon, The Plantation of Ulster: The British Colonization of the North of Ireland in the 17th Century (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2011); Liam Kennedy, Ulster Since 1600: Politics, Economy, and Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. p. 143.
44 “Northern Ireland” and its border were established by Britain in its Government of Ireland Act of 1920. The Anglo-Irish Treaty provided for a Border Commission to adjust the boundary in accordance with the preferences expressed by majorities residing in each locale, and Republicans thus anticipated that non-Protestant areas like south Armagh, south Down, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Derry would opt to merge with the Free State. No genuine referenda were conducted, however. Instead, militarized police units were formed to enforce settler control over the entire area. See generally, Robert Lynch, The Partition of Ireland, 1918-1925 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Michael Farrell, Arming the Protestants: The Formation of the Ulster Special Constabulary and Royal Ulster Constabulary (London: Pluto Press, 1983).
45 The anti-treaty IRA forces are estimated to have outnumbered those accepting the Free State, 12,000 to 8,000 when the fighting began. See Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), 127; on the IRA campaign in Ulster, see pp. 83–6. Also see Robert Lynch, The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition, 1920-1922 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Calton Younger, Ireland’s Civil War (London: Frederick Muller, 1968).
46 The British Crown was left unmentioned in the 1937 Constitution, while Article 2 stated that the “national territory” consisted of “the whole island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas” and Article 3 that the county’s jurisdiction extended over the same area. Crown authority within Éire was formally abolished by the Executive Powers Act of 1937, although the 1936 External Relations Act, under which the country’s foreign affairs were handled by the Crown, was left unchanged. The latter was repealed by the Republic of Ireland Act in 1948, severing the final vestige of British control. As is stated in Article 2 of the 1948 Act, the term “Republic of Ireland” simply defines what is meant by Éire, which, constitutionally enshrined, remains the Republic’s name. See Mary E. Daly, “The Irish Free State/Éire/Republic of Ireland/Ireland: ‘A Country by Any Other Name?,’” Journal of British Studies 46, no. 1 (January 2007): 72–90.
47 It should be noted that a secret report commissioned by the British prime minister and distributed to his cabinet in January 1949 concluded that it was “a matter of first-class strategic importance that the North continue to form part of His Majesty’s dominions” and, hence, it was “unlikely that Great Britain would ever be able to agree to [Ulster’s secession] even if the people of Northern Ireland desired it.” The Act was shaped accordingly, as was subsequent British policy. The document is Secret Cabinet Paper (49) 4; 7 January 1949—“Ireland: Report of Working Party”—Memorandum by the Prime Minister.
48 See Bishop and Mallie, Provisional IRA, 37. Also see J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA (New York: Routledge, [3rd ed., rev.] 2017), 239–54.
49 “Operation Harvest,” as the campaign was code-named, began in December 1956, and, while it was not officially terminated until February 1962, had fizzled by early 1958. See Bishop and Mallie, Provisional IRA, pp. 35–45; Bell, Secret Army, 255–326. Also see Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 71–7.
50 J. Bowyer Bell, The Gun in Irish Politics: An Analysis of Irish Political Conflict, 1916-86 (New York: Routledge, 1987), 107.
51 Northern Ireland’s population in 1922 consisted of roughly 800,000 Protestant settlers—the largest denomination being Presbyterian Scots, followed by English Anglicans—and 400,000 Irish Catholics. By 1960, the population had grown by about 200,000, with the 2:1 religious ratio remaining constant. As of 2011, the population had reached 1.8 million while the proportion of Catholics had reached 40%. See generally, James Anderson and Ian Shuttleworth, “Sectarian demography, territoriality and political development in Northern Ireland,” Political Geography 17, no. 2 (February 1998): 187–208; Eric Kauffman, “Demographic Change and Conflict in Northern Ireland: Reconciling Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence,” Ethnopolitics 10, nos. 3-4 (September 2011): 369–89.
52 Indeed, as even so hardline a Protestant enforcer as career member of the “B-Specials” summed up his own and his colleagues’ thuggish defense of the status quo, “it had little or nothing to do with religious beliefs…. The place where a man hung his hat on Sunday had little or nothing to do with [our] attitude.” See Constantine FitzGibbon, Red Hand: The Ulster Colony (New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1973), 384–85.
53 See David J. Smith and Gerald Chambers, Inequality in Northern Ireland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991); on the structural basis of oppression, see esp. p. 368. For further analysis, see John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990).
54 “Taig” is a derogatory term for Irish Catholics, serving essentially the same function as the N-word in white supremacist U.S. discourse. “Fenian” is a bit more complex. Derived from the warrior bands known in Gaelic legend as Fianna, “Fenian” was adopted as an umbrella term encompassing the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB, founded in 1858) and its U.S. offshoot, the Fenian Brotherhood, both secret societies devoted to Ireland’s independence. See David Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016); John Dorney, “The Fenians: An Overview,” The Irish Story (available at https://www.theirishstory.com/2017/03/07/the-fenians-an-overview/#.Yn7gypPMLUA).
55 As stated in the 1969 Cameron Report on disturbances in Northern Ireland, the B-Specials in particular functioned as “a partisan and paramilitary force recruited exclusively from Protestants.” Quoted in Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1976), 265.
56 To offer just one example among many, there was conclusive evidence that elements of the police doubled as members of the UPV. See the “Cameron Report,” officially titled Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission Appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland (Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1969) item 220.
57 For an in-depth study of how the RUC Special Branch enabled a range of crimes by the UVF—including at least 15 murders—during the 1990s, see Nuala O’Loan, Statement of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland on her investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Raymond McCord Junior and related matters (Belfast: Office of the Police Ombudsman, 2007), esp. pp. 132–37. Most recently, a comparable study revealed the same pattern of Special Branch collusion with the UDA/UFF. See Marie Anderson, Investigation into Police Handling of Certain Loyalist Paramilitary Murders and Attempted Murders in the Northwest of Northern Ireland during the Period 1989-1993 (Belfast: Office of the Police Ombudsman, 2022).
58 See generally, Farrell, Northern Ireland; Steve Bruce, Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).
59 In 1970, the police forces of the 300 largest U.S. cities were 96% white, while 100% was normative in rural areas. Cops doubling as Klansmen was common, especially—but not exclusively—in the Deep South, while their membership in other “whites only” patriotic, civic, and social organizations was all but universal. See David A. Sklansky, “Not Your Father’s Police Department: Making Sense of the New Demographics of Law Enforcement,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 94, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 1214; Charles E. Cobb, Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2019), esp. pp. 9, 19; William Spivey, “The Cops, the Klan, and the Pulpit,” AfroSapiophile (June 19, 2021; available at https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/the-cops-the-klan-and-the-pulpit-47dd318bace1).
60 Before it shifted to civil disobedience the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, as it called itself, was ineffectual at best. See Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), 133.
61 See Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 48–54. For further background, see Fionbarra O’Dochartaig, Ulster’s White Negroes: From Civil Rights to Insurrection (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1990); Niall O’Dochartaig, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997).
62 Bell, The Gun in Irish Politics, 138. Also see Russell Stetler, The Battle of Bogside: The Politics of Violence in Northern Ireland (London: Sheed and Ward, 1970), esp. Chapter 3.
63 The Shorland was configured to the RUC’s specifications, including a ring mount to accommodate the machine gun, a weapon explicitly designed for military usage. Ten were deployed in Belfast. A half-century after the fact, it was officially acknowledged that “the use of Browning machine guns…[in] a densely populated area…created a severe, disproportionate and unjustified risk of death.” See Marie Anderson, Statutory Report: The Circumstances of the Deaths of Patrick Rooney, Hugh McCabe, Samuel McLarnon and Michael Lynch in Belfast on August 15, 1969 (Belfast: Office of the Police Ombudsman, 5 May 2021), 115.
64 In the face of such official violence, so many people fled to Éire that the Irish Defense Force set up several refugee camps along the border, with at least 6,000 in just one of them. See Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal and the Search for Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 91, 106; Robert William White, Provisional Irish Republicans: An Oral and Interpretive History (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 75.
65 Aside from Belfast and Derry, the other towns were Dungannon, Coalisland, Armagh, Newry, Strabane, and Dungiven. In Armagh, the B-Specials killed one protester and wounded two others. See generally the so-called Scarman Report, Violence and Disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1969 (Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1971), esp. Chapters 14, 15, 16, 29. (Hereafter cited as “Scarman Report.”)
66 See Coogan, The Troubles, 101–2; Robin Evelegh, Peacekeeping in a Democratic Society: The Lessons of Northern Ireland (London: C. Hurst, 1978), 6–8.
67 This is not to say that the bodycount in Belfast wasn’t far lower than those marking its earlier counterparts in the U.S.; as many as 250 Black people were killed in East St. Louis and an estimated 300 in Tulsa. See Coogan, The Troubles, 91; Charles L. Lumpkins, American Progrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2008); James S. Hirsch, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001).
68 Two examples drawn from the “Long Hot Summer” of 1967 will suffice to make the case. During Newark rebellion in July, there was no mention of anyone shooting at police until the 3rd day, when a detective named Fred Toto was killed. While “snipers” were blamed in blaring headlines, it turned out that Toto—the only police fatality—had actually been the victim of police gunfire. No tangible evidence of any sniper activity was ever produced, but 24 “rioters” and bystanders were shot to death and scores wounded by the police and National Guard. During the Detroit rebellion that same month, Black snipers were again in the headlines. While a single individual possibly fitting that description was killed by police, 2 unarmed whites met the same fate at the hands of National Guard troops who misidentified as Black snipers. A National Guard corporal was accidentally shot to death by a member of his own unit. Meanwhile, 13 Black “looters” and the alleged sniper shot to death by police, 9 others by the Guard, 1 by an army paratrooper, and 6 more by white vigilantes. All told, at least 228 Black people were killed by police and troops during urban “race riots” between 1965 and ’71, while roughly 13,000 others were wounded or seriously injured. An exhaustive investigation by the FBI failed to turn up evidence that the “riots” were organized by a national conspiracy of “Black militants.” A presidentially appointed commission reached the same conclusion. See Peter Blackmer, “Police used the myth of black snipers to justify brutality in the Long Hot Summer of 1967,” Timeline (August 11, 2017; available at https://timeline.com/myth-black-snipers-1967-c8602defde13); Report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).
69 “In fact, the police appreciation that they had on their hands an armed uprising by the IRA was incorrect. Direct IRA participation was slight; and there is no credible evidence that the IRA planned or organized the disturbances.” “Scarman Report,” Chapter 3 (3.8).
70 At the outset, the IRA “arsenal” in Belfast seems to have consisted of a Thompson submachine gun, a Sten submachine gun, a Lee-Enfield rifle, 6 handguns, and very little ammunition. By August 18, the IRA’s Dublin-based general headquarters had managed to deliver a mere 96 weapons and 12,000 rounds of ammunition to the North. See Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 127, 130, 133; Eamon Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA (London: Corgi Books/Transworld, 1988), 108–12.
71 Abstention from the electoral process until a legitimate Irish Republic had been created through armed force was a cornerstone principle of the IRA since its founding. It was flatly contradicted by the Army Council’s ideological posture and resultant policy during the late ’60s. Championed by chief of staff Cathal Goulding, purportedly a “Marxist-Leninist intellectual,” this devolved upon a convoluted and ultimately eclectic “dialectical appreciation” of “objective conditions” in Ireland. For a valiant attempt to unravel the thinking involved, see Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 22–70.
72 See McDonald and Holland, I.N.L.A., 7; Mallie and Bishop, Provisional IRA, 93–94; Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 60.
73 See Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 33; Taylor, Provos, 60–1.
74 The term “Provisional” was selected as a means of linking PIRA to the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic proclaimed during the 1916 Easter Rising, thereby refusing to recognize either of the governments established under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 as legitimate. See White, Provisional Irish Republicans, pp. 64-65.
75 See Bowyer Bell, Secret Army, 366–67, 377; English, Armed Struggle, 125.
76 See English, Armed Struggle, 125; Brendan O’Brien, The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin (Dublin: O’Brien Press, [2nd ed.] 1999,) 119; M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland: The Military Strategy of the Republican Movement (New York: Routledge, 1995), 97–99.
77 For a popularization of the official history, see Nick van der Bijl, Operation Banner: The British Army in Northern Ireland, 1969-2007 (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2009).
78 Overall, upwards of half of those filling the ranks of the UDR had previously been B-Specials—9 of every 10 in one unit—and the rest almost exclusively Unionists (Catholic membership was reportedly 4%). See John Furniss Potter, Testimony to Courage: The Regimental History of the Ulster Defense Regent, 1969-1992 (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2001), 29; “UDR Tries to Attract More Catholics,” London Times (December 21, 1987).
79 By 1962, Kitson’s reputation was already sufficiently established that he was invited to participate in a symposium organized by the RAND Corp. to acquaint select U.S. military, intelligence, and FBI personnel with the concepts and techniques of counterinsurgency. See Steven T. Hosmer, ed., Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 2006 reissue of 1963 original).
80 On Kitson’s earlier postings, see Roger Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in Ireland: The Kitson Experiment (London: Zed Press, 1983), 11–15. For further background, see David French, The British Way of Counterinsurgency, 1945-1967 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).
81 Frank Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960). In Kitson’s peculiar usage, “gangs” refers to insurgent groups, “counter-gangs” to reactionary groups that can be set against them. There are also “pseudo-gangs” that appear to be one or the other but are actually composed of military or police operatives. See Margaret Urwin, Counter-Gangs: A History of Undercover Military Units in Northern Ireland, 1971-1976 (Glasgow: Pat Finucane Center/Justice for the Forgotten/Spinwatch, 2012).
82 Col. Frank E. Kitson, Army Land Operations Manual, Vol. III: Counter-Revolutionary Operations (London: Ministry of Defense, 1969); Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (London: Faber and Faber, 1971).
83 See Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy, 28–29. On p. 29 of The SAS in Ireland (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1990), Raymond Murray dates the arrival of this unit as “July 1970.” On “de-badging,” see Harry McCallion, Undercover War: Britain’s Special Forces and Their Secret Battle Against the IRA (London: John Blake, 2020), 20. Also see James Hughes, “State violence and the origins of nationalism: British counterinsurgency and the rebirth of Irish nationalism, 1969-1972,” in Nationalism and War, ed. John A. Hall and Sinisa Malesivic (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 97–123.
84 The information gleaned from such interrogations was typically of a sort Kitson considered “low-grade intelligence.” The severe physical/psychological abuse involved—what Kitson term the “Five Techniques”—was intended to break the victims’ will to resist, however, intimidating them to the point that they’d agree to actively collaborate rather than prolong the ordeal. The expectation was that the quality of intelligence they provided thereafter would rise appreciably. For an itemization of all 23 “techniques” actually employed, see Denis Faul and Raymond Murray, British Army and Special Branch RUC Brutalities, December 1971-February 1972 (Dungannon: self-published, 1972). Also see Faul’s and Murray’s The Hooded Men: British Torture in Ireland, August-October 1971 (Dungannon: self-published, 1974) and John McGuffin’s The Guineapigs (London: Penguin Books, 1974).
85 A former member of the MRF is quoted at length describing these operations in Murray, The SAS in Ireland, 44–45. Several others were later interviewed to the same effect in Leo Telling, dir., Britain’s Secret Terror Force (London: BBC Panorama, November 21, 2013).
86 These operations were quite lethal. While an accurate overall body count may never be possible, it is credibly estimated that a single member of the MRF, Sergeant Clive Williams, nicknamed “Taff,” killed 15 people, none of them IRA Volunteers. Although his tally may—or may not—have been the highest, his behavior was in no sense unique. A concise overview is provided in McCallion, Undercover War, pp. 2-18. It should be noted, however, that McCallion, a former member of the SAS, claims—falsely—that the SAS wasn’t present in Northern Ireland until after the MRF was disbanded. Much of his book is designed to deny culpability. For details on more than a dozen of the murders attributed to the MRF and its immediate successor, the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU), see Urwin, Counter-Gangs, 7–24.
87 See Murray, The SAS in Ireland, 42; Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy, 43.
88 In 1973, British Military Intelligence concluded that “as high as 15 per cent” of UDR personnel were linked to “Protestant extremist groups” to which they’d provided 200-odd current-issue military weapons. Between that point and 1985, despite cover provided by the RUC and British special operations units, 18 members of the regiment were convicted of murder, 11 of manslaughter, 99 of assault, many others of offenses ranging from kidnapping to bombing. By the time the UDR was disbanded in 1992, the number of convictions for such offenses was 197. See “Subversion in the UDR,” an August 1973 draft report stamped “Secret UK Eyes” discovered and released by Northern Ireland’s Public Records Office in 2004 (available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/publicrecords/1973/subversion_in_the_udr.htm); Ronald Weitzer, Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 208; Chris Ryder, The Ulster Defense Regiment: An Instrument of Peace? (London: Methuen, 1991), 150; John Eldridge, Getting the Message: News, Truth, and Power (London: Routledge, 2003), 91.
89 Much of the intelligence material originated with the RUC Special Branch, as was demonstrated when, in the late ’80s, the UDA made public hundreds of the files on individual Provos fed to it over the years by both police and UDR personnel. See Cusack and McDonald, UVF, 257, 259–61. Also see Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy, 38–39.
90 RUC’s Special Branch was reorganized and greatly expanded, beginning in the summer of 1973, in accordance with a plan formulated by Desmond Morton, the former director of Britain’s Security Service (MI5) and, like Kitson, a veteran of counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya. MI5 thereafter trained Special Branch personnel and seeded the unit with its own specialists. Morton’s “blueprint” for Special Branch structure and operations remains classified. See Phil Miller, “MI5 Report on the Troubles to Stay Secret, Court Rules,” Declassified UK (December 6, 2021; available at https://declassifieduk.org/mi5-report-on-troubles-to-stay-secret-court-rules/). Anne Cadwallader, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013). Also see Anderson, Investigation into police handling of loyalist paramilitary murders, and the so-called Cassell Report, Report of the Independent International Panel on Alleged Collusion in Sectarian Killings in Northern Ireland (October 2006; available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/collusion/docs/cassel061106.pdf).
91 The haul consisted of a rifle, a submachine-gun, 15 handguns, and some ammunition. See Andrew Sanders and Ian S. Wood, Times of Troubles: Britain’s War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2012), 24–27.
92 CS “tear gas” is not in fact a gas, but a very fine crystalline powder. While it is officially portrayed as a “nonlethal weapon,” it has caused death by asphyxiation in closed spaces. A toxin, it is also known to cause severe pulmonary damage as well as significant damage to the heart and liver. Even in best case scenarios, it is a burn agent, damaging to eyes and membranes, in some cases to the extent of causing scarring and permanent blindness. While it was developed in the British military lab at Porton Down during the mid-’50s, it was never used for “crowd control” purposes in the UK until 1969 or ’70, and then only in Northern Ireland. By then, the U.S. military and police had long since adopted it for standard usage in “riot” situation, a circumstance that still pertains. See H. Hu, J. Fine, P. Epstein, K. Kelsey, P. Reynolds, B. Walker, “Tear gas: Harassing Agent or Toxic Chemical Weapon?,” JAMA 262, no. 5 (August 1989): 660–63; Uwe Heinrich, “Possible Lethal Effects of CS Tear Gas on Branch Davidians during the FBI Raid on the Mount Carmel Compound Near Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993” (September 2000; available at http://www.veritagiustizia.it/docs/gas_cs/CS_Effects_Waco.pdf); K. K. Rebecca Lal, Bill Marsh, and Anjall Singhvl, “Here Are the 100 Cities Where Protesters Were Tear-Gassed,” New York Times (June 18, 2020; available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/16/us/george-floyd-protests-police-tear-gas.html). Also see Steven L. Hoenig, Compendium of Chemical Warfare Agents (New York: Springer, 2007), 138–40.
93 See Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles, 24–27; Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 157–59.
94 See Mallie, The Provisional IRA, 159.
95 On the number of rounds fired, see Steve Chibnall, Law and Order News: An Analysis of Crime Reporting in the British Press (London: Routledge, 2003), 176–77. On the quantity of CS, see Dillon, Dirty War, 232. On the effects of the CS, especially on small children and the elderly, see Taylor, Provos, 79–81. It should be noted that the British military used a concentrated form of CS 5 times more potent than that used by police in the U.S. See R.D. Southward, “CS incapacitant spray,” Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 76.
96 The Provos had run out of ammunition, according to one of their then-ranking officers in Belfast, Brendan Hughes. Quoted in Thomas Hennessey, The Evolution of the Troubles, 1970-1972 (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 40–41. On OIRA’s decision, see Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 157–59.
97 The order for the troops to “be aggressive” is recorded in British Army log sheets, quoted in Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles, 26. Accordingly, they “behaved with a new harshness…axing down doors, ripping up floorboards, disemboweling chairs, sofas, beds, and smashing the garish plaster statues of the Madonna…that adorned the tiny front parlors.” Mallie, The Provisional IRA, 159.
98 The only firearms seized that fit a specifically military profile were a half-dozen Thompson submachine-guns. On the other hand, the 14 shotguns—none of them configured for use as “riot guns”—were designed for decidedly nonmilitary usage. Of the 35 rifles, a dozen or so were antiquated British-issue Lee-Enfields and U.S. M-1s, and many of the rest were .22 caliber bolt-action appropriate for shooting rabbits and rats. Nearly half of the 52 handguns were also .22 caliber, and nearly all of them were revolvers rather than semiautomatic pistols. On August 5, embarrassed by this meager inventory, the army claimed—without evidence—that the IRA’s “more attractive” armaments had been “spirited away” before its units could be fully deployed. See Mallie, The Provisional IRA, 160; English, Armed Struggle, 136; Hanley and Millar, Lost Revolution, 157–59; Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 35.
99 Quoted in O’Brien, The Long War, 119.
100 The goal of the bombings was to deter investment while forcing the British government to pay compensation, thereby increasing the financial burden of retaining Northern Ireland in the UK. See M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), 97–99.
101 There were 153 bombings attributed to the IRA in 1970, nearly a thousand in 1971. See Smith, Fighting for Ireland, 95; Gearóid Ó Faoleán, A Broad Church: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland, 1969-1980 (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2018), 53.
102 See Laura K. Donohue, “Regulating Northern Ireland: The Special Powers Acts, 1922-1972,” The Historical Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1998): 1089–120.
103 Contingency planning for internment had been underway for months, as indicated in a British Ministry of Defense document dated April 6, 1971. See Margaret Urwin, A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries (Cork: Mercier Press, 2016), 25–27.
104 Among those on the list and therefore scooped up was 70-year-old Liam Mulholland, whose active service in the IRA dated to the 1920s and ’30s. While he was the oldest, several others hadn’t been active in decades. Still others were nationalist political organizers like Michael Farrell of People’s Democracy, who’d never belonged to the IRA or engaged in armed struggle. A few were cases of mistaken identity. On August 13, Joe Cahill, PIRA’s chief of staff, appeared at a press conference to announce that only 30 Provos had been captured. See Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 39–42; English, Armed Struggle, 139–40; Ciaran de Baroid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London: Pluto Press, [rev. ed.] 2000), 71–72.
105 That this utterly one-sided approach to internment might prove problematic was raised, as when, in March 1971, MI5 suggested to Britain’s Home Office that including at least a few members of the UVF—a designated illegal organization since 1966—“would be a sop to the minority community.” The Home Secretary concurred, for PR reasons if nothing else. However, Northern Ireland’s prime minister, Brian Faulkner, held that Unionist paramilitaries posed no threat to the government, as did the RUC Special Branch. See Urwin, State in Denial, 26, 28.
106 Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 41.
107 See, e.g., David Burke, “Kitson’s Private Army: the thugs, killers and rapists who terrorized Belfast and Derry,” Village (August 1, 2021; available at https://villagemagazine.ie/kitsons-murder-machine-the-thugs-killers-racists-and-rapists-who-terrorised-belfast-and-derry/).
108 The killings were plainly not inadvertent. One man was shot 14 times, mostly in the back as he lay on the ground. Another was shot twice in the back of the head with a 9mm pistol at close range. Yet another was wounded, then beaten and shot again after being taken into custody. For one of the better accounts, see de Baroid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War, 77–90. Also see Callum McCrea, dir., The Ballymurphy Precedent (New York/London: Janson Media/Dartmouth Films, 2018). On the milkman, see “Paddy McCarthy” (available at https://web.archive.org/web/20100621005039/http://ballymurphymassacre.com/paddy_mccarthy_15.html).
109 As recently as 2009 the myth was passingly repeated as fact in Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 41. The army press officer who initiated it, Captain Mike Jackson, went on to eventually become Commander-in-Chief, Land Command, the second most senior position in the British army. In his 2007 autobiography, Soldier (London: Bantam Press), he again recited the false narrative and, in 2019, again insisted upon its validity in sworn testimony. See Rory Carroll, “Ex-head of British army denies Ballymurphy killings cover-up,” The Guardian (May 30, 2019). There is, in this respect, an interesting parallel between Jackson’s career and that of U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell who, as a young Major in Vietnam, played a significant role in the attempted cover-up of the My Lai Massacre. Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Viking Press, 1992), 213.
110 See Rory Carroll and Heather Stewart, “Ten shot dead in Ballymurphy were innocent, inquest finds: Report says killings during British army operations in Belfast in 1971 were unjustified,” The Guardian (May 11, 2021).
111 In the so-called Watts riot in Los Angeles of 1965, police and national guard troops killed 23 Black people and wounded scores of others. In the “Newark race riot” of 1967, at least 24 Black people were killed by police and troops. In Detroit, also in 1967, the toll was 33 Black folks dead, with 14 of them shot by police, 9 by national guard troops—who also managed to kill 1 of their own and 3 white people with their “uncontrolled and unnecessary firing”—and 1 by an army paratrooper, while 6 more were killed by “private security personnel.” See generally, Gerald Horne, The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995); Tom Hayden, Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989). Also see Albert Bergeson, “Race Riots of 1967: An analysis of police violence in Detroit and Newark,” Black Studies Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 261–74.
112 Of the 882, 416 were released within 48 hours. See Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 41.
113 These special interrogations—over and above those to which all detainees were subjected during the first 48 hours—were conducted in the army’s Ballykinler facility and, although the details are murky, apparently requested by the Unionist prime minister, Brian Faulkner. See McGuffin, The Guineapigs, esp. Chapter 4; Faul and Murray, The Hooded Men.
114 The complaint was filed on December 16, 1971. After an extensive process, fraught with British misrepresentations of fact, the Commission filed its report with the Council of Europe on February 9, 1976, finding, among other things, that British forces had indeed engaged in torture in violation Article 3 of the Convention. Éire then requested that the European Court of Human rights confirm the Commission’s findings. A year later, prefiguring an argument advanced by John Yoo in 2002 to legitimate the Bush administration’s policy of subjecting Muslim captives to “enhanced interrogation” employing Kitsonian methods, the Court ruled that while the latter, “as applied in combination, undoubtedly amounted to inhuman and degrading…did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture.” It nonetheless held that inflicting inhuman and degrading treatment was in itself a violation of the victims’ human rights. Ireland v. United Kingdom (5310/1971, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 13 December 1977; available at https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,3ae6b7004.html) Para. 167. For a detailed examination of British factual distortions during the Commission proceedings, see Urwin, State in Denial, 87–104.
115 “Free Derry,” as the no-go zone was called, had been established twice before, first in response to an attack by the B-Specials in January 1969, and again in August after the Battle of the Bogside. Both episodes were brief. The 1971 iteration, marked by a strong IRA presence—both PIRA and OIRA—was much more durable, lasting until July 31, 1972. See Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites, 47, 120–21, 236–48; Bishop and Mallie, Provisional IRA, 196–97; Eamon McCann, War in an Irish Town (London: Pluto Press, 1980), 56–72, 114.
116 See Sarah Campbell, “A New Nationalism? The S.D.L.P. and the Creation of a Socialist and Labor Party in Northern Ireland, 1969-75,” Irish Historical Studies 38, no. 151 (May 2013): 422–38; Rosa Gilbert, “No Rate, No Rents: Civil Disobedience Against Internment in Northern Ireland, 1971-1974,” Studi irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies no. 7 (2017): 19–43.
117 See Arthur Paul, People’s Democracy, 1968-1973 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1974).
118 This was especially true regarding Armalites, mostly supplied by supporters in the U.S., but “at the end of September, a 3.5-inch rocket launcher was used for the first time.” PIRA’s escalation was dramatic. The first British soldier killed in Northern Ireland was on January 15, 1971; by August 9, the tally was 10. During the next 4 months, the toll exacted was 30 soldiers and 11 members of the RUC. Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 37, 42; English, Armed Struggle, 141.
119 Then People’s Democracy leader cum member of Northern Ireland’s parliament, John Hume, quoted in Ed Neafsey, “The end of the Civil Rights Movement: Prelude to Bloody Sunday and the aftermath,” IrishCentral (January 19, 2022; available at https://www.irishcentral.com/news/thenorth/end-of-civil-rights-movement-prelude-bloody-sunday-and-aftermath).
120 See English, Armed Struggle, 148–54; Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, Aren’t They? (London: Fourth Estate, 2000).
121 See Martin Melaugh, “Bloody Sunday—Names of the Dead and Injured” (available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bsunday/deadinj.htm).
122 As the MoD put it in a statement released on February 1, “Throughout the fighting…the Army fired only on identified targets—at attacking gunmen and bombers. At all times the soldiers obeyed their standing instructions to fire only in self-defense or in defense of others threatened.” It would be 38 years before the Saville Commission concluded that none of those killed had been armed or presented any threat to the troops, that several had been shot in the back while trying to flee, and that the Paras had “concocted lies” to justify their actions. See Report of the Bloody Sunday Investigation, 10 vols. (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2010). Also see Haroon Siddique and Megan French, “Bloody Sunday inquiry: key findings,” The Guardian (June 15, 2010); John Bingham, Rosa Prince, and Thomas Harding, “Bloody Sunday Inquiry: victims were all unarmed and killed without justification, say Saville report,” The Daily Telegraph (June 17, 2010).
123 Adam Ramsey, “Bloody Sunday and how the British empire came home,” Open Democracy (March 15, 2019; available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/bloody-sunday-british-empire/).
124 Kitson’s unexpected departure occurred on April 22, 1972. The assessment of his strategic importance is that of General Mike Jackson, quoted in Jim Hughes, “Frank Kitson in Northern Ireland and the ‘British way’ of counterinsurgency,” History Ireland, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January-February 2014; available at https://www.historyireland.com/frank-kitson-northern-ireland-british-way-counterinsurgency/).
125 On February 2, 1972, an estimated 90 percent of Dublin’s workforce went on strike to protest Bloody Sunday, while as many as 100,000 people marched on the British embassy, which was put to the torch. Marchers kept fire fighters from approaching the building until it was completely gutted. See, e.g., Ronan McGreevy, “The day of rage after Bloody Sunday that saw the British embassy burn down,” Irish Times (February 2, 2022).
126 Jackson, quoted in Hughes, “Kitson in Northern Ireland.” Kitson certainly suffered no harm as a result of his change in station. Having already been decorated for his “gallant and distinguished service in Northern Ireland” on February 15, his new position was heading the infantry school at Warminster. From there, he rose rapidly, becoming Commander in Chief, Land Forces, in July 1982, and appointed Aide-De-Camp General to the Queen in February 1983. He retired in July 1987. See “Frank Kitson,” Public Interest Investigations Powerbase (available at https://powerbase.info/index.php/Frank_Kitson).
127 “The Official IRA leader in Belfast, ‘Big’ Joe McCann had set up an elaborate surveillance system on Kitson, probably with a view to killing him. McCann had personally watched…Kitson himself as he drove about in his black limousine.” McCann, unarmed, was gunned down by the Paras on April 5, 1972, a week before Kitson’s hasty exit. Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy, 23n27; English, Armed Struggle, 175.
128 See Urwin, State in Denial, 258. The army recorded 10,631 shooting incidents in 1972, more than twice as many as the next closest year. See Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, 236.
129 See Toby Harnden, Bandit Country: The IRA in South Armagh (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999), 19.
130 See Martin Woollacott, “IRA kills 7 in raid on Paras’ English Base,” The Guardian (February 23, 1972; available at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/feb/23/ira-bomb-paras-aldershot-1972).
131 “Direct Rule was imposed by the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, passed by the British Parliament on March 28, 1972. This legislation gave Westminster full control over major policy decisions, security matters and the justice system in Northern Ireland. The executive government in the Six Counties was dismantled, the office of Northern Ireland prime minister was abolished, and the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont was dissolved…. London’s assumption of control was intended as a temporary measure, initially for 12 months. It was intended to stabilize and calm the political situation and provide solutions to end sectarian violence. In practice, it would last for 35 years.” See “Direct Rule in Northern Ireland,” Alpha History (available at https://alphahistory.com/northernireland/direct-rule-northern-ireland/).
132 See Bernard Weinrob, “Extensive Strike by Protestants Disrupts Ulster,” New York Times (March 28, 1972); Eamon Phoenix, “Death knell for Stormont amid bombing and carnage,” Irish Times (January 2, 2003).
133 The UV was launched on February 13, 1972, at a mass meeting held near Kitson’s headquarters in Lisburn. The rally at which Craig delivered the quoted speech occurred on March 18. The organization’s phalangist image was deliberately conjured by its “youth wing,” the Ulster Volunteers, who marched in formation, wearing military-style uniforms and masks. See Marc Mulholland, “The End of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule in 1972” (Cengage Learning, 2006) p. 3; Peter Barberis, John McHugh, and Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century (London: Continuum, 2000) p. 263. Also see Gareth Mulvenna, “Tartan Gangs and the ‘Hidden History’ of the Northern Ireland Conflict,” The Ulster Folk, No. 14 (June 8, 2014; available at http://www.theulsterfolk.com/2014/06/tartan-gangs-and-hidden-history-of.html).
134 In the 2013 BCC program referenced in note 82, three former MRF operatives acknowledged the unit’s murderous conduct. One result was that on December 1, 2015, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Legacy Investigations Division reopened 18 cases dating from the period April-September 1972. The MRF was replaced by—or renamed—the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU), also known as14th Intelligence Company (or “the Det”), in November the same year. See “Undercover Army Unit Linked to Killings Previously Blamed on IRA,” Irish News (June 9, 2015); Andrea McKenna, “Shootings by Military Reaction Force now focus of PSNI probe,” Irish News (December 2, 2015); Tom Griffin, “The long shadow of the Military Reaction Force,” Spinwatch (November 20, 2013; available at https://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/northern-ireland/item/5583-the-long-shadow-of-the-military-reaction-force).
135 Whitelaw was a senior Member of Parliament, first elected in 1955 and rising to the stations of Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Privy Council in 1970. See “No. 45134,” London Gazette (June 23, 1970), p. 6953.
136 The OIRA’s ceasefire, declared by the Goulding group in Dublin, was facilitated by the deaths of several of its more militant leaders, especially Joe McCann (see note 124). Also see Henry McDonald and Jack Holland, I.N.L.A.: Deadly Divisions (Dublin: Poolbeg Books), 19.
137 As set forth in the June 1972 issue of the OIRA’s United Irishman, the demands were 1) the release of all internees, 2) a general amnesty for civil resisters, 3) withdrawal of troops to their barracks pending removal from Northern Ireland, 4) abolition of the Special Powers Act, and 5) freedom of political expression.
138 This eventually caused a second split in the OIRA, when a substantial faction headed by former director of operations Seamus Costello broke off and formed both the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) on December 8, 1974. After a brief blood feud with INLA, the OIRA moved almost entirely into leftwing constitutional politics, recasting itself as the “Workers Party” in 1981. By that point, its position was “indistinguishable in its structural form that held by most Unionists.” Kevin Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 270. Also see Mallie and Bishop, Provisional IRA, 279–80; McDonald and Holland, I.N.L.A., 33–90.
139 MI6 agent Frank Steele worked behind the scenes with Dublin businessman Brendan Duddy and other “friends of the IRA” to arrange meetings between the Provos and British officials. See Jonathan Powell, Great Hatred: Making Peace in Northern Ireland (London: Bodley Head, 2008), 66–9.
140 Wilson was accompanied by liberal MP Merlyn Rees, who would be appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when Wilson once again became prime minister in 1974. Ranking Provos Daithi Ó Conaill and John Kelly accompanied Cahill. Wilson proposed a bilateral truce and phased release of internees as a starting point, but rejected the idea of a general amnesty and indicated that more substantive negotiations would require a “durable ceasefire.” The Provos took it under advisement. See Ruán O’Donnell, Special Category: Irish Prisoners in British Prisons, Vol. 1: 1968-1978 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012), 62–3.
141 Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (New York: Doubleday, 2019), 84. Adams would later insist that he was never a Volunteer, less still an officer, but a number of well-known Provos say otherwise. On p. 49, Keefe includes a photo of Adams wearing the IRA’s iconic black beret during a protest, circa 1970; on p. 63, there is another of him in a comradely embrace with Brendan Hughes, commander of the Belfast Brigade, circa 1972. According to Hughes and others, Adams commanded “The Unknowns,” a special unit in Belfast, during the early ’70s, and was secretly a member of the Army Council during the latter part of the decade.
142 The meeting was held in Ballyarnett (near Derry). Adams and Daithi Ó Conaill, a member of the PIRA Army Council, represented the Provos. Philip Woodfield, Whitelaw’s senior assistant, and MI6 agent Frank Steele, now attached to Whitelaw’s staff, represented Britain. O’Donnell, Special Category, 64.
143 Quoted in Mulholland, “The End of Stormont,” 4.
144 The status was accorded on June 19, 1972. Using the term “Special Category” rather than PoW allowed Whitelaw to misrepresent its substance when “explaining” to the House of Commons on July 6, 1972, that “the status of political prisoner is not being granted.” In fact, the Category’s “explicit recognition of the political nature of Republicans’ dissident activities meant IRA convicts were legally distinct from ordinary criminals.” Samantha Anne Caesar, “Captives or Criminals? Reappraising the Legal Status of IRA Prisoners at the Height of the Troubles Under International Law,” Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 27, no. 2 (March 2017): 334–35.
145 See, e.g., David F. Mulvihill, “The Legality of Pardoning Paramilitaries under the Early Release Provisions of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement,” Cornell International Law Journal 34, no. 1 (2001): 231–32; Kieran McEvoy, Paramilitary Imprisonment in Northern Ireland: Resistance, Management, and Release (London: Oxford University Press, 2001), 217.
146 Initially, internees were held in several locations, notably the Crumlin Road Prison, the Magilligan Strand army base, and a makeshift prison ship, the Maidstone, anchored in Belfast Lough. After groups of Provos escaped from Crumlin Road and the Maidstone, it was decided that virtually all male internees would be concentrated in the specially built camp at Long Kesh. The much smaller number of women were held in the Armagh Prison. The first 219 prisoners were airlifted by military helicopters into Long Kesh on September 19, 1971. See Mulholland, “The End of Stormont,” 6.
147 See John McGuffin, Internment! (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1973). Also see “The Granting of Special Category Status, 1972,” Hunger Strike Commemorative Web Project (July 27, 1971; available at www.hungerstrikes.org/background/specialstatus.html).
148 See Prisons Memory Archive (PMA), “Life in the Cages/Compounds of Long Kesh” (available at https://www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com/pma-for-education/life-in-the-cages-compounds-of-long-kesh/).
149 See the photos in PMA, “Life in the Cages,” and Ronan Bennet, “Fire and Rain: the burning of Long Kesh 45 years ago today,” The Irish Times (October 15, 2019; available at https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/fire-and-rain-the-burning-of-long-kesh-45-years-ago-today-1.4050219).
150 Mulholland, “The End of Stormont,” .
151 See Caesar, “Captive or Criminal?,” 335; Jay M. Spillane, “Terrorists and Special Status: The British Experience in Northern Ireland,” Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 9, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 489.
152 See “Granting of Special Category Status,” 3; Mulvihill, “Pardoning Paramilitaries,” 231–32.
153 See McEvoy, Paramilitary Imprisonment in Northern Ireland, 217. Also see PMA, “Life in the Cages”; Caesar, “Captive or Criminal?,” 335; Spillane, “Terrorists and Special Status,” 488.
154 See Cusack and McDonald, UVF, 124.
155 An image of UVF internees parading the colors in Long Kesh is included in the photo section of Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland (New York: Public Affairs, 2010).
156 Patrick McMeanamin, Long Kesh—Special Status: 1971-1976: The Politicization of a Generation of Working Class Youth (Galway: National University of Ireland, 2011), 14.
157 On that date, “the last 46 people interned without trial were released.” Unstated was the fact that many men who had been tried and convicted of one or another offence remained in the camp at Long Kesh, the last compound of which was not closed until 1988. See PMA, “Life in the Cages.”
158 Mulvihill, “Pardoning Paramilitaries,” 232.
159 The Act took effect on August 8, 1973. It was amended by the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act in 1974.
160 The name arises from Lord Diplock, head of the commission that proposed such courts. See Report of the Commission to Consider Legal Procedures to deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1972). For critique, see Steven C. Greer and Anthony White, Abolishing Diplock Courts: The Case for Restoring Jury Trial to Scheduled Offences (London: Cobden Trust, 1986).
161 The term “H-Blocks” comes from the configuration of its buildings when viewed from above. See Donovan Wylie, “The Maze/Long Kesh Prison: Aerial View,” The Met (2003; available at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/727655).
162 See Bishop and Mallie, Provisional IRA, 351–52; Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA (London: Bloomsbury, 2001), 356.
163 See Taylor, Provos, 221–34.
164 Bishop and Mallie, Provisional IRA, 354.
165 The demands, which were formulated during the dirty protest, were recognition of the protestors’ right not to wear prison uniforms or perform penal labor, free association with other prisoners and the right to organize educational and recreational activities, resumption of their visiting and mailing rights and their right to receive parcels, and full restoration of remission (good time) lost to the protests. See Taylor, Provos, 229–34.
166 For Hughes’ own recounting, see Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 235–40.
167 Strike spokesman Danny Morrison, March 1, 1981. Quoted in Robert White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Éire: Merrion Press, 2017), 177.
168 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 3 vols. (London: Keegan Paul, Trench, and Tuber, 1918), Vol 1, Chap. 1, Point 24.
169 Margaret Thatcher, “Speech in Belfast, March 5, 1981” (available at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104589).
170 Sands was elected to fill the seat vacated by the sudden death of Independent Republican Frank Maguire, representing Fermanagh and South Tyrone. “Hunger striker elected MP,” BBC News (April 9, 1981).
171 See Brian Rowan, Armed Peace: Life and Death After the Ceasefire (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1984), 84.
172 During the strike, the Provos killed 13 soldiers (5 of them UDR), 13 members of the RUC, and 18 prison guards. Taylor, Provos, 237.
173 The inimitable Brendan Duddy and “an intelligence agent”—possibly Frank Steele—provided the link to Adams. See Liam Clark, “Was Gerry Adams Complicit over Hunger Strikes?,” Sunday Times (April 5, 2009).
174 One theory is that the Army Council was holding out for formal reinstatement of the Special Category, another is that Adams was holding out in order to garner the sympathy vote for his preferred candidate in the special election to replace Adams in the House of Commons. That the last death of a striker, the special election, and relaxation of pressure on the men to continue occurred on August 20 seems a bit too coincidental. For what may be the best analysis, see David Beresford, Ten Men Dead (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987). Also see Richard Rawe, The Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike (Dublin: New Island Books, 2016).
175 See Taylor, Provos, 251–52; Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 332; R.K. Walker, The Hunger Strikes (Belfast: Lagan Press, 2006), 138.
176 For background on the Pratt case, see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, [3 rd ed.] 2022), 77–94.
177 The Visani clip is shown in Harry Reasoner, “Geronimo Pratt,” 60 Minutes, November 29, 1987 (available in 2 segments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXkmgi3imM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLwyrpj_j2g).
178 Senior Judge Charles S. Haight, Ruling on Defendant’s Motion for Compassionate Release (Case No. 82 CR 312 (CHS) November 2, 2020), 500.
179 Consider, as examples, the cases of Black Panthers Ed Poindexter, and Veronza Bowers, all of whom were eligible and recommended for release at least a decade ago but remain in prison after 40 years or more. Another Sundiata Acoli was recently released after decades of denials. For further background on these and similar cases, see National Association of Alumni of the Black Panther Party, Political Prisoners (April, 14, 2021; available at https://naabpp.org/political-prisoners/).
180 Kitson, Low Intensity Warfare, 69.
181 See Mutulu Shakur, Marilyn Buck, Geronimo Pratt, Albert Nuh Washington, Sekou Odinga, Cecilio Chui Ferguson El, Susan Rosenberg, and David Gilbert, “Prisoners of War: The Legal Standing of Members of National Liberation Movements,” in Cages of Steel: The Politics of Imprisonment in the United States, ed. Ward Churchill and J. J. Vander Wall (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1992), 158.
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Ward Churchill
Ward Churchill is an activist/scholar who served for over thirty years on the leadership council of the Colorado Chapter of the American Indian Movement. A former professor of American Indian studies and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, he has published more than twenty books and one hundred articles on American Indian history and the suppression of political dissent in the United States.