British Army - License to Kill With Impunity in Ireland - Letter of 1972 (30 Year Rule release)

[C. Flower]

The narrative of the neutral, put-upon British keeping the troublesome warring parties apart is amazingly stubborn, given the abundance of evidence that it is, and always was, b*ll*cks. What amuses me is the number of Irish people who accept it unthinkingly (or for their own ends).

How many months in a row has the Sindo been pushing the 'massacre of Protestants in West Cork' nonsense in the name of exposing unwelcome and unfashionable historical 'truths'? Yet will Eoghan Harris or John Paul McCarthy spend weeks on end picking apart what happened in Ballymurphy? Of course not, because that would be 'giving succour to the men of violence', wouldn't it?...

The British have hundreds of years of experience of running other peoples' countries. Diplomacy, propoganda, psyops, or whatever else we call spin and disinformation accounts a lot of their success in doing that.

The day after this meeting a 16 year old boy was shot dead by an unaccountable British soldier.

They were absolutely clear about their strategy

- blame the provos for everything: isolate them from support
- hit militant / resistant areas with hard military force: intern people
- give the UDA and protestant paramilitaries a job as mad dogs
- infiltrate - cause splits and divisions
- schmooze the amenable members of the provisional leadership with diplomacy and spin
- keep the Republic out of it at all costs (Dublin and Monaghan included)
- demonise Irish nationalism to the rest of the British.

I don't know when this idea came in that they were a neutral and put upon peace making force.

[C. Flower]

The British have hundreds of years of experience of running other peoples' countries. Diplomacy, propoganda, psyops, or whatever else we call spin and disinformation accounts a lot of their success in doing that.

The day after this meeting a 16 year old boy was shot dead by an unaccountable British soldier.

They were absolutely clear about their strategy

- blame the provos for everything: isolate them from support
- hit militant / resistant areas with hard military force: intern people
- give the UDA and protestant paramilitaries a job as mad dogs
- infiltrate - cause splits and divisions
- schmooze the amenable members of the provisional leadership with diplomacy and spin
- keep the Republic out of it at all costs (Dublin and Monaghan included)
- demonise Irish nationalism to the rest of the British.

I don't know when this idea came in that they were a neutral and put upon peace making force.

I left out the two most important elements of British strategy - entrench a sectarian divide by all possible political and physical means, and use diplomacy to cement the British position in Ireland.

Did a little reading, and it looks as if the Anglo Irish Agreement was a big moment in restructuring "the narrative" of Ireland.