Abstract
Huw Bennett’s Uncivil War is an authoritative and probing analysis of British military strategy during the Northern Ireland conflict and a vital contribution to scholars’ understanding of the war. Beginning in 1966 (because that was when the government recognized the possibility of widespread unrest), Bennett ends in 1975 when the government firmly settled for a protracted war waged at an ‘acceptable’ level of violence. It is this apparent intractability that motivates Bennett’s inquiry. Based on an exhaustive mining of primary sources – most chapters include over 200 footnotes each – Bennett explains how and why, from the British state’s perspective, the Troubles became a forever war, to use the lexicon of a later conflict. In doing so, Bennett slays many a historiographical sacred cow.
In the first two chapters, Bennett rejects the notion that the army’s methods were determined by its colonial experiences. He also deftly shows how events during the war’s so-called ‘honeymoon phase’, particularly threats of loyalist violence, shaped London’s political choices about the army’s role. The mistake, he concludes, was not the mid-1970 adoption of aggressive tactics, but the fact that these tactics overwhelmingly targeted Catholics, which undermined the army’s supposed impartiality and failed to convince Catholics that the army would protect them from loyalist violence.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine the conflict’s escalation throughout 1970 and 1971. Fearing the potential for a broader civil war and overconfident due to progress with Catholic community leaders, the army launched ‘a preventative assault on republicans’ (p. 67). The introduction of internment in August 1971 therefore should be seen not as a reluctant, last-minute decision based on poor intelligence, but ‘a deliberate military escalation’ that was legal under common law (p. 103). The government chose to quell republican violence first, then institute political reform later.
The next two chapters explore the path that followed from these choices. One might think that the 5,088-page Saville Report, published in 2010, covered everything there is to say about Bloody Sunday, but Bennett breaks new ground on the massacre. Additionally, Bennett reveals that Bloody Sunday did not lead to direct rule. Planning for direct rule was already underway prior to the tragedy in Derry. The confluence of other events – key parliamentary votes on entering the European Economic Community, an increase in Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) operations on the border that necessitated collaboration with the Republic, and PIRA’s threat to conduct bombings in Britain if negotiations did not begin – ultimately led to the March 1972 imposition of direct rule.
The final two chapters show how the army came to accept the war’s intractability. Bennett identifies how poor army morale from frequent rotations to the province, coupled with the difficulties of meeting Britain’s NATO obligations, convinced army leaders of the need to reduce force levels in Northern Ireland. These pressures drove the strategic decisions of keeping internment in effect and condoning loyalist paramilitary activities.
In essence, the army adapted its strategy not to win the war, but to endure it. Bennett writes that ‘as, in 1973–75, the character of the violence turned less “British” and more “Northern Irish”,’ the war grew more tolerable to political leaders (p. 248). Yet reduced force levels meant that the army’s ability to confront loyalists was limited. Ultimately, reduced force levels and appeasement of loyalism formed ‘essential components of a long-term strategy for holding the army together’ (p. 203).
Uncivil War is not only the product of incisive historical analysis; it is also the result of Bennett’s tenacity in gaining access to sources. In a worrying ‘note on sources’ at the end of the book, Bennett details numerous occasions in which he faced significant resistance from archival custodians and government officials. Army museum curators stifled his research by prohibiting him from accessing files or telling him that the files he sought did not exist (when in fact they did). Nearly half of the files he requested through the Freedom of Information Act were withheld, with the cabinet office proving particularly intransigent. Further difficulties ensued with the Ministry of Defence and Army Historical Branch.
If recent events are a guide, the controversial 2023 Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act will likely perpetuate this hesitancy to grapple openly with the past – a trend not limited to the Troubles. Bennett’s previous work on the Mau Mau insurgency made some within military circles suspicious of him this time around. Writing on the contemporary Afghanistan war, former British Army officers Mike Martin and Simon Akam also had trouble with officials’ reluctance to clear their books for publication. This kind of opposition to the transparent and forthright study of military history serves nobody, least of all the army. A military institution in a democratic country that cannot face its critics cannot do its job. Uncivil War may not be the book that many in the UK defence establishment will want to see, but it is one that they ought to read.