The time known as “The Irish Troubles” has seen the rise and demise of a great number of organizations that were established with the intention to protect the rights of either the Protestant or Catholic population of Northern Ireland. Whether or not the motives of these organizations were true or mere political statements or excuses for terrorism shall be of no consequence here. This is not the time for blame; it is the time to look at history and learn from it.

The newcomer to that part of Northern Irish history will be overwhelmed by the complexity of the military conflict, which finds it reflections in the great number of parties involved. Too many historians thrive in throwing around acronyms like UDR, USC, INLA, IRA, PIRA, SAS, RUC, UVF, and many, many more, making it difficult to determine to which side these groups belonged.

My special interest in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) came after reading “The Londonderry Air – Testament Of An Ulster Gunman” by Garrad Gawler.

Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

“The Londonderry Air” is one of the very few novels devoted to the Protestant view of what became known as the “Irish Troubles,” but it does so without the purpose of a political statement, but rather describing the life of an angry Protestant civilian through the testament of an Ulster gunman.

The Ulster Defence Regiment

The Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was an infantry regiment of the British Army which became operational in 1970, formed on similar lines to other British reserve forces but with the operational role of defence of life or property in Northern Ireland against armed attack or sabotage. The UDR replaced the Ulster Special Constabulary (“B-Specials”) along with a separate police reserve, to assist the regular Armed Forces. It was the largest infantry regiment in the British Army, formed with seven battalions and an extra four added within two years.

The regiment consisted overwhelmingly of part-time volunteers until 1976 when a full time cadre was added. Recruiting from the local community at a time of intercommunal strife, it was accused of sectarian attitudes and collusion with loyalist paramilitary organisations through most of its term. The regiment was intended to be nonpartisan, and it began with Catholic recruits accounting for 18% of membership. However, in time suspicion and disenchantment among the Catholic community grew, and Catholic membership settled at around 3%.

In 1992 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Irish Rangers to form the Royal Irish Regiment.

In 2006 the Royal Irish Regiment was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross which entitled the Ulster Defence Regiment to now be known as The Ulster Defence Regiment CGC.

Background

The UDR was created in 1970, during the period of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Before its creation, the police organisations charged with keeping order were the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC or “B Specials”). The RUC was the main police force whilst the USC was a reserve force tasked with patrolling and protection of vulnerable points additionally acting as a personnel reserve. The USC was the object of the Catholic nationalist community mistrust especially given it was drawn exclusively from the Protestant community. Whilst not prohibited by regulation, it was very unlikely that a Catholic could join. Nationalists had protested against the USC even before the events of 1968-9, and disbandment of the force was one of the key demands of both the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and the Derry Citizens’ Defence Association. Unionists, however, generally supported the USC as contributing to the defence of Northern Ireland from subversion and outside aggression. The USC had played an important and effective role in combating the Irish Republican Army (IRA) Border Campaign of 1956 to 1962.

The inability of the RUC and the USC to cope with the large scale intercommunal rioting of 1969 brought concerns over policing in Northern Ireland to a head. On 14 August, on a day of severe disorder and the police now at breaking point, Home Secretary, James Callaghan granted a request from the Northern Ireland government to deploy the British Army. On the 28th August 1969 security in Northern Ireland, including the USC, was put under the direct control of the General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland, General Ian Freeland.

The USC, which had no training in riot control, was mobilised to assist the RUC in dealing with the disorder. Widely reported incidents such as the death of a rioter in Tynan on 14 August and widespread allegations of misconduct from Catholic politicians and community leaders ensured that the USC were high on the political agenda for the British Government. Indeed the USC was so mistrusted by the Catholic population that at times this led to increased tension when deployed to Catholic areas. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson publicly declared that the USC being used for crowd control has caused great concern and that they would be progessively replaced by the British Army. He stated “they had up to now been exercing riot control duties… but that is not where they ought to be”. Whilst the Northern Ireland cabinet remained supportive of the USC, it was demonstrated to them at a London meeting on 19th August that disbanding the USC was top of the British Government’s agenda.

In response the Hunt Report was commissioned by the Government of Northern Ireland to: “examine the recruitment, organisation, structure and composition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Special Constabulary and their respective functions and to recommend as necessary what changes are required to provide for the efficient enforcement of law and order in Northern Ireland.” The report, published on 3rd October 1969, recommended that the RUC “should be relieved of all duties of a military nature as soon as possible”. Further; a “locally recruited part-time force, under the control of the G.O.C., Northern Ireland, should be raised”… and that the “force, together with the police volunteer reserve, should replace the Ulster Special Constabulary.” The report whilst recognising the “value of the the anti-guerilla patrols and armed guard duties they have carried out”, noted that whilst not prohibited from joining the USC “that for a variety of reasons, the fact remains that no Roman Catholic is a member” The report recommended that it be replaced with a force that would be “impartial in every sense” and “remove the responsibility of military style operations from the police force”.

The publication of the Hunt Report led to rioting on the Shankill Road in Belfast with both the RUC and army forced to battle loyalists. These disturbances led to the death of 3 people including RUC Constable Victor Arbuckle, the first RUC death in The Troubles. The USC itself suffered discontent and some resignations in the wake of the report.

The British Government accepted the findings of the Hunt Report and published a Bill and white paper on 12th November 1969 to begin the process of establishing the UDR. The resulting parliamentary debate in Westminster highlighted concerns about a continuing role for the USC. Jeremy Thorpe MP pointed to the fact that …”a substantial majority was to be recruited from former B Specials” and questioned if this was “likely to increase the chances of general acceptance in Ulster?” Roy Hattersley pointed out that this was due to “necessity” and that despite reservations towards some, the majority of the Specials were “men who have given good and honourable service to Northern Ireland.” Bernadette Devlin, MP for Mid Ulster, meanwhile stated that “What we are being offered, in my opinion, is the B Specials under another name”.

The Belfast Telegraph disagreed with the critics. In editorials several days apart it declared: “In no sense can the new Regiment be regarded like the old USC, as a vigilante force and a law unto itself. Inevitably the members of the new force will be provided by present B Specials and just as inevitably it is already being smeared in some quarters as simply the old force in new uniform. Every effort must be made to ensure that this is not so. No-one must be able to put a denominational tag on the UDR and if one of the senior officers in the force happened to be a Roman Catholic, so much the better…. The establishment of this new force should be regarded as a turning point in the life of the community.” (Source: Wikipedia.org)

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

The Bleeding Hills - A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

January 30th marks an anniversary in recent Irish history that most people living outside of Ireland and the Northern Provinces recognize only through a famous U2 song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. Unfortunately, the song is still misinterpreted as a “rebel song.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The band was aware of the controversial nature of Sunday Bloody Sunday, that its lyrics might be misinterpreted as sectarian, and possibly jeopardize their personal lives. Some of The Edge’s original lyrics explicitly spoke out against violent rebels, but were omitted in order to protect the group. The result is a song with virtually null relevance – other than its title – to the events of Bloody Sunday, and, in all consequence, U2 should have taken the efforts to find a different title for an otherwise extraordinary anti-violence song.

What happened in Londonderry on January 30th, 1972 went far beyond violence, and the song does not recognize the real issue at hand, the oppression of the Catholic minority living in Northern Ireland. Carmen de Monteflores once said, “Oppression can only survive through silence,” and while I applaud U2‘s campaign for anti-violence in Northern Ireland, I fail to see how the oppression would have ended without the war that followed after Bloody Sunday. On that day, members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment shot twenty-six demonstrators. Thirteen people, six of whom were just seventeen years old, died at the scene, with five of those wounded shot in the back. To this day there is no evidence that any of the demonstrators were armed.

Northern Ireland, during 1950s, 1960s 1970s, and beyond, was a place at odds with the rest of the civilized Western world. The pride of defeating Nazi Germany was still remarkably alive in the United Kingdom and fighting Communism had become the prime directive. However, in contrast to the self-proclaimed image of defender of the free world, their halo paled as they turned a blind eye on the oppression of the Catholic population in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was a place where the treatment of the Catholic minority came with the foul stench of Kristallnacht, the night when the Nazis coordinated an attack on the Jewish community in Germany as part of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policy. Most certainly, in the history of mankind there has been no greater crime against humanity than the Holocaust, but the question is, has Kristallnacht ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany? Did the world get a false sense of security?

The British occupation of the Irish island began as early as the late twelfth century, and attempts to annihilate the Irish identity fill the history of English rule. Some of these attempts carry a striking resemblance to Hitler’s henchmen trying to eliminate the Jewish population in Germany, although not quite as methodical. History is also filled with constant acts of Irish resistance, and no ruling king or parliament was ever able to solve the problem. The saying is that the nineteenth century Prime Minister William Edward Gladstone tried to deal with the Irish question, but never found the answer as the Irish continued to change the question.

December 1921 saw the signing of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, which established a free Irish republic with jurisdiction over twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. It also created the separate province of Northern Ireland that remained under British rule. It consists of the six northeastern counties of the predominantly Protestant Ulster region.

The terms, as negotiated by the founder of the IRA, Michael Collins, did not find the approval of the entire Irish population and, even though the Republic of Ireland was officially established, the battle for Irish reunification began. The importance of the IRA, though, endured a slow, but steady decline until the late 1960s, which saw increased confrontations between the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland and British officials, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

The Civil Rights movement’s demand was, just to name one particular issue, for equal voting rights. The current system allowed only house owners to vote in local elections, and they were predominantly Protestants supporting British rule in Northern Ireland. The Protestant majority defended their superiority by engaging their own militias against Catholics, and they were actively supported by the predominantly Protestant RUC.

By the summer of 1969, these disputes reached the dimensions of an outright Civil War, and in August of 1969 the British government deployed troops to Northern Ireland with the intent to restore public order. “Operation Banner” ended at midnight on July 31, 2007, thirty-eight years later, instead of the planned “few months,” and it represents the longest deployment in the history of the British Army. The death toll included more than 3500 civilians and 763 soldiers.

In 2008, General Michael Jackson, the British Army Chief, called Operation Banner a successful combat. Nothing could be further from the truth. The English army became part of the problem very quickly, and they turned out to be another player in the conflict, not a referee.

Initially, the Catholic population welcomed the presence of the army in the hope they would serve as a neutral force and protect them against the RUC and Loyalist forces. However, their hopes were shattered in July 1970 during a British operation called “Falls Curfew,” which resulted in three days of rioting and battles between the British Army and Irish Republican paramilitaries. In the final tally, five people were killed, and three hundred were arrested.

The streets of Londonderry endured a long line of events filled with violence and the rage among the Catholic population turned not only into increased support for the IRA. They expressed their anger in a series of protest marches. One of these marches took place in Londonderry on January 30, 1972. That day was seared into the memories of the Irish people as Bloody Sunday.

The Civil Rights Organization of Northern Ireland had contacted the RUC’s Chief Superintendent, Frank Lagan, to inform him of their intention to hold a non-violent demonstration and to protest against internment without charge or trial. The internment, officially named “Operation Demetrius,” allowed the RUC and the British Army to detain suspects without justification. Lagan, in turn, notified the British Army and requested they keep away any military interference, a wise recommendation and, if followed, could have prevented the bloody events. The army, however, turned down before, was eager to prove that their well-rehearsed plan would put an end to the riots in Northern Ireland.

Just a week before Bloody Sunday, at an anti-internment march held at Magilligan Strand, British soldiers beat a number of protesters with such an intensity that their own officers had to physically restrain them. An attack on the patrol car of two RUC officers resulted in their deaths the Thursday before Bloody Sunday at Creggan Road. Nevertheless, the organizers of the Sunday march, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, had called for a peaceful march. They tried everything to prevent a repeat of the events at Magilligan Strand.

The march started almost an hour late from Central Drive in the Creggan Estate and proceeded toward the Bogside area of Derry. The official report, produced only a few weeks later by the Widgery tribunal, tried to downplay the magnitude of the march and gave an estimated number of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000, while organizers claimed a number as high as 20,000. The correct figure was likely somewhere in between.

The organizers had intended to direct the march toward the town’s guildhall and hold a meeting there, but British military units had erected a number of barriers at strategic spots to seal the demonstration in the Bogside area away from the guildhall. They had also positioned a large number of snipers at strategic points around the perimeter of the Bogside area.

The barriers, the snipers, the stone throwing that followed, and the verbal abuse – all this was as familiar territory for the demonstrators as it was for the soldiers, who were very well protected in their anti-riot gear. The marchers did not suspect that the army’s reaction would be somewhere out of the ordinary. Maybe they would see some rubber bullets fired at them, maybe some gas, and then they would proceed to their meeting with the feeling they had fought well for their cause.

The exact details of the British Army’s reasoning for their attack are still, more than 30 years after the fact, under investigation. The fact is that the British Army engaged into a massive combat operation. Armored cars raced through the streets at a speed of forty miles per hour, thrashing through a horrified crowd. This was not a spontaneous response to a violent provocation, this was a well-rehearsed military operation. The soldiers that jumped out of the armored cars were paratroopers not wearing the usual anti-riot gear. Instead, they were wearing full combat gear. They took their strategic positions quickly and precisely and then they started shooting, using their fire-and-movement tactic as if they were fighting another army.

The only possible explanation for the army’s savage attack is that they believed they had effectively provoked an encounter with IRA forces. That was evidently not the case. Regardless of whether or not the attack was initiated on grounds of an erroneous interpretation of the circumstances or a more sinister plan, they were not able to recall their forces. Once a bloodhound smells blood, he is impossible to stop.

At the end of the riots, members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment had shot twenty-six civil rights protesters. Thirteen people, six of whom were just seventeen years old, died at the scene. Five of those wounded were shot in the back. After the shooting ended the army continued with collecting the dead and wounded, lining up demonstrators against walls, searching, and abusing them.

The Army Headquarters in Northern Ireland dealt with the following media inquiries particularly badly and defensively. The British Army Chief, Major General Robert Ford, just as useless as his fellow officers seeking to explain the firings, claimed his soldiers had only fired at IRA snipers and grenade-throwers, which turned out to be a blatant fabrication.

The question is, what was so different, so significant about Bloody Sunday? There had been rioting before, and people were killed. While that is true, the events of Bloody Sunday manifested a magnitude that was beyond anything that had happened before in Londonderry. Until Bloody Sunday, there was only a struggle for civil rights. There were riots, but the killing of people was a disturbing exception. After Bloody Sunday, it was outright war.

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Banner and Crosses carried by the families of the Bloody Sunday victims on the annual commemoration march.

I have often criticized the lack of good literature explaining the events of Bloody Sunday untainted and comprehensible. I have been faced with the same dilemma, now that I am in the middle of writing chapter four of my novel “The Bleeding Hills“, where Bloody Sunday takes center stage.

For the record, I am not looking down on those who were present at Bloody Sunday and wrote a book about it. An atrocity like this should be a part of a well recorded history, but I also believe that, in order to spark the interest of future generations, you need to start with the basics and these basics should, first of all, not be politically tainted; consequently they will lose credibility. In regards to comprehensiveness of recorded history, it does not help to confuse the newcomer to Irish history by frequently referring to Unionists, Republicans, Loyalists, MRF, SAS, MI5, MI6, Real IRA, Continuity IRA, RUC, Provisional IRA, INLA, NICRA, Saville, Widgery, MP, PM, etc., etc., without providing a comprehensible reference. The majority of books and web sites I found on the subject were written by experts for experts, having only their own indulgence in mind. What a waste of resources and what a waste to make it so difficult for our children to understand history!

As I wrote, I have been faced with the same dilemma of describing the background of Bloody Sunday in a way that it would seamlessly fit into my story line without boring or overwhelming the reader. In my novel, the main character, Finn Whelan, is an eye-witness of the events and I needed to explain the history that led to Bloody Sunday.

The Bleeding Hills - A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

Here is my draft version:
The British occupation of the Irish island began as early as the late twelfth century and the history of English rule is filled with attempts to annihilate the Irish identity, which bear striking characteristics of Hitler’s henchmen trying to eliminate the Jewish population in Germany, however, not quite as methodical.

History is also filled with constant acts of Irish resistance and no ruling king or parliament was ever able to solve the problem. It is said that the nineteenth century Prime Minister William Eward Gladstone tried to deal with the Irish question, but never found the answer, as the Irish continued to change the question.

December 1921 saw the signing of the ‘Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland’, which established a free Irish state with jurisdiction over twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. It also created the separate province of Northern Ireland which remained under British control. It consists of the six northeastern counties of the predominantly Protestant Ulster region.

The deal, as negotiated by the founder of the IRA, Michael Collins, did not find the approval of the entire Irish population and, even though the Republic of Ireland was officially established, the fight for an Irish reunification began. The importance of the IRA, though, endured a slow, but continuous decline until the late 1960s, which saw increased confrontations between the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland and British officials, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the official police force in Northern Ireland.

The Civil Rights movement’s demand was, just to name one single issue, for equal voting rights. The current system allowed only house owners to vote in local elections and they were predominantly Protestants supporting British rule in Northern Ireland. The Protestant majority defended their superiority by engaging their own militias against Catholics, supported by the predominantly Protestant RUC. By the summer of 1969 these disputes reached the dimensions of an outright Civil War and in August of 1969 the British government deployed troops to Northern Ireland, with the intention to restore public order. The mission was called “Operation Banner” and was envisioned to last only a few months. As a matter of fact, Operation Banner lasted thirty-eight years; it ended at midnight on July 31, 2007 and it represents the longest deployment in the history of the British Army. More than 3500 people died and 763 soldiers were killed.

Initially, the Catholic population welcomed the presence of the army in the hope they would act as a neutral force and protect them against the RUC and loyalists. But their hopes were shattered in July 1970 during a British operation called “Falls Curfew”, which resulted in three days of rioting and battles between the British Army and Irish Republican paramilitaries. Five people were killed and three hundred were arrested. The British Army became a player in the conflict, not a referee.

This is the in-a-nutshell-history that led to the events of Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972. There should be many more references included, but, as I wrote, I needed to be short and efficient in my novel.

According to the CAIN Web Service (see http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/sum.htm):
‘Bloody Sunday’ refers to the events that took place in Derry on the afternoon of Sunday 30 January 1972. A Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march had been organised to protest against the continuation of Internment without trial in Northern Ireland. Between ten and twenty thousand men, women and children took part in the march in a ‘carnival atmosphere’. The march was prevented from entering the city centre by members of the British Army. The main body of the march then moved to ‘Free Derry Corner’ to attend a rally but some young men began throwing stones at soldiers in William Street. Soldiers of the Parachute Regiment, an elite regiment of the British Army, moved into the Bogside in an arrest operation. During the next 30 minutes these soldiers shot dead 13 men (and shot and injured a further 13 people) mainly by single shots to the head and trunk.
The soldiers responsible for the deaths and injuries insisted that they had come under sustained gun and bomb attack by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and only fired at people in possession of weapons. Those involved in the march, and those who witnessed the events, provided evidence that ran contrary to the evidence given by the soldiers. According to these civilian testimonies none of those killed or injured had any guns or bombs.

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Almost Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.