The longest continuous operation in the history of the British Army will end after 38 years tonight. Operation Banner commenced with the deployment of British troops to support the police in Northern Ireland started in August 1969 and has been running ever since. In all, 763 British servicemen were killed during the deployment* (in a total of more than 3,500 dead over the course of the conflict), with the worst year being in 1972, when 86 soldiers were killed. To put that in some context, since March 2003, there have been 163 British deaths in Iraq. So for a period in the early 70s, an area of the United Kingdom was a more dangerous place for British soldiers than Basra is today. Quite amazing to think about now.
I guess the question that comes from this is whether Operation Banner can be regarded as a success. It undoubtedly contained some horrendous disasters, and the British certainly lost the PR war in the early days of the Troubles. We would do well to remember that, when they arrived, the British troops were there to protect Catholics from Loyalist mobs and were warmly welcomed by the minority community in Northern Ireland. However that good will was rapidly lost (an instructive lesson, if ever there were one, about how a military deployment can move from being supported to loathed in a matter of weeks). And then came Bloody Sunday. Whatever happened that day, it is clear that it acted as the single greatest recruiting tool physical force nationalism has had in modern times. Yet there is another important point to be made too. What if the army had not gone in? It is quite conceivable that, without the extra security resources, Northern Ireland could have descended into full-scale civil war in the late sixties and certainly it is hard to imagine the regular police service being able to keep the lid on the tensions that were tearing the province to pieces at that point.
With a hat-tip to Slugger O’Toole, I will point you towards some quite remarkable video footage from the early days of the deployment, which is from the BBC and available here. A BBC crew are shown round the Falls Road during a British Army enforced curfew. Once again very strange to think that this is in the UK, in the comparatively recent history.
*There seems to be some confusion over these figures. A Times article written a couple of years ago cites the 763 figure, but the authoritative CAIN website suggests a much lower figure of 362 deaths. I’m afraid that I can’t shed any light on the discrepancy.