Tuesday, July 31, 2007
British troop levels return to peace time levels…
At long last the British troop numbers here will drop to the ‘peacetime’ levels they were at before being called onto the streets of Belfast in 1969. Already the battles are beginning over what it means. It clearly means different things to different people:
The DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson:
Referring to the 763 members of the forces who were killed, he said: “This is a difficult time for the families of those who were killed. This was an immense sacrifice and we owe a great debt to those who laid down their life in defence of democracy.” Turning to locally recruited and part-time members of the forces, Mr Donaldson said: “Many UDR and latterly RIR soldiers were killed as they sat alongside their family, worked in their local community or while they returned home from duty. Undoubtedly those soldiers who served amongst their community, especially along the Border, faced scenes and hardships which were never printed and we’ll never read of.”
Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly:
“I remember around 1972, when I was going about, nearly every working class Catholic’s house was on computer,” he said.
“I was on the run at the time and if I gave a name they would ask me what colour the wallpaper was in that household because they had it on file. They used to walk into houses at night and count everyone there, from babies up, to keep check.” He described such operations as “real Big Brother stuff”. “We have had British troops and other crown forces on the ground now into a second generation, and it was an oppressive presence. . .
“Before they had intelligence, internment was being used as a weapon against nationalists and Catholic people. But when you look back at it now it was the simple repetition of tactics that were used by the British army in every single arena in the world they went into as a colonial power.”
If Mairtin reckons it’s bon voyage, to Richard Walsh of the Derry based Rpublican Prisoners Action Group, the ‘withdrawal’ is meaningless:
“They say it (Operation Banner) is drawing to an end, but there will still be a permanent garrison, and they`re only a helicopter`s flight away.
“They can be brought back at very short notice.”
He added: “The fact is that British policy has effectively succeeded in that the RUC/PSNI are able to police without the support of the British Army.
“It`s by no means a step forward when you have the Provisionals openly collaborating with the British Crown Forces.”
Mick Fealty @ 06:21 AM
It seems even after 38 years some of the senior officers aren’t quite sure what the whole thing was about.
Quote: Col. Wayne Harber,54, the Deputy Commander of 39 Infantry Brigade. (Daily Telegraph)
“We are glad that it has ended and that there is peace and a positive future for this part of the island of Ireland.”
Er, Colonel, didn’t you get the memo? You were supposed to be working for peace and prosperity for a part of the United Kingdom not Ireland.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 07:41 AMHM Forces have won. The interesting thing is wtf 20,000 Brits are doing in Germany. Of course, if the Loughall set up had not happened and if Derry Brigade were not toally compromised and if Stakeknife, Adams and Donaldson….
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 07:46 AMHarry - its both.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 08:17 AMMuch greater confusion on Radio 1 this morning with a wee girl saying :
“It was a foreign force coming in to tell us what to do” ....
at this point I was reaching for my phone to complain about persistent and obvious BBC bias towards republicanism <cough> when she went on to say
“I mean we had our own police force and we could have sorted it out ourselves”
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 08:20 AMI agree with Richard Walsh, Operation Banner was a tactical and strategic success.
Because of the Army, Militant Republicans completely failed in their objective to make the state untenable and bring about its destruction. They supported the RUC to achieve primacy in security and their lasting legacy is that they helped shape the political climate for their no longer being needed outside a normal garrison mode.
They did kill people. They did kill some innocent people and this cannot be forgotten about in the context of their presence here. But it is quite clear to me that in the balance, the Army prevented a much, much worse scenario from ever evolving despite the best efforts of dedicated and ruthless terrorists and a huge propaganda effort from Sinn Fein.
I’m glad that the Army presence is no longer required. They did not withdraw from this part of the United Kingdom. They defended it at great personal cost until democracy won out against naked republican fascism. They can depart with dignity and honour.
Now, here’s your ball, how hard can you hit it back? :)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 08:24 AM“there will still be a permanent garrison”
To quote somebody or other who may or may not have been in the IRA -
“they haven’t gone away, you know ” ;)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 08:30 AMThere’s now roughly a similar level of soldier to general population ratio in both NI and the ROI - Normality indeed.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 08:45 AMBut where, oh, where are the MOPEs? Time for peace? Time to go? :)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 09:21 AM‘But where, oh, where are the MOPEs? Time for peace? Time to go? :)’
Okay, just for you Bog -
5,000 British troops on Irish soil is still 5,000 British troops too many!
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 09:44 AMOkay, just for you Bog
Thank God smgiff, I was thinking I was losing my touch there.
But I know you’ll agree that 5,000 tucked up in a barracks is a very, very small price to pay for the peace and stability we all now enjoy :)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:13 AMsmcgiff @ 11:44 AM:
5,000 British troops too many?
Nice propaganda rant, but not exactly the view of the locals in Tewksbury over the last week or so.And as for George Gay @ 09:46 AM, and his elegantly-phrased wonderment about wtf 20,000 Brits are doing in Germany:
The 55,000 people associated with British Forces Germany, of which 23,000 are serving personnel, are there very much at the earnest request of the Federal and Länder governments. And that might be because their departure would cost the economy of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony some 1,5 billion euro a year. Wiser heads might remember that the 1993 Options for Change defence cuts proposed even bigger reductions in the German presence.Alas, not everything in the galaxy is quite as simple as is represented in the columns of An Phoblacht.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:24 AM“5,000 British troops on Irish soil is still 5,000 British troops too many! “
Better than one Flatley ;)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:25 AM“Nice propaganda rant,”
Malcom - smcgiff was only having a laugh. He or she doesn’t do proaganda rants :)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:26 AMdid gerry kelly say that every catholic’s house was on computer? in 1972?? what kind of computer was this, did it travel in its own land rover, with big cables trailing across divis street to the squaddies’ backpacks?
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:30 AMMalcom - smcgiff was only having a laugh
Agreed - he is a worthy opponent, young skywalker.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:33 AMdid gerry kelly say that every catholic’s house was on computer? in 1972?? what kind of computer was this, did it travel in its own land rover, with big cables trailing across divis street to the squaddies’ backpacks?
I think it was called Crucible and, yes, was probably rather large.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:38 AMSorry for the RSI: try again, “Tewkesbury”.
Don’t want to get involved in the sort of geographical confusion put out by today’s Washington Post:
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said [Gordon Brown] “burst out laughing, and he indicated, in an inimitable English way, that he agrees with me ...”
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:38 AMI think it was called Crucible and, yes, was probably rather large.
Er.. no. Crucible was introduced in 1987. See below. Fifteen years before that, in 1972, there was not a computer in Northern Ireland that had the operating capacity to do this. If there had been it would have required a switching room similar to the ones that used to be in the telephone exchange on Cromac St!
But never let the truth stand in the way of great news copy.
See below:
Irish War: British Disease
Tony Geraghty 17.09.2000
Or, how Big Brother overcame liberty at home as well as “across the water”.
[...]
As early as 1974 the British Army in Northern Ireland had introduced the first computerised means of reading vehicle number plates. The system, named VENGEFUL, enabled checkpoints on the Irish border to identify vehicle ownership within thirty seconds. Soon, the system was swamped by an excess of data and by 1977 it was focused on suspect vehicles only. The process rapidly gathered momentum as the “electronic cage”, replacing the fortified village of Malaya, became the Army’s principal means of controlling civilians. A new computer, named CRUCIBLE, was put into the hands of 125 Intelligence Section in 1987. As the defence journalist Mark Urban noted:
“Crucible does not only store information on people and incidents but also contains data on the ImovementsI of individuals, fed in from dozens of terminals in the intelligence cells of [military] units around Ulster. The introduction of the new computer brought some complaints from intelligence officers who resented the amount of time which their men had to spend feeding information into it…Computerization ..can compound mistakes and the consequences - being detained at roadlblocks or having homes searched - for people entered erroneously in the computer as terrorist suspects are potentially damaging to the security forces.”Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:49 AMDec @ 12:38 PM:
Let’s stick to the facts. VENGEFUL (which was the prototype for identifying vehicle registrations, and mainly on the Border, went operational in 1974. It was overwhelmed by information by 1977, and was then concentrated on suspect vehicles only.
CRUCIBLE was implemented by 125 Intelligence Section as late as in 1987. Mark Urban (BBC Newsnight Diplomatic editor noted: “The introduction of the new computer brought some complaints from intelligence officers who resented the amount of time which their men had to spend feeding information into it…”
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:51 AMjoffy donaldson @ 12:49 PM:
Sorry for the synchronicity: great minds thinking alike, but my fingers are slower.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:53 AMOh for the 80s days of the Sinclair ZX and the Commodore 64 - Had Al Gore invented the Internet back in ‘72 ?
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 10:57 AMCruimh @ 12:57 PM:
Even the Commodore Pet didn’t appear until ‘77, which a smartarse could burn out by POKE-ing the monitor voltage. It failed in the Francophone market for obvious reasons (in the same way Pschitt lemonade would amuse my daughters). But “Elite” on the BBC Micro: that was something else.
Err… I think this is “off-topic”.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 11:07 AMi see we killed this thread stone dead…
nobody have any thoughts on the new powers then?
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 12:08 PMI am sure many a brothel owner is shedding a tear.
Seriously though, the scale of British Army involvement in the Troubles was enormous, to match the level of garrisoning on a per capita basis that NI had at the peak of the Troubles Iraq would need to have five hundred thousand “coalition” forces and Afghanistan would need about fifty thousand more troops again. It shows just how much effort was required to keep the paddies down and correspondingly how little chance the current adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have of succeeding.
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 12:15 PMPerhaps attention can now turn to the increasing numbers of genuinely foreign troops on Irish soil - the thousands of US troops who stop over at Shannon on their way to perpetrate an illegal war in Iraq which the Irish government seems content to quietly endorse.
No *idly standing by* for Bertie, eh? :)
Posted by on Jul 31, 2007 @ 12:19 PM
