Northern Ireland (merged thread)

[SWJED]

.. to the board and looking forward to your contributions to the discussions here.

If I remember correctly, the Blue Book is a restricted publication and should not be passed on through unofficial channels. Would recommend the normal official means for such a request.

Best,

Dave

[Strickland]

I echo the comments above. I believe that this is a restricted document. However, the Canadians have incorporated much of the Northern Ireland lessons learned into their Dispatches series. I would try to contact them as well. In addition, I would try to locate a copy of the UK COIN manual which should cover much of what you are looking for.

As for a book recommendation, Moloney's A Secret History of the IRA is the best book on the subject that I have read.

[Wagram]

Thank you for the recommandations; I have read Moloney's book and found it very informative indeed; I am currently reading the updated version of The RUC: a force under fire by Chris Ryder which is quite interesting too.

If anybody is aware of personal, maybe unpublished first-person account of rural tours....I have already read the usual suspects such as Bandit Country and Brigadier Morton's 3 PARA: emergency Tour Armagh 1976" as well as a few others.

[Neilg]

If you have any question I would be happy to try to answer them.
e-mail me at neilpresage@hotmail.com

[davidbfpo]

Below is a list of books collected when 'The Troubles' were "hot" and I've added asterisks to the best ones - although read years ago. I've not checked their availability on Amazon.com, most were published in the U.K.

**Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh, by Toby Harnden; pub. Coronet 1999

**Rebel Heart: Journeys within the IRA’s soul, by Kevin Toolis; pub. Picador 1996 (explains what makes the IRA tick)

**The Irish War: The Military History of a domestic conflict, by Tony Geraghty; pub. Harper & Collins 1998)

**Shadows: Inside Northern Ireland’s Special Branch by Alan Barker; pub. Mainstream Publishing 2004 (insiders account)

The Thin Green Line: The History of the Royal Ulster Constablulary GC by Richard Doherty; pub. Pen & Sword 2004

Phoenix: Policing the Shadows by Jack Holland & Susan Phoenix; pub. Hodder & Stoughton 1996 (insiders account of RUC surveillance and CT work)

The Guineapigs, by John McGuffin, pub. Penguin 1972; (internment interrogation allegations)

The Informer, by Sean O’Callaghan, pub. Corgi Books 1999; (informer inside PIRA for the Garda Siochana - Irish Police)

Amush: The war between the SAS & IRA, by James Adams, Robin Morgan & Anthony Bambridge, pub. Pan 1988

Stone Cold, by Martin Dillon, pub. Arrow 1993 (Michael Stone and Milltown massacre)

Fishers of Men, by Rob Lewis; pub. Coronet 2000 (British Army FRU insiders account)

Ten-Thirty-Three, by Nicholas Davies; pub. Mainstream 1999 (FRU expose by investigative journalist)

Beating the Terrorists: Interrogation in Omagh, Gough and Castlereagh by Peter Taylor; pub. Penguin 1980 (RUC methods 1976-79, by a journalist who became a regular writer on Ulster)

A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney; pub. Penguin 2002

Twenty-five years of terror: The IRA’s war against the British by Martin Dillon; pub. Bantam Books 1996

Nights in Armour by Blair McMahon; pub. Ulster Society 1993 (fiction about serving in the RUC)

14 May Days: The inside story of the Loyalist Strike of 1974, by Don Anderson; pub. Gill & Macmillan 1994

Behind the Lines: The story of the IRA and the Loyalist ceasefires by Brian Rowan; pub. The Blackstaff Press 1995

The Serpents Tail by Martin Dillon; pub. Richard Cohen Books 1995 (novel about informants)

A Testimony to Courage: The Regimental History of the Ulster Defence Regiment by John Potter; pub. Pen & Sword 2001

The RUC: A Force under Fire by Chris Ryder; pub. Methuen 1989 (several editions since then by a well known local journalist)

Dead Ground: Infiltrating the IRA by Raymond Gilmour; pub. Little, Brown & Company 1988 (informer for the RUC)

Loyalists by Peter Taylor; pub. Bloomsbury 1999 (book for the BBC TV series; similar book for PIRA)

The Long War: IRA and Sin Fein by Brendan O’Brien; pub. O’Brien Press 1993

Pig In The Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969-1984 by Desmond Hamill; pub. Methuen 1985 (revised edition later)

The Provisional IRA by Patrick Bishop & Eamonn Mallie; pub. Heinmann 1987

Big Boys Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA by Mark Urban; pub. Faber & Faber 1992

The Dirty War by Martin Dillon; pub, Hutchinson 1988

Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland by Ronald Weitzer; pub. SUNY 1995

Any questions ask via private message.


Added in January 2020 books I missed in 2006, a few purchased since then:

Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency & Peacekeeping by Frank Kitson; pub. 1971 (British Army author and seen by many as a key text and controversial)

Bunch of Five by Frank Kitson; pub. 1977 (this records the author's experiences in Kenya, Malaya, Muscat & Oman and Cyprus)

The Point of No Return: The Strike which broke the British in Ulster by Robert Fisk; pub. 1975 (the 1974 Loyalist strike against the power-sharing government)

Who Framed Colin Wallace by (the late) Paul Foot; pub. 1989 (allegations of "dirty tricks" and Wallace being framed for murder. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wallace )

The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision by Steve Bruce; pub.1994

The Secret Victory: The Intelligence War That Beat The IRA by William Matchett; pub. 2016 (subject of several six posts here and they can be searched for - they were in 2017-2019)

Note: the following book are in the RUSI Military History Library, London and were consulted this month:

‘Armed Struggle; The History of the IRA’ by Richard English (published 2003)

‘A Long, Long War: Voices from the British Army in Northern Ireland 1969-1998’ by Ken Wharton (published in 2008)

The British Approach to Counterinsurgency: From Northern Ireland to Iraq and Afghanistan, Edited by Paul Dixon (published in 2012)

From Violence to Power-Sharing by William Beattie Smith (former Northern Ireland civil servant and then a Queens Belfast academic; published in 2011)

[Wagram]

Below is a list of books collected when 'The Troubles' were "hot" and I've added asterisks to the best ones - although read years ago. I've not checked their availability on Amazon.com, most were published in the U.K.

**Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh, by Toby Harnden; pub. Coronet 1999

**The Irish War: The Military History of a domestic conflict, by Tony Geraghty; pub. Harper & Collins 1998)

**The Thin Green Line: The History of the Royal Ulster Constablulary GC by Richard Doherty; pub. Pen & Sword 2004

**Phoenix: Policing the Shadows by Jack Holland & Susan Phoenix; pub. Hodder & Stoughton 1996 (insiders account of RUC surveillance and CT work)

The Informer, by Sean O’Callaghan, pub. Corgi Books 1999; (informer inside PIRA for the Garda Siochana - Irish Police)

Amush: The war between the SAS & IRA, by James Adams, Robin Morgan & Anthony Bambridge, pub. Pan 1988

Fishers of Men, by Rob Lewis; pub. Coronet 2000 (British Army FRU insiders account)

A Testimony to Courage: The Regimental History of the Ulster Defence Regiment by John Potter; pub. Pen & Sword 2001

The RUC: A Force under Fire by Chris Ryder; pub. Methuen 1989 (several editions since then by a well known local journalist)

Pig In The Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969-1984 by Desmond Hamill; pub. Methuen 1985 (revised edition later)

Big Boys Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA by Mark Urban; pub. Faber & Faber 1992

I read the above books; thanks for the list. I found "The thin green line" very disappointing having read "A force under fire" just before. "The thin green line" seems to be a poor copy of Chris Ryder's book on the RUC with a lesser depth of analysis.

Bandit Country and Big Boys Rules were among my favourite as well as "NI soldiers talking" by Max Arthur for its "view from the ground" feel.

I will try to get some of the others.

Regards,

W