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A Degree of Success

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Terrorist Propaganda

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Abstract

So far this book has attempted to isolate and describe historical and ideological influences on two terrorist groups emerging in Europe at the end of the 1960s. It has also identified three propaganda target audiences and the strategies and tactics within each group. This chapter will attempt to measure how successful they have been. What is immediately apparent is that in the sense of achieving their major strategic goals, neither of the two groups has been successful. However, this is not the case at the tactical level. Explaining these successes is as important for any counter-propaganda offensive as it is for the terrorists themselves. The hypothesis offered here is that terrorists will achieve the most tactical success when the objective is fairly limited and is clearly linked with either ideological or historical reference points. Empirically, it seems that tactical successes are also closely linked to government actions and reactions. Some government responses to terrorism have clearly been mistakes, producing a ground-swell of support for terrorists. Again it should be stressed that these terrorist successes are limited, but nonetheless governments should openly acknowledge them as part of the learning process.

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Notes and References

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  49. Ultimately Mahler, Proll, Klein, Baumann, Speitel and Boock were all to concede that in some ways their ideology and strategy were wrong.

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  63. M. Farrell, Northern Ireland The Orange State (London: Pluto, 1976).

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  64. For a left wing critique of the left wing analysis see P. Bew and H. Patterson, The British State and the Ulster Crisis (London: Verso, 1985). While agreeing that British interests are imperialist, the authors argue that left wing views on Northern Ireland seriously underestimate the indigenous support for the British connection (p. 143). This book remains one of the most oustanding analyses of Northern Ireland from any quarter.

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  65. Livingstone quoted in Clarke, op. cit., p. 182.

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  66. The Sun, 13 Oct. 1981.

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  67. Belfast Telegraph 9 Aug. 1982.

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  68. See also the Irish News, 9 Aug. 1982.

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  69. Keesings Contemporary Archives, vol. xxix (1983) p. 32197A-B.

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  70. See An Phoblacht/Republican News, 3 March 1983.

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  71. ibid.

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  72. Daily Star 15 May 1981, 59 per cent in favour of British withdrawal. New Society, 24 Sep. 1981, 54 per cent supported British troop withdrawal immediately or within the next five years. Sunday Times, 21 Dec. 1981, 63 per cent said they would vote against Northern Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom in a referendum.

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  73. Sunday Times, 16 Aug. 1981. This argument was put forward on the basis that ‘the root Catholic instinct in the North is a rejection of British rule: nothing else’. For a critique of this see. C. C. O’Brien’s reply in the Observer, 23 Aug. 1981, and the letters page of the Sunday Times, 23 Aug. 1981.

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  74. Daily Star, 15 May 1981.

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  75. Sunday Times, 17 Oct. 1971.

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  76. These allegations were based on the five techniques.

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  77. New York Times, 2 Dec. 1971.

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  78. New Statesman, 10 Sep. 1976.

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  79. ‘Report of the Committee of Privy Counsellors’, (Parker) op. cit., p. 14 (Minority Report of Lord Gardiner).

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  80. Report of An Amnesty International Mission to Northern Ireland, 28 November–6 December 1977 (Amenesty International: June 1978) p. 70.

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  81. Report of The Committee of Inquiry into Police Interrogation Procedures In Northern Ireland (Bennett) Cmnd 7497 (London: HMSO, 1979). For a comparison of the number of complaints before and after the Bennett Report see Table 14 Appendix D to Review of the Operation of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976 (Jellicoe) Cmnd 8803 (London: HMSO, 1983) p. 31.

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  82. Kelley, op. cit., especially pp. 299–300, and Curtis, op. cit., pp. 51–67. Curtis also accuses the media of aiding the government cover-up of torture.

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  83. J. Stalker, Stalker (London: Harrap, 1988). See also

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  84. P. Taylor, Stalker: The Search for the Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1987).

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  85. Stalker, op. cit., p. 9 and p. 92.

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  86. Another very complex and very controversial issue is the use of the police in military type situations. The RUC officers involved in the incidents investigated by Stalker had been specially trained in SAS techniques. Indeed many of them were ex-British soldiers. There are clearly operational, moral and political problems in expecting militarily trained personnel to operate within the civil policing model so fiercely defended in the United Kingdom as a whole. For a more detailed discussion of these issues see K. Bryett, The Effects of Political Terrorism on the Police in Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1969, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1987.

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  87. See speeches by Peter Archer and Clive Soley in HC Debs., Series 6, vol. 63, 1983–4, cols. 30–7, and cols. 96–101 respectively.

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  88. Kenny, op. cit., p. 117.

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  89. See HC Debs., Series 6, vol. 102 (1985–6) col. 1287.

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  90. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 5 April 1984. British politician Tony Benn seemingly accepts this and argues that ‘the occupation of Ireland is primarily a defence issue — it is like a curious cul-de-sac of NATO’. The British Troops-Out Movement has also supported this analysis. See Bew and Patterson, op. cit., p. 141.

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  91. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 7 Nov. 1985.

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  92. Resistance, (Irish Republican Support Group of Great Britain, October 1985).

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  93. Quoted in R. W. Mansbach (ed.) Northern Ireland: Half a Century of Partition (New York: Facts on File inc., 1973) p. 87.

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  94. ibid., p. 88.

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  95. ibid.

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  96. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 5 Nov. 1981.

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  97. Libya and Iran have certainly supported the PIRA, although this is closely related to the state of their relations with Britain.

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  98. Adams, ‘The Politics of Irish Freedom...’, op. cit., p. 56.

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  99. Bowyer Bell, op. cit., p. 382. See also Coogan, ‘The IRA’, op. cit., p. 434 and Kelley, op. cit., p. 157.

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  100. Kelley, op. cit., p. 162.

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  101. Tugwell, ‘Revolutionary Propaganda...’, op. cit., p. 261, quoting from Sunday Independent (Western Australia) 27 Jan. 1974.

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  102. Report of the Tribunal appointed to Enquire into the Events on Sunday, 30th January 1972, which led to Loss of Life in connection with the Procession in Londonderry on that day (Widgery) HC 220 (1971–72) vol. xxxii (London: HMSO, April 1972).

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  103. The threat of a Protestant backlash is one of the few inconsistencies in PIRA propaganda. It tends to be played up in propaganda aimed at the Catholic community in Northern Ireland and played down whenever anyone else suggests it as a possibility.

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  104. See An Phoblacht/Republican News, 14 May 1987. The PIRA statement after Loughall reads, in part, ‘[v]olunteers who shot their way out of the ambush and escaped saw other Volunteers being shot on the ground after being captured’.

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  105. Report of the Commission to consider legal procedures to deal with terrorist activities in Northern Ireland (Diplock) Cmnd 5185 (London: HMSO, 1972).

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  106. Adams, ‘The Politics of Irish Freedom...’, op. cit., p. 100.

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  107. ‘New Ireland Forum Report...’, op. cit., p. 18.

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  108. D. P. J. Walsh, The Use and Abuse of Emergency Legislation in Northern Ireland (Great Britain: The Cobden Trust, 1983) p. 77.

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  109. Adams, ‘The Politics of Irish Freedom...’, op. cit., p. 72; Kelley, op. cit., p. 298, referring to Amnesty International op. cit., p. 2. Adams and Kelley are actually misquoting the Amnesty Report which attributes the figures to a review done by the law department at Queen’s University, Belfast. See The Sunday Times, 23 Oct. 1977.

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  110. For a detailed discussion of these issues see P. Hillyard and J. Percy-Smith, ‘Converting Terrorists: The Use of Supergrasses in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 11 (1984) no. 3, pp. 337–55.

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  111. 38 people were put on trial on the word of PIRA supergrass Christopher Black, and 40 on the word of Raymond Gilmore. Gifford states that of the 15 supergrasses granted immunity up to 1984, 12 retracted their statements and refused any further co-operation. (See T. Gifford, Supergrasses: The use of accomplice evidence in Northern Ireland (Great Britain: The Cobden Trust, 1984). The PIRA kidnapped supergrass Raymond Gilmore’s father and the INLA seized Harry Kirkpatrick’s wife to put pressure on them to retract.

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  112. The Times, 20 Oct. 1988.

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  117. Irish Times, 4 May 1981.

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  118. Irish News, 5 April 1981.

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  119. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 9 May 1981. To be fair to the Catholic church, it did consistently call on the prisoners to end their hunger strike, and was instrumental, through Fr. Faul, in ultimately ending the protest.

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  120. The five demands were: 1) exemption from wearing prison clothing; 2) exemption from prison work; 3) freedom of association with fellow political prisoners; 4) the right to organise educational and recreational facilities, to have one weekly visit, to receive and send out one letter per week and to receive one parcel per week; 5) entitlement to full remission of sentence.

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  121. Sand’s election manifesto declared in part, ‘[t]here is but one issue at stake and that is the right of human dignity for Irish men and women taking part in this period of the heroic struggle for Irish independence’.

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  125. Quoted in O’Ballance, ‘Terror in Ireland...’, op. cit., p. 242.

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  126. See P. Wilkinson, ‘The Provisional IRA in the Wake of the 1981 Hunger Strike’, Government and Opposition, vol. 17 (1982) no. 2, p. 149.

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  127. Michael Flannery of Noraid was reported as saying ‘[t]his incident will bring in over 250,000 dollars. The money is just rolling in’. Courier Mail, (Brisbane) 17 Aug. 1984.

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  128. Biaggi, a former policeman now faces charges of accepting bribes. See The Guardian Weekly, 22 March 1987.

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  129. Kennedy quoted in Mansbach, op. cit., p. 147.

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  133. Significantly quoted in An Phoblacht/Republican News, 9 May 1981.

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  134. For example, Q. Dempster’s interview with S. Whealen, on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s 7.30 Report, 17 March 1988. This interview took place after a loyalist extremist had attacked a PIRA funeral, killing three and injuring over 50.

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  135. See, for example, An Phoblacht/Republican News, 9 May 1981.

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  136. Sunday Times, 19 April 1987. The Australian Foreign Affairs Minister claimed the decision was part of a larger cut back in overseas aid packages.

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  137. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 12 Aug. 1982.

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  138. Sarah Horsey, quoted in The Guardian Weekly, 22 March 1987.

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  139. This communique was issued on 8 Dec. 1980.

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  141. ibid., p. 345.

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  151. ibid., p. 13.

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  152. ibid., p. 14. This passage is one of the best examples of bias in the whole Report. While bitterly condemning the Diplock courts, no mention is made of the Republic’s own system of non-injury courts. The EPA is criticised, but no mention is made of the Republic’s own ‘Offences Against the State Act’ which contains many of same provisions found so objectionable when administered by the British in the North. Similarly, while pleas were made from the South for the British to be ‘flexible’ during the hunger strike, no ‘flexibility’ has been shown towards PIRA hunger strikers in Southern gaols.

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  153. For example, the only mandate Sinn Fein derived from the 1918 election was to take Ireland’s case to the peace conference in Paris. How does this then translate into a mandate for an all-Ireland Republic? And what explanation can be put on the fact that on an all-Ireland basis this election produced a total anti-Republic vote of 557 435 compared to the 485 105 polled by Sinn Fein? (This former figure inlcudes 237 393 votes for the Nationalist Party which, while certainly not Unionist votes, were also not Sinn Fein votes. See R. Kee, Ourselves Alone (London: Quartet, 1976) p. 53).) Also, like so many other analyses the Report ignores the strength of indigenous support for the British connection.

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  154. See O’Malley, op. cit., pp. 88–97.

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  159. ibid., p. 27.

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  160. Haughey quoted in Kenny, op. cit., p. 45. (Emphasis added.)

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  161. Blaney was a co-defendant with Haughey in a 1970 arms trial where both were accused of attempting to import arms to supply the PIRA. Both were acquitted, as were the other two defendants in the trial. Blaney is now an independent member of the Dail.

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  162. Republican News, 27 Nov. 1971.

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  163. Manseragh, Director of Research for Fianna Fail, quoted in O’Malley, op. cit., p. 48.

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  164. David O’Connell, ex-PIRA Chief-of-Staff, in Belfast Telegraph, 28 July 1971. Such arguments as these ‘are simply empirically wrong’. P. Bew, P. Gibbon and H. Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland 1921–72 (Manchester University Press, 1979) p. 207.

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  165. R. L. McCartney, The Case for the Unionists, (Belfast: Official Unionist Party, 1981). McCartney is probably the most eloquent Unionist spokesperson. A long time critic of Paisley, he recently left the Official Unionist Party to stand (unsuccessfully) as an independent in the 1987 General Election.

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  166. McGuinness in the Republic.

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  167. O’Malley, op. cit., p. 207.

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  168. Glover quoted in Cronin, op. cit., p. 342.

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  169. The Sunday Times, 19 May 1985, estimated that the PIRA had fewer than 50 fighting activists. Wilkinson, in the aftermath of the 1981 hunger strike, puts the number of ‘hard core’ members at 300–350. (The Provisional IRA in the Aftermath of the 1981 Hunger Strike’, op. cit., p. 142.)

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  170. Coogan, The IRA...’, op. cit., p. 535.

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  171. Wilkinson, The Provisional IRA...’, op. cit., p. 150.

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  172. A cannabis haul worth approximately £1 million was captured by the Garda in August 1979. See Coogan, op. cit., p. 535.

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  173. J. Adams presents a colourful, amusing and slightly exaggerated picture of cattle wandering back and forward across the border, netting from one farm alone £8000 per week for the PIRA in EEC subsidies. J. Adams, The Financing of Terror (London: New English Library, 1986) p. 157.

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  174. Glover estimated these at £400 000 and £180 000 respectively in 1978. (Glover in Cronin, op. cit., p. 344.)

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  175. However, compared to 1985, Sinn Fein did lose representation on two local councils. The total number of seats won also declined from 59 in 1985 to 35 in 1989. Of the 59 Sinn Fein councillors elected in 1985, J. Adams claims ‘ten had convictions for serious terrorist offences, and had between them served more than 100 years in jail. All the offences were committed on behalf of the IRA’. J. Adams, op. cit., p. 165.

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  176. ‘New Ireland Forum Report’, op. cit., p. 15 (2300), O’Malley, op. cit., p. 10 (2300) and Kenny, op. cit., p. 35 (2304). Kenny gives the following breakdown of the death toll; ‘Republicans had killed 1264, Loyalists 613. The security forces had caused 264 deaths and had themselves sustained a loss of 702 lives’. p. 35.

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  177. ‘New Ireland Forum Report...’, op. cit., p. 16.

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  178. O’Malley, op. cit., p. 85. For estimates of the ‘Additional costs of the army in Northern Ireland’, see HC Debs. Series 5, vol. 967 (1979–80) col. 1220.

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  179. See interview with Belfast Telegraph, 3 Nov. 1989.

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  180. In June 1988, a PIRA bomb on a school bus severely injured a young girl. The following month two civilians were killed by a PIRA bomb on the Falls Road and another ‘mistake’ just a few weeks later killed three members of the one family. In 1989, the PIRA concentrated on murdering British soldiers in Europe and mainland Britain.

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  181. Belfast Telegraph, 3 Nov. 1989.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Government, University of Queensland, Australia

    Joanne Wright (Lecturer)

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© 1990 Joanne Wright

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Wright, J. (1990). A Degree of Success. In: Terrorist Propaganda. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11714-7_7

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