Explain how the early policies and tactics of the British army played an important role in the rebirth of the IRA

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to Bell, the British army came to Ulster with little or no appreciation of the historical circumstances behind the conflict.
• When the army arrived its commanders believed they were in the midst of a colonial war, they evaluated the situation and concluded there were two "tribes.".
One tribe flew the Irish tricolor and spoke with deep-seated hatred of the
• British? the other flew the Union Jack and claimed to be ultrapatriotic subjects of the British Empire.
Far from being a conflict to preserve British influence in a colony, the struggle in Northern Ireland was a fight between two groups of Irish citizens, neither side was British.
• The British army mistakenly allied itself with one of the extremist positions in the conflict.
• The Unionists greeted the army with open arms.
• Historically, the British army had rallied to the Unionist cause? however, the Republicans also welcomed the British army.
• In Republican eyes, it was a peacekeeping force. The Republicans believed the British army would protect them from the Unionists and the police.
• As the British army made its presence felt in Ulster, Republicans and Catholics were subjected to the increasing oppression of British army measures.
Catholic neighborhoods were surrounded and gassed by military forces searching for subversives, and the soldiers began working as a direct extension of the RUC.
• Londonderry and Belfast were military targets, and rebels fighting against the government were to be subdued.
• As confrontations became more deadly, Republican support for the British army vanished.
• Feeling oppressed by all sides, Catholics and Republicans found help in the form of the IRA.

• The IRA pushed its internal squabbles aside, and the Officials and Provisionals focused on their new common enemy, the British army.
• The new IRA policy emphasized the elimination of British soldiers from Irish soil and brushed aside internal political differences.
• The British army found itself in the middle of a conflict.
• Alienated nationalists offered support for the growing ranks of the IRA.
• Each time the British army overreacted the Republican cause was strengthened.
• IRA ranks grew from a few dozen to nearly 2,000, and members adopted an elaborate justification of violence.
• When crackdowns by British army patrols and incidents of alleged torture by intelligence services increased the ranks of the IRA, Unionist paramilitary organizations grew in response.
• The British army also began taking action against Unionist organizations and then truly found itself in the midst of a terrorist conflict.
• In 1972 the British government issued a report on the violence in Northern Ireland concluding that tensions inside the community were so great, once they had been unleashed, that little could be done to alleviate them.
• The policies of the police and the British army had done much to set those hostile forces in motion.