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The Force Research Unit Britain's dirty war: why we must wash the blood from our hand Sunday Herald Leader Publication Date: Nov 19 2000 Field Marshal Montgomery observed in his memoirs that the involvement of the British Army in military operations against the IRA in 1918 quickly developed into a murder campaign which brutalised both sides and lowered their standards of decency and chivalry. He knew what he was talking about for he was no stranger to violence, having just come out of the killing fields of the first world war. What he and many other senior officers hated about the use of British soldiers in irregular counter-insurgency operations was the fact that, all too often, the soldiers involved broke the rules of warfare and operated outside the law. As our story on Page One shows, three-quarters of a century later that kind of conduct was still going on in Northern Ireland. Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles British soldiers fought a dirty undercover war against terrorists, often using their own initiative, operating according to their own rules and in so doing they often crossed the boundary between justified killing and illegal murder. For that reason we have decided to reveal the part played by Brigadier Gordon Kerr and his fellow soldiers in British undercover units who indulged in what can only be described as officially condoned murder and thuggery. The decision to publish was not taken lightly but it was taken within the guidelines used by the government in its advice to media organisations when dealing with sensitive security and defence issues. The story does not reveal sensitive information about operational procedures which would be of help to terrorist organisations, neither does it put the lives of British service personnel at risk. It does not sensationalise or glamorise the incidents involving Kerr and his fellow soldiers and it is most certainly not an apologia for terrorist attacks and killings which were also revolting and beyond the law. Rather it shows what happens when regular soldiers, however brave, start fighting irregular wars and take the law into their own hands, secure in the knowledge that senior commanders will cover up their dirty deeds. This is not justified warfare in protection of the state - one of the tasks of any army - but individuals acting as the apparatus of the state in a kind of warfare which strays beyond the bounds of the law. The actions of British military intelligence personnel in Northern Ireland is nothing short of an indictment of British democracy. The behaviour of Kerr's Force Reaction Unit shows that the British state failed to police Northern Ireland legally or with honour and failed to control its own agents, allowing them to act with impunity. The dirty war not only reduces those who took part in it, it reduces the nation for allowing it to happen in the first place. It is always the terrorists - in this case (but not always) the IRA - who cry "dirty war", pointing an accusatory finger at Britain for alleged state-sanctioned murder. The Provos may often be right, but one has to remember that these men and women have fought a campaign that plumbed the depths of evil and depravity. However, two wrongs do not make a right; and the British state, if it is to preserve its legitimacy, must be unimpeachable, even in the most difficult of circumstances. If the men are arrested as part of the Stephens inquiry into collusion between the security forces and loyalist terrorists, the question will have to be asked: were they acting on their own behalf or were their actions sanctioned by senior officers? This is a question which goes right to the heart of the long, drawn-out war between British security forces and the terrorist armies in Northern Ireland, for if there is any hint that the soldiers were acting under orders it makes it impossible to condemn the terrorists who indulged in equally disgusting activities. Of course, there will be those who say that the men involved were only doing their duty, that they were fighting an equally bloodthirsty enemy who neither gave quarter nor expected it to be given to them. In the shadowy world of guerrilla warfare the rules exist in a kind of moral no-man's-land. In the years of the armed struggle in Northern Ireland, British special forces used the simple mantra: "big boys' games". Big boy republican terrorist groups made it clear by their actions that they were prepared to murder and bomb their way to achieving their aims. The argument could be taken further to insist that they were soldiers taking part in extremely risky covert operations and that killings were only to be expected. As for the men themselves, their defence will no doubt be the tried and time-honoured excuse that they were only soldiers under orders. All those reasons can be taken into account, soldiers in combat understand that they might have to kill or be killed themselves, but they can never excuse illegal behaviour which in the case of the lawyer Pat Finucane led to the deaths of innocent civilians. In any case the soldier's excuse - only carrying out orders - has been aired too often in recent times and it has always been found wanting. From the involvement of SS soldiers in Nazi extermination camps to the brutality of Serb thugs in the Balkans half a century later, soldiers have tried to hide behind that excuse and it is to society's credit that steps have been taken to bring them to book through International War Crimes tribunals. If Kurt Waldheim, a former UN secretary-general and Austrian presidential candidate can be made to explain why he wore an SS uniform, then the same must hold true for Kerr and his colleagues. If we are to have live in a state whose servants have to keep within the law, those who transgress must be exposed and punished. By the same token, if the state condoned the operations, either officially or unofficially, then it must be reformed to make sure that it never happens again. The British Army has a long and honourable tradition and if that is to be upheld, this case has to be exposed and those responsible dealt with. To sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened would only dishonour those, the majority, who are a credit to the country they serve.