UK GOVERNMENT PLANS to commission an ‘official’ history of the Troubles

The British Army have already released their report on operations in Northern Ireland, it came out a few years ago. Since it was written as much for future politicians as military education, it's not too long and written in plain English.

I found it to be overall quite a fair overview, particularly with regards to the errors made in the late 1960s.

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It's not, but it's still a reasonable assessment by a professional military to figure out what went wrong and right, you won't find a better document on the subject. Army operational levels of collusion with the various loyalist paramilitaries also were nowhere near the same levels as were coming from other British government agencies, this document focuses on the Army's operations, not the overall situation of Northern Ireland with all the various hands which had their fingers in the pie. Don't write it off until you read it.

It's a document designed to make people understand the 'why', not the 'what.' However, it describes the Loyalists thusly:

"Loyalist paramilitaries continued to operate against the catholic community but on a fairly limited scale. They presented themselves as the protectors of the protestant community but in practice were often little more than a collection of gangsters, a description which could also apply to a number of republican terrorists."

The report correctly emphasizes the practical need for intelligence in order to operate successfully, and reaffirms civilian deaths at the Army's hands as counter-productive. The details of the MRF and SRU activities specifically are below the level of the report. Even much bigger specific issues like internment are dealt with briefly, with a couple of paragraphs ending with "Put simply, on balance and with the benefit of hindsight, it was a major mistake."

Again, this the high points of a 30-year-military operational strategy condensed into under 100 pages. As the introduction states, "It considers the high-level general issues that might be applicable to any future counter insurgency or counter terrorist campaign which the British armed forces might have to undertake. It is not intended as a history." and "It is important to learn from their successes, which were considerable. It is no less important to learn from mistakes, where they were made, and to ensure that they are not repeated. The publication seeks to stimulate thought and will have failed if whatever is written is slavishly and unthinkingly applied to future operations".

So we're talking as much things like "In the absence of such deep understanding the British tended to underestimate the differences between the Irish and themselves. One commentator observed that Englishmen, especially, tend to view the Irishman as a variant of a Briton rather than as a foreigner" and the problems that causes, or "Tactically the Balkan Street Search was a limited success. However, it was a significant reverse at the operational level. It handed a significant information operations opportunity to the IRA, and this was exploited to the full."