Bunch of Five

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You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Kitson described as “total rubbish” a report suggesting he was involved in a plan for the illegal march to come under attack, forcing the IRA to defend it so that military “snatch squads” could then be sent in to arrest suspect paramilitaries. Historians have documented widespread torture by British forces, including crushing testicles with pliers and the internment of up to 320,000 people in concentration camps where they endured slavery, starvation, murder, and rape with blunt objects. The 30-year duration of the conflict in the North is the most obvious evidence of the military failure of these tactics. He was promoted colonel on 31 December 1969 (with seniority from 30 June 1969), [12] and brigadier on 30 June 1970.

The approach is often concealed under terms such as ‘pacification’, ‘stabilisation’ or ‘winning hearts and minds’. How much of an agent of change in the conflict was Kitson, and how transferable are the lessons of Northern Ireland? Meaning, Kitson is being sued because of the policies he implemented in Northern Ireland as part of his counter-insurgent operation (“Ex-chief”).During one visit to Northern Ireland, Bahraini officers were trained in “community intelligence” and “how to use dogs”. On that crisp day in Derry, 30 January 1972, it was ‘Kitson’s Private Army’ who fired all 108 shots[1] .

The eldest son of a rear-admiral, he attended one of England’s leading public schools, Stowe, in the mid-1940s, and was head boy of his house. In Northern Ireland, Kitson sought to duplicate his Kenyan experience, forming the Military Reaction Force. Kitson’s Irish War lays bare the evidence they discounted: Kitson’s role in the events leading up to and surrounding that massacre; evidence from a deserter from 1 Para who joined the IRA; a deceitful MI5 agent; a courageous whistle blower whom the British state tried to discredit, and much more, all of which points to a motive for the attack on the Bogside. In the context of The Troubles, this can clearly be seen through the use of the “five techniques” and the threat of legal punishment for being associated with the IRA, both of which Keefe discusses. This use of “counter-gangs” was in coordination with interrogations that used the “five techniques” to gather information from those within the internment centers (“Frank Kitson”).

Moreover, the law would be ‘little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public’. Relatives for Justice accuse Kitson of being one of the “ architects of collusion” and allege that he brought his counter-gangs doctrine from Kenya to Northern Ireland – one of his books on the subject was published while he was serving in Northern Ireland. In 2015, Kitson was sued over the wrongful death of Eugene “Paddy” Heenan as a result of “negligence and misfeasance in public office” (“Ex-army”).

Collusion, Counterinsurgency and Colonialism: The Imperial Roots of Contemporary State Violence" (PDF). A group of men who were specially selected during internment in 1971, ‘Hooded Men,’ who allege they were tortured, commenced legal proceedings against him earlier this year. The lasting legacy of Kitson’s tactics in Belfast was a framework of intelligence tactics of penetration of paramilitaries, abuse of prisoners and the psyops of disinformation, with ‘going in hard’ against the Provisional IRA and coercive control of the Catholic community. He led British military operations in the north at the beginning of the Troubles, and went on to become a hate figure for nationalists and republicans.On New Year’s Day 1955, Frank Kitson was awarded the British Military Cross ‘in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Kenya. According to Kenya’s biggest newspaper, the Daily Nation, a man named Ian Henderson was known in Kenya as the “ torturer in chief”, and was “the prime mover in the preparation of bogus evidence in the 1953 trial at Kapenguria”, where six leading Mau Mau figures were convicted, including the future first president of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. The British had used the mass ‘resettlement’ of women, children and elderly males during the Boer War to ensure Boer commandos could not access food. In April 1975, Father Denis Faul, a Catholic priest antipathetic to the IRA, wrote that the British are teaching: “a deadly lesson to the people – that power came out of the barrel of a gun … that police and army can betray their trust and not be the impartial servants of government and people”. Soldier F and Brigadier Kitson’s elite ‘EFGH’ death squad: a murderous dirty-tricks pattern is emerging which links Bloody Sunday with the actions of paratroopers in Belfast in August 1971.