Shortly before I assumed command of 39 Infantry Brigade, which included all the troops serving in Belfast, in December 1978, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Field Marshal Lord Carver, wrote to me to say that I must read A Place Apart, by a Southern Irish author called Dervla Murphy. In his opinion, it was the best book available on the subject of Northern Ireland.

Throughout the time that I had worked with and for Lord Carver as a Military Assistant (1971–4), Northern Ireland had been a major focus of his attention, and therefore of mine. He was both professional head of the Army and the Chief of Staff responsible for dealing with Northern Ireland affairs in Cabinet, in Whitehall and at Stormont. As these years included Internment, Bloody Sunday, Direct Rule and Operation Motorman, they were both interesting and demanding, but they also gave me the privilege, as a comparatively junior officer, of being privy to some of the affairs affecting the Province at a very high level, as well as having the opportunity to meet many people – military, political and civilian – during our frequent visits to the troops. Having subsequently commanded my regiment on the streets of West Belfast for four months, I felt that I had a head start in understanding my role, but I also knew that I’d become out of date the moment the wheels of my aircraft had left the ground, and that all my experience was of yesterday. In order to understand today, I needed to meet today’s people, and remain in touch with them.

With Mike Carver’s recommendation, which I felt amounted to a command, I bought the book and was at once enraptured, although faintly surprised that the author made no mention of meeting the Army. Here, at last, was someone who clearly understood the complexities of the situation and was able to cut through all the propaganda to get to the basics. What seemed particularly remarkable was that while the author clearly abhorred violence, she had had access to and appeared to be entirely accepted by those whom we regarded as terrorists on both sides of the religious divide. I was struck too by the fact that the only time she reported being in the presence of evil was when attending Mr Paisley’s church on the Ravenhill Road, while she clearly had immense admiration for the remarkable cross-divide work, particularly with the young, being carried out by the Corrymeela community. I was immensely grateful for Dervla’s informed objectivity about views on the ground, and I determined to have the book beside me throughout my two-year tour.

The year 1978 was a particularly interesting time to be made militarily responsible for Belfast. In addition to commanding all military operations, I had to work closely with the RUC, was an ex-officio member of Belfast City Council, where I was involved in such matters as housing developments and shop opening hours, and had to work with both national and local government. Fortunately my wife and I had an increasing number of local friends with whom we were able to relax, as well as hear their side of the situation.

Times had changed since I had commanded my battalion. Then, the Army was very much in control and internment without trial was still being used, which had inevitably meant that people were unwilling to pass on information. Now internment had been ended and there had been a deliberate handover of command to the RUC, the Army’s role being to help it to restore and maintain law and order on the streets. There had also been an abortive attempt to imprison the IRA leadership on charges of incitement. In addition a group which became known as the Peace Women was campaigning for the end of both military and paramilitary violence, enjoying considerable initial success in the part of Belfast from which they came, Andersonstown. I was able to meet them through the American consul-general, who invited them to his house, which I ‘accidentally’ happened to visit.

The IRA too had changed its pattern of operations since 1974. Gone were the days when the Army’s every movement was monitored by small boys, known as ‘dickers’, who were clearly IRA watch-dogs. Instead it had introduced a cellular structure, in which only those who needed to know knew anything about a potential operation. Therefore the time seemed ripe for us to change our pattern of operations from one of constant armed patrolling, which was the very antithesis of normal day-to-day life and therefore a potential irritant, to one of observation backed up by patrolling only when someone or something of interest had been identified. If the observation was good, it was hoped that the number of military bases could be reduced, each reduction being a step on the road to normality.

However that train of thought was interrupted in 1979 by the change of government. Mrs Thatcher’s views on Northern Ireland were coloured by the murder of her close friend and advisor, Airey Neave, which prompted her to issue instructions that the Army was no longer to have regular contact either with the press or the IRA. During the same year came the tragic incidents at Warrenpoint, when eighteen soldiers were blown up, and the murder of Lord Mountbatten and other members of his family at Mullaghmore. Coming as it did so soon after these two events, I have always regarded the Papal visit that year as being unhelpful for the cause of peace, because, presumably briefed by Cardinal Thomas O’Fee whose anti-Britishness was well known, he refused to denounce IRA murders, to the dismay of a number of Roman Catholic priests who were actively working towards inter-faith reconciliation. In order to understand public reaction to these events, so that I could better direct the operational posture of those under my command, I maintained as regular contact as I could with bishops, priests, local politicians and others. But as a Brigadier, who travelled around in uniform with an armed escort, what I couldn’t gauge was the feelings of the people whose lives were dominated by the paramilitaries of both sides, and whose support for either of them would decide whether the Troubles continued or ended. Which is where Dervla comes in.

Early in 1979 Charles and Mary Chenevix-Trench, whom my wife and I had met when he was our District Commissioner when I served in Kenya in 1962–3, came to stay with us from their home in North Tipperary. At the time Charles was writing the ‘Looker On’ current affairs column in Blackwood’s Magazine, that sadly defunct pillar of the old Empire. I put A Place Apart beside his bed, with the same briefing that I had been given by Mike Carver. The following morning, Charles said that not only did he already know the book well but he also knew Dervla, and wondered whether I would like to meet her when she next came north. I jumped at the opportunity, but thought no more about it until one afternoon a friend rang to say that I should drop everything and come to dinner that night, because Dervla was staying and wanted to meet me.

When my wife and I arrived we were introduced to a deep-voiced, trousered, middle-aged woman, with a cheroot in one hand, a glass of whiskey in the other and a ‘Ban the Bomb’ badge pinned prominently to her jersey. At the end of dinner, as our host and hostess led the way from the table, Dervla told me to stay where I was because we needed to talk. There followed three hours of what was, for me, pure gold, because not only did she describe what was going on and what people were thinking in Belfast, without ever giving away a single name, but she questioned me about what I thought, in a way that appeared to be both seeking answers and trying to understand the complexities of the Army’s task. She also explained why the Army had not featured in her book. She had approached the then Director of Public Relations (Army) asking for facilities, only to receive a complete refusal without explanation. I could only presume that he had allowed himself to be influenced more by the fact that she came from the South, than by the fact that she was deeply committed to helping to resolve the situation by explaining what people really thought, without political bias. By excluding her he had not only unbalanced her story, but had done the Army no favours by denying people an explanation of its role, and the practical limitations that it faced in the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland.

I do not think that I have ever learned more from a conversation. It was invaluable to hear what people actually thought about the Troubles and how they might be brought to an end, and about how the Army and the RUC were going about their business. I was interested to learn that, in preparation for the evening, Dervla had asked some of her contacts whether I was someone with whom she should have contact. I remember feeling flattered that my attempts to talk with people of all persuasions had been recognised. What was most important for me was that she said that she hoped we could remain in touch, because after meeting her that was exactly what I wanted. I knew that I had so much to gain from her deep understanding as well as her unique access to people who mattered in their communities, which was where the Troubles would be resolved.

Our host, who must have realised how important the meeting was for me, accepted my apology for being so long, along with my thanks for having engineered what has developed, over the years, into a deep and abiding friendship for both my wife and myself. To enable us to talk on a number of subsequent occasions during the remainder of my tour, my wife would meet Dervla and bring her to an agreed place. I looked forward to every occasion, not least because I was able to ask questions about how the changed pattern of operations that I was introducing was being received, as well as about how each side was responding to the change of political direction from London. Intelligence is the key to any successful military operation, particularly one in support of the civil power. When you are not living among people, you are denied the all-important ‘humint’, as human intelligence is called – regular exposure to what the general public thinks about things. I never thought of Dervla as a source of humint, and I am certain that she would have been, and would be, horrified if I ever mentioned the word! What she provided was invaluable collateral for what I was being told by others, both those with whom I spoke and those who worked for me, with the added value that what she told me was entirely objective and impersonal in the best senses of both words.

Bearing in mind the personal nature of our original contact, while realising the immense practical value that I had gained from my contacts with her I thought deeply about whether or not I should introduce Dervla to my successor, whom I had never met. I knew that, not having served in Belfast, he did not know the personalities concerned in the way that I had been fortunate enough to come to even before my Brigade command. I reckoned that, bearing in mind the political situation and the reduction in terrorist activity in Belfast, what she had to say was more likely to be of interest to a politician than a soldier, who was inevitably looking for matters of immediate rather than general or long-term interest. Though I’d kept it to myself while I was in the Province, I arrogantly decided that Dervla’s unique insight was best given to Secretaries of State, rather than mere Brigadiers. But, again arrogantly, by no means all Secretaries of State, because not all of them knew enough to appreciate the value or significance of what she had to say.

There followed a period when I would be woken very early in the morning to receive a call from Dervla, particularly during the hunger strike, when she had crucial information to pass on. This I did while never disclosing my source, and this was the only time that there was an immediacy about what she had to say, she being in touch with those most immediately concerned. We then settled into a routine of regular updating calls and more general discussion which, again, I sometimes passed on. As far as Secretaries of State were concerned, I know that Jim Prior was particularly appreciative of her advice, because he wanted to understand how people felt about the evolving situation. As the tempo of violence decreased and the search for a ceasefire mechanism increased, I found myself, several times, thinking how marvellous it would be if Dervla could do a follow-up to A Place Apart, using the same formula of cycling around, talking to everyone no matter what their political or religious persuasion, and recording their views. There seemed to be too much unintelligent reporting which was no help to those who had responsibility for guiding the future.

Since those heady days of the early 1980s, Dervla and I have enjoyed countless hours of discussion about the problems of Ireland. What seemed slightly ironic at the time was that my wife was staying with her when the IRA put a bomb under what they thought was our car outside our house in London which, fortunately for our neighbours, did not go off. We keep in regular contact, as we do with her daughter and three granddaughters, not least when she passes through London on her way to or from assignments in former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Siberia, Cuba or Israel/Gaza. Wherever she travels, there is that unique blend of the wish to understand and to explain, gifted as she is with the ability to extract views both from people on the street, wherever they are and whatever language they speak, and people in authority, who are often charmed by the openness of her approach.

When I look back at the history of the Troubles from 1969 to 1999, I am struck by how often an accident of timing prevented a logical step being taken. If only Edward Heath had not been so obsessed about the vote on Britain’s accession to the Treaty of Rome, might he have imposed Direct Rule earlier, following the debacle of Internment, in which case Bloody Sunday might never have happened? Similarly, if only the then Director of Public Relations (Army) had realised the gold he was being offered when Dervla asked to include the Army’s point of view in A Place Apart, the book might have offered similar insight to other parties to the conflict, rather than just to an entranced Brigadier, for whom reading it was a life-changing experience.

DAVID RAMSBOTHAM
2014