"IRA Terrorists?"

A lot of people believe in the phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” It’s a useful phrase here and there. For example, (racist and hypocritical) Irish-Americans who supported the IRA but not the ANC’s military wing. But I believe “terrorism” should be loosely defined as an armed campaign that targets civilian life an unacceptable percentage of the time. There will be disagreements and shades of gray:

1) what’s unacceptable? I’d say that starts at 5% of the time, if not much closer to about 2% of the time (depending on which, if any, civilians are being killed intentionally; and operations that target civilian property but are planned to avoid civilian deaths are kind of relevant (i.e. 2% for the intentional deaths and about 40% for the bombings just described, would be VERY close to deserving the label of terrorism, considering that such bombings can have a mildly terroristic impact)) and gets more offensive as it goes up.

2) As I explain below, there are some shades of gray when it comes to which people are legitimate targets.

3) Are bombings that are planned to spare civilian life but which nonetheless risk loss of civilian life terrorism?

Some people on the Left seem comfortable using the word "terrorist" to refer to groups that they like. But I have difficulty seeing former members of the ANC’s military wing or of the IRA describing themselves as terrorists. And I believe there are groups out there that should be labeled as terrorist, to one degree or another.

The IRA was not one of those groups. (I am speaking of the IRA which has been on cease-fire for about 16 years now). Only a very tiny percent of their operations intentionally resulted in civilian death (I'm defining "operations" as attacks on the security forces, bombings of civilian property, attacks on civilians not suspected of crime or informing to the security forces; but NOT feuding with other republicans, or defending their communities from what might be called incursions by loyalists or the security forces (these incidents would largely be found in the first three years of the conflict when there were no-go areas) or intelligence gathering, etc.). I would say the same thing about unintentionally killing civilians.

As I more or less prove below, .2% of the time their operations intentionally resulted in civilian death, .1% of the time they unintentionally resulted in civilian death, and .1% of the time they tried unsuccessfully to kill civilians. I then explain that many of the civilians they intentionally killed were less than totally innocent or were in very close proximity to legitimate or semi-legitimate targets.

In typing this up I am relying heavily on Malcolm Sutton’s Index of deaths which is a database of all the people who were killed in connection with the conflict that filled most of the last 45 years. It’s part of the CAIN web-site, which is part of the University of Ulster and part of INCORE and ARK. CAIN gets it’s funding from various sources listed here.

I took official figures from the Police Service of N. Ireland (which I found on the CAIN site here) made some adjustments (below) based partly on the Sutton database and partly on many, many hours studying the conflict. Throughout this post the numbers that are marked with * are at least approximately what I found in the Sutton Database but might be off a little (probably no more than about 1% if at all). First, the total number of gun incidents in N. Ireland during the conflict (1969-1998) was 35,458. I deducted the following numbers of such incidents because they weren't offensive operations of the Provisional IRA (these are not meant to be absolutely precise, they are estimates, probably pretty good estimates but I don't think they need to be absolutely precise- we're not entering them into a computer of a spaceship that will take people to Mars and back (for better or worse that's how I was thinking of it- the only significant apparent flaw I have found is that my figures might imply that the OIRA and INLA had a higher rate of success than the IRA but that's probably not true, and my estimates below might say that to a very small degree but NOT to a large degree (the figure for the OIRA and INLA includes shooting civilians and loyalist paramiltaries in addition to attacks on the security forces, while the estimate about the IRA succeeding once out of 51 attempts at killing soldiers or police in attacks on the security forces is about only ATTACKS ON THE SECURITY FORCES)).

-950 loyalist sectarian attacks (Loyalists killed about *692 Catholic civilians; sometimes they killed more than one Catholic civilian at a time, and I’m sure that sometimes they failed to kill any (and some of those Catholic civilians were killed by bombs))

-190 republican feuding. (although this is only partly about feuding (the rest would be premature bomb explosions) there were *187 deaths that were republican-on-republican, so maybe about 65 were successful gun attacks, and then another 125 for unsuccessful attempts)

-165 loyalist feuding (there were *94 loyalist-on-loyalist deaths, and probably no more than 14 were from premature bomb explosions; adding some for unsuccessful attempts, probably about 165)

- 400 republican punishment attacks (although it’s not solid, as far as I can tell, about *10 alleged criminals were killed by republicans and I would be very surprised if there were more than about 390 non-lethal gun attacks on alleged criminals).

-160 loyalist punishments (I can only find one entry in the Sutton database that is an alleged criminal killed by loyalist paramilitaries in a punishment attack. Between that and the fact that probably around 2/3 of the unionist population completely supported the police during the conflict I doubt the total was higher than 160)

-900 other republican gun-attacks (there were about *150 (total) civilians, security force members and loyalist paramilitary members killed by the INLA and the OIRA, organizations that were, towards the beginning of the conflict, waging armed campaigns of some significance. Those deaths probably are the result of about 75 gun attacks and a very small number of bomb attacks that are separate from this) (probably about 825 gun attacks that didn’t kill anyone)

-1,500 republican and loyalists interface incidents (found a very small number of deaths resulting from these, but probably about 1,500 incidents total)

-1,000 The IRA defending nationalist areas from security forces (mostly, for example, manning barricades for no-go areas) (a similarly weak estimate like the one right above, but probably pretty accurate)

-8,500 Incidents where the security forces fired at someone and arrested someone, but it was not a result of a republican or loyalist attack (there are vague and incomplete stats on the number of people charged with terrorist and other serious offenses. For the period of 1969-1998 there were something like 19,000 arrests. I’m sure about 2,000 (1/4 of that with gunfire) involved loyalists instead of republicans, and about 9,000 would have involved nationalists and republicans but not weapons being fired, so I think it might be as low as 8,000 arrests of nationalists and republicans with shots fired)

-100 Incidents where the security forces killed someone but there was no arrest.

-155 Loyalist operations against republican paramilitaries and the security forces (Loyalists killed a combined total of *55 republican paramilitaries and British security forces; probably about 40 gun attacks and about 5 bombings accomplished that plus a lot of unsuccessful attacks)

-35 shootings of suspected  and probably actual informers in the nationalist community (there were about *30 such shootings that resulted in death, probably only about 5 that didn’t)

-20 informers in the loyalist community (there were *16 informers killed by loyalists).

The total deducted is 14,075, which leaves about 20,483 being IRA operations. I couldn’t find figures for the first two right below, but I think I make a pretty good estimate for them:

+150 mortars or RPG attacks in N. Ireland.
+ 350 attacks outside of N. Ireland.

 I did find good figures for bombings.
+15,000 bombs (there were 9,873 bombs that went off and 6,337 that were “neutralized.” the “neutralized” ones count because clearly the area was evacuated before the bomb was set to go off; and probably about 1.000 were the work of other parties) (those figures are from here)

The total for IRA operations is then estimated at about 36,883. The IRA was responsible for *512 civilian deaths (according to the Sutton database at- http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/ ) (in one way it might be closer to 550, as some deaths attributed to other republican forces (or republicans in general) might have been caused by the IRA; on the other hand the #512 included about 40 deaths that were not what I counting as "operations," and I think those two cancel each other out so I just went with 512)). I have made some effort towards finding the exact number of IRA operations resulting in civilian death but I have seen many clusters of such deaths where more than one civilian was killed in an IRA operation, and I believe there were about 110 IRA operations where at least one civilian died (that would be an average of 4.65 civilian deaths per operation which caused at least one civilian death) . Using the #110  for operations that resulted in civilian death, I found that about .3% of the IRA’s operations resulted in civilian death. I am not close to nailing this down soon, but I think it breaks down to roughly .2% of their operations intentionally resulted in civilian death, and about .1% resulted unintentionally in civilian death. I imagine that about .1% of the time they tried to kill civilians and failed- that's based on the reasonable assumption that 2/3 of the time they tried to kill civilians, they succeeded, which seems likely.

Of the 15,000 IRA bombs, I would imagine about half would have been aimed at the security forces (if any more than half had been used for destroying civilian property there would be many more references to their bombing campaign in books and conversations, etc.; also IRA mines, only one kind of bomb, killed around *90 members of the security forces). And of the more than 21,000 gun attack operations, almost all of them were attacks on the security forces. You might think that and what I said about half the bombs doesn’t make sense since the IRA killed only 1009 members of the security forces and only 39 members of loyalist paramilitaries. First, I would say something about their attacks on loyalists being similar to their attacks on civilians- I doubt that the former was much more difficult than the latter, and the former would have been much easier than attacking the security forces. While reading this paragraph and the rest of this post, remember that the security forces were always or almost always wearing some kind of body armor (at least flak jackets) and (for soldiers) helmets, which would have given them some degree of protection from bullets or at least bomb fragments, and they were often traveling in armored vehicles. For every IRA operation that successfully killed at least one member of the security forces, there probably were about 50 that were aimed at the security forces but didn’t result in such deaths.



Two other aspects of this to consider when discussing whether or not the IRA deserved the label “terrorist” are how many of their civilian victims were killed more or less unintentionally, and how many of their intended civilian victims were not completely innocent. There were *512 civilian deaths attributed to the IRA by the Sutton database.

The first category is about unintentional killings. There were  about 104 civilian deaths where there is no doubt in my mind that they were unintentional. About *31 were premature explosions (this often involved those transporting the bomb being killed as well, which is pretty solid evidence that it was not intentional) and about *73 involved “inadequate warnings” that were given (from what I’ve read this often involved nervous and inexperienced IRA members making phone calls hurriedly and I’m sure there also would have been some times when the SECURITY FORCES simply screwed up). (when the IRA bombed civilian property, the plan about 99% of the time was to place the explosives, leave, call in a warning so the place would be evacuated- which is exactly what happened about 99% of the time that that was the plan)

There are also a few subcategories where it’s sort of accurate to say it was unintentional (but are part of the .2% of overall operations that intentionally resulted in civilian death). The first one contains about *35 victims and is overwhelmingly about the IRA targeting locally recruited members of the security forces when they weren’t on duty. For example many innocent victims were killed when they were covering for a part-time security force member at their civilian job. People were also often killed driving a security force member relative’s vehicle or at a security force member relative’s home.

The second subcategory is when people were more or less caught in the crossfire, almost always involving gun-battles where the IRA were fighting the security forces. There were about *34 people in this category. Besides people killed in gun battles, this included people driving past targets of intentional IRA bombings. And the third is that there were about 5 people in a miscellaneous batch of similar scenarios.

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There is also a category for those intended IRA civilian victims who were less than completely innocent. I have two subcategories and a few divisions of those two at the next level down. With the first subcategory, although the IRA, most of the time, was wrong to kill them (the informers and criminals were probably legitimate targets, but to a very large degree no one else), they were definitely targeted for things they either did or were seriously suspected of doing- they were not randomly chosen civilians.

The first division of the first subcategory is made up of suspected, and probably actual, criminals. I have yet to do a post about this but basically the entire nationalist community, and certainly people in republican areas, rejected the police (until sometime around 7-12 years ago) and turned to the IRA to deal with crime. There are about *10 people in this category.

The second division is suspected and probably actual informers. There were  about *30.

The 3rd division is civilian employees of the security forces. There were about *31.

The 4th division is people killed in street disturbances. All but one of the *6 that I found happened during a night of anti-Catholic pogroms, and after a 11-month period that saw several such pogroms.

The 5th division is miscellaneous. Below each set of information (which is in the format used in the Sutton database) my comments will be between asterisks.

"18 December 1972    William Johnston (48) Protestant
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Ulster Unionist Party Councilor and member of Police Authority. Abducted from a house, Drumarg estate, Armagh. Found shot a short time later, Knockbane, near Middletown, County Armagh."

**His elected position, in my opinion could either help justify his death or lead me to criticize it more, depending on how extreme he was (was he saying things that were going to encourage anti-Catholic murderers?) His membership of the Police Authority I believe is very relevant to his death**

"25 January 1973    William Staunton (46) Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Resident magistrate. Died three months after being shot outside St Dominic's School, Falls Road, Belfast. He was injured on 11 October 1972."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"16 September 1974    Martin McBirney (55) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Resident Magistrate. Shot at his home, Belmont Road, Belmont, Belfast."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"16 September 1974  Rory Conaghan (54) Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Judge. Shot at his home, Beechlands, off Malone Road, Belfast."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"21 July 1976    Christopher Ewart-Biggs (54) nfNIRI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
British Ambassador to Ireland. Killed in land mine attack on his official car, Sandyford, County Dublin."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland. UPDATE 5/3/14 He was involved with MI6, part of Britain's intelligence community **

"04 March 1977    Rory O'Kelly (59) Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Senior Department of Public Prosecutions official. Shot while in Little's Bar, Coalisland, County Tyrone."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"22 March 1979    Richard Sykes (58) nfNIE
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
British Ambassador to the Netherlands. Shot outside his official residence, Den Haag, Netherlands."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state (not in Ireland of course, so this is a little more questionable than the killing of the Ambassador to Ireland) **

"27 August 1979    Lord Mountbatten (79) nfNIRI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed by remote controlled bomb on his boat, detonated when leaving Mullaghmore Harbour, County Sligo."

**Very much a representative of the British state (for example, he had been the last British Viceroy of India)**

"21 January 1981    Norman Stronge (86) Protestant
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) member, and former Speaker at Stormont. Shot together with his son at their mansion, Tynan Abbey, near Middletown, County Armagh."

**His elected position, in my opinion could either help justify his death or lead me to criticize it more, depending on how extreme he was (was he saying things that were going to encourage anti-Catholic murderers?) (UPDATE 5/1/14 he was killed after an assassination attempt on Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey, who was targeted after 3-4 other civilian leaders of those supporting Republican POWs were killed (for how much popular support the hunger-strikers had in the Nationalist community see the middle third of this (beginning with "For about 5 years")); There is reason to believe he was killed as a warning to the Unionist upper-class that they would be held responsible for such killings)**

"14 November 1981    Robert Bradford (40) Protestant
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament. Shot at Community Centre, Finaghy, Belfast."

**His elected position, in my opinion could either help justify his death or lead me to criticize it more, depending on how extreme he was (was he saying things that were going to encourage anti-Catholic murderers?)(UPDATE 5/1/14 He was connected to a loyalist paramilitary, the UVF)**

"16 January 1983    William Doyle (55) Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Judge. Shot outside St Brigid's Roman Catholic Church, Derryvolgie Avenue, Malone, Belfast."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"12 October 1984    Anthony Berry (59) nfNIB
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Member of Parliament. Killed in time bomb attack at Conservative Party Conference, Grand Hotel, Brighton, Sussex, England."

**His elected position, in my opinion could either help justify his death or lead me to criticize it more, depending on how extreme he was. And I think that since he was a BRITISH MP voting on legislation at least partly for part of Ireland it’s less questionable than the IRA killings of NI politicians**

"25 April 1987    Maurice Gibson (74) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Chief Justice, together with his wife, killed by remote controlled bomb hidden in parked car detonated when they drove past, Killeen, County Armagh."

**He wasn’t elected, yet had a lot of power and was a representative of the British state in Ireland**

"18 October 1989    Robert Metcalfe (40) Protestant
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Member of Ulster Resistance. Shot at his home, Drumnabreeze Road, Magheralin, near Lurgan, County Down."

**Ulster  Resistance was a militant and armed political organization (calling them a paramilitary would be going too far) especially in the late 80s when he was killed**

"30 July 1990    Ian Gow (53) nfNIB
Status: Civilian Political Activist (CivPA), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Conservative Member of Parliament. Killed by booby trap bomb attached to his car outside his home, Hankham, Pevensey, Sussex, England.."

**His elected position, in my opinion could either help justify his death or lead me to criticize it more, depending on how extreme he was. And I think that since he was a BRITISH MP voting on legislation at least partly for part of Ireland it’s less questionable than the IRA killings of NI politicians**


The second subcategory is similar to the last one The people killed are much more innocent (most completely innocent but with someone who was at least a slightly legitimate target) than the first subcategory, but were still not randomly chosen civilians killed just to terrorize people.

"Houghton, Linda    04 February 1974 (23) nfNIB
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in time bomb attack on British Army (BA) coach travelling along M62 motorway, Yorkshire, England."
AND
"Houghton, Lee    04 February 1974 (5) nfNIB
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in time bomb attack on British Army (BA) coach travelling along M62 motorway, Yorkshire, England."
AND
"Houghton, Robert    04 February 1974 (2) nfNIB
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in time bomb attack on British Army (BA) coach travelling along M62 motorway, Yorkshire, England."

**Were on a British Army bus with their husband or father**

"05 October 1974    Paul Craig (22) nfNIB
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed in bomb attack on Horse and Groom public house, Guildford, Surrey, England"

**Was in a pub apparently full of off-duty British soldiers (the other four people killed were in the British Army)**

"21 July 1976    Judith Cook (25) nfNIRI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
British Ambassador to Ireland's secretary. Killed in land mine attack on his official car, Sandyford, County Dublin."

**Was with a fairly legitimate target when both were killed**

"02 February 1977    Jeffrey Agate (59) nfNI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Originally from England. Manager of Du Pont factory. Shot outside his home, Talbot Park, Derry."

**Probably, depending on the details, one of the three most questionable killings in this subcategory**

"02 March 1977    Donald Robinson (56) nfNI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
English businessman. Shot at his workplace, Lawrence Street, off University Street, Belfast."

**Probably, depending on the details, one of the three most questionable killings in this subcategory**

"14 March 1977    James Nicholson (44) nfNI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
English businessman. Shot while in chauffeur-driven car, just after leaving Strathearn Audio factory, Stockman's Lane, Belfast."

**Probably, depending on the details, one of the three most questionable killings in this subcategory**

"03 March 1978    Norma Spence (25) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Civilian searcher. Shot while at British Army (BA) pedestrian check point, Donegall Street, Belfast"
AND
"28 September 1978    Brian Russell (30) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Civilian searcher. Shot during sniper attack on British Army (BA) patrol, Waterloo Place, Derry."

**I don’t know exactly what “civilian searchers” are, but they had something to do with security force checkpoints**

"27 August 1979    Dowager Lady Brabourne (82) nfNIRI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed by remote controlled bomb on Lord Mountbatten's boat, detonated when leaving Mullaghmore Harbour, County Sligo."
AND
"27 August 1979    Nicholas Knatchbull (14) nfNIRI
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed by remote controlled bomb on Lord Mountbatten's boat, detonated when leaving Mullaghmore Harbour, County Sligo."
AND
"27 August 1979    Paul Maxwell (15) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
From Northern Ireland. Killed by remote controlled bomb on Lord Mountbatten's boat, detonated when leaving Mullaghmore Harbour, County Sligo."

**Were with a fairly legitimate target when they were all killed. A friend believes the IRA should have killed Mountbatten with a gun, to lessen the odds of anyone else being killed**

"25 April 1987    Cecily Gibson (67) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA)
Killed together with her Chief Justice husband, by remote controlled bomb hidden in parked car detonated when they drove past, Killeen, County Armagh."

**Was with a fairly legitimate target when both were killed. A friend believes the IRA should have killed the Chief Justice with a gun, to lessen the odds of anyone else being killed**

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I am going to be lazy and not redo the math and such, but I need to add something I forgot about. There were 57 former members of the security forces killed by the IRA. Even if we categorize them all as civilians, it would have little effect on what I’m saying in this post, and I think there’s a good chance that many of them were targeted for their membership in the security forces and the IRA just didn’t know they had become civilians. The Sutton database puts them in the security forces category.

Same thing with the use of incendiaries (not bombs). based partly on the CAIN web-page Security and Defense there was possibly around 500 such operations by the Provisional IRA, but for various reasons I’m not including that in the calculations above because the information is far from complete and is unclear. Adding 500 to the calculations above would simply make the IRA look better.

When the IRA were bombing civilian property it was (at least about 99% of the time) non-military government property and commercial property. The idea with the former was to make it difficult for the British to govern nationalist parts of N. Ireland. The idea with the latter was to indirectly pressure London via the British business community and to also pressure the Unionist business community. Both would have also been about reminding people outside N. Ireland that resistance was continuing.

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In conclusion, very little of what the IRA did could be called terrorism, although there’s about 20% of their operations that could SORT OF be called terrorism in that they involved significant risk of civilian casualties (that is, their campaign of bombing civilian buildings). Around 79% of their operations were against the security forces or loyalist paramilitaries. And pretty much all of their activities that I’m not calling operations were at least sort of morally inoffensive (some of those are in the list of subtracted figures (defending against loyalist mobs and (at least with no-go areas in the early 1970s) keeping the security forces out), and others are, for example, intelligence, acquiring guns, etc.).