Methods included beatings, sleep deprivation, and on one occasion the placing of lighted pieces of paper between the toes of a detainee. Kitson himself wrote in December 1971 that successes against the IRA would be hard to achieve without radical change and “we are taking steps to do so in terms of building up and developing the MRF”. Recent developments have focused attention on the nature of British counterinsurgency as ‘dirty war’, not only in Northern Ireland but also in several other anti-colonial struggles after World War II.

Equally, it gave Kitson the opportunity to train and indoctrinate a new generation of British soldiers in his counterinsurgency framework. Charles Belgrave, a British official who worked in Bahrain between 1926 and 1957, and whose multiple roles included financial advisor to the Ruler, commandant of the police, and judge, used torture on detainees in a number of high profile cases, as did his British colleague Captain Parke. She was previously an advocacy case worker at the Pat Finucane Centre, a non-party political, anti-sectarian human rights group advocating a non-violent resolution of the conflict in Ireland. Yet these conflicts were consistently interpreted almost universally by British academics as exemplifying the best practice of counterinsurgency. As in Kenya, torture was commonly used and pictures emerged of British soldiers celebrating killing civilians.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.

Despite the huge attention given to Bloody Sunday, it’s not the main reason Kitson is known in Northern Ireland. As is traditional for senior officers of the British Army, Kitson held a number of more honorary positions: Colonel Commandant of 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets from 1 January 1979 to 1 January 1987; [26] [27] Honorary Colonel to the University of Oxford Officer Training Corps from 21 July 1982 to 21 July 1987; [28] [29] and Aide-de-Camp General to the Queen from 14 February 1983 to 1985. Meanwhile, the Saville Report (2010) into Bloody Sunday and the de Silva Report (2013) on collusion with loyalist paramilitaries led to two further ‘unconditional’ British apologies for the behaviour of its security forces in Northern Ireland. 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.In it this expert in counter insurgency describes his experiences in Kenya 1953-55, Malaya 1957, Muscat and Oman 1958, as well as his peacekeeping activities during two stints in Cyprus, 1963-64 and 1967-68. Lady Kitson was appointed an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of June 2015, for her work with the Army Families Federation. I do not think that the Parachute Regiment in general or 1 Para in particular went about their duties in an excessively forceful way. The use of the internment centers allowed for harsh techniques such as the “five techniques” to be used. This book unlocks the some of the key secrets of the Dirty War that the British government is still determined to cover-up.