A Secret History of Torture by Ian Cobain

Author:Ian Cobain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2012-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Although disturbing, such episodes of mistreatment appeared random, even haphazard in their nature and occurrence. It seemed that a handful of soldiers and RUC detectives were simply seeing what they could get away with and that their superiors were turning a blind eye. But what came next in Northern Ireland was a far more sophisticated application of state-sponsored violence, one with clarity and a real sense of direction.

Suspected terrorists were to be beaten not just to extract intelligence but to ensure that they were convicted of serious criminal offences and then removed from society, and this was to be done in a fashion that bore some semblance of justice. Police officers would play their part, of course, but so too would lawyers, judges, civil servants, journalists and, on occasion, physicians. New legislation would be needed: a statute featuring sufficient ambiguity for the interrogators to believe that they were being tacitly encouraged by Parliament. Torture was about to be normalised and a small number of key figures, men of vision and real resolve, would be needed to drive the policy through.

One man who had given considerable thought to the need to remove from society those who posed a threat to the state was Frank Kitson, who had been honing his views on counter-insurgency strategy and tactics, within the law, for more than a decade. Back in the autumn of 1969, Kitson, then a forty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel in the British Army, was given an unusual mission. He was told that for the next year he was to take up residence at University College, Oxford, where he would conduct an examination into the defence of the realm.

The other students at University College at that time included a shaggy-bearded Bill Clinton, who was studying philosophy, politics and economics, and, as one wit later put it, not inhaling, not getting drafted and not getting a degree. Many other students were also steeped in the radicalism and anti-war sentiment of the times. Not so Kitson. A veteran of the war against the Mau Mau in Kenya and Communists in Malaya, Kitson’s orders were that he should reflect upon his experiences and then scan the horizon, examining what needed to be done ‘to make the army ready to deal with subversion, insurrection and peace-keeping operations during the second half of the 1970s’.5

When Kitson’s thesis was published in 1971, under the title Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, it made an immediate impact among those struggling to cope with the mounting violence and lawlessness in Northern Ireland. It also enhanced Kitson’s stellar reputation in the British Army: in little more than a decade he would be appointed commander-in-chief of UK land forces. Among some on the Left, the book caused uproar for its suggestion that the military should use the civil administration to fight subversion, and that the rule of law might be subverted to the aims of the military.

Kitson wrote:Firm policy rulings should be taken before operations against those practising subversion can start. An excellent example concerns the way in which the law should work.

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