Times of Troubles by Andrew Sanders

Author:Andrew Sanders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The elongated border with all its hazards for soldiers was of course the creation of a British government in 1920 who believed that there was no viable basis for a united Ireland, given the intensity of Ulster Unionist opposition to it. Irish republicans, however, saw the border as the betrayal of their cause. Their view, it has been said, was ‘that they had a right to secede from the United Kingdom but that Unionists did not have the right to secede from the entity they sought to create’.14

The new Irish state had unfulfilled hopes that the border might be altered in its favour and the IRA launched a series of attacks across it in 1921 and 1922. Another generation of its volunteers did so again as part of ‘Operation Harvest’, the abortive border campaign of 1956–62. The border, however, remained intact and remained also a conduit for smuggling of livestock, black-market goods during World War II and more recently untaxed motor oil and petrol as well as contraband tobacco and much else besides. The politics of border republicans proved very adaptable when financial gain was in prospect through exploiting a border whose existence they claimed to deplore.

Total control of the border was never attainable after the onset of the troubles in 1969. Merlyn Rees, the Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1974, considered the case for letting the Irish state take over the South Armagh area but accepted that it should be held in order to keep active IRA units away from the Belfast area. Before the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement appeared to commit Dublin to cross-border security cooperation, Margaret Thatcher also sanctioned an inquiry into possible border alterations to ease the burden on security forces.15

The 224 miles of border between Carlingford Lough and Lough Foyle is peppered with small country roads and fields that were useful escape routes for republicans carrying out operations in the north. In a staunchly republican region, the security operation was very much one of containment. With effective authority limited by the sheer volume of potential cross-border routes which they could not control, an early security move made by British troops was to crater small roads and place checkpoints at major border crossings.

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