The British government has used terror tactics learnt from the IRA, says matthew carr |
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In recent years, the bloody atrocities carried out by the al-Qaeda networks have confirmed the perception of "terrorism" as a unique moral evil. But however brutal or atrocious its actions, terrorism has always been described by those who engage in it as a weapon of necessity.
This was the argument offered by Michael Collins, the brilliant head of the IRA's intelligence section in the 1919-21 Troubles. Collins rejected British criticisms that the IRA's methods were the savage and immoral actions of a "murder gang", declaring that the methods were determined by the situation of military weakness in which the IRA found itself.
The IRA's policy of generalised mayhem established a template that spawned numerous imitators in the colonial world, from
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| The methods advocated by Gubbins to fight the Nazis were not very different from those once used by the IRA |
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the Irgun in Israel to EOKA in Cyprus. In view of subsequent historical developments, there is some irony in the fact that the IRA directly influenced the British Government itself.
In 1938-39, the British High Command commissioned a number of pamphlets on guerrilla warfare, in the event that Britain might be defeated by Nazi Germany. The methods advocated were not very different from those once used by Collins's gang.
One of the authors of these pamphlets was Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Gubbins (left), an officer who had fought against the IRA during the Troubles. The rapid German victories in the first months of the war forced Britain to put these tactics into practice, as the Labour Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton, proposed creating a new democratic international force in Europe whose methods would include "terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders".
Churchill agreed, telling Dalton to "set Europe ablaze". The result was the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), led by Gubbins and J F C Holland, another 
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