Kitson now lives a quiet life, nearing 90. In the 1950s, he received a Military Cross and Bar for service during the Malaya conflict. Following his NI service, he rose to be commander-in-chief of the UK land forces from 1982 to 1985. Archive discovery implicates British General Frank Kitson in McGurk’s Bar Bombing cover-up: families demand immediate arrest and questioning. In 2015, lawyers representing Heenan’s widow began civil proceedings against the British Ministry of Defence, naming Kitson as a respondent in the case. They said that they were seeking to “obtain truth and accountability for our clients as to the role of the British army and Frank Kitson in the counterinsurgency operation in the north of Ireland during the early part of the conflict, and the use of loyalist paramilitary gangs to contain the republican-nationalist threat through terror, manipulation of the rule of law, infiltration and subversion all core to the Kitson military doctrine”. Mark Thompson from the Belfast-based campaign group Relatives for Justice has told openDemocracy that the case will return to court later this month. I'm a barrister and I know that (Lord) Saville is entitled to come to the conclusion that the soldiers 'were out of control'. I respectfully disagree with him. I think there's another interpretation of it. In July 1971 a unique unit was born into the British Army, in particular 39 Airportable Brigade under the command of Brigadier Frank Kitson (September 1970 – April 1972). Brigadier Kitson has a wealth of experience in counterinsurgency operations, and politically his appointment to 39 Bde was welcomed. Known as the “Bomb Squad,” the original role of this small and secretive unit was “to collect, collate, develop and act upon intelligence relating to terrorist bombing activities” in Northern Ireland. They would operate in civilian vehicles, wearing civilian clothes and specialise in covert operations. Aside from the facts which hindsight appears to have brought us in recent years, this article aims to bring out some of the facts surrounding the formation of this unit from a series of recently released documents.

Therefore the British targeted ordinary people in Ireland in a deliberate attempt to persuade others to reject the IRA. Innocence murderedKitson was awarded the Military Cross on 1 January 1955 "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Kenya, during the period 21st April to 20th October, 1954". [7] Malaya On New Year’s Day 1955, Frank Kitson was awarded the British Military Cross “in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Kenya”. Three years later, he gained a bar to that medal for his work in the Malayan ‘Emergency’. During Britain’s brutal war in Malaysia – waged in part so that Clement Attlee’s government could continue to plunder the country’s rubber, despite a famine, to fund Britain’s post-war reconstruction – half a million Malaysians were forced into concentration camps through a process known as ‘villagisation’. It is the first attempt to hold a senior army officer personally responsible for a death during the 30-year conflict. Burke's book reveals how the tragic events of Bloody Sunday was not a case, of a few troops being 'out of control' but the culmination of a number of poor, ill-formed decisions that had its roots in the British army's counter-insurgency techniques employed in their then-colonies of Malaya, Kenya and Aden.

Kitson is a counterinsurgency expert who had served in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and the Oman before he was sent to Northern Ireland as the brigadier in charge of the 39 Brigade area which included Belfast, 1970-72. He set up the Mobile Reaction Force (MRF) which carried out the murder of a series of unarmed civilians in Belfast in the early 1970s. Kitson’s own pen has long since exposed him as a racist and anti-Catholic bigot. He committed perjury at the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday (January 1972) on an industrial scale. Colonel Derek Wilford. On October 25, 1902, he left Brooklyn to sign with the Detroit Tigers in the American League. In his first season in Detroit, he compiled a 15-16 record with a career-best 2.58 ERA. He remained with the Tigers for two more seasons, compiling a 9-13 record, 3.07 ERA in 1904, and a 12-14 record, 3.47 ERA in 1905. [1] Washington and New York [ edit ] Kitson was appointed commandant of the Staff College, Camberley on 5 March 1978. [25] He held this position until 18 January 1980. [26] For exceptional skill and leadership as a Company Commander during jungle operations. By his devotion to duty he attained the virtual elimination of two communist party branches in a difficult area. [10] Oman a b c Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p.2208. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.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. Henderson, from Aberdeenshire, is our Scotsman. He died in 2013. Tom Griffin, The military response to direct action, General Kitson's manual, OpenDemocracy, 22 December 2010. Indeed relations between the Catholic community and the Army had begun so well that some of the girls married British soldiers. Readers interested in further information about Kitson, Wilford and the Parachute Regiment are also directed to a publication produced by the Pat Finucane Centre entitled ‘The Impact of the Parachute Regiment in Belfast 1970 – 1973’. According to Kitson, an insurgency is in its most vulnerable state when it first begins operations before gaining popular support. [4] A successful campaign will require two types of intelligence; political and military. Political intelligence includes the ability to judge the level of popular support for political parties and terrorist groups. This will help decision makers select agreements that are acceptable to political and military actors involved and gauge the public support for or against the counterinsurgency. [5] The military intelligence required for a COIN campaign includes the accurate identification of terrorists, timely information on their operations, and accurate intelligence on their objectives and strategy. [6] In most cases, the general public is not supportive of the violent methods used by insurgents, but if the public feels that the government is unable to protect it from violence it will be more reluctant to share information. [7] Both the British in Northern Ireland and the Americans in Iraq had the general support of the population during the beginning stages of the insurgencies, but it was their failure to identify and implement key elements of political and operational intelligence that led to the eventual deterioration of public support for their COIN campaigns.

Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (1971), Faber and Faber - reprint 1991 ISBN 0-571-16181-2 Major-General Robert Ford, commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland, 1971–2. Like most senior British Army career soldiers who served there in the early ’70s, he had seen recent service in British counterinsurgency campaigns—in his case in Palestine and Aden. (Victor Patterson) To Wilford’s eyes, he is the victim. He gave an interview to the Telegraph in March 2019 claiming that he and his troops had somehow been ‘betrayed’. Find out more about this documentary here. The film is being shown at selected theatres with regular updates on screenings posted here.Mission accomplished. The unscrupulous judge who covered-up the Bloody Sunday murders. Soldier F and other paratroopers have been protected by the British State for five decades. None of them now face prosecution. This perversion of justice began with the connivance of the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, John Widgery, a former British Army brigadier, Freemason and oath-breaker. Brigadier Frank Kitson in 1971. How much of an agent of change in the Northern Ireland conflict was he? (Victor Patterson)

But it starts five thousand miles away, in Kenya, with our Englishman and our Scotsman. Frank Kitson and British counter-insurgency from Kenya to Ireland One other factor was the arrived of Kitson and Kitson's career in the colonies had always been about counter-insurgency. He was, as I say in the book, 'the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time'. Relatives for Justice accuse Kitson of being one of the “ architects of collusion” and allege that he brought his counter-gangs doctrine from Kenya to Northern Ireland – one of his books on the subject was published while he was serving in Northern Ireland. However, Frank Kitson has always denied that collusion was a product of his theories on the use of ‘counter-gangs’. Cadwallader and the PFC keep people informed through public events. They also documented the Glenanne gang’s killings in the book Lethal Allies. And Cadwallader’s opening remarks summarised the purpose of these talks and the campaign for justice: Mentioned in

Read Margaret Urwin’s book A State in Denial which looks at British state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. The Saville Report has been presented as the final denouement on what happened on Bloody Sunday but Burke says questions still remain to be answered. Why else would separate groups of soldiers have targeted unarmed and peaceful civilians and murdered them in cold blood? One of them was a mother out looking for her children. On the 10 th John Beattie was taken down by a bullet which tore through his heart. He had become the target of an army sniper who aimed directly at the van in which he was carrying a number of men.