Policing the Irish community in Britain

Abstract

The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 and its successors was only part, albeit an important part, of the methodology used to control the Irish community. Very few terrorists were arrested and prosecuted under these Acts but they provided the British government with a wide range of effective information gathering powers. Many members of the Irish community had suffered from a lack of civil and economic rights in the North of Ireland in the past and were deeply concerned at the use of strip-searching, plastic bullets and shoot to kill policies there. But the Prevention of Terrorism Acts tended to have a chilling effect on political debate and action in the Irish community in Britain; as did a number of now notorious miscarriages of justice; such as the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven. At the same time, Frank Kitson’s intelligence gathering methods, referred to in his seminal text, Low Intensity Operations, were used to increase surveillance of the Irish community in Britain and much of the British media fuelled anti-Irish racism. Later the spread of similar policing tactics to other minority communities in Britain had the unintended consequence of building understanding of and support for the previously beleaguered Irish community.