Bunch of Five

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Kitson was a willing tool of the British empire and has gone to his death a decorated ‘hero’ of the empire. General Frank Kitson (97) led British military operations in the north at the beginning of the conflict, and went on to become a hate figure for nationalists and republicans after being linked to several atrocities. He was one of the most senior officers in the north at the time of the Ballymurphy massacre (1971) and Bloody Sunday (1972). The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The British government has taken steps to halt the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths of civilians in Northern Ireland, most of whom had no connection to paramilitary activities.

Between 2012 and 2017, the Foreign Office spent significant sums training Bahrain’s security services, including arranging a number of visits to Belfast so that Bahraini officials could learn about crowd-control techniques from Northern Irish colleagues and have a tour of Northern Ireland’s only high-security prison. General Sir Frank Kitson GBE, KCB, MC and Bar was commissioned in the army soon after the end of the Second World War. Kitson described as “total rubbish” a report suggesting he was involved in a plan for the illegal march to come under attack, forcing the IRA to defend it so that military “snatch squads” could then be sent in to arrest suspect paramilitaries.J. Hughes, ‘State violence in the origins of nationalism: British counterinsurgency and the rebirth of Irish nationalism, 1969–1972’, in J. He organised ‘night squads,’ recruited from the Zionist Haganah militia (the origin of today’s Israeli Defence Force).

A further brigade was usually attached as brigade reserve, but this could be employed elsewhere as required. Charles Belgrave, a British official who worked in Bahrain between 1926 and 1957, and whose multiple roles included financial advisor to the Ruler, commandant of the police, and judge, used torture on detainees in a number of high profile cases, as did his British colleague Captain Parke. He was appointed to a regular commission as a lieutenant on 10 April 1948 (with seniority from 15 December 1947), [3] and promoted to captain on 15 December 1953.Kitson’s Irish War lays bare the evidence they discounted: Kitson’s role in the events leading up to and surrounding that massacre; evidence from a deserter from 1 Para who joined the IRA; a deceitful MI5 agent; a courageous whistle blower whom the British state tried to discredit, and much more, all of which points to a motive for the attack on the Bogside. When Kitson is discussed, the concern is with the development of his counterinsurgency parameters in the mid- to late 1970s, and less on his actual tour of duty in Belfast in 1970–2. This conclusion is also drawn by the British military’s Operation Banner report (2006) into its role in the North, and the claim informs the new JDP 3-40 (2010) counterinsurgency doctrine for the British Army. Among those involved in these killings was he Support Company of the 1st Parachute Regiment (1 Para), commanded by Brigadier Frank Kitson, who is alleged to have selected his toughest men for this unit. As The Daily Telegraph recounts, “David Petraeus, the American general who commanded coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, drew heavily on Sir Frank’s work when he devised the US Army’s new strategy for confronting al-Qaeda and the Taliban, even making the time to visit the 88-year-old retired general at his Devon home.

Meaning, Kitson is being sued because of the policies he implemented in Northern Ireland as part of his counter-insurgent operation (“Ex-chief”). Tony Doherty, Chair of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said there will be no sadness at the passing of Frank Kitson in Derry.Ian Henderson was awarded the George Medal – Britain’s highest civilian award – on 28 September 1954 for his work in Kenya. Kitson wrote widely on gangs, counter-gangs and measures of deception, the use of defectors, and concepts such as pseudo-gangs and pseudo-operations. According to Belfast politician Paddy Devlin, Kitson "probably did more than any other individual to sour relations between the Catholic community and the security forces" in Northern Ireland. Not surprisingly, Kitson was security-obsessed and there is little in the public domain about his life.