The wrong force in the wrong place for 38 years

The behaviour of British soldiers in the North was a recruiting sergeant for the IRA.

History rarely records what might have been, yet as the British Army’s 38-year-long sojourn in the North came to an end this week, perhaps not many know how it might all have been so different.

A series of political blunders, coupled with the inability to realise the long-term implications of the evolving crisis in the North in 1969, ...