British troops went to Northern Ireland to save lives. Today, prosecutors pursue them for doing just that.
To understand how we reached this appalling state of affairs, we must return to the beginning.
In 1969 the British Army deployed to Northern Ireland not as an occupying force but as a peacekeeping one. Their mission was to shield the Catholic community from loyalist mobs amid spiralling sectarian violence.
The IRA and their supporters are now trying to cynically rewrite that basic truth.
The early years of the Troubles did not feature unrest, but murder. It was Paramilitary killings, as opposed to arrests, which defined the conflict: take the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979, where 18 British soldiers were killed and over 20 more were wounded by IRA bombs.
But the IRA’s campaign was not just against soldiers: its terrorists slaughtered innocent civilians, too. In Omagh in 1998, a bomb planted by the so-called Real IRA killed 29 and injured 200. These were not military operations. They were cowardly attacks on the defenceless.
And yet, astonishingly, those who perpetrated such atrocities now recast themselves as victims. The IRA peddles a grotesque inversion of the truth, downplaying the scale of its crimes, while promoting a narrative of ‘state abuses’ designed to paint terrorists as martyrs and soldiers as villains.
British troops guard a blazing barricade at a police station in Belfast in 1979. Now some veterans fear prosecution
The Troubles killed more than 3,500 people, and injured more than 50,000. Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries caused roughly 90 per cent of the deaths.
In stark contrast, British soldiers operated under the strict constraints of Operation Banner, bound by the ‘yellow card’ rules of engagement, which required restraint, warnings and proportionality.
Time and time again, we see examples of the British military displaying courageous restraint in their confrontations with the IRA. One such case is that of Captain Herbert Westmacott, an SAS officer who was killed in an IRA ambush.
Having witnessed their commanding officer brutally gunned down, his patrol entered the house from which the terrorist had fired the shots that killed him – not to exact revenge, but to detain the gunman.
These troops chose justice over vengeance. Meanwhile, 1,400 soldiers and police officers died, while the Army killed only 300 IRA terrorists: a stark indicator of the lethal, asymmetric war they faced. Our troops served with discipline and honour in near-impossible conditions.
And the facts bear this out: more Catholics were killed by the IRA than by any other group during the Troubles. So much for their claims to be liberators.
Which brings me to the Clonoe incident, now the subject of a politically loaded inquest.
Readers may already be aware of some of the facts. In February 1992, Special Branch learnt that an IRA team, armed with a Soviet DShK (‘Dushka’) heavy machine gun, would attack the Coalisland police station.
The intelligence indicated that the attack would be mounted from the Clonoe chapel car park, so the SAS commander’s plan was to close in on the IRA operatives and arrest them there as they mounted the heavy machine gun on to their stolen lorry.
At 7.40pm on that dark February night, 12 members of the SAS were in position on the boundary of the car park, behind the hedgerow.
However, the intelligence briefing was wrong. Instead, at around 10.40pm, the DShK was used to attack the Coalisland police station. Sixty rounds were fired at close range from the DShK. The attackers’ intent was clear: to kill police officers.
The gunfire could clearly be heard, and the tracer bullets were observed by the SAS patrol.
After a minute or two, the soldiers heard another burst of gunfire. They did not know that this was in fact IRA terrorists firing their guns in the air as a tribute to Tony Doris, another IRA man who had been killed in a firefight the previous year. For all they and their commander knew, hiding behind their hedge, the murder gang were engaging other soldiers or other policemen.
Within a minute, the lorry appeared out of the darkness, driven at breakneck speed, lurching around corners and with its engine screaming in too low a gear.
As it drove into the car park, headlights illuminated the SAS position behind the hedgerow. At that point, the soldiers did not know whether they had been spotted. Fearing they were about to be attacked, the soldiers stood up, advanced on the occupants of the lorry and the three other vehicles in the car park, and opened fire.
Four IRA members were shot dead, one was wounded, arrested at the scene and, notably, given first aid by the soldiers, while others fled in the three cars.
Like all counter-terrorism actions at the time, the operation was reviewed by the Director of Public Prosecutions and all soldiers involved were found to have behaved entirely properly.
Now we fast forward to February 2025, when Mr Justice Michael Humphreys ruled that the use of lethal force by the SAS in this incident was unlawful. The ruling is demonstrably wrong and ignores the facts.
I find it hard to imagine a more clear-cut situation that would allow firing without challenge.
Clonoe is just one incident in which elderly veterans are being persecuted, there will be many more.
Soldier Johnny Mercer. As Veterans Minister he later brought in the first legislation to shield service personnel from historical witch hunts
Terrorists killed 722 British soldiers during the Troubles. Not one of those murders has led to a retrospective inquest, let alone a prosecution. But today, we witness a legal crusade against the men who risked everything in the service of peace. This is not justice. While the killers walk free, authorities hound the men who stopped them, like criminals.
The Legacy Act, which created a new body known as the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) to take over all Troubles-era cases, was designed to put an end to this travesty.
But the Government’s dithering response has handed the initiative back to those who spent decades glorifying violence.
Labour must decide whose side it is on: the defenders of this nation, or those who tried to destroy it?
Our veterans, many now in their seventies, deserve peace in retirement, not a knock on the door and questions about a firefight in a chapel car park three decades ago, in which they were operating well within the law.
Brave soldiers who served their country with honour, heroism and skill during the Troubles now have the Sword of Damocles hanging over them.
I have repeatedly asked the Government to end this shameful campaign of retrospective justice. I have received no meaningful answer.
That is why I support the petition calling for an end to these prosecutions – and the Mail’s important new campaign, Stop the SAS Betrayal, to seek new legal safeguards for our troops. The petition has now passed 100,000 signatures, triggering a debate in Parliament. But that is just the start.
This is not just massively important to our veterans. If this rewriting of history succeeds, this weapon of lawfare can be used against soldiers in any future conflict, destroying the efficacy of our troops when we need them most.
The Rt Hon Sir David Davis is MP for Goole and Pocklington.
