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Britain's ‘Vietnam syndrome’? Public opinion and British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
PAUL DIXON
Review of International Studies / Volume 26 / Issue 01 / January 2000, pp 99 ­ 121
DOI: null, Published online: 08 September 2000
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210500000991
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PAUL DIXON (2000). Britain's ‘Vietnam syndrome’? Public opinion and British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia. Review of International Studies, 26, pp 99­121
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Review of International Studies (2000), 26, 99–121
Copyright © British International Studies Association
Britain’s ‘Vietnam syndrome’?1 Public opinion
and British military intervention from
Palestine to Yugoslavia
PAU L D I XO N 2
Introduction
There have been calls for policymakers to draw ‘lessons’ from Britain’s experience of
Empire and Northern Ireland to inform a new generation of post-Cold War interventions by the international community. This article emphasises the role that
domestic public opinion, galvanized by the impact of casualties and the plight of
military relatives, has played in shaping Britain’s experience of ‘military intervention’
in the ‘civil wars’ of Palestine, Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Three
principal arguments are put forward.
Firstly, that public opinion, and in particular military families, has acted as a
significant constraint on the extent to which the British can intervene ‘robustly’ (or
aggressively) in ‘civil wars’.
Secondly, because of the possible impact of public opinion the political and
military elite has placed a premium: on a bipartisan approach among the political
parties, for fear that elite divisions may produce and exacerbate the mobilization and
polarization of public opinion; on pacifying military families as a key constituency
for its impact on public opinion but also the morale and recruitment of the armed
forces; and the manipulation of the media’s presentation of conflict.
Thirdly, the challenge posed by military intervention in ‘civil war’ can place a
particular strain on the civil-military relations of the intervening power.
The three case studies presented here are in fundamental ways very different, yet
they illustrate the impact public opinion can have on military intervention in ‘civil
wars’. The Palestine case study suggests that Jewish terrorism against British soldiers
led to revulsion amongst British public opinion and a populist clamour to ‘bring the
boys home’ which accelerated the British pull-out. This precedent cautioned British
policymakers in their attitudes towards the rest of Empire and the experience of the
US in Vietnam reinforced this. The case of Northern Ireland apparently demonstrates that the British can sustain intervention for a long period of time in spite of
taking significant casualties. However, it will be argued here that the intervention in
Northern Ireland was only sustained with considerable difficulty in a region which is
1
2
This title should not to be taken to suggest that the aversion of public opinion to the costs of military
intervention, over Vietnam or anywhere else, is an illegitimate one.
I would like to thank Alan Bloomgarden, Phil Cerny, Malcolm Chalmers, Michael Cox, Charles and
Kate Dixon, Ian Forbes, Ian Lustick, Christine Margerum, Lord Wallace, the participants at the 1997
BISA conference at the University of Leeds and two anonymous referees for comments on earlier
versions of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.
99
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Paul Dixon
part of the UK and where a majority of the population identifies with Britain. The
British presence was maintained in spite of strong populist pressure for withdrawal.
Opinion polls began to show majority support for withdrawal and increasing army
casualties led to a revolt among army relatives to ‘Bring Back the Boys from Ulster’.
The Army’s plight in Palestine and Northern Ireland strained civil-military relations
and, in the case of the latter, led to a recruitment crisis. Against this background, the
Conservative Government’s argument that Britain’s experience in Northern Ireland
cautions against more ‘robust’ or ‘muscular’ involvement in the former Yugoslavia
does appear to have some substance to it. The British Army also experienced a
recruitment crisis during the more recent conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.
There has been much recent controversy over the failure of the West to intervene
more ‘robustly’ in the former Yugoslavia to save Bosnia from Serb aggression. Yet
the question is seldom posed as to whether, if the political elites of the West desired
escalation, they could win, and sustain, the support of domestic opinion for such an
intervention and the high casualties which might result? What has been missing from
accounts of British military intervention is a convincing explanation of why if public
opinion is so unimportant the government and military have gone to such lengths to
try and manipulate it?
The ‘Real war’ and the ‘Propaganda war’
In the case studies presented here, the British fought both a ‘real war’ alongside a
‘propaganda war’. The ‘real war’ refers to the physical struggle between enemies to
destroy their opponents’ forces. But this ‘real war’ is inextricably intertwined with
the ‘propaganda war’, sustaining the determination and morale of the domestic
audience while attempting to break the opponent’s will to resist. This is attempted in
three ways.
Firstly, by waging a ‘propaganda war’ and/or ‘psychological operations’ directly
against the enemy government and population to undermine its will to resist. The
‘propaganda war’ is waged by promoting information and perspectives which will
benefit British interests, most effectively through sources, such as the BBC, which
have a reputation for impartiality. ‘Psychological operations’ or ‘black propaganda’
can involve the deliberate planting of false stories to mislead and undermine the
enemy, or in the case of a ‘civil war’ to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of those
people living in the affected territory.
Secondly, the ‘propaganda war’ is waged to win the support and sympathy of
international opinion which may support one side or the other ideologically,
materially or through diplomatic pressure.
Thirdly, the domestic government attempts to break its opponent’s will to resist in
the ‘propaganda war’ by showing its determination, and that of the military and
public opinion, to overcome the enemy. This might be achieved by demonizing the
opponent with stories (sometimes false) of atrocities in order to whip up popular
support for war. Morale may also be sustained by censoring reports of defeats or
reversals or exaggerating success against the enemy. The army has also been sensitive
to the morale of public opinion and the perceived impact this can have on soldiers.3
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
101
Creating the appearance if not necessarily the reality of the public’s determination,
strengthens the position of the government in negotiations with the enemy. It could
result in victory with more ‘limited’ use of force (Kosovo might be an example of
this, see below), or even without any need to resort to force. On the other hand,
demonizing your opponent can make it more difficult to negotiate with them at a
later stage; whipping up popular opinion could result in an unstoppable momentum
to war or even to withdrawal. Not enough domestic interest in a conflict fails to
demonstrate determination to win, too much could impact on elite control of policy.
Myths about the US experience in Vietnam have played an important role in
affecting both US and British elite attitudes towards the media, bipartisanship,
public opinion and the conduct of military interventions. A myth has arisen over
Vietnam—particularly in British and US military circles—that it was the media, in
particular television coverage of military casualties and bodybags, which undermined US domestic will to defeat the Viet Cong.4 The media coverage led to
domestic public and elite division and this in turn had a disastrous effect on the
morale of the US Army and led to defeat and withdrawal. This myth has persisted
against all the available evidence.5
There is evidence, presented below, to suggest that British political and military
elites have perceived public opinion and the impact of casualties to be a significant
or important constraint in military interventions. There are good reasons why
political and military elites want to play down the impact of public opinion and
casualties on military interventions. To publicly acknowledge the impact military
casualties can have on public opinion is to show weakness and invite insurgents to
target the British military in order to precipitate withdrawal. If the state is to make
credible threats against an enemy to cause them to back down or reach negotiation,
the enemy needs to believe that the political and military elites can act even if the
public seems reluctant to sustain casualties. Douglas Hurd’s fiction links all three
case studies and indicates the political elite’s concern at the impact of the deaths of
soldiers on domestic opinion.
Civil war and conventional war
Three conflicts considered here—Palestine, Northern Ireland and Bosnia—can be
categorized as ‘civil wars’, that is between intermingled peoples who consider
themselves, or are seen to be, part of different nations/groups which lay claim to the
same territory. This is not to deny the role and influence of external powers nor
should it suggest that there is a moral equivalence between the parties to a conflict.
The role of ‘intervention’ in a ‘civil war’ is not to drive out an invading army and its
supporters but to maintain order while a political accommodation is worked out.
3
4
5
S. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, The Media and Colonial CounterInsurgency 1944–1960 (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), p. 16.
For example R. Harris, Gotcha! The Media, The Government and the Falklands Crisis (London: Faber
and Faber, 1983), pp. 59–65.
Daniel C. Hallin, The ‘Uncensored War’: The Media and Vietnam (London: University of California
Press, 1989), p. 187.
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Paul Dixon
There is no clear military goal beyond ‘holding the ring’ until a political settlement is
agreed by the politicians or until a state is rebuilt, however long that might take. The
opponents of the ‘peace-keeping intervention force’ are guerrillas or terrorists and
may be indistinguishable from the non-combatant civil population. Such an operation usually involves limited rather than overwhelming force to achieve its objectives.
The need of politicians to promote a political environment in which a settlement can
be agreed by the political representatives of the local communities often involves
considerable constraints being imposed on the army’s use of force and close political
scrutiny and oversight of its tactics and conduct. The state’s ability to intervene in a
‘peacekeeping’ operation is likely to depend on perceptions of the ‘national interest’
and the willingness of domestic military, political and public opinion to sustain that
intervention. The task of selling a limited ‘peacekeeping operation’ as opposed to a
total war to public opinion is more problematic, particularly where there may be no
perceived, clear ‘national interest’.6 The enemy can be demonized to rally public
opinion behind a conventional war, but demonization is less compatible with civil
wars where soldiers are supposed to maintain a presence and act impartially.
British military intervention in the ‘civil wars’ of Palestine, Northern Ireland and
Bosnia contrasts with its conventional military interventions in Suez in 1956, the
Falklands/Malvinas in 1982 and the Gulf War in 1990–91. In these latter instances
there was a clear military objective—take the Suez Canal, force the Argentinians out
of the Falklands, drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait—which was achieved after a
swift military operation. Yet even during these conventional military interventions
the British political elite could not afford to ignore British domestic public and
political opinion (see below). By contrast, in Palestine, Northern Ireland and Bosnia
the military objectives were less clear cut. The British Army was to operate more in a
counter-insurgency ‘policing’ role, ‘holding the ring’ for an indefinite period while it
was hoped a political settlement could be agreed. The support of public opinion
would have to be sustained over a longer period of time.
There is division within the military over the use of the army in a ‘peacekeeping’
or policing role. Some see this, rather than preparation to fight a conventional
enemy, as the future for NATO in the post Cold War world to achieve humanitarian
objectives and prevent the disintegration of states. Others argue that the ambiguity
and lack of clearly definable and attainable military objectives in ‘peace-keeping’
situations is unsuited to military operations. Furthermore, the military do not have
the training and skills for policing and it distracts from and reduces their conventional capablility.7 The prominent right-wing US military commentator, Harry
Summers, has described the use of the US military in non-traditional, peacekeeping
roles, as a danger to democracy. He argues that as the military returns to its traditional war-fighting focus ‘the trends such as they were towards a military coup in the
United States have faded as well’.8
Recently, attention has been drawn again to the brutality of armies engaged in
‘conventional wars’. Guerrilla warfare, it has been argued, tends to make combat
6
7
8
For example, see General Sir Hugh Beach, ‘New Coalitions for Peacemaking’, in J. M. O. Sharp,
About Turn, Forward March with Europe (London: IPRR/River Oram Press, 1996), p. 201–2.
Daily Telegraph, 4 March 1997.
H. Summers, The New World Strategy (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995), p. 203, see ch. 10,
‘Dangers to Democracy’.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
103
even more ‘atrocity-prone’. ‘The enemy seem to be everywhere—and nowhere—and
men hit out blindly with frustration and passion’.9 General Sir Michael Rose (who
commanded the UN Protection Force in Bosnia in 1994–95) described the demands
placed on peacekeepers in Bosnia, ‘. . . This demanded of them the same fighting
qualities that soldiers need in battle: guile, courage, determination and endurance;
but, without the clarity of purpose of a war, perhaps peacekeeping demanded more
of them than fighting ever did’.10 This may make soldiers deployed in ‘peacekeeping’
operations more prone to abuses of human rights.
The Palestine precedent
The British debacle in Palestine warned of the dangers of intervention in ‘civil wars’
and of the problems for managing policy when domestic opinion becomes
galvanized by growing casualties and the plight of their army. A Jewish ‘terrorist’
campaign against the British presence in the mid to late forties appeared to turn
British politicians away from the Zionist cause. The bombing of the King David
Hotel in 1946 caused outrage in Britain and succeeded in accelerating withdrawal: ‘It
stirred up powerful conflicting emotions among the British that terrorism should be
repressed and, at the same time, that they should withdraw because of Jewish
ingratitude’.11 Unable to reconcile the competing claims of Jews, Arabs and the US,
and in the face of mounting violence, the British declared in September 1947 that
they were giving up the mandate and handing over the problem to the United
Nations. On 15th May 1948 the British pulled out, leaving the Jews and Palestinian
Arabs to fight it out.
The constraints of British domestic opinion and party politics were significant
factors in the British decision to abdicate responsibility for Palestine. The two major
British parties had maintained a bipartisan approach to facilitate the management
of the Palestine issue.12 This was for three principal reasons: firstly, by presenting a
united front to the Jews and Palestinians these groups would be unable to exploit the
differences between the two British parties and hold out on negotiations in the hope
of a better deal from a change of British Government. Secondly, a bipartisan
approach would demonstrate Britain’s determination to defeat ‘terrorism’ and
undermine the will of the insurgents. Thirdly, by taking Palestine out of the party
battlefield the political elites could manage the conflict with less chance of provoking
the mobilization of public opinion. Nevertheless, Winston Churchill, the Conservative Opposition leader, favoured a speedy withdrawal from Palestine and was
prepared to breach the spirit of bipartisanship in order to achieve this end. In the
wake of the King David Hotel bombing, Churchill criticized the Labour Govern9
10
11
12
Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare
(London: Granta, 1999), pp. 203–4.
General Sir Michael Rose, Fighting for Peace (London: The Harvill Press, 1998), p. 3.
William Louis, ‘British Imperialism and the End of the Palestine Mandate’, in W. R. Louis and R.
Stookey (eds), The End of the Palestine Mandate, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 10.
On the role of bipartisanship in managing communal conflict see P. Dixon, ‘“A House Divided
Cannot Stand”: Britain, Bipartisanship and Northern Ireland’, Contemporary Record, 9:1 (Summer,
1995), and P. Dixon ‘Sri Lanka and Bipartisanship: Lessons from Northern Ireland?’, ASEN Bulletin,
no. 16 (Winter 1999).
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Paul Dixon
ment’s handling of the conflict and hinted that it was time to consider withdrawal.
The British ‘have discharged a thankless, painful, costly, laborious, inconvenient task
for more than a quarter of a century with a very great measure of success’ but
Jewish terrorism was releasing the British from their obligation to Palestine.
Churchill’s arguments were increasingly to be heard on both sides of the House, his
conclusion ‘. . . ill-received as it had been in the summer of 1946, by the end of 1947
was agreed to be inevitable’.13 In March 1947 a terrorist attack on Goldsmith House,
the Officers’ Club in Jerusalem, resulted in the deaths of 17 British officers and the
implementation of martial law. The failure of martial law ‘to produce the necessary
results was a breaking point in their ability to eliminate the terrorist campaign’.14
The hanging of two army sergeants in July 1947 was a further catalyst to withdrawal
opinion: ‘in cold terms of political impact, there can be little doubt that it was the
single most effective act of the Jewish resistance against the mandatory’.15 Winston
Churchill capitalized on the public mood in a speech to a crowd of 60,000 at
Blenheim Palace in which he expressed British resentment at the thankless task
being carried out by the army in Palestine and the government’s indecision.16 The
House of Commons united behind Churchill’s stand. The Conservative imperialist,
Leo Amery, testified in his diary to the popular momentum which had built up
around Churchill’s demand for withdrawal. ‘I had thought again and again in the
last two years of weighing in with a strong indictment of government policy, but
always felt that, what with Winston giving the lead for scuttle, and the resentment
against Jewish fanatics, it was useless to try and check the stampede . . .’17
The British public had been ‘incensed’ by regular stories of the humiliation of
their army in Palestine. Riots and anti-Semitic demonstrations affected London,
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Gateshead, Holyhead, and Eccles in
Lancashire.18 The mothers of the British soldiers were mobilizing to ‘bring their
boys home’.19 The army was experiencing problems even defending its own, let alone
maintaining ‘law and order’. The soldiers and their families were under considerable
pressure. One terrorist recounted: ‘They were afraid to leave their barracks so they
had to stay there night after night, month after month. It was very bad for morale.
And the casualties spread unrest among British families in England. They started
demanding the evacuation of British troops. It had a political effect. That was the
purpose’.20
The sensitive ‘policing’ role of the British army and police in Palestine strained
morale and civil-military relations.21 This was not an orthodox war on the lines of
World War II; the British Army were dealing with an ‘invisible enemy’ against whom
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune: 1945–55 (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 145, 149, 147.
S. Zadka, Blood in Zion: How the Jewish Guerrillas drove the British out of Palestine (London:
Brassey’s, 1995).
M. J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers 1945–48 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1982), p. 247; Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 9, 78, 81, 85 and ch. 9.
The Times, 5 August 1947.
L. S. Amery diary entry, 14 May 1948, quoted in M. J. Cohen, Churchill and the Jews, p. 320.
P. Sissons and P. French (eds.), The Age of Austerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 233,
245; The Times, 4 August 1947.
Bevin claimed this was occurring in the ‘Record of a conversation between the Secretary of State and
Dr Silver on Palestine at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel’, 14 November 1946 PREM 8/627, quoted in
Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, p. 61.
Quoted in N. Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 241.
Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 3–4.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
105
they were not trained to fight. The soldiers and police were frustrated by the political
restrictions placed by politicians on their ability to respond to Jewish terrorism and
some unauthorized retaliation took place. Following the hanging of the two
sergeants the police fired on innocent Jews, killing five and injuring ten. The British
Governor of Palestine, General Cunningham, explained that soldiers worked ‘in an
atmosphere of constant danger and increasing tension, fraught with insult, vilification and treachery’ and it was in this context that they retaliated, ‘excited . . . to a
pitch of fury which momentarily blinded them to the dictates of discipline, reason
and humanity alike’.22 The military wanted more repressive measures to restore law
and order in Palestine and the morale and discipline of the troops. The politicians,
on the other hand, required restraint from the security forces in order to promote a
more congenial environment in which agreement might be reached between the
contending communal groups23. This was spilling over into civil-military relations.
Field Marshall Montgomery, Chief of General Staff, felt the Army’s hands had been
tied in dealing with terrorism: ‘. . . infirmity of purpose in Whitehall, and the lack of
a clear political policy, resulted in the death of many young British soldiers; it was
against these things that I fought’. At one point the Chiefs of General staff
threatened to resign over the Government’s Middle East Policy and Montgomery
contemplated an active role for himself in domestic British politics.24
The growing revulsion among the British public at the humiliations and casualties
inflicted on its army in Palestine appear to have played an important role in the
eventual British decision to pull out.25 Palestine warned the British of the dangers of
intervention in communal conflict. Churchill had been able to galvanize and lead
popular discontent amongst British public opinion with the plight of its army in
Palestine. Bipartisanship had been swept away by this inexorable tide of opinion.
Significantly, this surge amongst public opinion in favour of withdrawal from
Palestine occurred before the age of television. The Army was also under considerable stress, sensitive to the impact of changing British public opinion and its
consequences for troop morale.
Empire, the Falklands and withdrawal
Britain’s experience in Palestine served as a warning to its political elite. It did not
demonstrate an iron-law mathematical relationship between British casualties and
withdrawal opinion, but it set a precedent by demonstrating the possibility that a
populist mobilization of considerable force could emerge amongst the British public
on the issue of troop casualties. According to John Darwin there was ‘little sign’ of a
22
23
24
25
Cunningham to Colonial Office, 15 November 1947 quoted in Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers,
p. 245.
Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 7, 8, 170.
The Memoirs of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (London: Collins, 1958), p. 466,
see ch. 29. See also N. Hamilton, Monty: The Field Marshal 1944–76 (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1986), pp. 674, 677, 689, 705.
E. Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981),
p. 165, M. J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, p. 276; F. S. Northedge, Descent from Power,
British Foreign Policy 1945–73 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 163; Carruthers, Winning Hearts
and Minds, p. 64.
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Paul Dixon
public reaction to events in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus to compare with the ‘revolt’
over Palestine, which had so radically affected British policy. However, the ‘fear that
it might occur was an important influence on British policy, especially in the Cyprus
and Aden cases, which came nearest to replicating the humiliating experience of
Palestine’. British politicians were caught between their reluctance to lose prestige by
giving way to violence and threats, which would push them towards intervention,
and public opinion’s aversion to the loss of British life which might lead to ‘scuttle’
and loss of prestige once intervention had taken place.26 John Darwin wrote of
public opinion and Empire: ‘Public revulsion at terrorist outrages was always prone
to be balanced by irritation at the inability of the security forces to defeat terrorist
movements, and eventually by a feeling that the loss of (British) life was not justified
by the purpose supposedly served by a military presence’.27 Kenneth Younger, the
former Labour Foreign Minister, argued in 1955 before the Suez Crisis ‘. . . it is
surely clear that public opinion may become irresistible whenever a policy decision
involves issues of war and peace, or the acceptance of a substantial loss of British
lives. No government today could long survive heavy British losses in a war whose
justice was strongly attacked by the opposition in Parliament’.28 Stephen Howe
maintains: ‘. . . To governments eager to preempt possible crisis and confrontation at
home as in the colonies themselves, there could never be any guarantee that the
relative lack of popular protest over Malaya, Kenya, or Cyprus would continue to
be replicated. Suez was the great warning signal, even if Labour’s opposition to the
war did not command majority support. . . .’ 29
During the Suez Crisis in 1956 the Labour Party broke bipartisanship and
opposed the Conservative Government’s invasion of Egypt. This division at the
political elite level ‘tended to extend the lines of partisan conflict to the general
public’.30 The Commander-in-Chief of the joint Anglo-French invasion force, later
reflected on the Suez debacle that ‘Her Majesty’s Opposition “rocked the landing
craft” ’.31 In the cabinet the Minister of Defence, Walter Monckton, questioned
whether public opinion would support a Suez adventure and perceptions about
public opinion appeared to constrain the options on Suez open to the cabinet.32
Opinion polls suggested public support was ebbing for military intervention. An
opinion poll taken prior to the deployment of British troops found only 37 per cent
of respondents thought Britain was ‘right to take military action against Egypt’
while 44 per cent thought it was wrong.33 Only after the event did the government
win a plurality on Suez, although it has been argued that there was a chauvinistic
reaction once the attack had been launched.34 The British government may have
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
John Darwin, The End of the British Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 18, 21.
Ibid., p. 21.
K. Younger ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’, British Journal of Sociology, 6 June 1955, p. 172,
Younger cited the Palestine example.
S. Howe, Anti-Colonialism in British Politics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 325.
L. D. Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964), p. 139.
Quoted in M. Lyus and P. Hennessy, ‘Tony Blair, Past Prime Ministers, Parliament and the Use of
Military Force’, Strathclyde Papers on Government and Politics, no. 113 (1999), p. 11.
A. Horne, Harold Macmillan: Volume 1 1894–1956 (London: Viking, 1989), pp. 410, 412.
S. Lucas, Britain and Suez (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 100, see also Epstein,
pp. 141, 144.
Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis, p. 144, K. Younger, ‘Public Opinion and British Foreign
Policy’, International Affairs, 40:1 (1964), p. 27.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
107
planned a short war in view of the lack of domestic support.35 The Suez Crisis
‘undoubtedly had an effect upon the calculations which British leaders were bound
to make about the domestic repercussions of their external policies.’ It reinforced the
importance of bipartisanship to the British political elite, and emphasized ‘the
domestic and external difficulties posed by actions which might isolate Britain and
to point up the dangers of armed intervention except under highly favourable
circumstances’.36
During the Falklands/Malvinas War 1982 the support of public opinion was also
problematic, indicated by the care with which news of the conflict was managed by
the government and military. This was in spite of the fact that, unlike the Suez
Crisis, the Labour Party offered its bipartisan support for the government’s policy.
This strengthened its negotiating position with the Argentinians and ‘. . . endowed
any actions they [the government] might take to recover the islands with a degree of
popular support that might otherwise have been unobtainable’.37 In spite of this
public opinion was not so solidly behind the war as the media at the time
suggested.38 There was a danger that Britain’s determination to demonstrate the will
of the country to defeat the Argentinians, rather than bolstering a negotiating
position, would develop into an unstoppable momentum towards war. Anything
short of victory might become politically problematic for the Conservative
Government.
The censorship of television pictures by the government and military during the
war can be explained on at least two, interrelated grounds. Firstly, it has been
claimed that the military were concerned about the effect of the broadcasts on the
military personnel serving in the Falklands and their families.39 There was concern
that if relatives saw precisely what the military were engaged in they would express
their concerns in letters to the relatives and this might undermine morale.40
Certainly, there is evidence that, in the television news, care was taken to present
Task Force families as models of support for the war, possibly for fear of ‘undermining the national will’.41 The revolt of army families over Northern Ireland in the
early seventies may have heightened concern with the presentation of military
families during the Falklands Crisis. The military families, it might be calculated,
because they have so much invested in the war are a key constituency which could
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis, p. 204.
Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 231, 230. On Rhodesia see
J. Frankel, British Foreign Policy 1945–73 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 42; R. C. Good,
UDI: The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion, (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), p. 62;
Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–70, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 181.
L. Freedman and V. Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 122.
See ‘The Falklands War: The Home Front’, in G. Philo (ed.), Glasgow Media Group Reader, Vol 2:
Industry, Economy, War and Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); G. M. Dillon, The Falklands: Politics
and War (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 117; M. Hastings and S. Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands
(London: Michael Joseph, 1983), pp. 135–6.
D. E. Morrison and H. Tumber, Journalists at War: The Dynamics of News Reporting During the
Falklands Conflict (London: Sage, 1988), p. 169; L. Freedman, Britain and the Falklands War (Oxford:
Blackwell 1988), p. 90; the BBC was aware of the distress that pictures might cause relatives—Harris,
Gotcha!, p. 61.
Harris, Gotcha!, p. 64.
Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), ‘The Falklands War: The Home Front’, p. 105.
Hastings and Jenkins, in The Battle for the Falklands, p. 136 state: ‘Visitors to service communities,
where the true price of war would be paid, found local people unconvinced that the case was worth
the loss of life’.
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Paul Dixon
have an enormous impact on the attitude of public opinion. Secondly, censorship of
television was also justified for fear of its direct impact on public opinion. ‘During
the Falklands War the general problems of broadcasting independence were
sharpened, because keeping public morale on the home front high was seen as part
of the war effort, so the ‘national interest’ demanded that the TV news should paint
a picture of national support, and isolate opposition to the war. Too much questioning of the government’s policy and the precise interests it served was thought by
some to be unpatriotic’.42 After optimistic, jingoistic reporting, the sinking of HMS
Sheffield brought home to the British public the human cost of the war. The
government’s satisfaction rating in the polls declined and it came close to losing its
nerve.43 Sir Terence (later Lord) Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff during the Falklands
Crisis, has written, ‘If some of the Falklands scenes had been on the screens a few
hours after they happened . . . the public pressure for a ceasefire might have been
irresistible’.44 The possible impact of the Falklands War on public opinion was
indicated by the debate over whether the ‘Falklands Factor’ had revived the
Conservative Government’s fortunes and enabled it to win the 1983 British General
Election. During the Gulf War there was also concern about casualties and
considerable efforts were made to manipulate media coverage of the war and the
perceptions of public opinion.45
Sustaining British military ‘intervention’ 46 in Northern Ireland
The result of Britain’s Empire experience was a weariness of intervention. Analogies
were drawn between Britain’s experience in Empire and in Northern Ireland. The
Northern Ireland conflict was frequently seen as a ‘colonial’ conflict in particular
after the initial British efforts at reform failed and the Army came into conflict with
the Provisional IRA.47 The British did contemplate a ‘scuttle’ from Northern
Ireland. In the early seventies, the Labour Party leadership referred to the option of
withdrawal from Northern Ireland by the codename ‘Algeria’.48 Shortly before the
collapse of the power-sharing experiment in 1974 Rees was reportedly preoccuppied
with the impact that the failure of the initiative might have on British public opinion
and its support for withdrawal.49 Following its collapse, withdrawal from Northern
Ireland was seriously considered by a cabinet sub-committee of the Labour
Government. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson chaired the committee, and
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
‘The Falklands War: The Home Front’, GUMG, p. 131; Hastings and Jenkins, The Battle for the
Falklands, p. 183.
Freedman, Britain and the Falklands War, p. 95.
Letter Lord Lewin quoted in Anthony Beevor, ‘The Implications of Social Change on the British
Army’, British Army Review, no. 104 (1993), p. 17.
For a review see F. Halliday, ‘Manipulation and Limits: Media Coverage of the Gulf War, 1990–91,
in T. Allen and J. Seaton (eds.), The Media of Conflict (London: Zed, 1999).
For a discussion of why Northern Ireland is not like any other part of the UK, see P. Dixon,
‘Internationalization and Unionist Isolation’, Political Studies, 43:3, September, 1995.
Adrian Guelke, Northern Ireland: An International Perspective, (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988),
p. 198.
J. Haines, The Politics of Power (London: Coronet, 1977), p. 114.
G. FitzGerald, All in a Life (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1991), pp. 237–8.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
109
reluctantly gave up the withdrawal option after pressure from the Irish Government
who lobbied in Europe and US against this option.50 Labour’s Gerald Kaufman,
Wilson’s political press officer and who was reputed to be part of the inner group of
Wilson’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ during the 1966–70 Labour Government, was one of the
few British MPs to openly favour withdrawal from Northern Ireland. He argued:
‘. . . In India, Palestine, Cyprus and British Guiana, a solution was brought because
of a revolt by the British people about their boys being killed purposelessly. In every
case, because of the feeling of the British people, we have pulled out our Army’.51
(1) British politicians and public opinion
The Provisional IRA were consciously trying to mimic the success of guerrillas who
had fought British imperialism and create a movement for withdrawal among British
domestic opinion. The Provisionals had learnt the lessons of the impact of British
Army casualties on British public opinion from Empire.
‘. . . The [PIRA] Army Council’s first target was to kill thirty-six British soldiers—the same
number who died in Aden. The target was reached in early November 1971. But this the Army
Council felt, was not enough: I remember Dave [O’Connell], amongst others, saying: “we’ve
got to get eighty”. Once eighty had been killed, Dave felt, the pressure on the British to
negotiate would be immense. I remember the feeling of satisfaction we had at hearing another
one had died. As it happened the total killed by the time of the truce in June 1972 was 102’.52
The deaths of professional British soldiers on the streets of Northern Ireland
provoked a reaction among some sections of the British public in favour of withdrawal. In August 1969 Gallup opinion polls indicated that the British public
thought the government was right to send British troops to Northern Ireland.
However, support for the government’s decision to send troops into Northern
Ireland should be seen alongside pluralities and later majorities among British
public opinion for the withdrawal of British troops.53 Simultaneously support grew
amongst the public for more repressive measures and for troop withdrawal. One
survey found that ‘British public opinion appears to endorse a ‘tough’ Ulster policy
for its own sake, regardless of the consequences, good, bad or nil’.54
There were signs that a populist movement for withdrawal from Northern Ireland
might emerge, along the lines of that which developed over Palestine. On 6th
February 1971, Gunner Curtis became the first British soldier to be killed in action
in Northern Ireland for almost 50 years. His mother-in-law said, ‘My daughter
believes the troops should be pulled out and the mobs left to fight it out amongst
themselves’. By September 1971 an opinion poll for the Daily Mail suggested that a
majority of the British public, 59 per cent, favoured an immediate withdrawal of the
army from Northern Ireland. This withdrawal opinion developed with very little
50
51
52
53
54
Irish Times 20 July 1983, 21 July 1983 and FitzGerald, All in a Life, p. 255.
House of Commons Debates, vol. 857, col. 1808/9, 14 June 1973, Max Hastings made a similar point,
Evening Standard 6 September 1971.
Maria Maguire, To Take Arms (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 74.
See Gallup Political Index for these figures.
R. Rose, et al., ‘Is there a concurring majority about Northern Ireland?’, Strathclyde Papers in Public
Policy, 1978.
110
Paul Dixon
encouragement from either major British political party or the media. Conservative
backbenchers called for censorship of the media, complaining that Britain was
losing the ‘propaganda war’ and blaming the media for undermining the will of the
home population to fight. In Whitehall there was also concern that the media could
‘create an attitude of despair and indifference among the British public, and . . . feed
the view that British troops should be withdrawn’.55 In 1973 a populist campaign for
British withdrawal from Northern Ireland developed among army relatives.
The political and military elite’s fear of the development of a populist movement
for withdrawal from Northern Ireland helps to explain the importance attached to
bipartisanship and the extraordinary sensitivity to media coverage. The bipartisan
approach of the major British parties was designed to stifle and contain this populist
sentiment.56 The British Army welcomed the bipartisan approach, fearing that a
divided domestic opinion would lower morale in the way it had in the US over
Vietnam.57 Throughout ‘the troubles’ the British government has attempted to
control and influence the media’s coverage of the conflict.58 Particularly in the
Conservative Party, the media was seen as defeatist, undermining Army morale and
fostering the growth of ‘troops out’ sentiment. The British Prime Minister, Edward
Heath, said in 1972 ‘that we were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military
war but a propaganda war’.59 British counter-insurgency strategy emphasized the
importance of the state’s will and its determination to defeat the enemy. The media
by exposing British weakness or incompetence could undermine the ‘propaganda
war’ by destroying the image of resolution. This would encourage the enemy to fight
on in the ‘real war’ in the hope that it would be ultimately victorious.60
The anxiety of the British political elite that casualties in Northern Ireland would
result in pressure to withdraw the troops is reflected in a novel Shoot To Kill written
by Douglas Hurd and published in 1975. Hurd, who was head of Edward Heath’s
political office 1968–74, had been a career diplomat with the Foreign Office before
entering politics. In his novel he described a fictional scenario where a ‘young rogue
elephant’ of the Conservative Party, Jeremy Cornwall MP [a Powell figure who later
instructs his supporters to vote Labour when that party comes out in favour of
withdrawal], exploits dissent over Ireland and launches a popular crusade to ‘bring
the boys home’. He invokes the spirit of Churchill at a mass meeting at Blenheim
Palace (which suggests that Hurd was aware of the Churchill precedent over
Palestine): ‘. . . Would to God that he was living at this hour! Can anyone doubt that
he would have brought the Army home from Ireland long ago? Can anyone doubt
that he would have seen this as the first essential to restore our self-respect? . . .’ 61
‘And so in Belfast night by night there is death and failure as our English Army
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
L. Curtis, Ireland: The Propaganda War (London: Pluto, 1984), pp. 9, 17.
For a detailed account of the importance of bipartisanship, see P. Dixon, ‘“A House Divided Cannot
Stand”: Britain, Bipartisanship and Northern Ireland’, Contemporary Record (Summer 1995),
pp. 147–87.
Desmond Hamill, Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–84 (London: Methuen,
1985), p. 26, see also p. 34.
See for example D. Miller, Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media
(London: Pluto, 1994).
The Guardian, 10 November 1995.
P. Dixon, ‘Counter-Insurgency Strategy and the Crisis of the British State’, in P. Rich and R. Stubbs
(eds.), Counter Insurgent States, (London: Macmillan, 1997).
D. Hurd, Shoot To Kill (London: Collins, 1975), p. 127; for a fuller discussion of Hurd’s novel, see
P. Dixon, ‘A House Divided Cannot Stand’.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
111
moves further and further into the Irish trap’. Opinion polls show a majority of the
British people want troops withdrawn.
A Cornwall figure did not emerge to exploit sentiment amongst British public
opinion for withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Any maverick politician attempting
to lead withdrawal opinion would probably incur the wrath of the political establishment. Bipartisanship has remained intact throughout ‘the troubles’ and helped to
contain popular support for British withdrawal. The bipartisan strategy of the
British political parties towards Northern Ireland was designed to meet the problem
of elite division precipitating further domestic discontent, which in turn would
provoke further elite division. Bipartisanship can also help to promote a resolution
to conflict by demonstrating the determination of the ‘intervening’ power to defeat
‘insurgency’. Divisions among the political elite over policy could hold out the hope
to the ‘insurgent’ the prospect of victory and encourage continued resistance, placing
a strain on civil-military relations. British counter-insurgency strategy emphasized
the importance of political will in defeating insurgents.62 Nevertheless, since the midseventies opinion polls suggest a consistent majority of the British public favour
withdrawal from Northern Ireland.
(2) The British Army’s crisis over Northern Ireland
The British Army reached something of a crisis point in 1973. In April the Ministry
of Defence reported its first set of disastrous recruiting statistics. The recruitment 63
of men into the army from civilian life was:
1969/70
1970/71
1971/2
1972/3
1973/4
1974/5
1975/6
21,411
24,337
31,298
26,484
15,310
22,041
27,238
The army’s ‘peacekeeping’ role in Northern Ireland was held to blame for the poor
recruitment figures. Lord Carrington, Minister of Defence (later a mediator in the
Bosnian conflict), commented in June 1973: ‘. . . Northern Ireland has had some
effect, not among serving soldiers so much, but parents who may have discouraged
their sons from going into the Service’.64 The recruitment figures for the year ending
January 1974 were released on 15th March 1974. A Defence spokesperson said ‘I am
afraid it is no use denying it, Ulster is largely to blame for these figures’.65 In August
1973 The Times commented on the army’s poor recruiting figures: ‘. . . The prospect
62
63
64
65
P. Dixon, ‘Counter-Insurgency Strategy’.
The Statement on the Defence Estimates 1975, Cmnd 5976 (London: HMSO, 1975), Annex G, p. 103.
Annual Abstract of Statistics 1976 (London: HMSO, 1976).
The Times, 20 June 1973.
R. Deutsch and V. Magowan, Northern Ireland A Chronology of Events: vol.3 1974 (Belfast:
Blackstaff, 1975), p. 29.
112
Paul Dixon
of active service usually encourages recruiting, and it was thought during the first
year or two of the Northern Ireland troubles that this was again the case. In the last
two-and-a-half years however too many soldiers have been killed or maimed for any
parent or wife to view the situation with equanimity. Not only is it dangerous but it
is frustrating. There is no advance or retreating. One just stays where one is’.66 In
1972 the deaths of British soldiers totalled 108, with a further 542 injured, while 77
republicans were killed in 1972.67 The Army’s own survey of recruitment cited by
two serving officers found ‘. . . After four years of trying to keep the peace in Ulster,
however, there is now little doubt that the army’s role there is bad for recruiting.
Surveys among potential recruits show that early in 1973, although the overwhelming majority thought it should remain there, 46 per cent of them were put off
joining by the prospect of serving there’.68
There is little evidence of any significant crisis of morale among the soldiers
themselves but there was a revolt among their families. By October 1972 General
Ford, Commander Land Forces, was expressing his anxiety ‘as to whether public
opinion at home will continue to support retention of our troops in Northern
Ireland. Army morale very high but beginning to have anxiety over attitude of wives
and families’.69 In May 1973, the month after the first set of poor recruitment figures
was published by the MoD, a campaign was launched to ‘Bring Back the Boys from
Ulster’ by Peggy and Neville Chaston, the parents of a serving soldier. They appealed
principally to the wives and mothers of other serving soldiers.70 Their aim was ‘the
return of all the Soldiers serving in Ulster. The reasons are, that they are being killed
and maimed in an obscure cause on behalf of an unworthy people and that we want
no part of Ireland, considering it to be alien to the United Kingdom. . . .’ A petition
was circulated and was immediately successful. An advertisement was placed in the
personal columns of the Daily Mirror on 17th May 1973. By 21st June, when the first
petition was handed in to 10 Downing Street, 42,535 signatures were collected largely
by the relatives of serving soldiers. Within a year 120,000 signatures had been
collected. In June 1973, Stan Orme MP claimed there was ‘a real stirring in the
nation’ and that the momentum for withdrawal was increasing.71
The revolt of army relatives had profound consequences since there was evidence
of the importance of their influence on recruitment.72 The army responded to the
challenge from army relatives with a programme of reform to deal with the disaffection of army wives. ‘. . . A scale of effort and imagination seldom seen during
the last two decades of service in Northern Ireland was devoted to helping wives
while their husbands were away’.73
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
The Times, 29 August 1973.
M. Fay, et al., Northern Ireland’s Troubles: The Human Costs (London: Pluto, 1999), pp. 159–60.
P. J. Dietz (British Army HQ Scotland) and J. F. Stone (Royal Military College of Science), ‘The
British All-Volunteer Army’, Armed Forces and Society, 1:2 (February 1975), p. 171.
David James MP, Irish Visit—October 10th–17th 1972, Conservative Central Office.
Richard Rose found in his analysis of a 1983 poll that 43 per cent of men favoured withdrawal from
Northern Ireland while 58 per cent of women did. Only on reducing sex and nudity in the media did
men and women disagree more, R. Rose, Politics in England, 4th edn. (London: Faber and Faber,
1985), p. 167. For a discussion of women and international relations see F. Halliday, Rethinking
International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994), ch. 7.
Dixon, ‘“A Real Stirring in the Nation”: The Crisis of the British Army over Northern Ireland’, in
G. Stanyer (ed.), Contemporary Political Studies (Longman, 1996), p. 1765.
Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting (Cmnd 545) (London: HMSO, October 1958), p. 7.
A. Beevor, Inside the British Army, (London: Corgi, 1993), p. xiii.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
113
Bipartisanship was not the only means by which the British political elite hoped
to insulate their Northern Ireland policy from domestic public opinion and prevent
the emergence of a withdrawal movement. The British security strategy of
‘Ulsterization’ placed the locally-recruited security forces rather than the British
Army in the front line against the IRA in Northern Ireland. The subsequent
reduction of Army deaths was likely to help dampen the intensity of public support
for British withdrawal. The Army’s casualties appeared to be falling anyhow
following the peak in 1972.
British counter-insurgency strategy has emphasized the importance of ‘police
primacy’ in the defeat of insurgents and the experience of Northern Ireland might
have reinforced this. The limitations of soldiers as ‘police’ and ‘peacekeepers’ was
often acknowledged. Soldiers were trained for war, employed the use of lethal force
and were only deployed temporarily, while the police were better trained for a
‘peacekeeping’ role, likely to be more sensitive to local opinion, were based in an
area on a more long-term basis and therefore better equipped for intelligence
gathering.74
The Ulsterization of security and therefore British dependence on the Protestant
community to police Northern Ireland has lead to a structural bias in security policy
against the nationalist community. The British have been reluctant to police
unionists as rigorously as nationalists for fear of provoking unionism and the danger
of fighting an unsustainable ‘war on two fronts’. The locally recruited security forces
can only be pushed so far to police the community from which they have sprung and
implement policies which they find politically distasteful. The dilemmas of policing
‘civil wars’ such as Northern Ireland, had also been apparent in Empire.75 In
Northern Ireland, contrary to Palestine, the Army was also fortunate in being able
to rely on the ‘support’ of the majority community which, in the main, regarded the
British Army as ‘its’ national Army. The difficulties of intervening in ‘civil wars’
without taking sides have again been highlighted during the recent conflict in the
former Yugoslavia.
Former Yugoslavia
The reluctance of the ‘Western powers’ to commit ground troops in the former
Yugoslavia has been linked to domestic public opinion in these states and their
unfortunate experience of previous interventions.76 The UK political elite cited
Northern Ireland as a reason not to intervene more robustly in the former
Yugoslavia.77 The UK Government, represented by its Foreign Secretary Douglas
Hurd, was in the forefront in its reluctance to commit ground forces.78 Both Douglas
74
75
76
77
78
P. Dixon, ‘Counter-Insurgency Strategy’, pp. 182–7.
D. Anderson and D. Killingray, Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police
1917–65, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Hugh Beach, ‘New Coalitions for
Peacemaking’, pp. 108–9 also raises the issues of impartiality and expediency.
J. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will (London: Hurst and Co., 1997), p. 306.
J. Gow, ‘British Perspectives’ in A. Danchev and T. Halverson (eds.), International Perspectives on the
Yugoslav Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 89. P. Towle, ‘The British Debate about Intervention
in European Conflicts’ in L. Freedman (ed.), Military Intervention in European Conflicts (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994), pp. 101–2.
Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 181–2.
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Paul Dixon
Hurd, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, and Lord Carrington, an EU mediator, had
intimate experience of the problems encountered by Britain’s efforts to resolve ‘the
troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Both argued that Britain had limited interests in the
former Yugoslavia, it was a ‘civil war’ and that British and US public opinion, while
wringing its hands, was not prepared to do anything about it. Lord Carrington was
Defence Secretary 1970–74, at the time of the Army’s recruitment crisis. He told one
interviewer: ‘And it’s all very well for people, frankly, to say that they feel morally
culpable [for Bosnia]. Would they actually have advocated British troops going in
there and suffering casualties—and really quite a lot of casualties—to stop this? It
was quite clear that no Western government was prepared to do that’.79 Carrington
argued that you should not intervene in a civil war unless you were willing to take
sides.
The military also had misgivings about more robust intervention in the former
Yugoslavia. A military staff report rejected deeper involvement in the former
Yugoslavia based on Britain’s experience in Northern Ireland.80 A Foreign Office
briefing ‘The case against military intervention’ November 1992, also used the
Northern Ireland example of an operation where the military had become bogged
down.81 According to Stephen Badsey, of the Department of War Studies at
Sandhurst, Britain’s reluctance to deploy ground troops in the former Yugoslavia
between September 1991 and November 1992 was based on the theory ‘. . . that
virtually any casualties suffered in a military intervention would lead to the collapse
of public support, and are therefore to be avoided at all cost’.82
Douglas Hurd, after his experience as head of Heath’s political office went on to
be Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and closely involved with negotiating the
Anglo-Irish Agreement. He was Britain’s representative at The Hague Peace
Conference and he ‘finally quashed the plan’ to send WEU troops to Yugoslavia to
establish peace.83 Hurd warned of the hazards of deeper intervention by referring to
Northern Ireland where the British had been ‘fighting from village to village and
street to street . . . for 22 years’.84 He later said in an interview: ‘The only thing
which could have guaranteed peace with justice would have been an expeditionary
force, creating if you like a new Northern Ireland being there for how many years?
And no government, no government has at any time proposed that’.85 Hurd argued
in The Search for Peace that the cry from public opinion that ‘Something must be
done’ about civil wars was not matched by ‘any particular willingness to risk lives or
assume the thankless role of umpire or emperor’.86 The British and the West might
have intervened ‘if a quick and favourable outcome could have been assured’ but ‘A
major military enterprise could not be undertaken by Britain against the settled
weight of British public opinion. Although public opinion could not force a
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
Financial Times, 31 December 1994–1 January 1995.
Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995), p. 175; also
Jane Sharp, Honest Broker or Perfidious Albion? British Policy in Former Yugoslavia (London: IPPR,
1997), p. 11.
Sharp, Honest Broker or Perfidious Albion?, p. 7.
Badsey, SCSI, p. 13.
Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 466.
Quoted in The Independent, 18–20 November 1991.
Douglas Hurd, Bloody Bosnia, Channel 4, 2 August 1993. There was Serbian lobbying of the
Conservative Party and later Douglas Hurd became Director of Natwest Markets and helped to
reschedule Serb debts and privatize its telecommunications industry, Sharp, pp. 21, 67.
D. Hurd, The Search for Peace, (London: Little, Brown, 1997), p. 11.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
115
government to undertake an enterprise against its better judgement, it can
powerfully influence that judgement’.87
Against the backdrop of Britain’s experience in Empire and Northern Ireland, it
is not surprising that the impact of casualties on public opinion also appears to have
been an important factor in the decision of the Conservative Government not to
commit British soldiers to a more interventionist role in the former Yugoslavia.
Hurd could not state officially his fear of the impact of casualties on public opinion.
To do so would reveal British vulnerability and may invite attack on troops by forces
hostile to intervention in order to precipitate a withdrawal. Therefore, Hurd once
again turned to fiction to express his reservations about military intervention. He
penned a short story in The Observer describing a fictional scenario where, following
the deployment of British and other European troops in Yugoslavia and the casualties suffered by them, there emerges a vociferous movement for ‘Troops Out’ in all
those countries which had sent troops.88 In the story, British opinion polls show a
majority in favour of withdrawal. There is a ‘crude anti-foreign mood’ at Conservative Party conference. A speaker, describing herself as ‘mother of serviceman’, asks
why her son is risking his life in a country which neither of them had heard of a year
ago. The ‘Troops Out Now’ movement gets out of hand. Hurd’s story was published
two weeks after the first British fatality in the former Yugoslavia.
The elite bipartisan strategy helped to stifle domestic debate and media coverage
around which the momentum for a withdrawal campaign might develop.89 Public
opinion polls have shown support among British public opinion for intervention in
Bosnia. However, it is difficult to estimate whether this feeling that ‘something must
be done’ is sufficiently strong that it would have been able to sustain a prolonged
intervention which could result in considerable casualties being inflicted on British
soldiers. What limited evidence there is from MORI on British public opinion
attitudes towards Bosnia, suggests that public enthusiasm for intervention waned
between April 1993 and July 1995 (the first British soldier to die in Yugoslavia was
killed on 12th October 1994 and British Army hostages were taken in May 1995).
Although a majority supported ‘British soldiers being involved in armed conflict in
order to defend the Bosnian Muslim population’, and 40 per cent to 50 per cent
thought it right ‘to risk British soldiers’ lives in order to protect the Bosnian Muslim
population’, this support seems to have been only for a short operation. A clear
majority now opposed British soldiers being involved in armed conflict ‘even if they
may have to stay in the area for several years’. Indeed, in the case of Northern
Ireland, as we have seen, public support for the presence of the troops fell away as
the conflict escalated and the Army sustained a growing number of casualties
(although it could be that public opinion is more likely to support a British
commitment as part of an international force). Philip Towle has written: ‘. . . What
was particularly curious . . . was the contrast between the majority in favour of
enforcement in Bosnia and the majority in favour of withdrawal from Northern
Ireland’.90
87
88
89
90
Hurd, The Search for Peace, p. 130. Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former Diplomat and a British
representative at the Dayton talks, has also questioned whether British public opinion would risk its
service personnel in military interventions, The Big Idea, BBC2 18 July 1999.
The Observer, 31 January 1993.
There is some evidence that MI6 was involved in attempting to influence public opinion during the
Bosnian civil war against more forceful intervention, Guardian, 21 December 1998.
Towle, ‘The British Debate about Intervention’, p. 99.
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Paul Dixon
Arguably, the ‘West’ acted in a more muscular way in the former Yugoslavia but:
only once the combatants had exhausted themselves; peacekeepers were removed
from the ‘safe areas’ where they might be taken hostage; after the US covertly armed
the Bosnians and the Croats and the balance of power had shifted against the Serbs.
As with Northern Ireland, there seemed to be problems with achieving ‘impartiality’
in ‘peace enforcement’ operations. Christopher Bellamy has argued, ‘The Serbs may
not have been the ‘designated enemy’ by name, but the decision to get UN troops
out of Serbian territory and concentrate them in the Muslim heartland was surely
tantamount to taking sides. And once NATO started bombing the Serbs, the
Bosnian government forces became much more friendly. If this was peace
enforcement, then, under the new definition, it was looking pretty close to war’.91
Signs of revolt among army relatives and a populist campaign for British withdrawal from Bosnia were apparent in the press following the seizure of army
hostages by the Serbs in May 1995.92 But ‘in spite of some press attempts to create a
public demand for withdrawal from Bosnia the casualties have not been sufficient for
them to succeed’.93 The army was also experiencing severe recruitment problems.
The mothers of army recruits, as in the case of Northern Ireland, were playing an
important role in its recruitment problems. The Times commented: ‘The plan to win
the hearts and minds of sceptical mothers who believe that joining up means
sending their sons to be killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina is regarded as essential
because of a change in the way in which the public views the Army. . . . One defence
source said mothers of teenage boys seemed increasingly to be of the view that, if
they allowed their sons to join the Army, they would be sent to Bosnia and have to
stand by while the warring parties committed massacres’.94
Kosovo
Early in the Kosovo crisis, Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was criticized for
not being willing to contemplate casualties to the British Army in Kosovo.95 There
were other reports about the concern of Labour ministers for the effect of British
casualties on a squeamish public opinion.96 It was reported that ‘fear of casualties
was one of the single biggest constraints on NATO’s military options during the
Kosovo conflict’.97 Initially Blair argued that NATO ground forces would only be
sent to Kosovo if they were to police an agreed political settlement. Sometime
between the 13th and the 25th April, when Blair was in Washington for a NATO
summit, the Labour government shifted its position on the use of ground troops. On
the 13th April Blair ruled out an armed invasion of Kosovo: ‘the potential loss of
life among our servicemen and women, to say nothing of civilians, would be
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
Christopher Bellamy, Knights in White Armour (London: Pimlico, 1997), p. 253.
See various newspapers, 28–31 June 1995.
Bellamy, Knights in White Armour, p. 200.
The Times, 2 November 1995.
Antony Beevor, ‘The Soldiers Preferred Margaret’, New Statesman, 19 April 1999.
Andrew Rawnsley, ‘Saving Ryan’s Privates’, The Observer 4 April 1999. Simon Jenkins, a columnist
with The Times, argued that public opinion would not support troops going in on the ground, The
Observer, 18 April 1999.
‘Army Chiefs call for EU “backbone’’’, The Observer, 25 July 1999.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
117
considerable’.98 In Washington less than two weeks later he was reportedly arguing
for the use of ground troops.99 Although Blair became a ‘hawk’ on the use of
ground troops we do not know, firstly, whether this was a bluff—part of the
‘propaganda war’—to force Milosevic into a climbdown (playing ‘hard cop’ to
Clinton’s ‘soft cop’). There were reports that NATO leaders had ruled out a ground
war at a summit in Washington in April 1999.100 Or secondly, whether if the British
Army had taken many casualties, had not defeated the Yugoslav Army swiftly and
became engaged in a ‘peace-keeping’ operation against Serb resistance, there would
have been large scale public support for withdrawal.
Again, the ‘propaganda war’ and the ‘real war’ were intertwined during the
Kosovo crisis. The war was not necessarily determined ‘by events on the ground’101
but by the enemy’s perception of NATO’s will to win. While the spin doctor’s arts
were used to try and mould this perception some journalists resisted being drawn
into the ‘propaganda war’ on NATO’s side.
The Labour Government’s concern about British public opinion and whether it
would be supportive of a land war against the Serbs was indicated by the attack of
the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell, on the media at the end of
the war. Campbell complained that ‘the media’s acceptance of the Serbs’ ‘lie
machine’ could have lost the war’ because journalists’ reports ‘may influence public
opinion’. He told the Royal United Services Institute, ‘That NATO could win
militarily was never really in doubt. The only battle we might lose was the battle for
the hearts and minds. The consequence would have been NATO ending and losing
the war. Keeping public support, keeping the alliance united, and showing Milosevic
we were united, was what we were all about. Our enemy, as spokesman, was
Milosevic’s media machine but our judge and jury was the western media. . . . In the
end our message did get through. It got through to Milosevic . . . It got through to
our own public opinion, which was more robust than much media opinion, and
remained largely supportive through the inevitable ups and downs’.102 Critics
responded that journalists were sceptical about the information coming from the
British government because at times NATO did not always tell the truth and
governments had a habit of lying in the past.
Britain’s bipartisan approach to the Kosovo crisis faltered. The Labour
Government responded to Conservative criticism of the government by suggesting
that it undermined the morale of the military and emphasising the importance of
‘resolve and determination’ for seeing the conflict through.103 The Government
opposed a vote in parliament on the war, according to an ‘insider’, because ‘You give
ammunition to the Serbian propaganda machine if you let them say there was
opposition in the British Parliament’.104 Opinion polls indicated that while the
British public supported the NATO bombing raids, there was less support for the
deployment of ground troops.
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
The Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1999.
The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 1999.
The Guardian, 11 May 1999.
John Keegan, ‘Wars are not Won by Spin Doctors’, The Daily Telegraph, 25 April 1999.
Alastair Campbell, ‘J’accuse’, The Guardian, 10 July 1999.
The Guardian, 12 May 1999, see also ‘Blair Accused of Bungling the War’, The Daily Telegraph,
12 May 1999.
The Observer, 18 April, 1999.
118
Paul Dixon
Military families and intervention
The remarkable revolt of the army families over Britain’s presence in Northern
Ireland and Bosnia (and, more limited, evidence of army relatives’ pressure over
Palestine) with its important knock-on effects on recruitment may reflect a growing
trend among the armies of the ‘developed’ world. Not only public opinion, but the
attitude of military relatives (and their impact on public opinion) may be affecting
the ability of the British and other ‘Western’ governments to intervene in the former
Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Women are playing a prominent role in these campaigns—as they did over the Northern Ireland campaign in 1973. There is continuing evidence of the increasing assertiveness of British Army families during the
Falklands War, over the ‘friendly fire’ incident during the Gulf War, the helicopter
crash in Scotland and ‘Gulf War syndrome’.105 The power of military relatives and
the sympathy of public opinion compounds the difficulties of bringing soldiers to
justice for civil rights abuses carried out during ‘peacekeeping’ operations. The
British Army has a poor record in Northern Ireland for punishing its soldiers for
breaking the law.106 Such prosecutions could undermine the morale of the army,
raise the discontent of army relatives and create problems with recruitment.
The influence of military families is not just a British phenomenon. Countries
with conscripts in their armies may be expected to suffer a greater reaction from
parents. This has accelerated the trend to all-volunteer armies. Significantly, it tends
to be mothers and wives who lead the campaigns of relatives. Since at least the
Korean War the US army have recognized the importance of the military family for
retaining its soldiers. During the Vietnam war mothers mobilized against the draft.
When the Italians sent their contribution to the UN force in Mozambique the
Italian Defence Ministry faced a ‘barrage of weeping mothers’. In the Republic of
Ireland army wives mobilized to battle for better pay for their men. In Israel the
parents of soldiers have also mobilized in opposition to the presence of Israeli
Defence Force soldiers in Southern Lebanon. In Chechnya, the mothers of Russian
soldiers have set up a ‘Mothers of Soldiers Committee’ to seek the release of their
sons from Chechen prisons. The New York Times reported that ‘dozens of mothers
have walked onto military bases and taken their sons home without interference
from officers . . . Deserters have not been prosecuted, and senior officers have looked
the other way as mothers retrieved their sons’.107 During the 1994–96 Chechen War
3,500 Russian soldiers were brought home by their parents.108 In Afghanistan ‘There
were also sporadic protests among the civil populace (primarily parents) against
posting of sons and relatives to Afghanistan . . .’109 According to Edward Luttwak,
public opinion in the Soviet Union, in spite of the absence of television coverage of
105
106
107
108
109
Beevor, ‘The Implications of Social Change on the British Army’, British Army Review, 104 (1993),
p. 17.
On Northern Ireland see also A. Jennings, ‘Shoot to Kill: The Final Courts of Justice’, in A. Jennings
(ed.), Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 1988).
See Bourke, An Intimate Histry of Killing, ch. 6 on the difficulties in bringing the perpetrators of the
My Lai massacre and other soldiers to justice. On Northern Ireland see M. Urban, Big Boys’ Rules:
The SAS and the Secret Struggle against the IRA (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), pp. 72–3.
New York Times, 11 February 1995.
The Observer, 10 October 1999.
Ellen Jones, ‘Social Change and Civil-Military Relations’, in T. J. Colton and T. Gustafson (eds.),
Soldiers and the Soviet State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 256.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
119
the Afghan War, constrained the Soviet military’s operations against the guerrillas:
‘. . . the Soviet headquarters was under constant and intense pressure from Moscow
to avoid casualties at all costs because of the outraged reactions of families and
friends’.110
Shooting the messenger? The media, public opinion and intervention
The military have assumed that the public cannot stomach huge casualty figures
particularly if they are given prominent media attention.111 The Vietnam precedent
is used to warn against fighting a war in front of the TV cameras. Some counterinsurgency and ‘terrorism’ specialists argue that terrorism is fuelled by the oxygen of
publicity supplied by the media. The ‘CNN effect’ with its graphic pictures of
humanitarian disaster, it is argued, causes domestic opinion to demand that
‘something must be done’. This leads political elites to intervene militarily but once
casualties are suffered there is public protest. In response to such perceived problems
the military has developed media management systems in order to secure the
support of public opinion.112 The Vietnam myth is a politically useful one to
political and military elites who wish to enhance their power over the conduct of a
conflict by suppressing media scrutiny. Public opinion’s attention can be diverted
from the elite’s conduct of the war and the justice of its cause by blaming or
‘shooting the messenger’ (the media) for bad news from the front. As far as military
casualties are concerned, the implication is that it is the media coverage of those
casualties, rather than the ‘real war’ and the casualties themselves, which is
responsible for the public reaction.
The evidence presented here suggests that the impact of casualties on public
opinion has occurred whether or not those casualties have been broadcast by
television. The reaction of the British public to casualties suffered in Palestine, took
place before the ‘age of television’ and might warn against overestimating the impact
of television, or even the media more generally. The French also became aware that
their Vietnam War was not going well from returning soldiers and other sources.113
The evidence on Vietnam suggests that television was not responsible for the division
of US opinion and as Schlesinger puts it, ‘After 1968, scepticism about the war
began to be evident in US network television due to the changing political context:
divisions in the administration, declining military morale, the spread of the anti-war
movement into mainstream politics’.114 Hallin points out that public support for the
Korean War ‘also dropped as its costs rose, despite the fact that television was in its
infancy, censorship was tight, and the World War II ethic of the journalist serving
110
111
112
113
114
Edward Luttwak, ‘Where Are the Great Powers? At Home with the Kids’, Foreign Affairs,
July/August 1994, p. 24.
P. M. Taylor, ‘War and the Media’, Sandhurst lecture (1995), p. 10. See Schlesinger, et al., 1983 for an
explanation of the conservative tradition of thought which has given rise to such a sensitivity to the
media, ‘If an easily-persuaded, irrational mass audience, highly susceptible to televised propaganda, is
assumed, it becomes logical to suppose that ‘a television programme may be an act of war . . .’,
p. 141.
P. Young and P. Jesser, The Media and the Military (London: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 272–3, 296.
Ibid., p. 61.
P. Schlesinger ‘From Production to Propaganda?’, Media, Culture and Society, 11 (1989), p. 289.
120
Paul Dixon
the war effort remained strong’.115 There was an adverse public reaction in the
USSR to the Afghan War in spite of the absence of television. Media censorship
over Northern Ireland has not been successful in undermining public support for
withdrawal from Northern Ireland. There is also evidence that broadcasting interviews with republican spokespersons increases British hostility to them and sympathy for the security forces. Media coverage can also serve to decrease, at least in
the short term, numbers in favour of withdrawal.116 Morrison and Tumber have
argued: ‘Historically, there is no evidence to suggest that showing the horrors of war
act as a brake on existing wars or indeed make wars in the future less likely . . . In
fact, from historical evidence the counter-hypothesis, that the graphic portrayal of
destruction is more likely to stiffen resolve to fight and foster the revengeful desire to
inflict further destruction, is a stronger candidate for support’.117
There was and is a strong moral case for more ‘muscular’ military intervention in
the former Yugoslavia and other ‘civil wars’. It is arguable that a full and proper
public and democratic debate might have sustained more robust action. The
influence of public opinion is not necessarily malign nor the rule of political elites
benign. The ‘patronising attitudes of the British ruling elite’ towards public opinion
during World War II did not recognise that the public could be trusted to stomach
bad news as well as optimism.118 If ‘robust’ intervention is to be sustained it would
have to be sold to British public opinion for as long as the intervention lasted. This
is less likely to be achieved through short-term manipulation and the ‘rally-roundthe-flag’ effect than more long-term, informed and less restricted public debate.
Censorship, by preventing public debate and scrutiny of the elites, can be counterproductive in war by producing inefficiency, corruption and distrust of the state.
Arguably greater public debate and scrutiny of the US elite’s conduct of its Vietnam
policy may have avoided intervention and the resulting debacle.
The politics of intervention
Right-wing and left-wing ‘robust’ interventionists share an interest in the more
‘muscular’ use of force in military intervention in ‘civil wars’ in the post-Cold War
period. Right-wing interventionists argue for a new imperialism to control barbaric
conflicts and commend British counter-insurgency strategy as a model for peacekeeping. They acknowledge the strain ‘peacekeeping’ places on soldiers and are
resistant to bringing soldiers to justice for human rights abuses. They favour the use
of greater force by soldiers to restore morale and self-respect. According to reports,
British soldiers were involved in fighting with all parties in Yugoslavia and engaged
in reprisal attacks.119 On the thorny issue of civil-military relations, right wing inter115
116
117
118
119
Hallin, The ‘Uncensored War’, p. 213.
P. Schlesinger, et al., Televising Terrorism: Political Violence in Popular Culture (London: Comedia,
1983), p. 131, Miller, Don’t Mention the War, p. 280.
Morrison and Tumber, Journalists at War, p. 347.
P. U. Taylor, British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1999), p. 173.
Ed Vulliamy, ‘Shootbat squaddies’ hidden battles’, The Guardian, 2 April 1996, see also Bellamy,
Knights in White Armour, p. 154.
British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia
121
ventionists favour greater military autonomy and control of intervention, ideally a
military ‘supremo’ on the Templar model.120
Left-wing interventionists often share the right’s faith in British counterinsurgency strategy for dealing with peace enforcement operations. But on the other
hand, they want to make the army more subject to political control, to use greater
force, take more risks for victims, and bring ‘peacekeepers’ to account for human
rights abuses. This would take a revolution in British civil-military relations which
the military hierarchy might well resist. According to Hew Strachan the British
Army has considerable power in the UK and ‘the army’s subordination to parliament has become a constitutional figment rather than a practising reality’.121 There
has been considerable tension in US civil-military relations. The EU’s peace negotiator in Bosnia recalls that the US military was so anxious to leave Bosnia without
casualties that they were able to thwart the policy of the US Government.122
The impact of casualties on British public opinion seems to be increasingly
recognized by defence analysts.123 The fear of casualties has been a significant constraint on the nature of military intervention in the former Yugoslavia. When the US
had no soldiers on the ground it seemed to veer towards more belligerent policies,
endangering French and British ‘peacekeepers’.124 Those states with troops on the
ground appear to have acted with far greater caution than those that did not.125
Contemplating intervention in Kosovo in 1999, European military commanders
from Britain, France and Germany emphasized that they would only intervene on
condition that the US provided a substantial contingent of troops.126 Tony Blair
stated that the armed forces would only be deployed if there were clear military
objectives.127 Michael Ignatieff argues that the NATO powers, wary of the Vietnam
experience, were very reluctant to commit soldiers to a long-term ‘imperial’ policing
role in former Yugoslavia: ‘. . . Only in rare situations can democratic politicians
succeed in creating the consensus for sacrifice which international military operations require among domestic electorates. The authoritarian populists of the
Balkans displayed a shrewd recognition of this Achilles heel of modern postimperial power.’ 128
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
There was tension in civil–military relations over Kosovo with claims from military sources that they
led the war and not the politicians, The Guardian 20 August 1999.
H. Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 265.
Robert Fisk’s review in the Irish Times, 22 January 1999 of Carl Bildt’s, Peace Journey: The Struggle
for Peace in Bosnia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998).
These include Chris Bellamy, Robert Cooper, Chris Dandeker, Denis Duncanson, James Gow, Anatol
Lieven.
The Economist, 25 November 1997.
J. Sharp, Honest Broker or Perfidious Albion?, pp. 37, 40, 63.
The Guardian, 30 January 1999.
The Observer, 15 February 1999.
M. Ignatieff, ‘The Seductiveness of Moral Disgust’, Social Research, 62:1 (Spring 1995), p. 88. For a
similar point see Douglas Hurd, The Search for Peace, pp. 251–3.