Bunch of Five

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Kitson proposed a ‘chain reaction system’ of intelligence-gathering whereby the accumulation of masses of low-grade ‘background intelligence’ would generate ‘contact information’, which would then expose the enemy for elimination. An estimated 90,000 Kenyans were slaughtered in the Kikuyu uprising while just over a thousand were hanged on a portable gibbet. He is not mentioned in most of the British studies of the Northern Ireland conflict, even those that have a security focus. 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.

Here in the north, he invested heavily in the Parachute Regiment as the crack troops of the empire and, in doing so, was responsible for the Ballymurphy Massacre and Bloody Sunday and the torture of innocent people in RUC and British army barracks. Many of those paramilitary police then went to Palestine to serve in the British police there and were involved in repressing the Arab Revolt of 1936.

Jackson was in command of the Paratroop Regiment at the time of Bloody Sunday in Derry on 31 January 1972, when they shot 14 unarmed civilian demonstrators dead. Kitson joined the British Army as a second lieutenant on an emergency commission in the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own) on 23 February 1946. He was promoted major on 15 December 1960, [8] brevet lieutenant-colonel on 1 July 1964, [9] and to the substantive rank on 31 December 1966.

He became the architect of a clandestine war, waged against Nationalists while ignoring Loyalist atrocities. Such abuses were not merely low-level tactical excesses by undisciplined and racist troops but were institutional, systematic, and approved or covered up at the highest levels. Mr Doherty, whose father was killed on Bloody Sunday, said: "Kitson, in his blind pursuit of defending the crown’s interests, made no distinction between civilian and combatant as he honed his skills in applying torture, internment and death from Kenya, to Aden and then to Ireland.For example, of the overall commanders in 1970–2, the GOCs, Sir Ian Freeland and General Harry Tuzo, were veterans of counterinsurgency in Cyprus and Borneo (Brunei) respectively. The notorious Military Reaction Force (MRF), which has been accused of being behind a string of illegal shootings of Catholic teenagers in the early 1970s, was based at Kitson’s headquarters outside Belfast. Indeed, after Bloody Sunday and the murder of 14 innocent men and boys, he berated Colonel Derek Wilford for not going far enough into the Bogside, presumably to murder more. To term a 30-year-long war that ended in military stalemate and political compromise a ‘success’ is by any benchmark delusional.

Although he reached the top of the military greasy pole and a state memorial in his honour is to be held in due course, could he have avoided hearing the words of King Charles on a recent visit to Kenya? Kitson’s promotion in the 1980s (he was appointed commander-in-chief of UK Land Forces in 1982) is indicative of the priorities of Thatcher’s revolution. During this time”, according to the The Guardian, “his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists. Charles Haughey, Minister for Finance, a captain in Irish military intelligence along with two others were put on trial. To place Bloody Sunday in its proper context, we also need to look at what British officials were up to elsewhere.The Para were just jolly good and there was no conceivable way you could overlook the fact that they got there very quickly, they were ready to go at the drop of a hat and they were experienced," he said. This assumption has been replicated in the ‘Petraeus doctrine’ with disastrous outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan.