Plans for a drastic extension of shoot-to-kill powers for British forces in the North in 1973 are revealed for the first time in secret papers released in London yesterday.
The proposed "Operation Folklore" anticipated a worst-case scenario in which the British authorities would be forced to impose control on Northern Ireland through an intensive military assault.
The legal powers necessary for putting the operation into effect would have included explicitly permitting British soldiers to shoot Northern Ireland citizens even in the absence of an immediate threat to soldiers' lives.
Military exemption from due process was intended to cover opening fire without warning on any person carrying firearms. But it would also cover opening fire on any person who failed to halt when challenged during a curfew, or on any person who failed to halt when challenged in an area designated as "special" by the General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland.
Correspondence from the Ministry of Defence also terms the "special areas" as "hard areas" - presumably republican heartlands such as Andersonstown or Ballymurphy - unless, of course, these were already under curfew. A hand-written note by a Northern Ireland Office official commented: "We would just have to ignore protestations from the Republic."
Plans for Operation Folklore were laid in the wake of Operation Motorman which secured the British army's occupation of republican strongholds in Belfast and Derry in 1972. "We feel strongly that in the wholly abnormal situation envisaged, it would be essential for a soldier to be able to open fire without fear of legal penalty in certain circumstances," Mr Anthony Stephens, head of a defence secretariat at the Ministry of Defence, wrote on November 16th.
Indemnifying British soldiers from prosecution had been under consideration by civil servants at the Northern Ireland Office since the summer of 1972. But for the purposes of Operation Folklore, an Act of Indemnity was deemed insufficient. The new legal powers required by the British forces were to be introduced either by a new act, or by piecemeal extension of the powers available under the recent Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act.
A drastic extension of existing powers of arrest, search and detention was also envisaged and all necessary measures would, in extremis, be introduced "whatever the attitude of the government of the Republic".