Bandit Country - The IRA and South Armagh

**Toby Harnden** (0:00)
But this was, in name, part of the United Kingdom, but it just felt like a place that was, in one way, beautiful and benign, but I knew all the stuff that had gone on there, and that it was an IRA stronghold, and it was just completely different.

**Ian Sanders** (0:17)
During the Cold War, British soldiers fought an insurgent war against the Provisional IRA in their own country. Probably the toughest location was South Armagh, where they had to travel by helicopter while watchtowers scanned fields, and an IRA sniper could strike without warning. In this episode, journalist and Royal Navy officer Toby Harnden takes us inside his book Bandit Country, which describes the borderland of South Armagh, where the Provisional IRA fought one of its most formidable campaigns. Harnden recalls arriving during the uneasy peace of 1996, meeting IRA members and security personnel, and learning how family ties, local knowledge and the Irish border made the South Armagh Brigade unusually effective. We explore its sniper teams, homemade mortars, intelligence networks, the massive London and Manchester attacks, Libyan weapons and attempts to bring down British helicopters.
I'm delighted to welcome Toby Harnden to our Cold War Conversation.

**Toby Harnden** (1:22)
Most of the story of the Troubles happened against the backdrop of the Cold War. It was going on at the same time. Now, obviously, Cold War ended at the end of the 80s. So by the time I was in Northern Ireland, which was 96, it was over.
I grew up with the Greenham Common and Mutually Assured Destruction and all that. Many of the soldiers that served in South Armagh had been based in Germany and were the Cold War troops.
I had grown up in Manchester, including many visits to Manchester Museum, by the way. And I was a new journalist. I spent 10 years in the Royal Navy, which was unusual entree into journalism. I had been to Northern Ireland once, but it was just a sort of senior officer's visit where I was the bag carrier and I was following him around. But I was fascinated by the place. I had grown up in a kind of Irish Catholic environment. If you like in Manchester, lots of kids, parents were Irish at school, so I was always interested in Ireland. But when I got there, it felt familiar. Belfast felt familiar. It felt a little bit like Manchester in the 70s. So it was 20 years behind. It had that sort of grim, gritty feel to it. So it didn't feel alien. Everybody spoke English and obviously some Irish people spoke Irish, but very few.
So it wasn't like being in the Middle East where I went to subsequently. And I guess I was innocent, naive, whatever you think. I just thought if something goes bang, I'm going to go there. If there's somebody to talk to, I'm going to knock on the door. And I'm just going to present myself as a reporter and just go to things. And it was surprising. Maybe a lot of journalists were jaded, but a lot of people didn't do that. So often I would be the only person at the scene of a bomb, for instance, late at night or a shooting. And I start talking to a police officer or sometimes the British military, and I'd always get something useful and make some kind of useful contact. And with South Armagh, I wasn't naive to the extent that I was unaware of dangers. I was very careful about it in some ways. I knew what had happened to Robert Nyarack, who's a Grenadier Guards officer who disappeared, body still not found in 1977 And I had some good advice from people, including no matter how comfortable you feel, always have a plan, always know where your car is, always have your car key ready in your pocket, and be ready to leave very quickly. And I'd also seen the footage of the corporals in 1988, who were killed by a mob and executed by the IRA during an IRA funeral. So I could see how mobs work and how things go badly wrong. Somebody gave me the very good advice to never pretend to be something or somebody that I wasn't. Never skulk in the background and think I could merge in. And South Armagh is a very rural place. If you're from the next village, you're going to be noticed, never mind some English reporter. I made sure to always be very straightforward, to say who I was, to go to the front and shake the hand of the Sinn Fein person or whatever, and be really upfront about what I was doing, which was that I was researching a book on South Armagh, and I got very into their history. I'm fascinated by history anyway, and history of South Armagh is really fascinating.