Banner was a sign of Troubles ahead
You may not have heard of Operation Banner, which began 50 years ago this week.
But it kicked off 38 years of continuous deployment, making it the longest in the British Army’s history.
Banner was the operational name for British armed forces operations in Northern Ireland and, according to the Ministry of Defence, it cost the lives of 1,441 service personnel, 722 of whom were killed in paramilitary attacks, with a further 6,116 wounded.
It’s also estimated that around 100 armed forces personnel committed suicide during the operation or shortly afterwards, while the military killed 307 people, of whom just over half were civilians.
Banner lasted from 1969 until midnight on July 31, 2007, when it was replaced by Operation Helvetic which saw fewer personnel deployed and only in training, bomb disposal and extreme public disorder roles.
According to an internal document released that year, the Army failed to defeat the Provisional IRA but made it impossible for them to win by violence.
The British forces’ participation in what became known as the Troubles began on August 14, 1969, when the authorities in Northern Ireland requested a peacekeeping force in response to the political and
sectarian rioting that had broken out that month.
Initially it was to prevent further loyalist attacks on Catholic communities in the wake of unionist attacks on nationalists.
This meant Catholic communities initially welcomed the soldiers, but hostility quickly increased after incidents such as Bloody Sunday.
Operation Banner saw more than 300,000 service men and women deployed over the course of its almost four decades, and at the peak of the operation in the early 1970s about 27,000 British troops were in the province.
The original peacekeeping role evolved into supporting the Royal Ulster Constabulary – and its successor the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
In 1970 the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) formed, tasked with “the defence of life or property in Northern Ireland against armed attack or sabotage”, but unlike troops deployed from Great Britain they were never used for riot control.
Quickly becoming the largest infantry regiment in the Army, it was mainly formed of part-time volunteers but the UDR was always controversial with some members involved in sectarian killings.
After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Operation Banner was gradually scaled down as patrols were suspended, barracks closed and cross-border roads were reopened.
Today, troop levels are kept at about 5,000.