Introduction

The previous chapter examined British counter-terrorism policies and practices in Northern Ireland without considering the accusation, often levelled against the British government by the nationalist community, that some of these policies and practices individually, or all of them collectively, constitute terrorism – that is, state terrorism. It is just as frequently assumed that if terrorism is morally wrong, then terrorism practised by the state is necessarily even worse. To evaluate this accusation of state terrorism and the moral judgement commonly attached to it, reasonable answers must be given to three fundamental questions: (1) What is ‘state terrorism’? (2) To what extent has the British government engaged in state terrorism in Northern Ireland? (3) Is state terrorism necessarily morally worse than terrorism practised by non-state agents? Answering each of these questions will require examining a number of subsidiary issues as well, including the vexed question of whether, or to what extent, loyalist terrorism should be regarded as state-terrorism-by-proxy. I will argue that state terrorism has occurred in Northern Ireland, but there is little evidence to suggest state terrorism has been pursued as a policy.