Ulster

This is a revised and extended version of two remarkable articles on Ulster which were published in the Sunday Times in November 1971. The report, written by the famous Insight team, was internationally acclaimed and the entire text was read into the United States Congressional Record as 'an extremely valuable record of the development of the tragedy in Ulster'. The team spent four months on intensive investigation and interviewed generals, civil servants, IRA leaders and ordinary people. From the first stirrings of the Civil Rights protest to the rebirth of the IRA and its bloody aftermath, their story dispassionately follows the sequence of events in Ulster and fearlessly exposes the facts of discrimination against Catholics and the ill-defined motives of the Provisional IRA. Apart from details of the 'hooding' techniques used in interrogation - and first revealed by Insight - many new facts emerge in this Penguin Special, which contains additional material about the reform programme, the role of Whitehall, the effects of internment and the Compton report. But its main purpose is to analyse how social, military and political pressures have built up the most violent post-war crisis in Britain.