Perimeter (codeword)
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This article is part of SpinWatch's Northern Ireland Portal. |
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- Not to be confused with Perimeter 81, an Israeli network-security company.
PERIMETER was a British government codeword used as a handling marking on official papers about Northern Ireland from 1969. It was not an organisation or a unit. The marking was introduced so that documents bearing it, initially intelligence material, would be kept from the Government of Northern Ireland at Stormont.[1]
Introduction of the codeword
A confidential Ministry of Defence minute of 17 November 1969, signed by H. E. Davies as D of HQ Sy (MOD), circulated instructions produced by the Cabinet Office on the use of the codeword. The minute stated that “Perimeter” had been “introduced as a marking to be used on documents to be kept from the Government of Northern Ireland”. It added that the codeword was already in use, having been endorsed by the Joint Intelligence Committee “since the information concerned was initially intelligence material”.[1]
Davies did not expect the marking to be used very often. It was intended to protect only “those papers which could possibly be passed to Northern Ireland authorities”, and would not be used, for example, on Cabinet papers or on Ministry of Defence committee papers. After consultation with the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Head of DS6 and the Secretary of the Defence Intelligence Staff, circulation of the instructions was restricted to the addressees of the minute, who were to decide which members of their staffs needed to know of the procedure.[1]
Use on psychological operations papers
The marking appears on a paper headed “Psychological Operations in Northern Ireland”, reference NISC 13/9 and dated 31 December 1970. Its first page is classified SECRET, with PERIMETER written in by hand beside the classification at the head and foot of the page. The paper considered what psychological operations should be conducted in Northern Ireland with the resources available to the Army.[2] Bradshaw and Deane reproduce the page as Figure 2 and cite TNA: CJ 4/4248, but their caption describes a Home Office minute of 22 September 1969 enclosing a memo on the Northern Ireland information problem; the reproduced document itself carries the 31 December 1970 date.[2]
In or about September 1971 the Army's Information Liaison Department at Headquarters Northern Ireland was replaced by the Information Policy Unit, headed by Colonel Maurice Tugwell.[3]
The Bradshaw and Deane study
Tancred Bradshaw and Shelley Deane take the codeword for the title of their 2025 study of British propaganda in Northern Ireland between about 1969 and 1982, “A Propaganda Failure in the Perimeter”. They reproduce the Davies minute as their first figure. The same TNA file, DEFE 31/28, is also the source they give for an extract headed “Improvement of Intelligence Supply”, concerning the reorganisation of RUC Special Branch; the visible classification on that extract is Confidential, not PERIMETER.[4] Their study also reproduces Information Research Department papers from 1972 and 1974.[5]
See also
- Psyops
- Information Policy Unit
- Information Research Department
- Northern Ireland Information Service
- RUC Special Branch
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 H. E. Davies, “Codeword ‘PERIMETER’”, minute, Ministry of Defence, ref. 19/601/1/2, 17 November 1969, The National Archives (TNA): DEFE 31/28; reproduced as Figure 1 in Tancred Bradshaw and Shelley Deane, A Propaganda Failure in the Perimeter: The British in Northern Ireland, c. 1969–82, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2 (ARINS, 2025).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Tancred Bradshaw and Shelley Deane, A Propaganda Failure in the Perimeter: The British in Northern Ireland, c. 1969–82, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2 (ARINS, 2025), Figure 2; TNA: CJ 4/4248, as cited for Figure 2 by Bradshaw and Deane.
- ↑ Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Volume IX, 15 June 2010, chapter 178, paras 178.6–178.7.
- ↑ Tancred Bradshaw and Shelley Deane, A Propaganda Failure in the Perimeter: The British in Northern Ireland, c. 1969–82, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2 (ARINS, 2025), Figures 1 and 3; TNA: DEFE 31/28.
- ↑ Tancred Bradshaw and Shelley Deane, A Propaganda Failure in the Perimeter: The British in Northern Ireland, c. 1969–82, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2 (ARINS, 2025), Figures 4 and 6; TNA: FCO 168/8290 and FCO 168/5354.