Maurice Tugwell

Information Policy

As Aly Renwick puts it:

In Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden inquisitive journalists had been kept away from the action, but this was not always possible now. In Northern Ireland, reporters appeared to be everywhere, and the army quickly realised that an ‘information policy’ was required. The writer Liz Curtis, in her book Ireland - The Propaganda War, detailed the build up of Army public relations in Northern Ireland:

In September 1971, soon after the start of internment, the army reorganised its information service in the North, setting up an ‘Information Policy’ department. This was initially headed by paratroop Colonel Maurice Tugwell, whose title was Colonel General Staff (Information Policy). Tugwell had previously been an intelligence officer in Palestine, and had also served in Malaya, Cyprus, Arabia and Kenya.

... Tugwell’s job as ‘Information Policy’ chief was, ... described [as] ... ‘not merely to react to the media - or to events - but to take a positive initiative in presenting the news to the best advantage for the security forces’.

... The army began training officers in how to be interviewed on television, and by the end of 1971 more than 200 officers had been through courses at the Army School of Instructional Technology at Beaconsfield. Here they were taught basic lore, such as always to look at the interviewer to give the impression of sincerity, and told how to answer ‘typical’ TV questions.[31]

'Bloody sunday' propagandist

On Monday, former British Army intelligence officer Maurice Tugwell, formerly a Colonel in the Information Policy unit admitted that the claims he made in an interview after Bloody Sunday that four of those killed were on a wanted list of IRA men were wrong. He said he had made the claims after "oral" intelligence checks.

He told the inquiry that "Later, I am not sure when, I discovered that the allegation that four men were on a wanted list could not be sustained." It was, he said, "an honest mistake".

During the radio interview Tugwell had claimed that, "One of the dead men was found in a car ... with four nail bombs in his pockets ... And of the others who are dead in the hospital, preliminary investigations show that four of them at least are on the wanted list."

"We have sent our investigators to the hospital and it is rather interesting that two of the wounded men, with gunshot wounds, have admitted that they were out on the streets armed with guns."

Speaking about the events of Bloody Sunday itself, at which he had in fact been present taking photographs of the marchers, Tugwell had told the interviewer that "Whilst they [the Paras] were on that operation, they came under fire, mainly from the area of the Rossville Flats, and there were altogether 25 shooting engagements, in 10 of which they could not identify the source of the fire and they did not fire back at all. In the other 15 they did identify and they fired back in all of them."

"On one occasion the soldier, who was armed with a riot gun which only fired rubber bullets, found himself facing a gunman with a pistol who fired two shots at him. All the bloke could do was to fire back with rubber bullets and then beat it. But on all the other occasions they fired back with live ammunition." All of this information, Tugwell admitted, came from 1 Para.

Affiliations

• Parachute Regiment
• Information Policy

Contact, References and Resources

Resources

• Maurice Tugwell, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry