Special Reconnaissance Unit

The Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) was an undercover British Army unit which operated in Northern Ireland from 1972.

Formation

According to a top Secret briefing prepared for Prime Minister Harold Wilson in April 1974, the Special Reconnaissance Unit replaced the Military Reaction Force units created in 1971:

In 1972 the operations of the MRF were brought under more centralised control and a higher standard of training achieved by establishing a Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) of 130 all ranks under direct command of HQNI.

Secrecy and cover names

The April 1974 briefing states:

The term "Special Reconnaissance Unit" and the details of its organisation and mode of operations have been kept secret. The SRU operates in Northern Ireland at present under the cover name "Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Teams (Northern Ireland)" - NITAT(NI) - ostensibly the equivalent of genuine NITAT teams in UKLF and BAOR.

The secrecy about the unit's name appears to have been maintained until this briefing was released to the National Archives three decades later. One apparent reference comes in Martin Dillon's 1990 book The Dirty War, which reports that according to Special Branch inspector Jimmy Blair, Special Branch Sergeant Charlie McCormick and informer Anthony O'Doherty both "worked for a special unit of the Army. His use of the words 'special unit' is 'in itself' significant."

Most accounts refer to what is clearly the same unit by a variety of cover names. The clearest account of these is perhaps in Mark Urban's Big Boys' Rules. According to Urban, the NITAT name was replaced in 1978 or 1979 by Intelligence and Security Group (NI) or Int and Sy Group. As with NITAT, there were genuine Int and Sy Groups in England and Germany. In the early 1980s, this name was replaced in turn by 14 Intelligence and Security Company:

The name, usually contracted in speech to 14 Intelligence Company, 14 Company of simply 14 Int, became widely used within the Army. Indeed most people who have worked with the Army in Northern Ireland know it as such and that is why I will use this name, even to describe activities in the mid 1970s before the Army adopted it. This cover name suggested an analogy with 12 Intelligence and Security Company, a unit of report writers, index keepers and computer programmers rather than an organized force of undercover surveillance specialists.

Role

The April 1974 briefing described the SRU's role as follows:

The prime task of the SRU is to conduct covert surveillance of terrorists as a preliminary to an arrest carried out by security forces in uniform. The SRU may also be used to contact and handle agents or informers and for the surveillance and for the surveillance and protection of persons or property under terrorist threat. The SRU works to a great extent on Special Branch information and the Special Branch have a high regard for it.

The SRU was a secretive British Army unit operating in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It had close links to the Special Air Service.

SAS troops were operating in the North two years before their presence was acknowledged by the British government, according to a document uncovered by Justice for the Forgotten and the Pat Finucane Centre.

The 1974 file from the prime minister’s office – found at the National Archives in London in January – sheds new light on the early history of British covert operations during the Troubles...

The newly-discovered files show that the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and the Ministry of Defence were tasked to produce a briefing on the SAS ahead of Wilson’s meeting with Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave on April 5, 1974.

They produced a document entitled Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern Ireland, together with a copy of a statement that had been delivered to the Irish government.

The statement to the Irish said: “The facts are as follows. No SAS unit has been or is stationed in Northern Ireland.”

It added that the policy had been not to use former SAS personnel on plain-clothes duties until two or three years after their service with the regiment had ended, but that in the past three months “use has been made of a number of volunteers, whose experience has been acquired only just beforehand.”

The full extent of the SAS role is only revealed in the briefing itself which states:

“Men who have served with the SAS are serving in the SRU Special Reconnaissance Unit but no SAS units are operating in Northern Ireland.

“One officer and 30 soldiers serving with the SRU since early January are due to resume service with 22 SAS by April 7. Their presence with the SRU went undetected until the Robert Fisk article in The Times on 19 March.”...

The SRU is almost certainly the unit generally known by the cover name 14 Intelligence Company, and the precursor of the new Special Reconnaissance Regiment, which was involved in the London shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, as well as a controversial incident in Basra, only months after becoming operational last year.

The SRU replaced Brigadier Frank Kitson’s MRF, an acronym which stood for Military Reaction Forces, according to the briefing.

It states:

“Plain-clothes teams, initially joint RUC/army patrols, have operated in Northern Ireland since the IRA bombing campaign in Easter 1971.

“Later in 1971 the teams were reformed and expanded as Military Reaction Forces (MRFs) without RUC participation.

“In 1972 the operations of the MRF were brought under more centralised control and a higher standard of training achieved by establishing a Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) of 130 with all ranks under direct command of HQNI.

“The term ‘Special Reconnaissance Unit’ and the details of its organisation and mode of operations have been kept secret.

“The SRU operates in Northern Ireland at present under the cover name “Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Teams (Northern Ireland)” – NITAT(NI) – ostensibly the equivalent of genuine NITAT teams in UKLF [United Kingdom Land Forces] and BAOR [British Army of the Rhine].”

“The prime task of the SRU is to conduct covert surveillance of terrorists as a preliminary to an arrest carried out by security forces in uniform.

“The SRU may also be used to contact and handle agents or informers and for the surveillance and protection of persons or property under terrorist threat.

“The SRU works to a great extent on Special Branch information and the Special Branch have a high regard for it.”

Although the briefing survives in the files from the British prime minister’s office, a copy was also originally held by the NIO.

According to a note left by officials this was destroyed “on the need to know principle” in 1976, some months after the official deployment of the SAS to the North.

The picture revealed by the briefing closely parallels allegations made in the 1980s by former British army major, Fred Holroyd, who has accused the army of murder, kidnapping, collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, and infiltration of the Republic’s security forces during the mid-1970s.

In his report on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings Mr Justice Barron said that, while not all Holroyd’s claims were true, they had contributed to his inquiry’s view on the possibility of collusion between loyalists and the security forces.

Holroyd claimed that an SAS troop led by Captain Julian Ball and Captain Robert Nairac was operating at Castledillon in Co Armagh under two cover names, 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers and NITAT.

In response to a question from Ken Livingstone in 1988, ministers denied that the NITAT unit existed, and claimed that records relating to 4 Field Survey Troop were no longer available.

The emergence, two decades later, of records confirming the existence of a unit corresponding closely to the one described by Holroyd raises two questions: was the British Parliament misled? And if Holroyd was right about this unit’s existence, was he also right about its involvement in collusion?