The Daily Telegraph's Irish correspondent Toby Harnden's book "Bandit Country" begins with a brief history of South Armagh, the outlying areas of north Louth and north Monaghan . He tries to make the case that basically even pre-partition, the 'Fewes' aka South Armagh was quite a bellicose place for the colonial invaders to attempt to conquer. Harnden cites the geography of the area which historically includes the Gap of the North as being an unwelcoming feature for the colonists to try to manage. He goes on to give more recent examples of the area being an extremely dangerous place for the Royal Irish Constabulary (the RIC was the pre-partition British police force) & the RUC post-partition. Harnden also tries to construct a picture of the area as being particularly 'lawless', prone to violence & a 'place apart' which I think he achieves overall in his book but is it a fair reflection in reality? I would rate his hypothesis as fairly typical of the British colonial mentality when dealing with Irish Republican areas as many commentators & authors fail to really comprehend why the 'Queen's Writ' is not warmly recieved in much of Ireland for very real historical reasons.

Harnden's book begins,once you have dispensed with the fairly predictable intro, with a scenario of a 'deisel mix' (home made) bomb being assembled in a farm outbuilding in South Armagh. Harnden mentions names as well as pseudonyms of people he thinks were involved which have probably been gleaned from court papers & 'security force contacts' he has consulted when researching the book. He is basically constructing a likely scenario here, fleshing it out with minutae to add authenticity & presenting it as fact which I suppose we have to put down to artistic licence with a liberal sprinkling of 'security' based opinion.

Harnden is as obsessed with the alleged main player in South Armagh as his 'security force contacts!' He devotes a whole chapter to Thomas 'Slab' Murphy' & his farm complex! As far as Harnden, the 'Brits' and the RUC/PSNI are concerned 'Slab',his personal associates & his farm are basically the 'epicentre' of all PIRA activity in at least 4 counties, if not the whole of Ireland! Harnden throughout the book chronicles IRA operations mounted against the British including the Docklands bomb & the innovative nature of those actions. He goes on to state the obvious that South Armagh isnt a very safe place for the security forces:

"The very mention of South Armagh can send a shiver down the spine of any one of the tens of thousands of soldiers who have served there since the 'Troubles' began. Branded 'Bandit Country' in 1975 by Merlin Rees, then NI secretary , no other part of the world has been as dangerous for someone wearing the uniform of the British army. Some 123 soldiers have been killed in the S/Armagh area since August 1971, around a fifth of all military casualties in NI , along with 42 RUC officers & 75 civilians . According to RUC statistics , the area within a 10 mile radius of the heart of S/Armagh has seen 1255 bomb attacks and 1158 shooting incidents since the 'troubles' began."

Which is a fair enough statement given the media generated 'notoriety' of South Armagh. The sources Harnden has used have included past serving 'Brits', RUC personnel, ex-spook turned decommissioning official John Grieve & ex-PIRA 'supergrass' Eamonn Collins. Collins was later allegedly murdered on the orders of the South Armagh IRA . Collins had at one time been an IRA intelligence officer in the nearby city of Newry, he agreed to turn 'Queens Evidence' against former comrades when he was arrested following an IRA mortar attack on an RUC barracks in Newry that killed 9 of their members. Collins eventually retracted from his deal with the prosecution & was later aquitted of all the serious charges he was facing because the judge accepted that he had been ill-treated by the RUC during questioning. While on remand in Crumlin Rd prison he became disillusioned with the IRA and on his release he became an outspoken critic of Irish Republicanism and was courted by the British media for his scathing critique of the IRA. Collins then appeared as a witness giving testimony against alleged PIRA comander Thomas 'Slab' Murphy when he was sueing a British newspaper for libel damages. Considering the fact that Collins decided to remain living in a Republican housing estate in Newry, many felt that he was being foolhardy to the point of being suicidal! The proverbial 'dogs on the street' knew it was only a matter of time before he was 'got' by the local IRA and he subsequently met a brutal death in January 1999 while taking out for an early morning walk. Collin's book 'Killing Rage' is a graphic account of his involvement in IRA subversive activities, his later disillusionment and for those interested in the Irish conflict it is well worth a read.
Even Harnden's very partisan sources within the British security forces all feared & grudgingly respected the South Armagh IRA's ingenuity and ruthless determination. This seems to be a major 'theme' throughout this book, if not its general conclusion.

I suspect that when Harnden was writing this book he was mindfull that the market for this kind of 'Troubles non-fiction', would have a slightly narrower readership than 'Troubles Fiction' (see Dr .P. Magee's doctoral thesis: "Gangsters or Guerillas" later released in book form by Beyond the Pale Publications.) Harnden may have realised that if he was to make a fiscal success of his South Armagh work he would have to tap into the Irish book buying publics' general world view and he may rightly have concluded that the Irish readership would not have much of an appetite for the typical Daily Telegraph (Torygraph) tales of 'derring do' by ex-Britsh officer types. I cant help suspecting that perhaps some of his 'security' sources and the average Daily Telegraph reader may have suspected that Harnden had 'gone native' considering his conclusions....

There seems to be no doubt from reading 'Bandit Country' that the average squaddie in the British army or RUC viewed a posting to South Armagh 'back in the day' with at least the same trepidation that current British troops view a posting to Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Many readers may even think that Harnden is 'sympathetic' but in my opinion any 'praise' of the local insurgents is based on a grudging type of respect. One of the liberally served portions of 'backhanded compliments' that one of the British army personnel who Harnden interviewed in 'Bandit Country' gives to the local IRA volunteers is that he says that many of the local IRA operators would have made excellent NCO's in their regiment!
One of the 'operations' by the S/Armagh Brigade that gets mentioned by Harnden & his British army interviewees that aptly testifies to the ingenuity & resourcefullness of the South Armagh IRA is an operation that involved a Ford Transit van containing a large bomb sent running on nearby railway lines towards a British army base's sanger! Harnden tells of a Ford Transit van that was fitted with railway carriage wheels, lifted onto the railway tracks near Kilnasaggart bridge by a JCB mechanical digger & fitted with a red railway light & of course, a large bomb to fit snuggly in the back! The Transit Van-cum-train was then set trundling along the tracks towards the target which was a British army base close to the railway line!

When Harnden's book first came out I would have been in the area regularly through work & Harnden's demonising description of the average South Armagh republican as being a cunning bloodthirsty almost fratricidal killing machine is a nonsense. Basically, if you dont do them any harm they wont do you any harm, same as anywhere else really & the people are as welcoming & hospitable as any in Ireland. Though, like any other republican area in the North of Ireland, if someone was to arrive in it with an agenda of mischief making or asking probing questions about locals they would be most certainly shunned & made very 'unwelcome' by the local populace.
Its a really beautiful part of the world with the highest arable land in Ireland. The British army and the RUC would have been totally blanked by the entire population as if they did not exist(well except when they were attacking them I suppose!) Harnden provides numerous accounts throughout his book from former serving members of the security forces who relate that because of the level of threat from the IRA in South Armagh patrols they only leave the likes of Crossmaglen barracks by helicopter and even the rubbish bins had to be emptied by the same method! I can remember in the mid-1990's the local television station UTV screened a series of PR based documentaries on the role of the RUC, the North's paramilitary police force, trying to show a 'human face' to the conflict (or as some would say, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!) In one episode, they featured the RUC in Crossmaglen & try as hard as they could they didnt get any foootage of the local populace even breaking breath to them nor was any crime ever actually reported to them ! And despite a lot of unrealistically optimistic talk from the Crossmaglen cop(s) the viewer got the distinct impression that the RUC in Crossmaglen never really crossed the door of the barracks, no-one rang them to report anything, no-one talked to them (except the British army protecting them in their barracks I suppose) and they were made as welcome as a dose of scabies !

With Irish 'Troubles' related non-fiction there is a huge domestic readership (including of course the Irish diaspora.) The readership or target market would be a much more politically sophisticated one & unlikely to accept simplex descriptions of the Irish insurgents as being bloodthirsty savages. I therefore suspect that Harnden knew that if his book was to be well recieved (& sell) he would have to structure his book & come to more balanced conclusions on Irish Republicans overall.
Having said that , it is not a criticism of Harndon or his methodology, conclusions etc, far from it, just my opinion on how authors & publishing decisions are market driven to a significant degree.

Harnden's 'Bandit Country' is a very readable account considering that many English journalists in the past such as Gerald Seymour (Harry's Game etc) have chosen to write Irish conflict related material in the sub-genre known as 'Troubles Fiction' plus they are rarely sympathetic or give even grudging respect to Irish Republicans. For example, their fictional accounts are littered with that frequently used hyper-cliched description of Republicans as "ferret faced" or "pinched faced" and they invariably portray the ever present British officer type 'hero' as honourable, honest & brave while Republicans (as well as being attributed with rodent like physiogamies) are usually portrayed as squalid, vicious, sociopathic etc. The readership of these 'Trouble Fiction' works would be less politically sophisticated than the average reader of 'Bandit Country' & there would be a 'broader' market for that kind of Irish conflict/espionage based pot boilers. They are popular 'airport' books, thriller readers buy them who would not neccessarily be political or au fait with the Irish 'Troubles.' It is my understanding that Harnden's book is used frequently by journalists covering Irish affairs both domestic and overseas.
"Bandit Country" has become a bookcase essential for anyone with an interest in the centuries old Anglo-Irish conflict or even those who have an interest in counter-insurgency matters in general. Harnden's work is well researched and at 400+ pages in the hardback edition it should keep the reader interested for a day or two. The softback edition published by Hodder & Stoughton retails at under a £tenner, so there really is plenty of bang for your buck! I would recommend this book and it would definitely make my top 40 of Irish conflict related literature

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