Paper On Sunday morning, 4 June 1922, detachments of the British Army, including two companies each from 1st Battalion., Lincolnshire Regiment and 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment supported by a section of howitzers, moved quickly to occupy the Donegal village of Pettigo and the surrounding area. The operation – called “Basil” – was an entirely military affair, aside from some borrowed Ulster Special Constabulary lorries and drivers. Over the next seven months units of the British Army, aided by a local civilian committee, established and administered a military zone in the Pettigo area. It marked the only occasion since the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty when part of the Irish state was occupied - without the consent of the Irish government - by an external power. This paper argues that the British occupation in Donegal could have been much more extensive if it were not for the intervention of the cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George to curb more ambitious military plans and the subsequent tactful negotiations on the part of the British officer commanding the Pettigo garrison and a liaison officer of the National Army appointed by the Free State government.

 

Dr Edward Burke is an Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Nottingham specialising in insurgency, terrorism and political violence. In 2018, he published Army of Tribes; British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland (Liverpool University Press). In 2020, he was awarded a two-year AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK) early career fellowship to investigate patterns of political violence in rural Ulster since 1920. Edward is a regular media commentator on British foreign policy, security and the EU. He has been interviewed by the BBC, RTE, the Financial Times, The Irish Times and The Economist. He has published opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Irish Times. Edward has been invited as an expert witness to the Houses of Parliament, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the European Parliament.