THE ARCHITECT of Britain’s terror campaign in the North, General Frank Kitson died on 2 January without ever facing justice.

Kitson made a name for himself in Britain’s receding colonial Empire, learning and carrying out tactics which he would later use in the North of Ireland, against the Mau Mau in Kenya and Communists in what was then British Malaya.

His two books, ‘Gangs and Counter-gangs’ and ‘Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping’ formed the bulk of his military thinking which he applied to the North of Ireland through the use of black propaganda, destruction of community infrastructure and colluding with loyalist paramilitaries.

On his arrival in 1970, Kitson’s presence and tactics led to the bloodiest years of the Troubles. Kitson was in overall command of 1 Para who carried out both the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacres. 1 Para also went by another nickname, which was ‘Kitson’s Private Army’.

Kitson was also the mastermind behind the establishment of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), a covert group of British soldiers who operated in plainclothes and used weaponry used by paramilitaries. As well as carrying out surveillance the MRF also routinely carried out sectarian drive-by shootings on Catholics.

In 1978 a former member of the MRF described the group's activities: "Our role was repression through fear, terror and violence… our unit had been trained to use weapons favoured by the IRA."

The MRF’s actions have been heavily linked to several atrocities including the McGurk’s Bar bombing, the shootings of Gerry and John Conway on the Whiterock Road in April 1972; the shooting of seven men in Andersonstown in two separate incidents in May 1972 in which Patrick McVeigh was killed; the shooting of four men on the Glen Road a month later; the killing of Jean Smyth-Campbell, the murder of Daniel Rooney in September 1972 and instigating the massacre of the New Lodge Six through the drive-by shooting of James Sloan and James McCann in February 1973.

The unit’s activities were discovered by the IRA in September 1972 after two Volunteers were outed as informants. A subsequent operation saw the IRA eliminate and shut down two undercover MRF front businesses which included a laundry and a massage parlour.

In June 1982 the Andersonstown News reported on Kitson’s background and how his methods in Britain’s former colonies were being used on the streets of the North. "In the Six Counties Kitson was responsible for the physical and psychological torture inflicted on the ‘guinea pig’ [his term] internees… he also pioneered the early MRF units and the SAS murder squads… In Kenya Kitson recruited gangsters and criminals to penetrate the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau), he then used these gangs to commit atrocities in order to discredit the guerrilla fighters."

As well as being an architect for mayhem and murder on the streets, Kitson’s policies also had a lasting affect on the architecture of many neighbourhoods and communities in Belfast, most notably in the Lower Falls and in Twinbrook where the British military forced the Housing Executive to construct estates in ‘T-Shapes’. 

The logic being that in the event of civil unrest security forces would only have to close three exit points to completely seal off an estate. It is this same policy which today leads to many of the parking and accessibility issues facing many who live in these areas.

Also in the field of architecture, Kitson pioneered and enthusiastically promoted the use of extreme house searches which often left families homeless owing to the sheer destruction caused. It was a tactic he had previously used in assaults on EOKA guerrillas fighting against British rule in Cyprus.

WRECKED: A 1988 article in the Andersonstown News shows the methods pioneered by Frank Kitson in Cyprus being used in Belfast
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WRECKED: A 1988 article in the Andersonstown News shows the methods pioneered by Frank Kitson in Cyprus being used in Belfast

In 2015 Relatives for Justice travelled to London to personally serve a writ against Frank Kitson after it emerged he was involved in directing a UDA murder gang led by Albert ‘Ginger’ Baker. Baker’s gang, which murdered 22 innocent Catholics including eight in ‘romper room’ torture killings, was responsible for a grenade attack on a minibus full of Catholic workmen, killing Andersonstown father of five Patrick Eugene Heenan who sacrificed his life by jumping on the grenade, shielding the other workmen on board.

Just a few months after the grenade attack, in May 1973 Baker walked into a police station in Wiltshire, England, and confessed to the killing of Patrick and three other murders.

ATTACK: Patrick Heenan sacrificed his life to save other workmen when the minibus he was on was attacked by the UDA who threw a grenade inside
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ATTACK: Patrick Heenan sacrificed his life to save other workmen when the minibus he was on was attacked by the UDA who threw a grenade inside

Baker was convicted in one of the first ‘supergrass’ trials and in subsequent prison visits, Baker spoke at length to Fr Denis Faul and Fr Raymond Murray of the Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) revealing his UDA activities and close links to British Military Intelligence and Frank Kitson.

Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice said of Kitson’s passing, "In 2015 the family of Patrick Heenan served a writ on him for his policy development and tactics. The deliberately slow legal system of impunity has meant he did not see final justice in a court but the tenacity of Mary Heenan and families like hers ensured his deplorable actions and their victims will never be forgotten.”

Mark continued: “Kitson was the architect of the framework which led to collusion, shoot-to-kill and all the special measures he put in place such as forcing economic deprivation, sanctions against communities, ‘poisoning the well’ (policy used most notably in the aftermath of the McGurk’s bombing in which Kitson ordered the bombing be reported as an IRA ‘own goal’). 

“Kitson was also involved in destroying the infrastructure of communities as well as the more frontline methods such as killing people.”