Colonel Robin Evelegh retired from the British Army in 1977, having commanded his infantry battalion on separate tours at the Springfield Road police station in Belfast in 1972 and 1973. it struck him forcibly at the time that the Government's overall campaign to restore a peacetime level of order in Northern Ireland seemed doomed to failure, although most of the conditions that could be thought necessary for success- skilled and sensitive politicians, devoted civil servants and a disciplined army and police force- were present. This failure, it became clear, arose from faults in the...