Born March 21st, 1944
Died October 15th, 2024
Mike Jackson, who has died aged 80, gained many honours and plaudits in his British army career of more than four decades. For many in Ireland, however, he will be associated with the Parachute Regiment killings on Bloody Sunday in Derry on January 30th, 1972, and the killings at Ballymurphy in west Belfast in August the previous year by the same regiment.
Jackson was a captain on the ground when Col Derek Wilford gave the order for the paratroopers to charge into the Bogside in Derry, a decision that resulted in 13 innocent civil rights demonstrators being shot dead on the day, and a 14th man dying some months later.
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Jackson told the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday that as he “sprinted across the waste ground, I had an absolutely firm impression that I was being shot at ... What I thought was: ‘Some bugger is firing at me’.”
Later when recalled to the inquiry to give evidence about documents called the “shot list” that he had compiled featuring explanations soldiers gave for why they had fired, he denied that the list was designed to “sanitise” the actions of the paratroopers. Lord Saville accepted Jackson’s evidence about the list and found “nothing sinister in the fact that it did not include details such as the names of the soldiers and the number of rounds fired”.
In his 2007 memoir, Soldier, Jackson wrote, “I hated the thought that our soldiers might have lost control ... I found it difficult to accept that there could have been any mass breach of discipline.”
Jackson nonetheless accepted Saville’s damning 2010 report of the soldiers’ conduct on Bloody Sunday and his exoneration of all those killed and injured. He joined in the then British prime minister David Cameron’s apology to the victims.
Anybody who loses their lives as a result of violent conflict is also a tragedy. I too have lost friends. So be it
— Jackson on the Ballymurphy massacre
Similarly, Jackson had an indirect role in the killings in west Belfast in August 1971, which became known as the Ballymurphy massacre.
The shootings happened during Operation Demetrius, the introduction of internment without trial. Over three days from August 11th to 13th, 10 people including a priest who went to the aid of one of victims and a 50-year-old mother of eight children were shot dead. An 11th victim, Paddy McCarthy, died from a heart attack after a soldier allegedly put an empty gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
In 2019 Jackson said during an inquest into the killings that he probably was the unnamed British army captain who told the Belfast Telegraph in 1971 that the first two fatalities of the shootings were “gunmen”, adding that he was probably repeating information from fellow soldiers. “In retrospect, of course I should have said ‘alleged’,” he said.
That same inquest in 2021 found that all those killed were innocent and that the killings were “without justification”.
Responding to his death, the Ballymurphy families said Jackson had started a “narrative that all those killed in Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday were gunmen” and had created a “lie that stayed with the Ballymurphy Massacre victims for over 50 years”.
In 2021 the UK supreme court ruled that the treatment meted out to the 14 “Hooded Men” during interrogation by the police and British army in 1971 would be characterised as torture by today’s standards. They were subjected to the so-called five techniques: hooding, prolonged wall-standing, subjection to white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and drink. In a BBC documentary two years later Jackson questioned “whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights should or should not be illegal”.
“This question, can non-violent ill-treatment equal torture, is very philosophical as well as legal,” he said. “You might be better asking a bishop on such matters.”
He described the Ballymurphy killings as a “hugely regrettable” tragedy. “But I would also say that anybody who loses their lives as a result of violent conflict is also a tragedy. I too have lost friends. So be it.”
That was probably a reference to the August 1979 Warrenpoint ambush known as the Narrow Water Massacre, in which 18 British paratroopers were killed and more than 20 seriously injured in a double-bombing by the IRA. He was incident commander in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, and one of his tasks was to identify the remains of his close friend, Maj Peter Fursman. He said he had never witnessed such “carnage”.
“It greatly disturbed me. Still does,” he said. “Once you’ve seen such appalling sights you can’t close your mind to them.”
Whatever about his reputation in Ireland he became probably Britain’s best-known post-second world War officer. With his craggy, lived-in face emphasised by heavy bags under his eyes he was known affectionately to his soldiers as Darth Vader or the Prince of Darkness and dubbed “Macho Jacko” by the tabloids. Apart from three tours in Northern Ireland he served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, although he missed out on duty during the Falklands War, instead working in London in military intelligence.
He became the professional head of the British army, a post he held during the invasion of Iraq
He was born into a military family in Sheffield in 1944. He attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and aged 19 joined the army’s Intelligence Corps, with some of his duties relating to the Cold War, his competence here aided by a degree in Russian he subsequently took at Birmingham University. He transferred to the Parachute Regiment in 1970.
In the 1990s he had senior roles with Nato during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, once describing the Serbian commander Ratko Mladić as “a brutal, boastful and manipulative thug”.
In 1999 he was appointed commander of Nato’s rapid reaction force in Kosovo. It resulted in a famous clash with the US general Wesley Clark, who was his superior. Clark ordered Jackson to block the airport runway in the Kosovan capital of Pristina to prevent the arrival of Russian troops being flown in to help keep the peace, although there was a suspicion this was an attempt by the then Russian leader Boris Yeltsin to assist the Serbs.
Jackson refused the order saying, “Sir, I am a three- star general, you can’t give me orders like this. I have my own judgment of the situation and I believe this order is outside our mandate.” He also said, “I’m not going to start the third World War for you.”
Jackson was supported by the British government and Clark backed down.
Like his hero, the Duke of Wellington, he achieved the top military rank, rising to commander-in-chief, land forces in 2000 and three years later appointed chief of the general staff, the professional head of the British army, a post he held during the invasion of Iraq. Here he was critical of the lack of planning for dealing with the aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
He also ordered an investigation into claims of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, acknowledging that while such allegations were damaging, covering them up would be more harmful to the British army.
He retired in 2006 but continued to speak regularly on military matters.
He married Jennifer Savery in 1966. They had two children, Amanda and Mark. After their divorce he married Sarah Coombe in 1985. They had a son, Tom.