CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

suggestions of an impact on operational effectiveness. Hugh Bicheno ascribes to
concern for his legal position the reluctance of Henry Clinton, Commanding British
forces in America some time after the Boston incident, to take firm action against the
rebels:
…. for as long as the conflict was regarded as a rebellion, and not a declared war,
recent legal precedents were not such as to encourage an Army officer to take
drastic action. The soldiers who fired on the Boston mob in 1770 had been put on
trial for their lives, and there had been other examples in Britain of the same
happening to officers who acted to quell disturbances without a magistrate, and even
of magistrates for having authorized the use of deadly force. For as long as his
superiors chose not to take the responsibility on their shoulders in formal written
orders, Clinton was wise to refrain from outright counter-terrorism. 125
Thirdly, it illustrates that asymmetric enemies have long sought to advance their cause
not through direct confrontation but by provoking an overreaction by their regular
opponents that undermines legitimacy and moves an otherwise neutral population
towards the insurgent cause. (There is little historical doubt that the ‘motley rabble of
saucy boys, negroes and mulatoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarres’ 126 had been
deliberately whipped-up by John Adams’s more extreme cousin Sam); a key reason
why such overreaction must be avoided and the forces of the state shown to be
accountable to the law.
That is not to say that all cases of apparent wrong doing have been properly or
effectively held to account. The Amritsar Massacre of 1919 is a stain on British
military history. In April 1919 Brigadier General REH Dyer led a small contingent of
British troops into the Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar and ordered them to open fire into
an unarmed crowd. Deaths are estimated at about 400 with a further 1200 wounded.
Dyer was removed from command and placed on the non-active list. Defending the
Government’s decision not to offer Dyer any further appointment, Winston Churchill,
then Secretary of Sate for War, described the events as an episode which
appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the
British Empire. It is an event of an entirely different order from any of those
tragical occurrences which take place when troops are brought into collision
with the civil population. It is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an
event which stands in singular and sinister isolation. 127
Nevertheless, no formal disciplinary measures were taken against Dyer.
293