Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath: A New History of the Use of Internment without Trial in Northern Ireland 1971–75, by Martin J. McCleery

The book history of Rona M. Fields's A Society on the Run (1973): A case study in the alleged suppression of psychological research on Northern Ireland

“…As evidence for this claim, Field refers to the policy of internment launched by the British Army, with Northern Irish and British state approval, on August 9, 1971 (and which continued until December 1975). This inflammatory policy overwhelmingly targeted the Catholic, Irish nationalist, and republican population, and served only to intensify sectarian violence, as well as hostility to British Army (McCleery, 2015, pp. 14–52).…”

“…14–52). The use of psychological and physical torture and coercion upon detainees was widely reported at the time, including the egregious case of 14 internees, who were used as experimental test subjects for interrogation using sensory deprivation and related techniques such as sleep deprivation (McCleery, 2015, pp. 61–68).…”

“…Fields developed a reputation for expertise on terrorism partly because of her research in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, a period when the conflict had been intensified by the inflammatory program of mass internment launched in August 1971 (see, e.g., McCleery, 2015), and by subsequent catastrophes, most notoriously the killing of unarmed civilians by the British Army in Bloody Sunday of January 1972 (see, e.g., Hayes & Campbell, 2005). The fruits of Fields's research fieldwork in Northern Ireland were issued by the leading UK publisher Penguin as an original title, as opposed to Penguin's primary output of paperbacks taken over from hardback editions issued by other publishers.…”