the previous summer. And when the law
is applied in the absence of legitimacy,
it does not produce obedience. It
produces the opposite. It leads to
backlash.^6
The great puzzle of Northern Ireland
is why it took the British so long to
understand this. In 1969, the Troubles
resulted in thirteen deaths, seventy-three
shootings, and eight bombings. In 1970,
Freeland decided to get tough with thugs
and gunmen, warning that anyone caught
throwing gasoline bombs was “liable to
be shot.” What happened? The historian
Desmond Hamill writes:
The [IRA] retaliated by saying that