THIS book by Liam Kennedy does not claim to be an objective assessment of the Northern Ireland Troubles and the author does not attempt to conceal his political views.

His comment that Dan Breen, an Irish War of Independence guerilla, was a “leading gunman from my own county” gives a clue to his perspective, not just on the Provisional IRA but the early 20th-century struggle against the British.

Kennedy emphasises statistics of violent deaths and injuries to justify the conclusion that the Provos were mainly responsible for the Troubles. Those statistics, and the Provos’ prosecution of a long war, underpin the book’s main thesis.

While there are some references to the activity of the British state’s role in the violence, the view is that the murder and mayhem for which the British were responsible was more by way of an aberration as opposed to deliberate policy.

There is no examination of counter-insurgency terror and no assessment of events such as the violent loyalist and Stormont reaction in 1969 to the civil rights campaign, the 1970 Falls Road curfew, the introduction of internment without trial in 1971 or the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacres in 1971 and 1972.

Nor is there mention of the wrecking of working-class homes in Catholic areas by British army regiments or that the handling of the hunger strikes contributed to the elongation of the conflict.

The author does not attempt to “credit” the denial of the democratic will of the Irish people by the British state in the aftermath of the 1918 all-Ireland election or consider how this represented a catalyst, albeit slow-burning, which ignited into violence post-1969. Less than 10 years prior to that outbreak of violence, Britain was prosecuting its counter-insurgency strategy in Kenya and Malaysia.

At the time, many on the left took the view that the “war” was avoidable, that the armed campaign could not succeed in forcing the British from the North of Ireland and that the physical force strategy would cause even greater divisions within the working class, fuel sectarianism and result in a totally unnecessary waste of life.

It has been argued that had the civil rights campaign not been aborted by the armed campaign, we still could have achieved parity of esteem and full equality in a less antagonistic political environment and that a resolution to the democratic question — partition — could have been resolved without recourse to violence. We can however only speculate.

At least half the book is taken up with the grisly and unacceptable punishment beatings, tar and feathering, shootings and expulsions which were a feature within many working-class communities.

The chapters The Terror Within and They Shoot Children are of interest in their own right but hardly underpin the book’s thesis as to who was responsible for the Troubles and the highlighting of this brutal by-product of the conflict, so as to avoid any doubt, is designed to throw the kitchen sink at the Provos,

This statistical reductionist methodology, probably deliberately, lets that most powerful political and historical agency, the British state, off the hook. There is no doubt that the opening of all intelligence files held by the state would assist with a more comprehensive understanding of its role but this is not referenced either.

The anger and outrage at the heart of this book is a reaction to the electoral success of Sinn Fein, especially in the Republic of Ireland and, while it will be music to the ears of the political establishment there, I suspect Sinn Fein will not be too bothered by a book whose author held among his close associates former Provo gunmen who switched sides to become active agents of the British state.

I doubt also that it will bother the vast majority of the Irish electorate.

Published by McGill Queen’s University Press, £19.95.