British Armalite Rifles?

[Nightcrawler]

To what extend did the Armalite AR-18/AR-180 see use in the United Kingdom? I'm given to understand that the IRA was quite fond of it in the 80s, and I've heard rumors that some small contingents of the British Army used it as well. (Just as the SAS used the M16A1 in the Falklands.)

Anybody know for sure?

Note this interesting little diddy that I dug up on the internet. Apparently, an IRA folk song or something.

I was stopped by a soldier he said "you are a swine"
He hit me with his rifle and he kicked me in the groin
I bowed and I scraped, sure my manners were polite
Ah, but all the time I was thinking of me little Armalite!

Chorus:
And it's up along the bogside that's were I long to be
Lying in the dark with the Provo company
A comrade on my left and another one on me right
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite!

A brave RUC man came walking up our street
With 600 British soldiers gathered round his feet,
Come out ya cowardly Fenians come on out and fight
But he cried I'm only joking when he heard my Armalite!

Chorus:
And it's down along the Falls Road that's were I long to be
Lying in the dark with a Provo company
A comrade on my left and another one on me right
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite!

The army came to visit me 'twas in the early hours
With saracens and saladins and buggered armoured cars,
They thought they had me cornered but I gave them all a fright
With the armourpiercing bullets of me little Armalite!

Chorus:
And it's up in Crossmaglen that's were I long to be
Lying in the dark with a Provo company
A comrade on my left and another one on me right
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite!

Well the premier came to Belfast to see the battles won
The generals had told them we have them on the run,
The corporals and privates while on patrol at night
Said "send home for re-enforcement's it's the bloody Armalite!"

Chorus:
And it's up in old Poleglass that's were I long to be
Lying in the dark with a Provo company
A comrade on my left and another one on me right
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite!

No offense intended to anyone from the UK. I have no personal sympathies for the IRA terrorists, but merely found it interesting that they have a song about an Armalite rifle.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Hmm...actually, it's possible that this song is REFERRING to the M16. I've realized that in Europe and Australia, they refer to the M16 family as "the Armalite".

I was thinking of the Sterling AR-180s, but I might be totally off-base...

 

[Badger Arms]

The Armalite AR-18 as made by Sterling was and is more prolific in the IRA and other terrorists in that part of the world. Don't know how that happened to be, though. Maybe there was a police agency that had an armory that was raided. Maybe the IRA purchased some on the international market. Who knows. I think it was the AR-18, though.

On a separate note, the Current British is a direct descendant of the AR-18. It has been bastardized with their hair-brained bullpup concepts from years past and they managed to make the gun LESS reliable than virtually every other combat weapon in the inventory.

 

[jacketch]

I was thinking of the Sterling AR-180s, but I might be totally off-base...

The AR180 was the preferred weapon of the IRA, often referred to as the "Widow-maker."

 

[El Tejon]

The IRA purchases many 180s in the U.S. in Canada via "charities" in NYC and Boston. It was a prized weapon among them even as Type 56s and Combloc weapon more readily available via the KGB.

"Invisible Sun" by The Police: "I don't want to spend the rest of my days, looking down the barrel of an Armalite."

M16 used by SAS and units of the RUC (which largely used the AC556).

 

[Nightcrawler]

Royal Ulster Constabulatory?

Please, exactly what sort of unit were these guys?

 

[son of a gun]

I thought I read somewhere that Joe Kennedy founded that "charities".

 

[Gordon]

Naw, Joe Kennedy founded his political dynasty running booze in prohibition, he learned to foist his Democratic lies off on starving drunks. The AR 180 by Sterling never turned me on in the 10 years (76-86) I owned one, it was half as accurate as an AR-15 and wouldn't feed soft point ammo. Stock always was loose and trigger stank. Sharp edges every where! The Howa was better, but still a 2nd rate design IMHO!

 

[son of a gun]

Smuggling Irish Brandy and then after prohibition getting an exclusive distributorship from some Irish Brandy distillers.

http://icnorthernireland.icnetwork....ine=-JFK-and-his-IRA-Ancestors-name_page.html

 

[Logan5]

I found a fairly interesting article (reprint from Jane's Defense Review) Here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/inside/weapons.html

The only Armalites they discuss are "Armalite AR-15 Rifles" so I guess there's just no public information available about where and when they would have gotten AR-18's/180's. I know I've seen pictures of arms found in searches over there that included bona fide Armalites, along with Czech skorpions and so on, but I don't have the book they are in handy.

The waters are pretty muddy here, ABC online will say things like "Ulster unionist leader and Northern Ireland's First Minister, David Trimble, says he received Republican assurances last year that progress on the weapons issue would be well under way by now. But that hopeful expectation has been blown apart by the Canadian General in charge of disarmament who's been unable to report the giving up of a single IRA armalite bomb or bullet."
Obviously, Armalite never made any bombs, bullets, fruit baskets, plush toys, etc. Basically no one reporting or commenting on the issue can be bothered to accurately identify whatever rifle they're talking about. Things like this t-shirt (http://www.users.fast.net/~emckee/text/merchandise.html) would seem to indicate that nowadays they're calling pretty much anything that Gene Stoner had a hand in "an Armalite".

 

[MrMurphy]

The RUC as far as I know (according to an Irish friend of mine) is essentially a group like the Italian Carabineri, or the Israeli MaGav (Border Guards), cops that are better armed, sort of a cross between cops and military. I've seen pics of RUC guys with Mini-14s or AC556s (pics weren't close up enough to tell which).

From what I remember hearing in the 80's the AR-18 was "The Armalite" up there, the M16/AR15 not being easy to get or even possible to get..... from what i know.

 

[Jim K]

Some 30 years ago, there were unconfirmed rumors that some AR-18's destined for the Haitian army disappeared from the dock in Port au Prince after a Haitian colonel became suddenly wealthy; the guns turned up in Ulster. Supposedly, one of the Northern Ireland "aid" societies was involved, along with a couple of Irish-American politicians (naturally, the anti-gun kind).

Jim

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Re Haiti: note that many of the pics from Haiti's current unrest clearly show AR-18 rifles, as well as the Garand and M14.[

Re: AR-18: I don't know where to find the reference offhand, but I did a fair bit of reading on the AR-18 history a couple years back when the AR-180B came out. As I understand it, the AR-18 was being tested by the British military, and many of them were stolen from storage and sold to the IRA.

I recently dug up a lot of images off the Net of IRA propaganda, which I used in a military brief on Information operations. Many of the images clearly showed the Armalite AR-18 in use by IRA members.

---
[From http://paulf.free.fr/ira.html ]
And if there's one thing worse than a terrorist idjit, it's a damn Yank that thinks the Irish are still starving and living in subjugation and sends a wad of $$$ to buy more guns and bombs to blow up women and children. After all, the motto of the IRA is "The Armalite and the Ballot Box". Note, that's armalite, not kalashnikov, like most other terrorists in the world. It shows clearly which side of the IRA's toast is buttered on.
----

Pic included not as a political statement, just as an example of the AR-18 in the IRA iconography.

 

[Stoker]

The Royal Ulster Constabulary were simply the Northern Ireland police force. Uniquely among British police, they were routinely armed because of the threat from Republican gunmen. Because of IRA intimidation of potential recruits from the Catholic community, the RUC was almost entirely recruited from the Protestant community.

At the beginning of the current 'troubles' in the late '60s, an important aspect of the RUC was a reserve called the 'B' Specials. Rightly or wrongly, this group was widely believed to be the armed wing of the Loyalist (aka Protestant) grouping and was abolished, being replaced with a new regiment of the British Army called the Ulster Defence Regiment. This was locally recruited and used only for internal security duties. Its senior officers were all British Army officers seconded from other regiments. This force has been reduced in size and its battalions are now part of the Royal Irish Regiment. The regular battalions of the RIR are recruited from all over Ireland (including the Republic) and are quite separate from the internal security force.

Part of the current peace 'process' is a deal that the RUC will be reformed to make it more acceptable to the Nationalists. It is now called the Police Service of Northern Ireland.