The British Army in Northern Ireland 198083. This book is called An Agony Continued because it was simply that an agony. It was an agony which commenced at the end of the 1960s and as the new decade of the 80s arrived, so the pain, the grief, the loss and the economic destruction of Northern Ireland continued. Little did any of us know at the time, but it was to do so for almost a further two decades. Between January 1980 and December 1989, around 1,000 people died many were soldiers and policemen some were Prison Officers some were paramilitaries and some were innocent civilians. The Provisional IRA PIRA and their slightly more psychopathic