Unless otherwise stated all of these documents are from November/ December 1972. Internment without trial had been introduced in August 1971. Despite a deadly loyalist assassination campaign in 1972 (with over 120 sectarian murders in that year alone) the authorities had not interned a single loyalist. By late 1972 memos began to circulate in the Ministry of Defence and Northern Ireland Office as to when and under what circumstances they 'might' arrest and intern 'Protestants'.