Am at the @Nat_Mem_Arb @GMB ahead of a @PoppyLegion commeroration service for the 50th anniversary of the start of #OperationBanner - when British troops were deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland. The mission lasted 38 years, the longest campaign in UK military history 
The Royal British Legion clear this is not a celebration, fully aware of community and political sensitivities that continue long after soldiers left the streets in 2007. That followed the Good Friday agreement signed in 1998.
Very few involved at the start of #OperationBanner would have thought it would last so long - the archive pictures take us back to a very different era, the legacy though still having an impact today.
