General Sir Mike Jackson: The 'uncompromising' soldier at Bloody Sunday who refused NATO order

It was in 1999, while commanding 40,000 NATO troops in the Balkans, that he refused an order from his American superior officer, the NATO supreme commander General Wes Clark, who directed him to send forces into Kosovo to pre-empt a surprise Russian advance heading for the airport at Pristina.

Jackson played the ‘national card’ and referred back to orders from London to isolate the Russian contingent. “I won’t start World War Three for you,” he told Clark. The approach paid off: NATO asserted control over the whole of Kosovo successfully and without dangerous confrontation with Moscow.

Gen Jackson subsequently spoke out forcefully in defence of British troops accused of ill-treating Iraqi prisoners when faked photographs were published, but also apologised in 2005 when British Army abuses in Basra were confirmed.

In 2006 after British troops helped free a UK peace campaigner kidnapped by Iraqi extremists, Jackson criticised the hostage Norman Kember’s lack of appreciation, saying that he was saddened “that there doesn’t seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives“.

Also that year he issued a sharp critique of the Ministry of Defence: “One’s loyalty must be from the bottom. Sadly, I did not find this fundamental proposition shared by the MoD,” he said during the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture. The following year he was critical, too, of the way the Bush administration had handled the situation in Iraq, arguing that the US approach had been too focused on military might rather than nation-building and diplomacy.

Born in 1944 and educated at Stamford School, RMA Sandhurst and Birmingham University, Jackson was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1963, and after obtaining an in-service degree in Russian Studies, spent two years on secondment to the Parachute Regiment and then the Intelligence Corps. During the early 1970s he served in Northern Ireland, and with the Territorial Army in Scotland.

In 1981, he joined the staff at the National Defence College. His two-and-a-half year tour included a 10-week attachment to the Ministry of Defence during the Falklands conflict.

He commanded 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment from March 1984 to September 1986. The Battalion was part of NATO’s Allied Command Europe Mobile Force, a role which included three winters spent in Norway on Arctic training.

He moved back to Northern Ireland in late 1989 to command 39 Infantry Brigade for two years, after which he commanded the 3rd (United Kingdom) Division, spending six months in Bosnia commanding the Implementation Force’s multinational division south west on the peace enforcement mission, Operation Resolute.

Upon his return to the UK, Jackson was promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief, Land Command, the second-most senior position in the British Army. His appointment as Chief of the General Staff came three years later.

He retired in August of that year having held the post for three-and-a-half years.

Jackson was awarded the MBE in 1979, the CBE in 1992, the CB in 1996 and the KCB in 1998. He is survived by his wife Sarah and by two sons and a daughter.