The availability under the Thirty Year Rule of British and Stormont government papers for the early stages of the Troubles has made it possible for existing analyses of the role of key actors to be reassessed. This article uses the reports of successive UK Representatives to cast new light on the nature of British policy in the 1969-71 period. It argues that a view of the dynamics of the conflict as between an entrenched and discriminatory majority and an oppressed minority led to an underestimation of the depth of Protestant fears and the deepening of the regime's legitimacy crisis with its own supporters. The result was persistence with a policy that achieved the worst of both worlds: a regime incapable of stabilising itself and an increasingly militant and radicalised Catholic population.