The Troubles - The Beginning (1960s)
There is little agreement on the exact date of the start of the Troubles. Different writers have suggested different dates. These include the formation of the UVF in 1966, the civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968, the beginning of the 'Battle of the Bogside' on 12 August 1969 or the deployment of British troops on 14 August 1969.
Emergence of the Ulster Volunteer Force
The UVF is an illegal loyalist paramilitary organisation that formed in response to a perceived revival of the IRA at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. That month the UVF began a campaign of intimidation against a Catholic-owned off-licence on the Shankill Road. Its members painted sectarian graffiti on the neighbouring house and threw a petrol bomb through the window, killing a 77-year-old Protestant widow.
On 21 May 1966, the UVF issued a statement:
"From this day, we declare war against the IRA and its splinter groups. Known IRA men will be executed mercilessly and without hesitation. Less extreme measures will be taken against anyone sheltering or helping them, but if they persist in giving them aid, then more extreme methods will be adopted . . . we solemnly warn the authorities to make no more speeches of appeasement. We are heavily armed
Protestants dedicated to this cause".
On 11 June 1966, the UVF shot and killed Catholic store owner John Patrick Scullion in west Belfast. On 26 June 1966, another UVF gun attack in west Belfast killed Catholic barman Peter Ward and seriously injured three others. On 30 March 1969 a UVF bomb exploded at an electricity station in Castlereagh, resulting in widespread black-outs. A further five bombs were exploded at electricity stations and water pipelines throughout April. It was hoped that these attacks would be blamed on the IRA, forcing moderate unionists to increase their opposition to the reforms of Terence O'Neill's government.
Attacks on civil rights marches
On 20 June 1968, Austin Currie, a Nationalist MP staged a symbolic protest against housing discrimination when he squatted in a house in the village of Caledon, in County Tyrone, which a local Unionist party official had allocated to a Protestant 19-year-old single woman over two homeless Catholic families. Catholics in Northern Ireland had long complained that religion and political views were more important than need when it came to the allocation of state-built houses and this was just one of the many unjust example of such discrimination. When the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) showed up to remove Currie from the house, one of the members was the girl's brother, who would later move in with her. Prior to Currie's protest, the two Catholic families had been squatting in a nearby house but were evicted by the police, while the local news cameras filmed, when the Protestant girl, also the secretary of a Unionist parliamentary candidate, moved in to her new house. Currie had brought their grievance to the local council and Stormont and in both cases, he was asked to leave. He then chose to highlight the issue with an act of civil disobedience which became a "cause celebre" thereby helping in rallying thousands for the first ever civil right protest march in Northern Ireland and has been referred to by some scholars as the spark which ignited the Troubles.
In 1968, the marches of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) were met with a violent backlash by police and civil authorities. This group had launched a peaceful civil rights campaign in 1967, which borrowed the language and symbolism of the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King in the United States. NICRA was seeking a redress of Catholic and nationalist grievances within Northern Ireland. Specifically, it wanted an end to the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries that produced unrepresentative local councils (particularly in Derry city) by putting virtually all Catholics in a limited number of electoral wards; the abolition of the rate-payer franchise in local government elections, which gave Protestants disproportionate voting power; an end to unfair allocation of jobs and housing; and an end to the Special Powers Act which allowed for internment from 1971 to 1975 and other repressive measures and which was seen as being aimed at the nationalist community.
Initially, Terence O'Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, reacted favourably to this moderate-seeming campaign and promised reforms of Northern Ireland. However, he was opposed by many unionists, including William Craig and Ian Paisley, who accused him of being a "sell-out". Some unionists immediately mistrusted the NICRA, seeing it as an IRA "Trojan horse".
Violence broke out at several civil rights marches when Protestant loyalists attacked civil rights demonstrators with clubs. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, almost entirely Protestant, was widely viewed by nationalists as supporting the loyalists and of allowing the violence to occur. On 5 October 1968, a civil rights march in Derry was banned by the Northern Ireland government. When civil rights activists defied the ban, they were attacked by the RUC, leading to three days of rioting. On 4 January 1969, a People's Democracy march between Belfast and Derry through Catholic and Protestant areas was repeatedly attacked by loyalists and off-duty police. At Burntollet Bridge it was ambushed by approximately 200 loyalists armed with iron bars, bricks and bottles. The police did little to protect the march. Subsequently, barricades were erected in nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry to prevent police incursions. Many regard these events as the beginning of the Troubles.
Riots of August 1969
This disorder culminated in the Battle of the Bogside (12 August 1969 – 14 August 1969), which was a nationalist communal uprising in Derry. The riot started as a confrontation between Catholic residents of the Bogside, police, and members of the Apprentice Boys of Derry who were due to march past the Bogside along the city walls.
Rioting between police and loyalists on one side and Bogside residents on the other continued for two days before British Army troops were sent in to restore order. The "battle" sparked vicious sectarian rioting in Belfast, Newry, Strabane and elsewhere, starting on 14 August 1969, which left many people dead and many homes burned. The riots began with nationalist demonstrations in support of the Bogside residents and escalated when a grenade was thrown at a police station. The RUC in response deployed three Shorland armoured cars mounted with M2 Browning machine guns, and killed a nine-year-old boy, struck by a tracer bullet as he lay in bed in his family's flat in Divis Tower in Belfast. Loyalist crowds attacked Catholic areas, burning down much of Bombay Street, Madrid Street and other Catholic streets (see Northern Ireland riots of August 1969).
Nationalists alleged that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had aided, or at least not acted against, loyalists in these riots. The IRA was widely criticised by its supporters for failing to defend the Catholic community during the Belfast troubles of August 1969, when eight people had been killed, about 750 injured and 1,505 Catholic families had been forced out of their homes—almost five times the number of dispossessed Protestant households. Graffiti reading "IRA – I Ran Away" appeared in many areas.
In the wake of the riots, the Republic of Ireland expressed open support for the nationalists. In a televised broadcast, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Jack Lynch stated that the Irish Government could "no longer stand by" while hundreds of people were being injured. This was interpreted in some quarters as a threat of military intervention. The Irish Army set up field hospitals along the border to provide medical support for the wounded. Under the orders of Taoiseach Lynch, the Irish Army General Staff drew up Exercise Armageddon, a classified plan for possible humanitarian intervention in Northern Ireland, which was ultimately rejected.
The Government of Northern Ireland requested that the UK Government deploy the British Army in Northern Ireland to restore order and to prevent sectarian attacks on Catholics. Nationalists initially welcomed the Army, often giving the soldiers tea and sandwiches, as they did not trust the police to act in an unbiased manner. Relations soured due to heavy-handedness by the Army.
Emergence of the Ulster Volunteer Force
The UVF is an illegal loyalist paramilitary organisation that formed in response to a perceived revival of the IRA at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. That month the UVF began a campaign of intimidation against a Catholic-owned off-licence on the Shankill Road. Its members painted sectarian graffiti on the neighbouring house and threw a petrol bomb through the window, killing a 77-year-old Protestant widow.
On 21 May 1966, the UVF issued a statement:
"From this day, we declare war against the IRA and its splinter groups. Known IRA men will be executed mercilessly and without hesitation. Less extreme measures will be taken against anyone sheltering or helping them, but if they persist in giving them aid, then more extreme methods will be adopted . . . we solemnly warn the authorities to make no more speeches of appeasement. We are heavily armed
Protestants dedicated to this cause".
On 11 June 1966, the UVF shot and killed Catholic store owner John Patrick Scullion in west Belfast. On 26 June 1966, another UVF gun attack in west Belfast killed Catholic barman Peter Ward and seriously injured three others. On 30 March 1969 a UVF bomb exploded at an electricity station in Castlereagh, resulting in widespread black-outs. A further five bombs were exploded at electricity stations and water pipelines throughout April. It was hoped that these attacks would be blamed on the IRA, forcing moderate unionists to increase their opposition to the reforms of Terence O'Neill's government.
Attacks on civil rights marches
On 20 June 1968, Austin Currie, a Nationalist MP staged a symbolic protest against housing discrimination when he squatted in a house in the village of Caledon, in County Tyrone, which a local Unionist party official had allocated to a Protestant 19-year-old single woman over two homeless Catholic families. Catholics in Northern Ireland had long complained that religion and political views were more important than need when it came to the allocation of state-built houses and this was just one of the many unjust example of such discrimination. When the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) showed up to remove Currie from the house, one of the members was the girl's brother, who would later move in with her. Prior to Currie's protest, the two Catholic families had been squatting in a nearby house but were evicted by the police, while the local news cameras filmed, when the Protestant girl, also the secretary of a Unionist parliamentary candidate, moved in to her new house. Currie had brought their grievance to the local council and Stormont and in both cases, he was asked to leave. He then chose to highlight the issue with an act of civil disobedience which became a "cause celebre" thereby helping in rallying thousands for the first ever civil right protest march in Northern Ireland and has been referred to by some scholars as the spark which ignited the Troubles.
In 1968, the marches of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) were met with a violent backlash by police and civil authorities. This group had launched a peaceful civil rights campaign in 1967, which borrowed the language and symbolism of the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King in the United States. NICRA was seeking a redress of Catholic and nationalist grievances within Northern Ireland. Specifically, it wanted an end to the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries that produced unrepresentative local councils (particularly in Derry city) by putting virtually all Catholics in a limited number of electoral wards; the abolition of the rate-payer franchise in local government elections, which gave Protestants disproportionate voting power; an end to unfair allocation of jobs and housing; and an end to the Special Powers Act which allowed for internment from 1971 to 1975 and other repressive measures and which was seen as being aimed at the nationalist community.
Initially, Terence O'Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, reacted favourably to this moderate-seeming campaign and promised reforms of Northern Ireland. However, he was opposed by many unionists, including William Craig and Ian Paisley, who accused him of being a "sell-out". Some unionists immediately mistrusted the NICRA, seeing it as an IRA "Trojan horse".
Violence broke out at several civil rights marches when Protestant loyalists attacked civil rights demonstrators with clubs. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, almost entirely Protestant, was widely viewed by nationalists as supporting the loyalists and of allowing the violence to occur. On 5 October 1968, a civil rights march in Derry was banned by the Northern Ireland government. When civil rights activists defied the ban, they were attacked by the RUC, leading to three days of rioting. On 4 January 1969, a People's Democracy march between Belfast and Derry through Catholic and Protestant areas was repeatedly attacked by loyalists and off-duty police. At Burntollet Bridge it was ambushed by approximately 200 loyalists armed with iron bars, bricks and bottles. The police did little to protect the march. Subsequently, barricades were erected in nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry to prevent police incursions. Many regard these events as the beginning of the Troubles.
Riots of August 1969
This disorder culminated in the Battle of the Bogside (12 August 1969 – 14 August 1969), which was a nationalist communal uprising in Derry. The riot started as a confrontation between Catholic residents of the Bogside, police, and members of the Apprentice Boys of Derry who were due to march past the Bogside along the city walls.
Rioting between police and loyalists on one side and Bogside residents on the other continued for two days before British Army troops were sent in to restore order. The "battle" sparked vicious sectarian rioting in Belfast, Newry, Strabane and elsewhere, starting on 14 August 1969, which left many people dead and many homes burned. The riots began with nationalist demonstrations in support of the Bogside residents and escalated when a grenade was thrown at a police station. The RUC in response deployed three Shorland armoured cars mounted with M2 Browning machine guns, and killed a nine-year-old boy, struck by a tracer bullet as he lay in bed in his family's flat in Divis Tower in Belfast. Loyalist crowds attacked Catholic areas, burning down much of Bombay Street, Madrid Street and other Catholic streets (see Northern Ireland riots of August 1969).
Nationalists alleged that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had aided, or at least not acted against, loyalists in these riots. The IRA was widely criticised by its supporters for failing to defend the Catholic community during the Belfast troubles of August 1969, when eight people had been killed, about 750 injured and 1,505 Catholic families had been forced out of their homes—almost five times the number of dispossessed Protestant households. Graffiti reading "IRA – I Ran Away" appeared in many areas.
In the wake of the riots, the Republic of Ireland expressed open support for the nationalists. In a televised broadcast, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Jack Lynch stated that the Irish Government could "no longer stand by" while hundreds of people were being injured. This was interpreted in some quarters as a threat of military intervention. The Irish Army set up field hospitals along the border to provide medical support for the wounded. Under the orders of Taoiseach Lynch, the Irish Army General Staff drew up Exercise Armageddon, a classified plan for possible humanitarian intervention in Northern Ireland, which was ultimately rejected.
The Government of Northern Ireland requested that the UK Government deploy the British Army in Northern Ireland to restore order and to prevent sectarian attacks on Catholics. Nationalists initially welcomed the Army, often giving the soldiers tea and sandwiches, as they did not trust the police to act in an unbiased manner. Relations soured due to heavy-handedness by the Army.
1970s
Violence peaks and Stormont collapses
The period from 1970 through 1972 saw an explosion of political violence in Northern Ireland, peaking in 1972, when nearly 500 people, just over half of them civilians, lost their lives. The year 1972 saw the greatest loss of life throughout the entire conflict.
In Derry by the end of 1971, 29 barricades were in place to block access to what was known as Free Derry; 16 of them impassable even to the British Army's one-ton armoured vehicles. Many of the nationalist/republican "no-go areas" were controlled by one of the two factions of the Irish Republican Army—the Provisional IRA and Official IRA.
There are several reasons why violence escalated in these years.
Unionists claim the main reason was the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), a group formed when the IRA split into the Provisional and Official factions. While the older IRA had embraced non-violent civil agitation, the new Provisional IRA was determined to wage "armed struggle" against British rule in Northern Ireland. The new IRA was willing to take on the role of "defenders of the Catholic community", rather than seeking working-class unity across both communities which had become the aim of the "Officials".
Nationalists pointed to a number of events in these years to explain the upsurge in violence. One such incident was the Falls Curfew in July 1970, when 3,000 troops imposed a curfew on the nationalist Lower Falls area of Belfast, firing more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition in gun battles with the IRA and killing four people. Another was the 1971 introduction of internment without trial (out of over 350 initial detainees, none was a Protestant). Between 1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were Catholic/republican, while 107 were Protestant/loyalist. There were widespread allegations of abuse and torture of detainees, and the "five techniques" (wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink) used by the police and army for interrogation were ruled to be illegal following a British government inquiry. Nationalists also point to the fatal shootings of 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights demonstrators by the British Army in Derry on 30 January 1972, on what became known as Bloody Sunday. The Provisional IRA (or "Provos", as they became known), which emerged out of a split in the Irish Republican Army in December 1969, soon established itself as defenders of the nationalist community. Despite the increasingly reformist and Marxist politics of the Official IRA, it began its own armed campaign in reaction to the ongoing violence. The Provisional IRA's offensive campaign began in early 1971 when the Army Council sanctioned attacks on the British Army.
In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings, mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy". The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. The Official IRA, which had never been fully committed to armed action, called off its campaign in May 1972. Despite a temporary ceasefire in 1972 and talks with British officials, the Provisionals were determined to continue their campaign until the achievement of a united Ireland.
The loyalist paramilitaries, including the Ulster Volunteer Force and the newly founded Ulster Defence Association, responded to the increasing violence with a campaign of sectarian assassination of nationalists, identified simply as Catholics. Some of these killings were particularly gruesome. The Shankill Butchers beat and tortured their victims before killing them. Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas.
The UK government in London, believing the Northern Ireland administration incapable of containing the security situation, sought to take over the control of law and order there. As this was unacceptable to the Northern Ireland Government, the British government pushed through emergency legislation (the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972) which suspended the unionist-controlled Stormont parliament and government, and introduced "direct rule" from London. Direct rule was initially intended as a short-term measure; the medium-term strategy was to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on a basis that was acceptable to both unionists and nationalists. Agreement proved elusive, however, and the Troubles continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s within a context of political deadlock.
The existence of "no-go areas" in Belfast and Derry was a challenge to the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland, and the British army finally demolished the barricades and re-established control over the areas in Operation Motorman on 31 July 1972.
Sunningdale Agreement and UWC strike
In June 1973, following the publication of a British White Paper and a referendum in March on the status of Northern Ireland, a new parliamentary body, the Northern Ireland Assembly, was established. Elections to this were held on 28 June. In October of that year, mainstream nationalist and unionist parties, along with the British and (Southern) Irish governments, negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement, which was intended to produce a political settlement within Northern Ireland, but with a so-called "Irish dimension" involving the Republic of Ireland. The agreement provided for "power-sharing" between nationalists and unionists and a "Council of Ireland" designed to encourage cross-border co-operation.
Unionism, however, was split over Sunningdale, which was also opposed by the IRA, whose goal remained nothing short of an end to Northern Ireland's existence as part of the United Kingdom. Many unionists opposed the concept of power-sharing, arguing that it was not feasible to share power with those (nationalists) who sought the destruction of the state. Perhaps more significant, however, was the unionist opposition to the "Irish dimension" and the Council of Ireland, which was perceived as being an all-Ireland parliament-in-waiting.
In January 1974, Brian Faulkner was narrowly deposed as Unionist Party leader and replaced by Harry West. A UK general election in February 1974 gave the anti-Sunningdale unionists the opportunity to test unionist opinion with the slogan "Dublin is only a Sunningdale away", and the result galvanised their opposition: they won 11 of the 12 seats, winning 58% of the vote with most of the rest going to nationalists and pro-Sunningdale unionists.
Ultimately, however, the Sunningdale Agreement was brought down by mass action on the part of loyalists (primarily the Ulster Defence Association, at that time over 20,000 strong) and Protestant workers, who formed the Ulster Workers' Council. They organised a general strike: the Ulster Workers' Council strike. This severely curtailed business in Northern Ireland and cut off essential services such as water and electricity. Nationalists argue that the UK government did not do enough to break this strike and uphold the Sunningdale initiative. There is evidence that the strike was further encouraged by MI5, a part of their campaign to 'disorientate' Wilson's government. In the event, faced with such determined opposition, the pro-Sunningdale unionists resigned from the power-sharing government and the new regime collapsed.
Three days into the UWC strike, on 17 May 1974, two UVF teams from the Belfast and Mid-Ulster brigades detonated three no-warning car bombs in Dublin's city centre during the Friday evening rush hour, resulting in 26 deaths and close to 300 injuries. Ninety minutes later, a fourth car bomb exploded in Monaghan, killing another seven people. Nobody has ever been convicted of these attacks.
The failure of Sunningdale led on to the examination in London of the option of a rapid British withdrawal by the new government of Harold Wilson. This was also considered in Dublin by Garret FitzGerald in a memorandum of June 1975, on which he commented in 2006. This concluded that the Irish government could do little on such a withdrawal with its army of 12,500 men, with the likely result of a greater loss of life.
Mid-1970s
Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had lifted the proscription against the UVF in April 1974. In December, one month after the Birmingham pub bombings which killed 21 people, the IRA declared a ceasefire; this would theoretically last throughout most of the following year. The ceasefire notwithstanding, sectarian killings actually escalated in 1975, along with internal feuding between rival paramilitary groups. This made 1975 one of the "bloodiest years of the conflict". On 31 July 1975 at Buskhill, outside Newry, the popular Irish cabaret band "The Miami Showband" was returning home to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge when it was ambushed by gunmen from the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade wearing British Army uniforms at a bogus military roadside checkpoint on the main A1 road. Three of the bandmembers were shot dead and two of the UVF men were killed when the bomb they had loaded onto the band's minibus went off prematurely. The following January, ten Protestant workers were gunned down in Kingsmill, south County Armagh after having been ordered off their bus by an armed Republican gang who called itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force. These killings were in retaliation for the loyalists' double shooting attack against the Reavey and O'Dowd families the previous night.
The violence continued through the rest of the 1970s. The British Government reinstated the ban against the UVF in October 1975, making it once more an illegal organisation. When the Provisional IRA's December 1974 ceasefire had ended in early 1976 and it had returned to violence, it had lost the hope that it had felt in the early 1970s that it could force a rapid British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, and instead developed a strategy known as the "Long War", which involved a less intense but more sustained campaign of violence that could continue indefinitely. The Official IRA ceasefire of 1972, however, became permanent, and the "Official" movement eventually evolved into the Workers' Party, which rejected violence completely. A splinter from the "Officials", however, in 1974 – the Irish National Liberation Army — continued with a campaign of violence.
By the late 1970s, war weariness was visible in both communities. One manifestation of this was the formation of group known as "Peace People", which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. The Peace People organised large demonstrations calling for an end to paramilitary violence. Their campaign lost momentum, however, after they appealed to the nationalist community to provide information on the IRA to security forces, the Peace People being perceived as being more critical of paramilitaries than the security forces.[84] The decade ended with a double attack by the IRA against the British. On 27 August 1979, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, while on holiday in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, was killed by a bomb planted on board his boat. Three other people were also killed, including a local teenage boatman. That same afternoon, eighteen British soldiers, mostly members of the Parachute Regiment, were killed by two remote-controlled bombs at Warrenpoint, County Down.
The period from 1970 through 1972 saw an explosion of political violence in Northern Ireland, peaking in 1972, when nearly 500 people, just over half of them civilians, lost their lives. The year 1972 saw the greatest loss of life throughout the entire conflict.
In Derry by the end of 1971, 29 barricades were in place to block access to what was known as Free Derry; 16 of them impassable even to the British Army's one-ton armoured vehicles. Many of the nationalist/republican "no-go areas" were controlled by one of the two factions of the Irish Republican Army—the Provisional IRA and Official IRA.
There are several reasons why violence escalated in these years.
Unionists claim the main reason was the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), a group formed when the IRA split into the Provisional and Official factions. While the older IRA had embraced non-violent civil agitation, the new Provisional IRA was determined to wage "armed struggle" against British rule in Northern Ireland. The new IRA was willing to take on the role of "defenders of the Catholic community", rather than seeking working-class unity across both communities which had become the aim of the "Officials".
Nationalists pointed to a number of events in these years to explain the upsurge in violence. One such incident was the Falls Curfew in July 1970, when 3,000 troops imposed a curfew on the nationalist Lower Falls area of Belfast, firing more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition in gun battles with the IRA and killing four people. Another was the 1971 introduction of internment without trial (out of over 350 initial detainees, none was a Protestant). Between 1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were Catholic/republican, while 107 were Protestant/loyalist. There were widespread allegations of abuse and torture of detainees, and the "five techniques" (wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink) used by the police and army for interrogation were ruled to be illegal following a British government inquiry. Nationalists also point to the fatal shootings of 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights demonstrators by the British Army in Derry on 30 January 1972, on what became known as Bloody Sunday. The Provisional IRA (or "Provos", as they became known), which emerged out of a split in the Irish Republican Army in December 1969, soon established itself as defenders of the nationalist community. Despite the increasingly reformist and Marxist politics of the Official IRA, it began its own armed campaign in reaction to the ongoing violence. The Provisional IRA's offensive campaign began in early 1971 when the Army Council sanctioned attacks on the British Army.
In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings, mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy". The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. The Official IRA, which had never been fully committed to armed action, called off its campaign in May 1972. Despite a temporary ceasefire in 1972 and talks with British officials, the Provisionals were determined to continue their campaign until the achievement of a united Ireland.
The loyalist paramilitaries, including the Ulster Volunteer Force and the newly founded Ulster Defence Association, responded to the increasing violence with a campaign of sectarian assassination of nationalists, identified simply as Catholics. Some of these killings were particularly gruesome. The Shankill Butchers beat and tortured their victims before killing them. Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas.
The UK government in London, believing the Northern Ireland administration incapable of containing the security situation, sought to take over the control of law and order there. As this was unacceptable to the Northern Ireland Government, the British government pushed through emergency legislation (the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972) which suspended the unionist-controlled Stormont parliament and government, and introduced "direct rule" from London. Direct rule was initially intended as a short-term measure; the medium-term strategy was to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on a basis that was acceptable to both unionists and nationalists. Agreement proved elusive, however, and the Troubles continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s within a context of political deadlock.
The existence of "no-go areas" in Belfast and Derry was a challenge to the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland, and the British army finally demolished the barricades and re-established control over the areas in Operation Motorman on 31 July 1972.
Sunningdale Agreement and UWC strike
In June 1973, following the publication of a British White Paper and a referendum in March on the status of Northern Ireland, a new parliamentary body, the Northern Ireland Assembly, was established. Elections to this were held on 28 June. In October of that year, mainstream nationalist and unionist parties, along with the British and (Southern) Irish governments, negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement, which was intended to produce a political settlement within Northern Ireland, but with a so-called "Irish dimension" involving the Republic of Ireland. The agreement provided for "power-sharing" between nationalists and unionists and a "Council of Ireland" designed to encourage cross-border co-operation.
Unionism, however, was split over Sunningdale, which was also opposed by the IRA, whose goal remained nothing short of an end to Northern Ireland's existence as part of the United Kingdom. Many unionists opposed the concept of power-sharing, arguing that it was not feasible to share power with those (nationalists) who sought the destruction of the state. Perhaps more significant, however, was the unionist opposition to the "Irish dimension" and the Council of Ireland, which was perceived as being an all-Ireland parliament-in-waiting.
In January 1974, Brian Faulkner was narrowly deposed as Unionist Party leader and replaced by Harry West. A UK general election in February 1974 gave the anti-Sunningdale unionists the opportunity to test unionist opinion with the slogan "Dublin is only a Sunningdale away", and the result galvanised their opposition: they won 11 of the 12 seats, winning 58% of the vote with most of the rest going to nationalists and pro-Sunningdale unionists.
Ultimately, however, the Sunningdale Agreement was brought down by mass action on the part of loyalists (primarily the Ulster Defence Association, at that time over 20,000 strong) and Protestant workers, who formed the Ulster Workers' Council. They organised a general strike: the Ulster Workers' Council strike. This severely curtailed business in Northern Ireland and cut off essential services such as water and electricity. Nationalists argue that the UK government did not do enough to break this strike and uphold the Sunningdale initiative. There is evidence that the strike was further encouraged by MI5, a part of their campaign to 'disorientate' Wilson's government. In the event, faced with such determined opposition, the pro-Sunningdale unionists resigned from the power-sharing government and the new regime collapsed.
Three days into the UWC strike, on 17 May 1974, two UVF teams from the Belfast and Mid-Ulster brigades detonated three no-warning car bombs in Dublin's city centre during the Friday evening rush hour, resulting in 26 deaths and close to 300 injuries. Ninety minutes later, a fourth car bomb exploded in Monaghan, killing another seven people. Nobody has ever been convicted of these attacks.
The failure of Sunningdale led on to the examination in London of the option of a rapid British withdrawal by the new government of Harold Wilson. This was also considered in Dublin by Garret FitzGerald in a memorandum of June 1975, on which he commented in 2006. This concluded that the Irish government could do little on such a withdrawal with its army of 12,500 men, with the likely result of a greater loss of life.
Mid-1970s
Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had lifted the proscription against the UVF in April 1974. In December, one month after the Birmingham pub bombings which killed 21 people, the IRA declared a ceasefire; this would theoretically last throughout most of the following year. The ceasefire notwithstanding, sectarian killings actually escalated in 1975, along with internal feuding between rival paramilitary groups. This made 1975 one of the "bloodiest years of the conflict". On 31 July 1975 at Buskhill, outside Newry, the popular Irish cabaret band "The Miami Showband" was returning home to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge when it was ambushed by gunmen from the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade wearing British Army uniforms at a bogus military roadside checkpoint on the main A1 road. Three of the bandmembers were shot dead and two of the UVF men were killed when the bomb they had loaded onto the band's minibus went off prematurely. The following January, ten Protestant workers were gunned down in Kingsmill, south County Armagh after having been ordered off their bus by an armed Republican gang who called itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force. These killings were in retaliation for the loyalists' double shooting attack against the Reavey and O'Dowd families the previous night.
The violence continued through the rest of the 1970s. The British Government reinstated the ban against the UVF in October 1975, making it once more an illegal organisation. When the Provisional IRA's December 1974 ceasefire had ended in early 1976 and it had returned to violence, it had lost the hope that it had felt in the early 1970s that it could force a rapid British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, and instead developed a strategy known as the "Long War", which involved a less intense but more sustained campaign of violence that could continue indefinitely. The Official IRA ceasefire of 1972, however, became permanent, and the "Official" movement eventually evolved into the Workers' Party, which rejected violence completely. A splinter from the "Officials", however, in 1974 – the Irish National Liberation Army — continued with a campaign of violence.
By the late 1970s, war weariness was visible in both communities. One manifestation of this was the formation of group known as "Peace People", which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. The Peace People organised large demonstrations calling for an end to paramilitary violence. Their campaign lost momentum, however, after they appealed to the nationalist community to provide information on the IRA to security forces, the Peace People being perceived as being more critical of paramilitaries than the security forces.[84] The decade ended with a double attack by the IRA against the British. On 27 August 1979, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, while on holiday in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, was killed by a bomb planted on board his boat. Three other people were also killed, including a local teenage boatman. That same afternoon, eighteen British soldiers, mostly members of the Parachute Regiment, were killed by two remote-controlled bombs at Warrenpoint, County Down.
The prisoners' role
Successive British Governments, having failed to achieve a political settlement, tried to "normalise" Northern Ireland. Aspects included the removal of internment without trial and the removal of political status for paramilitary prisoners. From 1972 onwards, paramilitaries were tried in juryless Diplock courts to avoid intimidation of jurors. On conviction, they were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Resistance to this policy among republican prisoners led to over 500 of them in the Maze prison initiating the blanket protest and the dirty protest. Their protests culminated in hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981, aimed at the restoration of political status.
In the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, ten republican prisoners (seven from the Provisional IRA and three from the Irish National Liberation Army) starved themselves to death. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands, was elected to Parliament on an Anti-H-Block ticket, as was his election agent Owen Carron following Sands' death. The hunger strikes proved emotional events for the nationalist community—over 100,000 people attended Sands' funeral mass at St. Luke's, Twinbrook, West Belfast, and crowds also attended the subsequent funerals.
From an Irish republican perspective, the significance of these events was to demonstrate a potential for political and electoral strategy. In the wake of the hunger strikes, Sinn Féin, seen by some as the Provisional IRA's political wing, began to contest elections for the first time in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.
>>More info at Maze Prison page.
In the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, ten republican prisoners (seven from the Provisional IRA and three from the Irish National Liberation Army) starved themselves to death. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands, was elected to Parliament on an Anti-H-Block ticket, as was his election agent Owen Carron following Sands' death. The hunger strikes proved emotional events for the nationalist community—over 100,000 people attended Sands' funeral mass at St. Luke's, Twinbrook, West Belfast, and crowds also attended the subsequent funerals.
From an Irish republican perspective, the significance of these events was to demonstrate a potential for political and electoral strategy. In the wake of the hunger strikes, Sinn Féin, seen by some as the Provisional IRA's political wing, began to contest elections for the first time in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.
>>More info at Maze Prison page.