Troubled history of Northen Ireland

The United Irishmen of the 1790s failed to overcome these religious and caste antagonisms, which instead in the nineteenth century reconfigured around rival national allegiances. Religious identity was reworked, not weakened, by new psychologies of national fellow-feeling generated by the mobility and literacy of Ireland’s market economy. The Protestant culture of Great Britain worked against the satisfaction of Irish nationalism within the United Kingdom. But the alternative of separation was certain to meet the opposition of Protestant Ulster. As an entire society of all classes, it proved much more able to adapt to the rise of democratic self-determination than the Protestant elite spread thinly throughout the rest of Ireland.

The democracy Ulster Unionism came to espouse was of a certain type, however. For long it had supported its case primarily on the inability of Catholic Ireland to govern fairly. Support for parallel self-determination of both Irish national groups came late and was only half-formed even by the time of Partition, enacted by Britain upon this principle. Unionist anti-Catholicism, now primarily directed against a large internal minority, fused with an intolerant majoritarian democracy. Northern Ireland’s Catholics, meanwhile, resented the sacrifice of their identity to political expediency by both Ulster Unionism and Irish separatism. Fearing absorption, they set out to ignore as best they could the structures of the new state.

                                   Chapter 2 The Troubles

Although armed hostilities between Catholics and Protestants largely subsided after the 1921 agreement, violence erupted again in the late 1960s; bloody riots broke out in Londonderry in 1968 and in Londonderry and Belfast in 1969. British troops were brought in to restore order, but the conflict intensified as the IRA and Protestant paramilitary groups carried out bombings and other acts of terrorism. This continuing conflict, which lingered into the 1990s, became known as "the troubles."

The troubles consisted of about thirty years of recurring acts of intense violence between elements of Northern Ireland's nationalist community (principally Roman Catholic) and unionist community (principally Protestant) during which 3,254 people were killed . The conflict was caused by the disputed status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and the domination of the minority nationalist community, and discrimination against them, by the unionist majority. The violence was characterised by the armed campaigns of paramilitary groups, including the Provisional IRA campaign of 1969-1997 which was aimed at the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and the creation of a new "all-Ireland", Irish Republic, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, formed in 1966 in response to the perceived erosion of both the British character and unionist domination of Northern Ireland. The state security forces-the British Army and the police-were also involved in the violence.

                            2.1 The Civil Rights Movement

In October 1968, when television pictures of RUC officers baton-charging a civil rights demonstration in Derry were shown around the world, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement became international news [14, p. 34].

This push for civil rights was backed by a wide range of political and social activists. It was influenced by television coverage of the black civil rights protests in America and the student protest movement across Europe. The main areas where reforms were sought were: the allocation of public housing, a "one man, one vote" electoral system, fair employment practices in the public service and a restructuring of the RUC. With the population of Northern Ireland divided two-thirds Protestant and one-third Catholic, it was the minority who felt the brunt of discrimination. Public housing was granted by local government authorities, and there was much evidence of discrimination against the Catholic population by local councils in the allocation of houses. Prior to 1969, elections were not held on a "one person, one vote" basis, and gerrymandering was used to secure unionist majorities on local councils.

In 1963, Terence O'Neill became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Seen as a moderate unionist, he set about reforming the economy. He also expressed a desire to improve community relations in Northern Ireland and create a better rapport with the government in Dublin, hoping this would address the sense of alienation felt by Catholics towards the political system in Northern Ireland. However, reforms were too slow in coming for the minority Catholic population, and O'Neill's meeting with the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, in 1965 raised the ire of loyalists led by the Reverend Ian Paisley. Within his own Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), O'Neill also met with opposition from William Craig and Brian Faulkner.

From the autumn of 1968 onwards, a wide range of activists marched behind the civil rights banner, adopting civil disobedience in an attempt to secure their goals. Housing activists, socialists, nationalists, unionists, republicans, students, trade unionists and political representatives came together across the North. Many of the protesters were bright young university-educated Catholics, who had been able to avail of the free education brought in by the 1949 Education Act. This movement attempted to bring a new dynamic to Northern Ireland politics. The demand for basic civil rights from the Northern Ireland government was an effort to move the traditional fault-lines away from the familiar Catholic-Protestant, nationalist-unionist, republican-loyalist and Irish-British divides by demanding basic rights for all citizens of Britain. However, as the civil rights campaign gained momentum, so too did loyalist opposition. Heightened sectarian tension became more difficult to control, and civil disobedience events began to descend into occasions of civil disorder.

                                 2.2 Battle of the Bogside

The Battle of the Bogside was a very large communal riot that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland during 12–14 August 1969. The fighting was between residents of the Bogside area (allied under the Derry Citizens Defence Association) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The rioting erupted after the RUC attempted to disperse nationalists who were protesting against a loyalist Apprentice Boys parade along the city walls, past the nationalist Bogside area. Rioting continued for three days in the Bogside. The RUC was unable to enter the area, however, and the British Army was deployed to restore order. The riot, which sparked widespread violence elsewhere in Northern Ireland, is commonly seen as one of the first major confrontations in the conflict known as the troubles.        

              The Apprentice Boys parade on 12 August commemorated the Protestant victory in the Siege of Derry in 1689 and was considered highly provocative by many Catholics. Although the march did not pass through the Bogside, it passed close to it at the junction of Waterloo Place and William Street. It was here that trouble broke out. Initially, taunts were exchanged between the loyalists and Bogsiders. Stones were then thrown from both sides for a period, before the police forced the nationalists into Rossville Street and the Bogside itself. They were followed by local loyalists, and the confrontation escalated. Large crowds turned out and pelted the police and the mob with stones and Molotov cocktails, and set up barricades to block their progress.

              The actions of the Bogside residents were coordinated to some extent. The Derry Citizens Defence Association set up a headquarters in the house of Paddy Doherty in Westland Street and tried to supervise the making of petrol bombs and the positioning of barricades. They also set up "Radio Free Derry." Many local people, however, joined in the rioting on their own initiative and impromptu leaders also emerged, such as Bernadette Devlin, Eamonn McCann and others. Local youths climbed onto the roof of the High Flats on Rossville Street, from where they bombarded the RUC below with missiles. When the advantage that this position possessed was realized, the youths were kept supplied with stones and petrol bombs. The RUC were in many respects badly prepared for the "battle". Their riot shields were too small and did not protect their whole bodies. In addition, their uniforms were not flame resistant and a number were badly burned by petrol bombs. They possessed armored cars and guns, but were not permitted to use them. Moreover, there was no system in place to relieve officers, with the result that the same policemen had to serve in the rioting for three days without rest. The police responded to this situation by flooding the area with CS gas, which caused a range of respiratory injuries among the local people. After two days of almost continuous rioting, during which police were drafted in from all over Northern Ireland, the RUC were exhausted, and were snatching sleep in doorways whenever the opportunity allowed.                                                                                            

On 13 August, Jack Lynch, Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland made a televised speech about the events in Derry, in which he said that he "could not stand by and watch innocent people injured and perhaps worse" [3, p. 33]. He promised to send the Irish Army to the border and to set up field hospitals for those injured in the fighting. Lynch's words were widely interpreted in the Bogside as promising that Irish troops were about to be sent to their aid. Unionists were appalled at this prospect, which they saw as a threatened invasion of Northern Ireland. In fact, although the Irish Army was indeed sent to the border, they restricted their activities to providing medical care for the injured.                                                                       

By 14 August, the rioting in the Bogside had reached a critical point. Almost the entire community there had been mobilized by this point, many galvanized by false rumours that St Eugene's Cathedral had been attacked by the police. The RUC were also beginning to use firearms. Two rioters were shot and injured in Great James' Street. The B-Specials, an auxiliary, mostly Protestant police force, much feared by Catholics for their role in killings in the 1920s, were called up and sent to Derry, provoking fears of a massacre on the part of the Bogsiders.

On the afternoon of the 14th, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester-Clark, took the unprecedented step of requesting the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for troops to be sent to Derry. Soon afterwards a company of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment relieved the police, with orders to separate the RUC and the Bogsiders, but not to attempt to breach the barricades and enter the Bogside itself. This marked the first direct intervention of the London government in Ireland since partition. The British troops were at first welcomed by the Bogside residents as a neutral force compared to the RUC and especially the B-Specials.                                                                                                               

Only a handful of radicals in Bogside, notably Bernadette Devlin, opposed the deployment of British troops. This good relationship did not last long however, as the troubles escalated. Over 1000 people had been injured in the rioting in Derry, but no one was killed. A total of 691 RUC men were deployed in Derry during the riot, of whom only 255 were still in action at 12.30 on the 15th. Manpower then fluctuated for the rest of the afternoon: the numbers recorded are 318, 304, 374, 333, 285 and finally 327 at 5.30 p.m. While some of the fluctuation in numbers can be put down to exhaustion rather than injury, these figures indicate that the RUC suffered at least 350 serious injuries. How many Bogsiders were injured is unclear, as many injuries were never reported [3, p. 33].                                                             

A call by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association for people to stretch police resources to aid the Bogsiders led to rioting in Belfast and elsewhere, which left five Catholics and two Protestants dead. That same night (the 14th) a loyalist mob burned all of the Catholic homes on Bombay Street. Over 1,500 Catholics were expelled from their homes in Belfast. Taken together with events in Derry, this period of rioting is widely seen as the point in which The Troubles escalated from a situation of civil unrest to one of a three-way armed conflict between nationalists, state forces and unionists.

                                                2.3 Bloody Sunday

“Bloody Sunday” refers to the events that took place in Derry on the afternoon of Sunday 30 January 1972. A Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march had been organised to protest against the continuation of Internment without trial in Northern Ireland. Between ten and twenty thousand men, women and children took part in the march in a “carnival atmosphere”. The march was prevented from entering the city centre by members of the British Army. The main body of the march then moved to “Free Derry Corner” to attend a rally but some young men began throwing stones at soldiers in William Street. Soldiers of the Parachute Regiment, an elite regiment of the British Army, moved into the Bogside in an arrest operation. During the next 30 minutes these soldiers shot dead13 men (and shot and injured a further 13 people) mainly by single shots to the head and trunk.

The soldiers responsible for the deaths and injuries insisted that they had come under sustained gun and bomb attack by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and only fired at people in possession of weapons. Those involved in the march, and those who witnessed the events, provided evidence that ran contrary to the evidence given by the soldiers. According to these civilian testimonies none of those killed or injured had any guns or bombs.

The events of “Bloody Sunday” caused a lot of shock and revulsion at an international level. Within Ireland the killings resulted in a dramatic increase in support for Republicanism in general and the IRA in particular. The strength of feeling was demonstrated when a crowd of protestors burnt the British embassy in Dublin on 2 February 1972.

Immediately after the killings the British government announced the appointment of Lord Widgery, then Lord Chief Justice, to undertake an inquiry into the events of the day. Many people were skeptical of the impartiality of Widgery and were not reassured when it was decided to hold the Tribunal in Coleraine – a town 32 miles from the scene of the killings. The hearings of the Tribunal were conducted between 21 February 1972 and the 14 March 1972. Many key witnesses, including some of those shot and injured, were not called to the Tribunal. The report of the Tribunal was published on 18 April 1972. Widgery found no fault on the part of the soldiers who fired live rounds on the day but stated that there was a "strong suspicion" that some of those killed "had been firing weapons or handling bombs" [4, p. 33].

Over a period of many years the relatives of those killed on 30 January 1972 campaigned for a fresh inquiry into the killings. On 29 January 1998 Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, announced that there would be a new inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Saville. Main hearings of the new Inquiry took place between March 2000 and January 2005 making it one of the longest and most expensive in British legal history. The final report and conclusions of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry were initially expected to be published in the summer of 2005. It is now likely that the report will be published during 2006.

Many people in the Unionist community have criticised the cost of the Saville Inquiry and the extent of media attention given to the killings of 'Bloody Sunday' and point to the contrast with a number of other major incidents involving paramilitary groups which receive less attention. Part of the reason for this difference is the fact that the Widgery Report into “Bloody Sunday” left doubts about the innocence of those killed whereas no such doubts are attached to those killed, for instance, in the Omagh bombing. In addition those who died in other major incidents were killed by members of various paramilitary groups. However, in Derry it was state forces, in the form of the British Army, the very people who were meant to protect life and uphold law and order, who carried out the killings.

                                    2.4 Ulster Workers' Council Strike

The Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) strike took place between Wednesday 15 May 1974 to Tuesday 28 May 1974. The strike was called in protest at the political and security situation in Northern Ireland and more particular at the proposals in the Sunningdale Agreement which would have given the government of the Republic of Ireland a direct say in the running of the region. The strike lasted two weeks and succeeded in bringing down the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive. Responsibility for the government of Northern Ireland then reverted to the British Parliament at Westminster under the arrangements for “Direct Rule”.

There had been a couple of occasions before, and several after, the 1974 UWC strike, when sections of the Loyalist community had tried to use the industrial might of Protestant workers in a national stoppage or strike to achieve a political end. Most of these stoppages were failures or achieved only limited success. The 1974 UWC strike, however, was successful for a number of reasons. The most important was the fact that the leadership of the strike was able to harness the deep sense of alienation that had grown in the Protestant community during the previous five years. This sense of alienation meant that a large section of the Protestant community was prepared to give active or, at least, tacit support to the strike. Another key factor was the support for the strike in key industries such as power generation, gas and petrol distribution. Other reasons for the success of the strike can be found in the shambolic nature of the response of the British Government and the Northern Ireland Office.

There is no doubt that the events of May 1974 have had important repercussions on the various attempts that have been made since to find a political settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland. The attempts in the current Peace Process to find a vehicle for nationalist aspirations in the form of “cross-border bodies” have obvious echoes in the “Council of Ireland” proposals in the Sunningdale Agreement.

                       2.5 Dublin and Monaghan Bombings

The term “Dublin and Monaghan bombings” refers to four car bombs that exploded in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland, on Friday 17 May 1974. 33 civilians and one unborn child died as a result of the four explosions. Approximately 258 people were injured. The bombings resulted in the greatest loss of life in a single day of the conflict. No one was ever arrested or convicted of causing the explosions.

Initially the two main Loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), denied responsibility for the bombings. However, on 6 July 1993 Yorkshire Television broadcast a documentary entitled “Hidden Hand – the Forgotten Massacre” made as part of its “First Tuesday” series. The programme dealt with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The programme concluded that the UVF carried out the attacks but would have required assistance to plan the attacks and prepare the bombs. There was speculation that elements of the British security forces in Northern Ireland were the most likely source of such assistance. Following the broadcast the UVF released a statement on 15 July 1993 in which the organisation admitted sole responsibility for the bombings.

Members of “Justice For the Forgotten”, the group representing families of those killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, began a campaign to put pressure on the Irish government to establish a full public Inquiry into the bombings. On 19 December 1999 Bertie Ahern, then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), announced the appointment of Justice Liam Hamilton to undertake a private Inquiry into the bombings of 1974. Hamiltion became ill in October 2000 and was succeeded by Justice Henry Barron. “The Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings” was published by the Department of the Taoiseach, on 10 December 2003 [17, p. 34].

                                      2.6 Hunger Strike

Bobby Sands, then leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Maze Prison, refused food on 1 March 191 and so began a new hunger strike. The choice of the date was significant because it marked the fifth anniversary of the ending of special category status (1 March 1976). The main aim of the new strike was to achieve the reintroduction of “political” status for Republican prisoners. Special category, or “political”, status would be achieved if five demands were met: the right of prisoners to wear their civilian clothes at all times; the right to free association within a block of cells; the right not to do prison work; the right to educational and recreational facilities; and the restoration of lost remission of sentence. It later became clear that the IRA leadership outside the prison was not in favour of a new hunger strike following the outcome of the 1980 strike. The main impetus for a new protest came from the prisoners themselves. The strike was to last until 3 October 1981 and was to see 10 Republican prisoners starve themselves to death in support of their demands.