The Troubles ( ) was a
period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland
which spilled over at various times into England
, the
Republic of
Ireland
, and mainland
Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally
dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with
the
Belfast Agreement of 1998.
Violence nonetheless continues on a sporadic basis.
The principal issues at stake in the Troubles were the
constitutional status of Northern
Ireland and the relationship between the mainly-Protestant
Unionist and mainly-Catholic
Nationalist communities in
Northern Ireland. The Troubles had both political and military (or
paramilitary) dimensions.
Its participants included politicians and
political activists on both sides, republican and loyalist paramilitaries, and the security forces of the
United
Kingdom
and of the Republic of Ireland.
Overview
"The
Troubles" refers to approximately three decades of violence between
elements of Northern
Ireland's nationalist
community (principally Roman
Catholic) and unionist
community (principally Protestant). Use of the term "The
Troubles" has been raised at
NI Assembly
level, as some people considered this period of conflict a war .
The
conflict was the result of discrimination against the
Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist majority
and the question of Northern Ireland's status within the United Kingdom. The violence was characterised by the armed
campaigns of paramilitary groups, including those of the
Provisional Irish
Republican Army campaign of 1969–1997, intended to end British
rule in Northern Ireland and to
reunite
Ireland politically and thus creating a new "all-Ireland"
Irish Republic; and of 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
Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC)—were also involved in the violence.
The
British Government's view was
that its forces were neutral in the conflict, trying to uphold law
and order in Northern
Ireland and the right of the people of Northern Ireland to
democratic self-determination. Irish republicans, however, regarded the
state forces as forces of occupation and "
combatants" in the conflict, noting
collusion between the state forces and the
loyalist paramilitaries. The "Ballast" investigation by the
Police Ombudsman has confirmed that
British forces, and in particular the RUC, did, on several
occasions, collude with loyalist paramilitaries, were involved in
murder, and did obstruct the course of justice when such claims had
previously been investigated. The extent of collusion is still
hotly disputed.
Unionists claim
that reports of collusion were either false or highly exaggerated
and that there were also instances of collusion between the
authorities of the Republic of Ireland and Republican
paramilitaries.
Alongside the violence, there was a political deadlock between the
major political parties in Northern Ireland, including those who
condemned violence, over the future status of Northern Ireland and
the form of government there should be within Northern
Ireland.
The Troubles were brought to an uneasy end by a
peace process. It included
the declaration of ceasefires by most paramilitary organisations,
the complete decommissioning of the IRA's weapons, the reform of
the police, and the corresponding withdrawal of army troops from
the streets and sensitive border areas such as
South Armagh and
Fermanagh, as agreed by the signatories to the
Belfast Agreement (commonly known
as the "
Good Friday
Agreement"). The agreement reiterated the long-held British
position, which successive Irish governments had not fully
acknowledged, that Northern Ireland would remain within the United
Kingdom until a majority votes otherwise.
On the
other hand, the British Government recognised for the first time
the principle that the people of the island of Ireland
as a whole
have the right, without any outside interference, to solve the
issues between North and South by mutual consent. The latter
statement was key to winning support for the agreement from
nationalists and republicans. It also established a devolved
power-sharing government within Northern Ireland (which had been
suspended from 14 October 2002 until 8 May 2007), where the
government must consist of both unionist and nationalist
parties.
Though the
number of active participants in the Troubles was relatively small,
and the paramilitary organisations that claimed to represent the
communities were unrepresentative of the general population, the
Troubles touched the lives of many people in Northern Ireland on a
daily basis, while occasionally spreading to the Republic of
Ireland and England. At
several times between 1969 and 1998, it seemed possible that the
Troubles would escalate into a full-scale
civil war. Critical times were in 1972 after
Bloody Sunday, or during the
Hunger Strikes of
1980–1981, when there was mass, hostile mobilisation of the two
communities . Many people today have had their political, social,
and communal attitudes and perspectives shaped by the
Troubles.
Background
1608–1912
From 1608, British
settlers, known as
planters, were given land confiscated from the native
Irish in the
Plantation of
Ulster. Coupled with Protestant immigration to "unplanted"
areas of Ulster, particularly Antrim and Down, this resulted in
conflict between the native Catholics and the "planters". This led
to two bloody ethno-religious conflicts in
1641–1653 and
1689–1691, each of which resulted
in Protestant victories.
British Protestant political dominance in Ireland was ensured by
the passage of the
penal laws,
which curtailed the religious, legal and political rights of anyone
(including both Catholics and (Protestant) Dissenters, such as
Presbyterians) who did not conform to
the state church—the
Anglican Church of Ireland.
As the penal laws broke down in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, there was more competition for land, as restrictions were
lifted on the
Catholic Irish
ability to rent. With Roman Catholics allowed to buy land and enter
trades from which they had formerly been banned, Protestant
"
Peep O'Day Boys" attacks on that
community increased. In the 1790s Catholics in south Ulster
organised as "
The Defenders" and
counter-attacked. This created polarisation between the communities
and a dramatic reduction in reformers within the Protestant
community. It had been growing more receptive to ideas of
democratic reform.
Following the foundation of the nationalist-based
Society of the United
Irishmen by Presbyterians, Catholics and liberal Anglicans, and
the resulting failed
Irish
Rebellion of 1798, sectarian violencebetween Catholics and
Protestants continued. The
Orange
Order (founded in 1795), with its stated goal of upholding the
Protestant faith and loyalty to
William of Orange and his heirs, dates
from this period and remains active to this day.
In 1801, a
new political framework was formed with the abolition of the
Irish Parliament and incorporation
of Ireland into the United Kingdom
. The result was a closer tie between the
former, largely pro-republican
Presbyterians and Anglicans as part of a
"loyal" Protestant community. Though
Catholic Emancipation was achieved in
1829, in large part by
Daniel
O'Connell, largely eliminating legal discrimination against
Catholics (around 75% of Ireland's population), Jews and
Dissenters, O'Connell's long-term goals of Repeal of the 1801 Union
and
Home Rule were never achieved. The
Home Rule movement served to define the divide between most
nationalist (often Catholics), who
sought the restoration of an Irish Parliament, and most
unionist (often Protestants), who were afraid
of being a minority in a Catholic-dominated Irish Parliament and
tended to support continuing union with Britain. Unionists and home
Rules advocates countered each other during the career of
Charles Stuart Parnell, a repealer,
and onwards.
1912–1922
By the second decade of the 20th century Home Rule, or limited
Irish self-government, was on the brink of being conceded due to
the agitation of the
Irish
Parliamentary Party. In response, Unionists, mostly Protestant
and concentrated in Ulster, resisted both self-government and
independence for Ireland, fearing for their future in an
overwhelmingly Catholic country dominated by the Roman Catholic
Church. In 1912, unionists led by
Edward
Carson signed the
Ulster
Covenant and pledged to resist Home Rule by force if necessary.
To this
end, they formed the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers and imported arms from
Germany
(the Easter Rising
insurrectionists did the same several years later).
Nationalists formed the
Irish
Volunteers, whose ostensible goal was to oppose the
Ulster Volunteers and ensure the enactment
of the
Third Home Rule Bill in
the event of British or Unionist recalcitrance. The outbreak of the
First World War in 1914 temporarily
averted the crisis of possible civil war and delayed the resolution
of the question of Irish independence. Home Rule, though passed in
the British Parliament with
Royal
Assent, was suspended for the duration of the war.
Following
the nationalist Easter Rising in
Dublin
in 1916 by the Irish Republican Brotherhood,
and the executions of fifteen of the Rising's leaders, the
separatist Sinn Féin party won a
majority of seats in Ireland and set up the First Dáil (Irish Parliament) in
Dublin. Their victory was aided by the
threat of conscription to the
British Army.
Ireland essentially seceded from the
United
Kingdom. The Irish War for Independence
followed, leading to eventual independence for the Republic of
Ireland. In Ulster, however, and particularly in the
six counties which became Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin fared poorly
in the 1918 election, and Unionists won a strong majority.
The
1920 Government of
Ireland Act partitioned the island of Ireland into two separate
jurisdictions, Southern Ireland and
Northern
Ireland, both devolved regions of the United
Kingdom. This
partition of
Ireland was confirmed when the
Parliament of Northern
Ireland exercised its right in December 1922 under the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 to
opt
out of the newly established
Irish
Free State.
A part of the treaty signed in 1922, stated that a boundary
commission would sit in due course to decide where the frontier of
the northern state would be in relation to its southern neighbour.
With the two key signatories from the South of Ireland dead during
the Irish Civil War of 1922–23, this part of the treaty was given
less priority by the new Southern Irish government led by Cosgrave
and was quietly dropped.
The idea of the boundary commission was to include as many of the
nationalist and loyalist communities in their respective states as
fairly as possible. As counties Fermanagh and Tyrone and border
areas of Londonderry, Armagh and Down were mainly nationalist, the
boundary commission could have rendered Northern Ireland untenable,
as at best a 4 county state and possibly even smaller than
this.
If the boundary commission was to sit today (by the 1991 census),
the northern state would consist of one full county (Antrim) and
two thirds of Armagh and Down and one quarter of Londonderry.
Fermanagh, Tyrone, 3 quarters of Derry and border areas of Down and
Armagh would pass to the Republic of Ireland.
Northern
Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, albeit under a separate system of government
whereby it was given its own Parliament and devolved government. While this
arrangement met the desires of Unionists to remain part of the
United Kingdom, Nationalists largely viewed the partition of
Ireland as an illegal and arbitrary division of the island against
the will of the majority of its people. They argued that the
Northern Ireland state was neither legitimate nor democratic, but
created with a deliberately
gerrymandered Unionist majority. Catholics
initially composed about 33% of its population.
Northern Ireland came into being in a violent manner—a total of 557
people were killed in political or sectarian violence from
1920–1922, during and after the
Irish War of Independence. Most
were Catholics.
(See also;
Irish War of Independence in the North East.) The result was
communal strife between Catholics and Protestants, with
Nationalists characterizing this violence, especially that in
Belfast
, as a
"pogrom" against their community although one
historian argues that the reciprocity of northern violence does not
fit the pogrom model or imagery so well.
1922–1966
A legacy of the Irish Civil War, later to have a major impact on
Northern Ireland, was the survival of a marginalised remnant of the
Irish
Republican Army. It was illegal in both Irish states and
ideologically committed to overthrowing both by force of arms to
re-establish the
Irish Republic of
1919–1921. In response, the Northern Irish government passed the
Civil
Authorities Act 1922; this gave sweeping powers to the
government and police to do virtually anything seen as necessary to
re-establish or preserve law and order. The Act continued to be
used against the nationalist community long after the violence of
this period had come to an end.
The two sides' positions became strictly defined following this
period. From a Unionist perspective, Northern Ireland's
nationalists were inherently disloyal and determined to force
Protestants and unionists into a united Ireland. In the 1970s, for
instance, during the period when the British government was
unsuccessfully attempting to implement the
Sunningdale Agreement, then-
Social Democratic and Labour
Party (SDLP) councillor
Hugh Logue
described the agreement as the means by which unionists "will be
trundled into a united Ireland". This threat was seen as justifying
preferential treatment of unionists in housing, employment and
other fields. The prevalence of large families and a more rapid
population growth among Catholics was also seen as a threat.
From a nationalist perspective, continued discrimination against
Catholics only proved that Northern Ireland was an inherently
corrupt, British-imposed state.
The Republic of Ireland Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) Charles Haughey, whose
family had fled County
Londonderry during the 1920s Troubles, described Northern
Ireland as "a failed political entity". The unionist
government ignored Edward Carson's warning in 1921 that alienating
Catholics would make Northern Ireland inherently unstable.
After the initial turmoil of the early 1920s, there were occasional
incidents of sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland. These included a
brief and
ineffective IRA
campaign in the 1940s, and another
abortive IRA campaign in the 1950s. By
the early 1960s Northern Ireland was fairly stable.
Timeline
Beginning
Emergence of the Ulster Volunteer Force
A UVF mural in Belfast
The origins of the Troubles can be traced back to the formation of
the
Ulster Volunteer Force in
May 1966. The UVF was 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:
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 blackouts. 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 equality reforms of
Terence O'Neill's government.
Attacks on Civil Rights marches
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, they wanted an end to the
gerrymandering of electoral
constituencies 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 and other repressive
measures) 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, who let an
Apprentice Boys march take place
instead. 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 ~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) involving a
nationalist communal uprising in Derry. The riot started in 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 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 gun, 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
had been 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. One
Catholic priest reported that his parishioners were contemptuously
calling the IRA "I Ran Away".
In the wake of the riots, the Irish prime minister
Jack Lynch made a famous television broadcast in
which he stated that the Irish Government could "no longer stand
by" while nationalists in Northern Ireland were attacked. This was
interpreted in some quarters as a threat of military
intervention.
The
government
of Northern Ireland requested that the
British 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.
Violence peaks and Stormont collapses
British Army in south Belfast,
1981.
The years 1970–1972 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. It was the year
which saw the greatest loss of life throughout the entire conflict.
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 argued that the upsurge in violence was caused by the
disappointment of the hopes engendered by the civil rights movement
and the repression subsequently directed at their community. They
point to a number of events in these years to support this opinion.
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, not a single one was a Protestant.
Moreover, due to poor intelligence, very few of those interned were
actually republican activists, but some went on to become
republicans as a result of their unfortunate experiences. Between
1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were
Catholic/republican, while 107 were Protestant/loyalist. There were
widespread allegations from the nationalist community of abuse and
even
torture of detainees. Nationalists also
point to the fatal shootings of 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights
demonstrators by the British Army in Derry in January 1972, on what
became known as
Bloody
Sunday.
The Provisional IRA (or "Provos", as they became known), formed in
early 1970, soon established itself as more aggressive and militant
in responding to attacks on the nationalist community, who saw the
Provisional IRA as their "defenders". Despite the increasingly
reformist and
Marxist politics of the Official IRA, they began
their 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
July 21, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast
killing seven civilians and two soldiers. The Official IRA, who had
never been fully committed to armed action, called off their
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 murders 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. For example, in Belfast, Protestants were forced
out of Lenadoon, and Catholics were driven out of the Rathcoole
estate and the Westvale neighbourhood. In Derry City almost all the
Protestants fled to the predominantly loyalist Fountain Estate and
Waterside areas.
The UK government in London, believing the Northern Ireland
administration incapable of containing the security situation,
suspended the unionist-controlled
Stormont Home Rule government in 1972. It 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. The Troubles continued
throughout the 1970s and 1980s within a context of political
deadlock.
Sunningdale Agreement and UWC strike
In June 1973, following the publication of a British
White Paper and an abortive
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.
Seamus Mallon, the
Social Democratic and Labour
Party (SDLP) politician, has pointed to the marked similarities
between the Sunningdale Agreement and the Belfast Agreement of
1998. Notably, he characterised the latter as "Sunningdale for slow
learners".
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.
The remarks by SDLP councillor Hugh Logue to an audience at Trinity
College Dublin
that Sunningdale was the tool "by which the
Unionists will be trundled off to a united Ireland" ensured its
defeat.
In January 1974,
Brian Faulkner was
narrowly deposed as Unionist Party leader by his own party 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 stopped all 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.
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.
Late 1970s
The violence continued through the rest of the 1970s. The
Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in 1975 but returned to
violence in 1976. By this time they had lost the hope that they had
had in the early 1970s that they 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. However, a splinter
from the "Officials" 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. However, their campaign lost momentum after
they appealed to the nationalist community to provide information
on the IRA to security forces. The Army and police were so
unpopular in many nationalist areas that this was not seen as an
objective stance.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, Co.
Sligo
, was blown
up by a bomb planted on board his boat. Three other people
were also killed, including a local teenage boatman.
That same afternoon,
eighteen soldiers, mostly members of the Parachute Regiment, were killed by two
remote-controlled bombs at Warrenpoint
, County
Down.
Hunger strikes and the emergence of Sinn Féin
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. In 1986, Sinn Féin recognised the legitimacy of the Irish
Dáil, which caused a small group of
republicans to break away and form
Republican Sinn Féin.
The 1980s
The IRA's
"Long War" was boosted by large donations of arms to them from
Libya
in the 1980s (see Provisional IRA arms
importation) due to Moammar
Qaddafi's anger at Thatcher's
government for assisting the Reagan government's bombing of Tripoli, which had killed one of
Qaddafi's children.
The IRA continued its bombing campaign.
One of its most high
profile actions was the Brighton hotel bombing
on 12 October 1984, when it set off a 100-pound
bomb in the Grand Hotel
, Brighton, where politicians including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were staying for the
Conservative Party
conference. Five people were killed, including Conservative
MP Sir
Anthony Berry and the wife of
Government Chief
Whip John Wakeham, and thirty-four
others were injured, including Wakeham, Trade and Industry
Secretary
Norman Tebbit and Tebbit's
wife, Margaret.
In the mid to late 1980s loyalist paramilitaries, including the
Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association and
Ulster Resistance, imported arms and
explosives from
South Africa. The
weapons obtained were divided between the UDA, the UVF and Ulster
Resistance, and led to an escalation in the assassination of
Catholics, although some of the weaponry (such as
rocket propelled grenades) were
hardly used. These killings were in response to the 1985
Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave the
Irish government a "consultative
role" in the internal government of Northern Ireland.
Paramilitary ceasefires and peace process
Since the late 1980s, while the IRA continued its armed campaign,
its 'alleged' political wing
Sinn
Féin, led since 1983 by
Gerry Adams,
sought a negotiated end to the conflict, although Adams knew that
this would be a very long process. In the 1970s he himself
predicted that the war would last another 20 years. He conducted
open talks with
John Hume—the
Social Democratic and Labour
Party leader—and secret talks with Government officials.
Loyalists were also engaged in behind-the-scenes talks to end the
violence, connecting with the British and Irish governments through
Protestant clergy, in particular the Presbyterian
Rev Roy Magee and the Anglican Archbishop
Robin Eames.
First ceasefire
After a prolonged period of political manoeuvring in the
background, the loyalist and republican paramilitaries declared
ceasefires in 1994.
The year leading up to the ceasefires was a particularly tense one,
marked by atrocities. The UDA and UVF stepped up their killings of
Catholics (for the first time in 1993 killing more civilians than
Republicans). The IRA responded with the
Shankill Road bombing in October 1993,
which aimed to kill the UDA leadership, but in fact killed nine
Protestant civilians. The UDA in turn retaliated with the
Greysteel massacre and shootings at
Castlerock, County Londonderry.
On 16 June 1994, just before the ceasefires, the Irish National
Liberation Army killed a UVF member in a gun attack on the Shankill
Road.
In
revenge, three days later, the UVF killed six civilians in a
shooting at a pub in Loughinisland
, County Down. The
IRA, in the remaining month before its ceasefire, killed four
senior loyalists, three from the UDA and one from the UVF. There
are various interpretations of the spike in violence before the
ceasefires. One theory is that the loyalists feared the peace
process represented an imminent "sellout" of the Union and
ratcheted up their violence accordingly. Another explanation is
that the republicans were "settling old scores" before the end of
their campaigns. They wanted to enter the political process from a
position of military strength rather than weakness.
On 31 August 1994, the Provisional IRA declared a
ceasefire. The loyalist paramilitaries,
temporarily united in the "
Combined Loyalist Military
Command", reciprocated six weeks later. Although these
ceasefires failed in the short run, they marked an effective end to
large-scale political violence in the Troubles, as they paved the
way for the final ceasefire.
In 1995 the United States appointed George Mitchell as the
United States
Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Mitchell was recognised as
being more than a token envoy and someone representing a President
(
Bill Clinton) with a deep interest in
events. The British and Irish governments agreed that Mitchell
would chair an international commission on disarmament of
paramilitary groups.
Second ceasefire
On 9
February 1996, less than two years after the declaration of the
ceasefire, the IRA revoked it with the Docklands bombing
in the Canary Wharf area of London, killing two
people and causing £85 million in damage to the city's financial
centre. Sinn Féin blamed the failure of the ceasefire on the
UK government's refusal to begin all-party negotiations until the
IRA decommissioned its weapons.
The
attack was followed by several more, most notably the Manchester
Bombing
, which destroyed a large area of the centre of the
city on 15 June 1996. It was the largest bomb attack in
Britain since World War II. While the attack avoided any fatalities
due to the rapid response of the emergency services to a telephone
warning, over 200 people were injured in the attack, many of them
outside the established cordon. The damage caused by the blast was
valued at £411 million. The last British soldier to die in the
Troubles,
Lance Bombardier Stephen
Restorick, was also killed during this period, on 12 February 1997,
by the "
South
Armagh sniper".
The IRA reinstated their ceasefire in July 1997, as negotiations
for the document that would become known as the Good Friday
Agreement were starting without Sinn Féin. In September of the same
year Sinn Féin signed
the Mitchell
Principles and was invited into the talks.
The UVF was the first paramilitary grouping to split as a result of
their ceasefire, spawning the
Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in
1996. In December 1997, the INLA assassinated LVF leader
Billy Wright, leading to a series of
revenge killings of Catholics by loyalist groups. In addition, a
group of Republicans split from the Provisional IRA and formed the
Real IRA.
In August
1998, a Real IRA bomb in Omagh
killed 29
civilians. This bombing largely discredited "dissident"
Republicans and their campaigns in the eyes of most nationalists.
They are now small and non-influential groups, but still capable of
violence. The INLA also declared a ceasefire after the Belfast
Agreement was passed in 1998.
Since then, most paramilitary violence has been directed inwards,
at their "own" communities and at other factions within their
organisations. The UDA, for example, has feuded with their fellow
loyalists the UVF on two occasions since 2000. There have also been
internal struggles for power between "Brigade commanders" and
involvement in organised crime.
The Provisional IRA has been accused of killing at least one
double-agent (
Denis Donaldson). Its
members have also been accused of intimidating and exiling
Catholics, assaulting men and women, and killing men, such as
Robert McCartney, Matthew
Ignatius Burns and Andrew Kearney.
Political process
After the ceasefires, talks began between the main political
parties in Northern Ireland to establish political agreement. These
talks led to the
Belfast Agreement
of 1998. This Agreement restored self-government to Northern
Ireland on the basis of "power-sharing". In 1999 an executive was
formed consisting of the four main parties, including Sinn Féin.
Other reforms included reform of the RUC, which was renamed as the
Police Service of
Northern Ireland and required to recruit at least a minimum
quota of Catholics.
The power-sharing Executive and Assembly were suspended in 2002,
when unionists withdrew following the exposure of a Provisional IRA
spy ring within the Sinn Féin office. (This was later revealed to
have been started by undercover British agent Denis Donaldson).
There were ongoing tensions about the Provisional IRA's failure to
disarm fully and sufficiently quickly. IRA decommissioning has
since been completed (in September 2005) to the satisfaction of
most, but the Democratic Unionist Party has continued to be wary
over republican claims that the "war was over".
A feature of Northern Irish politics since the Agreement has been
the eclipse in electoral terms of the relatively moderate parties,
such as the Social Democratic and Labour Party and
Ulster Unionist Party, by more extreme
parties—Sinn Féin and the DUP. Similarly, although political
violence is greatly reduced, sectarian animosity has not
disappeared. Residential areas are more segregated between Catholic
nationalists and Protestant unionists than ever.
Because of this, progress towards restoring the power-sharing
institutions has been slow and tortuous. Though the "peace process"
is slow-going, movements have formed which give those affected by
the Troubles a voice in their communities. In particular, the
Corrymeela Community in
Ballycastle teaches the
prejudice-reduction model, which has been adopted by the
Ulster Project International to improve
relations between Protestant and Catholic families across the
country.
On 8 May 2007, devolved government returned to Northern Ireland.
DUP leader
Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin's
Martin McGuinness took office as
First Minister and deputy First Minister, respectively.
Consultative Group on the Past
The
Consultative Group on the Past is an independent group established
to consult across the community in Northern Ireland on the best way to deal with the legacy of the
Troubles.
The Group states its terms of reference as:
The group is co-chaired by His Grace the Most Rev. Dr.
Robin Eames (Lord Eames), the former
Church of Ireland
Archbishop of Armagh, and
Denis
Bradley, and published its report in January 2009.
Whilst
the group has met MI5 and the
UVF, the Provisional IRA has refused to meet with the
group.
The Group published its recommendations on 28 January 2009 in a
190-page report, containing more than 30 recommendations, expected
to cost in total £300m. The report recommended the setting up of a
5 year Legacy Commission, a Reconciliation Forum to aid the
existing commission for victims and survivors, and a new historical
case review body. The report concluded the Legacy Commission should
make proposals on how "a line might be drawn", but omitted
proposals for an amnesty. Additionally, it was proposed that no new
Public Inquiries be held, and an annual Day of Reflection and
Reconciliation and a shared memorial to the conflict. A
controversial proposal to pay the relatives of all victims killed
in The Troubles, including the families of dead bombers, £12,000,
as a "recognition payment", caused disruption to the report's
launch by protestors. This estimated cost of this part of the
proposal was £40m.
Collusion between security forces and loyalist
paramilitaries
One particularly controversial aspect of the conflict has been
collusion between the state security
forces and loyalist paramilitaries as highlighted by the
Stevens Inquiries and the case of
Brian Nelson amongst others.
According to a report released by the Irish government in 2006 ,
members of British security forces colluded with loyalist
paramilitaries in a number of attacks during the troubles.
Ulster Defence Regiment
A platoon of UDR soldiers.
One problem, highlighted by documents declassified in 2004, is that
British government documents from the early 1970s show overlapping
membership between the
Ulster
Defence Regiment (UDR) and loyalist paramilitary groups. The
documents include a report titled "Subversion in the UDR" which
details the problem. The documents state that:
- An estimated 5–15% of UDR soldiers were directly linked to
loyalist paramilitary groups.
- It was believed that the "best single source of weapons, and
the only significant source of modern weapons, for Protestant
extremist groups was the UDR."
- It was feared that UDR troops were loyal to "Ulster" alone
rather than to "Her Majesty's Government".
- The British Government knew that UDR weapons were being used by
loyalist paramilitaries, including the killing of a Roman Catholic
civilian and other attacks
Despite knowing that the UDR had problems and that over 200 weapons
had been passed from British Army hands to loyalist paramilitaries
by 1973, the British Government went on to increase the role of the
UDR in maintaining order in Northern Ireland.
Special Patrol Group and the Glenane allegations
In the mid-1970s, a Royal Ulster Constabulary "anti-terrorist
unit", the
Special Patrol
Group, was implicated in aiding and participating in a number
of sectarian murders in the mid-Ulster area, including the
Reavey and O'Dowd killings of
1976.
Two
SPG members, John Weir and Billy
McCaughey, were convicted in 1980 of a 1977 murder, an attack
on a pub in Keady
, and the
kidnap of a Catholic priest. They implicated their immediate
colleagues in at least 11 other killings and alleged that they were
part of a wider conspiracy involving the RUC Special Branch,
British military intelligence, and the UVF. The Special Patrol
Group was stood down after the men's conviction.
The nationalist
Pat Finucane Centre has claimed
that the group of British Army, RUC, UDR and UVF members that Wier
and McCaughey referred to, which they called the "Glenane gang", was responsible for 87 killings in
the 1970s, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of
1974 and the Miami Showband killings
of 1975.
Collusion in the 1980s and 1990s
A republican mural in Belfast with the
slogan "Collusion Is Not An Illusion"
Elements within the Army and police have been shown to have leaked
intelligence to loyalists from the late 1980s to target republican
activists. In 1992, a British agent within the UDA,
Brian Nelson, revealed Army
complicity in his activities which included murder and importing
arms. Factions within the British Army and RUC are known to have
cooperated with Nelson and the UDA through the British Army
Intelligence group called the
Force
Research Unit. Since the late 1990s, some loyalists have
confirmed to journalists such as
Peter Taylor that they received
files and intelligence from security sources on Republican
targets.
In a report released on 22 January 2007, the Police Ombudsman
Nuala O'Loan stated that UVF informers
committed serious crimes, including murder, with the full knowledge
of their handlers. The report alleged that certain
Special Branch officers created false
statements, blocked evidence searches and "baby-sat" suspects
during interviews.
Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) councillor and former Police Federation
chairman Jimmy Spratt said if the report "had had one shred of
credible evidence then we could have expected charges against
former Police Officers. There are no charges, so the public should
draw their own conclusion, the report is clearly based on little
fact". However, the then
Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland,
Peter Hain, said
that he was "convinced that at least one prosecution will arise out
of today's report". Peter Hain also said, "There are all sorts of
opportunities for prosecutions to follow. The fact that some
retired police officers obstructed the investigation and refused to
co-operate with the Police Ombudsman is very serious in itself.
There will be consequences for those involved and it is a matter
for the relevant bodies to take up".
Shoot-to-kill allegations
In addition, republicans allege that the security forces operated a
policy of "
shoot-to-kill,"
killing rather than arresting IRA suspects.
The security forces
denied this and point out that in incidents such as the killing
of eight IRA men at Loughgall
in 1987, the paramilitaries who were killed were
heavily armed. Others argue that incidents such as the
shooting of
three unarmed IRA members
in Gibraltar
by the SAS
ten months later confirmed suspicions among
republicans, and in the British and Irish media, of a tacit British
"shoot-to-kill"
policy of suspected IRA members.
Parades issue
Inter-communal tensions rise and violence often breaks out during
the "marching season" when the Protestant
Orange Order parades take place across
Northern Ireland. The parades are held to commemorate
William of Orange's victory in the
Battle of the Boyne in 1690,
which secured the
Protestant
Ascendancy and British rule in Ireland.
One particular
flashpoint that has caused repeated strife is the Garvaghy Road
area in Portadown
, where an Orange parade from Drumcree Church passes by a predominantly
nationalist estate off the Garvaghy Road. This parade has
now been banned indefinitely, following nationalist riots against
the parade, and also loyalist counter-riots against its banning. In
1995, 1996 and 1997, there were several weeks of prolonged rioting
throughout Northern Ireland over the impasse at Drumcree.
A number
of people died in this violence, including a Catholic taxi driver,
killed by the Loyalist
Volunteer Force, and three (of four) nominally Catholic
brothers (from a mixed-religion family) died when their house in
Ballymoney
was petrol-bombed.
Disputes have also occurred in Belfast over parade routes along the
Ormeau and Crumlin Roads. Orangemen hold that to march their
"traditional route" is their civil right. Nationalists argue that
by parading through predominantly Catholic areas, the Orange Order
is being unnecessarily provocative. Symbolically, the ability to
either parade or to block a parade is viewed as expressing
ownership of "territory" and influence over the government of
Northern Ireland.
Many commentators have expressed the view that the violence over
the parades issue has provided an outlet for the violence of
paramilitary groups who are otherwise on ceasefire.
Social repercussions
The youth of Northern Ireland were
strongly affected by the Troubles.
Unemployment was rife and social activities limited.
The Troubles' impact on the ordinary people of Northern Ireland
produced such psychological trauma that the city of Belfast had
been compared to London during the Blitz. The stress resulting from
bomb attacks, street disturbances, security checkpoints, and the
constant military presence had the strongest effect on children and
young adults. In addition to the violence and intimidation, there
was chronic unemployment and a severe housing shortage. Vandalism
was also a major problem. In the 1970s there were 10,000 vandalised
empty houses in Belfast alone. Most of the vandals were aged
between eight and thirteen. Activities for young people were
limited, with pubs fortified and cinemas closed. Just to go
shopping in the city centre required passing through security gates
and being subjected to body searches.
Social intercourse was also affected. Normal interaction and
friendship with people from the opposite side of the
religious/political divide was nearly impossible in the atmosphere
of fear and distrust that the Troubles generated.
According to one historian of the conflict the stress of the
Troubles engendered a breakdown in the previously strict sexual
morality of Northern Ireland, resulting in a "confused hedonism" in
respect of personal life. In Derry, illegitimate births and
alcoholism increased for women and the divorce rate rose.
The
Department of Health has looked at a report written in 2007 by Mike
Tomlinson of Queen's University
, which asserted that the legacy of the Troubles has
played a substantial role in the current high rate of suicide in
Northern Ireland.
Casualties
Responsibility
Between 1969 and 2001, 3,526 people were killed as a result of the
Troubles.
Approximately 60% of the dead were killed by republicans, 30% by
loyalists and 10% by British security forces.
|
Responsibility for killing |
Responsible party
|
No. |
| Republican
Paramilitary Groups |
2057 |
| Loyalist Paramilitary
Groups |
1019 |
| British Security
Forces |
363 |
| Persons unknown |
82 |
| Irish Security
Forces |
5 |
|
Total |
3526 |
Status
Most of those killed were civilians or members of the security
forces, with smaller groups of victims identified with republican
and loyalist paramilitary groups. It is often disputed whether some
civilians were members of paramilitary organisations due to their
secretive nature. Several casualties were listed as civilians by
CAIN but are now claimed by the IRA as their
members, Padraig O'Seanachain (Patrick Shanaghan) for example. One
UDA and three
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) members
killed during the conflict were also
Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR)
soldiers at the time of their deaths.
*27 July 1975 William Hanna (46) Protestant
Status: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Killed by: Ulster Volunteer
Force (UVF)
Also off duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) member. Shot outside
his home, Houston Park, Mourneview, Lurgan, County Armagh.
- 31 July 1975 Harris Boyle (22) Protestant
Status: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Killed by: Ulster Volunteer
Force (UVF)
Also Ulster Defence Regiment member. Killed in premature explosion
while planting bomb on minibus belonging to Miami showband,
Buskhill, near Newry, County Down.
- 31 July 1975 Wesley Somerville (34) Protestant
Status: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Killed by: Ulster Volunteer
Force (UVF)
Also Ulster Defence Regiment member. Killed in premature explosion
while planting bomb on minibus belonging to Miami showband,
Buskhill, near Newry, County Down.
*17 October 1972 John Todd (23) ProtestantStatus: Ulster Defence
Association (UDA), Killed by: British Army (BA)Also off duty Ulster
Defence Regiment (UDR) member. Shot during street disturbances,
Wilton Street, Shankill, Belfast.
At least one civilian victim was an off-duty member of the
TA.
Location
Most
killings took place within Northern Ireland, especially Belfast,
although surrounding counties, Dublin and large
English cities (such as London
and
Birmingham
) were affected, albeit to a lesser degree than in
Northern Ireland itself. Occasionally, violence also took place in
western Europe, especially against the British Army and to a lesser extent against the
Royal Air Force in Germany. The
IRA killed a Royal Air Force corporal, Maheshkumar Islania and his
6-month-old daughter in October 1989 when two gunmen opened fire on
his car in a snack-bar parking lot outside RAF Wildenrath near the
West Germany/Netherlands border. A few months later, in May 1990,
the IRA shot two Australian tourists in Roermond, Netherlands after
they mistook them for British soldiers. The 24-year-old lawyers
were ambushed in the main square as they returned to their car
after a meal in a restaurant.
Chronological listing
Deaths
related to Northern Ireland conflict (1969–2001).
Number of deaths listed as "conflict-related (uncertain if
conflict-related)." |
|
Year |
No. |
| 2001 |
16 |
| 2000 |
19 |
| 1999 |
8 |
| 1998 |
55 |
| 1997 |
21 |
| 1996 |
18 |
| 1995 |
9 |
| 1994 |
64 |
| 1993 |
88 |
| 1992 |
89 |
| 1991 |
96 |
| 1990 |
81 |
| 1989 |
75 |
| 1988 |
104 |
| 1987 |
98 |
| 1986 |
61 |
| 1985 |
57 |
| 1984 |
69 |
| 1983 |
85 |
| 1982 |
110 |
| 1981 |
113 |
| 1980 |
80 |
| 1979 |
121 |
| 1978 |
81 |
| 1977 |
111 |
| 1976 |
295 |
| 1975 |
260 |
| 1974 |
294 |
| 1973 |
253 |
| 1972 |
479 |
| 1971 |
171 |
| 1970 |
28 |
| 1969 |
16 |
Additional statistics
|
Additional estimated statistics on the conflict. |
|
Incident |
No. |
| Injury |
47,541 |
| Shooting |
36,923 |
| Armed robbery |
22,539 |
| Persons charged with
paramilitary offences |
19,605 |
| Bombing and attempted
bombing |
16,209 |
| Arson |
2,225 |
See also
Notes
- The Politics of Northern Ireland: Beyond the Belfast
Agreement by Arthur Aughey (ISBN 978-0415327886), page 7
- "The troubles were over, but the killing continued. Some of the
heirs to Ireland's violent traditions refused to give up their
inheritance." Holland, Jack: Hope against History: The Course
of Conflict in Northern Ireland. Henry Holt & Company,
1999, page 221. ISBN 0805060871
- Historical Dictionary of the Northern Ireland Conflict
by Gordon Gillespie (ISBN 978-0810855830), page 250
- Elliot, Marianne: The Long Road to Peace in Northern
Ireland: Peace Lectures from the Institute of Irish Studies at
Liverpool University. University of Liverpool Institute of
Irish Studies, Liverpool University Press, 2007, page 2. ISBN
1846310652
- Goodspeed, Michael: When reason fails: portraits of armies
at war : America, Britain, Israel, and the future. Greenwood
Publishing Group, 2002, pp. 44 and 61. ISBN 0275973786
- Elliot, page 188
- Rose, Peter. How the Troubles Came to Northern
Ireland. 2001, page 94
- Van Engeland, Anisseh and Rudolph, Rachael M. From
Terrorism to Politics. 2008, page 59
- Hackney Blackwell, Amy and Hackney, Ryan. The Everything
Irish History & Heritage Book. 2004, page 200
- The Ballast report: "...the Police Ombudsman
has concluded that this was collusion by certain police officers
with identified UVF informants."
- Parliamentary debate: "The British government
agree that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by
agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their
right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and
concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united
Ireland, if that is their wish."
- Holliday, Laurel. Children of the Troubles. 1998, pp.
341–2.
- Wright, Frank (1996) Ulster: Two Lands, One Soil, p.
17.
- English, Richard, Armed Struggle: a History of the
IRA, pp. 39–40.
- Laura K. Dohonue, "Regulating Northern Ireland: The Special
Powers Acts, 1922–1972", The Historical Journal, 41, 4 (1998).
- History Ireland
- http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/faq/faq2.htm#when
- Loyalists, pp. 37–40.
- Loyalists, pp. 41–44.
- We Shall Overcome ... The History of the Struggle for
Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 1968–1978 by NICRA (1978)
- From Peaceful Protest to Guerrilla War: Micro mobilization
of the Provisional Irish Republican Army by Robert H. White.
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, No. 6 (May,
1989), pp. 1277–1302
- We Shall Overcome ... The History of the Struggle
for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland 1968–1978 by NICRA
(1978)
- Loyalists, p. 47
- [1] Background to Bloody Sunday]
- Lost Lives 2007 edition, ISBN 978-1-84018-504-1
- About turn
- Cain:Sutton Index of Deaths
- Armed Struggle, pp. 134–135.
- Internment - Summary of Main Events
- A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney (ISBN
0-141-01041-X), pp. 89–90.
- Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin by Peter Taylor (ISBN
0-7475-3818-3), pages 75-78
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA by Richard
English (ISBN 0-330-49388-4), page 137
- Armed Struggle, p. 137
- 1972: Official IRA declares ceasefire
- Ó Ceallaigh, Daltún, Along The road to Irish unity?--Some sources
strongly disagree with Mallon: "As one political scientist has put
it, the remark about Good Friday being 'Sunningdale for slow
learners' is 'as misleading as it is diverting, since the Agreement
is a much more subtle and inclusive bargain than was reached at
Sunningdale...' Also, a European Studies expert has said: "...there
are... significant differences between them [Sunningdale and
Belfast], both in terms of content and the circumstances
surrounding their negotiation, implementation, and operation." More
pertinently, it has been observed: "In one sense, it could be
argued that mainstream unionism could only lose in the talks and
the question was really how much would be lost."
- Keeping Secrets London Review of Books April 1987
- FitzGerald.qxd
- Peter Taylor, Loyalists, page 163
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA, p. 200.
- On This Day: 12 October 1984, BBC, retrieved 27 September 2008.
- Loyalists, pp. 188–190.
- US policy and Northern Ireland, BBC News story, 8 April
2003
- New York Times, 30 November 1995
- CNN - IRA claims responsibility for London bombing - 10
February 1996
- New feud rips apart the UDA
- Scanlan, Margaret. Culture and Customs of Ireland, p.
51, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 0313331626,
9780313331626
- BBC news article on Barron Inquiry report on
collusion British security forces and loyalist
paramilitaries
- CAIN Archive:Public Records: Subversion in the
UDR Although initially written in 1973, the report was only
declassified in 2004.
- 2 May 2006 edition of the Irish News available here.
- SeeingRed [John Weir's Affidavit]
- Collusion in the South Armagh / Mid Ulster Area in the
mid-1970s
- BBC News
- CAIN website
- British Irish Rights Watch
- CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1999
- Statement by the Police Ombudsman for Northern
Ireland on her investigations into the circumstances surrounding
the death of Raymond McCord Junior and related matters
- BBC News, Monday, 22 January 2007. Reaction to
Ombudsman's report
- BBC News, Monday, 22 January 2007. NI police colluded
with killers
- Murder on the Rock by Maxine Williams.
The article also includes a list of suspected shoot-to-kill victims
between 1982–1986.
- Michael McGoldrick, 64, Activist in Ulster,
Dies
- Police hold six over loyalist turf war
deaths
- 1998: Children die in Drumcree protests
- Dervla Murphy, A Place Apart, p. 134.
- Murphy, p.209
- Murphy, p.210
- Jack Holland (1999) Hope Against History: The Course of
Conflict in Northern Ireland: 12–13
- Murphy, p. 80.
- BBC News 4 July 2007, retrieved 29 September 2008
- Bloody Sunday victim did volunteer for us, says
IRA The Guardian 19 May 2002
- Robert Dunseath, killed in the Teebane massacre was a member of
the Royal Irish Rangers: www.palacebarracksmemorialgarden.org
Bibliography
- David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris
Thornton (1999), Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and
children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland
troubles, Mainstream Publishing Company. ISBN
1-84018-227-X.
- Greg Harkin and Martin Ingram
(2004), Stakeknife: Britain's secret
agents in Ireland, O'Brien Press (18 Feb 2004), ISBN
0862788439
- Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the
IRA, Oxford University Press (23 Dec 2004), ISBN
0195177533
- Kevin Myers, Watching the Door A Memoir 1971–1978,
Lilliput Press, Dublin (16 Oct 2006). ISBN 1843510855
- Tim Pat Coogan, 'Ireland in the Twentieth Century', Palgrave
Macmillan (16 February 2006), ISBN 1-4039-6842-X
- Peter Taylor, Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Féin,
TV books, Inc., New York, 1997, ISBN 1-57500-061-X
- Kevin Toolis, ' ' Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul,
Picador 2000, ISBN 9780330346481
External links
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