The Troubles Begin
Northern Ireland in the late 1960s was a society deeply divided along sectarian lines, with the Protestant Unionist majority holding political and economic power while the Catholic nationalist minority faced systematic discrimination in housing allocation, employment, and electoral boundaries deliberately gerrymandered to dilute Catholic voting strength. Inspired by the American civil rights movement and the tactics of Martin Luther King Jr., the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was founded in 1967 and began organizing marches in 1968 to demand equal rights, one man one vote in local elections, an end to gerrymandering, fair housing allocation, and disbandment of the B Specials reserve police force widely seen as a sectarian militia. The marches met with violent resistance from loyalist counter-protesters and from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), whose baton charges on a NICRA march in Derry on October 5, 1968 were broadcast on television and shocked international audiences. The violence radicalized both communities: Catholic neighborhoods erected barricades for self-defense, and loyalist mobs burned Catholic streets in Belfast in August 1969. The Battle of the Bogside erupted in Derry from August 12 to 14, 1969, when nationalists repelled RUC attempts to enter their neighborhood in three days of sustained street fighting, forcing the Stormont government to request British Army intervention. Operation Banner began on August 14, 1969, as British Army soldiers were deployed to Northern Ireland, initially welcomed by Catholics as protection against loyalist attacks. The deployment would last until 2007, becoming the longest continuous operation in British military history. The simultaneous collapse of the IRA — which had largely demobilized during the 1960s — led to bitter recrimination and a historic split in December 1969 between the Official IRA, which favored a Marxist political approach, and the Provisional IRA, which prioritized armed resistance to British rule and defense of Catholic communities. By the end of 1969, Northern Ireland had been transformed. The B Specials were disbanded, the Hunt Report recommended disarming the RUC, and a new Ulster Defence Regiment was formed. But the structural conditions that had generated the crisis — partition, discrimination, and the denial of political rights — remained unresolved, and the Provisional IRA was rapidly recruiting in the embattled Catholic enclaves of Belfast and Derry, setting the stage for an escalating armed campaign that would define the next three decades.
- Year: 1968 CE
- Category: Political
