Civil unrest in Northern Ireland
The Origins of the Troubles
Northern Ireland had been created in 1921 as part of the partition of Ireland, when the predominantly Protestant and unionist counties of the north-east remained within the United Kingdom while the rest of Ireland became the Irish Free State. By 1968, Northern Ireland had a Catholic and nationalist minority — approximately one-third of the population — who faced systematic discrimination in housing, employment, and political representation under the Stormont government (Northern Ireland’s devolved parliament, dominated by the Ulster Unionist Party).
In 1968, inspired by the American civil rights movement and student protests in France, a civil rights movement emerged in Northern Ireland, demanding equal rights. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) organised marches. A march in Londonderry/Derry on 5 October 1968, attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) with batons, was filmed and broadcast on television, shocking audiences in Britain and internationally. The Troubles had begun.
Catholic grievances in Northern Ireland included: discrimination in council housing allocation (properties systematically given to Protestant families); gerrymandered electoral boundaries that minimised Catholic representation; discrimination in public and private employment; and a special powers act that allowed detention without trial. These were not imaginary — independent investigations, including a 1969 Cameron Commission report, confirmed systematic discrimination.
The British Army and Escalating Violence
In August 1969, communal violence erupted on a large scale. Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry were attacked; houses burned. The RUC was unable to contain the violence. The Stormont government requested British Army assistance. British troops deployed to Northern Ireland on 14 August 1969 — initially welcomed by many Catholics as protection from Loyalist attacks. Within months, the relationship between the Catholic community and the army had deteriorated sharply.
The Provisional IRA split from the official IRA in December 1969. The Provisionals believed that the British state could only be removed by armed force. They began their bombing and shooting campaign in 1970. Violence escalated through 1970 and 1971. The British government, under Heath, faced mounting pressure to “do something.”
In August 1971, Heath’s government introduced internment — detention without trial. Operation Demetrius arrested 342 people on 9 August 1971. Almost all were Catholic or nationalist; Loyalist paramilitaries were largely untouched in the initial sweeps. The intelligence used was outdated and many arrested had no paramilitary connections. Fourteen of those detained were subjected to “five techniques” of interrogation involving hooding, noise bombardment, wall-standing, and sleep deprivation — later found by the European Court of Human Rights to constitute inhuman and degrading treatment.
Internment was a catastrophic political mistake. Rather than suppressing the IRA, it fuelled nationalist anger, swelled IRA recruitment, and alienated moderate Catholic opinion that had supported the civil rights path. Violence increased significantly after August 1971. The death toll for 1971 was 171; for 1972, the worst year of the Troubles, it rose to approximately 470 deaths.
Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972
On 30 January 1972, British paratroopers of the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment shot dead fourteen unarmed civilians during a civil rights march in the Bogside area of Londonderry/Derry. A fifteenth person later died of wounds. The victims were all Catholic and nationalist. The soldiers opened fire claiming they had been fired at; witnesses and survivors denied this. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.
The immediate official inquiry (the Widgery Tribunal, 1972) largely exonerated the soldiers. Nationalists condemned it as a whitewash. The Irish government withdrew its ambassador from London. Thousands marched in Dublin; the British Embassy was burned. In Belfast and Derry, IRA recruitment accelerated massively. Bloody Sunday became the single most powerful symbol of British injustice in Ireland — a grievance that sustained Republican support for a generation. A second inquiry (the Saville Inquiry) was ordered in 1998 and its report, published in 2010, found that the shootings were “unjustified and unjustifiable” and that soldiers had fired on unarmed civilians. Prime Minister David Cameron issued a full apology in the House of Commons on the day of publication.
Bloody Sunday: 30 January 1972. Fourteen people shot dead (fifteen died including a later casualty) by British paratroopers in Londonderry/Derry. The Widgery Tribunal (1972) largely exonerated soldiers. The Saville Inquiry (1998–2010) found the shootings unjustified; PM Cameron apologised in 2010.
The IRA Bombing Campaign on the Mainland
The Provisional IRA extended its campaign to mainland Britain. In March 1973, car bombs exploded in central London, injuring over 200 people. The Guildford pub bombings of October 1974 killed five people. The Birmingham pub bombings of 21 November 1974 killed 21 people and injured 182 in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs. It was the deadliest mainland attack of the campaign. Six men were convicted and imprisoned, but the “Birmingham Six” were subsequently found to have been wrongly convicted; their convictions were quashed in 1991.
The mainland campaign caused widespread public fear and political pressure on governments to find a solution. The Prevention of Terrorism Act was rushed through Parliament within two days of the Birmingham bombings, introducing powers to detain suspected terrorists for up to seven days and ban from mainland Britain individuals connected with Irish terrorism. The miscarriages of justice in the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases became a major issue of civil liberties in the 1980s and 1990s.
In March 1972, following Bloody Sunday, Heath’s government prorogued (suspended) the Stormont Parliament and introduced direct rule from Westminster. The Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973 attempted to create a power-sharing executive between Unionists and Nationalists, with an “Irish dimension” involving the Republic of Ireland. Unionists opposed the Irish dimension; the Ulster Workers’ Council called a general strike in May 1974. The strike brought Northern Ireland to a standstill and the power-sharing executive collapsed after fifteen days. Heath’s one attempt at a political settlement had failed.
Throughout the late 1970s, violence continued at a reduced but still deadly rate. In 1979, the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten (Queen Elizabeth’s cousin and a former Viceroy of India) off the coast of County Sligo, Ireland, and killed eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint, County Down, on the same day. The Troubles would not be resolved until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 — but in this period they profoundly reshaped British security policy and politics.