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The Republican Threat: How Protestant Anxieties and Republican Plotting Destabilized

Northern Ireland

By Kimberly Burroughs

Advised by Professor Harland-Jacobs

April 16, 2012

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Republican Conspiracy 5

Chapter 2: The Civil Rights Movement Begins 13

Chapter 3: A Turn to Mass Demonstration 20

Chapter 4: The Real Republican Threat 29

Chapter 5: Internment 41

Conclusion 51

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I would like to thank Professor Jessica Harland-Jacobs

for her invaluable guidance and support

throughout this project.

I would also like to thank my family for always

encouraging me to pursue my passions.

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Introduction

The British occupation of Ireland began in the twelfth century and persisted until 1921.

Over eight hundred years of British rule, imperial policies segmented the island into distinct cultural regions. The residents of the northern Ulster province strongly identified with British culture (and Protestantism), while southern Irish Catholics, exploited economically by centuries of British rule, rejected the Empire. By the early twentieth century the regions had established imagined communities based on these opposing ideologies. Southern nationalists (frequently

Catholic) increasingly agitated for Irish independence, while Northern Protestants desperately clung to union with Britain, fearing absorption into an alienating Catholic state. Tensions between Unionists (who wanted to remain within the British Empire) and Nationalists would prompt violence as these two communities, feeling intrinsically at odds with each other, clashed over the future of Ireland.

In 1916 a small band of Irish nationalists in the city of Dublin launched an uprising now known as the Easter Rising. Aware of the high-likelihood of failure, the revolutionaries martyred themselves in an effort to galvanize Irish Nationalists into revolution. Their ploy worked. The

British brutally mistreated the rebels, exciting the passions of Catholic sympathizers and setting the stage for revolution. The island erupted into war from 1919-1921, which produced the Irish

Republican Army, a militant Nationalist organization designed to defend Catholic communities and bring about an independent Irish Republic entirely free of British interference.

Acknowledging the potency of nationalist resistance, which was largely concentrated in the southern portion of the island, the British ended the war in 1921 with the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The treaty partitioned the island into a two separate entities, the Irish Free State, composed of the

26 southern counties, and Northern Ireland, home to the Unionist Protestant ascendancy that had Burroughs 5 maintained a strong hold of the region since the first serious British efforts to colonize the island.

Thus Britain attempted to ease Protestant/Catholic tensions by appeasing both parties. It granted

Irish Nationalists many of their demands and secured for Unionists the protection of a cultural majority in the province of Northern Ireland, which would remain within the United Kingdom.

However, a large portion of the Republican movement, which had demanded freedom for the entire island, viewed Anglo-Irish Treaty and partition as a failure. In 1922 militant sections of the Irish Republican Army launched a civil war against Irish political leaders who had accepted the terms of the 1921 treaty. Although anti-partition forces were defeated and the border remained, Republicans continued to threaten the region without success for the next forty years.

After decades of relative peace in which the Unionist ascendancy secured its position in the North and the southern Republic struggled to gain its footing, Northern Ireland devolved into a guerilla war that would take over three thousands lives from1969 to 2003. How did this war begin? Who was responsible? How did conflicting interest groups change the course of Irish history, and how might they have avoided violence? In an attempt to answer these questions, this paper focuses on the Catholic civil rights movement of 1962-1971 to ascertain how sectarian divisions emerging from Ireland’s colonial history promoted the misunderstandings, suspicions, and mistrust that ultimately led to violence.

Three key ideologies are fundamental to understanding the communal differences that would instigate this violence. The first is Unionism, a political persuasion held by residents of

Northern Ireland who wish to remain within United Kingdom. Unionism is largely associated with Protestantism and Britishness. It corresponds to the Protestant Ascendancy of the sixteenth century, which reaped most of the benefits from participating in Britain’s colonial program. The Burroughs 6 second is Irish Nationalism, which largely but not exclusively corresponds to Irish Catholicism.1

Nationalists agitated for the increased autonomy of colonized Irish people through cultural movements like the Gaelic revival of the nineteenth century and through armed uprisings against colonial rule. The third and perhaps the most important ideology relevant to twentieth century

Irish history is Republicanism, which emerged during the late 1800s and is largely associated with the Irish Republican Army. Republicanism, an extreme form of Nationalism, calls for the complete dismantling of all British influence over the island of Ireland and the establishment of a unified Irish republic under exclusive Irish sovereignty. The term “Republican” would become inextricably linked to militarism throughout the 1900s. Republicanism represented the most alarming threat to Unionists because it explicitly and violently opposed the existence of Northern

Ireland, its Protestant Ascendancy and its neo-colonialism.

This paper makes two related arguments concerning the sectarian divisions of the civil rights movement. First, to an artificially constructed and anxious Protestant majority, the

Catholic civil rights movement appeared to be another iteration of Republican plotting. Fearing imprisonment within a Catholic republic, which would represent the antithesis of Protestant beliefs, Unionists reacted to the civil rights movement with fearful anxiety, leading extremist elements to engage in terrorism and violence. As a result, Protestant Unionists and their radical constituents ultimately brought about the very Republican threat they so feared by alienating the

Catholic population, producing similarly beleaguered sentiments and prompting an embrace of

Republican militarism. While this cyclic model of oppositional tension is not remarkably original, most scholars fail to acknowledge the validity of initial Protestant anxieties and construe Unionists as irrational.

1 Nationalist sentiments would also attract Labor movements, Socialists, and Communists who, like Catholic Nationalists, rejected the status quo. Socialists and Communists would apply a Marxist formula to the Northern Ireland situation that would call for proletarian resistance. They were a key factor in civil rights agitation. Burroughs 7

This historiographical failure introduces the second argument of this paper. An autobiography of Roy H.W. Johnston released in 2004 reveals that Unionists’ fears were not entirely groundless.2 While Republicans never exercised unilateral control over the civil rights movement, they did maintain a constant presence within it, exerting indirect influence over its leadership and pushing it in certain directions. While Protestants grossly overestimated the power of the Irish Republican Army, a persistent Republican presence within the movement did reinforce Unionist anxieties. This paper further develops the neglected elements of the Protestant anxiety thesis by juxtaposing both Republican and Unionist source material, including political pamphlets, speeches, and declassified government documents, in an effort to trace the co- evolution of communal tensions.

To make these arguments, this paper explores the narrative of events from 1964-1971.

Chapter One consults Johnston’s autobiography and demonstrates the real (although weak)

Republican threat emanating from the civil rights movement. Chapter Two unpacks the nature of

Protestant anxieties at the time, noting their consequences at both a grass roots and parliamentary level. Chapter Three traces the first political demonstrations of the civil rights movement.

Chapter Four explores the consequences these demonstrations, noting that that they were integral to solidifying sectarian tensions and radicalizing the conflict. Five reveals how this sectarianism infiltrated the upper echelons of Stormont governance and led to the fatal error of internment.

This final misstep sealed the fate of Northern Ireland, making a non-violent solution impossible in the wake of insurmountable communal tension.

2 Roy H.W. Johnston, Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the 20th Century in Ireland (Bethesda: Academica Press, 2004). Johnston’s book is an anomaly among historical texts. Johnston himself was a Republican insider throughout the crisis with access a variety of documents that remain inaccessible to the general public. In his book, Johnston has attempted to synthesize these documents into an internal narrative of Republican activities throughout the civil rights movement. It remains one of the few sources in existence that allow scholars access into the internal events of Republican circles at the time. Burroughs 8

Chapter 1: Republican Conspiracy

Following the partition of Ireland in 1921, Republicans fixated on the border issue.3 For the next forty years the Irish Republican Army focused its energy on ending partition and reuniting the six northern counties with the republic.4 These efforts culminated in an IRA bombing campaign from 1956-62. Under the leadership of Sean Cronin, the IRA targeted the outposts of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the state-police of Northern Ireland, in a series of guerilla style bombings. A lack of support for the campaign by the population of both the border region and of the republic caused the effort to fail, alienating disgruntled nationalists and

Catholics from the republican cause. 5 As a result, progressives and nationalists embraced reform-minded programs that, rather than seeking the dismantlement of the Northern Ireland government through violence, worked towards the improvement of current political realities through legal, constitutional means.6 This shift towards constitutional reform, inspired by the failure of the IRA bombing campaign, became the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement.

While the rejection of Republican violence initiated a shift to reform-minded politicking in the North, the IRA itself also began to re-evaluate its anti-partition strategy. The failed campaign of 1956-1962 led to a purge of the IRA executive, ushering in a new wave of left-

Republican leadership that would take the organization in an entirely new direction. Cathal

Goulding assumed the role of IRA Chief of Staff and, upon the closure of the campaign, met with republican leadership to determine the causes of its failure.7 Throughout these meetings,

Republican leaders determined that “the IRA had become remote from the people” and had lost

3 Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 73 4 Ibid. 5 English, Armed Struggle, 76. 6 Fitt, Gerry, Connolly Commemoration Meeting in Londonderry on Sunday, 21st July, 1968 – Address by Mr. Gerry Fitt, M.P. (Government Document, Derry, 1968). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1968/proni_HA-32-2-28_1968-07- 21_b.pdf 7 Bob Whalen, Inside the IRA:Interviews with Cathal Goulding (Durham: Duke University, microfiche), 4. Burroughs 9 the broad-based support it enjoyed during earlier campaigns.8 Rather than engaging the population in its own struggle for freedom, the IRA had acted unilaterally, forcing their program of political violence upon Northern Irish Catholics and nationalists without examining the complexities of their positions. For Republicanism to succeed, Goulding and his constituents argued, the IRA must revitalize their base.

Upon emerging from these meetings, Goulding announced a new strategy focused on securing this broad-based support. In a 1973 interview, Goulding explains: “It was decided, not to organize for a campaign in the Six Counties against the British Occupation Forces, but to organize for a revolution in the whole country against all the forces of British Imperialism…9

He envisioned a strategy of proletarian agitation that would produce a “united [Irish] socialist republic in which the brotherhood of man [would] make religious differences irrelevant” and

Catholics and Protestants would unite to oust British colonial rule.10 He and other left-

Republican leaders placed their faith in a Marxist analysis of the situation, wagering that if the oppressed of both Northern Ireland and the Republic could awaken a class consciousness and unite in a proletarian struggle against bourgeoisie exploitation, British rule and Unionist domination would inevitably crumble.11 Accordingly, from 1962 onward, any organization that promoted a rejection of the status quo and solidarity with oppressed peoples would gain

Republican support.12 The civil rights movement would prove ripe with opportunities for

Republicans to agitate for class warfare.

8 Ibid 8. 9 Ibid. 6. 10 ELOAS, “Interview with Cathal Goulding,” in Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, 35. 11 Roy H.W. Johnston, Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the 20th Century in Ireland (Bethesda: Academica Press, 2004), 179. 12 N.A. Assesment of Operations in Northern Ireland – 1May to 1 Nov 71 (Government Report, Belfast, 1971). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1971/proni_HA-32-2-51_1971-nd.pdf Burroughs 10

The embrace of a left-socialist political program marked a significant shift in IRA tactics.

Traditionally conservative, militaristic, and abstentionist, the IRA had never engaged in any type of political organization beyond simple military engagements.13 Goulding’s socialist initiative flung the IRA into the arena of Northern politics, a realm that it had traditionally avoided to project the illegitimacy of the imperial government. This fateful shift would lead directly to the destabilization of the nation in the later part of the 1960s when the IRA would splinter into socialist and traditionalist factions. Before that split, however, Goulding, with the help of socialist intellectual and Republican sympathizer Roy Johnston, would implement his socialist program with significant support from 1962-1969.14

While Goulding, Johnston, and other left-Republicans engineered this nascent political program, tensions over Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland mounted. After a highly publicized scandal in which a Catholic family was denied public housing by local authorities in favor of a single Protestant woman, discrimination against Catholics assumed a prominent position in the national consciousness.15 Northern Ireland’s Campaign for Social Justice, the first official organization of the Catholic civil rights movement, and other interest groups emerged in this period to lobby for Catholic rights.16

13 Since the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty created a compromise government in Southern Ireland that split the Republican movement into pro- and anti-treaty factions, abstentionism had been a tactic of anti-treaty Republicans. Abstentionist Republicans refused to partake in any government that they deems illegitimate by refusing to vote or take public office. By the 1960s, leftist Republicans felt that this strategy did more harm than good to their cause. English, Armed Struggle. 14 Johnston, Century of Endeavour 179. The following demonstrates Johnston’s perspective on implementing a socializing program in the IRA situation: “I decided to…throw in my lot with the politicizing republicans on the assurance from Cathal Goulding that he wanted help in converting the IRA from an illegal army into a democratically disciplined political movement reflecting the interests of working people as a whole, broadly based on the socialist ideas of Marx, as adopted by Connolly to the Irish situation.” 15 Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1991), 85. Catholic grievances included disenfranchisement through electoral gerrymandering, public employment discrimination, and educational segregation. 16 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 93. Burroughs 11

Goulding and Johnston recognized an opportunity in all of this unrest. In a 1973 interview, Goulding explains:

Victory for the people on civil rights issues we knew would inspire them to further battles on the social and economic front. It was in this second stage of the struggle that Republicans saw the greatest prospect of united Catholic and Protestant workers. We believed that the struggle for civil rights would become a struggle for class rights: that all Irish workers would become dissenters.17

In other words, as tensions mounted in the early 1960s, IRA leadership recognized an opportunity to capitalize on widespread unrest over Catholic discrimination and kick-start their socialist program. Goulding tasked Johnston and a number of other intellectuals with somehow merging a left-Republican campaign with this burgeoning civil rights movement. On July 25,

1964 Johnston and other intellectual leaders founded the Wolfe Tone Society, an “intellectual think tank” designed to draft left political strategies on behalf of Goulding and the IRA.18

Throughout the rest of 1964 the society devised a plan to create a “broad based movement for national unity” that would capitalize on organizations like the Campaign for Social Justice and ultimately bring about a united Ireland.19 During this first year, the WTS primarily publicized its theories in Republican publications like Taurisic and The United Irishmen and in lectures held for the various leaders of civil rights organizations.20 The goal was to educate these leaders on the importance of uniting into a popular front to impose greater pressure for change upon the

Stormont parliament.21

17 Ibid. 18 Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 176. The Wolfe Tone Society took Theobald Wolfe Tone, a leading Irish revolutionary of the 18th century, as its namesake. Wolfe Tone is arguably the father of Irish nationalism. He and the nationalist organization The Society of United Irishmen introduced the idea of placing nationality above religious identification, laying the groundwork for later organizations (like Goulding’s IRA) to agitation for cross-cultural resistance. He is directly responsible for the 1798 United Irish Rebellion, the most organized and violent resistance movement to date. 19 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 182. 20 Ibid 192. 21 Ibid, 185. Burroughs 12

By mid-1965, with this educational program well underway, Belfast WTS member

Anthony Coughlin proposed the creation of an umbrella organization designed to unite emerging civil rights interest groups, like the CSJ, under a single umbrella organization.22 After courting nationalist, labor, Catholic, and Protestant leaders, the Wolfe Tone Society hosted a symposium on August 23, 1966 to discuss the creation of such an organization.23 Collectively, this diverse group agreed to inaugurate the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) the following year.24 They decided the NICRA could accomplish more to unite Northern Irish Catholics and

Nationalists without polarizing connections to its Republican origins.25 Attendees imagined the

NICRA as a non-sectarian, unaffiliated organization that advocated for the interests of Catholics by pursuing internal reform.26 The Wolfe Tone Society’s meticulous educational effort and its timely introduction of the NICRA concept demonstrate an organized effort to capitalize upon civil rights. Despite the flawless execution of this initial socializing plan, the WTS would stain the NICRA with Republican affiliation, marring future efforts with IRA conspiracy.

In its first year the NICRA was a relatively un-influential player in the growing civil rights movement, focusing mainly on letter writing campaigns and lobbying.27 However, by

1968 the NICRA would turn to mass protest in its mission to advocate on behalf of Catholic rights, a key development in the destabilization of Northern Ireland. Despite the previously stated goal of non-sectarianism, Johnston, in his autobiography entitled A Century of Endeavour,

22 Ibid 187. 23 Ibid 197. 24 Ibid 187. 25 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 197. 26 Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal and the Search for Peace (Boulder,Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 2002), 57. Purdie, Politics in the Streets, Chapter 4.Note: Implied within the concept of “internal reform” is basic support for the existence of the Northern Irish government. NICRA supporters, on the whole, did not fundamentally disagree with the existence of the state, only with its poor execution. 27 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 218. Burroughs 13 claims “politicizing republicans… [projected] a sense of ‘ownership’” over the NICRA.28

Scholars have been unable to uncover evidence of direct republican control of the NICRA, but, with the release of Johnston’s autobiography in 2004, its inception within republican circles is indisputable. Johnston uses ‘ownership’ to imply a subtle but persistent Republican influence within NICRA leadership. This perception of ‘ownership,’ even if unconfirmed by direct evidence, would poison NICRA attempts to rid itself of rumors that civil rights was merely a front for Goulding’s new socialist agenda. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, the persistence of these rumors would ultimately destabilize Northern Ireland as anxious radical

Protestants reacted to NICRA successes with pre-emptive violence.

Royal Ulster Constabulary intelligence monitored IRA activities through the 1960s.29

Widespread paranoia of republican conspiracy led local administrators, Stormont, and

Westminster to believe the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1964 would mark the beginning of a “major IRA campaign of violence.”30 The respective governments even considered the deployment of British troops to assist in quelling potential violence and tasked a

Special Branch of the RUC with investigating IRA activities.31 While nothing came of these increases in security since IRA militarization was defunct, the paranoia of republicanism evident in both the Westminster and Stormont administration during 1964 would last through the ensuing conflict. Perceived Republican threats would continually distract the resources of both

Parliaments, which, rather than attempting to stave off a sectarian crisis through reform and conciliation, would exacerbate Protestant anxieties.

28 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 187. 29 Peter Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland (New York, St. Martin’s Press, Inc.: 2000). Chapter 1. 30 Ibid 18. 31 Ibid 19. Burroughs 14

As tensions between the Catholic minority and Protestant majority enflamed, Unionists, reacting with historical memory and under a depressed economy, felt their privileged position slipping.32 As momentum for a civil rights movement mounted, Protestant Unionists, with the

IRA bombing campaign of 1956-62 seared into their memories, reacted defensively by hosting counter demonstrations and engaging in obstructionist politics in Stormont. In 1964, for example, this radical element, under the leadership of Reverend Ian Paisley, instigated two days of rioting in Belfast that now appear as a precursor to the dramatic events of 1968-69.33 This

Paisleyite rioting occurred well before the destabilization of the country in 1968-69, indicating a long-standing Protestant fear of Republican conspiracy.

Two years later, as the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising approached, tensions again reached a boiling point as Catholics, Protestants, and Stormont officials all assumed inevitable violence.34 From January to April, Belfast endured a sectarian gang war, the first petrol bombings of the city, arson threats, and acts of violence, mostly targeting Catholic neighborhoods and institutions.35 Augustus “Gusty” Spence founded the Ulster Volunteer Force in May 1966 to “declare war against the IRA and its splinter groups,” pledging to “execute mercilessly” any IRA man.36 The UVF would go on to commit the first murder of the Troubles only one month after its creation, when three UVF members gunned down a group of Catholic youths leaving a bar late at night, wounding two and killing Peter Ward.37 Again, the rise of the

UVF and its specific anti-IRA program reveals a sustained fear of IRA conspiracy well before the NICRA campaign provided any evidence of a Republican threat.

32 John Simpson, “Economic Development: Cause or Effect in the Northern Ireland Conflict,” Northern Ireland: The Background to the Conflict Ed. John Darby. (Syracuse: Appletree Press Ltd. 1983). 33 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, Chapter 2. 34 Galliher and DeGregory, Violence in Northern Ireland, 21. 35 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 31-32. Galliher and DeGregory, Violence in Northern Ireland, 22. 36 Galliher and Degregory, Violence in Northern Ireland, 22. 37 Galliher and DeGregory, Violence in Northern Ireland, 23. Terrence O’Neill, The Autobiography of Terrence O’Neill (London: Granada Publishing Ltd. 1972), Chapter IX. Burroughs 15

The NICRA and the civil rights movement emerged in this moment. While republicans were instrumental in the creation of the NICRA, its leadership was an ad hoc committee of various civil rights leaders with incongruent political ideals.38 While, Republicans did maintain a presence in NICRA meetings and marches throughout the crisis, they never exerted direct control over NICRA leadership and there is no evidence of a direct, organized effort to provoke violence through NICRA activities.39 Nevertheless, the mere visible presence of Republicans at march functions would provide enough evidence to stoke the fears of anxious Protestants. This circumstantial evidence would prove potent enough to stoke the fears of an anxious Protestant majority throughout the conflict, eventually prompting the reactionary violence that would unleash chaos in the country.

38 Purdie 154. 39 Ibid. 155. Burroughs 16

Chapter 2: The Civil Rights Movement Begins

As Goulding and Johnston pioneered the IRA’s new program, tensions between anxious

Protestants and disenfranchised Catholics mounted. After implementing a policy that reinforced

Protestant supremacy for twenty years, Lord Basil Brookeborough resigned from his post as

Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1963.40 His successor, Terrence O’Neill, entered office with reformist rhetoric, indicating that he intended to “take the heat out of the situation” by making reformist gestures to the Catholic minority.41 Unsurprisingly, Protestants greeted

O’Neill’s rhetoric with trepidation. Further, while O’Neill’s conciliatory rhetoric appealed to

Catholics, his politics were nevertheless “directed chiefly towards the traditional unionist objective of consolidating the hegemony of the party, and especially to thwarting the recent advances among the Protestant working class.”42 With O’Neill’s pro-Catholic rhetoric and anti- labor policies threatening the Protestant working class on two fronts, anxieties heightened and more “extreme” Protestant elements launched a series of demonstrations that would exacerbate the Protestant/Catholic sectarian divide.

Before we can begin to understand how Protestant anxieties shaped the conflict, an inspection of the anxieties themselves is in order. In 1966, the IRA remained largely de- militarized, with a rapidly dwindling supply of arms and no militant plans due to Goulding’s politicizing campaign. The Unionist UVF, then, was the first terroristic organization to initiate violence during the civil rights movement. Historians John Galliher and Jerry DeGregory have investigated why segments of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland were susceptible to populist violence and extremism. In Violence in Northern Ireland: Understanding Protestant

40 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 79. 41 O’Neill, The Autobiography of Terrence O’Neill, 79. 42 James Loughlin, The Ulster Question since 1945 (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 27. Terrence O’Neill, Memorandum by the Prime Minister (Government Document, Belfast, 1968). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1968/proni_CAB-4-1406_1968-10-14_b.pdf Burroughs 17

Perspectives, they argue Protestants both feared the tenets of the Catholic Church (and its ostensible political manifestation in the southern Republic) and were “painfully aware of their insecurity” as a political majority, the loss of which (they believed) would institutionalize a

Catholic way of life.43 They felt misrepresented to the world, vilified by an ingenious Republican manipulation of the media.44 According to Sarah Nelson, Protestants “saw a vital link between religion and politics…[and] viewed Protestantism as under constant threat from a monolithic and aggrandizing Catholic Church.”45 In short, Protestants feared an international Catholic assault on their way of life that promoted an IRA campaign against the North.46

Nelson assesses how these sentiments influenced the more radical elements of the

Protestant population, “the belief that Protestant heroes were defending [Ulster] was as important as the belief that rebels were constantly planning to attack and destroy Protestants. This rationalized violence which many others would see as pre-emptive.”47 In other words, scholarship indicates that Protestant affinities for violence emerged from a historical tradition of cautious defense against Republican attacks. Protestants held a constant awareness of the shared historical memory of prior Republican campaigns, prompting paranoid speculation. Primary evidence corroborates this argument. In an undated (1968?) pamphlet entitled Northern Ireland

Fact and Falsehood: A Frank Look at the Present and the Past, the Ulster Unionist Party combats many claims of Protestant discrimination against Catholics, implementing a “it is often

43 Galliher and DeGregory, Violence in Northern Ireland, 130. 44 Ibid. Sarah Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders: Protestant Political, Paramilitary and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 74. Stormont Cabinet, Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet Held at Stormont Castle on Tuesday, 7 July 1970, at 11 00 AM, (Government Paper, Belfast, 1970). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1970/proni_CAB-4-1532_1970-07-07.pdf 45 Sarah Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders, 56 46 Ibid 73-87. 47 Ibid 63. Burroughs 18 alleged… but the facts are” format that reflects embattled sentiments.48 The pamphlet depicts

Northern Protestants not as villains but as victims of repeated Republican and Nationalist attacks:

…Over the years, the IRA and other terrorist organizations based in the South have launched outrageous attacks on Northern Ireland, murdering police and other citizens, destroying both public and private property and stirring up hatred and violence. A serious campaign of this kind, with murders, bomb outrages and other violence, was running as recently as 1956.49

As the document demonstrates, Protestants and Unionists drew directly from collective memories of the 1956 IRA bombing campaign as a source of their deep-rooted anxieties. This constant fear of IRA conspiracy and the political erosion of Protestants’ standing would promote extreme reactions a largely moderate civil rights movement. Preemptive Protestant violence would in turn radicalize civil rights moderates, promoting a cycle of violence.

Protestant anxieties would also bring the Stormont Parliament to a grinding halt. In 1964 the British Labor Party swept into office as Harold Wilson won the premiership. That same year, progressive Terrance O’Neill emerged as Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister. With two progressives in office, many pro-Catholic lobbyists optimistically hoped for successful reform, striking fear into the hearts of conservative Unionists.50 However, despite considerable agitation within Westminster among Labor Party and Progressive MPs to take direct action to calm the growing disturbances in Northern Ireland, Wilson ultimately upheld the historic Westminster tradition of leaving Northern Ireland to its own devices.51 Wilson determined to “leave it to

48 Ulster Unionist Party, Northern Ireland Fact and Falsehood: A Frank Look at the Present and the Past (Political Pamphlet, 1968?), 3. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/uup/uup68.htm 49 Ibid. 3. 50 Peter Taylor, Loyalists: War and Peace in Northern Ireland (New York, TV Books, 1999). 33-35. 51 Peter Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), Chapter 1. Burroughs 19

Terence,” the embattled Prime Minister of Northern Ireland who endured growing Stormont gridlock and economic recession.52

O’Neill faced staunch Unionist opposition to reforms.53 Internal fracturing within the

Unionist Party itself rendered compromise nearly impossible as radical Protestants increasingly embraced a strategy of obstructionism.54 As Bob Purdie argues, “the launching of street marches by the [NICRA] in 1968,” the very tactic that would directly bring about reactionary violence,

“can be seen as a logical consequence of the closure of every other channel for bringing about reform…”55 Moreover, the newly formed Nationalist Party under the leadership of Eddie

McAteer opposed Unionism and Catholic discrimination with equal gusto.56 O’Neill was trapped between the sectarian groups, with progressives and Catholics clamoring for reform and

Unionists threatening extreme responses to Catholic relief.

These political divisions prevented O’Neill from preemptively implementing significant change.57 While reform would have exacerbated sectarian Protestant anxieties regardless of the circumstances, had O’Neill or Westminster been able to introduce it before the NICRA began its mass-demonstration campaign in 1968 (which would provide ample outlet for violence that both sides would take advantage of), Northern Ireland might have avoided mass demonstration outright, removing a key factor in the evolution of violence. However, Westminster’s inaction and Stormont gridlock, motivated by communal tension, rendered proactive reform impossible and created a catastrophic missed opportunity.

52 Simpson, “Economic Development.” Northern Ireland: A Background on the Conflict Ed. John Darby. 53 Coogan, The Troubles, 35. 54 Ibid. 55 Purdie, Politicsin the Streets, 78. 56 Coogan, The Troubles, 53. 57 Ibid. 41. Burroughs 20

As Protestant anxieties fermented and Stormont proved increasingly incapable (or unwilling) of enacting reform, Catholics began organizing. The Campaign for Social Justice

(mentioned in Chapter 1) emerged in January of 1964 and would be “instrumental in the founding of the NICRA some years later.”58 The CSJ declared its mission to end “the

Government of Northern Ireland’s policies of apartheid and discrimination” against the Catholic community.59 Rhetoric of “apartheid” and the inception of the CSJ demonstrated the growing severity of Catholic discontent and an increasing identification of the Stormont regime with colonial injustices, indicating a notable intensification of Nationalist sentiments. Despite widespread Protestant denial of the legitimacy of Catholic grievances, a variety of reports validate these claims. 60 According to Minority Rights Group International, Catholics experienced a higher rate of unemployment than Protestants (18 percent versus 8 percent), were significantly more likely to live in overcrowded conditions (10 percent versus 3 percent), and were more likely to rely on public authority housing.61 Maps of the city of Derry demonstrate how artificial Unionist electorates were maintained against an overwhelming Catholic majority population. Even the Stormont-commissioned Cameron Report agreed that Catholic grievances

“[were] justified in fact and called urgently for remedy.”62

The Cameron Report notes that Catholics, who had previously “accepted” discriminatory practices as a “compromise way of life,” were increasingly beginning to question this mindset,

58 Purdie, Violence in the Streets, 82. 59 Purdie, Violence in the Streets, 94. 60 Campaign for Social Justice, Northern Ireland: The Plain Truth (Pamphlet, Londonderry, 1964.) http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/pdfs/csj179.pdf. Catholic grievances included gerrymandering, housing and employment discrimination, and educational segregation. 61 Rights Group International, Northern Ireland: Managing Difference (Minority Rights Group, 1995), 16-21. 62 The Cameron Commission, Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission Appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland (Governmental Report, Belfast, 1968), paragraph 127. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/cameron.htm Burroughs 21 arguing instead that such discrimination “perpetuates rather than…heals…sectarian divisions.”63

This intensifying sense of injustice, combined with Protestant violence, allowed the Catholic community and sympathetic Nationalists to organize. The Wolfe Tone Society meeting mentioned in Chapter 1 became possible only after Protestant extremism under the leadership of

Ian Paisley provoked Catholic anger. The Campaign for Social Justice was instrumental in consolidating, codifying, and promulgating this Catholic discontent, paving the way for future civil rights organizations to capitalize upon it. The NICRA would adopt the CSJ platform and merge it with the political tactics of mass demonstration that, when met with persisting and reactionary Protestant counter-demonstrations, would plunge Northern Ireland into chaos.

Understanding the nature of the NICRA is vital to an explanation of both Protestant and

Republican reactions to it. Despite growing Protestant extremism and an increasing acceptance of violent demonstration, the NICRA strived to maintain an image as a non-sectarian organization dedicated to the maintenance of civil liberties. In its constitution, the NICRA made no mention of specific grievances, instead claiming only to “assist in the maintenance of civil liberties” through any means deemed fit. It also promoted the “lawful” defense of the “basic freedoms” of the Catholic population and at no point advocated disbanding Northern Ireland’s government.64 These points “underline the character of the NICRA at this stage as an organization which…was concerned with the defense of legal and constitutional rights and the grievances of individuals.”65 The emergence of the NICRA demonstrated the growing necessity for Catholics to organize and defend themselves against extreme Protestant politics.

As an umbrella organization determined to avoid sectarian associations, the NICRA inherently encompassed a large cross section of the Northern Irish Nationalist community.

63 Ibid paragraph 128. 64 Purdie, Violence in the Streets, 133. 65 Ibid. 133. Burroughs 22

Republicans were of course a part of this community, but they represented a small portion of the

NICRA constituency. While NICRA supporters ranged from moderate to extreme, all sections of the constituency agitated for internal reform, but not all (or even most) supported the Republican anti-partition program. The NICRA did not officially question the validity of Stormont itself, but rather promoted an official policy of equality. This distinction reveals the gravity of Protestant misconceptions of the NICRA. Protestant extremists failed to acknowledge the subtleties of

NICRA supporters, most of whom were not concerned with bringing about the demise of

Unionism but with enacting internal reform. As later chapters will show, this failure and its ensuing violence would radicalize and alienate moderate nationalists, creating the very militant organization that Protestants originally feared.

Despite this political organizing, grass roots Catholic sentiment revealed widespread doubt concerning Stormont’s ability to enact reform. 66 Faced with the threat of a large portion of the Catholic population that fundamentally doubted Stormont, Protestants embraced protectionist violence, hosting hostile counter-demonstrations at NICRA protests and eventually resorting to offensive violence. This anxiety-induced perception of Republican conspiracy would eventually produce a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that would create the very Republican threat that Protestants feared. From 1964-1967, sectarian tensions intensified through local skirmishes and small scale protests. A tactical shift from conventional lobbying to mass demonstration in 1968 gave vent to the mounting anger of both Unionists and Nationalists, creating a powder keg situation in which one false move could ignite a war.

66 James Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 36. Burroughs 23

Chapter 3: The Turn to Mass Demonstration

The trouble brewing throughout the mid-1960s reached a boiling point in 1968. By

August, the NICRA had abandoned its letter writing campaign in favor of a mass protest model similar to the one pioneered by Martin Luther King a decade earlier.67 During the fall of 1968 the

NICRA organized two mass protests that would fundamentally change the course of Northern

Ireland’s history. The first was a march from Coalisland to Dungannon, a three-mile trek that passed without incident. The second NICRA march occurred in Derry on October 5th, 1968. This demonstration devolved into communal rioting, triggering the reactionary anxiety and sectarianism that would destabilize the region and usher in the Troubles.

In the year and a half leading up to these events, the NICRA “had been doing ordinary constitutional things like writing to Members of Parliament, and getting nowhere by these methods.”68 The NICRA’s early strategy of constitutional lobbying could not gather the momentum necessary to gain the attention of both Stormont administrators and the general population of Ireland. By February 1968, the association would elect a new leadership interested in implementing “the tactics of Martin Luther King in America” which “could draw wide attention to what [the association] [was] trying to achieve by normal democratic means.”69 The shift to mass public demonstration would eventually open to floodgates to counter-demonstration and the escalation of violence. However, even as it made the fateful decision that would result in the dissolution of Stormont, the NICRA continued to agitation for reform, not Republicanism.

The first of these demonstrations was the Coalisland to Dungannon march on Saturday,

August 24th, 1968. Bernadette Devlin, a key figure of the civil rights movement whose

67 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 134. Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 42-44. 68 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 133. 69 Ann Hope, 1976, p. 33, quoted in Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 134. Burroughs 24 importance will become clear later in this chapter, joined this march. She offers the following account of the event:

We had been told that this was a nonsectarian, nonpolitical march….young people had turned up with the banners of their associations…but they weren’t allowed to carry them….It was the first civil-rights demonstration Northern Ireland had ever seen, and we all jogged along happily, eating oranges and smoking cigarettes, and people came out of their houses to join the fun….The whole thing had a sort of good-natured, holiday atmosphere, with the drunk men lolloping in and out of this supposedly serious demonstration.70

Devlin’s account of the marchers’ temperaments reveals an absence of the anger and tension that would come to characterize later NICRA marches. At this early stage, marchers were at most only abstractly interested in the causes promoted by the NICRA and its constituents, and at the least marched simply to partake in something “new.”71 This frivolity demonstrates that the movement did not yet enjoy the national solidarity that would emerge from the violence of future demonstrations. Devlin’s account and its blithe tone emphasize the severity of Protestant misconceptions concerning the moderate, non-violent population of the civil rights movement at this moment. Protestant pre-emptive violence would eventually radicalize these once gregarious marchers, as the next chapter will show.

The march passed off without violence, prompting the NICRA to claim the demonstration “proved the need for a civil rights body in Northern Ireland.”72 According to the

Cameron Commission, the Coalisland-Dungannon march “was…regarded as proof…that many elements in the society of Northern Ireland whose ultimate political purposes differed in a very marked degree could cooperate in peaceful and lawful demonstration of certain common and limited objectives.”73 In other words, the Coalisland-Dungannon march convinced a large

70 Bernadette Devlin, The Price of My Soul (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1969), 92. 71 Ibid. 72 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 137 73 The Cameron Commission, Cameron Report, paragraph 35. Burroughs 25 segment of Northern Ireland’s reform-minded population that the civil rights movement could succeed in uniting disparate elements and bringing about change. This success drew the attention of other civil rights organizers, who increasingly recognized the value of NICRA support.

While the NICRA was gaining prominence, it suffered from internal disputes inherent in any ‘popular front’ organization. As stated previously, the NICRA was designed to function as an umbrella under which independent, interest-based civil rights organizations could coordinate to conduct a broad-based movement. Accordingly, the leadership of both moderate and radical organizations united under the NICRA. As a result, “sharp internal differences within the Civil

Rights Committee” inhibited its organizational objectives as council members with disparate political views clashed over which direction the association should take.74 Even among

Republicans, Roy Johnston claims “there was a clear mismatch between the…vision of a broad based…radical democratic movement [that would naturally bring about an end of partition]…and the…tactic of going for the Unionist underbelly via the Civil Rights

Movement.”75 This internal strife would be the primary factor in the disorganization of the next

NICRA march in Derry, which would devolve into communal violence and saddle the NICRA with Republican sectarianism.

Upon hearing of the ‘successful’ protest in Dungannon, Derry Housing Action

Committee organizers requested that the NICRA sponsor a Derry march. A local committee, composed of members “identified with strongly left with and republican attitudes,” planned the march without much supervision from the NICRA.76 The route they chose purposefully led the

74 Betty Sinclair quoted in Desmond Greaves, Diary of Desmond Greaves quoted in Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 236. Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 52-53. 75 Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 231. 76 Purdie, Politics in the Streets 146. The Cameron Commission, Cameron Report 18 Chapter 4. Burroughs 26 march through traditional Protestant strongholds of Derry, all but guaranteeing violence.77

According to the Cameron Report, “No inquiry was made by any official of the Civil Rights

Association into the antecedents or political views or affiliations of those would be likely to organize or conduct the march in Londonderry itself.” Eamon McCann, DHAC member and prominent young radical during the civil rights movement, noted:

It was immediately clear that the CRA knew nothing of Derry. We had resolved to press for a route which would take the march into the walled centre of the city and expected opposition from moderate members of the CRA. But there was none. No one in the CRA delegation understood that it was unheard of for a non-Unionist procession to enter that area.78

Lack of NICRA oversight allowed this radical committee to ‘hijack’ the Derry March, guaranteeing conflict and reinforcing Protestant fears of Republican conspiracy.

Initially, the proposed route gained the approval of Derry police. However, when the

Apprentice Boys of Derry organized a coinciding counter demonstration, Minister of Home

Affairs William Craig issued a ban of “all public processions…situated within and on the Walls

[of Londonderry].”79 Craig claimed he feared the conflicting demonstrations would instigate

“serious public disorder.”80 Organizers and marches argued the ban unfairly penalized the

NICRA march, which had given notice more than a month prior, and played directly into the strategy of the Unionist Apprentice Boys, whose goal had been to prevent the NICRA march from occurring.81 After a night of deliberation, organizers decided to march anyway.

77 Ibid. 78 Eamon McCann quoted in Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 139. 79 William Craig, Public Order Act 1951 (Government Order, Belfast, 1968) http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1968/proni_HA-32-2-30_1968-10-03.pdf. The Apprentice Boys of Derry are a historic Protestant club that originated in the nineteenth century to resist Irish nationalists violently opposing landlord abuses. Their annual march commemorates the Protestant victory of the Siege of Derry, in which the forces of William of Orange conquered those of the Catholic sympathizing king Charles II during the English Civil War. 80 Ibid. 81 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 138. Burroughs 27

On the morning of October 5th 1968 demonstrators embarked on the intended route.82 The were met with a police cordon that had been deployed to uphold Craig’s ban. Marchers detoured up Duke Street in an attempt to work around the blockade.83 In response, police hurried to head the marchers off at the end of the bloc, halting the procession between the walls of the shops lining the area and trapping the marchers between police cordons on both ends of the street.84 As the crowd approached this newly formed barrier officers drew their batons and halted the crowd with force.85 Anticipating disaster, Betty Sinclair called an impromptu meeting and demanded peace.86

Bernadette Devlin notes that unlike the Dungannon march “there was no carnival atmosphere and [the marchers] weren’t people who had come out for the fun of something new.”87 Her account of Derry on October 5th tells of an “electric” day on which the people of the city, whose “passions don’t need much to be aroused” because of prolonged economic difficulty and historical strife, took to the streets in “excitement,” “anger,” or “alarm.”88 The tension in the chronically depressed streets of Derry would not be easily dispersed, and signs of the oncoming conflict loomed as Sinclair’s vain appeals for peace fell on deaf ears.

When marchers failed to disband, officers bookending the crowd filtered along the sidewalks of the street, encircling the protestors.89 Some more radical demonstrators began throwing debris at this new police formation, prompting a baton charge designed to disperse the

82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 House of Commons, Three Eye-Witnesses Report on Londonderry (Government Report, London House of Commons, 1968), 4. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1968/proni_HA-32-2-30_1968-10-08.pdf 85 House of Commons, Three Eye-Witnesses Report on Londonderry, 3. 86 Ibid. 4. 87 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 98. 88 Ibid, 97. 89 House of Commons, Three Eye-Witnessess Report on Londonderry, 4. Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 99. Burroughs 28 march.90 Widespread rioting broke out as protestors and bystanders alike became targets of the charge.91 As protestors and other civilians attempted to flee the scene by crossing Craigavon

Bridge, police water cannons pummeled them to halt their progress into the Protestant District.92

Video captured by RTE depicts policemen batoning marchers who offered no resistance and, in many instances, had their backs turned.93 When the marchers had finally dispersed, seventy- seven civilians, including eight children under the age of fourteen, needed hospitalization.94

The violence initiated on October 5th lasted for two days. When the fighting finally subsided, Northern Ireland had been torn in two. International attention turned on the growing conflict. Devlin describes the Derry March as having given the civil rights movement “life in one day.”95 Indeed (and ironically), it was the Derry March, botched by NICRA leadership, that would unite a national civil rights front and create the previously absent demand for a civil rights umbrella group. It garnered national attention for civil rights, creating a unified Nationalist base willing to work in solidarity to enact reform.

Derry also revealed the extent to which the Protestant/Unionist paranoia discussed in

Chapter Two infiltrated Northern Ireland’s upper echelons of government. According to the

Cameron Report, The Apprentice Boys submitted complaints against the NICRA march that

“argued that the march was objectionable, since it was alleged that Civil Rights was only a cover for a parade of the Republican and Nationalist movements…”96 While these sentiments are unsurprising given chapter two’s discussion, William Craig, who had instituted the controversial

90 House of Commons, Three Eye-Witnesses Report on Londonderry, 4. 91 Purdie, Politics in the Streets, 139. 92 Ibid. 141. 93 RTE, “Civil Rights Movement 1968-69,” RTE Libraries and Archives, April 2012, http://www.rte.ie/laweb/ll/ll_t11_main.html 94 Londonderry Hospital Management Committee, Disturbances in Londonderry on Saturday/Sunday, 5th/6th October, 1968 (Police Report, Belfast, 1968). 2. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1968/proni_HA-32-2-26_1968-10- 09.pdf 95 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 99. 96 The Cameron Commission, Cameron Report, paragraph 41. Burroughs 29 ban, also demonstrated deep anxieties of perceived threats to Unionism in his address to the

House of Commons on October 16th, 1968:

Let us look at the actual composition of [the NICRA] – it is an “omnium gatherum” made up of members of the Londonderry Housing Action Committee, the majority of whom are also members of the Connolly Association, of the Republican Party which includes well-known members of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein, of the Young Socialists and of the Communist Party. A body of this composition is obviously unacceptable to those of loyalist belief…97

His comments demonstrate the true motivations behind banning the demonstration, which posed more of a threat to “loyalist belief” than it did to Derry city unrest. Craig’s critique of the

NICRA runs the gamut of conservative political suspicions popular at the time, including anti- communism, anti-socialism, and anti-republicanism, and even calls to mind McCarthy-like anxieties. He uses the mere composition of the organization as justification for banning the Derry march initially, a fateful decision that most likely turned the march into a bloody riot by heightening Catholic sectarian tensions. These sentiments permeate Craig’s entire speech and make clear that Protestant/loyalist leadership was not immune to the anxieties that radical

Unionist organizers like Ian Paisley shaped into fear and violence. Nevertheless, as the Cameron

Report notes, “members of the Irish Republican Army were present and represented among the stewards” of the march. While Craig made his decision before this information became available, the presence of IRA stewards further exacerbated pre-existing tensions by seeming to validate

Craig’s claims.

Reports of RUC police brutality reveal Catholic anxieties of institutional violence.

Largely lacking in Catholic members due to discriminatory hiring practices and/or an unspoken preference for Protestant recruits, the Royal Ulster Constabulary was widely regarded as “the

97 William Craig, Speech by Minister of Home Affairs, House of Commons October 16th 1968 (Government Document, Belfast, 1968), 2. Burroughs 30 armed wing” of the Unionist party.98 The Cameron Report notes that “batons were used by certain police officers without explicit order,” and that “there was no justification for the use of the water wagons” aimed at dispersing marchers.99 Widespread confirmation of the existence of police brutality enflamed Catholic and Nationalist anger. While the Scarman Report “rejected the claim that the RUC was, in general, a partisan force siding with Protestant mobs,” NICRA supporters would continue to view the RUC as sectarian, further cementing the impression of institutionalized discrimination against Northern Irish Catholics.100 Complaints against the failures of the RUC would eventually rally Catholic support behind burgeoning Republican violence later in the conflict.

Derry further intensified the sectarian divide when the media cast Unionists and Stormont as oppressively violent. March reports emphasized police brutality, the suppression of the freedom of speech, and religious discrimination. Unionists balked at these representations, arguing that the police and Unionism were the victims of “smear, denigration and agitation tactics” promoted by the Southern Republic media and bent on vilifying the Northern Ireland

Government.101 Northern Protestants could find no recourse in denying these depictions, finding their repudiations discredited.102 This perceived injustice of media portrayal further solidified

Protestant sectarianism by creating the sense that the Unionist ascendancy battled against international accusations of totalitarian maltreatment of the Catholic minority.

Far from an organized Republican conspiracy, the Derry March was a disorderly event that demonstrated the weaknesses of William Craig and NICRA leadership as well as the

98 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 77. 99 The Cameron Commission, The Cameron Report, paragraphs 44-51. 100 Michael Cunningham, British Government Policy in Northern Ireland: 1969-2000 (New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), 6. 101 William Craig, Speech by Minister of Home Affairs, 9. 102 Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders, 73. Burroughs 31 capacity of nationalists and Unionists to engage in spontaneous communal violence. Chaos emerged out of a serious of disastrous assumptions and miscommunications that led each side to provoke the other. The model of October 5th would reappear repeatedly throughout the conflict and, with each rendition, sectarian tensions mounted. However, while feelings of injustice on the part of both Catholics and Protestants continued to climb, a wide-spread embrace of defensive guerilla tactics and violence did not emerge until a bloody series of riots in August 1969. Until then, peaceful solution remained viable if communal suspicions could be relaxed. Unfortunately, the anxieties of both communities would only strengthen in the coming months, prompting each side to assume the worst and act accordingly.

Burroughs 32

Chapter 4: The Real Republican Threat

The Derry March inflamed communal oppositions and galvanized both Unionists and

Nationalists into increasingly sectarian organizing. Bernadette Devlin’s autobiography offers the following account of Northern Ireland’s changed politics: “I went up to Belfast thinking I had changed, and I found that everyone had. The atmosphere was different…all the old complacent attitudes were gone.”103 If the Dungannon-Coalisland march had lent the NICRA and the civil rights movement some hopeful evidence of its own potential, the Derry March forced the civil rights movement into the forefront of Northern Irish politics. It instigated a wave of reactions and counter-reactions, ultimately initiating a trend of radicalization that would sweep moderates out of power in both Stormont and the NICRA.

Days after the Derry March students at Queens’ University Belfast assembled to discuss the events of 1968. They eventually established the People’s Democracy, a radicalized, reactionary civil rights group that emerged in the wake of Derry’s communal violence. The PD conducted meetings and local marches from its inception in October 1968 until November 22nd, when Prime Minister Terrence O’Neill announced a reform package that included the reformation of the Londonderry Housing Corporation, the eventual abolition of the Special

Powers Act, and the establishment of the Cameron commission.104 The NICRA, in response to

O’Neill’s reform package and his calls for moderation, announced a ban on all mass demonstration and marching to allow Stormont time to execute these reforms.105 However, while

O’Neill’s announcement mollified the moderate leadership of the NICRA, the radical People’s

103 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 101. 104 Coogan, The Troubles, 65. Taylor, Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 120. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Security Related Incidents (table, 2003). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ni/security.htm#06 105 Terrence O’Neill delivered a famous speech called “Ulster at the Crossroads” on Monday December 9, 1969. In it he asked all parties to embrace rationalism and moderation rather than sectarianism and reactionary violence. University of Ulster, “A Chronology of the Conflict,” Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland: Conflict Archive on the Internet, April 2012. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch68.htm Burroughs 33

Democracy felt “sold down the river” by moderates so willing to allow the momentum of the movement to fade, especially after the violence at Derry.106 Journalist Tim Pat Coogan argues the announced reforms “proved too little, too late to appease all sections of Catholic opinion; and at the same time inflamed and frightened Protestants.”107 The left-socialist PD agreed with

Coogan’s too-little-too-late thesis, and at Christmas the PD elected to join the Belfast Young

Socialists in a march from Belfast to Derry on January 1, 1969.108

The PD intended to both rebuff NICRA moderate leadership and reveal the sectarian violence that might be “swept under the carpet” if the civil rights movement lost momentum.109

Organizers chose an eighty-mile route from Belfast to Derry, modeled after Martin Luther

King’s One Million Man March, and designated January 1st, 1969 as a start date. On that morning a core group of PD members assembled, setting out with less than one hundred marchers.110 Early portions of the march avoided violence by remaining relatively unknown to

Northern Ireland’s media.111 However, as the march swelled with supporters, and as Unionists caught wind of the approaching demonstration, counter-demonstrations became increasingly volatile.112 PD marchers also faced repeated reroutes and police cordons, unearthing suspicions of RUC sectarianism that emerged in the Derry March and prompting indignation from march leaders who argued that the counter demonstrators, not PD marchers, assembled illegally.113

By the time the PD march reached Derry, the situation had grown precarious. A force of nearly 200 “hostile” Unionist counter-demonstrators awaited the marchers, stretching police

106 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 118. 107 Coogan, The Troubles, 65. 108 Ibid 127. 109 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 126. 110 Ibid Chapter 9. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. Burroughs 34 resources thin.114 A cordon halted the procession, requesting that leaders accept another rerouting. Organizers, however, were “fed up [with] being diverted,” feeling that this police tactic was used not to ensure the march’s safety but to thwart its effectiveness.115 They and their now 600 supporters pressed on through the cordon, approaching a well-disciplined and armed group of Unionist counter-demonstrators.116 Devlin recounts what happened as marchers approached Derry’s Burntollet Bridge:

…from lanes at each side of the road a curtain of bricks and boulders and bottles brought the march to a halt. From the lanes burst hordes of screaming people wielding planks of wood, bottles, laths, iron bars, crowbars, cudgels studded with nails, and they waded into the march beating the hell out of everybody.117

While the first portion of the PD march struggled through the ambush, other marchers fled for safety as the onslaught began. Dr. Raymond McClean, who acted as a steward for a number of

Derry marches, recounts the experiences of those caught in the fray:

For several hours I was busy treating injured marchers. I, and the first-aiders helping me, were horrified to hear the stories recounted by the injured as to what had happened when they approached Burntollet Bridge. The most amazing and consistent thread throughout the various stories was the complete lack of intervention or assistance given to any of the marchers by the large body of police present, all of whom witnessed the grievous bodily assault carried out by the Loyalist militants against the marchers, who were unarmed themselves and had apparently refused to retaliate.118

As Dr. McLean’s account notes, the main complaint against RUC police was a lack of protection from Unionist militants, a claim that would persist until the RUC disarmament in

1969.119 Local business fronts sustained considerable damage as ambushers flung stones and

114 Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland, 131. Londonderry District Inspector, Civil Rights March from Belfast to Londonderry 1st- 4th of January, 1969: Third Day January 6, 1969 (Internal Report, Londonderry, 1969). (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_HA-32-2-26_1969-01-08.pdf 115 Londonderry District Inspector, Civil Rights March, 1. Devlin, The Price of My Soul, Chapter 9. 116 Londonderry District Inspector, Civil Rights March, 1. 117 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 146. 118 Dr. Raymond McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday Revised Ed. (Dublin, Guildhall Press, 1997), 57. 119 It is more likely that the RUC was simply ill-equipped to handle the scale of the skirmish. Regardless, Nationalists would emerge from the Burtollet Ambush convinced of RUC sectarianism, moving the community one step closer to embracing Republican violence. Burroughs 35 bottles. By the end of the struggle twelve students and a handful of police officers required hospitalization, with some students bleeding profusely from head wounds.120 The event, dubbed the Burntollet Ambush, represented a major turning point in the growing conflict.

While the October 5th Derry March revolved around conflicts between marchers and police, growing sectarianism motivated the clash at Burntollet. With the condemnation of both

Stormont and the leadership of the NICRA, the PD’s radical initiative was blatantly intended to provoke the sectarian response of radical Unionists. Devlin, a prominent member of PD leadership, recounts the following motivations behind holding the march:

Our function in marching from Belfast to Derry was…to relaunch the civil-rights movement as a mass movement…We knew we wouldn’t finish the march without getting molested…What we really wanted to do was pull the carpet off the floor to show the dirt that was under it, so that we could sweep it up; and to show the uselessness of the tactics of both the Unionist Party, who were stretching the carpet to prevent the dirt coming out; and of the civil-rights campaigners, who were tidying round the edges of the carpet and forgetting about the real problems underneath.121

The march undoubtedly drew attention to the “dirt under the carpet” mentioned in Devlin’s passage by instigating intense sectarian violence. Her explanation appears to partially validate

Protestant fears of civil rights conspiracy. While there is no evidence of direct Republican influences within the PD, organizers nevertheless seem to have intended to provoke sectarian violence. While Protestants misplaced the blame for this intent to “promote the demise of law and order” (blaming Republicans rather than PD radicals), they nevertheless validly detected a malicious objective.122 Consequently, the “Long March” radicalized both sectarian communities,

120 Peter Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland, 131. 121 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 126. 122 There are many speeches given by William Craig that demonstrate a specific fear of Republicanism. For example, in a speech given soon after the Derry march, Craig states: “It has been clear for some time that a variety of elements were anxious to create a riot and disorder in our community and for the most part these elements have in common the bond of intent to overthrow the constitution of Northern Ireland [Republicans]. It is about two years ago when the IRA began to work to bring about unrest and disorder which they openly state as a necessary prerequisite for their physical force program.” William Craig, Speech By Minister of Home Affairs, 7. Burroughs 36 with validated Unionists arming themselves against Republican conspiracy and Nationalist martyrs enduring communal attacks.123

The composition of the marchers and counter-demonstrators combined with the severity of the violence solidified the popular notion a Catholic-versus-Protestant struggle for power, making it impossible to unite the two groups without enormous communal pressure. Roy

Johnston accused the PD of relegating the civil rights movement to a “crypto-Nationalist,

Catholic ghetto movement by making it impossible for Protestant workers to unite with the

Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.”124 Protestants felt compelled to remain within

Unionists lines from fear of violence, and PD marchers, “by reason of [their] experiences between Belfast and Derry, [were] a lot more politically aware then [they] had been” at the outset of the march.125 While the Derry march brought the civil rights movement to the forefront of Irish politics, the Burntollet Ambush radicalized the debate, cementing sectarian divisions and initiating a series of 1969 events that would mark the end of constitutional efforts and an embrace of violence. From this moment onwards, sectarian divisions ensured that demonstrations were perceived not just as antithetical political maneuvering, but also as a direct threat to communal ways of life.

The PD march not only radicalized the Protestant/Catholic debate, but also polarized sections of the civil rights community itself, pitting moderates against radicals in a battle for control of the movement. In February 1969 the NICRA held its annual general meeting, at which it held elections for leadership positions.126 Betty Sinclair had faced increasing criticism for her moderate policies when the Derry March (which she initially opposed after Craig’s ban)

123 Loughlin, The Ulster Question¸43-46. 124 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 242. 125 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 153. 126 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 236. Burroughs 37 devolved into violence and with the NICRA’s announcement of the Christmas truce.127 James

Loughlin argues the NICRA was “largely reluctant to engage in public protests [for fear of violence and poor publicity] and played no major role in the most important demonstrations.”128

Fresh from their dramatic showing in the Long March, a contingency of PD representatives attended the conference to challenge this moderate leadership. As a result, Sinclair was swept out of power and replaced by radical Frank Gogarty, with PD leaders Michael Farrell and Kevin

Boyle also assuming positions on the NICRA executive.129 With moderate NICRA tactics rapidly going out of style, the new executive promoted “PD-type activities,” including public marches and civil disobedience.130 By pursuing the more radical tactics of PD mass demonstration and combining them with the widespread influence of the NICRA, this new radical leadership terrified beleaguered Protestants and set the stage for future conflict.

Mirroring the NICRA’s executive election, the 1969 Stormont general election revealed a shift in voter preference from moderate to radical candidates. In February, Terrence O’Neill, facing growing criticism from extreme elements of the Unionist Party, dissolved the government to hold an election of confidence. The results of this election exposed the dramatic change in atmosphere from only a year earlier and weakened O’Neill’s moderate position. According to

W.D. Flackes’s Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, O’Neill survived the election in the

Bannside, where he was opposed by the militant Protestant leader Ian Paisley, by only 1,414 votes, signaling growing support for Paisley’s radical politics.131 Further, while Unionist candidate A.W. Anderson earned 9,122 votes in the Derry City by-election of 1968, a rapidly

127 Purdie, Politicsin the Streets, 244. 128 Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 37. 129 Ibid 153. 130 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 155. N.A., Civil Rights Campaign (Government Report, Belfast, 1969). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_HA-32-2-28_1969-01-29.pdf. 131 W.D. Flackes and Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-1993. 4th ed. (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1994), 161. Burroughs 38 growing radical element within Unionism split the vote in 1969, with the Independent (radical)

Unionist candidate stealing 4,181 votes from the official Unionist candidate.132 The elections were “a defining moment for the [Unionist] party, when it had to choose between two distinct paths for development,” one that embraced radicalism and another that pursued moderate reform.133 While not definitive in its results, the 1969 Stormont by-elections, like the NICRA elections that swept moderate leadership out of power, revealed serious “divisions at the grassroots of Unionism” and increasing acceptance of Paisleyite radicalism.134

While the Unionist party fractured, Nationalists experienced their own internal tensions.

The April 1969 Westminster by-election created a serious dilemma within the Nationalist and civil rights movements. Republicans, Nationalists, Labor, and Socialists all struggled to have their candidate represent the civil rights movement in the election.135 Through this internal debate, Bernadette Devlin (with her PD background) emerged as the only candidate who could secure widespread nationalist support. On election day Devlin defeated her opponent by 4,211 votes, becoming the first radical civil rights candidate to hold a seat at Westminster.136 Devlin’s rise signals an embrace by nationalists of her left-socialist radicalism and PD pedigree. Both elections demonstrate increasing tensions on both sides of the aisle.

Roy Johnston’s memoir divulges the contemporary Republican perceptions of the civil rights movement. He recounts that, at the January 19th meeting of the Sinn Fein (the Republican political party) “there was pressure from the republican activists to get rid of the broad-based moderates” who made up both NICRA and Republican leadership.137 Johnston notes the Sinn

132 Ibid. 163. 133 Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 44. 134 Ibid 159. 135 Devlin, The Price of My Soul, 170. 136 Flackes, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 164. 137 Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 246. Burroughs 39

Fein agreed “to work for a full attendance at the annual general meeting of the NICRA…to get good radical people elected to the executive” and to promote the trend of radicalization.138 The

“target was to ensure that the NICRA after its annual general meeting would remain under republican ‘control.’”139 Obviously, Republicans continued to imagine the civil rights movement as a tool for destabilizing the north. However, a persisting dearth of evidence of direct

Republican ‘control’ over the NICRA makes highly organized Republican machinations unlikely. Rather, Johnston implies that Republicans exerted indirect influence over the NICRA as a small but powerful constituent minority.140 Despite Protestant insistence otherwise,

Republicans at no time posed an organized threat to the future of Northern Ireland. Rather, they were merely able to push the civil rights movement in certain directions, relying on (and perhaps exacerbating) communal distrust to provoke violence.

A series of bombings in the summer of 1969 demonstrated the effectiveness of this

Republican design. Anonymous men petrol bombed post offices, electrical towers, and water treatment centers that supplied water to the residents of Derry.141 The bombers were later identified as Samuel Stevenson and Thomas MacDowell of the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, a militant Unionist organization with close ties to Ian Paisley. The bombings were intended to mimic traditional IRA military tactics and to force the moderate O’Neill out of office.142 He resigned a week after the series of explosions ended, to be replaced by James Chichester-

Clark.143 By August 1969, communal tensions would explode, initiating an unprecedented period of violence in Northern Ireland.

138 Ibid. 246. 139 Johnston, Century of Endeavour, 247. 140 Taylor, Loyalists, 51. 141 Ibid. 59. 142 Ibid. 60. 143 Ibid. 61. Burroughs 40

On August 12th, the Apprentice Boys of Derry hosted an annual march through the city.144 This same event sparked the rioting of October 5th, 1968, and would incite violence once again. Inexplicably, the August 1969 Apprentice Boys march did not receive a ban. In response to condemnation concerning this misstep, Prime Minister Chichester-Clark claimed, “The fact of the matter…is that although various people expressed some anxiety about the proposed march, absolutely no evidence came to hand of plans either to behave violently on the march or to mount violent opposition to it.”145 Contrary to Chichester-Clark’s claims, Dr.Raymond McClean notes “…several approaches were made to those in authority to ask them to veto the march. The general grass-roots feeling was that serious trouble just could not be avoided otherwise.”146

Nationalists may have perceived Chichester-Clark’s failure to ban the Protestant demonstration as motivated by sectarian preference, reinforcing conceptions of Stormont injustice. The demonstration did in fact grow violent as marchers approached the Bogside area of Derry rendering Chichester-Clark’s failure catastrophic in hindsight.147

As loyalist demonstrators marched across Derry’s River Foyle, they flung pennies down upon the Catholic residents of the Bogside, re-enacting a traditional form of insult. In response, a handful of Catholic demonstrators lunged at the march as it approached.148 Chaos ensued as both sides took up readily available crude weapons. Rioting grew so intense and the ill-equipped RUC became so exhausted that Chichester-Clark approved the first use of CS “tear” gas in the

144 Taylor, Loyalists, 64. 145 James Chichester-Clark, Press Release: Speech by the Prime Minister, Major the Rt. Hon. J.D. Chichester-Clark, D.L., M.P., At A Press Converence in Stormont Castle To-Day, Sunday, 17th August, 1969 (Government Document, Belfast, 1969), 2. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_CAB-9-B-312-1_1969-08-17.pdf 146 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 69. 147 Taylor, Loyalists, 64. 148 Taylor, Loyalists, 65. Burroughs 41 conflict.149 Finally determining that Northern Ireland was rapidly spiraling out of control,

Westminster approved the deployment of the British army to assist the RUC.

The Derry rioting spread to Belfast, where NICRA fringe elements hosted demonstrations in solidarity with the Catholic Bogsiders despite official NICRA disapproval.150

According to author Peter Taylor, who gives an account of the conflict from the loyalist perspective, Falls Road Republicans encouraged these demonstrations to “stretch police resources and take the heat of the besieged Bogsiders.”151 As fighting in the Bogside intensified with the use of CS gas, Falls Road demonstrators marched on a Belfast police station to express their anger.152 RUC armored vehicles attempted to disperse the angry crowd as it assembled around the police station, provoking a riot. From within the Falls Road crowd traditionalist, militant Republicans gathered a small cache of antiquated rifles and fired the first IRA bullets of the conflict at police vehicles.153

The rioting in both cities lasted from August 12th-14th. As a result of the rioting “some

5,000 to 6,000 were estimated to be homeless or displaced.”154 An impromptu casualty clinic, which had formed with the knowledge that “many rioters would not go to the hospital for fear of arrest,” treated nearly 1,000 casualties.155 Catholics again claimed the R.U.C. failed to offer fair protection for residents of the Bogside and that the B-Specials, a notorious thug enforcement

149 Ibid. N.A. Formal Government decisions (i.e. those taken by the Cabinet or Cabinet Committees) in relation to the use and deployment of (a) the RUC, (b) the U.S.C. and (c) the Army, Including (where available) the information and evidence placed before Ministers. (Government Document, Belfast, 1969). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_HA-32-2-55_1969-08-14_c.pdf 150 Taylor, Loyalists, 67-68. 151 Ibid. 66. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 67. 154 N.A. Riots in Belfast: Care of the Homeless and Displaced (Government Report, Belfast, 1969). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_CAB-9-B-312-1_1969-08-29.pdf 155 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 74-75. Burroughs 42 regiment, actually joined Apprentice Boys marchers in the attack against the Bogside.156 The

Hunt Report, commissioned to investigate Northern Ireland’s security forces and to offer recommendations for reform, would later recommend that the R.U.C. be disarmed and the B-

Specials disbanded because of their performance in the August 1969 riots.157 As James Loughlin notes, Republicans “had only been called on when repeated appeals to the army for protection had failed to elicit any response, …its failure clearly [working] to the [IRA’s] advantage.”158

These August riots and the repeated failure of security forces to protect Catholic neighborhoods would force Catholics to embrace such Republican protection. The Battle of the Bogside marks a fateful moment in the conflict with the re-emergence of IRA militarism.

However, extent of the destruction in Catholic residential areas even provoked a Catholic backlash against Goulding’s failure (or abandonment) of the Bogside. Disgruntled residents invented the slogan “Irish Ran Away” to capture this sentiment.159 In fact, “the IRA posed very little threat to anyone in those days,” as it had remained disarmed since the failed bombing campaign ended in 1962.160 According to historian Peter Taylor, “the rioting in Belfast in August

1969 demonstrated the unpreparedness of the IRA, which had disarmed in 1962 and was unable to defend the area from loyalist attacks.”161 Republican Liam Hannaway recounts that

Republicans “only had ten weapons in the [Falls Road] area when rioting broke out.”162 The riots initiated a wide-spread rejection of Goulding’s socialist agenda, which appeared increasingly naive and untenable as the conflict intensified.

156 Ibid. 75. 157 Hunt Committee, Report of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland (Government Report, Belfast, 1969). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/hunt.htm 158 Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 54. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid 89. 161 Taylor, Loyalists, 73. 162 Coogan, The Troubles, 89. Burroughs 43

The Battles of the Bogside and of the Falls Road area were a watershed moment. The presence of armed IRA shooters in Belfast confirmed the suspicions of anxious Protestants, who remained uninformed of the schism and lack of resources within Irish Republican Army.

Chichester-Clark insisted that “the real cause of the disorder is to be found in the activities of extreme Republican elements and others determined to overthrow our State,” despite the

Apprentice Boys’ provocative marching.163 Sustained theories of Republican conspiracy finally appeared validated.164 Unionists failed recognize that the very anxieties that motivated the

Protestant marchers created the conditions necessary for the emergence of the Provisionals, the very militant Republican threat Unionists feared. As Dr. McClean would reminisce:

To date, the struggle had been a community effort based on massive peaceful demonstrations against blatant injustices; more recently, it had come to represent a defiant people with stones taking on the armed wing of the establishment, who were equipped with superior weaponry and techniques. I was not to know that a more lethal armed resistance was about to commence, with dire consequences for all the aspirations within Northern Ireland.165

The Provisional Irish Republican Army, which emerged after the split within Republicanism discredited Goulding’s socialist agenda, were this “more lethal armed resistance.” The August riots, instigated by sectarian and provocative Protestant demonstrating, presented traditional

Republicans with the opportunity to definitively demonstrate Goulding’s inability to protect Irish

Catholics through his socializing agenda. Embracing a conventional program of militant

Republicanism, the Provisionals immediately embarked on a mission to end partition and the existence of the Northern Irish state through active violence. Where such a radical element had remained harnessed by the moderate leadership of Goulding and other politicizing Republicans, the Provisionals were now unleashed, and violence became an inevitability.

163 Chichester-Clark, Speech by the Prime Minister, 3. 164 Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders 73. 165 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 77. Burroughs 44

Chapter 5: Internment

Roy Johnston ruminates in his memoir on the alternatives to the Provisional response to the August 1969 riots. As a leader of Cathal Goulding’s “politicizing” Republican movement,

Johnston reflects that “the political response to the pogrom would have been to let it run its course and turn all attention to getting the world media to report it, and thereby show up the nature of British rule…To go for guns was to do what the enemy wanted.”166 He even proposes that the apparent wide-scale mobilization and provocative path of Protestant marchers in the

Bogside were a deliberate attempt to provoke the IRA into armed conflict.167 Unfortunately, the hypothetical stance of Gouldingite Republicans would become irrelevant as the strength of their program began to fade.168 Furious with the IRA’s failure to prevent large scale structural damage in predominantly Catholic neighborhoods, young Republicans increasingly embraced the traditional Republican militarism of the Provisionals as the only means to defend their compatriots. By birthing the Provisionals, the August 1969 riots cemented Northern Ireland’s road towards violence. However, only with the disastrous introduction by Stormont of an internment policy would the Provisionals secure enough Catholic support to launch a sustained guerilla war against Unionism.

From the end of 1969 until mid-1970 the Provisionals gathered their strength and waged a civil war with Goulding’s Official Republicans. Both factions struggled to secure arms, as

Goulding’s liberalizing program had left the IRA relatively de-militarized by 1970.169 From

January until June of that year, Provisionals and Officials routinely engaged in firefights over weapons caches hidden in the middle of Derry and Belfast, dragging the Royal Ulster

166 Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 262. 167 Ibid 261. 168 Ibid 270-72. 169 Coogan, The Troubles, 89. Burroughs 45

Constabulary and the British Army into the fray. The incidence of unannounced bombings and shooting related crimes dramatically increased as Provisionals and Officials attempted to seize the others’ weapons.170 Both factions fought not only for weapons but for support. Cathal

Goulding, rapidly hemorrhaging recruits to MacStiofain’s growing Provisional faction, retreated back into traditional defensive militarism in an effort to reassure disgruntled Ulster Catholics of the Officials’ defensive abilities.171 However, MacStiofain’s Provisionals strived to transcend

Goulding’s strictly defensive militarization:

…as soon as it became feasible and practical the IRA would move from a purely defensive position into a phase of combined defence and retaliation…After a sufficient period of preparation…it would go into the third phase, launching an all-out offensive action against the British occupation system.172

In other words, the August 1969 riots made manifest the very form of aggressive militant

Republicanism that Unionists and Protestants feared by producing the Provisionals, who readily planned to launch an “all-out offensive” against both the British and Unionists at an opportune moment.

The entrance of the British army into the Northern conflict introduced new pressures on

Stormont to enact reform. No longer exclusively in control of policy decisions, Stormont worked in conjunction with Westminster, which, under the impetus of British Home Secretary James

Callaghan, enacted an “extensive range of reforms” that “conceded virtually the entire case made by the civil rights movement.173 While this represented a victory for nationalists, Callaghan failed to account for Protestant anxieties concerning eroding social positions. His intervention

“intensified the developments that had brought the Ulster problem to a crisis point, namely,

170Police Service of Northern Ireland, “Security Related Incidents 1969-2003,” “Background Information on Northern Ireland Society-Security and Defense,” Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland: Conflict Archive on the Internet. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ni/security.htm#06 171 Johnston, A Century of Endeavour, 263-265, Cathal Goulding, Statement by Cathal Goulding (Government Paper, 1971?). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_CAB-9-B-312-1_1969-nd.pdf 172 Sean MacStiofain, “Interview,” quoted in Coogan, The Troubles, 97. 173 Louglin, The Ulster Question, 48. Burroughs 46 nationalist expectations of fundamental reforms and unionist dismay at the perceived Catholic successes.”174 With both Stormont and Westminster confirming Catholic grievances, Northern

Irish Protestants were increasingly deprived of their privileged social position. British intervention and reformism “greatly [weakened] Stormont’s powers of patronage,” allowing

“Unionist party unity” to progressively erode and undermining the acting Prime Minister’s power to keep loyalist elements in line with Unionist Party policy. This situation prompted the emergence of radical Protestant extremism amidst a loyalist power vacuum, creating a well supported Protestant militancy in answer to the Provisional IRA.

In June of 1970, the British Conservative Party defeated the labor party in the UK’s

Westminster elections, ushering in a new “hard line” approach to the Republican problem.175

Conservatives initiated a tougher approach to the British Army’s role in Northern Ireland. Prime

Minister Chichester-Clark supported this move, believing that “a slightly tougher line by the

Army might improve the situation, especially if more people were arrested.”176 Acting with the cooperation of the Stormont government, army leadership planned a series of raids in Catholic residential neighborhoods intended to unearth Republican arms caches. The most notorious of these raids was the Falls Road Curfew, which began on July 3, 1970.177 Catholic residents were prohibited from leaving their homes in Belfast’s Falls Road area except to buy food or attend religious services.178 The following is an account of the incident by a security forces officer:

It was sparked off by the search for arms in Balkan Street. Crowds gathered – barricades were erected – petrol bombs and grenades were thrown. The situation escalated into a military operation to take over the Falls Road. Five battalions of soldiers

174 Ibid. 175 Coogan, The Troubles, 97. 176 Stormont Cabinet, Prime Minister’s Meeting with Home Secretary- Wednesday, 4th February, 1970 (Cabinet Papers, Belfast, 1970), 6. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1970/proni_CAB-9-G-91-2_1970-02-04.pdf 177 Coogan, The Troubles, 103. Stormont Cabinet, Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet Held at Stormont Castle on Tuesday, 7 July 1970, at 11 00 AM (Cabinet Papers, Belfast, 1970), 1. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1970/proni_CAB-4-1532_1970-07-07.pdf 178 Ibid. Burroughs 47

were involved and considerable armor…Occupants of the area were ordered into their homes for their own safety…The Ammunition found was mounting hourly. At 11:00 am this morning ammunition recovered was into five figures and arrests had increased to 287.179

There are reports of ransacking and excessive violence on the part of British army troops.180 The conclusions of a meeting of the Stormont cabinet demonstrate that even high ranking Stormont officials questioned “the [legal] validity of the measures already taken,” leading them to dictate the operation under the controversial “the Special Powers legislation,” a major source of

Nationalist discontent.181 Of course, these raids did nothing to mollify tensions. Rather, they further confirmed both Protestant fears of a Republican threat and Catholic fears of institutionalized aggression against their community.

After months in which Stormont progressively enacted many of the reforms demanded by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, the Falls Road riots represented a regression into the traditional paranoia of Republicanism.182 While the raid did yield a substantial weapons cache, “the age and variety of weapons captured [suggests] that there had been no recent organized supply of arms to the Lower Falls area.”183 In other words, the raid, which violated residents’ rights, demonstrated the persisting reality that the IRA, both its Provisional and

Official factions, remained relatively unorganized and minimally armed while locked in internal civil war. Despite this, the raids both reinforced Protestant suspicions of an IRA conspiracy and exacerbated Catholic anger, making them one of many ruinous decisions made by Stormont and

179 Ibid, 2. 180 Coogan, The Troubles. 103-106. 181 Stormont Cabinet, Prime Minister’s Meeting,1. The Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act of 1922 emerged in the heyday of the Republican campaign against the border region during the Irish Civil War. It granted the government sweeping powers to suppress any developments perceived to constitute a threat to the general peace. Because Unionists maintained a firm hold on most government posts, the Special Powers Act was almost exclusively used on the minority population. It was a key grievance of the civil rights movement and a hate piece of legislation by most nationalists. 182 James Chichester-Clark, Press Release, (Government Document, Belfast, 1970). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1970/proni_CAB-9-G-96-1_1970-09-23_a.pdf 183 Ibid. Burroughs 48

Westminster. This compulsion of Northern Ireland’s security forces and administration to hunt- out Republican threats swung more Catholic support to the side of the Provisionals, who reaped the benefits of skyrocketing recruitment and increased funding.184

1970 ended in a series of violent protests, including an August riot in which five

Provisionals defended a Bogside church from a band of Protestants with Thompson sub-machine guns. Incidents like these, in which bands of Provisional ‘heroes’ rallied to defend vulnerable

Catholic neighborhoods from Protestant aggression, garnered more support from embattled

Catholics to the Provisional cause. By March 1971, Chichester-Clark had made the devolving security situation his top priority. In a meeting with the British prime minister, Chichester-Clark demanded that the British provide increased security resources in the form of both personnel and armaments, threatening to resign if his needs were not met.185 He received a promise of a mere

1,300 more troops, a number that fell far short of his needs. Making good on his threat,

Chichester-Clark resigned that month.186 His successor was Brian Faulkner, who had missed the position by only 1 vote two years earlier and who “[came] to power with the reputation of being the six-county expert on security, the man who had broken the IRA 1956-1962 bombing campaign by introducing internment when he was minister of home affairs.”187 As Michael

Cunningham notes, “the accession of Brian Faulkner to the Northern Ireland premiership in

March 1971 was an indication of a hardening of Unionist attitudes.”188 Faulkner intended to redeploy internment, believing that this policy alone was responsible for the failure of the ’56

IRA bombing campaign.189 However, before embracing a policy of internment, which had

184 Coogan, The Troubles, 108. 185 Ibid. 120. 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 121. 188 Cunningham, British Government Policy in Northern Ireland, 1969-2000, 9. 189 Coogan, The Troubles, 123. Burroughs 49 previously been rejected because “adverse repercussions would outweigh any likely benefit,”

Faulkner worked towards convincing all sections of Northern Ireland’s population that the IRA specifically (not other terroristic organizations like the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force) was

“the principal threat” to the security of Northern Ireland.190

First, Faulkner attempted to construe the suppression of IRA activities as a bipartisan undertaking. He inherited a government in which political gridlock impeded legislation. The same 1970s elections that brought the British Conservative Party to power at Westminster also installed Ian Paisley and a variety of other radical Unionists in Stormont, making moderate solutions improbable.191 After arguing against such obstructionism, Faulkner announced radical changes to the basic organization of Stormont. He proposed the creation of three new committees in Social Services, Environmental Services, and Industrial Services designed to overcome partisan gridlock.192 These committees would “give Parliament a genuine opportunity to contribute to the making of policy at the formative stage” and would be composed as “broadly representative of Party strengths in the House.”193 Faulkner proposed that “the Opposition should provide at least two Chairmen” to serve on these new committees.194

Offering a Nationalist a position on a permanent governmental committee was an unprecedented gesture in Northern Ireland politics. Faulkner was clearly hoping that by

190 Brian Faulkner, Press Release: Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. Brian Faulkner DL MP at 11 15 AM on Monday 9 August 1971 (Press Release, Belfast, 1971). http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1971/proni_CAB-9-J-80-1_1971- 06-22.pdf . Stormont Cabinet, Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet Held at Stormont Castle on Monday, 20 July 1970, at 3 00 PM (Government Document, Belfast, 1970), 3. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1970/proni_CAB-4- 1535_1970-07-20.pdf 191 Coogan, The Troubles, 103. 192 Brian Faulkner, Press Release: Speech by the Prime Minister, The RT Hon B D Faulkner DL MP, During the Course of the Queen’s Speech Debate in the House of Commons, Stormont, on Tuesday, 22 June 1971 (Press Release, Belfast, 1971), 4. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1971/proni_CAB-9-J-80-1_1971-06-22.pdf 193 Ibid. 5-6. 194 Ibid. The Social Democratic Labor Party was assembled by nationalist M.P. Gerry Fitt and civil rights activist David Hume to replace the defunct Nationalist Party. Austin Currie’s Nationalist Party had lost the support of Northern Ireland’s nationalists, who accused it of bending to the slightest pressure from Stormont. The creation of the SDLP demonstrates a continued desire to achieve a political solution on the part of nationalists. Burroughs 50 conceding such a high position to the Nationalist movement, he would gain at least some bipartisan support for his future endeavors and perhaps mollify sectarian tensions. Indeed,

Faulkner even makes this intention known in his initial proposal of the committees:

It must be recognized that any concept of participation will be hollow which does not recognize the duty to participate in bearing the burdens of the State as well as enjoying its advantages, and that no duty is more important than to mount a sustained opposition to terrorism.195

Here, Faulkner clearly warns that the “advantages” afforded by the inclusion of Nationalist politicians in governmental proceedings come with the price of accepting the Prime Minister’s hard-line approach to Republicanism. Faulkner’s ploy to court nationalists failed when the Social

Democratic Labour Party voluntarily withdrew from Stormont, ceding the futility of attempting to reform the broken government.196 However, the mere recognition of the likely consequences of internment and the need for bi-partisan support reveals Faulkner’s awareness of the dangers of internment. Faulkner’s decision to enact the policy regardless indicates the severity of his

Republican anxieties. Protestant paranoia had now entirely derailed Stormont’s executive, which would continue ignore possibilities of political solution out of a narrowly focused determination to crush the IRA threat.

By the time of the SDLP’s departure from Parliament, Faulkner and the internment policy had gained the support of Westminster’s conservative executive. On the morning of August 9th,

1971, “Operation Demetrius” (the code name for Internment) began as members of the RUC corralled 350 people from a list of names issued by the RUC Special Branch, which was established exclusively to investigate potential Republicans.197 Internees were held without trial

195 Brian Faulkner, Memoirs of a Statesmen, quoted in Coogan, The Troubles, 124. 196 Coogan, The Troubles, 124. 197 Ibid. 126. Burroughs 51 and subjected to “the five techniques” while in RUC custody.198 These techniques included

“hooding, sleep deprivation, white noise, a starvation diet, and standing for hours spread-eagled against a wall.”199 Tim Pat Coogan interviewed an internee, who recounted:

After they arrested me, I was thrown into a lorry where I got a kicking. Then I was taken to another barracks where I got another kicking. They took me up in a helicopter and told me they were going to throw me out. I thought we were hundreds of feet up, but were only up a few feet. They set Alsatians on me. My thigh was all torn, and they made me run in bare feet over broken glass.

The European Commission on Human Right determined that the treatment of prisoners during internment “did constitute a break of the Convention of Human Rights: ‘…in the form not alone of inhuman and degrading treatment, but also of torture.’”200 Along with this maltreatment, internees were wrongfully detained, either due to mistaken identity or inaccurate intelligence.201

The uproar from the Catholic community following August 9th demonstrated the wisdom of earlier admonitions of an internment scheme. Dr. McClean noted that “it seemed obvious that the British authorities had seriously underestimated the reaction to internment among the general

Catholic population.”202 The hypocrisy of the raids was also not lost on Catholic residents. In his official announcement of the new policy, Faulkner admitted, “the main target of the…operation is the Irish Republican Army, which has been responsible for recent acts of terrorism.”203 Yet, conspicuously absent from the list of names provided by the R.U.C. was a single Protestant name, despite the terrorism of organizations like the Ulster Volunteer Force.204 Catholic communities, having lost all faith in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and now rapidly losing faith

198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 200 Ibid. 129. 201 Coogan, The Troubles, 127. 202 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 109. 203 Brian Faulkner, Press Release: Statement by the Prime Minister, 2. 204 Coogan, The Troubles, 124-126. Burroughs 52 in the army, had grown to believe the IRA was the only defense against Protestant radicalism and institutionalized Unionist aggression.

As reports of prisoner abuse emerged, Northern Ireland rapidly destabilized. According to Coogan, “in the eight months prior to internment, 34 people had been killed. In the 4 months after it, 140 people died.”205 While the riots of August 1969 were the major turning point of the conflict, internment, the final manifestation of Unionist anxieties during the civil rights period, was the spark the blew the powder keg. Casualty numbers would not sink back to below pre- internment levels until 1976, with approximately 17,000 conflict related injuries reported in the five years following internment.206 As Dr. McClean notes, “…communities in Northern Ireland had become hopelessly polarized and the issues had become blatantly sectarian, with the

Catholic community totally opposed to internment,” regardless of the horrific atrocities

Provisionals would commit throughout the next thirty years.207

In the wake of internment, the Provisionals would secure unwavering support from the

Catholic community. In response to corresponding Protestant attacks, Provisionals began leaving bombs in Protestant pubs, slaughtering innocent civilians within months of the introduction of

Internment. Peter Taylor recounts an account of one such bombing at the Four Step Inn in the

Protestant Shankill neighborhood, in which a two-year old and a one-year old were killed:

Women were crying. Men were trying to dig out the rubble. Other men were hitting the walls. One person was crying beside you and the next person was shouting ‘Bastards!’ and things like that. I didn’t actually see the babies’ bodies as they had them wrapped in sheets, but the blood was just coming right through them. They were just like lumps of meat, you know, small lumps of meat.208

205 Coogan, The Troubles, 128. 206 Police Service of Northern Ireland, “Security Related Incidents in Northern Ireland.” Conflict Archive on the Internet. 207 McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday, 110. 208 Taylor, Loyalists, 90. Burroughs 53

Not even reports like these could rattle Catholic support. In the minds of many Catholics, the

Provisionals were the last line of defense for Catholic neighborhoods. According to journalist

John Conroy,

To a Catholic, an IRA man is not some outsider causing violence and death, but Sean down the street, or Mickey, whose father was interned, or Mrs. Sands’ son Bobby. There is a definite ambivalence in the Catholic community; most Catholics support the IRA’s goal of a united Ireland, but condemn the IRA’s means.”209

Catholics could not afford the luxury of questioning Provisional tactics. Their community was caught between a desire to free itself from an oppressive state and revulsion at Provisional violence. Any loyalist reprisal for Provisional attacks “only consolidated further the PIRA’s base of support” from this point on.210 Internment even galvanized support in the United States, which would become a key asset in funding Provisional activities for the rest of the conflict.211 The cumulative effects of anxiety-driven Protestant violence finally emerged in the form of a

Provisional army that, thanks to internment, could now boast broad support from the embattled

Catholic minority and vindication concerning the inefficacy of Goulding’s politicizing program.

209 John Conroy, Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life (Boston, Beacon Press, 1987), 58. 210 Loughlin, The Ulster Question, 55. 211 Ibid. 59. Burroughs 54

Conclusion

The Northern Ireland civil rights movement ushered in the era commonly referred to as

“The Troubles.” Following severe post-internment violence, Westminster determined that the

Stormont’s sectarian divisions rendered it incapable of managing the rapidly devolving conflict.

After fifteen Catholic demonstrators were killed by British soldiers in January of 1972, sectarian warfare exploded, enveloping Northern Ireland in a chaotic guerilla war. Westminster disbanded

Stormont after the January shootings (now known as Bloody Sunday), disenfranchising both nationalists and Unionists. The Provisional IRA triumphantly insisted that the implementation of direct rule finally made apparent the constant colonial subjugation of Northern Irish Catholics.

Ironically, with the solid base of support that Goulding had hoped for in his leftist campaign, the

Provisionals would bomb residential areas of Ireland without warning for the next three decades.

As recently as 2010 a car bomb exploded outside a Newry courthouse.212

Tragically, “The Troubles” were entirely avoidable. While Gouldingite Republicans undoubtedly conspired to end partition through the civil rights movement, they never exercised enough power within the movement to unilaterally provoke violence and destabilization. Rather, communal tensions, exacerbated by a series of poor decisions on the part of both Unionists and nationalists, promoted conflict. Invalid assumptions by both Catholics and Protestants led each community to assume it was the target of a large scale communal attack, prompting defensive maneuvering and, eventually, violence. “The Troubles” are a tragedy of miscommunication, facilitated by a government incapable of bridge-building due to its own sectarian divisions.

In a departure from the vast majority of related (and politicized) historiography, this paper has attempted to demonstrate that both Catholics and Protestants must assume some

212Mark Tran, “Car Bomb Explodes in Northern Ireland,” The Guardian, Monday, 22 February 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/23/car-bomb-newry-northern-ireland Burroughs 55 responsibility for the origins of “The Troubles.” Many of the same communal tensions present throughout the civil rights movement persist in present day Northern Ireland. I leave it to other scholars to bridge this sectarian gap. They must overcome centuries of historic strife and decades of communal violence. Reuniting these communities will not be easy. However, it is imperative that each community transcend the historical divisions that keep Ireland from peace.

Burroughs 56

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