Summary of the Troubles

Background:

 1920: The Government of Ireland Act partitioned Ireland, set up the state of Northern Ireland
 Unionist Party controlled power in NI
 NI = sectarian state
 Nationalists/Catholics were discriminated against -> NI was describes as a ‘Protestant land for a Protestant
people’
 Gerrymandering took place
 B-Specials = armed, part-time police force
 1967: Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association formed
 NICRA Members = Catholic nationalists, e.g. John Hume, Gerry Fitt and Bernadette Devlin
 Campaigned for 1) end to gerrymandering 2) fair share of jobs and council houses 3) one person, one vote
 Loyalists (e.g. Rev. Ian Paisley) outraged
 October 1968: police and loyalists attacked civil rights demonstrators in Derry
 Jan 1969: supporters of Ian Paisley battered civil rights marchers with bottles and iron bars at Burntollet,
Co. Derry
 The Troubles:
 The Troubles were a long-term conflict that broke out in 1969 and lasted until 1998. 3,000 people were
killed.
 ‘The Battle of Bogside’: August 1969, rioting broke out
 End of 1969, 30,000 Northern nationalists had fled to the Republic
 1970: British army were sent to NI
 Brian Faulkner (PM of NI) introduced interment
 9 August 1971, 342 people sent them to Maze Prison
 Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972 -> 13 civilian demonstrators shot by Brit troops, mob burned Brit embassy
in Dub
 March 1972 -> NI Parliament suspended
 Direct rule introduced
 Secretary of State introduced -> William Whitelaw
 Power-sharing seen as way forward
 The Sunningdale Agreement (1973); power restored to Stormont, power shared between Ulster Unionist
Party + SDLP, Council of Ireland set up, general strike forced power sharing to collapse
 1974: Dublin and Monaghan bombings killed 33 people, 300 injured by the UVF
 1975: internment abandoned to help ease violence
 1976: British Ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, killed
 1979: Lord Mountbatten killed
 1980: Hunger Strike Crisis -> H-Block prisoners go on strike, Bobby Sands and 9 others die
 1984: bomb planted by IRA killed 4 attending Conservative Party Conference
 1985; Anglo-Irish (Hillsborough) Agreement -> ‘any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only
come about with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland’
 1987: 11 civilians killed in a Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen
 1998, The Good Friday Agreement -> IRA ceasefire, elected Assembly in NI
 2007: Ian Paisley = First Minister of NI, Martin McGuinness = Deputy First Minister

Miss Stout