Civil Rights and Fire

Northern Ireland was built on inequality. Since the partition of Ireland in 1921, the Protestant unionist majority had governed the province in ways that systematically discriminated against the Catholic nationalist minority in housing, jobs, and voting. In the late 1960s, inspired by the American civil-rights movement, Catholics began to march for equal rights — and were met with police batons and loyalist hostility, most notoriously when police attacked a march in Derry in October 1968.

Tensions boiled over in August 1969. In Derry, residents of the Catholic Bogside, fearing incursion after a loyalist parade, barricaded their district and fought the Royal Ulster Constabulary for three days behind walls proclaiming 'Free Derry.' The Battle of the Bogside spread to Belfast, where sectarian rioting left streets burning and families driven from their homes. The overwhelmed police could not restore order, and the British government sent in the army.

The troops were at first welcomed by Catholics as protectors. But the honeymoon was brief. As the army was drawn into policing nationalist areas — with heavy-handed raids and curfews — it came to be seen as an occupying force. Out of the chaos, a militant new 'Provisional' IRA broke away from the older organisation, dedicated to driving the British out and uniting Ireland by force. The stage was set for thirty years of war.