During 12–16 August 1969, there was an outbreak of political and sectarian violence throughout Northern Ireland, which is often seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles. There had been sporadic violence throughout the year arising out of the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign, which demanded an end to discrimination against Catholics and Irish nationalists. Civil rights marches had been attacked by Protestant loyalists, and protesters often clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the overwhelmingly Protestant police force.
On 12 August, the Battle of the Bogside erupted in Derry: three days of fierce clashes between the RUC and thousands of Catholic/nationalist residents of Derry's Bogside district. The besieged residents built barricades and set up first aid posts and workshops for making petrol bombs. Police fired CS gas at rioters for the first time in the history of the UK. In support of the Bogsiders, on 13 August Catholics/nationalists held protests elsewhere in Northern Ireland, some of which led to violence. The bloodiest clashes were in Belfast, where seven people were killed and hundreds wounded, five of them Catholic civilians shot by police. Protesters clashed with both the police and with loyalists, who attacked Catholic districts. Scores of homes and businesses were burnt out, most of them owned by Catholics, and thousands of mostly Catholic families were driven from their homes. In some cases, police helped the loyalists and failed to protect Catholic areas. Both republican and loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the clashes.Fields, Rona M. Northern Ireland: Society Under Siege. Transaction Publishers, 1977. p.19Tonge, Jonathan. Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change. 2002. p.39Shanahan, Timothy. The Provisional IRA and the morality of terrorism. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. p.13 There were also clashes between protesters and police in Armagh, where a protester was killed by police, as well as in Dungannon and Newry.
The British Army was deployed to restore order on 14 August, beginning the thirty-seven year Operation Banner, and peace lines were built to separate Catholic and Protestant districts. The Republic of Ireland's government set up field hospitals and refugee centres near the Irish border, and called for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be sent to Northern Ireland. The British government held an inquiry into the riots, and the reserve police force was disbanded. The riots led to a split within the IRA and the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Official Irish Republican Army. It also led to the growth of loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
Background Northern Ireland was destabilised in 1968 by sporadic rioting arising out of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) campaign, and the police and loyalist reaction to it. The civil rights campaign demanded an end to discrimination against Catholics in voting rights, housing and employment. NICRA was opposed by loyalists led primarily by Ian Paisley.
During the summer of 1969, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) published a highly critical report which "criticised the Northern Ireland Government for police brutality, religious discrimination [against Catholics] and gerrymandering in politics".Rose, Peter. How The Troubles Came to Northern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. p.160 The ICJ secretary general said that laws and conditions in Northern Ireland had been cited by the South African government to justify its apartheid system. The Times reported that the Ulster Special Constabulary (B-Specials), Northern Ireland's reserve police force, was "regarded as the militant arm of the Protestant Orange Order". The Belfast Telegraph reported that the ICJ had added Northern Ireland to the list of states/jurisdictions "where the protection of human rights is inadequately assured".Rose, p.161
Events leading up to the August riots The first major confrontation between Catholic civil rights activists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland's overwhelmingly Protestant police force, occurred in Derry on 5 October 1968, when a NICRA march was baton-charged by the RUC. Disturbed by the prospect of major violence, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O'Neill, promised reforms in return for a "truce", whereby no further demonstrations would be held.
In spite of these promises, in January 1969 People's Democracy, a left-wing group, staged an anti-government march from Belfast to Derry. Loyalists, including off-duty members of the B-Specials, attacked the marchers, most determinedly at Burntollet Bridge, outside Derry. The RUC failed to adequately protect the marchers. This action, and the RUC's subsequent entry into Derry's predominantly Catholic Bogside district, led to serious rioting in the city.Chronology of the conflict: 1969 . Conflict Archive on the Internet.
In March and April 1969, there were six bomb attacks on electricity and water infrastructure, causing blackouts and water shortages. At first the attacks were blamed on the Irish Republican Army (IRA), but it later emerged that the loyalist Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had carried out the bombings in an attempt to implicate the IRA, destabilise the Northern Ireland government and halt the reforms promised by O'Neill.
There was some movement on reform in the first half of 1969. On 23 April Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) members of the Northern Ireland parliament voted by 28 to 22 to introduce universal adult suffrage in local government elections in Northern Ireland. The call for "one man, one vote" had been one of the key demands of the civil rights movement. Five days later, O'Neill resigned as UUP leader and prime minister and was replaced in both roles by James Chichester-Clark. Chichester-Clark, despite having resigned in protest over the introduction of universal suffrage in local government, announced that he would continue the reforms begun by O'Neill.
Street violence, however, continued to escalate. On 19 April there was serious rioting in the Bogside following clashes between NICRA marchers and the RUC. A Catholic, Samuel Devenny, was severely beaten by the RUC and later died of his injuries.Sutton Index of Deaths: 1969 . Conflict Archive on the Internet. On 12 July, during the Orange Order's Twelfth of July marches, there was serious rioting in Derry, Belfast and Dungiven, causing many families in Belfast to flee from their homes. Another Catholic civilian, Francis McCloskey (67), died after being hit on the head with batons by RUC officers during rioting in Dungiven.
Battle of the Bogside
This unrest culminated in a pitched battle in Derry from 12 to 14 August, known as the Battle of the Bogside. As the yearly march by the Protestant loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry skirted the edge of the Catholic Bogside, stone-throwing broke out.Coogan, Tim Pat. The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. pp.87–90 The RUC—on foot and in armoured vehicles—drove back the Catholic crowd and attempted to force its way into the Bogside, followed by loyalists who smashed the windows of Catholic homes.Stetler, Russell. The Battle of Bogside: The Politics of Violence in Northern Ireland. Chapter 3: August . Reproduced by Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Thousands of Bogside residents mobilised to defend the area, and beat back the RUC with a hail of stones and petrol bombs. Barricades were built, petrol bomb workshops and first aid posts were set up, and a radio transmitter ("Radio Free Derry") broadcast messages and called on "every able-bodied man in Ireland who believes in freedom" to defend the Bogside.
The overstretched police resorted to throwing stones back at the Bogsiders, and were helped by loyalists. They fired CS gas into the Bogside – the first time it had been used by police in the UK. The Bogsiders feared that the B-Specials, the wholly-Protestant police reserves, would be sent in and would massacre the Catholic residents. On 13 August, NICRA called for protests across Northern Ireland in support of the Bogside to draw police away from the fighting there. That night it issued a statement: A war of genocide is about to flare across the North. The CRA demands that all Irishmen recognise their common interdependence and calls upon the Government and people of the Twenty-six Counties to act now to prevent a great national disaster. We urgently request that the Government take immediate action to have a United Nations peace-keeping force sent to Derry.
Violence in Belfast Belfast has a long history of riots between Catholics and Protestants. British rule in Ireland was cemented by official British support for Protestant settlement since the 17th Century. Beginning in 1835 there have been at least 15 major riots in Belfast, the most violent ones taking place in 1864, 1886 and 1921.Boyd, Andrew (1969), Holy War in Belfast, Anvil Books Ltd, Tralee, pgs 217–218. See 1886 Belfast riots, Bloody Sunday (1921) and The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922). Belfast saw the most intense violence of the August 1969 riots. Unlike Derry, Catholics were a minority in Belfast and mostly lived in enclaves surrounded by Protestant districts."The North in Crisis: The Belfast Massacre" . Politico.ie – Nusight archives. Originally published in Nusight magazine. For this reason, whereas in Derry the fighting was largely between nationalists and the RUC, in Belfast it also involved fighting between Catholics and Protestants, including exchanges of gunfire and widespread burning of homes and businesses.Eamon McCann, War and an Irish Town, p118
On the night of 12 August, bands of Apprentice Boys arrived back in Belfast after taking part in the Derry march. They were met by Protestant pipe bands and a large crowd of supporters. They then marched to Shankill Road waving Union Flags and singing "The Sash My Father Wore", a popular loyalist ballad.
According to journalists Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, "Both communities were in the grip of a mounting paranoia about the other's intentions. Catholics were convinced that they were about to become victims of a Protestant pogrom; Protestants that they were on the eve of an IRA insurrection".Bishop, Mallie, The Provisional IRA, p103
Wednesday 13 August The first disturbances in Belfast took place on the night of 13 August. Derry activists Eamonn McCann and Seán Keenan contacted Frank Gogarty of NICRA to organise demonstrations in Belfast to draw off police from Derry.Mallie, Bishop, Provisional IRA, p103 Independently, Belfast IRA leader Billy McMillen ordered republicans to organise demonstrations "in support of Derry".Hanley, Millar, The Lost Revolution p126
In protest at the RUC's actions in Derry, a group of 500 nationalists held a demonstration outside Springfield Road police station, where they handed in a petition.Swan, Sean. Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972. Lulu, 2008. p.281. After handing in the petition, the crowd of now 1,000–2,000 people, including IRA members such as Joe McCann,Hanley, Millar, p126 began a protest march along Falls Road and Divis Street to the Hastings Street police station. When they arrived, about fifty youths broke away from the march and attacked the police station with stones and petrol bombs.Geraghty, Tony. The Irish War: The hidden conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence. JHU Press, 2000. p.21. The RUC responded by deploying riot police and by driving Shorland armoured cars at the crowd. Protesters pushed burning cars onto the road to stop the RUC from entering the nationalist area.