The Troubles (Modern Mess)

The Troubles (Irish: Na Trioblóidí) was an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, and the Conflict in Ireland it is sometimes described as a "guerrilla war" or a "low-level war".The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Two Hand Pleed of 1990.Although the Troubles primarily took place in Northern Ireland, at times the violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.

The conflict was primarily political and nationalistic, fuelled by historical events.It also had an ethnic or sectarian dimensioalthough it was not a religious conflict.A key issue was the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Unionists/loyalists, who were mostly Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists/republicans, who were mostly Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a united Ireland.

The Trigger of War
On 1 January 1969, People's Democracy began a four-day march from Belfast to Derry, which was repeatedly harassed and attacked by loyalists. At Burntollet Bridge the marchers were attacked by about 200 loyalists, including some off-duty police officers, armed with iron bars, bricks and bottles in a pre-planned ambush. When the march reached Derry City it was again attacked. The marchers claimed that police did nothing to protect them and that some officers helped the attackers.That night, RUC officers went on a rampage in the Bogside area of Derry, attacking Catholic homes, attacking and threatening residents, and hurling sectarian abuse.Residents then sealed off the Bogside with barricades to keep the police out, creating "Free Derry", which was briefly a no-go area for the security forces.

In March and April 1969, loyalists bombed water and electricity installations in Northern Ireland, blaming them on the dormant IRA and elements of the civil rights movement. Some attacks left much of Belfast without power and water. Loyalists hoped the bombings would force O'Neill to resign and bring an end to any concessions to nationalists. There were six bombings between 30 March and 26 April.All were widely blamed on the IRA, and British soldiers were sent to guard installations. Unionist support for O'Neill waned, and on 28 April he resigned as Prime Minister.

1970-1976
1970 through to 1972 saw an explosion of political violence in Northern Ireland, peaking in 1972, when nearly 500 people, just over half of them civilians, lost their lives. 1972 saw the 2nd greatest loss of life throughout the entire conflict.

By the end of 1971, 29 barricades were in place in Derry, blocking access to what was known as Free Derry; 16 of these were impassable even to the British Army's one-ton armoured vehiclesMany of the nationalist/republican "no-go areas" were controlled by one of the two factions of the Irish Republican Army—the Provisional IRA and Official IRA. There are several reasons offered for why violence escalated in these years.

Unionists claim the main reason was the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), and the Official Irish Republican Army (Official IRA), particularly the former. These two groups were formed when the IRA split into the 'Provisional' and 'Official' factions. While the older IRA had embraced non-violent civil agitation, the new Provisional IRA was determined to wage "armed struggle" against British rule in Northern Ireland. The new IRA was willing to take on the role of "defenders of the Catholic community",rather than seeking working-class ecumenical unity across both communities.

Nationalists pointed to a number of events in these years to explain the upsurge in violence. One such incident was the Falls Curfew in July 1970, when 3,000 troops imposed a curfew on the nationalist Lower Falls area of Belfast, firing more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition in gun battles with the Official IRA and killing four people. Another was the 1971 introduction of internment without trial (of 350 initial detainees, none were Protestants).Moreover, due to poor intelligence, very few of those interned were actually republican activists at the time, but some internees became increasingly radicalised as a result of their experiences.

A third event "Bloody Sunday", was the shooting dead of thirteen unarmed male civilians by the British Army at a proscribed anti-internment rally in Derry on 30 January 1972 (a fourteenth man died of his injuries some months later) while more than fourteen other civilians were wounded.The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The soldiers involved were members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, also known as "1 Para".

This was one of the most prominent events that occurred during the Northern Irish Conflict as it was recorded as the largest number of people killed in a single incident during the period.

Bloody Sunday greatly increased the hostility of Catholics and Irish nationalists towards the British military and government while significantly elevating tensions during the Northern Irish Conflict. As a result, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) gained more support, especially through rising numbers of recruits in the local areas.

Following the introduction of internment there were numerous gun battles between the British army and both the Provisional and Official IRA. Between 1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were interned; 1,874 were Catholic/republican, while 107 were Protestant/loyalist.There were widespread allegations of abuse and even torture of detainees,and in 1972, the "five techniques" used by the police and army for interrogation were ruled to be illegal following a British government inquiry.[

The Provisional IRA, or "Provos", as they became known, sought to establish itself as the defender of the nationalist community.The Official IRA (OIRA) began its own armed campaign in reaction to the ongoing violence. The Provisional IRA's offensive campaign began in early 1971 when the Army Council sanctioned attacks on the British Army.

In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 members of the security forces, wounded 500 others, and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings,mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy". The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast, killing seven civilians and two soldiers.

In the same year, the Official IRA killed dozens of soldiers and wounded several more, mostly through gun attacks, according to the CAIN project's Sutton database. The Official IRA called off its campaign in May 1972.

Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had lifted the proscription against the UVF in April 1974. In December, one month after the Birmingham pub bombings which killed 21 people, the IRA declared a ceasefire; this would theoretically last throughout most of the following year. The ceasefire notwithstanding, sectarian killings actually escalated in 1975, along with internal feuding between rival paramilitary groups. This made 1975 one of the "bloodiest years of the conflict".

On 31 July 1975 at Buskhill, outside Newry, the popular Irish cabaret band "The Miami Showband" was returning home to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge when it was ambushed by gunmen from the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade wearing British Army uniforms at a bogus military roadside checkpoint on the main A1 road. Three of the bandmembers, two Catholics and a Protestant, were shot dead, while two of the UVF men were killed when the bomb they had loaded onto the band's minibus detonated prematurely. The following January, eleven Protestant workers were gunned down in Kingsmill, South Armagh after having been ordered off their bus by an armed republican gang, which called itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force. One man survived despite being shot 18 times, leaving ten fatalities. These killings were reportedly in retaliation to a loyalist double shooting attack against the Reavey and O'Dowd families the previous night.

The violence continued through the rest of the 1970s. The British Government reinstated the ban against the UVF in October 1975, making it once more an illegal organisation. When the Provisional IRA's December 1974 ceasefire had ended in early 1976 and it had returned to violence, it had lost the hope that it had felt in the early 1970s that it could force a rapid British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, and instead developed a strategy known as the "Long War", which involved a less intense but more sustained campaign of violence that could continue indefinitely.