The Troubles

Introduction
The Troubles consisted of about 30 years of repeated acts of intense violence between elements of Northern Ireland's nationalist community (principally Roman Catholic) and unionist community (principally Protestant). The conflict was caused by the disputed status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and the domination of the minority nationalist community, and alleged discrimination against them, by the unionist majority. The violence was characterised by the armed campaigns of paramilitary groups. Most notable of these was the Provisional IRA campaign of 1969–1997 which was aimed at the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and the creation of a new, "all-Ireland," Irish Republic.

In response to this campaign and the perceived erosion of the British character and unionist domination of Northern Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) launched their own campaigns against the nationalist population. The state security forces — the British Army and the police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) — were also involved in the violence. The British government's point of view is that its forces were neutral in the conflict and trying to uphold law and order in Northern Ireland and the right of the people of Northern Ireland to democratic self-determination. Irish republicans, however, regarded the state forces as "combatants" in the conflict, using alleged collusion between the state forces and the loyalist paramilitaries as proof of this. The "Ballast" investigation by the Police Ombudsman has confirmed that British forces, and in particular the RUC, did collude with loyalist paramilitaries, were involved in murder, and did obstruct the course of justice when such claims had previously been investigated. The extent to which such collusion occurred is still hotly disputed, with Unionists claiming that reports of collusion are either false or highly exaggerated and that there were also instances of collusion between the authorities in the Republic of Ireland and Republican paramilitaries.

Alongside the violence, there was a political deadlock between the major political parties in Northern Ireland, including those who condemned violence, over the future status of Northern Ireland and the form of government there should be within Northern Ireland.

The Troubles were brought to an uneasy end by a peace process which included the declaration of ceasefires by most paramilitary organisations and the complete decommissioning of their weapons and the reform of the police and the corresponding withdrawal of Army troops from the streets and from sensitive border areas such as South Armagh and Fermanagh as agreed by the signatories to the Belfast Agreement (commonly known as the "Good Friday Agreement"). This reiterated the long-held British position, which had never before been fully acknowledged by successive Irish governments, that Northern Ireland will remain within the United Kingdom until a majority votes otherwise. On the other hand, the British Government recognised for the first time, as part of the prospective, the so-called "Irish dimension:" the principle that the people of the island of Ireland as a whole have the right, without any outside interference, to solve the issues between North and South by mutual consent. The latter statement was key to winning support for the agreement from nationalists and republicans. It also established a devolved power-sharing government within Northern Ireland (currently suspended), where the government must consist of both unionist and nationalist parties.

Though the number of active participants in the Troubles was relatively small, and the paramilitary organizations that claimed to represent the communities were sometimes unrepresentative of the general population, the Troubles touched the lives of most people in Northern Ireland on a daily basis, while occasionally spreading to Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. In addition, at several times between 1969 and 1998 it seemed possible that the Troubles would escalate into a full-scale civil war — for example in 1972 after the Bloody Sunday, or during the Hunger Strikes of 1980-1981, when there was mass, hostile mobilisation of the two communities. Many people today have had their political, social, and communal attitudes and perspectives shaped by the Troubles.

Beginning of the Troubles
The Troubles are often acknowledged to have begun in 1968, when widespread rioting and public disorder broke out at the marches of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). This group launched a peaceful civil rights campaign in 1967, which borrowed the language and symbology of the Civil Rights Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States. NICRA was seeking a redress of Catholic and nationalist grievances within Northern Ireland. Specifically, they wanted an end to the gerrymandering of electoral constituencies that produced unrepresentative local councils (particularly in Derry City) by putting virtually all Catholics in a limited number of electoral wards; the abolition of the rate-payer franchise in local government elections, which gave Protestants (who tended to be richer) disproportionate voting power; an end to perceived unfair allocation of jobs and housing; and an end to the Special Powers Act (which allowed for internment and other repressive measures) that was seen as being aimed at the nationalist community.

Initially, Terence O'Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, reacted favourably to this moderate-seeming campaign and promised reforms of Northern Ireland. However, he was opposed by many hardline unionists, including William Craig and Ian Paisley who accused him of being a "sell out." Some Unionists immediately mistrusted the NICRA as an IRA “Trojan Horse.” Violence broke out at several Civil Rights marches when loyalists attacked civil rights demonstrators with clubs and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was widely accused of supporting the loyalists, was accused of allowing the violence to occur.

Much of the hostile loyalist reaction to the Civil Rights Movement was linked to the ability of leaders to provoke fear within the Unionist populace that the IRA was not only behind the NICRA, but was also planning a renewed armed campaign. In fact, the IRA was moribund, had few weapons, fewer members, negligible support, and was increasingly committed (out of necessity) to non-violent politics. The first bombing campaign of the Troubles (largely directed against power stations and other infrastructure) was staged by the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force in 1969 to try and implicate the IRA.

Communal disturbances worsened throughout 1969, escalating in January after a march by the People's Democracy from Belfast to Londonderry was attacked by loyalists in Burntollet, County Derry. The RUC were accused of failing to protect the marchers. Barricades were erected in nationalist areas of Derry and Belfast in the following months. This disorder culminated in the Battle of the Bogside (12-14 August 1969) - a huge communal uprising in Derry between police and nationalists. The riot started in a confrontation between Catholic residents of the Bogside, police, and members of the Apprentice Boys of Derry who were due to march past the Bogside along the city walls.

Rioting between police and loyalists on one side and Bogside residents on the other continued for two days before British troops were sent in to restore order. The "Battle" sparked vicious sectarian rioting in Belfast, Newry, Strabane, and elsewhere, starting on 14 August 1969, which left many people dead and many homes burned. The riots began with nationalist demonstrations in support of the Bogside residents and escalated when a grenade was thrown at a police station. The RUC in response deployed armoured cars with Browning heavy machine guns and killed a nine year old boy in the nationalist Falls Road area of Belfast. Loyalist crowds reacted to the violence by attacking Catholic areas, burning down much of Bombay Street, Madrid Street, and other Catholic streets. The first policeman killed, Victor Arbuckle, was shot by loyalists, not republicans.

Nationalists alleged that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had aided, or at least not acted against, loyalists in these riots (despite the deaths of Constable Arbuckle). The IRA had been widely criticized by its supporters for failing to defend the Catholic community during the Belfast troubles of August 1969, when seven people had been killed, about 750 injured, and 1,505 Catholic families had been forced out of their homes — almost five times the number of dispossessed Protestant households. One Catholic priest reported that his parishioners were contemptuously calling the IRA "I Ran Away."

The government of Northern Ireland requested that the British Government deploy the British Army in Northern Ireland to restore order, possibly in response to somewhat exaggurated media reports that the Irish government were considering military intervention to protect Catholic areas in Derry. Nationalists initially welcomed the Army, often giving the soldiers tea and sandwiches, as they did not trust the police to act in an unbiased manner. But relations soured due to heavy-handedness by the Army, who were soon considered to be biased in favour of the Unionists.

Many unionists see the civil rights movement as the cause of the Troubles. They argue that it led to a destabilisation of government and created a void filled later by paramilitary groups. Others, mainly (though not exclusively) nationalist, argue that the civil rights campaign and the opposition to it by Ian Paisley and other loyalists was merely a symptom of a sectarian system of government that was itself inherently corrupt and prone to collapse.

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The peak of violence and the collapse of Stormont
The years 1970–72 saw an explosion of political violence in Northern Ireland, peaking in the year 1972, when nearly 500 people lost their lives. There are several reasons why violence escalated in these years.

Unionists believe the main reason was the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), a break-away from the older IRA. While the older IRA (the remnants of which became known as the Official 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 a sectarian character as "defenders of the Catholic community," rather than seeking working-class unity across both communities, which had become the aim of the "Officials." Unionists see this ongoing campaign as the main cause and sustaining element of the Troubles.

Nationalists argued that the upsurge in violence was caused by the disappointment of the hopes engendered by the civil rights movement and the repression subsequently directed at their community. They point to a number of events in these years to support this opinion. 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 IRA and killing four people. Another was the 1971 introduction of internment without trial — out of over 350 initial detainees, only 2 were Protestants and only 1 was a loyalist. Moreover, due to poor intelligence, very few of those interned were actually republican activists, but some went on to become republicans as a result of their unfortunate experiences. Between 1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were Catholic/republican, while 107 were Protestant/loyalist. There were widespread allegations from the nationalist community of abuse and even torture of detainees. Most emotionally of all, nationalists also point to the fatal shootings of 14 apparently unarmed nationalist demonstrators by the British Army in Derry in January 1972 on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

The Provisional IRA (or "Provos", as they became known), formed in late 1969, soon established itself as more aggressive and militant in its response to attacks on the nationalist community by loyalists and the police, gaining much support in the nationalist ghettos in the early 1970s as "defenders" of those communities. Despite the increasingly reformist and Marxist politics of the Official IRA, they nonetheless began their own armed campaign in reaction to the ongoing violence and the deteriorating relationship between the Catholic community and the British military. From 1970 onwards, both the PIRA and OIRA engaged in armed confrontations with the British Army.

By 1972, the Provisionals' campaign was of such intensity that they had already killed more than 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out 1,300 bombings, mostly against commercial targets that they considered “the artificial economy.” The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday in July 1972, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast. The Official IRA, who had never been fully committed to armed action, called off their campaign in June 1972. The Provisionals however, despite a temporary ceasefire in 1972 and talks with British officials, were determined to continue their campaign until the achievement of a united Ireland.

The loyalist paramilitaries, including the Ulster Volunteer Force and the newly-founded Ulster Defence Association responded to the mushrooming violence with a campaign of sectarian assassination of nationalists, whom they identified simply as Catholics. Some of these murders were particularly gruesome, as in the case of the Shankill Butchers, who beat and tortured their victims before killing them. The PIRA were also guilty of sectarian murder. For example, in January 1976, they responded to the killings of six Catholic civilians by loyalists with the Kingsmill massacre of 1976, in which ten Protestant civilians were machine-gunned to death. Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas. In Belfast, Protestants were forced out of Lenadoon and Catholics were driven out of the Rathcoole estate and the Westvale neighborhood. In Derry City almost all the Protestants fled to the predominantly loyalist Fountain Estate and Waterside areas.

The British government in London, seeing that the Northern Ireland administration was incapable of containing the security situation, suspended the unionist-controlled Stormont Home Rule government in 1972 and introduced "Direct Rule" from London. Their government addressed many of the concerns of the civil rights movement: re-drawing electoral boundaries to make them more representative, giving all citizens the vote in local elections, and transferring the power to allocate public housing to an independent Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Direct Rule was initially intended as a short-term measure, the medium-term strategy being to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on a basis that was acceptable to both unionists and nationalists. Agreement proved elusive, however, and the Troubles continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s within a context of political deadlock.

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The Sunningdale Agreement
In 1973, mainstream nationalist and unionist parties, along with the British and (Southern) Irish governments, negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement, which was intended to produce a political settlement within Northern Ireland, but with a so-called "Irish dimension" involving the Republic of Ireland. The agreement provided for "power-sharing" between nationalists and unionists and a "Council of Ireland" designed to encourage cross-border co-operation. Seamus Mallon, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, has pointed to the marked similarities between the Sunningdale Agreement and the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Famously, he characterised the latter as "Sunningdale for slow learners."

Unionism, however, was split over Sunningdale, which was also opposed by the IRA, whose goal remained nothing short of an end to Northern Ireland's existence as part of the United Kingdom. Many unionists opposed the concept of power-sharing, arguing that it was not feasible to share power with those (nationalists) who sought the destruction of the state. Perhaps more significant, however, was the unionist opposition to the "Irish dimension" and the Council of Ireland, which was perceived as being an all-Ireland parliament-in-waiting. The remarks by SDLP councillor Hugh Logue to an audience at Trinity College Dublin that Sunningdale was the tool "by which the Unionists will be trundled off to a united Ireland" ensured its defeat.

In January 1974, Brian Faulkner was narrowly deposed as Unionist Party leader by his own party and replaced by Harry West. A British general election in February 1974 gave the anti-Sunningdale unionists the opportunity to test unionist opinion with the slogan "Dublin is only a Sunningdale away" and the result galvanised their opposition: they won 11 of the 12 seats, winning 58% of the vote with most of the rest going to nationalists and pro-Sunningdale unionists.

Ultimately, however, the Sunningdale Agreement was brought down by mass action on the part of loyalists (primarily the Ulster Defence Association at that time over 20,000 strong) and Protestant workers, who formed the Ulster Workers' Council. They organised a general strike - the Ulster Workers' Council Strike. This stopped all business in Northern Ireland and cut off essential services such as water and electricity. Nationalists argue that the British government did not do enough to break this strike and uphold the Sunningdale initiative. In the event, however, faced with such determined opposition, the pro-Sunningdale unionists resigned from the power-sharing government and the new regime collapsed.

The violence continued through the rest of the 1970s. The Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in 1975, but returned to violence in 1976. By this time they had lost the hope that they had had in the early 1970s that they 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. The Official IRA ceasefire of 1972, however, became permanent, and the "Official" movement eventually evolved into the Workers Party, which rejected violence completely. A splinter from the "Officials" in 1974 - the Irish National Liberation Army, however, continued with a campaign of violence.

By the late 1970s, war weariness was visible in both communities. One manifestation of this was the formation of group known as "Peace People", which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. The Peace People organised large demonstrations calling for an end to paramilitary violence. However, their campaign lost momentum after they appealed to the nationalist community to provide information on the IRA to security forces. The Army and police were so unpopular in many nationalist areas that this was not seen as an objective stance.

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The Hunger Strikes and the emergence of Sinn Féin
Successive British Governments, having failed to achieve a political settlement, tried to "normalise" Northern Ireland. Aspects included the removal of internment without trial and the removal of political status for paramilitary prisoners. From 1976 onwards, paramilitaries were tried in juryless Diplock courts to avoid intimidation of jurors. On conviction, they were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Resistance to this policy among republican prisoners led to over 500 of them in the Maze prison going on the blanket protest and the dirty protest. Their protest culminated in hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 aimed at the restoration of political status.

In the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, ten republican prisoners (seven from the PIRA and three from the Irish National Liberation Army) starved themselves to death. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament on an Anti-H-Block ticket, as was his election agent Owen Carron, following Sands' death. The hunger strikes proved emotive events for the nationalist community - over 100,000 people attended Sands' funeral mass at St. Luke's, Twinbrook, and crowds also attended the subsequent funerals.

From an Irish republican perspective, the significance of these events was to demonstrate a potential for political and electoral strategy. In the wake of the hunger strikes, Sinn Féin, the PIRA's political wing, began to contest elections for the first time in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. In 1986, Sinn Féin recognised the legitimacy of the Irish Dáil, which caused a small group of hardline republicans to break away and form Republican Sinn Fein.

From a unionist perspective, the hunger strikes appeared to show that the nationalist community supported terrorism and this perception deepened sectarian antagonism.

The "Long War"
Paramilitary campaigns continued on both sides until the respective republican and loyalists ceasefires of 1994 ("non-authorised" killings such as vendettas or drugs-related killings still continue today). Fewer people were killed in the 1980s and 1990s than in the 1970s, but the duration and seemingly interminable nature of the political violence has left behind a very negative sociological legacy.

The PIRA's "Long War" was boosted by large donations of arms to them from Libya in 1986 due to Moammar Qaddafi's fury at then British Prime Misinster Margatet Thatcher's government for assisting the Americna President Ronald Reagan government's bombing of Tripoli, which killed one of Qaddafi's children. Although they were now killing fewer soldiers, the PIRA's capacity for assassinations and bombings appeared boundless. Many of their operations were directed at local unionist targets such as off-duty policemen, part-time soldiers and Protestant civilians, such as those killed during the Remembrance Day massacre of 1987. The PIRA also targeted construction workers, cleaners, and other workers, both Catholics and Protestants, who were employed on jobs at police stations and Army bases.

In the mid to late 1980s loyalist paramilitaries including the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Resistance, imported arms and explosives from South Africa. The weapons obtained were divided between the UDA, the UVF, and Ulster Resistance and led to an escalation in the assassination of Catholics, although some of the weaponry (such as rocket propelled grenades) were hardly used due to loyalist incompetence. These killings were in response to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave the Irish government a "consultative role" in the internal government of Northern Ireland.

The Paramilitaries' Activities
Since the late 1980s, Sinn Féin, led since 1983 by Gerry Adams, sought a negotiated end to the conflict (though the IRA continued its armed campaign), although Adams knew that this would be a very long process. In the 1970s he himself predicted that the war would last another 20 years. This was manifested in open talks with John Hume - the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and secret talks with Government officials. The loyalists were also engaged in behind the scenes talks to end the violence, liaising with the British and Irish governments through Protestant clergy, in particular, the Presbyterian Rev. Roy Magee and Anglican Archbishop Robin Eames. After a prolonged period of political manoeuvring in the background, both loyalist and republican paramilitaries declared ceasefires in 1994.

The year leading up to the ceasefires was a particularly tense one, marked by atrocities. The UDA and UVF stepped up their killings of Catholics (for the first time killing more civilians than Republicans in a year in 1993). The IRA responded with the Shankill Road bombing in October 1993 that aimed to wipe out the UDA leadership, but in fact killed nine Protestant civilians. The UDA in turn retaliated with the Greysteel massacre and the shootings at Castlerock, County Derry.

On 16 June 1994, just before the ceasefires, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) killed two UVF members in a gun attack on the Shankill road. In revenge, three days later, the UVF shot up a pub in Loughinisland, County Down, killing six civilians. The IRA, in the remaining month before its ceasefire, killed four senior loyalists, three from the UDA and one from the UVF. There are various interpretations of the spike in violence before the ceasefires. One theory is that the loyalists feared the peace process represented an imminent "sellout" of the Union and ratcheted up their violence accordingly. Another explanation is that the republicans were "settling old scores" before the end of their campaigns and wanted to enter the political process from a position of military strength rather than weakness.

Eventually, in August 1994, the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire. The loyalist paramilitaries, temporarily united in the Combined Loyalist Military Command, reciprocated six weeks later. Although these ceasefires failed in the short run, they mark an effective end to large-scale political violence in the Troubles as it paved the way for the final ceasefire.

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The Second Ceasefire
Less than two years after the signing of the Ceasefire the IRA revoked it on 9 February 1996. Later that day a half tonne bomb was exploded in the Canary Wharf area of London killing two people and doing £85 million in damage to the city's financial centre. The failure of the ceasefire was blamed on the British Governments refusal to begin all party negotiations until the IRA decommissioned its weapons.

The attack was followed by several more, most notably the the Manchester Bombing, which destroyed much of the centre of the city on 15 June 1996. It was the largest bomb attack in Great Britain since World War II but the attack avoided many fatalities due to the rapid response of the emergency services to an earlier telephone warning to a local television station. However, over 200 people were still injured in the attack, many of them outside the established cordon.

The IRA reinstated their ceasefire in July 1997 as negotiations for the document that would become known as the Good Friday Agreement were starting without Sinn Féin. In September of the same year, Sinn Féin signed The Mitchell Principles and was invited into the talks.

The Mitchell Principles
The Mitchell Principles were six ground rules agreed by the Irish and British governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland regarding participation in talks on the future of the region. They were named for United States Senator George Mitchell, who was heavily involved in the Northern Ireland peace process. All involved in negotiations had to affirm their commitment to: