Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland

by David McKittrick

In 1922 the voting system known as proportional representation (PR) was abolished. Its removal was by no means simply a technical adjustment, since it had been built in both as an actual safeguard for Catholic and Protestant minorities in the two parts of Ireland and also a symbol of respect for their views.

Professor John Whyte concluded: ‘Nationalists were manipulated out of control in a number of councils where they had a majority of electors. This is one of the clearest areas of discrimination in the whole field of controversy.’

If ever a community had a right to demonstrate against a denial of civil rights, Derry is the finest example. A Roman Catholic and nationalist city has for three or four decades been administered (and none too fairly administered) by a Protestant and Unionist majority secured by a manipulation of the ward boundaries for the sole purpose of retaining Unionist control. I was consulted by Sir James Craig at the time it was done. Craig thought that the fate of our constitution was on a knife edge at the time and that, in the circumstances, it was defensible on the basis that the safety of the State is the supreme law. It was most clearly understood that the arrangement was to be a temporary measure – five years was mentioned.

While the exercise had been aimed at wiping out independent Unionists, the 37 to 15 majority it delivered to Craig was so overwhelming that most of the Catholic opposition simply gave up. Most nationalists rarely attended and debates became much shorter, the votes which followed becoming mere formalities.

The political, legal and policing worlds were thus inextricably linked: one community governed, judged and policed the other.

The police had at their disposal the Special Powers Act, a sweeping piece of legislation which allowed arrests without warrant, internment without trial, unlimited search powers and bans on meetings and publications, as well as providing far-reaching catch-all clauses.

Unsurprisingly, Catholic unemployment was generally more than double Protestant unemployment, partly because of these patterns and partly because a higher proportion of Catholics lived in areas of high unemployment such as the west.

Since only ratepayers and their spouses had the vote, others such as subtenants, lodgers and anyone living at home with their parents could not vote.

Far from being acclaimed in Dublin, northern nationalist politicians were sidelined. They regularly pressed for invitations to state occasions in the south but were not particularly welcomed.

Although the media in general portrayed him as an anachronistic crank, it gradually became obvious that he had substantial support within a section of rural and working-class Protestants.

His mix of religious fundamentalism, political opportunism, personal charisma and talent for self-publicity was a potent one.

in 1968 when Austin Currie, a young Nationalist MP, staged a protest by squatting in a house in the County Tyrone village of Caledon near Dungannon.

The marchers, consciously emulating American civil rights protesters, sang ‘We Shall Overcome’.

The IRA itself had had a major rethink since the abject failure of its 1950s campaign, and in the process had swung sharply to the left with prominent Marxists taking control.

The consensus in the Catholic ghetto backstreets was that an effective defence force was needed, and so a new IRA came into being.

Lower Falls district was sealed off by the army for several days while soldiers were sent in to conduct rigorous house-to-house searches.

‘It is hard to remember any other incident that so clearly began the politicisation and alienation of a community.’ A moderate local councillor wrote: ‘Overnight the population turned from neutral or even sympathetic support for the military to outright hatred of everything related to the security forces.

A local civil servant later wrote: ‘What you got from Maudling was the impression of a massive intelligence, only partly in gear, which moved sideways towards the problem, like a crab, and then scuttled back into its hole without actually coming to grips with it.’

In 1971 more than 170 people were killed; a further 2,600 were injured and 17,000 homes were searched. Unsurprisingly, there was massive alienation from authority. To the outside world internment might be seen as a response to IRA violence, but many Catholics in areas such as west Belfast regarded IRA activity as a response to violence from the authorities.

These ideas held no attraction for the IRA, which saw them as desperate attempts to shore up crumbling British rule. It remained intent on fighting on in the hope of wearing down the British will and bringing about a British withdrawal. But the new concepts were much welcomed by the SDLP and the Irish government, both of which had been lobbying for such an approach.

One assembly official recalled in his memoirs: ‘Ministers, especially Faulkner, were abused verbally on every occasion and sometimes even physically. Faulkner was spat upon, jostled, reviled and shouted down. It was sad to see him spat upon by lesser men, political pygmies and procedural bullies and wild men of the woods and the bogs.’

The nucleus was a group styling itself the Ulster Workers Council (UWC), consisting of trade unionists and others, some based in key industries with predominantly Protestant workforces. These included shipbuilding, heavy engineering and, above all, electric power generation.

During the strike there was, in fact, a bombing attack which claimed more lives than almost any other single incident in the troubles, but it took place not in the north but south of the border. This was what came to be known as the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which on the third day of the strike killed twenty-five people in Dublin and a further seven in the border town of Monaghan. Three separate car bombs went off without warning in Dublin, causing carnage during the evening rush hour. One newspaper report described the scene: ‘Dozens of people lay on the pavements and in the road and in front of broken shops, dead, dying or screaming with pain and shock. A newspaper photographer was sick when he saw a gutter literally running with blood. A few feet away was a human leg and next to it a head.’ A report on the inquest said: ‘Horrifying head wounds, loss of limbs, enormous lacerations and the presence of debris and shrapnel in the victims’ bodies were described to the court. Most of the victims died from multiple injuries, shock and haemorrhage.’ Loyalist sources said the UVF was responsible for the attacks, but some years later it was alleged that British intelligence had played a part, a claim which led to a long-running campaign by relatives for an inquiry into the episode.

In one unprecedented move a group of senior northern Protestant churchmen travelled south to meet IRA leaders at Feakle in County Clare, reporting back to NIO officials on their talks.

Loyalists were more unabashedly and consistently sectarian than the IRA. Republicans often denied the IRA was involved in sectarian killings and sometimes used a cover name to claim responsibility for attacks. The UVF and UDA, by contrast, made little secret of the fact that they regarded the Catholic population in general as legitimate targets, and made no bones about attacking Catholic bars and other targets with the aim of killing as many as possible.

Of the approximately 3,600 troubles deaths, almost exactly half took place in the period of five years and four months which began when internment was introduced in August 1971.

A frequent Unionist, and sometimes government, misconception throughout the years of protest was that these prisoners were unfortunate victims who were being sacrificed by a ruthless IRA leadership. In fact all the evidence points to an IRA leadership opposed to and frustrated by the tactics of the prisoners.

truth of the old saying that it is not those who inflict the most who ultimately win, but those who endure the most.

The hungerstrike had not technically achieved special category status but in effect it had achieved something much more potent: political status. There could have been no more definitive display of political motivation than the spectacle of ten men giving their lives in an awesome display of self-sacrifice and dedication. It was possible to view this as outlandish fanaticism, and many did; but it was not possible to claim that these were indistinguishable from ordinary criminals. The hungerstrikers thus won political status in the eyes of the world.

‘She was a great wee lassie. She was a pet, and she’s dead. But I bear no ill will, I bear no grudge.’

Michael Stone,

As always, however, republican violence attracted more attention than did loyalist killings.

“Are my legs on?” and he said, “You’re all right” and he shook my legs but I couldn’t feel them. I said: “Get me up”, and part of my kneecap came off but I knew my leg was there and I thanked God that I was living.’

Two bombs set off in the City of London, Britain’s financial heartland, actually inflicted more financial damage than all the 10,000 bombs which had ever gone off in Northern Ireland. When the smoke and dust cleared it was found that the two bombs had caused more than £700 million of damage.

On 31 August came the ceasefire announcement. Just after 11 a.m. excited journalists and newsreaders read out an IRA statement proclaiming that, as of midnight that night ‘there will be a complete cessation of military operations’. Few people in Ireland have forgotten where they were when they heard the news that after twenty-five years of conflict and more than 3,000 deaths the IRA, one of the world’s most formidable terrorist organisations, had finally decided to call a halt. There was jubilation in the nationalist community but among Unionists the reaction was more uncertain.

As the weeks passed and the ceasefire held, another major development came in October when the loyalist paramilitary groups followed the IRA’s lead. They not only declared a ceasefire but set a new tone by including an unexpected note of apology, offering ‘the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years abject and true remorse’. The announcement carried all the more weight because it was made by Augustus ‘Gusty’ Spence, who had been jailed for life for the 1966 Malvern Street killing and had since become an icon of loyalist paramilitarism. This change in tone reflected the existence of a new phenomenon within militant loyalism with the emergence, from that violent underworld, of a political element.

Groups such as the UVF and UDA remained in being, but now they too went on ceasefire and sprouted new political wings. There had been previous such attempts, but they had been short-lived and unsuccessful. In particular the UVF now produced the Progressive Unionist party, with articulate spokesmen such as David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson. They and most of the other new spokesmen were ex-prisoners who had learnt the hard way the cost of violence. Some like Hutchinson had served life sentences, spending a dozen years or more behind bars. A number had established discreet contacts with republicans whom they had met in jail, had come to know individual IRA members, and kept up contacts with them after their release, often through community groups. The sight of the previously violent loyalists embracing the peace process with such enthusiasm gave the process a huge boost, for many had assumed the loyalist groups would continue to pose an active threat. Instead they became at many points a force for moderation, eager for dialogue and presenting a very different approach from that of mainstream Unionist politicians.

appallingly metronomic rate.

George Mitchell

In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the US the IRA finally carried out an act of weapons decommissioning in October.

The Protestants of Northern Ireland have long been pilloried for their siege mentality, their resistance to change and for what their critics characterise as an unsavoury mixture of reactionary instincts and religious bigotry. The British encouraged them to move to Ireland essentially as a garrison community for Britain’s own defensive purposes. Those settlers were bound to develop a siege mentality given that they experienced actual sieges, most famously Londonderry in 1689. The settlers valued the British connection, and their differences with the Catholic Irish were continuously sharpened by the fact that the two sides competed for territory and power, setting patterns which endured through the generations.

O’Neill had an instinct that modernisation was called for, but he did not foresee the consequences of his new approach. He probably envisaged a Northern Ireland which would remain under exclusively Unionist control, though with a relaxation of communal divisions, but in the end he proved incapable of managing the tide of change.

Roy Mason remembered him as ‘an oafish bully, a wild rabblerouser, to many a poisonous bigot because of his No Popery rantings’. James Prior thought him ‘basically a man who thrives on the violent scene. His aim is to stir the emotions of the Protestant people. His bigotry easily boils over into bombast.’

London’s problems with both republicans and loyalists have tended to reinforce the standard British posture that they are dealing with two inherently unreasonable tribes and in effect holding the ring between them. This perspective allows the average Englishman to exonerate himself from any element of responsibility for the conflict.