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March 29 - April 14, 2020
government was fully aware of the allegations that Stormont was being run in an unfair manner.
The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.
Not until the 1960s would the Northern Ireland system first begin to tremble, disintegrate, and then descend into violence.
Captain Terence O’Neill,
He became the first Unionist prime minister to pay regular visits to Catholic schools and to offer handshakes to nuns.
Years later a southern civil servant recalled that one of the few channels of communication was provided by rugby matches in Dublin, where Belfast and Dublin officials would meet discreetly to sort out shared problems.
‘to convince more and more people that the government is working for the good of all and not only those
who vote Unionist’.
A traitor and a bridge are very much alike, for they both go over to the other side.’
as republicans celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 rising, led to three killings carried out by a group styling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force.
many in the Shankill Road district, to discuss over drinks means of combating the practically nonexistent IRA. A series of attacks carried out in a two-month period in 1966, many of which were drunken escapades, claimed three lives.
None of those killed was remotely connected with the IRA.
‘Up the Republic, up the rebels’.
O’Neill himself was clearly well aware that the game had changed and that pressure from London could not be dismissed, but many in his party were slow to grasp this.
upon a powerful new political instrument in the form of the civil rights movement. This was not a party but an umbrella group wide enough to embrace every anti-Unionist element in the land.
NICRA had a shopping list of demands which included one man – one vote, the redrawing of electoral boundaries, anti-discrimination legislation, a points system for housing allocation, the repeal of the Special Powers Act, and the disbanding of the B Specials.
In council elections subtenants, lodgers and anyone living at home with their parents could not vote, so that around a quarter of Stormont voters had no say in local government elections.
or perhaps a well-intentioned man who was simply not in control of his own party.
Catholics complained that the largely Catholic west lost out and was bypassed by the much-vaunted industrial modernisation.
Then the RUC spectacularly overreacted, using water cannon and batons on an obviously peaceful group of marchers.
Even years later William Craig revealed a breathtaking ignorance of public relations considerations when he said: ‘I thought the way the police acted on the day was fair enough. I would have intensified it. I wouldn’t have given two hoots for the Labour MPs who were present, or the TV pictures.’
but can any of us truthfully say in the confines of this room that the minority has no grievance calling for remedy?’
Let us at least get the credit for putting our own house in order.’
IRA was intimately involved in the civil rights movement, and in this they were correct.
wrong in thinking that the IRA was using the movement to foment trouble as a prelude to a new campaign of violence.
is not weakness but commonsense to go into the conference chamber with some weapons in our own hands, rather than be placed entirely on the defensive.’
Wilson pitched straight in, opening the meeting with
reminder that Stormont was subordinate to Westminster and following up with a direct threat to cut off some of Northern Ireland’s money:
political obtuseness when Craig, in spite of the repeated threats to cut off money, asked for additional financial help for a large Belfast company.
Craig took the view that Wilson was bluffing, and that his bluff should be called.
behind it all there is our old traditional enemy exploiting the situation.
Craig defiantly delivered the same speech again.
Man is a fucking idiot
‘the crossroads speech’.
‘Unionism armed with justice will be a stronger cause than Unionism armed merely with strength.’
‘What kind of Ulster do you want? A happy and respected province, in good standing with the rest of the UK, or a place continually torn apart by riots and demonstrations, and regarded as a political outcast?’
‘attraction to ideas of a UDI [unilateral declaration of independence] nature. Your idea of an Ulster which can go it alone is a delusion.’
set out on a march from Belfast to Londonderry which was to pass through a number of strongly loyalist areas.
Burntollet Bridge,
The march was ambushed by hundreds of loyalists at the bridge, a rural location in County Londonderry, with large numbers of attackers throwing stones and assaulting both male and female marchers with cudgels.
Lord Cameron, the Scottish judge who headed the commission, would eventually produce a report highly critical of the Unionist government,
John Hume.
though much later it emerged that the bombs were the work of the loyalist UVF, which was successfully attempting to bring down O’Neill.
The nationalist Irish News said on his departure: ‘The judgement of history will certainly be kinder to him than to his predecessors, who did nothing at all to bridge the chasm that divides our society and which Unionism of the anti-O’Neill variety still seems unwilling to attempt. At least Mr O’Neill tried.’
praised O’Neill but listed his shortcomings as ‘his lack of personal warmth, his difficulty with personal relationships, his inability to communicate, even with his friends, his defensiveness in the face of criticism and his inability to mend fences within the party’.
‘It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants, because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets. They will refuse to have eighteen children, but if a Roman Catholic is jobless and lives in the most ghastly hovel, he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance.’
nationalism reinvigorated by the civil rights movement and enlivened by a new generation of bright young leaders. From the Unionist side came not fresh thinking but Ian Paisley, a highly disruptive and destructive element, as well as opposition from within his own party.
He was the first Unionist leader to realise that Northern Ireland could not forever go on as it was,
With hindsight, the notion that he might have persuaded Unionism to change its ways was as improbable as his scheme for draining Lough Neagh.
Great ending sentence
In the end permission was given and the feared flare-up duly took place, as early skirmishes between Catholics and Protestants escalated into what came to be known as the Battle of the Bogside.
took the form of pitched battles between police and local men and youths using petrol bombs, bricks and any other missiles they could find to prevent the RUC from entering the district. Police replied with tear gas and by throwing stones back at the rioters.
