The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

August 1969 saw two crude notions of liberty come into conflict. One side, the Protestant, was admittedly open to the definition of being every bit as supremacist as the South African Boers of the period, the comparison being heightened by similarities in attitude and religion. Nevertheless, there was a sense of defending a heritage of Britishness and of freedom of religion. The other side, the Catholic, from which came the Provisional IRA, could be said to have emerged from the mists of history and the burnings of August, but at base, they too were moved, not by hatred, but by an instinct for freedom. Two sets of Irish Christians, overseen by an arm’s-length British Government, and observed by a reluctant but increasingly involved Irish Government, were about to engage in a war which would prove yet again that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.