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

by Tim Pat Coogan

They were in fact still in a mood of defiance and determination to carry on until their absurd ultimatums were met.18

However, the IRA side told me that Whitelaw appeared to be ‘ne...

I hope that in me you will see a British minister you can trust. Look on me as a man who will not make a promise that he will not keep.’

The British Government to give an immediate declaration of its intent to withdraw from Irish soil, the withdrawal to be completed before 1 January 1975.

A general amnesty for all political prisoners in Irish prisons, all internees and detainees and all persons on the wanted list.

‘Give me the time and the opportunities and I will surprise you, gentlemen, with the rapidity with which I will act.’

with the IRA making the point that the best contribution that Britain could make to long-term peace in Ireland would be a recognition of the right of the Irish people as a unit to decide the future of Ireland. The IRA were prepared to accept that the timing and mechanics of such a declaration were open to negotiation but emphasised that the principle was inviolable.

The minority in the North have been deprived of their rights.

Whitelaw was prepared to concede reform within the system and to work sincerely for it, but the Government of Ireland Act was the keystone of the arch. The IRA wanted the arch demolished.

‘These are our people, ’ O’Conaill told Whitelaw, ‘and we do not desire nor would we welcome a clash with them. But the fact must be faced that they cannot be allowed to intimidate and hold out on the whole people of Ireland.’

If the truce ends, all bets are off.’

In the event of the documents being unacceptable to the Irish, they would be at liberty to resume offensive operations without notice.

And the IRA’s goals by that stage would appear considerably less remote than they had in the elegant confines of Paul Channon’s library.

The conference took place on a Friday and by the following weekend, the ceasefire was over.

In fact, so many Catholics were forced out of their homes that the southern authorities recorded 7, 000 refugees coming south to seek assistance in this period.

IRA had been negotiating at a lower level with British Army officers on having some homeless Catholics housed in the former Protestant homes which were now standing idle.

stating that any Catholics who were housed, legally or illegally, would be burned out.

the army had, against the wishes of the Catholic population of Portadown, insisted on forcing through yet another Orange march over the disputed ‘tunnel’ route through a bitterly resentful Catholic area.

In the event, the truce broke down amidst recrimination, charge and countercharge.

The simple truth was that the situation had simply not matured to a point where a solution on anything like the IRA terms was even remotely possible.

The violence which ensued after the ending of the ceasefire was the worst of the Troubles so far.

The death toll for the month was ninety-five, including twenty-one members of the security forces.

The bulk of those killed, however, were Catholics, victims of sectarian assassination. Any remorse which the Protestant community might have felt at this butchery was dissipated on Bloody Friday, 21 July, when the IRA detonated twenty...

The shock and horror of Bloody Friday provided the British with the opportunity to crack down finally on the IRA no-go areas in Belfast and Derry.

Twelve thousand troops, supported by tanks and bulldozers, smashed their way into the no-go areas but as with internment failed to capture any IRA personnel.

The IRA responded viciously with a set of car bombs in the Co. Derry village of Claudy ...

Nineteen seventy-two was the worst year o...

There were 467 deaths, a total of 10, 628 shootings, and almost 1, 90...

British justice is recognised within Anro not only by the stamp of repressive law, but by brutal enforcement. Soldiers not alone apprehend and detain suspects, they beat them. They interrogate with illegal methods ranging from ill-treatment to torture. They wreak vengeance for their dead comrades. The ‘enforcement’ can be terrifying, as when the Paratroop Regiment entered Anro.

I said I was not and they replied, ‘Well, fucking join so that we can shoot you.’

A lying statement was issued saying that the girl was killed in crossfire between the IRA and the British Army.

At the time that was written (in 1976) no soldier, or member of the RUC, had served even a day in jail for either killing or ill-treating people in Northern Ireland.

The device of charging serving soldiers with murder, rather than manslaughter, meant that premeditation was almost invariably argued successfully to have been absent, resulting in acquittal.

after serving only twenty-six months of a life sentence.

The British realised that, with the coming of direct rule, either a settlement with the IRA or a long war was the choice. The Whitelaw talks were proof, if proof were needed, that settlement was out of the question, and attention turned to counterinsurgency methods.

is intimidation by terrorist organisations of those persons who would be able to give evidence for the prosecution if they dared.

This floated the idea of joint British and Irish sovereignty over Northern Ireland, a thought which is very much in the air at the time of writing, and proposed a new form of treaty between Britain and the Republic, combined with a declaration of intent by the British Government that it intended to work for Irish unity.

even though the parliament had disappeared, the guarantee, or as the Nationalists would see it, ‘the veto’, remained.

It hinted broadly that there should be a more generous approach on the part of the Unionists towards the minority: ‘There are strong arguments that the object of real participation should be achieved by giving minority interests a share in the exercise of executive power.’

the Northern Ireland situation could not be viewed in isolat...

The result was that the Freudian fears of the Unionist community that anything in the way of benignity towards the minority, or Dublin, would inevitably thrust them towards a united Ireland were kindled afresh.

In May, four Catholics and a Protestant who had a Catholic girlfriend were murdered. In early June, five Catholics and a Protestant living with a Catholic woman were killed.

The British Army joined in the shooting and when the dead were counted, they were found to include four Catholics, including a fourteen-year-old girl, one Protestant and a British soldier.

Meanwhile, behind the barricades there was widespread harassment, beatings and intimidation of Catholics aimed at creating some ethnic cleansing.

the IRA truce inflamed the Protestants into setting up permanent, concrete barricades, both in Protestant areas of Belfast and in Portadown.

Loyalists also murdered Catholics. The Catholics began hitting back on a sectarian basis.

the UDA were allowed to extend their control by way of patrols and barricades, after the army had first negotiated with the UDA in this area and then retreated.

Army policy, and the ending of the truce, emboldened the Loyalists to declare open season on the Catholics in a fashion which seems to indicate a desire to demoralise the minority into flight by creating an atmosphere of terror.

Sadistic torture began to accompany murder as a m...

The Oldpark area was a mixed district, and obviously the deaths, none involving members of the IRA, were aimed at driving Catholics out. By August 1972, Loyalist paramilitaries were killing three Catholics for every Protestant, the same ratio which had occurred during the pogroms of the early 1920s.