1. The Troubles
1969-1998

2. Drawing the Irish Border
• After the Irish War of Independence, the United Kingdom’s borders were
changed. The name of the UK was changed to “The United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland”
• The Border with the Irish Free State caused serious challenges. The Border
had been drawn around the colonial North, where most people were
Protestant Unionists (pro-British).
• However, it also fenced in pockets of Catholic Nationalists (anti-British)
communities.
• These communities wanted Northern Ireland to join the Irish Free State.
• The Free State continued to lay territorial claim to the whole island.
• As a result, Northern Ireland’s status as a viable state was highly unstable,
and most people predicted it would soon collapse.

4. The ‘Red hand of Ulster’
The ‘Red Hand’ had been a symbol of Ulster since
pre-colonial times. It was adapted by Protestant
Unionists to represent the New Northern Ireland.

5. Stormont House – the new local
parliament for Northern Ireland,
created 1921

6. The Orange Order
• The Orange Order is a private, ultra-conservative, all-male club for religious
fanatics, established to assert Protestant supremacy in Northern Ireland.
• Parades are held every year to commemorate historical British military
conquests over Ireland, and the establishment of Protestant governance.
• Orange Order Parades, as a matter of principle, made their routes through
local Catholic areas – an act which was considered to be deliberately
provocative and intimidating by local Catholic populations.
• Many Protestant Unionists, however, see them as the assertion of a culture
under siege from Nationalist Republicans across the Border.
• The Parades continue today.

13. ‘Gerrymandering’
• Protestant (unionist) dominance of public life in Northern Ireland was maintained vie
three methods of systematic exclusion:
• Housing: This was the most fundamental method of political control. Council Housing
(équivalent HLM) was carefully distributed in voting constituencies to ensure that
Catholics always formed a voting minority -- even in towns where they formed the vast
majority.
• Jobs: Candidates for jobs were usually asked about their religion, which frequently led to
better jobs being reserved for Protestants. This led to wholesale exclusion of Catholics in
some sectors, mass unemployment in the Catholic community, and Protestant
dominance in the middle and upper classes.
• Votes: Businessmen in N. Ireland often had access to more than one vote (often up to 6).
Since most business owners were Protestant, this meant that while Catholic votes were
usually ineffective, Protestants could sometimes vote multiple times.
• The resulting system of Catholic exclusion, especially in the voting system, became
known as Gerrymandering.

16. https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=cjLCnckqX
wQ

17. Paisleyites and the Ulster Volunteer Force
• Protestant religious extremists, often linked to the ultra-conservative Orange
Order, rallied behind the Unionist activist Reverend Ian Paisley in the 1960s.
• Paisley encouraged hatred of Nationalists Catholics as religious duty.
• His followers rejected any co-operation between the Northern Irish assembly and
the Republic’s government in Dublin.
• When one Northern Irish prime minister met with the Irish Taoiseach, Paisleyite
riots broke out in Protestant areas of Northern Ireland.
• From the late 1969, the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary
organisation, carried out a series night-time attacks on Catholic districts. In most
cases, the Unionist police force (the RUC) did nothing to prevent these attacks,
leaving the communities to defend themselves.
• This led to 1,505 Catholic families being forced to leave their homes, taking
refuge in refugee camps set up by the Irish Army across the border in the
Republic.

18. Ian Paisley on the recent
attacks on Catholic homes:
“Catholic homes caught fire
because they were loaded
with petrol bombs; Catholic
churches were attacked and
burned because they were
arsenals and priests handed
out sub-machine guns to
parishioners …They breed like
rabbits and multiply like
vermin … “ 1969

21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=vJ4ksonBHFM

22. Civil Rights Movements 1960s
• The Northern Irish Civil Rights Movement was established in the early 1960s.
• It took its influence from contemporary civil rights movements around the world:
in particular, Martin Luther King’s movements for African-American civil rights in
the USA.
• It aimed to establish equal civil rights for Catholics in housing, voting,
employment and political representation – all through peaceful demonstration.
• The first civil rights march took place in 1968, mostly by young Catholic students
from the (mostly Catholic) Derry University.
• When the students were attacked by Protestant mobs, the police offered them
no protection, instead coordinating with the mobs to disperse and arrest the
marchers.
• This led to a dramatic growth in support for the civil rights movement across the
Catholic community.

26. Bernadette Devlin: a young Catholic
student and leader of the civil rights
movement

27. The Catholic Ghettos
• The Gerrymandering system depended on housing the majority of Catholics in a
single district.
• In cities with high Catholic populations, like Derry and Belfast, this led to chronic
overcrowding and Ghettoisation.
• Catholics were often removed from better housing to make way for Protestants,
meaning that Catholics were often crowded into the worst areas of the city.
• Since the Catholics in these Ghettos mistrusted the Unionist police, they formed
mafia-like organisations to govern themselves.
• In some of the Catholic Ghettos the IRA took over as an amateur police force, and
the official police (the RUC) were barricaded out by the locals.
• The Ghettos became no-go areas for the army and police.
• The different districts of Northern Ireland were (and are) identifiable by flags on
the street, as well as street murals commemorating the opposing traditions.

33. The centre of Derry City

34. The Catholic Bogside District, outside the city walls

45. The arrival of the British Army
• In 1969, attacks between the communities had grown so bad that the
British Army was sent into Northern Ireland to keep peace.
• At first the army was welcomed (especially by the Catholics under attack
from the police and UVF), but soon caused turmoil by imposing strict
curfews and performing regular cordoned searches of Catholic
neighbourhoods.
• In 1970, internment without trial was implemented – meaning that those
suspected of IRA collusion could be arrested and imprisoned without trial.
Within one year over 600 people had been imprisoned without trial.
• The Prisoners were kept in huge internment camps. These actions
dramatically increased support for the IRA which exploded in size, and
started to attack the army.

56. Bloody Sunday
• In 1972, thousands of Catholic civil rights marchers paraded through Derry to protest against
internment.
• The march was illegal, since all public gatherings had been banned.
• As the crowd became agitated, the British Army opened fire, killing 13 and wounding 13 more.
• It was widely known that those killed were unarmed and had not been provoking the army:
almost all had been shot in the back, while some were shot holding white flags.
• The British government, however, covered up the events; it refused to admit wrong-doing by the
Army and no soldiers were charged.
• This reaction, in particular, gained international attention. The IRA gained an enormous swell of
support, both in the North and the Republic
• In the Republic, the British embassy in Dublin was burnt to the ground.
• Bloody Sunday has generally been seen as the trigger that launched 30 years of armed violence
in Northern Ireland.
• The British government did not admit it had covered up the incident until 2010.

57. https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=paoXAB16x8
M

58. The 1981 Hunger Strikes
• In the 1980s, IRA prisoner started to go on work strike until they were
recognised as political prisoners, nor criminals.
• They refused to wear civilian uniforms, or to Partake in prison work.
• The prison authorities retaliated by refusing to provide toilet facilities for
the IRA prisoners. They, in turn, reacted by smearing their feces on the
walls of the cells – in what became known as the Dirty Protest.
• In time, the Dirty Protest escalated into a full-scale hunger strike.
• The hunger strikers drew new attention to the Republican cause in
Northern Ireland; one of hunger strikers, Bobby Sands, gained so much
popular support that he was elected to the Westminster parliament while
starving to death in the Maze Prison.

59. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/blanket_no-
wash_protests_maze#p00lx397

63. Margaret Thatcher and the Hunger Strikers
• The then prime-minister Margaret Thatcher refused to negotiate with
the hunger Strikers.
• The ten hunger strikers died one by one, including Bobby Sands who
was now an MP in the British parliament. The deaths caused mass
outrage in Ireland and confusion in Britain, with the strikers’ funerals
attracting up to 100,000 attendees.
• The international attention gained by the hunger strikes also
increased foreign support for the IRA, with funds from America
gaining new impetus.

67. https://www.y
outube.com/
watch?v=vM-
iJGtDR2k

70. U2 – Sunday, Bloody Sunday 1983
• I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long
Cause tonight, we can be as one
Tonight
Broken bottles under children's
feet
Bodies strewn across the dead
end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me
who has won
The trench is dug within our
hearts
And mothers, children, brothers,
sisters
Torn apart
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
How long
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long
Cause tonight, we can be as one
Tonight,
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away
Oh, wipe your tears away
Oh, wipe your blood shot eyes
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday,
Bloody Sunday)
And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow
they die
The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On Sunday Bloody Sunday

71. The Cranberries ‘Zombie’, 1994
Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And if violence causes the silence
Who are we mistaking
But you see it's not me
It's not my family
In your head in your head
They are fighting
With their tanks and their bombs
And their bombs and their guns
In your head in your head they are crying
In your head
In your head
Zombie zombie zombie ei ei
What's in your head
In your head.
Zombie, zombie, zombie
Another mother's breakin',
Heart is taken over
When the violence causes silence
We must be mistaken
It's the same old thing since 1916
In your head in your head
They're still fighting
With their tanks and their bombs
And their bombs and their guns
In your head in your head they are dying

72. 1998: The Good Friday Peace agreement
• By 1998, Northern Ireland had been at war for 30 years without any real
outcomes.
• Eventually, the British and Irish governments came to a truce.
• The Republic of Ireland withdrew its territorial claim to Northern Ireland.
• In response, the UK agreed that Northern Ireland would only remain part
of the UK if the majority there wanted this.
• According to the agreement, at any time in the future, Northern Ireland
can hold a referendum to leave the UK.
• Part of the agreement was that all terrorist groups, British and Irish, would
declare peace in the province. This peace has now lasted 20 years.
• Northern Ireland’s government is divided 50/50 between pro-Irish parties
and pro-British parties, who must work together under the agreement.

73. Composition of Northern Irish Assembly