meet Michael Stewart, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Hillery expressed the Irish Government’s grave concerns about the prospect of holding an excessively large Apprentice Boys’ parade on 12 August 1969, deliberately routed through Catholic areas, and urged that it be banned, or at least confined to Protestant areas, that no partisan B-Specials (the RUC Auxiliary police force) should be allowed to be deployed and that British Government observers should be present to exercise a restraining influence on events. In reply, he was told that it was a matter for the Stormont and London Governments not Dublin, that it was better to control than ban the parade and that the parade was to follow the less provocative of the two routes.
What followed bore out the Dublin Government’s misgivings and the London Government’s misjudgement. Westminster’s misguided policy on non-interference in Stormont’s five decades of misrule was about to unmercifully misfire.
A strong RUC force had been drafted into Derry and the Catholic Bogsiders were fearful that its deployment would not be impartial; that instead it would be extreme and uncompromising towards them. The initial disturbances flared in Waterloo Square during the late afternoon, towards the end of the parade when sections of the Catholic and Protestant crowds faced each other. The RUC and its part-time reserve – the feared and hated steel-helmeted, shield-carrying, baton-wielding B-Specials – forced the stone-throwing Catholic youths back towards the Bogside, a nationalist area in Derry. After two hours of stone throwing between the two sides, charge and counter charge, advance and retreat up and down William Street, approximately a quarter of a mile into the Bogside, the RUC made its move.
The feared eruption of rioting and street violence escalated quickly, progressing into an unprecedented sustained exchange that developed with heightened intensity, the residents inflamed by the naked aggression of the RUC, the B-Specials and the Protestant mob following behind them. The brutality of the B-Specials was nothing new for the Bogsiders; eight months previously, in January 1969, they had launched a limited but nonetheless fierce foray and the residents had not forgotten the experience. This time they were ready, prepared and expectant. Moreover, they were organised and resolute. A reaction was planned and a defence arranged, their nervous suspension turned to a pragmatic tenacity. With the clashes continuing, when the physical weight of the mob swarmed into the Bogside proper they were met with pre-prepared rudimentary street barricades. Now the atmosphere changed as roused by the unrestrained RUC incursion, the besieged Bogsiders responded. Young and old, hundreds came to defend the Catholics against the RUC, more especially the untamed, predatory brutish B-Specials. The disturbances already mounting, the situation was, further inflamed when the RUC opened fire with baton rounds (rubber bullets) in response to the Bogside Defence Association’s plans being put into effect, and they pressed boldly forward in their wake. It was close-quarter action with man-to-man exchanges.
The stakes were high and the assault sustained; any momentary lapse in the Bogsiders’ defence could be quickly seized upon. The exchanges became heightened and their ferocity resembled a modern day medieval pitched battle, with sheer brute force against the defenders’ stubborn will. Blood was spilled, bones broken and heads split; there were injuries on both sides and an unyielding defence fought back against incessant attack. The manning of the barricades remained steadfast and the defence endured; the Bogside remained intact. The Bogsiders were determined that the RUC were not getting in, and the defence was greatly aided by the advantageous height afforded by the Rossville flats, from the roof of which defenders rained down stockpiled stones, bottles and petrol bombs onto the RUC. The RUC had a response of their own, firing large quantities of tear gas (CS gas) canisters into the fray. The use of CS gas distinguished the RUC as the first police force in Britain to use ‘war gas’ against its own population. The result was a large lingering cloud of tear gas that covered the Bogside, causing respiratory problems for children and the elderly. Notwithstanding, the RUC were kept at bay. The ‘Battle of the Bogside’ lasted from 12 to 14 August, and at the same time the disaffected Catholic community across Northern Ireland took to the streets to ease the pressure in Derry. There was serious rioting in Belfast particularly, but also elsewhere.
Stormont had ignored decades of demands by the Catholic Nationalists for equality and inclusion. For years, the requests for reform from the 35 per cent minority population solicited no reaction. Disenfranchised, discriminated against, and dispirited that their grievances were continually unrecognised, it was not until the 1960s, when an era for change worldwide saw the Catholic nationalists dispel their demoralised position and create a non-violent Civil Rights movement. This aroused unionist fury and there was a backlash of violent counter-demonstrations with partisan participation, particularly by the RUC and more especially by the B-Specials. The hint of change alone gave vent to a pent-up deeply felt exasperation underpinned by fear and frustration that the Catholic Nationalist minority’s demands for civil rights would cause unstoppable momentum towards reform, in turn leading to a United Ireland.
The Six Counties came into being by partition, an administrative division of the country of Ireland and part of the Treaty negotiations after the Irish War of Independence. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 first fashioned the six north-eastern counties into a Northern Ireland mini-state, and gave the Unionist population an overwhelming and unyielding hold on power, with a Unionist government and legislative shorn up by its own armed police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the part-time B-Specials, who utilised the wide-ranging powers of search and arrest and detention without trial contained within the provisions of the Special Powers Act 1921. The commonly found sectarianism of the Unionist regime had been legitimised. Even the outcomes of local elections favoured the Unionist candidates, because the electoral constituent boundaries were shaped to ensure this happened. Catholics remained powerless and politically excluded for decades, despite being a sizeable minority and even, as in Derry, where Catholics held a majority.
The 1960s was a time for change the world over, and it was to be a time for change in Northern Ireland also, only the Unionists remained steadfastly unmoved. Foremost amongst them was the Reverend Ian Paisley, who vociferously opposed what he referred to as any ‘sell out to the powers of Popery and Republicanism’, referring suspiciously to the exploratory reform of conditions for Catholics by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Captain Terence O’Neill. Provocative, trouble-seeking and confrontational, with the prevention of change uppermost, this active intransigence was evident during the 1964 British General Election. Northern Ireland had a dozen seats at Westminster, all Unionist held. However, West Belfast, with its large Catholic population, potentially held the possibility of a seat for Nationalists. When an Irish tricolour was placed on show in the window of the election office of the republican candidate, the belligerent Paisley threatened to lead a march to remove the flag. The RUC chose instead to remove the flag themselves, and in turn later to seize the flag’s replacement; the reaction to which was two days of rioting on Divis Street. Two years later, 1966, was the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising and this helped colour the mood again when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a General Election for just prior to Easter. On this occasion, Gerry Fitt, founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), won the West Belfast seat and there was a Nationalist presence in Westminster. Nationalist grievances began to be heard, despite a heretofore House of Commons convention which ‘prevented’ questions about Northern Ireland being raised at Westminster – because when it came to Northern Ireland, you never asked a question unless you wanted to know the answer and the British parliamentarians did not want to hear the answers; the responses could only have represented the retarded social, economic and political reality of the dysfunctionality of the dynamic in Northern Ireland at play, intended to oppress the Catholic Nationalist minority.
A year later, Bernadette Devlin won a by-election for Mid Ulster on a Unity platform; now there were two Nationalist voices in Westminster. The nationalist Catholics were asking the same old questions; this time however they were determined to receive new and different answers. The nationalist Catholic cry for civil rights was eclipsing unionist intransigence. Times were changing and they echoed the modern drumbeat of the 1960s. The US had an Irish-American president, the civil rights movement in America was in full flow and it was an era of liberalisation. But the Unionist response was
