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 to march to the beat of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, a seventeenth-century victory of Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic King James. Instead of participating in and otherwise contributing towards managing the change, the Unionists dug in. The extreme Unionist answer to Catholic civil rights demonstrations was counter demonstration. The enormity of the challenge remained and brought the communities into contention instead of compromise.
A newly emerging political activism articulated the voice of the more confidently assertive Catholic collective and self-consciousness. These young, modern-minded and, for the first time, university-educated, world-aware, and media-savvy cadre of Catholic representatives and spokespersons began to cogently argue the Catholic Nationalist case, correctly and rightly framed in terms of being a civil rights issue. Worryingly for the extreme elements of Unionism, this agitation articulated a self-evident institutionalised victimhood of the Catholic minority; the only correct response to which was reform, but instead the Unionist extremists were unwilling to compromise, fearful of a loss of influence over sole control of Northern Ireland affairs. The pulse of Northern Ireland’s politics had begun to change; Catholic nationalists were aware of it and the Unionist hard-liners, resentful, moved to block it.
The Northern Ireland mini-state endured, specifically designed through partition, and partisan Unionist interests, control and power thwarted reform, representation and the right to democratic process. This led directly to injustice, intimidation, discrimination and deprivation of the Catholic Nationalist minority, who continually suffered discriminatory treatment when it came to housing, employment and electoral politics. The ‘hands off’ approach of the British government in London was a conscious stratagem to ensure that Northern Ireland stayed off the Westminster agenda; a blind eye was turned to a territory they held claim over, yet where similar standards of governance to the UK they knew did not apply. In Northern Ireland, to be a Catholic Nationalist was to be made wholly disadvantaged. An entrenched inter-communal distrust, bitterness and hatred arose from many years of disdainful unimaginable bigotry and neglect.
There were no signs that the Unionists had the inclination or interest to ameliorate the atmosphere – even belatedly. Different choices could have avoided the decline that was to come and lives could have been saved from the decades of bloody, protracted political violence that followed.