Bloody Sunday - 5 Years Later

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JAMES SHORT looks for signs of progress in the struggle for Irish liberation since January 1972 Bloody Sunday, January 1972, marks the high point of British army repression in Northern Ireland.

By killing 13 unarmed Civil Rights demonstrators that day, the army thought they could bludgeon into submission the anti-imperialist movement within the Catholic ghettoes.

In this they failed. For within two months the Unionist government at Stormont had been forced out of existence; and within six months, the Tory regime Northern Ireland, under William Whitelaw, was negotiating with Provisional IRA leaders.

SHIFT

The reasons for this apparent shift from open repression to negotiation and conciliation can only be found in an analysis of the changing tactics of the British government since the introduction of the army into Ireland in August 1969.

The changing pattern of British imperialism's interests in Ireland during the fifties and sixties had meant that for Britain, Ireland was now a single economic unit.

The division of Ireland into two separate states - a division which had suited British interests at an earlier date - was now no longer necessary.

In fact it was fast becoming a berrier to lucrative exploitation of the island as a whole, and in this context British imperialism's task mas to rationalise Northern Ireland to reform it and bring it into line with the South.

CIVIL RIGHTS

The mid-sixties saw therefore, a series of discussions between the Sorthern and Southern administrabons on various economic matters and the growth of a Civil Rights movement in the North designed to secure equal rights for the Catholic population there.

Tis movement soon discovered that the forthern Ireland state was Die o iesist In: attempt at TE OTE using ibe methods it the movement itself.

Northern Ireland was and is an artificial political unit created in 1921 on the most pragmatic basis possible.

Six counties in the NorthEast of the country were chosen as its geographical domain because this was the largest possible land mass compatible with permanent Unionist rule.

From the very outset, Northern Ireland was undemocratic, and antidemocratic, sectarian practices were built into the state to ensure that the nationalist population would never gain governmental power.

Gerrymandering, forced emigration - „a whole array of sectarian devices were thus part and parcel of the Northern Ireland state from its inception.

By trying to secure reforms within the context of the Northern Ireland state itself, the Civil Rights movement was attempting impossible. The Northern Ireland state was irreformable, and the problem was not that it was undemocratic but that it existed at all.

The early days of the Ciril UD A thugs of running clashes with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and B Specials.

The winter of 1968-9 passed in this way - Derry, Armagh, NewaLl witnessed Loyalist attacks on Civil Rights marches. By the summer of 1969 the Catholics had had enough.

FIGHT IT OUT

Exasperated by the repeated refusals of the Stormont regime to concede any reforms, they decided to fight it out once and for all.

Thus occurred the famous Battle of the Bogside of August 1969, when the Catholic workers of Derry succeeded in inflicting a major defeat on the RUC and B Specials.

It was at this moment, when the Catholics had actually won a temporary, but important victory, that the british government, fearful lest all of Northern Ireland erupt, sent in the army.

This was done not to protect the Catholics, bur to stabilise and defuse a highty volatile situation.

Die die forces of lem and demanded that certain reforms be made, and this could only be done by dismantling the more cumbersome features of the Northern Ireland state - disbanding the B Specials, disarming the RUC, etc.

On the other hand there existed the Catholic population, who had shown their capacity to fight the state, and who were now clamouring for the immediate implementation of long overdue reforms.

The army's first move was to keep this militancy in check, to ensure that whatever reforms were made, were made in accordance with British policy, and not in accordance with Catholic demands.

This antagonism soon came to a head. In July 1970, soon after the Tory government came back to office in Britain, the army proclaimed a curfew over the Falls Rd area of Belfast.

During the curfew the army killed four civilians; and in anticipation of further army attacks the Catholic ghettoes began to arm themselves.

It was in this context that the Provisional IRA grew in strength and established themselves as an independent force.

The Provisional campaign got under way in earnest in 1971. The first soldier to be killed in Northern Ireland was shot dead in February of that year - a full 18 months after the army had first been brought in.

INTERNMENT

Between February and August, eight more soldiers were killed, a tiny fraction of the numbers to die in later months of that year.

On August 9th 1971, internment was introduced, a measure which marked a new offensive against the Catholic ghettoes. This offensive was to bear fruit in 1972, two words - Smash Stormont, then British policy can be summarised as neatly - Smash the Provos.

This policy of undisguised military repression failed. In the South, workers and students answered the Derry killings by burning down the British Embassy in Dublin. A week later, 60,000 people marched in Newry defiance of a government ban on demonstrations.

PROROGUED

This spontaneous outburst of militancy brought home to the Tory government that their vital interests, North and South, were in serious jeopardy. Faced with this unpleasant prospect they changed tack and conceded certain Provisional IRA demands.

By the end of March, Stormont was prorogued; officially for one year only, yet everyone knew it was gone foreyer.

By the beginning of July a series of negotiations between the Provisionals and Whitelaw had taken place, and a ceasefire had been arranged. On the face if it, mid1972 was the highpoint of the Provisional campaign.

Yet the rejoicing was to prove premature. The army, who had opposed the ceasefire from the beginning seized the first opportunity they could to break it.

Within nine days hostilities had been resumed because of an incident in Lenadoon: Estate in Belfast.

The negotiations with the Provisionals were terminated, and by the end of the month Whitelaw acceded to Loyalist demands and instructed the army to invade the "no-go" areas of Derry and Belfast.

July 1972 also saw the escalation of the campaign of sectarian

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