IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING
Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus
“ Noted historian Eamon Phoenix gives a very useful background to the beginning of The Troubles fifty years ago.
Important reading for Members of Congress concerned about justice and peace in Northern Ireland/The North.”
—Fr. Sean Mc Manus
Marking 50 years since The
Troubles erupted
DR. Eamon Phoenix. Irish News. Belfast. Thursday, July 18, 2019 (Dr Éamon
Phoenix is a historian and commentator and a member of the Taoiseach’s Expert
Advisory Group on Centenaries).
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first two deaths of the
Northern Ireland Troubles. The death of an innocent Derry man, Sam
Devenney – as a direct result of a brutal police assault in his own home
during rioting coincided with that of Francis McCloskey, an elderly
farmer during an RUC baton charge in Dungiven, Co.Derry.
Since October 5 1968 the 50-year-old unionist state had been rocked to
its foundations by the rising challenge of the civil rights movement.
The events in Derry on that day as unarmed marchers were batoned by the
RUC under the direction of a one-party unionist regime had shocked UK
and world opinion.
In the dramatic aftermath, half a century of masterly inactivity by
successive Westminster governments at the treatment of the Nationalist
minority in its own back yard was reversed as the Labor government of
Harold Wilson forced the Stormont cabinet of Terence O’Neill to
commit to a raft of reforms which cut through the dams which Craigavon’s
‘Orange State’ had erected to secure its ascendancy in perpetuity.
As a result, and in spite of Whitehall pressure, the cabinet baulked at
the notion of ‘one man, one vote’ – the iconic civil rights demand. In
vain, it seemed, O’Neill warned his colleagues that ‘without a commitment
to reform, the British would no longer stand aloof’ and could use the
‘financial lever to the disadvantage of a recalcitrant
Northern Ireland’.
From the outset, Wilson recognized the insidious influence of ‘a
black reactionary group’ within the O’Neill cabinet centred on
William Craig and the able Brian Faulkner, while outside Ian Paisley
alleged an IRA conspiracy and used his club-wielding supporters to harass
Civil Rights marches, notably in Armagh on November 30 1968.
In vain, the RUC Inspector General, Sir Albert Kennedy, warned the
reactionary Home Affairs Minister Craig on November 25 that the Civil
Rights demand had nothing to do with ‘the old bogey of partition’ but
was concerned with inequality. He also warned of the danger of
‘catastrophic conflict’ if the demand for ‘one man, one vote’ was
withheld.
As world opinion swung powerfully behind the Civil Rights Campaign and
O’Neill warned that ‘Ulster was at the crossroads’, the radical
People’s Democracy’s ‘Long March’ form Belfast to Derry at the New Year
was savagely ambushed by armed Loyalists at Burntollet on March 4.
Scores of young marchers were bludgeoned into the swollen River
Faughan by sectarian thugs, some of them B Specials while their RUC escort
failed to protect them. It was a miracle that no-one died in the
frenzied attack. That night the RUC invaded the Bogside, hurling
sectarian abuse at residents.
Burntollet marked a watershed in the deteriorating situation in the North.
It fuelled a rise in sectarian tensions, reinvigorated the civil
rights campaign and emboldened the unionist right wing. On March 26 the
leading Protestant civil rights leader, the late Ivan Cooper – by now
an elected MP – had to run the gauntlet of a incensed Loyalist crowd
who gate-crashed a civil rights meeting in Limavady Town Hall.
Subjected to blood-curdling threats, Cooper had to be escorted from the
building by the RUC while a leading Orangeman appealed for calm. A
shattered Cooper told the Irish News: “I got the impression the
crowd wanted to kill me. I have never been in a crowd so hostile in
my life.”
O’Neill, undermined by a series of cabinet resignations over his reform policies,
had called a general election in which his hope of a moderate upsurge
failed to materialize. The embattled PM finally resigned on April
28 1969. He was, as he put it, ‘blown out of office’ by a series of
mysterious explosions at key installations, which turned out to be
with work of the illegal UVF[Ulster Volunteer Fore].
As the uncharismatic country squire, Major Chichester-Clark, replaced
O’Neill fresh rioting erupted in Derry on April 19 following a
government ban on a Civil Rights march. Among the casualties was 42-year
old Samuel Devenney, a quiet, popular family man who worked as a
hearse driver for a local undertaker.
As Bishop Edward Daly, then a local curate, records: “Sammy was
an inoffensive man who did not enjoy robust health.” He had been
chatting to a friend at his front door in William Street when a group of
rioters ran though his house to evade arrest. Devenney was then
subjected to a savage beating by members of the police force [RUC]
while a senior officer stood by. He sustained serious injuries from which
he did not recover.
In the aftermath of the attack, Fr Daly visited the house to find
‘blood everywhere’. He noted: “None of us had previously witnessed
anything like the ferocity of the police action.”
With riot police infesting the Bogside, the situation threatened to
spiral out of control. The situation was only retrieved when John
Hume and civic leaders arranged for a mass exodus of residents to the
nearby Creggan.
Meanwhile, Hume urged the liberal-minded Minister of Home Affairs, Robert
Porter, to order a police withdrawal from the area. Porter agreed and
an uneasy peace was restored. However, the gulf between the police
and the nationalist community was now unbridgeable.
Meanwhile, as Spring turned to Summer, sectarian tensions rose in Belfast,
especially on the Crumlin Road and at Unity Flats, a small Catholic
enclave at the foot of the Shankill Road.
The RUC were deployed and vigilantes were formed in the Shankill and
Ardoyne. On the Twelfth there was serious sectarian rioting in North
Belfast, Derry , Lurgan and Dungiven.
James Callaghan, the Labour Home Secretary, noted how the nature of
the violence had changed, becoming more insurgent, intense and
prolonged.
The Sunday Times commented ominously: “The monster of sectarian violence is
well out of its cage, particularly in Belfast.”
As ever, the most serious trouble was in Derry where hundreds of youths
confronted the RUC who used water cannons.
At the same time an Orange parade through the nationalist town of
Dungiven twenty miles away was the trigger for sustained rioting. The
town had been the center of serious disturbances in 1958 when a
non-traditional Orange parade had led to conflict and a boycott of
Protestant traders.
At the time, the RUC Inspector General had blamed the trouble on
Orange ‘hotheads’ from the nearby loyalist village of Bovevagh who
insisted on a provocative march.
Since then an Orange hall had been erected in the Dungiven and annual
parades forced through the town. As Scarman observed, this was “a
provocation to Dungiven Catholics in the inflamed conditions of 1969”.
The parade that July 12 faced a peaceful protest but violence erupted that
evening when a Catholic crowd of 300 attacked the Orange hall.
In response, the outlying Orangemen threatened to come in from the
countryside to defend the building. According to evidence given to the
Scarman Tribunal later, on the night of 13/14 July, as rioting
continued, Head Constable Irwin and a dozen constables launched a
baton charge. The 200-strong nationalist crowd retreated and, in the
melee, police saw a man lying on the footpath . This was Francis McCloskey
(66), a local farmer . He died in hospital a few hours later from
head injuries. He was the first official victim of the Troubles (1968-94).
As Scarman noted: “The death of Mr McCloskey became a cause celebre in Northern
Ireland.”
Though the police denied any contact with the fleeing crowd it was
widely alleged that Mr McCloskey had been ‘a victim of police
brutality’. Over 4,000 people attended his funeral on July 17 where Fr.
George Doherty told mourners that no injustice justified the use of
violence.
As Mr. McCloskey was being laid to rest, word spread in Derry of the
death of Sam Devenney, three months after being assaulted by the RUC.
An investigation by a senior RUC officer had unearthed ‘a conspiracy
of silence’ among the force. Over 20,000 people followed Mr
Devenney’s coffin to the City Cemetery.
Ironically on that same day, July 20, the outside world was enraptured by
images of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. However, as Bishop
Daly noted wryly: “This event was hardly noticed in Derry. We
were too preoccupied with events on this planet.”
The two deaths were accompanied by the government decision to mobilize 400
B Specials – a notorious sectarian force. Indeed, on the night of
July 14 a party of Specials had opened fire on a crowd of
dancers emerging from the Castle Ballroom in Dungiven. The minister
had forbidden the issuing of firearms to them.
It was against this background of increasing mayhem that John Hume rushed
to London to apprise the British government of the seriousness of
the developing situation as the Apprentice Boys march, scheduled for
Derry on 13 August, loomed ahead.
Visibly exhausted by having “to act as Police Chief in Derry”, as told by
Con Howard, an Irish diplomat in London, Hume described Derry as a
powder-keg. Chichester-Clark’s government had lost control of
the situation; there was mounting polarization across the North;
intimidation of Catholics in Belfast and the real prospect of “a
blood-bath”.
The Derryman put his concerns to Lord Stonham, Callaghan’s deputy at the Home
Office, at a three-hour meeting on 24 July 1969.
In his view, the only course of action was the suspension of the Stormont government
and the appointment of a Parliamentary Commission backed by the
British army.
Stonham listened politely but it was clear that the Wilson government was
unprepared, in Callaghan’s phrase, to be ‘sucked into the Irish bog’.
Northern Ireland was clearly on the verge of disaster.
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