The Protestants set up the RUC, which was a slack police that allowed arms to be carried. There were terms of the RUC called “special powers” that allowed them to search houses without a warrant, arrest people for suspicion and whip them. These laws were taken for granted and Catholics were discriminated against very badly:
“The area was peaceful and deserted at 2am when a mob of policeman came from the city shouting and singing:
Hey, hey we’re the monkees,
And we’re still going to monkey around,
Till we see your blood flowing,
All along the ground
They broke windows in with their batons, kicked doors and shouted to people ‘come out an fight you Fenian bastards’”
This quote was written by a civil rights activist and shows just how much the Catholics were discriminated against. The police were clearly just hooligans with authority set up purposely by the government. These on going horrid events only influenced the Catholics to do something about this, some decided to fight back in both physical ways others with political methods.
Between the 1950’s and 60’s attitudes changed in Parliament after a new Unionist Prime Minister was employed, called Terence O’Neill. He was keen to end the unfair treatment of the Catholics by law. He promises them fair treatment but his promises were very slow in coming and so the NICRA (Northern Ireland Civil Right Association) movement started. The recent civil rights movements in France and America, that had made a difference in how their country was run, influenced the NICRA. The marches caused many scraps and big fights where the Police were still going by the ”special powers” laws started attacking sometimes innocent and sometimes brutal protesters. Many innocent protesters quote on how they were attacked out of the blue by on and off duty policemen;
“they attacked men, women and children with clubs and about 100 had to go to hospital for treatment”
says a civil rights leader in 1968. The protesting continued and so the fighting continued. The IRA started a bombing campaign in 1969 and the British Army was sent over to help stop it. These events are called ‘the troubles’ and they have been going on ever since. The IRA kept bombing against British troops and Unionists and there have been such events as Bloody Sunday where 14 innocent Catholics where shot dead when chased into hotel blocks. Many more injuries happened that day which lead to the IRA attacking more unionist buildings. After this, parliament in London started to control things to try to rebuild Northern Ireland.
The Emergence of the Civil Rights movement happened because of the constant discrimination of the Catholics. The Catholics wanted the unfairness to stop and so they formed the NICRA, which caused many of the troubles by them marching and causing friction between the Catholics and the Protestants. Overall both sides are to blame; the Protestants for being so unfair in the law courts and the Catholics for fighting a guerilla warfare against the unionists, but that was because they saw it as the only option. The Unionists were scared of this so their only way of thinking was to fight back. They used the police to scare and provoke the Catholics and to stop attacking the Protestants, and to stay as they were in an unfairly treated life.
Both the Catholics and the Protestants have very strong views about their faith and each other to make a compromise, and so it is likely that this conflict may go on for a very long time.
