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Explain why the civil rights movement of the 1960's led to the outbreak of violence in 1968/69. Northern Ireland.

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Introduction

History c/wk Explain why the civil rights movement of the 1960's led to the outbreak of violence in 1968/69. The civil rights movement started because the Catholics felt as though they were discriminated against. This is because Protestants get the best jobs, the policeforce is biased against Catholics, many Catholics could not get a vote, elections were being gerrymandered, Catholics live in the worst houses, new council houses are always given to Protestants first and the Northern Ireland government always has a Protestant majority. For these reasons Catholics felt they were second class citizens and ever since partition they have been under the rule of Protestant governments. They aimed to have equal rights and wanted to achieve this by having peaceful marches. ...read more.

Middle

wanted to be loyal to the Queen and stay apart of Britain whereas the Republicans (Catholics) wanted one Ireland and to get rid of the border. The main Protestant that opposed the civil rights movement was Ian Paisley as he was an extremist, he had support from not only the government but the police aswell eventhough the police aswell eventhough the police force is meant to be impartial. The police caused a lot of disturbance in 1968/9 by smashing Catholic house windows and by attacking marchers on the Burntollet march for no apparent reason. William Craig was in my opinion also an extremist because he made accusations like, the civil rights marchers are just a front for the IRA. ...read more.

Conclusion

it would not have made an impact on anyone. I agree with William Craig about the civil rights movement being a front for the IRA for two reasons. The first reason is that they cannot have really believed that they would be able to march through Protestant areas peacefully whilst protesting about them, especially when Ireland is a Protestant country. My second reason is that the IRA were supposedly dormant during this period and to me that does not make sense because becuase they are extremists hence they cannot suddenly not be active and one day start up again. I think the civil rights movement was created to deter the attention from the IRA so they could plan their next step. It was a skillful tactic, as was the English not allowing Catholics to speak Gaelic in order to make it harder for them to plot against the Protestants. ...read more.

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