A second wave came toward the East London area three-quarters of an hour after the warning.
The German machines approaching from the south-east could be seen at a great height. A.A. shells burst round them and they changed their course.
Some bombs were dropped on a suburb, including incendiaries, which started a blaze.
Fires Their Guide
Some of the German machines appeared to turn over another district owing to the fierce A.A. gunfire and flew back toward the coast without, apparently, reaching their main objective.
It was evident that the German airmen had used the smouldering fires of Saturday's raids to guide them, for the attacks were directed at the same area - London's dockland.
The first hour of the attack was considerably less formidable than Saturday's raid - fewer enemy planes were penetrating the intense defensive barrage from the coast to London. At the end of an hour there was a hushed lull.
Ten minutes passed - then, 'like all hell let loose', the whole of London's defence barrage roared and crashed into action, heralding the return of the raiders.
Dull menacing crunches, whining and quivering reverberations were heard. Livid flashes leapt across the darkened sky as the planes dropped their bombs.
What it is and what it stands for
I.R.A. stands for Irish Republican Army. It was formed to fight against the British for independence in the early twentieth century. It never accepted the way Ireland was divided into North and South in 1922: the IRA thinks that the whole of Ireland should be independent because that's what the majority of Irish want. It tries to bring this about by force; but because it's not very big it has to use terror rather than open war.
When the present Troubles began around 1968 the IRA split: the really war-minded members broke away to form the Provisional IRA. But even the Provisionals are now negotiating for peace. There are other splinter-groups which don't want peace talks of any kind: these include the Irish National Liberation Army and the Real IRA.
Good Friday Agreement
The Belfast Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, a Good Friday, hence its unofficial title of the Good Friday Agreement. Former US Senator George Mitchell, Canadian General John de Chastelain, and the Finnish ex-Prime Minister Harry Holkerri chaired the multi-party talks.
The participants included the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom and eight political parties representing unionist, loyalist, nationalist, republican and cross-community constituencies in Northern Ireland. The US President Bill Clinton provided political support and encouragement.
Two other parties, Rev Dr Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party and Bob McCartney's United Kingdom Unionist Party (having first contributed to the multi-party talks beginning in June 1996 that lead to the Agreement) boycotted them in protest at the presence of Sinn Féin who entered the multi-party negotiations in September 1997. Their voluntary exclusion meant that 43 per cent of the unionist electorate were outside the talks process when crucial elements of the Agreement were being negotiated. Senator George Mitchell described this tactic as "a fateful error". If the DUP and the UKUP had stayed within the process and fought from within, Senator Mitchell observed, "there would have been no agreement. Their absence freed the UUP from daily attacks at the negotiating table and gave the party room to negotiate."
The 65-page document is divided into three strands. Strand One deals with institutional arrangements in Northern Ireland; Strand Two with the relationships between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and Strand Three with the relationships between both parts of Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
The Agreement established a Human Rights Commission and an Equality Commission. It has a section on Economic, Social and Cultural Issues including: the advancement of women in public life; the promotion of the Irish language; promoting social inclusion and targeting social need; community development; reconciliation and victims of violence and new economic and regional development strategies. It deals with opposing claims to sovereignty and provides unionists and nationalists with equivalent rights of self-determination. People living in Northern Ireland can choose to be British or Irish or both.
The Belfast Agreement represents the most significant shift in party political positions since the partition of Ireland in 1921. For the first time in the history of the Troubles the British and Irish governments have radically addressed the conflict over opposing national identities by providing a framework within which the principle of consent will decide any future constitutional change.
A copy of the Agreement was sent to very house in Ireland and was ratified in joint referenda on 22 May 1998 with 71.12% in Northern Ireland and 94.4% in the Republic creating an all-Ireland majority of 85.4% in favour.
Michael Collins 1890-1922
Michael Collins is widely regarded as the most charismatic political leader in the history of twentieth century Ireland. His premature and violent death was deeply mourned at the time and has been regarded by many historians since as an irreparable loss for the newly independent nation
The Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was virtually confined to Dublin. The British capture of a shipment of German arms on 21st April 1916 greatly reduced its scale outside the capital. Moreover, confusion was caused by a rash of conflicting orders sent out to the Irish Volunteers – the main strike force - from their headquarters and the decision taken by the rebel leaders to postpone their action arranged for Easter Sunday 23rd April, until the next day.
Sinn Féin
Arthur Griffith helped found the Sinn Féin movement in 1905. Its formation was symptomatic of the emergence of a more militant nationalist spirit in Ireland. Its name ‘Ourselves’ indicated an emphasis on economic and cultural self-sufficiency, as well as political independence. Deriving his ideas from European experience, Griffith provided the organisation with its programme. He rejected force. To achieve nationalist aims, he advocated passive resistance. Irish MPs would withdraw from Westminster and form a national assembly in Ireland whose moral authority Irish people would recognise and the British government would, in time, ultimately be compelled to accept. In economic affairs, he urged the need for high protective tariffs so enabling Ireland to exploit its domestic market, develop its own resources, support itself and end emigration. By adopting these policies, Ireland would thus become an equal partner with England in a dual monarchy under the Crown.
From 1921 to 1972 Northern Ireland had its own regional parliament that exercised considerable authority over local affairs. The Protestant, unionist majority dominated the parliament, which made the government unpopular with the Catholic, nationalist minority. Northern Ireland experienced a nearly continuous period of violent conflict between these two groups from the late 1960s through the mid-1990s. The violence extended beyond Ireland, as republican paramilitary groups—in particular the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—also struck targets in London and elsewhere in England. The clashes, bombings, and assassinations in this period were often referred to as “the troubles.” In 1972 the British government shut down Northern Ireland’s regional parliament and governed the region directly from London. A 1998 accord known as the Good Friday Agreement restored some powers to a new provincial government.
The Protestant community often refers to Northern Ireland as Ulster. Catholics seldom use this name. For most Catholics the term Ulster is used only to refer to the historic Irish province of Ulster, which consisted of the current six counties and three other counties that are now in the Republic of Ireland. Catholics tend to refer to the territory as “the north of Ireland,” and those of strongly nationalist views also use the term “the six counties.”
Since 1973 Northern Ireland has been divided into 26 districts, each with an elected council responsible for providing local services. The province had previously been divided into more than 80 smaller urban and rural districts. The British government reformed the system in 1973 in response to housing allocation and employment practice abuses by local councils, as well as to the gerrymandering of election boundaries in closely contested areas. These abuses contributed significantly to Catholic protests and the campaign of civil disobedience that began in the 1960s. Both Catholic- and Protestant-controlled councils were guilty of abuses, but Protestants controlled the great majority of councils.
The British government’s answer to the uprising of 1798 was to draw the whole of Ireland fully into the United Kingdom, by the Act of Union of 1800. The Union did not benefit Ireland as a whole. No longer a capital, Dublin declined, and the rural population grew to unsustainable levels before the potato blight and famine of 1845 to 1850 set the population trend into rapid reverse. Memory of the famine and mass emigration generated the bitterness that later underpinned nationalist fervour.
The British Parliament in 1949 affirmed the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom unless its own parliament decided otherwise. In 1955 the IRA began a terrorist campaign aimed at expelling British forces from Northern Ireland. Low-level terrorist acts continued through 1957 and 1958, but faded away by 1962. In 1962 the government of Ireland condemned terrorism as a means of achieving unification.
In the 1960s opposition to the government of Northern Ireland grew as Catholics witnessed the strategies and successes of the American civil rights movement on their televisions. Civil disobedience campaigns against discriminatory actions of Protestant-dominated local councils quickly found strong support in Catholic neighborhoods. This was accompanied by increased sectarian street violence. In October 1968 a peaceful civil rights march in Londonderry/Derry was violently broken up by police. Conflict between Catholics and Protestants escalated, first in Londonderry/Derry and then in Belfast. By the summer of 1969, the police force, which was inadequate in numbers, skills, and on occasion impartiality, was unable to control the violence. In August 1969 the government of Northern Ireland requested that the British government send in the army to support the police. As the British army gradually brought civil disorder under control, the IRA began to reemerge. Catholics, who had initially welcomed the army as protectors against the Protestants, came to see the large-scale presence of British troops in Catholic neighborhoods as a hostile British occupation. As curfews and house-to-house arms searches concentrated on Catholic neighborhoods, IRA recruiting rose. The government of Northern Ireland reformed the province’s system of local government, but the reforms failed to satisfy Catholic opinion and created an aggressive Protestant backlash that impeded further progress. In August 1971 the government introduced internment (imprisonment without trial), and 300 republicans were rounded up. The IRA campaigns continued to escalate. At the same time, recruitment rose in Protestant vigilante groups such as the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF, not directly linked with the 1912-1914 body of the same name), which targeted suspected IRA members.
In March 1972 the British government insisted on taking over control of security policy, knowing that the government of Northern Ireland would resign in protest. The province then came under the direct rule of the British Parliament, pending the negotiation of new political structures acceptable to Catholics as well as to Protestants.
The British government created the post of secretary of state for Northern Ireland, with a seat in the British Cabinet, and a team of British junior ministers took over direction of Northern Ireland’s governmental departments. From then until the early 1990s Northern Ireland’s legislation passed through the British Parliament by orders in council (ordinances technically issued directly from the British monarch in consultation with members of the Cabinet) rather than as fully debated legislation. In 1983 the number of Northern Irish representatives in the British Parliament increased from 12 to 17, and in 1997 to 18. In a 1973 referendum largely boycotted by Roman Catholics, the voters of Northern Ireland chose to retain ties with Britain rather than join the Republic of Ireland.
