"Since 1972 the British Government has tried a number of solutions to the crisis in Northern Ireland" How successful has this process been?

     In the 1960’s Catholics were protesting for civil rights as they had poor housing and unemployment these protests became increasingly violent and in 1971 the British sent in soldiers to sort out this problem.  They introduced internment, which meant that they could put any terrorist in jail without trial to try to reduce the terrorists. This wasn’t very successful and the terrorist groups like the IRA and Ulster Defence Association grew stronger and the violence increased.  On January 30th 1972 there was a march against internment and 13 civilians were killed by British soldiers the British say they were fired upon first but others say that they didn’t this caused a lot of problems and people still don’ know the truth today.

     The fighting continued to grow and all order was being lost so the British Prime Minister Ted Heath introduced direct rule where the British government decided what to do not Stormont which was the Northern Ireland parliament.  Protestants didn’t mind being ruled by the British as they wanted to be part of Britain anyway, however, the Catholics were outraged by this they wanted an independent Ireland and hated the British.  

     The British government introduced power-sharing in March 1973 to try and get Catholics and Protestants to share power this was called the Sunningdale agreement.  Protestants didn’t like this because they saw it as the first step to becoming a united Ireland and they wanted to be British, some normal Catholics liked this because at least they had some power but extremists like sinn fein hated it they wouldn’t share power with Protestants.  Power-sharing stopped because a Protestant Ian Paisley and his group the Ulster Workers Council called a general strike in Northern Ireland and Intimidated members to go on strike.