The creation of Northern Ireland dates from 1921 when the Irish Free State (the Republic of Ireland) was established separately from the mainly Protestant counties of Ulster (6/9) which were given limited self government but continued to send members to the House of Commons. Outbreaks of violence by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) occurred but only in 1968-1969 there were serious disturbances arising from Protestant political dominance and discrimination against the Roman Catholic minority. All of this led to some dramatic events such as the Battle of Boyne 1916, Easter Rising and Partition in 1920 and in 1972 there was Bloody Sunday.
The long term causes of Bloody Sunday are that there was and still are partition and conflict with Ireland, the medium term causes are the Stormont Parliaments discrimination against Catholics. They discriminated against them by the police because the police would be prejudice against Catholics. The Catholics were discriminated against jobs for example the protestants would have a wider and first choice at jobs, they were discriminated against housing because unionist councils allocated best housing to Protestants, they were discriminated against voting because votes were only given to householders knowing that there were less Catholic householders for example gerrymandering which is the changing of the election boundaries to influence results so the protestants would win the vote every time. Catholics responded to this by wanting civil rights in Northern Ireland and so they set up a civil rights movement in 1968 and this led to outbreaks of violence and paramilitary groupings such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) clashed with 'loyalist' militant organizations such as the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Defense Force (UDF). In 1969 extra British military forces were sent to the province at the request of the Stormont government, and have remained there ever since. The British government shut down Stormont Parliament in 1972, imposing direct rule from London. A more representative Northern Ireland Assembly was elected (1973), but collapsed through extremist Unionist opposition. Leaders such as the Reverend Ian Paisley also referred to as the Paisleyites, together with the Ulster Workers Council, which organized a general strike in 1974 then there was the start of the troubles which there was a ‘scoop-up’ operation in which the British were sent over to Ireland and at first the Catholics thought that the British were on their side but later felt they were being attacked at and were wrong.
