If Curfew

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Falls Curfew (Eng .: curfew of the Falls), also Lower Falls Curfew or Rape of the Lower Falls (Eng .: rape of the Lower Falls ) was a three-day curfew imposed by the British Army in July 1970 in the area of ​​the Falls Road in the west the Northern Irish capital Belfast during the Northern Ireland conflict. On July 3, 1970, British soldiers searched several homes for weapons. The operation turned into riot, in which five civilians died and 300 suspected Irish Republicans were arrested. Larger amounts of tear gas were used.

prehistory

A week before the operation, there was already more serious unrest after the Protestant Unionist Orange Order marched through the northern part of the city. Some groups of loyalists , radical Protestants, subsequently invaded the Catholic enclave of Short Strand in the otherwise Protestant-dominated East Belfast and threatened the residents. Under the leadership of IRA commander Billy McKee , some members of the Belfast Brigade from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had barely appeared to date, took up positions with the Catholic Church and engaged in a three-hour shootout with the loyalists. Five people were killed, four Protestant attackers and one IRA member. A total of seven people died in riots across Belfast that day.

course

Women break through the British Army barriers on the third day of curfew (2010 Republican mural).

The British army then sent soldiers from the Black Watch and Life Guards regiments under Ian Freeland to the Catholic district of Lower Falls to secure weapons. After a tip, the soldiers found 19 small arms in a house. Jim Sullivan , a local leader of the Official IRA , which was the dominant IRA group in the area after the split in December 1969, initially wanted to stop an attack on the soldiers in order to keep further weapons supplies secret. Some Republicans, led by the competing and more radical Provisionals, nevertheless attacked the soldiers with Molotov cocktails . The British imposed a curfew and occupied the area with 3,000 soldiers. Helicopters and armored vehicles were used.

According to journalists, the Official IRA leadership was unconfident given the strength of the British forces. Nevertheless, it was decided to take military countermeasures. On the morning of July 4th, British troops encountered barricades . Freeland arranged for his soldiers to conduct further house searches.

The next few days saw long house fights with the 80 or so volunteers of the Official IRA. Some young people also provoked the troops with stones and small incendiary devices. Four civilians were shot dead and one was run over by a Saracen tank. Another 60 civilians and 15 soldiers were injured by projectiles. 300 civilians were arrested.

The British also sprayed 1,600 canisters of CS gas in order to be able to carry out the house searches better. 35 rifles, six automatic weapons, 14 shotguns, 100 incendiary devices, around 100 kilos of explosives, 21,000 rounds of ammunition and eight radios were seized.

The curfew ended on July 5 after women, particularly from the Andersonstown neighborhood , broke army barriers to provide food to residents.

consequences

In retrospect, it was reported that the army drove two Ulster Unionist Party ministers ( John Brooke and William Long ) through the cleared streets in armored vehicles, which was later stylized as a provocation.

Many historians see the incident as a key scene that had a lasting negative impact on the relationship between the Northern Irish Catholic minority and the British Army. This was now perceived not as a neutral actor, but as a representative of a “colonialist” claim of the British. The incidents also contributed to a broadening of the IRA base and a radicalization of the same.

Another consequence is the growing division between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, which have operated separately since December 1969. The Officials accused the Provisionals of intentionally seeking what they believed to be an unnecessary confrontation with the British in order to harm the Official IRA. The following year the groups also fought among themselves. After the OIRA shot and killed the Provo Charly Hughes, who also took part in the fighting during the curfew and was a brother of the local Provisional IRA commander Brendan Hughes , the two groups agreed on a ceasefire.

literature

  • Richard English: Armed Struggle - A History of the IRA. MacMillan, London 2003, ISBN 1-4050-0108-9 .
  • Peter Taylor: Provos - the IRA and Sinn Féin. Bloomsbury, London 1997, ISBN 0-7475-3392-X .
  • Ed Moloney: The Secret History of the IRA. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-141-01041-X .
  • Eamonn Mallie, Patrick Bishop: The Provisional IRA , Corgi, London 1988, ISBN 0-552-13337-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eamonn Mallie, Patrick Bishop, the Provisional IRA (1988), p. 159.
  2. ^ Mallie, Bishop, Provisional IRA, p. 160.
  3. ^ Entry July 5, 1970 at CAIN - Conflict Archive on the Internet (English, accessed December 25, 2011).
  4. ^ Richard English, Armed Struggle (2003), p. 136.
  5. ↑ Peter Taylor: Provos The IRA & Sinn Féin

Coordinates: 54 ° 35 ′ 50 ″  N , 5 ° 56 ′ 55 ″  W.