Residential and territorial segregation have been accepted realities for many Catholic and Protestant working-class communities in Belfast since the seventeenth century. It wasn’t until the summer of 1935, however, that the first physical barrier was built to provide social distancing and separation. The British Army, in response to increased sectarian rioting, constructed a temporary barrier … Read more
The magnitude of the events in Belfast during that fateful month can be gauged by the testimony of 2nd Lt Adams to the Scarman Tribunal, describing the scene he witnessed on entering Bombay Street for the first time on the night of 15/16 August: ‘I was horrified. I had never seen houses burning like that … Read more
The IRA became the first customers for the machine-gun designed in 1919 by General John T. Thompson of Pennsylvania and made by the Colt Patent Fire Arms Company of Hartford, Connecticut. The first three submachine-guns arrived in Dublin in May 1921 and were test-fired by Tom Barry at a demonstration on 24 May attended by … Read more
Omagh-born Labour PRO John Devine enjoyed a particularly good rapport with the Northern activists. Before joining the staff in Labour’s head office in October 1968, he had been a journalist with the Irish Times for fifteen years, and before that with the Belfast Telegraph. His contacts in the North were good to begin with and … Read more
Relations between individuals in Labour in the south and their comrades in the North, including Gerry Fitt of the Republican Labour Party and Paddy Devlin of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), had been reasonably strong in the late 1960s and were bolstered by the events of August 1969. When violence broke out in Derry … Read more