British Intervention

Abstract

The puzzle addressed in this chapter is why one British government intervened in Northern Ireland in 1969 and why another eventually resorted to direct rule in 1972. British conduct in this period stands out in comparison with the inactivity of their predecessors during similar historical junctures when the Ulster Unionist Party had been able to repress Catholic or nationalist discontent. Though the preference of many British officials was to shore up the Stormont regime, the civil-rights movement had corroded the previous normative order protecting the UUP’s control because its marchers demanded British rights for British citizens, in the full glare of modern media. The immediate precipitants of intervention in the loss of control by the RUC and the Specials are examined. They took place against the background of the mobilization of Irish forces and field hospitals and riotous pogroms directed against Catholics in Derry and Belfast. Whether Northern Ireland was reformable is addressed, as are the dynamics of the descent into loyalist violence, British counterinsurgency, and IRA insurgency. The development of Irish government policy toward the North in 1969–70 is treated in a brief appendix.