In 1971, the Troubles in Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland were in full cry.

TIMELINE

10 January 1971 – Members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out an early form of ‘punishment attack’ by tarring and feathering four men who were accused of criminal activities in Catholic areas of Belfast. [‘Punishment beatings’, and ‘punishment shootings’ (were people were shot in the knee or elsewhere on the body with intent to wound but not kill) were to become a continuous feature of the conflict in Northern Ireland and were used by both Republican and Loyalist

13 January 1971 – Riots began in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast.

15 January 1971 – Riots broke out in the Ardoyne area of Belfast.

17 January 1971 – At an Ard Fheis (party conference) in Dublin the Official Sinn Féin ended the 65 year abstentionist policy and agreed that any elected representative could take their seat at the Dáil, Stormont or Westminster parliaments. It was this issue that caused the split between the Official and Provisional movement in Republicanism.

6 February: Robert Curtis is shot dead by the IRA. He is the first British soldier to die in the Troubles. Bernard Watt (28), a Catholic civilian, was shot and killed by the British Army (BA) during street disturbances in Ardoyne, Belfast. James Saunders (22), a member of the IRA, is shot dead by the British Army during a gun battle near the Oldpark Road, Belfast.

9 February 1971 – Five men, two of them British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) engineers, the others construction workers, were killed near a BBC transmitter on Brougher Mountain, County Tyrone in a land mine attack carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). [It was believed that a British Army (BA) mobile patrol, which had been visiting the site, was the intended target.]

26 February 1971 – Two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, Cecil Patterson (45) and Robert Buckley (30), were shot and killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) while on a mobile patrol in the Ardoyne area of Belfast.

28 February 1971 – A British soldier died in Derry as a result of inhaling chemicals from fire extinguisers that were used to put out a fire inside the vehicle he was travelling in. The vehicle had been attacked with petrol bombs.

8 March 1971 – Members of the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) engaged in a gun battle with members of the Provisional IRA (PIRA). One man was killed. The feud between the two wings of the IRA had been developing ever since the Republic movement split on 11 January 1970.

9 March – Three off-duty Scottish soldiers – John McCraig 17 (L) his brother Joseph, 18 (R) and Dougald McCaughy,23 – are killed by the IRA. In Scotland, 4000 shipyard workers march. They want internment.

23 March – Brian Faulkner is Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

15 May 1971 – William ‘Billy’ Reid, an IRA member, was shot dead by British soldiers in Belfast. [According to ‘Lost Lives’ Reid was the person who fired the shot which killed Robert Curtis, the first British soldier to be killed in ‘the Troubles’, on 6 February 1971. Reid is reported as having been killed on Curtis Street near the centre of Belfast.]

25 May – The PIRA throw a bomb into the Springfield Road British Army/RUC base in Belfast. British Army Sergeant Michael Willetts is killed. The bomb wounds: seven RUC officers, two British soldiers and eighteen civilians.

8 July – British soldiers shoot dead two Catholic civilians in Free Derry. The SDLP withdrew from Stormont in protest. Riots erupt.

9 August – Operation Demetrius (or Internment) was introduced in Northern Ireland. The security forces arrested 342 people suspected of supporting paramilitaries.

The BBC:

In a statement made at 1115 BST today, Mr Faulkner said Northern Ireland was “quite simply at war with the terrorist.” He said: “The terrorists’ campaign continues at an unacceptable level and I have had to conclude that the ordinary law cannot deal comprehensively or quickly enough with such ruthless violence. “I have therefore decided… to exercise where necessary the powers of detention and internment vested in me as Minister of Home Affairs.” He said the decision had been made to protect life and property and the main target would be members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The act has been described as one of the most powerful anti-terrorist measures on the statute books of any Western democracy but Mr Faulkner said he could not give any guarantees it would bring an end to the campaign. Suspects who are arrested under the new law, and who are not charged or released within 48 hours, will be taken to reception areas where they will be held indefinitely without trial.

9–11 August – fourteen civilians were shot dead by the British Army, and three security forces personnel were shot dead by republicans. In the following days, an estimated 7000 people fled their homes. The vast majority of the dead, imprisoned and refugees were nationalists and Catholics.

* In a series of raids across Northern Ireland, 342 people were arrested and taken to makeshift camps as Internment was re-introduced in Northern Ireland. There was an immediate upsurge of violence and 17 people were killed during the next 48 hours. Of these 10 were Catholic civilians who were shot dead by the British Army (BA). Hugh Mullan (38) was the first Catholic priest to be killed in the conflict when he was shot dead by the British Army as he was giving the last rites to a wounded man. Winston Donnell (22) became the first Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) solider to die in ‘the Troubles’ when he was shot by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Clady, County Tyrone.

[There were more arrests in the following days and months. Internment was to continue until 5 December 1975. During that time 1,981 people were detained; 1,874 were Catholic / Republican, while 107 were Protestant / Loyalist. Internment had been proposed by Unionist politicians as the solution to the security situation in Northern Ireland but was to lead to a very high level of violence over the next few years and to increased support for the IRA.

The introduction of the new measures and the secret dawn raids sparked fierce gun battles and protests in Ulster which claimed the lives of 12 people, including two women.

Protestants in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, which is predominantly Catholic, fled after setting fire to their own homes to make sure they were not taken over by Catholics.

September – Loyalist groups formed the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The group would quickly become the largest loyalist group in Northern Ireland.

4 December – McGurk’s Bar bombing – the UVF exploded a bomb at a Catholic-oned pub in Belfast, killing fifteen Catholic civilians and wounding seventeen others. This was the highest death toll from a single incident in Belfast during the Troubles.

Barrie Penrose reports on the Ulster Defence Regiment, a part-time auxiliary force of the British Army in Northern Ireland, as their role in Northern Ireland grows in significance. Denis Ormerod, the first Catholic commander of the UDR, comments on the religious make-up of the reservists and wider perceptions of the force.

Spotters: Belfast Telegraph, University of Ulster