Violence: Northern Ireland 1968–1998

Abstract

The first defining event in the recent troubles in Northern Ireland was probably the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966. The next was certainly the cultural revolution of 1968: Martin Luther King, les événements de mai, protest marches about Vietnam, civil rights marches against discrimination in Ulster, in itself a product of previous Troubles. Ironically, they escalated in exactly the way that Debray had hoped his foco theory would work, but had not, from marches to attacks on marches, broken windows to bombed churches, burning flags to burning houses, bullets to bombs. The events recorded in the Scarman Report on the 1969 disturbances seem almost trivial today: marches, demonstrations, public burnings of unpopular Acts, sit-ins, damaged churches and post offices, wrecked electricity pylons, and burned-out buses.