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From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry & the Birth of the Irish Troubles
Book by O Dochartaigh, Niall
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 25, 2018
Very interesting look at Derry during the Northern Irish Civil Rights movement
November 8, 2023
I really enjoyed this, what could best be described as a 'micro-history' or just local history of the birth of the Troubles in Northern Ireland's second city.
The most interesting and compelling thesis is that introduced by Ó Dochartaigh in the introduction: that the critical challenge for those who want to explain long-running civil and ethno-nationalist conflicts such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is to understand how simmering discontent can erupt into a 'shooting war'. The latter by its very nature tends to be self-perpetuating: killing begets killing, "tit-for-tat" reprisals, trauma and traumatisating, victimhood and victimising, all serve as cyclical patterns that make it ever harder to put "the genie back in the box". But, the spark that actually lights the tinder is often more difficult to locate: what turns a situation of protests and riots into a situation of mass revolt, the full-scale rejection of the state, and the popular (if qualified) endorsement of violent means by a significant section of the community?
In Ó Dochartaigh's view the answer in the NI context is three-fold: firstly, the violent actions of the right-wing Ulster Unionist government of the six-counties and its sectarian and quasi-militarised police force the RUC/B-Specials in response to relatively banal civil rights demands on the part of the nationalist minority; the failure of the British Government to intervene strongly enough to countermand the actions of the Stormont government in the critical period 1968-1971 when the region might still have been drawn back from the brink of full-blown civil conflict; and the activities of the British Army, who - in the absence of aforementioned coherent and robust political direction from London - fell back on their old habits of colonial "counter-insurgent" warfare that inevitably added fuel to the fire and served to more or less entirely poison the nationalist community against the official state.
I find Ó Dochartaigh's argument both compelling and articulate, and the sheer breadth of primary and secondary research that went into this book make it a valuable resource. His emphasis on explaining the local, contingent, factors that led to the total breakdown of the legitimacy of the Stormont government and British Army after the summer of 1968 (and before the ultimate point of no return circa. summer 1971-winter 1972) strikes one as thoroughly justified. As someone who has looked through primary material for the same period for West Belfast, the similarities and divergences are both strking. In the former case, how long a period of 'negotiation' went on between the British Army and working class nationalist communities (right into the middle '70s at least), and in the latter how quickly and dramatically the conflict in Belfast transformed into a shooting (and bombing war), as well as how important and transformative sectarian street conflict was there in contrast to Derry.
The most interesting and compelling thesis is that introduced by Ó Dochartaigh in the introduction: that the critical challenge for those who want to explain long-running civil and ethno-nationalist conflicts such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is to understand how simmering discontent can erupt into a 'shooting war'. The latter by its very nature tends to be self-perpetuating: killing begets killing, "tit-for-tat" reprisals, trauma and traumatisating, victimhood and victimising, all serve as cyclical patterns that make it ever harder to put "the genie back in the box". But, the spark that actually lights the tinder is often more difficult to locate: what turns a situation of protests and riots into a situation of mass revolt, the full-scale rejection of the state, and the popular (if qualified) endorsement of violent means by a significant section of the community?
In Ó Dochartaigh's view the answer in the NI context is three-fold: firstly, the violent actions of the right-wing Ulster Unionist government of the six-counties and its sectarian and quasi-militarised police force the RUC/B-Specials in response to relatively banal civil rights demands on the part of the nationalist minority; the failure of the British Government to intervene strongly enough to countermand the actions of the Stormont government in the critical period 1968-1971 when the region might still have been drawn back from the brink of full-blown civil conflict; and the activities of the British Army, who - in the absence of aforementioned coherent and robust political direction from London - fell back on their old habits of colonial "counter-insurgent" warfare that inevitably added fuel to the fire and served to more or less entirely poison the nationalist community against the official state.
I find Ó Dochartaigh's argument both compelling and articulate, and the sheer breadth of primary and secondary research that went into this book make it a valuable resource. His emphasis on explaining the local, contingent, factors that led to the total breakdown of the legitimacy of the Stormont government and British Army after the summer of 1968 (and before the ultimate point of no return circa. summer 1971-winter 1972) strikes one as thoroughly justified. As someone who has looked through primary material for the same period for West Belfast, the similarities and divergences are both strking. In the former case, how long a period of 'negotiation' went on between the British Army and working class nationalist communities (right into the middle '70s at least), and in the latter how quickly and dramatically the conflict in Belfast transformed into a shooting (and bombing war), as well as how important and transformative sectarian street conflict was there in contrast to Derry.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews