History of the Troubles 101, pt. 2

The start of the Troubles is marked by the Battle of the Bogside, a three day riot/battle between the Army and the Catholics in 1969. It started when the Protestants tried to push their July 16th (a Unionist holiday) into the Bogside, a Catholic area. The parade was ambushed, and the Army called in. When the army arrived, almost everyone in the Bogside came out to drive them off. Bars became mass producers of Petrol bombs, of which several thousand were thrown at the advancing army. After three days the army retreated, and the Catholics errected barricades of concrete and steel to the entrances of the Bogside and declared the area Free Derry. It became known to the army as the No Go Zone, and the Catholics were left largely alone. The IRA continued their bombing campaign from the safety of the No Go Zone, as well as policing the area, protecting the citizens from thieves and drug dealers.
Then, in 1972 during an anti-internment march, the British Army tried to stop the march from coming into the city center here in Derry. Most of the marchers redirected to another location, but some stopped to throw stones and bottles at the British army. This is where it gets hazy. The British maintain to this day that some in the crowd were IRA gunmen who shot first. Others insist that no guns were found on any of the bodies, and that the British were trying to draw out the IRA into a gunfight. One way or another, the Army opened fire into the crowd, killing fourteen wounding fifteen more. This event became known as Bloody Sunday. Listening to the stories of the people here, it's hard to imagine the level of sheer chaos that was running rampant through this city. Overnight it became the site of a civil war as, enraged by Bloody Sunday, young men by the hundreds lined up to join the IRA. In one night the IRA became an army, passing out guns to anyone who wanted them. A year later the army forced their way back into the Bogside, but the violence continued. Whenever the army was spotted coming in, women would start banging trash can lids on the walls and ground, sending up the alarm, and people would gather to the spot to throw rocks and petrol bombs. Things carried on this way until 1998, when, which the extensive help of President Bill Clinton, the Good Friday Agreement was written up. In an attempt to discourage the Agreement from being accepted, the IRA bombed the small town of Omagh. A mistake was made, however, involving the location of the bomb that had been called in ahead of time so that the police could evacuate the people. They cleared the wrong location and directed people right next to where the bomb actually went off. Over twenty people were killed, and the ensuing backlash against the IRA, even from the Republican populace, was such that the Good Friday Agreement was signed. This signing marks the end of the Troubles.
Since then there has still been some violence, but nothing that comes close to the levels of the Troubles. Across the thirty years between the start of the Troubles and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, 3600 people were killed in sectarian violence. That's the proportional equivalent of half a million people in the United States. 1976 was the worst, with over four hundred deaths just that year. Even with peace talks in effect and all parties invovled working hard towards a peaceful solution, it is still apparent that tensions are running high here in Derry, though that's for another post. That concludes today's lecture, any questions?