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The Falls Curfew, also known as the Lower Falls Curfew or sometimes as the "Rape of the Lower Falls", was a British Army operation on the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland between 3 July and 5 July 1970. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. Falls Road also refers to the Rochester Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad, the New York Central Railroad 's line to Niagara Falls New York. Belfast ( is the capital city of Northern Ireland and the seat of government in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland (Tuaisceart Éireann Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a Country within the United Kingdom, lying in the northeast of Events 324 - Battle of Adrianople Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium. Events 1295 - Scotland and France form an alliance the beginnings of the Auld Alliance, against England. Year 1970 ( MCMLXX) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The operation started with an arms search but developed into three days of rioting and gun battles between British troops and Irish republican paramilitaries. Five people were killed in the incident and over 300 arrested.

Contents

Arms search

A week before the Falls curfew, on Saturday June 27, Belfast experienced severe rioting after an Orange Order parade in the north of the city. Events 1358 - Republic of Dubrovnik is founded 1709 - Peter the Great defeats Charles XII of Sweden The Orange Institution, more commonly known as the Orange Order or the Orange Lodge, is a Protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly During the disturbances, the Provisional Irish Republican Army shot dead seven Protestants in gun battles in the Ardoyne and Short Strand areas. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (Óglaigh na hÉireann ( IRA; also referred to as the PIRA, the Provos, or by some of its supporters as the For the village in Scotland see Ardoyne Aberdeenshire. Ardoyne (from the Irish Ard Eoin meaning Owen's height is a predominantly The Short Strand ( Irish: An Trá Ghearr) is a predominantly nationalist housing estate in East Belfast with a population of around 3000 within In response, the following weekend, the British government sent troops from the Black Watch and Life Guards regiments, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Freeland into the predominantly Catholic Falls Road area of Belfast to recover paramilitary weapons. The Black Watch 3rd Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS is an Infantry Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. An informer had tipped them off that they would find an arms dump belonging to the Official IRA in a house in Balkans Street in the Lower Falls, an area which was dominated at that time by the Official IRA. The term Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA (informally the Officials) refers to one of the two organisations&mdashthe other being the Provisional The troops accordingly found 19 weapons at this location. Jim Sullivan, the local OIRA commander instructed his men not to attack the British troops, for fear that the rest of their weapons would be discovered and seized. Jim Sullivan (died September 16 1992) was a leading member of the Official Irish Republican Army from the Lower Falls area of Belfast However, the rival Provisional IRA did attack the British troops with improvised hand grenades. In response the British announced a curfew and flooded the area with up to 3,000 soldiers, supported by armoured vehicles and helicopters. A curfew can be one of the following An order by a Government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time

Gun battles and rioting

According to an Official IRA source quoted by journalists Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, the local OIRA leadership reluctantly decided to take on the British troops once the scale of their incursion became clear, 'The way we looked at it, we were not going to put up our hands and let them take the weaponry. We didn't want the confrontation, but we couldn't surrender'[1]

On the morning of June 4, when the British troops entered the area, they were met with rioting and a sustained barrage of rifle and automatic fire from Official IRA members. At this point, Freeland, the British commander, ordered all the area's residents to stay indoors and had his soldiers conduct a house to house search for arms. Troops cordoned off the area, comprising of around fifty streets, with barbed wire. Helicopters equipped with loudpeakers hovered overhead, ordering the residents to stay indoors.

Over the next two days, there were continuous riots and gun battles in the area. Approximately 80-90 Official IRA members (volunteers) exchanged fire with the British troops, who fired in excess of 1,500 rounds at the republicans. Volunteer, often abbreviated Vol, is a term used by a number of Irish republican Paramilitary organisations to describe their members Hundreds of local youths also pelted the troops with stones and petrol bombs. The Molotov cocktail, also known as the booze bomb, alcohol bomb or Molotov bomb, is a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary Four civilians were shot dead in the firing and another was killed after being run over by a British Saracen armoured car. The FV603 Saracen was a six-wheeled Armoured personnel carrier built by Alvis and used by the British army that became a recognisable vehicle as a A military armored (or armoured) car (see spelling differences) is a wheeled armored vehicle lighter than other armored fighting vehicles primarily Another 60 civilians suffered gun shot wounds, as did 15 soldiers. About 300 people were also arrested in the fighting.

Under the cover of CS gas (1,600 canisters of which were fired by the British troops), the Army conducted an aggressive search for weapons. CS gas is the common name for 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (also called o-Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile (chemical formula C10H5ClN2

Journalist Peter Taylor describes the effect of the CS gas on the densely populated area; 'The clouds of choking and suffocating gas drifted up the narrow alleyways and back streets of the warren that is the Lower Falls. The gas got everywhere, in through windows, under doors and into the residents' eyes, noses, throats and lungs. [2] A British soldier later interviewed by Taylor recalled; 'the place was still saturated with CS gas. Children were coughing, I remember. I'm talking now about the toddlers, kids of three, four, five. It affected everyone but children especially'. [3]

Houses were broken into and in some cases ransacked in the search for arms. According to Mallie and Bishop's account, 'the soldiers behaved with a new harshness . . . axeing down doors, ripping up floorboards, disembowelling chairs, sofas, beds, and smashing the garish plaster statues of the Madonna, the Infant of Prague and Saint Bernadette which adorned the tiny front parlours' [4]. Images of the Madonna and Madonna and Child are one of the central Icons of Christianity, representing the Madonna or Mary mother of Jesus Infant Jesus of Prague ( Czech Pražské Jezulátko) is a famous statue of infant Jesus located in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Saint Bernadette (born Marie-Bernarde Soubirous January 7 1844 – April 16 1879) was a miller's daughter from the town of By the time the search was over, the troops had captured 35 rifles, 6 machine guns, 14 shotguns, 100 home made grenades, 250 pounds of explosives, 21,000 rounds of ammunition and 8 two way radio sets. Almost all of this material belonged to the Official IRA [5].

The fighting spread to the rest of Belfast and there were shooting incidents and rioting in Ardoyne, the upper Falls, the Short Strand and Ballymurphy. For the village in Scotland see Ardoyne Aberdeenshire. Ardoyne (from the Irish Ard Eoin meaning Owen's height is a predominantly The Short Strand ( Irish: An Trá Ghearr) is a predominantly nationalist housing estate in East Belfast with a population of around 3000 within The curfew in the Lower Falls was broken early in the morning on Sunday 5 July, when over 1,000 women from the Andersonstown area marched on the Lower Falls with food and other groceries for the people there. Events 1295 - Scotland and France form an alliance the beginnings of the Auld Alliance, against England. Andersonstown (Baile Andarsan is a district of west Belfast. It is overshadowed by the Black Mountain and Divis Mountain and contains a mixture of

It was later reported that while the Lower Falls was under curfew and the streets emptied of people, the British Army had driven two Unionist ministers, John Brooke and William Long through the area in armoured vehicles. The Ulster Unionist Party ( UUP, sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist Party or OUP or in a historic sense simply the Unionist Party John Warden Brooke 2nd Viscount Brookeborough, PC (NI ( November 9 1922 &ndash March 5 1987) was a Northern Ireland politician William Long is the name of among others William Joseph Long (author American author on nature and literature This enraged nationalists in Northern Ireland, who perceived the gesture a symbol of unionist triumphalism over an area cowed by British military force. Triumphalism is the attitude or belief that a particular doctrine culture or social system is superior to and should triumph over all others

Results

The Falls Curfew had two major results. The first was that it deeply alienated Belfast's catholic Irish nationalist population from the British Army. Irish nationalism (Náisiúnachas Éireannach refers to political and sociological movements and sentiment that embodies a love for Irish ancestry, culture and language and Historian Richard English suggests that the Falls Curfew was, 'arguably decisive in terms of worsening the relationship between the British Army and the Catholic working class'[6] Previously, many of them had seen the Army as a neutral force, in the city to keep order between Catholics and Protestants. Richard English is a Historian from Northern Ireland. He was born in Belfast in 1963 However, the events of the Falls Curfew gave credence to the Irish Republican argument that the British Army was a hostile colonial army of occupation. Irish republicanism (Poblachtánachas is an ideology based on the Irish nationalist belief that all of Ireland should be a single independent Republic According to Gerry Adams, "Thousands of people who had never been republicans now gave their active support to the IRA; others, who had never had any time for physical force now regarded it as a practical necessity". Gerry Adams, MLA, MP (Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh born 6 October 1948 is an Irish Republican politician and abstentionist Westminster [7]

The second main consequence of the incident was a deepening of the enmity between the two factions of the Irish Republican Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, who had parted ways the previous December. The Officials blamed the Provisionals for starting the confrontation with British troops and then leaving them to fight alone against overwhelming odds, resulting in the loss of much of their weaponry. Over the following year, the two factions carried out many shootings and beatings of each other's members. A truce was eventually agreed between them to prevent further bloodshed after the OIRA assassinated a young Provisional named Charlie Hughes. Hughes was the commander of the Provisional's unit in the Lower Falls and had taken part in some of the fighting during the Falls Curfew.

References

  1. ^ Mallie, Bishop, the Provisional IRA (1988), p. 159
  2. ^ Peter Taylor Provos The IRA & Sinn Féin p. 79
  3. ^ Taylor, p. 81
  4. ^ Mallie, Bishop, Provisional IRA, p. 159
  5. ^ Mallie, Bishop, Provisional IRA, p. 160
  6. ^ English, Armed Struggle (2003), p. 136
  7. ^ Taylor, Peter (1997). Peter Taylor born Scarborough, North Yorkshire is a British Journalist and documentary -maker who had covered for many years the political Provos The IRA & Sinn Féin. Bloomsbury Publishing, p. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is an independent London -based publishing house known for literary Novels It was named Publisher of the Year in 1999 and 83. ISBN 0-7475-3818-2.  

Bibliography

External links

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