In July 1970, the world-famous movie director Christopher Nolan was born in England. He’s famous for many hit movies (Inception, Interstellar), and it’s hard to believe that directors like him have never flirted with the idea of creating a true masterpiece on the troubles. There’s plenty of content to create an epic tale, and time to shift away from the dross we’ve been served up in the past.
You may remember in the June 1970 edition, I introduced the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling. Well, turned out that Mr Maudling didn’t have a particularly high opinion of Northern Ireland. At the start of July, he paid a visit, and upon his departure again, he is reported to have said;
"For God's sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!"
What a lovely guy…
The beginning of July also saw the passing of The Criminal Justice (Temporary Provisions) Act by the Stormont Government. The act introduced a mandatory prison sentence of six months for rioting. Given all that had happened in the previous months and years, it was hoped this would act as a deterrent for those involved in the rioting. We’ll soon see that this wasn’t a deterrent at all…
On the 2nd of July, we also saw the introduction of the Prevention of Incitement to Hatred Act (Northern Ireland). It proved difficult to secure convictions under the provisions of the Act and it was seldom enforced.
On the same day, there was a bomb explosion on the railway line between Dublin and Belfast at Baldoyle, Dublin. The Garda Síochána later said that they believed the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was responsible for the attack.
Throughout July 1970 there were numerous political developments, but the main story from that month is the Falls Road Curfew (sometimes referred to as the Battle of The Falls).
On the 3rd of July 1970, at approximately 4:30 pm, a mixed patrol of British Army soldiers and RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) pulled up to number 24 Balkan Street, in the Lower Falls in West Belfast. They were acting on a tip-off from a ‘concerned resident’ about a stash of weapons hidden in the property. The search is reported to have lasted about 45 minutes and uncovered 15 pistols, a rifle, a submachine gun and a large quantity of ammunition.
What happened next is widely seen as having changed the course of the ‘Troubles’ and alienated Catholic opinion against the British Army.
As the search ended and the troops began to leave, a crowd of youths on Raglan Street tried to block their path and attacked them with stones. The troops replied by launching CS gas at the crowd. The youths continued to throw stones and the soldiers responded with more CS gas. The stone-throwing escalated into a riot.
With the soldiers surrounded, they called for reinforcements. Over the following hours, the Royal Scots would be reinforced by troops from the Black Watch, the Life Guards, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, the Gloucestershire Regiment and the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment. As troops began to arrive at the edge of the area, locals hastily barricaded a number of streets to keep the soldiers out. Buses were hijacked and made into burning barricades.
Jim Sullivan, the local Official IRA commander, feared that the soldiers would launch a bigger raid and instructed his men to move weapons out of the area. At about 6 pm, Provisional IRA volunteers attacked the soldiers with improvised hand grenades, with a number of soldiers suffering leg injuries. As more troops arrived, "the Officials realized that they would have to fight" and Sullivan ordered his men to confront the troops. An Official IRA source later said,
"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".
One source said that 60–70 Official IRA volunteers were involved, while another said 80–90. It’s reported that each was armed with a rifle and at least one revolver. They exchanged fire with the soldiers and attacked them with grenades, assisted by hundreds of local youths who attacked the soldiers with stones and petrol bombs. Journalist Simon Winchester later wrote;
To anyone who experienced the battle, it was perfectly obvious that hundreds and hundreds of bullets were being fired by both sides – and yet the Army had the gall, when asked by reporters later in the weekend, to say that its soldiers fired only 15 shots in sum. The official figures were to be published later: soldiers in the Falls that weekend fired no less than 1,457 rounds.
The British Army also continued firing CS gas. Local politicians and priests who were on the streets "complained that every time they got a bad situation cooled down more gas had been plunged in". Slingshots were used to launch heavy CS gas canisters into the area and some went through the roofs of houses. According to the Central Citizens' Defence Committee, even streets where there had been no disorder "received salvo after salvo".
The soldiers fired 1,600 canisters and cartridges of CS gas during the operation, which was considered to be excessive in such a small area. Some householders set buckets filled with a mixture of water and vinegar outside their front doors "so that those involved in clashes could wet rags to protect them against the stinging gas". Journalist Peter Taylor described 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.
A 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".
There were allegations that some soldiers fired CS gas canisters through the windows of houses while residents were still inside. Hundreds of women and children, along with the sick and elderly, began to leave the area.
At 10 pm on Friday the 3rd of July, four hours after the violence began, Freeland ordered that the area be put under an indefinite curfew and that anyone on the streets be arrested. British soldiers announced the curfew through loudspeakers on the ground and from helicopters flying low over the streets. The boundaries of the official curfew zone were the Falls Road in the west and north, Albert Street and Cullingtree Road in the east, and Grosvenor Road in the south. However, during the curfew, the zone was extended in the southwest as far as Dunmore Street. There were about 3,000 homes inside the curfew zone.
After the curfew was announced, up to 3,000 soldiers began moving into the curfew zone supported by armoured vehicles and helicopters. They also began sealing off the curfew zone with barbed wire.
Shooting and rioting continued for a number of hours after the curfew began. Minutes after the curfew was announced, three soldiers were shot and wounded by Official IRA volunteers in Omar Street. Troops also reported coming under "heavy and extremely accurate sniper fire" in Plevna Street. Billy McKee, commander of the Provisional IRA's Belfast Brigade, telephoned Jim Sullivan and offered help, but Sullivan rejected the offer. The small Provisional IRA unit in the area decided to engage the troops nevertheless. It consisted of up to 11 volunteers commanded by Charles 'Charlie' Hughes. They fought a gun battle with troops in Cyprus Street before withdrawing. According to Brendan Hughes, the unit ran out of ammunition. Martin Dillon wrote that by withdrawing, they "avoided losing what few weapons they had in a confrontation which could only end in disaster".
Outside the curfew zone, the Springfield Road Army/RUC base came under sustained attack from missile-throwing crowds. Soldiers pushed them back with CS gas and baton charges, but IRA snipers moved in and kept the base under intermittent fire. The last shots were fired at dawn on Saturday 4 July.
Inside the curfew zone, the British Army began a house-to-house search for weapons and demolished barricades and made arrests. At least 1,000 houses were searched.
Any journalists who remained inside the curfew zone were arrested by the British Army. It is claimed that because the media was unable to watch their activities, the soldiers behaved "with reckless abandon". British Army log sheets reveal that the troops were ordered to "be aggressive". Hundreds of houses were forcibly searched and there were scores of complaints of soldiers hitting, threatening, insulting and humiliating residents.
Pubs and businesses were also searched and it is claimed that several of them were looted by the soldiers. According to Mallie and Bishop's account;
"The soldiers behaved with a new harshness... axing down doors, ripping up floorboards, disembowelling chairs, sofas, beds, and smashing the garish plaster statues of the Madonna... which adorned the tiny front parlours"
At 5 pm on Saturday, the Army announced by loudspeaker that people could leave their homes for two hours to get vital supplies. However, nobody was allowed to leave or enter the curfew zone. During this time, the local Member of Parliament, Paddy Devlin, was arrested by the British Army while out talking to his constituents. He claimed that the soldiers responsible threatened to shoot him.
Although the area remained sealed off, by midday on Sunday the 5th of July there was a perception among locals that the operation had been abandoned. According to Hanley and Millar, "the British knew that most of the 'more attractive' armaments had been spirited away 'before the cordon was fully effective'". The curfew was broken at around 9 am on Sunday when 3,000 women and children from the nationalist Andersonstown area marched to the British lines with food and other groceries for the people there. The unprepared soldiers tried to hold back the crowd at first but eventually allowed it to pass through.
By the time the search was over, the troops had captured about 100 firearms, 100 homemade grenades, 250 pounds of explosives and 21,000 rounds of ammunition. Among the firearms were 52 pistols, 35 rifles, 6 machine guns and 14 shotguns. Almost all of this material belonged to the Official IRA.
It was later reported that while the lower Falls was under curfew and the streets emptied of people, the British Army had driven two Ulster Unionist Party government ministers, John Brooke and William Long, through the area in armoured vehicles. This enraged nationalists, who perceived the gesture as a symbol of unionist triumphalism over an area subdued by British military force.
The British Army killed four civilians during the operation;
Another 60 civilians suffered gunshot wounds. Eighteen soldiers were also wounded; twelve by gunshots and six by grenades. A total of 337 people, including Official IRA leader Billy McMillen, were also arrested.
In 1970, the annual 'Twelfth' parades passed off without serious incident. This year, the parades took place on Monday the 13th of July, as they are not normally held on a Sunday. However, on the 13th the IRA firebombed the hotel Elsinore on the Antrim Road causing damage, but no injuries, as the hotel was unoccupied at the time of the bombing. You can view some old footage of the damage to the hotel here.
On Thursday the 16th of July, there was a bomb explosion at the city-centre offices of Northern Bank, High Street, Belfast at 2.23 pm. 31 people were injured in the explosion, with nine being detained in hospital, and three reported as being seriously injured. The Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible for the bomb which was estimated to have contained approximately 8lbs of explosives.
On the 23rd of July, a ban on parades and public processions until January 1971 was announced by the Stormont government. This did not go down well within loyalist circles.
Throughout Belfast, riots continued in July. On the 31st of July, Daniel O'Hagan (19), a Catholic civilian, was shot dead by the British Army during a serious riot in the New Lodge Road area of Belfast.