The Troubles (1968–1998): Conflict in Northern Ireland

The Troubles were a conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted roughly three decades, from the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, British security forces and local communities were caught up in violence that killed about 3,500 people and injured tens of thousands. At its heart was a dispute over whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland, sharpened by inequality between communities.

Background: a divided province

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when six counties of Ulster remained in the United Kingdom after the partition of Ireland. About two-thirds of its population was Protestant and mostly unionist, wanting to stay British. About one-third was Catholic and mostly nationalist, identifying with Ireland.

From 1921 to 1972 Northern Ireland had its own parliament, which sat at Stormont from 1932 and was always controlled by the Ulster Unionist Party. Catholics faced discrimination in housing and jobs, and electoral boundaries in some areas, notably Derry, were drawn to favour unionists. Local government voting was restricted to ratepayers, which disadvantaged poorer households.

Civil rights and the descent into violence

In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was founded, inspired partly by the civil rights movement in the United States. It demanded fair allocation of housing, an end to discrimination and “one man, one vote” in local elections. On 5 October 1968 a civil rights march in Derry was broken up by police with batons in front of television cameras, a moment often taken as the start of the Troubles.

Tension grew through 1969. Loyalist counter-demonstrations and clashes with police culminated in the “Battle of the Bogside” in Derry in August 1969 and serious rioting in Belfast, where hundreds of homes, mostly Catholic, were burned. On 14 August 1969 the British government deployed troops on the streets, an operation later named Operation Banner, which lasted until 2007.

At the end of 1969 the IRA split, and the new Provisional IRA began an armed campaign to force British withdrawal and achieve a united Ireland. Loyalist paramilitaries, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), carried out attacks mainly on Catholics.

The worst years, 1971–1976

On 9 August 1971 the Northern Ireland government introduced internment without trial. Almost all those detained in the first sweep were Catholics, and violence increased sharply. On 30 January 1972, known as Bloody Sunday, British paratroopers shot dead 13 people at a civil rights march in Derry, and another man later died of his wounds.

In March 1972 London suspended Stormont and imposed direct rule. 1972 was the deadliest year of the conflict, with around 480 deaths. On “Bloody Friday”, 21 July 1972, the IRA set off some 20 bombs in Belfast, killing nine people.

An attempt at a political settlement, the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973, created a power-sharing executive between unionists and nationalists and a cross-border Council of Ireland. It collapsed in May 1974 after a general strike by the loyalist Ulster Workers’ Council. The same month, loyalist car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan killed 33 people, the deadliest single day of the Troubles. In November 1974 IRA bombs in two Birmingham pubs killed 21.

Prisons, hunger strikes and politics

From 1976 the British government ended special category status for paramilitary prisoners and treated them as ordinary criminals. Republican prisoners protested, and in 1981 ten of them died on hunger strike in the Maze prison. The first, Bobby Sands, had been elected to Parliament weeks before his death on 5 May 1981.

The hunger strikes drew huge support in nationalist areas and pushed Sinn Féin, the political party linked to the IRA, into electoral politics alongside the armed campaign. The IRA continued attacks, including the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in October 1984, which killed five people and narrowly missed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In November 1985 the Anglo-Irish Agreement gave the Irish government a consultative role in Northern Ireland, angering unionists. Atrocities continued, such as the IRA’s Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen in November 1987, which killed 11 people, and loyalist killings of Catholic civilians.

The road to peace

Behind the violence, dialogue slowly developed. The nationalist SDLP leader John Hume held talks with Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams from 1988. In December 1993 the British and Irish governments issued the Downing Street Declaration, stating that the people of Ireland, North and South, should decide their own future.

The IRA declared a ceasefire on 31 August 1994, followed by the main loyalist groups in October. The IRA ended its ceasefire with the Canary Wharf bombing in London in February 1996, but renewed it in July 1997. Multi-party talks chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell produced the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998, approved by referendums in both parts of Ireland on 22 May 1998.

Key people

John Hume (1937–2020), leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, argued consistently for non-violent change and opened the talks that drew Sinn Féin into politics. He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble.

Ian Paisley (1926–2014), a Protestant minister and founder of the Democratic Unionist Party, was for decades the most prominent opponent of compromise with nationalism. Late in life he became First Minister in a power-sharing government with Sinn Féin in 2007.

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin from 1983 to 2018, led the republican movement’s shift towards electoral politics and the peace process. He has always denied being a member of the IRA.

David Trimble (1944–2022), leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, accepted the Good Friday Agreement and became the first First Minister of Northern Ireland.

British prime ministers from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair, and Irish leaders such as Garret FitzGerald, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, shaped the intergovernmental side of the conflict and its settlement.

The human cost

More than half of those killed were civilians. For a population of about 1.5 million, the toll touched almost every family, and the conflict left deep legacies of trauma, segregation and unresolved killings.

Timeline

• 1968, 5 October: Police break up a civil rights march in Derry.
• 1969, 14 August: British troops are deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland.
• 1971, 9 August: Internment without trial is introduced.
• 1972, 30 January: Bloody Sunday in Derry.
• 1972, 30 March: Stormont is suspended and direct rule begins.
• 1974, 17 May: Dublin and Monaghan bombings kill 33 people.
• 1981, 5 May: Hunger striker Bobby Sands dies in the Maze prison.
• 1985, 15 November: The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed.
• 1994, 31 August: The IRA declares a ceasefire.
• 1998, 10 April: The Good Friday Agreement is reached.

Why it matters

The Troubles were the longest-running armed conflict in western Europe in the late 20th century. Their resolution through power-sharing and consent became a widely studied model of peacemaking, while the walls, memorials and unanswered questions they left behind still shape life in Northern Ireland.