Day-by-day, how the state broke down in Northern Ireland, 1969: Workers' Liberty 3/76

Politically, Northern Ireland in 1968-9 was sterile territory. Nothing had been done by political parties or groups to explore a possible democratic modus vivendi between Catholic Nationalists — with their ultimate aim of a united Ireland — and Protestant-Unionists, who were determined to to remain united with Britain, or at any rate, determined not to become a powerless Protestant minority in a Catholic-majority all-Ireland state. They confronted each other as irreconcilable enemies. In Catholic “Derry of the burning zeal” (as Thomas Kinsella called it) there was, by the summer of 1969, a...