50th anniversary of internment is nothing worth celebrating
IRA used Operation Demetrius as excuse for ramping up killing
SINN Fein, as well as the SDLP, do not want to commemorate the centenary of Northern Ireland. Instead, in 2021 Sinn Fein will probably look back 50 years to commemorate the introduction of internment in 1971 and, indeed, 1971 was a particularly important year in Ulster.
After the emergence of the Provisional IRA in December 1969, they spent much of 1970 on consolidation. That year, 29 people were killed and 19 of the deaths were the result of actions by republicans.
The consolidation of 1970 paved the way for the escalation of 1971. During that year, 180 people were killed and, of that number, republicans were responsible for 107.
Republican apologists often suggest that the escalation was a reaction to internment, known as Operation Demetrius, but that is said in an effort to conceal the cynical reality of the IRA strategy.
There was only one person killed in January 1971 and, according to Lost Lives, he was killed by the IRA, the first of many people to be murdered as alleged informers. But from February onwards, the IRA stepped up its campaign of shooting and bombing.
On the night of February 6, IRA gunmen fought a gun battle with the Army in north Belfast. Robert Curtis, a young soldier, was shot dead by an IRA sniper and James Saunders, a senior IRA man in Ardoyne, was shot by the Army.
Bernard Watt, a Catholic, was also shot by the Army in disputed circumstances in Ardoyne when republicans attacked an Army vehicle with nail bombs.
Five civilians were then killed when an IRA bomb destroyed a BBC vehicle carrying workmen up to a transmitter on Brougher Mountain. Three of the victims were Protestants and two were from England.
The IRA followed this up with the murder of a soldier in Ardoyne and the murders of two unarmed policemen in Ardoyne.
On March 8, the Army shot a republican rioter in west Belfast and a member of the Provisional IRA was killed by the Official IRA in a republican feud.
Then, on March 9, an IRA unit from Ardoyne murdered three Scottish soldiers at the White Brae on the outskirts of Belfast.
The victims were off duty, in civilian clothes and unarmed and two of them were brothers, aged 17 and 18. They were the first off-duty soldiers to be killed and their deaths caused a wave of revulsion and anger.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Belfast city centre, many of them weeping, as they came to express their sympathy.
The temperature was rising, but there was only one death in April, a young Belfast IRA man who was accidentally shot at a Provisional training camp in the Republic of Ireland.
The camp was on the farm of a former Sinn Fein councillor and the incident led to allegations of collusion between the IRA and members of the Garda.
All of this happened in the first four months of the year and long before internment, which was actually a response of desperation to what the IRA had been doing.
The IRA bombing campaign escalated with the blowing up of the Unionist Party headquarters and took on a distinctly sectarian character, designed to provoke a Protestant reaction. The IRA turned to no-warning bomb attacks on targets likely to be frequented by Protestants, particularly public houses in working-class Protestant communities.
They bombed the Bluebell Bar in Sandy Row and later, in September, two Protestants were killed when the IRA bombed the Four Step Inn on the Shankill Road.
Loyalists then attacked the Fiddler’s House Bar, killing a Protestant woman, and three more Protestants were killed when the IRA bombed the Red Lion on November 2. The cycle of violence continued and the UVF then bombed Mcgurk’s Bar, killing 15 Catholics.
The IRA had dragged the city into bitter tit-for-tat bombings and an afternoon IRA attack on a furniture store on the Shankill Road killed four people, two of whom were just babies. Tracey Munn was two and Colin Nicholl was 17 months.
There were other deaths in December, including three IRA men who died when a bomb they were transporting exploded prematurely in Magherafelt, and Senator Jack Barnhill, a unionist, was murdered by the Official IRA in front of his wife.
So, before Sinn Fein commemorate internment, perhaps they might care to reflect on why 1971 was the prelude to the bloodiest year of the Troubles.