Malachi ODoherty - The Year of Chaos: Northern Ireland on the Brink of Civil War, 1971-72

In the references that follow, proni stands for Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and nai stands for National Archive of Ireland.

Gearing Up

Trghr (Dublin: Republican Publications, 2002).

Internment

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Potter, John, A Testimony to Courage: The History of the Ulster Defence Regiment, 19691992 (London: Leo Cooper, 2001).

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United Irishman, September 1971, as quoted in McKittrick, David, Kelters, Seamus, Feeney, Brian, Thornton, Chris and McVea, David, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1999), entry 102 for William McKavanagh.

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One of Those Things That Happen in War

Hansard HC Deb 16 February 1922 vol 150 c1270.

Summitry

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Hansard HC Deb 22 September 1971 vol 83 cc1415.

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Shooting Women

Part of Corporal Raymond Beadons statement reproduced by Relatives for Justice in its submission to the Council of Europes Commissioner for Human Rights.

Walsh, Roseleen, Bridgets Daughters (Relatives for Justice, 2001).

McKittrick et al., p. 108.

The Army Gets It Wrong

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Corbett, Steve, A Tough Nut to Crack: Andersonstown Voices from 9 Battery Royal Artillery in Northern Ireland, November 1971March 1972 (Solihull: Helion & Co., 2015).

Radden Keefe, Patrick, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (London: William Collins, 2019), p. 44.

Deepening Deadlock

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Living in the Middle of It

Corbett, p. 241.

Routines of Murder

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A New Year

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Bloody Sunday

Kelly, Henry, How Stormont Fell (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 119.

Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c296.

Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c298.

Hansard HC Deb 31 January 1972 vol 830 c3233.

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Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c298.

Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c310.

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Britain Is Now the Problem

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Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c299.

Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c298.

Hansard HC Deb 01 February 1972 vol 830 c310311.

Kelly, p. 124.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 125.

Ibid., p. 126.

The Abercorn

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Adams, Gerry, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1996), p. 188.

ODoherty, Malachi, The Telling Year (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2007), p. 114.

Ibid.

London Takes Control

National Archives, Kew, Thursday 3 February 1972, Document reference: CAB 128/48, Cabinet Minutes Confidential Annex.

Kelly, Gerry, Playing My Part (G & M Publications, 2019), p. 42.

Dublins Pitch for Unity

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The Building Backlash

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Hansard HC Deb 28 March 1972 vol 834 c239.

ODoherty, p. 132.

Hunger Strikes

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Negotiations for a Ceasefire

National Archives, Kew, Wednesday 21 June 1972, Document reference: PREM 15/1009, Note of a Meeting with Representatives of the Provisional IRA.

Hansard HC Deb 22 June 1972 vol 839 c725.

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Bloody Friday

Hansard HC Deb 24 July vol 841 c1326.

Hansard HC Deb 24 July vol 841 c1327.

Motorman

Beaves, Harry, Down Among the Weeds (Kibworth Beauchamp: Matador, 2018), pp. 6971.

National Archives, Kew, Wednesday 26 July 1972, Document reference: PREM 15/1011 Annex A to CGS/828, Northern Ireland: Draft Rules of Engagement.

Sir Harry Tuzos report is in the National Archives at Kew.

Beaves, p. 75.

I would like to thank the many people who helped me with this book. Some of them were former paramilitaries who spoke frankly about their past and about the evolution of their thinking since the days they terrorised the people of Northern Ireland. They are named throughout the book so no list is needed here.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable resource of the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet) website at the University of Ulster and the records of the National Archives of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

I received permission from Jean Bleakney to quote from her poem The Sunday After Bloody Sunday from her collection No Remedy and from the family of Seamus Heaney and Faber and Faber to quote from Heaneys Bloody Sunday song.

The book was started at a time when I was receiving funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland through a Major Artist Award.

Most of it was written during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown which brought its advantages and hindrances, providing peace and quiet for a writer but complicating access to interviewees.

Thanks for support go also to my agent, Lisa Moylett, and, more than anyone, to my wife Maureen Boyle.

Since the completion of the book an inquest into ten killings by soldiers in the Ballymurphy estate, in one of the bloodiest periods in Northern Ireland, just after the introduction of internment, determined that all ten victims were innocent.

A trial of two soldiers for the alleged murder of Joe McCann was dismissed by the judge.

British Army troops in Belfast (Rolls Press/Popperfoto); Children playing in the streets, Belfast (Alain Le Garsmeur The Troubles Archive/Alamy Stock Photo); Members of the UDA in Belfast (David Lomax/Hulton Archive/Getty Images); IRA gunmen in Derry (Leif Skoogfors/Corbis Historical/Getty Images); Brian Faulkner and Edward Heath ( Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS.com/Mary Evans); Jack Lynch (Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images); Reginald Maudling (Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images); Peter Sellers and Swami Vishnu meet Irene Gallagher (Mirrorpix/Getty Images); Lieutenant General Sir Harry Tuzo (PA/Alamy Stock Photo); Wounded man carried away by friends on Bloody Sunday (William L. Rukeyser/Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Protesters are rounded up by British troops on Bloody Sunday (William L. Rukeyser/Hulton Archive/Getty Images); IRA men who escaped from the prison ship HMS Maidstone give a press conference (PA/Alamy Stock Photo); Gerry Adams (PA/Alamy Stock Photo); Ruairi O Bradaigh (John Walters/ANL/Shutterstock); Bernadette Devlin (Michel Laurent/AP/Shutterstock); Gerry Fitt (Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images); Ian Paisley (Heinz Ducklau/AP/Shutterstock); John Hume (Mirrorpix/Getty Images); Bloody Friday, 21 July 1972 (Mirrorpix/Getty Images); Julie Cockburn (Roger ODoherty). All other photographs are taken by the author.

Abercorn Restaurant bombing,

Adams, Gerry,

Adams, Margaret,

Agnew, Sydney,

Amnesty International,

Anderson, Gerry,

Anderson, Robert,

Andrews, Alexander,

Andrews, David,

Andrews, Tommy,

AngloIrish Treaty (1921),

Arbuckle, Victor,

Armagh Prison,

Armstrong, Ian,

Arthurs, Francis,

Assembly of the Northern Irish People,

Atwell, William,

Ballymurphy,

Ballymurphy Massacre,

Balmoral Furniture Company bombing,