Qualla: 1969 Northern Ireland riots

1969 Northern Ireland riots: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. On the morning of 15 August 1969, a fifteen-year-old named Gerald McAuley was running through the streets of west Belfast trying to help families on Bombay Street load whatever they could carry into vans before the loyalist mob came back. A loyalist sniper shot him dead. He was a member of the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA, but he was also a child. By the time British troops moved onto the Falls Road that evening, almost every house on Bombay Street had been burned, nearly fifteen hundred Catholic families had been driven from their homes in Belfast alone, and Northern Ireland had crossed a line it could not uncross. The five days from 12 to 16 August 1969 are usually called the beginning of the Troubles. They were also the beginning of three decades of grief.

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

1969 Northern Ireland riots: How the Heat Built

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1969 riots did not erupt from nothing. They were the explosion at the end of a long fuse lit by the civil rights movement of 1968, by gerrymandered electoral wards in Derry, by the systematic denial of public housing to Catholic families, and by a police force, the Royal Ulst...

Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0

1969 Northern Ireland riots: The Battle of the Bogside

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. In Derry, three days of clashes between the Bogside's Catholic residents and the RUC turned a working-class neighbourhood into a small free state. Residents built barricades, set up first aid posts, and made petrol bombs in workshops. The RUC fired CS gas at British civilians for...

Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

1969 Northern Ireland riots: Belfast Burns

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit geni, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Falls and the Shankill in west Belfast are separated by a few hundred metres of brick and a thin geography of hate. Beginning on the night of 14 August, loyalist crowds armed with bricks, sharpened poles, and petrol bombs moved down Dover and Percy Streets into Catholic homes...

Image: geni | CC BY-SA 4.0

1969 Northern Ireland riots: The Army Arrives

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. At about 6:30 pm on 15 August, soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Wales took up positions on the Falls Road. They were initially welcomed in Catholic areas as protection from the loyalist mobs and the RUC; Catholic women carried out tea and sandwiches to teenagers in uniform. The ...

Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

1969 Northern Ireland riots: What Came Next

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The riots split the IRA. In December 1969, men in Belfast led by Billy McKee and Joe Cahill broke from the Dublin leadership, accusing it of leaving Catholic areas defenceless. They formed the Provisional Irish Republican Army and promised never again. The loyalist Ulster Volunte...

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0