Qualla: Battle of the Bogside https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of the Bogside https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside Battle of the Bogside: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Adreanna Robson, CC BY 3.0. By 14 August 1969 the Royal Ulster Constabulary was sleeping in doorways. Almost the entire Bogside had been mobilised against them. A radio transmitter was broadcasting calls to resistance. Petrol bomb workshops were producing crates of bottles. Volunteer first aid posts were treating tear gas victims. The slogan You Are Now Entering Free Derry, painted on a gable wall on Lecky Road in January by a local activist named John Casey, had become a literal political fact. After two days of continuous fighting the police, drafted in from across Northern Ireland, were exhausted. At about five o'clock that afternoon the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland did something no prime minister of Northern Ireland had ever done: he asked Britain to send the army. By evening soldiers of the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire were on Derry's streets. The Battle of the Bogside was over. The Troubles had begun.

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Image: Adreanna Robson | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of the Bogside: How Derry Was Built to Riot https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Jimmy Harris, CC BY 2.0. To understand the Battle, you have to understand the city it happened in. Derry was, after partition in 1921, a majority Catholic city under permanent Protestant political rule, achieved through a careful piece of cartographic engineering. Electoral wards were redrawn so that Cat...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-how-derry-was-built-to-riot.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of the Bogside: Marches, Batons, and Free Derry https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. In March 1968 Eamonn McCann and a few activists founded the Derry Housing Action Committee. By October a civil rights march through Derry's centre, organised in defiance of a government ban, was baton-charged by the RUC. The Westminster MP Gerry Fitt, his head and shirt covered i...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-marches-batons-and-free-derry.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of the Bogside: The Apprentice Boys March https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Jimmy Harris, CC BY 2.0. The Apprentice Boys of Derry march every 12 August to commemorate the relief of the Siege of Derry in 1689. Their route does not pass through the Bogside, but it passes the junction of Waterloo Place and William Street at the Bogside's edge. In 1969 some loyalists on the city wal...

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Image: Jimmy Harris | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-the-apprentice-boys-march.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of the Bogside: Three Days, Three Nights https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. What followed was a riot organised like a small war. Bernadette Devlin, the twenty-two-year-old MP for Mid Ulster and the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster, walked the barricades urging people to fight. The Derry Citizens' Defence Association coordinated supplies of ston...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-three-days-three-nights.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of the Bogside: Five O'Clock on the Fourteenth https://qualla.com/battle-of-the-bogside/ Photo credit Jimmy Harris, CC BY 2.0. At five o'clock on the afternoon of 14 August, soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire moved into position on Derry's streets. They had been on standby at HMS Sea Eagle, the naval base nearby. They took over from the RUC. Bogside residents...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/b/battle-of-the-bogside-wp/gcfb-battle-of-the-bogside-five-oclock-on-the-fourteenth.mp3 0:06 6 full