Geist
09-05-2006, 06:19 PM
Some videos for those who have never seen it before. Now a lot of people assume that in videos such as these it is the IRA who are fighting, but the OIRA were by this stage more or less defunct, and the PIRA had not formed as such. It is said the people of Derry had three guns to fight with, two of which didnt work!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ciRjfJNBac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEgZ8ULgcho&mode=related&search=
BBC and in colour, good images on the Army being called in.)
This battle has always fascinated me, and I believe it will mark in the annals of Irish history as an important event right up there with the Easter Rising. I have always found much of the hardline Republicanism associated now with the IRA, SF etc. repugnant, and perhaps the attraction of the Battle of the Bogside is that it was the normal people of Derry who said enough is enough. Most of the stories I have read of it state that even the most moderate of Catholics, businessmen, teachers, and so on, who never got involved felt a need to defend the area that week.
There are two famous murals associated with the Battle. The first is this rather fancy one:
http://irelandsown.net/BogsideMural.jpg
but I admit I am more than partial to this defiant set of words:
http://irelandsown.net/derryb.gif
Derry has always been something of a no-go area for the RUC, and I am surprised they thought they could so openly supress an area knowing that any intrusion would be considered an invasion, and not just a routine some kids might riot scenerio.
from wiki:
The Battle of the Bogside was a battle in a rhetorical sense. In reality, it was a very large communal riot between the mostly unarmed residents of the Bogside area of Derry city in Northern Ireland and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In this sense it is similar to the Battle of Cable Street.
The Battle took place in Derry, Northern Ireland, 12 August-14 August 1969, after the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) attempted to force a loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry parade through a nationalist area of the city. The inhabitants declared the area "Free Derry" after the police had been successfully repulsed.
Tensions in the city were high after a local man, Samuel Devenny, had died the previous month from injuries received in a beating he took from the RUC in his home in April. His teenage daughters had also been beaten in the attack. On the 12th of August, clashes occurred as the Apprentice Boys parade approached the Bogside. The police, assisted by a loyalist mob, forced the nationalists deeper into the area, at which point the rioting escalated. Large crowds turned out and pelted the police and the mob with stones and petrol bombs, and set up barricades to block their progress. The loyalists went home soon after this development, leaving the RUC to try to bring the area back under control.
After two days of almost continuous rioting, during which police were drafted in from all over Northern Ireland, the police were exhausted, and snatching sleep in doorways whenever the opportunity allowed. Although the local police had been heavily augmented by men from other areas, on the afternoon of the 14th, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester-Clarke, took the unprecedented step of requesting the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for troops to be sent to Derry. Soon afterwards a company of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment relieved the police. This marked the first direct intervention of the London government in Ireland since partition. The British troops were at first welcomed by the Bogside residents as a neutral force compared to the RUC. This good relationship did not last long however, as the Troubles escalated.
A call by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association for people to stretch police resources to aid the Bogsiders led to rioting in Belfast, which left five Catholics and a Protestant dead. That same night (the 14th) a loyalist mob burned all of the Catholic homes on Bombay Street.
The documentary "Battle of the Bogside", produced and directed by Vinny Cunningham and written by John Peto, won "Best Documentary" at the Irish Film and Television Awards in October 2004.
Perhaps it doesn't quite rate with Waterloo, Gettysburg or the Bulge, but the Battle of the Bogside, which erupted in Derry 35 years ago this week, will forever stand out in the history of Ireland as a moment when people who felt betrayed, oppressed and thoroughly frustrated drew their line in the asphalt and said “enough.”Battle of the Bogside Mural
Much of the world was in flames in that summer of '69. Derry, a big town or a small city, was having to compete for attention with far more bloody urban clashes in other countries and continents, the U.S. included.
But what Ireland lacked in geographic scale, it more than made up for in historical depth.
Those journalists that turned up in the North in the early days of the civil rights marches found themselves immersed in an historical conflict that had simmered since the days of pikes and muskets.
What transpired in Derry in those August days of 1969 laid bare to the world a society that has been constructed and maintained on a policy of discrimination based not on race, but on national loyalties and religious affiliation.
Those divisions, and the policies shoring them up, were never more evident than when marching groups walked along “traditional” parade routes while sticking it to residents who did not want the marches to take place.
In Derry, the marchers of August were Protestant and unionist. The uneasy residents were their neighbors, the city's Catholic, nationalist and republican inhabitants.
The Battle of the Bogside was ignited by something long familiar to Derry people: the annual Apprentice Boys march, which took place on Aug. 12 that year. As the march reached Waterloo Place, nationalists staged a protest against what they saw as yet another set piece expression of Protestant triumphalism. The confrontation would not, however, simply end with tunes and slogans. Very quickly, running street skirmishes developed between young Catholics and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Barricades sprang up all over the Bogside district and what followed was a battle by any definition. In a 36-hour period, hundreds of petrol bombs, bricks and other assorted missiles were directed at police, who fired back, primarily with gas.
Such was the intensity of the clashes that the British government rushed in troops. The soldiers were initially welcomed by Bogsiders, but the initial bonhomie was not to last.
The world was waking up to yet another conflict. Within the Bogside area itself, people gleaned information not just from mainstream media, but also by a local Samizdat that included the “Barricade Bulletin.” Bulletin No. 2, dated Aug. 14, would announce a “great defeat” for the unionist government in far away Belfast. But it added a cautionary note: “We do not yet know whether it is a victory for us.”
The argument over victory or defeat would repeatedly surface in Northern Ireland in the years that followed. It would hover over marches, demonstrations and even funeral processions. The argument would makes headlines anew in other places such as the Garvaghy Road and in Ardoyne. But it would never be quite resolved. The matter of who wins and loses in Northern Ireland has always been impossible to fully nail down."You are now entering Free Derry"
The real battle has been to work out a process by which everyone comes out ahead. And that one continues to smolder. But the Battle of the Bogside, the clash that gave birth to “Free Derry” and riveting pictures that were beamed around the world, has to be seen now as an enormously significant turning point. It was a battle waged not by terrorists, but by citizens, old and young.
In the years that followed, many heads would hang with shame at the brutalities that were to become all too familiar during the Troubles. But veterans of August '69 in Derry, to this day, find little trouble in recalling with some pride that they stood up to an unjust state apparatus and proclaimed a new and long-delayed freedom, if only for a handful of streets in a town that had been weighed down for too long by the failures of a troubled past.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-1.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-3.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-4.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-5.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-10.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-13.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-14.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-17.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-19.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-21.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-22.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-24.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-27.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-28.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-32.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-34.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-48.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-46.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ciRjfJNBac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEgZ8ULgcho&mode=related&search=
BBC and in colour, good images on the Army being called in.)
This battle has always fascinated me, and I believe it will mark in the annals of Irish history as an important event right up there with the Easter Rising. I have always found much of the hardline Republicanism associated now with the IRA, SF etc. repugnant, and perhaps the attraction of the Battle of the Bogside is that it was the normal people of Derry who said enough is enough. Most of the stories I have read of it state that even the most moderate of Catholics, businessmen, teachers, and so on, who never got involved felt a need to defend the area that week.
There are two famous murals associated with the Battle. The first is this rather fancy one:
http://irelandsown.net/BogsideMural.jpg
but I admit I am more than partial to this defiant set of words:
http://irelandsown.net/derryb.gif
Derry has always been something of a no-go area for the RUC, and I am surprised they thought they could so openly supress an area knowing that any intrusion would be considered an invasion, and not just a routine some kids might riot scenerio.
from wiki:
The Battle of the Bogside was a battle in a rhetorical sense. In reality, it was a very large communal riot between the mostly unarmed residents of the Bogside area of Derry city in Northern Ireland and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In this sense it is similar to the Battle of Cable Street.
The Battle took place in Derry, Northern Ireland, 12 August-14 August 1969, after the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) attempted to force a loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry parade through a nationalist area of the city. The inhabitants declared the area "Free Derry" after the police had been successfully repulsed.
Tensions in the city were high after a local man, Samuel Devenny, had died the previous month from injuries received in a beating he took from the RUC in his home in April. His teenage daughters had also been beaten in the attack. On the 12th of August, clashes occurred as the Apprentice Boys parade approached the Bogside. The police, assisted by a loyalist mob, forced the nationalists deeper into the area, at which point the rioting escalated. Large crowds turned out and pelted the police and the mob with stones and petrol bombs, and set up barricades to block their progress. The loyalists went home soon after this development, leaving the RUC to try to bring the area back under control.
After two days of almost continuous rioting, during which police were drafted in from all over Northern Ireland, the police were exhausted, and snatching sleep in doorways whenever the opportunity allowed. Although the local police had been heavily augmented by men from other areas, on the afternoon of the 14th, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester-Clarke, took the unprecedented step of requesting the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for troops to be sent to Derry. Soon afterwards a company of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment relieved the police. This marked the first direct intervention of the London government in Ireland since partition. The British troops were at first welcomed by the Bogside residents as a neutral force compared to the RUC. This good relationship did not last long however, as the Troubles escalated.
A call by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association for people to stretch police resources to aid the Bogsiders led to rioting in Belfast, which left five Catholics and a Protestant dead. That same night (the 14th) a loyalist mob burned all of the Catholic homes on Bombay Street.
The documentary "Battle of the Bogside", produced and directed by Vinny Cunningham and written by John Peto, won "Best Documentary" at the Irish Film and Television Awards in October 2004.
Perhaps it doesn't quite rate with Waterloo, Gettysburg or the Bulge, but the Battle of the Bogside, which erupted in Derry 35 years ago this week, will forever stand out in the history of Ireland as a moment when people who felt betrayed, oppressed and thoroughly frustrated drew their line in the asphalt and said “enough.”Battle of the Bogside Mural
Much of the world was in flames in that summer of '69. Derry, a big town or a small city, was having to compete for attention with far more bloody urban clashes in other countries and continents, the U.S. included.
But what Ireland lacked in geographic scale, it more than made up for in historical depth.
Those journalists that turned up in the North in the early days of the civil rights marches found themselves immersed in an historical conflict that had simmered since the days of pikes and muskets.
What transpired in Derry in those August days of 1969 laid bare to the world a society that has been constructed and maintained on a policy of discrimination based not on race, but on national loyalties and religious affiliation.
Those divisions, and the policies shoring them up, were never more evident than when marching groups walked along “traditional” parade routes while sticking it to residents who did not want the marches to take place.
In Derry, the marchers of August were Protestant and unionist. The uneasy residents were their neighbors, the city's Catholic, nationalist and republican inhabitants.
The Battle of the Bogside was ignited by something long familiar to Derry people: the annual Apprentice Boys march, which took place on Aug. 12 that year. As the march reached Waterloo Place, nationalists staged a protest against what they saw as yet another set piece expression of Protestant triumphalism. The confrontation would not, however, simply end with tunes and slogans. Very quickly, running street skirmishes developed between young Catholics and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Barricades sprang up all over the Bogside district and what followed was a battle by any definition. In a 36-hour period, hundreds of petrol bombs, bricks and other assorted missiles were directed at police, who fired back, primarily with gas.
Such was the intensity of the clashes that the British government rushed in troops. The soldiers were initially welcomed by Bogsiders, but the initial bonhomie was not to last.
The world was waking up to yet another conflict. Within the Bogside area itself, people gleaned information not just from mainstream media, but also by a local Samizdat that included the “Barricade Bulletin.” Bulletin No. 2, dated Aug. 14, would announce a “great defeat” for the unionist government in far away Belfast. But it added a cautionary note: “We do not yet know whether it is a victory for us.”
The argument over victory or defeat would repeatedly surface in Northern Ireland in the years that followed. It would hover over marches, demonstrations and even funeral processions. The argument would makes headlines anew in other places such as the Garvaghy Road and in Ardoyne. But it would never be quite resolved. The matter of who wins and loses in Northern Ireland has always been impossible to fully nail down."You are now entering Free Derry"
The real battle has been to work out a process by which everyone comes out ahead. And that one continues to smolder. But the Battle of the Bogside, the clash that gave birth to “Free Derry” and riveting pictures that were beamed around the world, has to be seen now as an enormously significant turning point. It was a battle waged not by terrorists, but by citizens, old and young.
In the years that followed, many heads would hang with shame at the brutalities that were to become all too familiar during the Troubles. But veterans of August '69 in Derry, to this day, find little trouble in recalling with some pride that they stood up to an unjust state apparatus and proclaimed a new and long-delayed freedom, if only for a handful of streets in a town that had been weighed down for too long by the failures of a troubled past.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-1.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-3.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-4.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-5.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-10.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-13.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-14.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-17.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-19.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-21.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-22.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-24.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-27.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-28.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-32.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-34.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-48.jpg
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/battlebogside/battleofbogside/bob-46.jpg