The Falls Curfew, also known as the Lower Falls Curfew or sometimes as the "Rape of the Lower Falls", was a British Army operation on the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland between 3 July and 5 July 1970. The operation started with an arms search but developed into three days of rioting and gun battles between British troops and Irish republican paramilitaries. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ... The Falls Road (Bóthar na bhFál in Irish, meaning road of the hedgerows) is the main road through West Belfast in Northern Ireland; from Divis Street and Castle Place in Belfast City Centre to Andersonstown in the suburbs. ... WGS-84 (GPS) Coordinates: 54. ... Anthem: UK: God Save the Queen Regional: (de facto) Londonderry Air Capital Belfast Largest city Belfast Official languages English (de facto), Irish, Ulster Scots 3, BSL, NISL, ISL Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Ian Paisley  - Deputy First Minister... July 3 is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 181 days remaining. ... July 5 is the 186th day of the year (187th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 179 days remaining. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday. ...

Arms search

A week before the Falls curfew, on Saturday June 27, Belfast experienced severe rioting after an Orange Order parade in the north of the city. During the disturbances, the Provisional Irish Republican Army shot dead seven Protestants in gun battles in the Ardoyne and Short Strand areas. In response, the following weekend, the British government sent troops from the Black Watch and Life Guards regiments, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Freeland into the predominantly Catholic Falls Road area of Belfast to recover paramilitary weapons. An informer had tipped them off that they would find an arms dump belonging to the Official IRA in a house in Balkans Street in the Lower Falls, an area which was dominated at that time by the Official IRA. The troops accordingly found 19 weapons at this location. Jim Sullivan, the local OIRA commander instructed his men not to attack the British troops, for fear that the rest of their weapons would be discovered and seized. However, the rival Provisional IRA did attack the British troops with improvised hand grenades. In response the British announced a curfew and flooded the area with up to 3,000 soldiers, supported by armoured vehicles and helicopters. June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... The Orange Order is a Protestant fraternal organisation largely based in the province of Northern Ireland and in western Scotland but which has a worldwide membership. ... Provisional Irish Republican Army (Irish name: Óglaigh na hÉireann) (PIRA; more commonly referred to as the IRA, the Provos, or by some of its supporters as the Army or the RA) is an Irish Republican left-wing paramilitary organisation that, until the Belfast Agreement, sought to end Northern Ireland... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Short Strand is an area in eastern inner-city Belfast, in Northern Ireland. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The Life Guards is the senior regiment of the British Army. ... The term Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA refers to one of the two organisations - the other being the Provisional Irish Republican Army - that emerged from the split in the then Irish Republican Army in 1969-70. ... James Sullivan was the Democratic opponent of U.S. Representative Rob Simmons in 2004. ... A curfew can be one of the following: An order by the government or by the childs parents for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time. ...

Gun battles and rioting

According to an Official IRA source quoted by journalists Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, the local OIRA leadership reluctantly decided to take on the British troops once the scale of their incursion became clear, 'The way we looked at it, we were not going to put up our hands and let them take the weaponry. We didn't want the confrontation, but we couldn't surender'^[1]

On the morning of June 4, when the British troops entered the area, they were met with rioting and a sustained barrage of rifle and automatic fire from Official IRA members. At this point, Freeland, the British commander, ordered all the area's residents to stay indoors and had his soldiers conduct a house to house search for arms. Troops cordoned off the area, comprising of around fifty streets, with barbed wire and helicopters equipped with loudpeakers hovered overhead, ordering the residents to stay indoors.

Over the next two days, there were continuous riots and gun battles in the area. Approximately 80-90 Official IRA members (volunteers) exchanged fire with the British troops, who fired in excess of 1,500 rounds. Hundreds of local youths also pelted the troops with stones and petrol bombs. Four civilians were shot dead in the firing and another was killed after being run over by a British Saracen armoured car. Another 60 civilians suffered gun shot wounds, as did 15 soldiers. About 300 people were also arrested in the fighting. Volunteer, often abbreviated Vol. ... Molotov cocktail is the generic name for a variety of crude incendiary weapons. ... The FV 603 Saracen was a six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier built by Alvis and used by the British army that became a recognisable vehicle as a result of its part in the policing of Northern Ireland. ... Military armored cars A French VBL reconnaissance vehicle. ...

Under the cover of CS gas (1,600 canisters of which were fired by the British troops), the Army conducted an aggressive search for weapons. CS or 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (also called O-Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile)(chemical formula: C10H5ClN2) is a substance that is used as a riot control agent and is usually claimed to be non-lethal by the forces who use it. ...

Journalist Peter Taylor describes the effect of the CS gas on the densely populated area; 'The clouds of choking and suffocating gas drifted up the narrow alleyways and back streets of the warren that is the Lower Falls. The gas got everywhere, in through windows, under doors and into the residents' eyes, noses, throats and lungs. ^[2] A British soldier later interviewed by Taylor recalled; 'the place was still saturated with CS gas. Children were coughing, I remember. I'm talking now about the toddlers, kids of three, four, five. It affected everyone but children especially'.^[3]

Houses were broken into and in some cases ransacked in the search for arms. According to Mallie and Bishop's account, 'the soldiers behaved with a new harshness () axeing down doors, ripping up floorboards, disembowelling chairs, sofas, beds, and smashing the garish plaster statues of the Madonna, the Infant of Prague and Saint Bernadette which adorned the tiny front parlours' ^[4]. By the time the search was over, the troops had captured 35 rifles, 6 machine guns, 14 shotguns, 100 home made grenades, 250 pounds of explosives, 21,000 rounds of ammunition and 8 two way radio sets. Almost all of this material belonged to the Official IRA ^[5]. Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (c. ... Infant Jesus of Prague Infant Jesus of Prague (Pražské Jezulátko in Czech) is a famous statue of infant Jesus located in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Strana, Prague. ... Bernadette Soubirous (January 7, 1844–April 16, 1879) was a visionary from the town of Lourdes in southern France. ...

The fighting spread to the rest of Belfast and there were shooting incidents and rioting in Ardoyne, the upper Falls, the Short Strand and Ballymurphy. The curfew in the Lower Falls was broken early in the morning on Sunday 5 July, when over 1,000 women from the Andersonstown area marched on the Lower Falls with food and other groceries for the people there. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Short Strand is an area in eastern inner-city Belfast, in Northern Ireland. ... Ballymurphy is a large housing estate in west Belfast. ... July 5 is the 186th day of the year (187th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 179 days remaining. ... Andersonstown is a large suburb in west Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. ...

It was later reported that while the Lower Falls was under curfew and the streets emptied of people, the British Army had driven two Unionist ministers, John Brooke and William Long through the area in armoured vehicles. This enraged nationalists in Northern Ireland, who perceived the gesture a symbol of unionist triumphalism over an area cowed by British military force. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP, sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist Party or OUP or, in a historic sense, simply the Unionist Party ) is a moderate unionist political party in Northern Ireland, which formed its government between 1921 and 1972 and was supported by most unionists throughout the Troubles. ... John Warden Brooke, 2nd Viscount Brookeborough, PC (November 9, 1922 – March 5, 1987) was an Ulster Unionist politician, the son of the Northern Irish UUP leader the 1st Viscount Brookeborough, who succeeded his father as Stormont MP for Lisnaskea in 1968. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Supremacism. ...

Results

The Falls Curfew had two major results. The first was that it deeply alienated Belfast's catholic Irish nationalist population from the British Army. Historian Richard English suggests that the Falls Curfew was, 'arguably decisive in terms of worsening the relationship between the British Army and the Catholic working class'^[6] Previously, many of them had seen the Army as a neutral force, in the city to keep order between Catholics and Protestants. However, the events of the Falls Curfew gave credence to the Irish Republican argument that the British Army was a hostile colonial army of occupation. According to Gerry Adams, "Thousands of people who had never been republicans now gave their active support to the IRA; others, who had never had any time for physical force now regarded it as a practical necessity".^[7] An Irish nationalist is generally one who seeks (greater) independence of Ireland from Great Britain, including since 1921 the goal of a United Ireland. ... Richard English is a historian from Northern Ireland. ... Fianna Fáil - The Republican Party (Pronounced fee-na fall.) (English: Soldiers of Destiny) is the largest political party in the Republic of Ireland. ... Gerard Adams (Irish Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh[1]; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish Republican politician and abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. ...

The second main consequence of the incident was a deepening of the enmity between the two factions of the Irish Republican Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, who had parted ways the previous December. The Officials blamed the Provisionals for starting the confrontation with British troops and then leaving them to fight alone against overwhelming odds, resulting in the loss of much of their weaponry. Over the following year, the two factions carried out many shootings and beatings of each other's members. A truce was eventually agreed between them to prevent further bloodshed after the OIRA assassinated a young Provisional named Charlie Hughes. Hughes was the commander of the Provisional's unit in the Lower Falls and had taken part in some of the fighting during the Falls Curfew.

Sources

• Richard English, Armed Struggle - A History of the IRA, MacMillan, London 2003, ISBN 1-4050-0108-9
• Peter Taylor, Provos - the IRA and Sinn Féin
• Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA, Penguin, London 2002,
• Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA, Corgi, London 1988. ISBN 0-552-13337-X
• [CAIN chronology for 1970 [1]
• People's Democracy pamphlet on the incident [2]

Peoples Democracy was a political organisation that, while supporting the campaign for civil rights for Northern Irelands Catholic minority stated that such rights could only be achieved through the establishment of a socialist republic in all of Ireland. ... Peter Taylor is a British journalist and documentary maker who has covered the Troubles in Northern Ireland for many years. ... Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is an independent, London-based publishing house known for literary novels. ...

External links

• Article by republican Danny Morrison, comparing the Falls Curfew with the Siege of Falluja in 2004. http://dannymorrison.ie/articles/fallstofalluja.php
• Republican propaganda footage of the Falls Curfew on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3eSowF1eFI