Find Out Who the Irish Republican Army Where and What They Fought For.

#Irishrepublicanarmy #RA #IRA 

History of the Irish Republican Army 🇮🇪

Formed: The original Irish Republican Army formed in 1917 from those Irish Volunteers who did not enlist in the British Army during World War I, members of the Irish Citizen Army and others. (See Below)

Aim:  Military Organisation Seeking the Establishment of a 32 County Irish Republic, and the Total End of British Rule in Ireland.

Irish Republican Army AKA The RA, The Army 🇮🇪

Ireland's Proud History of Revolution and Resistance

The People of Ireland 🇮🇪 come from a very Proud Tradition Stretching Back Thousands of Years ⚔️

From the Anglo Norman invasion up until today there have been many brave Warriors who have taken on Ireland's oldest enemy the British Empire, the first Irish warlords where called the Kern. Kerns notably accompanied bands of the mercenary gallowglasses as their light infantry forces, where the gallowglass filled the need for heavy infantry. This two-tier "army" structure though should not be taken to reflect earlier Irish armies prior to the Norman invasions, as there were more locally trained soldiers filling various roles prior to this. The gallowglass largely replaced the other forms of infantry though, as more Irish began to imitate them, creating gallowglass of purely Irish origin. The Clans of Ireland became accustomed to Warfare and developed a Warrior class called the Fianna.

Whiteboys

The Whiteboys (Irish: na Buachaillí Bána) were a secret Irish agrarian organisation in 18th-century Ireland which used violent tactics to defend tenant farmer land rights for subsistence farming. Their name derives from the white smocks the members wore in their nightly raids. The Whiteboys developed as a secret oath-bound society among the peasantry.  As they levelled the fences at night, they were usually referred to at the time as "Levellers" by the authorities, and by themselves as "Queen Sive Oultagh's children" ("Sive" or "Sieve Oultagh" being anglicised from the Irish Sadhbh Amhaltach, or Ghostly Sally),"fairies", or as followers of "Johanna Meskill" or "Sheila Meskill", all symbolic figures supposed to lead the movement. They sought to address rack-rents, tithe collection, excessive priests' dues, evictions and other oppressive acts. As a result, they targeted landlords and tithe collectors. Over time, Whiteboyism became a general term for rural violence connected to secret societies. Because of this generalisation, the historical record for the Whiteboys as a specific organisation is unclear. There were three major outbreaks of Whiteboyism: 1761–64; 1770–76; and 1784–86.

Society of United Irishmen

 The Society of United Irishmen, also simply known as the United Irishmen, were a sworn society in the Kingdom of Ireland formed in the wake of the French Revolution to secure "an equal representation of all the people" in a "national government." Despairing of constitutional reform, in 1798 the Society instigated a republican insurrection in defiance of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Protestant Ascendancy Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain. The Society of United Irishmen was formed in Belfast by a group of liberal minded Presbyterian merchants in 1791.  They hoped to bring about radical reform of the Irish Parliament.  Inspired by the revolutions in France and America, their ambition was to create a new democracy that included Irishmen of every class and religious persuasion - "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

In the north of Ireland, where the population was predominantly Presbyterian, the principles of the United Irishmen had considerable appeal as the Society’s ambitions reflected Presbyterian ethos.

Shortly after the formation of the Society, they began to publish their own popular newspaper, The Northern Star, which helped to spread their political manifesto throughout the country.  By 1796, the Government became concerned that the United Irishmen posed a dangerous threat. Membership became illegal.  In response, the Society formed a secret army and began to plot rebellion.

The ill-fated rebellion took place in May-June 1798.  It was swiftly crushed and the armies of the Society of United Irishmen were mercilessly defeated.

Defenders 

The Defenders were a Roman Catholic agrarian secret society in 18th-century Ireland, founded in County Armagh. Initially, they were formed as local defensive organisations opposed to the Protestant Peep o' Day Boys; however, by 1790 they had become a secret oath-bound fraternal society made up of lodges. By 1796, the Defenders had allied with the United Irishmen, and participated in the 1798 rebellion. By the 19th century, the organisation had developed into the Ribbonmen.

Ribbonmen

Ribbonism, whose supporters were usually called Ribbonmen, was a 19th-century popular movement of poor Catholics in Ireland. The movement was also known as Ribandism. The Ribbonmen were active against landlords and their agents, and opposed "Orangeism", the ideology of the Protestant Orange Order.

The Ribbon Society was principally an agrarian secret society, whose members consisted of rural Irish Catholics. The society was formed in response to the miserable conditions in which the vast majority of tenant farmers and rural workers lived in the early 19th century in Ireland. Its objective was to prevent landlords from changing or evicting their tenants. Ribbonmen also attacked tithe and process servers, and later evolved the policy of Tenants' Rights. The existence of "ribandmen" was recorded as early as 1817. The name is derived from a green ribbon worn as a badge in a button-hole by the members.

Ancient Order of Hibernians 

The Ancient Order of Hibernians is America’s oldest Irish Catholic Fraternal Organization founded concurrently in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania and New York City in May,1836.  The Order can trace its roots back to a series of similar societies that existed in Ireland for more than 300 years.  Today the AOH exists in America, Canada, Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland, however, while the organizations share a common thread, the American AOH is a separate and much larger organization.

The early Irish societies were born of a need in the mid-fifteen hundreds to protect the welfare of fellow Irish Catholics, and especially the clergy who risked immediate death to keep the Catholic Faith alive in occupied Ireland after the Penal Laws of 1691.  These various secret societies were formed across the country to aid and comfort their people by whatever means was available. Similarly, the AOH in America was founded at New York’s St. James Church on May 4,1836 by men emulating these Irish societies, to protect the clergy and churches from the violent American Nativists who attacked Irish Catholic immigrants and Church property.  At the same time the vast influx of Irish Immigrants fleeing Ireland’s Great Hunger in the late 1840’s, prompted a growth in many Irish societies in the USA – the largest of which was, and continues to be, the AOH.

Molly Maguires

The Molly Maguires were an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts, twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. This history remains part of local Pennsylvania lore. 

Fenian Brotherhood

The Fenian Brotherhood (Irish: Bráithreachas na bhFíníní) was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny.It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Gaelic scholar, named his organisation after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill. The word Fenian served as an umbrella term for the Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), secret political organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were active in Ireland, Britain, Canada and the United States.  

The Fenian dynamite campaign (or Fenian bombing campaign) was a bombing campaign orchestrated by Irish Republicans against the British Empire, between the years 1881 and 1885. The campaign was associated with Fenianism; that is to say the Irish revolutionary organisations which aimed to establish an independent Irish Republic; such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenian Brotherhood, Clan na Gael and the United Irishmen of America. The campaign, led by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa and other Irishmen exiled in the United States, was a form of asymmetrical warfare and targeted infrastructure, government, military and police targets in Great Britain (particularly London). Over 80 people were injured in the attacks as well as three of the bombers in the 1884 attack on London Bridge. The campaign led to the establishment of secret police group Special Branch (originally known as the Special Irish Branch). 

Clan na Gael

The Clan na Gael (Clann na nGael, family of the Gaels) was an Irish republican organization in the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, successor to the Fenian Brotherhood and a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. It still exists. As Irish immigration to the United States of America began to increase in the 18th century many Irish organizations were formed. One of the earliest was formed under the name of the Irish Charitable Society and was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1737. These new organizations went by varying names, most notably the Ancient and Most Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of Saint Patrick, founded in New York in 1767, the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick for the Relief of Emigrants in Philadelphia in 1771, and the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick also formed in New York in 1784.

In the later part of the 1780s, a strong Irish patriot (rather than Catholic) character began to grow in these organizations and amongst recently arrived Irish immigrants. The usage of Celtic symbolism helped solidify this sense of nationalism and was most noticeably found in the use of the name "Hibernian." (Hibernia is the Latin name for Ireland.)

Irish Republican Brotherhood

The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB; Irish: Bráithreachas Phoblacht na hÉireann) was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924. Its counterpart in the United States of America was initially the Fenian Brotherhood, but from the 1870s it was Clan na Gael. The members of both wings of the movement are often referred to as "Fenians". The IRB played an important role in the history of Ireland, as the chief advocate of republicanism during the campaign for Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom, successor to movements such as the United Irishmen of the 1790s and the Young Irelanders of the 1840s.

As part of the New Departure of the 1870s–80s, IRB members attempted to democratise the Home Rule League. and its successor, the Irish Parliamentary Party, as well as taking part in the Land War. The IRB staged the Easter Rising in 1916, which led to the establishment of the first Dáil Éireann in 1919. The suppression of Dáil Éireann precipitated the Irish War of Independence and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Irish Free State, which excluded the Colonialist Occupied territory of Northern Ireland.

Irish Volunteers

The Irish Volunteers (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann), sometimes called the Irish Volunteer Force or Irish Volunteer Army, was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland". The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Increasing rapidly to a strength of nearly 200,000 by mid-1914, it split in September of that year over Traitor John Redmond's commitment to the British War effort, with the smaller group retaining the name of "Irish Volunteers". 

Irish Citizen Army

The Irish Citizen Army (Irish: Arm Cathartha na hÉireann), or ICA, was a small paramilitary group of trained trade union volunteers from the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) established in Dublin for the defence of workers' demonstrations from the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It was formed by James Larkin, James Connolly and Jack White on 23 November 1913. Other prominent members included Seán O'Casey, Constance Markievicz, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, P. T. Daly and Kit Poole. In 1916, it took part in the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection aimed at ending British rule in Ireland. Despite the relatively small size of the army, it was more organised than the larger Irish Volunteers, with its members receiving superior training and being less affected by factional and ideological division. The ICA became involved in the War of Independence, taking responsibility for parts of Dublin and aiding the Irish Republican Army in various operations. 

Na Fianna Éireann

Na Fianna Éireann (The Fianna of Ireland), known as the Fianna, is an Irish nationalist youth organisation founded by Constance Markievicz in 1909, with later help from Bulmer Hobson. Fianna members were involved in setting up the Irish Volunteers, and had their own circle of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). They took part in the 1914 Howth gun-running and (as Volunteer members) in the 1916 Easter Rising. They were active in the War of Independence and many took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, when the next conflict began in the North in 1969 the Fianna began another campaign alongside the Irish Republican Army and where instrumental in the new war with the Brits and it's proxies, Members of Na Fianna would have acted as scouts for I.R.A. Operations including scouting for ambushes, assisting sniping teams and helping the Irish Republican Army move weapons/explosives and volunteers through enemy territory safely. Once Fians came of age they would be absorbed into the main army structure. 

Cumann na mBan

Cumann na mBan literally "The Women's Council" but calling themselves The Irishwomen's Council in English), abbreviated C na mB, is an Irish republican women's military organisation formed in Dublin on 2 April 1914, merging with and dissolving Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and in 1916, it became an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers. Although it was otherwise an independent organisation, its executive was subordinate to that of the Irish Volunteers, and later, the Irish Republican Army.

They were active in the War of Independence and took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War. Cumann na mBan were declared an illegal organisation by the government of the Irish Free State in 1923. During the splits in the Republican movement of the later part of the 20th century, Fianna Éireann and Cumann na mBan supported Provisional Sinn Féin in 1969. Women have always played a very prominent role in the Struggle for Ireland's Freedom and held leadership positions in all areas/departments of the Republican Movement including the Front Line of the Armed Struggle.

Irish: (Óglaigh na hÉireann) In Irish law, the IRA was the Army of the Irish Republic.

• The Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), recognised by the First Dáil as the legitimate army of the Irish Republic in April 1921 and fought the Irish War of Independence and Defeated The Might of the British Empire! On ratification by the Dáil of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, it split into pro-Treaty forces (the National Army ,Free Staters/Traitors), also known as the Government forces or the Regulars) and anti-Treaty forces (the Republicans, Irregulars or Executive Forces or Simply the True I.R.A.) after the Treaty. These two went on to fight the Irish Civil War 1922-23.

• The Irish Republican Army (1922–1969), the anti-treaty IRA which fought and lost the civil war and which thereafter refused to recognise either the Irish Free State or Northern Ireland, deeming them both to be creations of British imperialism. It existed in one form or another for over 40 years before splitting in 1969.

• The Official IRA (OIRA), the remainder of the IRA after the 1969 split with the Provisionals; was primarily Marxist in its political orientation. It is now inactive in the military sense, while its political wing, Official Sinn Féin, became the Workers' Party of Ireland. After the Official IRA's 1972 ceasefire, it and Official Sinn Féin suffered a split in 1974 leading to the formation of the far left Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and Irish Republican Socialist Party, led by Seamus Costello (later assassinated by the Official IRA during a bloody feud).  

• The Provisional IRA (PIRA/Provos/Provies) broke from the OIRA in 1969 over abstentionism and how to deal with the increasing State Sponsored violence of the Colonial Orange State in Occupied North of Ireland. Although opposed to the OIRA's inactivity, began a Very Successful Campaign of Guerrilla Warfare Against the British Empire and it's Colonial State (Northern Ireland) and increased Political Activity, the Armalite and Ballot Box Strategy. The Irish Republican Army was a Secret Under Ground Army and the Greatest Global Insurgent Group of the 20th Century!

• The Colonial Orange State is Gone and a Thirty Two County 3️⃣2️⃣🇮🇪 United Irish Republic will soon be a Reality!

Notable Operations

Bloody Sunday

  21 November 1920 

Description

The Cairo Gang was a group of British intelligence agents who were sent to Dublin during the Irish War of Independence to conduct intelligence operations against prominent members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – according to Irish intelligence with the intention of assassinating them. Twelve men including British Army officers, Royal Irish Constabulary officers and a civilian informant were assassinated on the morning of 21 November 1920 by the Irish Republican Army in a planned series of pre-emptive simultaneous early-morning surgical strikes engineered by Michael Collins. The events were the first killings of Bloody Sunday 21 November 1920. 

Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. More than 30 people were killed or fatally wounded.

The day began with an Irish Republican Army operation, organised by Michael Collins, to assassinate members of the "Cairo Gang" – a team of undercover British intelligence agents working and living in Dublin. IRA members went to a number of addresses and killed or fatally wounded 16 men, mostly British Army intelligence officers. Five other men were wounded. 

Later that afternoon, in retaliation, members of the British Crown Forces Auxiliary Division and Royal Irish Constabulary Colonial Police opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match All-Ireland Final Between Dublin And Tipperary in Croke Park, Murdering Fourteen Innocent Civilians and wounding at least sixty others including Michael Hogan the Captain of the Tipperary Gaelic Football Team, (A Stand in Croke Park Stadium the GAA's Headquarters in Dublin is Named the Hogan Stand Proudly in His Honour).

Later that evening, two Irish republicans (Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy) who had helped plan the earlier assassinations, along with a third man, a civilian named Conor Clune, who happened to be caught with the others, were beaten and shot dead in Dublin Castle by their captors, who claimed they were killed during an escape attempt.

Overall, Bloody Sunday was considered a Major Victory for the IRA, as Collins's operation severely damaged British intelligence, while the later reprisals did no real harm to the guerrillas but increased support for the IRA at home and abroad. It is widely-accepted that the execution of British Intelligence agents in November 1920 was a devastating blow to British domination of Ireland. The British replaced the Cairo gang with the "Igoe gang".

Kilmichael Ambush (Irish: Luíochán Chill Mhichíl) 

28 November 1920

Description

The Kilmichael Ambush was an ambush near the village of Kilmichael in County Cork on 28 November 1920 carried out by the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. Thirty-six local IRA volunteers commanded by Legendary Guerilla Tom Barry killed seventeen members of the British Empire's Crown Forces Colonial Royal Irish Constabulary's Hated Auxiliary Division. This was the Most Successful Military Operation Against the British Empire's Crown Forces During the War of Independence.

Crossbarry Ambush

19 March 1921

Description

The Crossbarry Ambush or Battle of Crossbarry occurred on 19 March 1921 and was one of the largest engagements of the Irish War of Independence. It took place near the small village of Crossbarry in County Cork, about 20 km south-west of Cork city. About a hundred Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers, commanded by Tom Barry, escaped an attempt by about 1,200 British troops to encircle them. During the hour-long battle, ten British troops and three IRA volunteers were killed in the action. 

Narrow Water Ambush

27 August 1979

Description

The Warrenpoint ambush, also known as the Narrow Water ambush, was a Very Successful guerrilla attack by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 27 August 1979. The IRA's Elite South Armagh Brigade ambushed a British Army convoy with two large roadside IEDs at Narrow Water Castle outside Warrenpoint, Occupied North of Ireland. The first IED was aimed at the convoy itself, and the second targeted the incoming reinforcements and the incident command point (ICP) set up to deal with the incident, the I.R.A. Correctly Predicted what the British Would do, having Studied Previous Ambushes. IRA volunteers hidden in nearby woodland also fired on the British troops with GPMGs, who returned fire. The castle is on the banks of the Newry River, which marks the border between Occupied North of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Eighteen British soldiers were killed and over twenty were seriously injured, making it the deadliest attack on the British Army during the War, The Largest Loss For The British Army Since The Second World War. An English civilian was also killed and an Irish civilian wounded, both by British soldiers firing across the border after the first blast. The attack happened on the same day that the IRA assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten, a member of the British Royal Family. The attack was Revenge for The Ballymurphy massacre August 1971 Belfast, in which the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army Murdered Eleven Civilians in Ballymurphy. Belfast and Bloody Sunday in Derry 1972 when the same Parachute Regiment of the British Army Murdered A Further 14 Nationalist Civilians (6 of the 14 Victims Where Only Seventeen Years Old) on a Peaceful Civil Rights Demonstration.

Losses

Clonmult Ambush

20 February 1921

Description

The Clonmult ambush took place on 20 February 1921, during the Irish War of Independence.

Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers occupying a farmhouse in Clonmult, County Cork were surrounded by a force of British Army, Royal Irish Constabulary and Auxiliaries (With Intel From Informers/Touts). In the action that followed, twelve IRA volunteers were killed, four wounded and four captured. A total of 22 people died in the ambush and subsequent executions – 14 IRA Volunteers, 2 Black and Tans and 6 informers who where Executed for Treason by the IRA.

Loughgall Ambush

8 May 1987

Description

The Loughgall ambush took place on 8 May 1987 in the village of Loughgall, County Armagh, Occupied North of Ireland. An eight-man unit of the Irish Republican Army's Elite (IRA) East Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade launched Military Operation on the British Crown Forces Colonial Police Force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Military base in the village. An IRA volunteer (Declan Arthurs, 21) drove a JCB digger with a Large Bomb (500lb Semtex High Explosives) in its bucket through the secured perimeter fence, while the rest of the unit arrived in a van and fired on the Military Installation. The bomb exploded and destroyed almost half of the base. Soldiers from the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS Who Where Already Dug-In) then returned fire both from within the base and from hidden positions around it in a pre-planned ambush, killing all of the IRA volunteers. Two of them were subsequently found to have been unarmed when they were Executed.

A civilian was also killed and another wounded by the SAS after unwittingly driving into the Kill zone and being mistaken for IRA guerrillas.

The joint British Army/RUC operation was codenamed Operation Judy. It was the IRA's biggest loss of life in a single incident during the Troubles. The informer has still to be identified, Six Volunteers Escaped. 

Free State Massacres/War Crimes During the Civil War (The Civil War Was a Proxy War By The British). (Examples) List Not Complete

The Ballyseedy massacre and its aftermath 1923

March 1923 saw a series of notorious incidents in Kerry, where 23 Republican prisoners were killed in the field (and another five judicially executed) in a period of just four weeks.

Five Free State soldiers were killed by a booby trap bomb while searching a Republican dugout at the village of Knocknagoshel, County Kerry, on 6 March. The next day, the local Free State commander authorised the use of Republican prisoners to "clear mined roads". Paddy Daly justified the measure as "the only alternative left to us to prevent the wholesale slaughter of our men".

That night, 6/7 March, nine Republican prisoners who had previously been tortured, with bones broken with hammers, were taken from Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee to Ballyseedy crossroads and tied to a land mine which was detonated, after which the survivors were machine-gunned. One of the prisoners, Stephen Fuller, was blown to safety by the blast of the explosion. He was taken in at the nearby home of Michael and Hannah Curran. They cared for him and although he was badly injured, he survived. Fuller later became a Fianna Fáil TD. The Free State troops in nearby Tralee had prepared nine coffins. There was a riot when the bodies were brought back to Tralee, where the enraged relatives of the killed prisoners broke open the coffins in an effort to identify their dead.

This was followed by a series of similar incidents with mines within 24 hours of the Ballyseedy killings. Five Republican prisoners were blown up with another landmine at Countess Bridge near Killarney and four in the same manner at Cahersiveen. Another Republican prisoner, Seamus Taylor, was taken to Ballyseedy woods by National Army troops and shot dead.

On 28 March, five IRA men, captured in an attack on Cahersiveen on 5 March, were officially executed in Tralee. Another, captured the same day, was summarily shot and killed. Thirty-two Anti-Treaty fighters died in Kerry in March 1923, of whom only five were killed in combat. Free State officer Niall Harrington has suggested that reprisal killings of Republican prisoners continued in Kerry up to the end of the war.

British Massacres/War Crimes in Ireland (Examples) List Not Complete

Bachelor's Walk massacre

The Bachelor's Walk massacre occurred in Dublin, on 26 July 1914, when a column of troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers were accosted by a crowd on Bachelor's Walk following the Howth gun-running operation. After some baiting, the troops attacked “hostile but unarmed” protesters with rifle fire and bayonets - resulting in the deaths of four civilians and injuries to in excess of 30 more.

The events followed the landing of 1,500 rifles and ammunition, purchased for the Irish Volunteers in Hamburg in May 1914. In a counter operation to the Unionists running guns into Northern Ireland, Erskine Childers landed the cargo in Howth and a thousand rifle-carrying Irish Volunteers marched into Dublin. The quantity was negligible when compared to the far greater numbers of weapons landed and distributed by the Ulster Volunteers, completely without hindrance, but the reaction this time was severe from the British ruling authorities.

The incident proved a moment of political opportunity for Irish nationalists as it sharply brought out the different treatment for the Unionists and for unarmed Dublin civilians. Patrick Pearse declared 'The army is an object of odium, and the Volunteers are the heroes of the hour. The whole movement, the whole country, has been re-baptised by bloodshed for Ireland.

Ballymurphy Massacre, Belfast 1971

The Ballymurphy massacre was a series of incidents between 9 and 11 August 1971, in which the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army killed eleven civilians in Ballymurphy, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as part of Operation Demetrius (internment without trial). The shootings were later referred to as Belfast's Bloody Sunday, a reference to the killing of civilians by the same battalion in Derry a few months later.

Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972

Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march against internment without trial. Fourteen people died: 13 were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets, or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles. All of those shot were Catholics. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment ("1 Para"). This battalion was involved in two other massacres: the Ballymurphy massacre several months before and the killing of Protestant civilians in the Shankill several months after. 

New Lodge Six shooting, Belfast 1973

In the late hours of 3 February and the early hours of 4 February 1973, six men, all of whom were Catholics, were shot and killed in the New Lodge area of north Belfast, four (one IRA member and three civilians) of them were shot dead at the junction at Edlingham Street by British Army snipers, the other two men were shot dead by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Irish Nationalists and Republicans believe that collusion took place between the British security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries in the shootings. The six men who were killed became known as "The New Lodge Six."  

James McCann, James Sloan, Anthony Campbell, Ambrose Hardy, John Loughran, and Brendan Maguire were killed in the New Lodge area of Belfast in 1973.

James McCann, James Sloan and Anthony Campbell, all 19, were members of the IRA. None of the volunteers were armed.