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You know, I kind of like U2. I’m not sure where the hate comes from. Fuck Nickelback though. Anyway, you know that “Sunday Bloody Sunday” song about a day of violence in Northern Ireland in 1972? It wasn’t the first Bloody Sunday for that country. There was one that took place over half a century earlier.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 10, 1921--
The song is about a massacre of protesters by British soldiers in 1972, during a three-decade-long conflict called “The Troubles.” If you’ve seen the show Derry Girls (highly recommend), that’s where it took place. The much-earlier day of Sunday violence, however, happened in Belfast.
Early in the 20th century Northern Ireland was one-third Catholic. It is far from absolute, but Catholics tend to identify as Irish and saw the independent Republic of Ireland as their brethren. The majority Protestants in Northern Ireland, conversely, were more likely to consider themselves British and viewed independent Ireland as a foreign nation. The former are “nationalists,” and the latter are “unionists” or “loyalists” because of their support for the British monarchy.
The Irish War of Independence began in 1919 as a guerrilla action by the Irish Republican Army (nationalists) against the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary (unionists). Over a two-year period, several hundred died in the violence. June 1921 proved particularly bloody, leading to efforts to curtail the killing via a truce agreement taking place on July 9 in neutral Dublin. Many of the unionists saw the truce as a sellout to the republicans, and they weren’t going to stand for it.
And so, in the early morning hours of July 10, 1921, Bloody Sunday began when unionist forces launched an attack on the Catholic community of Lower Falls in Belfast. Scouts saw the raiding party approach and sounded the alarm; IRA volunteers counterattacked. The battle was a match to a powder keg, sparking fighting between Protestants and Catholics throughout west Belfast. Sixteen people died and almost 200 homes were destroyed. Most of the death and destruction was borne by Catholics.
The violence continued for a few days, followed by a lull, and then it flared again in late August. A treaty was signed the following December establishing an Irish Free State, but many IRA refused to accept it, leading to the Irish Civil War breaking out in June of 1922 between pro-treaty and anti-treaty forces. The civil war lasted almost a year; the Irish Free State lasted 15 years.
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