On This Day / July 26, 1971

Summary: On This Day – 26th July 1971, mass Army dawn raids across Northern Ireland fuelled fears that internment without trial was imminent. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Prelude to Internment? | On This Day – 26th July 1971

THE hounding of Republicans and their families in yesterday’s dawn raids by 1800 troops, backed up by large numbers of police, brought a wave of protest from all over NI last night.

Just after 4 a.m. the Army swooped on houses and other premises in Belfast’s Ardoyne, Falls, Finaghy, Ballymurphy, Whiterock, Markets and Stranmillis areas and in nine towns, including Armagh, Portadown and Lurgan.

Last night Republican organisations and Civil Rights groups were arranging protest meetings in towns across the North against what was being regarded as obvious moves towards internment.

Mr John Hume of the SDLP said: ‘We all agree on the need to end violence and death on the streets of NI.

‘We disagree on the means to achieve that end. In our view the British Government has had only two courses open to it.

‘One was outright repression, the other was a change in the system of government which, in our view, lies at the root of all our unrest and troubles.

‘The Government had chosen repression – which might succeed temporarily but would not solve the problems in the long term. It might even result in a ‘mammoth reaction’.’

Plea to Protestant Refugees

An appeal was made last night by Mr Paddy Devlin, MP for Falls, to Protestant mothers and children from Malt Street, off Grosvenor Road, who are now living in a children’s youth centre in Nuffield Street to return to their homes.

He told them that ‘the good people of the district will do you no harm’.

After claims that threats had been made against the Protestant families in the street by outsiders, a number of mothers and 38 children went to the youth centre while their menfolk remained.

Inquest into IRA Man’s Death

A Belfast gun battle in which IRA lieutenant, William James Reid (32), labourer, Sheridan Street was killed was described at the City Coroner’s Court yesterday.

In a statement, a soldier said he decided to stop a car carrying three men shortly after midnight on May 15.

‘As I got near it I saw a man in the back seat lowering a rear window and a gun was poked out.

Shots were fired and I returned more shots.’

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: EVEN at the time the dawn raids on the homes of Republican suspects in July 1971 were seen as a dry-run for the forthcoming internment operation and would prove to be cataclysmic.

Hume was right to fear a ‘mammoth reaction’ from such an initiative.

Meanwhile Protestant as well as Catholic families in isolated areas were being driven from their homes as Belfast’s sectarian faultlines were gradually redrawn.)

On This Day – 26th July 1971

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

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