On This Day / August 12, 1971

Summary: On This Day – 12th August 1971, the death toll continued to rise as thousands fled Belfast and entire streets were abandoned in the wake of internment. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Death Toll Rises | On This Day – 12th August 1971

WITH five more deaths in Belfast yesterday – bringing the street toll since internment was announced to 23 – there was renewed violence in Derry, Newry, Armagh, Lurgan, Strabane and Crossmaglen.

And the pathetic spectacle of refugees fleeing the terror shootings and burnings continued. An estimated 4,000 people have now fled their homes in Belfast.

Though some have found alternative accommodation, most are in emergency centres which have been set up in schools and in Irish Army camps.

Meanwhile UVF gunmen crossed the ‘peace line’ to open fire on the Falls Road…

The Death of Bryson Street

THE Russian ‘scorched earth’ policy of World War II was put into operation in Bryson Street in Belfast’s East End last night as with the Army on guard on one side and the RUC on the other, both Catholic and Protestant families moved out.

It was an unbelievable sight, writes an Irish News reporter. In a city with an acute shortage of housing, almost 100 comfortable, eminently-habitable dwellings were reduced to charred ruins so that they could never be occupied ‘by the other side’.

Protestants evacuating houses in other parts of the city set the trend. The Catholic families fleeing Bryson Street caught on quickly.

Fear had stalked Bryson Street since the beginning of the 1969 disturbances. On the Catholic side it was brought about by repeated nail bomb and incendiary device attacks on the back of the homes.

‘They were told that they could get out or be burned out’. The deadline was last night.

Editorial – The New Barbarism

AFTER the nights of strife and bloodshed and the counting of the dead, the road this city of Belfast is travelling goes backwards – and downhill…

Another strange element in the Army tactics has been the immunity given to heavily-armed UVF men who have been opening up in the fringe areas without hindrance.

… So that notwithstanding Mr Faulkner’s asseverations on television yesterday, the ‘enemy’ in the eyes of British troops live only in Catholic areas…

By their tactics the troops are alienating the vast majority of the Catholic population which Mr Faulkner is quick to assert is not behind the IRA.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: In this stinging leader, the Irish News captured the sense of abject hopelessness and full-scale nationalist alienation which followed Faulkner’s disastrous decision.

As loyalist gunmen joined in battles between the British Army and the IRA, the one-sided nature of internment rankled.

Embarrassed by this perception in Britain, Unionist Home Affairs Minister John Taylor suggested that the Stormont government should highlight the fact that at least two Protestants had been lifted – both as IRA suspects!)

On This Day – 12th August 1971

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

About Eamon Phoenix

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