On This Day / August 16, 1971

Summary: On This Day – 16th August 1971, opposition to internment intensified as civil disobedience gathered support and fresh violence unfolded in Derry. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Internment Protest | On This Day – 16th August 1971

A PRESBYTERIAN minister from Dublin was one of four Protestants who spoke at a Civil Rights meeting in Leeson Street, Falls Road, Belfast yesterday at which a call was made to the people to take part in a civil disobedience campaign by refusing to pay rent and rates.

Mr Paddy Devlin, MP said the people had reached the stage where they could take no more.

They had suffered fifty years of oppression under the Stormont government, the RUC and the B Specials and now the British Army had come in an effort to crush the minority underfoot.

Rev Terence McCaughey, a Presbyterian chaplain in Trinity College, Dublin said that ‘internment had become a bloody farce.

Its introduction had merely exposed Stormont for the nasty thing it was. Innocent people, including members of the Civil Rights Association, had been taken from their homes and incarcerated simply because Unionism could not live with justice and reform.’

Priests Save RUC Man

PRIESTS went to the rescue of an RUC man when he was attacked by an angry crowd in Derry city last night. Constable Daniel Barr, who was stationed in Antrim and whose parents live in Rossville Street Flats in Bogside, was on a visit to his native city.

Some people who got the impression that he was in the Bogside as a spy had threatened him earlier in the day. He was not wearing uniform last night when he visited his grandparents’ house.

A crowd attacked him and some of them were shouting, ‘Lynch him’. Three priests from St Eugene’s Cathedral and an Army chaplain arrived and tried to dissuade the crowd from their actions.

The constable was taken to a nearby house and his attackers then threatened to burn it if he remained there. About 11pm Constable Barr, his head completely covered, emerged from a school and was put into a car which set out to cross the border to Letterkenny Hospital. It is believed that the constable was seriously injured.

Cardinal Attacks Internment

CARDINAL Conway condemned internment without trial and called for an inquiry into allegations of brutality by security forces.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: Following the disarming of the RUC in 1970 Nationalist politicians had urged young Catholics to join the RUC and the new Ulster Defence Regiment.

Now they found themselves under threat when they returned home to visit relatives.

Meanwhile, nationalist anger at internment was being channelled into a new wave of civil rights protests across the north while a campaign of civil disobedience attracted widespread support. For the Unionist government it was the beginning of the end.)

On This Day – 16th August 1971

Further Reading on Irish History:

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About Eamon Phoenix

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