Edwin FonsecaJune 27, 2007History Dr. Dye
How had Belfast been affected by the onset of the troubles?
The troubles in Belfast have no approximate date at which they began. Many have statedthat they can remember the Troubles becoming most apparent in mid August of the year 1969.The Troubles affected Belfast in two significant ways. One way it affected Belfast was that itcaused a violent division between the Catholics and Protestants. Belfast close ties with theBritish were a second way it had been affected.The troubles in Belfast caused an obvious division between the two religious groups.Catholics had moved into the Protestant city of Belfast due to its industrialization in the mid1800s. This had caused many problems and riots had become a common thing. Conroy wroteabout his experience of the August of 1969 “A Protestant mob…crossed into Clonard fromShankill and burned half the houses in Bombay Street…each side threw up barricadesafterward…in September, the army constructed a wall of corrugated iron between the twodistricts”
People had turned less and less to communication. The two groups had turned torioting and violence in order to have their voice heard. The walls kept violence from breakingout and as Conroy again wrote “The walls not keep Catholics, they also kept Protestants out”
The views of Belfast’s Catholics and Protestants on the British had also been greatlyaffected. “The government invoked the Special Powers Act and banned some civil rightsmarches.”
Catholics had felt that the English presence would intervene but they had insteadneglected helping them. “Police set upon demonstrators…and smashed heads…sending a
1 John Conroy,
Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 2.2 Ibid.3 Ibid., 27.
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