Faulkner Introduces Internment


Chichester-Clark was replaced by Brian Faulkner. While Faulkner was popular with unionists, nationalists were less impressed. Faulkner did attempt to win over moderate nationalists by offering them a greater role in government. He asked the SDLP to chair a number of government committees. Faulkner’s offer received a guarded response from the SDLP’s John Hume, who said it did not go far enough, but represented a good start. However, the SDLP eventually withdrew


from Stormont on


16 July when the government refused to hold an official investigation into the shooting dead of two Catholic men by British soldiers earlier that month.


British troops search nationalists as internment is introduced.


At the same time as he was trying to win over moderate nationalists, Faulkner took a tough line against the IRA. Faulkner demanded that the British government allow him to introduce internment, and threatened to resign if they refused. The British granted Faulkner’s request. On 9 August 1971 internment without trial was introduced when the army launched Operation Demetrius. The operation was used exclusively against IRA suspects, resulting in the immediate arrest of 342 men, although fewer than 100 were actually active members of the IRA. Many senior IRA leaders managed to avoid capture, as they had been aware of the operation before it began.


In the first 48 hours of Operation Demetrius, 7,000 Catholics fled their homes and moved south. Seventeen people were killed. Among those killed were ten Catholic civilians, including a priest killed as he was administering the Last Rites. By the end of the year over 2,000 people had been arrested. Nationalists reacted with fury to what they saw as an onslaught on their community.


The policy of internment was a disaster for a number of reasons:


• Internment was almost exclusively enforced on Catholics, despite the fact that loyalists were also responsible for the ongoing violence. It was only in 1973 that the first loyalists were interned. By then many Catholics saw internment as a sectarian measure taken by the Unionist government. By 1975, when internment ended, almost 2,000 nationalists had been interned compared to just over 100 loyalists.


• The actions of the British Army destroyed any remaining goodwill Catholics had towards them.


• Internment actually increased support for republican paramilitaries, as people looked to the IRA for protection from loyalists and the army.


• The army’s intelligence on IRA suspects was out of date. Most of those interned were either older members of the IRA or no longer involved in it. Active members of the IRA avoided arrest by staying away from their homes or crossing the border into the Republic.


The SDLP organised a Rent and Rates Strike to protest at internment. By October 1971 it was estimated that up to 30% of homeowners in Belfast were withholding their payments.


POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1949–1993 321


CHAPTER 11CHAPTER 5 TOPIC 5


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