"The Troubles" refers to the most recent instalment of violence over three decades (1969–1997) between nationalists (mainly self-identified as Irish and/or Roman Catholic) and unionists (mainly self-identified as British and/or Protestant). The term "the Troubles" was previously used to refer to the Irish revolutionary period;[34][a] it was adopted to refer to the escalating violence in Northern Ireland after 1969.[35][36][37][38] The violence was characterised by the armed campaigns of Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups and British state security forces—the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). It thus became the focus for the longest major campaign in the history of the British Army.[39][40]
The British government's position is that its forces were neutral in the conflict, trying to uphold law and order in Northern Ireland and the right of the people of Northern Ireland to democratic self-determination. Nationalists regard the state forces as forces of occupation and/or partisan combatants in the conflict. The British security forces focused on republican paramilitaries and activists, and the "Ballast" investigation by the Police Ombudsman confirmed that British forces colluded on several occasions with loyalist paramilitaries, were involved in murder, and furthermore obstructed the course of justice when claims of collusion and murder were investigated.[41]
The Troubles were brought to an uneasy end by a peace process that included the declaration of ceasefires by most paramilitary organisations, the complete decommissioning of the IRA's weapons, the reform of the police, and the corresponding withdrawal of the British Army from the streets and sensitive Irish border areas such as South Armagh and Fermanagh, as agreed by the signatories to the Belfast Agreement (commonly known as the "Good Friday Agreement"). One part of the Agreement is that Northern Ireland will remain within the United Kingdom unless a majority of the Northern Irish electorate vote otherwise.[42] It also established the Northern Ireland Executive, a devolved power-sharing government, which must consist of both unionist and nationalist parties.
Although the number of active participants was relatively small, the Troubles have touched the lives of many in Northern Ireland on a daily basis, sometimes spreading into England, the Republic of Ireland, and, occasionally, parts of mainland Europe.[43]

In 1609, Scottish and English settlers, known as planters, were given land escheated from the native Irish in the Plantation of Ulster.[44] Coupled with Protestant immigration to "unplanted" areas of Ulster, particularly Antrim and Down, this resulted in conflict between the native Catholics and the "planters", leading in turn to two bloody religious conflicts known as the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–53) and the Williamite war (1689–91), both of which resulted in Protestant victories.
Anglican dominance in Ireland was ensured by the passage of the Penal Laws that curtailed the religious, legal, and political rights of anyone (including both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, such as Presbyterians) who did not conform to the state church, the Anglican Church of Ireland. As the Penal Laws started to be phased out in the latter part of the 18th century, there was more competition for land, as restrictions were lifted on the Irish Catholic ability to rent. With Roman Catholics allowed to buy land and enter trades from which they had formerly been banned, tensions arose resulting in the Protestant "Peep O'Day Boys"[45] and Catholic "Defenders". This created polarisation between the communities and a dramatic reduction in reformers among Protestants, many of whom had been growing more receptive to democratic reform.[45]
1791–1912[edit]
Following the foundation of the republican Society of the United Irishmen by Presbyterians, Catholics, and liberal Anglicans, and the resulting failed Irish Rebellion of 1798, sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants continued. The Orange Order (founded 1795), with its stated goal of upholding the Protestant faith and loyalty to the heirs of William of Orange, dates from this period and remains active to this day.[46]
With the 1801 Act of Union, a new political framework was formed with the abolition of the Irish Parliament and incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The result was a closer tie between Anglicans and the formerly republican Presbyterians as part of a "loyal" Protestant community. Although Catholic Emancipation was achieved in 1829, largely eliminating official discrimination against Roman Catholics (then around 75% of Ireland's population), Dissenters, and Jews, Daniel O'Connell's long-term goal of Repeal of the 1801 Union was never achieved. The Home Rule movement served to define the divide between most nationalists (usually Catholics), who sought the restoration of an Irish Parliament, and most unionists (usually Protestants), who were afraid of being a minority under a Catholic-dominated Irish Parliament and tended to support continuing union with Britain. Unionists and Home Rule advocates were the main political factions in 19th and early 20th century Ireland.[47]
1912–1922[edit]

The Ulster Covenant was issued in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill in September 1912.


The Proclamation of the Irish Republic was issued during the Easter Rising of April 1916.
Main article: Partition of Ireland
By the second decade of the 20th century, Home Rule, or limited Irish self-government, was on the brink of being conceded due to the agitation of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In response, unionists, mostly Protestant and concentrated in Ulster, resisted both self-government and independence for Ireland, fearing for their future in an overwhelmingly Catholic country dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1912, unionists led by Edward Carson signed the Ulster Covenant and pledged to resist Home Rule by force if necessary. To this end, they formed the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).[48]
In response, nationalists led by Eoin MacNeill formed the Irish Volunteers, whose goal was to oppose the UVF and ensure enactment of the Third Home Rule Bill in the event of British or unionist recalcitrance. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and Ireland's involvement in the war temporarily averted possible civil war in Ireland and delayed the resolution of the question of Irish independence. Home Rule, although passed in the British Parliament with Royal Assent, was suspended for the duration of the war.
The Irish Volunteers split, with a majority, called National Volunteers, joining Irish regiments of the New British Army. Many of those who stayed were radical nationalists, among them Irish Republican Brotherhood infiltrators. From these ranks came those who launched the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly. Two and a half years after the executions of fifteen of the Rising's leaders, the separatist Sinn Féin party won the December 1918 Irish general election with 48% of the vote and a majority of seats, and set up the 1919 First Dáil (Irish Parliament) in Dublin. Their victory was aided by the threat of conscription for World War I service. The Irish War for Independence followed, leading to eventual independence in 1922 for the Irish Free State, which comprised 26 of the 32 Irish counties. In Ulster, particularly in the six counties which became Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin fared relatively poorly in the 1918 election, and unionists won a majority.[48]
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 partitioned the island of Ireland into two separate jurisdictions, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, both devolved regions of the United Kingdom. This partition of Ireland was confirmed when the Parliament of Northern Ireland exercised its right in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 to "opt out" of the newly established Irish Free State.[42] A part of the treaty signed in 1922 mandated that a boundary commission would sit to decide where the frontier of the northern state would be in relation to its southern neighbour. After the Irish Civil War of 1922–23, this part of the treaty was given less priority by the new Dublin government led by W.T. Cosgrave, and was quietly dropped. As counties Fermanagh and Tyrone and border areas of Londonderry, Armagh, and Down were mainly nationalist, the Irish Boundary Commission could reduce Northern Ireland to four counties or less.[48]
Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, albeit under a separate system of government whereby it was given its own parliament and devolved government. While this arrangement met the desires of unionists to remain part of the United Kingdom, nationalists largely viewed the partition of Ireland as an illegal and arbitrary division of the island against the will of the majority of its people. They argued that the Northern Ireland state was neither legitimate nor democratic, but created with a deliberately gerrymandered unionist majority. Catholics initially composed about 35% of its population.[49] A total of 557 people, mostly Catholics, were killed in political or sectarian violence from 1920 to 1922 in the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, both during and after the Irish War of Independence.[50] The result was[51] communal strife between Catholics and Protestants, with some historians describing this violence, especially that in Belfast, as a pogrom,[52][53] although historian Peter Hart argues that the term is not appropriate given the reciprocity of violence in Northern Ireland.[54]
1922–1966[edit]


Sir James Craig, 1st Prime Minister of Northern Ireland who said, "All I boast is that we are a Protestant Parliament and Protestant State".
A legacy of the Irish Civil War, later to have a major impact on Northern Ireland, was the survival of a marginalised remnant of the Irish Republican Army. It was proscribed on both sides of the border and remained ideologically committed to overthrowing both Northern Ireland and the Free State by force of arms to unify Ireland. The Northern Irish government passed the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922; this gave sweeping powers to the government and police to do virtually anything seen as necessary to re-establish or preserve law and order.

There is little agreement on the exact date of the start of the Troubles. Different writers have suggested different dates. These include the formation of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force in 1966,[56] the civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968, the beginning of the 'Battle of the Bogside' on 12 August 1969 or the deployment of British troops on 14 August 1969.[48]
Civil rights campaign and unionist backlash[edit]
Main article: Northern Ireland civil rights movement


A civil rights mural in Derry
In the mid-1960s, a non-violent civil rights campaign began in Northern Ireland. It comprised groups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ), the Derry Citizens' Action Committee (DCAC) and People's Democracy,[57] whose stated goals were:
an end to job discrimination – it showed evidence that Catholics/nationalists were less likely to be given certain jobs, especially government jobs
an end to discrimination in housing allocation – it showed evidence that unionist-controlled local councils allocated housing to Protestants ahead of Catholics/nationalists
one man, one vote – in Northern Ireland, only householders could vote in local elections, while in the rest of the United Kingdom all adults could vote
an end to gerrymandering of electoral boundaries – this meant that nationalists had less voting power than unionists, even where nationalists were a majority
reform of the police force (Royal Ulster Constabulary) – it was over 90% Protestant and criticised for sectarianism and police brutality
repeal of the Special Powers Act – this allowed police to search without a warrant, arrest and imprison people without charge or trial, ban any assemblies or parades, and ban any publications; the Act was used almost exclusively against nationalists[58][59][60][61][62]
Some unionists suspected NICRA was a republican front whose ultimate goal was to unite Ireland. Although republicans and some members of the IRA (then led by Cathal Goulding and pursuing a non-violent agenda) helped to create and drive the movement, they did not control it and were not a dominant faction within it.[48][63][64][65][66]
In March and April 1966, Irish nationalists/republicans held parades throughout Ireland to mark the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. On 8 March, a group of Irish republicans dynamited Nelson's Pillar in Dublin. At the time, the IRA was weak and not engaged in armed action, but some unionists warned it was about to be revived to launch another campaign against Northern Ireland.[59][67] In April 1966, loyalists led by Ian Paisley, a Protestant fundamentalist preacher, founded the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (UCDC). It set up a paramilitary-style wing called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV)[59] in order to oust Terence O'Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Although O'Neill was a unionist, they viewed him as being too 'soft' on the civil rights movement and opposed his policies.[68]


A UVF mural in Belfast
At the same time, a loyalist group calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) emerged in the Shankill area of Belfast. It was led by Gusty Spence, a former British soldier. Many of its members were also members of the UCDC and UPV.[69] In April and May it petrol bombed a number of Catholic homes, schools and businesses. A firebomb killed an elderly Protestant widow, Matilda Gould.[59] On 21 May, the UVF issued a statement declaring "war" against the IRA and anyone helping it.[70] On 27 May the UVF fatally shot a Catholic civilian, John Scullion, as he walked home. A month later it shot three Catholic civilians as they left a pub, killing a young Catholic from the Republic, Peter Ward.[59][70] Shortly after, the UVF was proscribed (made illegal) by the Northern Ireland government.[59] The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in January 1967.[57][71]
On 20 June 1968, civil rights activists (including Austin Currie, a nationalist MP) protested against housing discrimination by squatting in a house in Caledon. The local council had allocated the house to an unmarried 19-year-old Protestant (Emily Beattie, the secretary of a local UUP politician) instead of either of two large Catholic families with children.[72] RUC officers – one of whom was Beattie's brother – forcibly removed the activists.[72] Two days before the protest, the two Catholic families who had been squatting in the house next door were removed by police.[73] Currie had brought their grievance to the local council and to Stormont, but had been told to leave. The incident invigorated the civil rights movement.[74]


A monument to Northern Ireland's first civil rights march
On 24 August 1968, the civil rights movement held its first civil rights march, from Coalisland to Dungannon. Many more marches were held over the following year. Loyalists (especially members of the UPV) attacked some of the marches and held counter-demonstrations in a bid to get the marches banned.[72] Because of the lack of police reaction to the attacks, nationalists saw the RUC, almost wholly Protestant, as backing the loyalists and allowing the attacks to occur.[75] On 5 October 1968, a civil rights march in Derry was banned by the Northern Ireland government.[76] When marchers defied the ban, RUC officers surrounded the marchers and beat them indiscriminately and without provocation. More than 100 people were injured, including a number of nationalist politicians.[76] The incident was filmed by television news crews and shown around the world.[77] It caused outrage among Catholics and nationalists, sparking two days of rioting in Derry between nationalists and the RUC.[76]
A few days later, a student civil rights group – People's Democracy – was formed in Belfast.[72] In late November, O'Neill promised the civil rights movement some concessions, but these were seen as too little by nationalists and too much by loyalists. On 1 January 1969, People's Democracy began a four-day march from Belfast to Derry, which was repeatedly harassed and attacked by loyalists. At Burntollet Bridge the marchers were attacked by about 200 loyalists, including some off-duty police officers, armed with iron bars, bricks and bottles in a pre-planned ambush. When the march reached Derry City it was again attacked. The marchers claimed that police did nothing to protect them and that some officers helped the attackers.[78] That night, RUC officers went on a rampage in the Bogside area of Derry, attacking Catholic homes, attacking and threatening residents, and hurling sectarian abuse.[78] Residents then sealed off the Bogside with barricades to keep the police out, creating "Free Derry", which was briefly a no-go area for the security forces.[citation needed]
In March and April 1969, loyalists bombed water and electricity installations in Northern Ireland, blaming them on the dormant IRA and elements of the civil rights movement. Some attacks left much of Belfast without power and water. Loyalists hoped the bombings would force O'Neill to resign and bring an end to any concessions to nationalists.[79][80] There were six bombings between 30 March and 26 April.[79][81] All were widely blamed on the IRA, and British soldiers were sent to guard installations. Unionist support for O'Neill waned, and on 28 April he resigned as Prime Minister.[79]
August 1969 riots and aftermath[edit]
Main article: 1969 Northern Ireland riots
On 19 April there were clashes between NICRA marchers, the RUC and loyalists in the Bogside. RUC officers entered the house of Samuel Devenny (42), an uninvolved Catholic civilian, and ferociously beat him along with two of his teenage daughters and a family friend.[79] One of the daughters was beaten unconscious as she lay recovering from surgery.[82] Devenny suffered a heart attack and died on 17 July from his injuries. On 13 July, RUC officers beat a Catholic civilian, Francis McCloskey (67), during clashes in Dungiven

By the late 1970s, war-weariness was visible in both communities. One manifestation of this was the formation of group known as "Peace People", which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. The Peace People organised large demonstrations calling for an end to paramilitary violence. Their campaign lost momentum, however, after they appealed to the nationalist community to provide information on the IRA to security forces.[112]
The decade ended with a double attack by the IRA against the British. On 27 August 1979, Lord Mountbatten while on holiday in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, was killed by a bomb planted on board his boat. Three other people were also killed: Lady Brabourne, the elderly mother of Mountbatten's son-in-law; and two teenagers, a grandson of Mountbatten and a local boatman.[89] That same day, eighteen British soldiers, mostly members of the Parachute Regiment, were killed by two remote-controlled bombs in the Warrenpoint ambush at Warrenpoint, County Down.[70]


A republican mural in Belfast commemorating the hunger strikes of 1981.
Successive British Governments, having failed to achieve a political settlement, tried to "normalise" Northern Ireland. Aspects included the removal of internment without trial and the removal of political status for paramilitary prisoners. From 1972 onward, paramilitaries were tried in juryless Diplock courts to avoid intimidation of jurors. On conviction, they were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Resistance to this policy among republican prisoners led to more than 500 of them in the Maze prison initiating the "blanket" and "dirty" protests. Their protests culminated in hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981, aimed at the restoration of political status, as well as other concessions.[48][104]

In the 1981 Irish hunger strike, ten republican prisoners (seven from the Provisional IRA and three from the INLA) died of starvation. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands, was elected to Parliament on an Anti-H-Block ticket, as was his election agent Owen Carron following Sands' death. The hunger strikes resonated among many nationalists; over 100,000 people[113] attended Sands' funeral mass in West Belfast and thousands attended those of the other hunger strikers. From an Irish republican perspective, the significance of these events was to demonstrate potential for a political and electoral strategy.[114]
In the wake of the hunger strikes, Sinn Féin, which had become the Provisional IRA's political wing,[113][115][116] began to contest elections for the first time in both Northern Ireland (as abstentionists) and in the Republic. In 1986, Sinn Féin recognised the legitimacy of the Irish Dáil, which caused a small group of members to break away and form Republican Sinn Féin.[48]
The IRA's "Long War" was boosted by large donations of arms from Libya in the 1980s (see Provisional IRA arms importation) due to Muammar Gaddafi's anger at Thatcher's government for assisting the Reagan government's bombing of Tripoli, which had killed one of Gaddafi's children, as well as from monies from pro-IRA partisans in the United States and elsewhere throughout the Irish diaspora.


Grand Brighton Hotel after the IRA bomb attack in October 1984
The INLA was highly active in the early and mid-1980s. In 1982, it bombed a disco frequented by off-duty British soldiers, killing 11 soldiers and six civilians.[89] One of the IRA's most high-profile actions in this period was the Brighton hotel bombing on 12 October 1984, when it set off a 100-pound bomb in the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, where politicians including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were staying for the Conservative Party conference. The bomb, which exploded in the early hours of the morning, killed five people, including Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry and the wife of Government Chief Whip John Wakeham,[89] and thirty-four others were injured, including Wakeham, Trade and Industry Secretary Norman Tebbit, and Tebbit's wife, Margaret. Margaret Tebbit was left permanently paralysed, while her husband's injuries were less serious.[117]
On 28 February 1985 in Newry, nine RUC officers, seven Protestants and two Catholics, were killed after a mortar attack on the police station in Corry Square. The attack was planned by the IRA South Armagh Brigade and an IRA unit in Newry. Nine shells were fired from a Mark 10 mortar which was bolted onto the back of a hijacked Ford van in Crossmaglen. Eight shells overshot the station, but the ninth hit a Portakabin which was being used as a canteen. On 8 November 1987, in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, a Provisional IRA time bomb exploded during a parade on Remembrance Day to commemorate victims of World War One. The bomb went off by a cenotaph which was at the heart of the parade. Eleven people (ten civilians, including a pregnant woman, and one serving member of the RUC) were killed and 63 were injured. Former school headmaster Ronnie Hill was seriously injured in the bombing and slipped into a coma two days later, remaining in this condition for more than a decade before his death in December 2000.[118] The IRA eventually apologised for what it claimed had been a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial. The unit which carried out the bombing was disbanded. Loyalist paramilitaries responded to the bombing with revenge attacks on Catholics, mostly civilians. Another bomb had been planted at nearby Tullyhommon at a parallel Remembrance Day commemoration but failed to detonate.[104]
Four months after the Enniskillen attacks, three IRA volunteers were shot dead at a Shell petrol station on Winston Churchill Avenue in Gibraltar, the British colony attached to the south of Spain. This became known as Operation Flavius. Their funeral at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast was attacked by Michael Stone, a UDA member who threw grenades and fired shots as the coffin was lowered. The attack killed three people, including an IRA volunteer. Stone was jailed for life the following year but freed 11 years later under the Good Friday Agreement.[119]
When two British soldiers, David Howes and Derek Wood, drove into the joint funeral in Andersonstown being held for the three men killed by Stone, they were found to be armed, and were captured, taken away and shot dead. This became known as the Corporals killings.[48][104]
In the 1980s loyalist paramilitary groups, including the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Resistance, imported arms and explosives from South Africa.[70] The weapons obtained were divided between the UDA, the UVF and Ulster Resistance, although some of the weaponry (such as rocket-propelled grenades) were hardly used. These killings were reportedly in response to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave the Irish government a "consultative role" in the government of Northern Ireland.[48][104] In 1987, the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO), a breakaway faction of the INLA, engaged in a bloody feud against the INLA which weakened the INLA's presence in some areas. By 1992, the IPLO was destroyed by the Provisionals for its involvement in drug dealing thus ending the feud.[48]
Around this time republicans alleged that a "shoot-to-kill policy" had been formed in Northern Ireland, in which tens of republican paramilitaries and one loyalist paramilitary were killed on active duty, usually by the SAS and/or RUC.

Since the late 1980s, while the IRA continued its armed campaign, its political wing Sinn Féin, led since 1983 by Gerry Adams, sought a negotiated end to the conflict, although Adams accurately predicted that this would be a very long process. He predicted the war would last another 20 years. He conducted open talks with John Hume — the SDLP leader — and secret talks with government officials. Loyalists were also engaged in behind-the-scenes talks to end the violence, connecting with the British and Irish governments through Protestant clergy, in particular the Presbyterian minister, Reverend Roy Magee and Anglican Archbishop Robin Eames.[citation needed]
When a French TV crew filmed the IRA at a training camp in Donegal, a representative for the General Headquarters Staff of the IRA was interviewed. He said the IRA would "[E]ventually sap the political will of the British government to remain in Ireland".[citation needed]


IRA members show a French TV crew their Mk-15 Barrack Buster mortar at a basic weapons camp, 1992. The same weapon was used in the Downing Street mortar attack.
Situation worsens in South Armagh[edit]
The IRA's South Armagh Brigade had made the countryside village of Crossmaglen their stronghold since the 1970s. The surrounding villages of Silverbridge, Cullyhanna, Cullaville, Forkhill, Jonesborough and Creggan were also IRA strongholds. In February 1978, a British Army Gazelle helicopter was shot down near Silverbridge, killing Lieutenant Colonel Ian Corden-Lloyd of the British Army.[120]
In the 1990s, the IRA came up with a new plan to restrict British Army foot patrols near Crossmaglen. They developed two sniper teams to attack British Army and RUC patrols.[121] They usually fired from an improvised armoured car using a .50 BMG calibre M82 sniper rifle. Signs were put up around South Armagh reading "Sniper at Work". The snipers killed a total of nine members of the security forces: seven soldiers and two constables. The last to be killed before the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), was a British soldier, bombardier Steven Restorick.
The IRA had developed the capacity to attack helicopters in South Armagh and elsewhere since the 1980s,[122] including the 1990 shootdown of a Gazelle flying over the border between Tyrone and Monaghan; there were no fatalities in that incident.[123]
Another incident involving British helicopters in South Armagh was the Battle of Newry Road in September 1993.[124] Two other helicopters, a British Army Lynx and a Royal Air Force Puma were shot down by improvised mortar fire in 1994. The IRA set up checkpoints in South Armagh during this period, unchallenged by the security forces.[122][125]


'Sniper at Work' sign in Crossmaglen
First ceasefire[edit]
After a prolonged period of background political manoeuvering, both loyalist and republican paramilitary groups declared ceasefires in 1994.



Aftermath of the 1993 Shankill Road bombing
The year leading up to the ceasefires was a particularly tense one, marked by atrocities. The UDA and UVF stepped up their attacks. The IRA responded with the Shankill Road bombing in October 1993, which aimed to kill the UDA leadership, but killed eight Protestant civilian shoppers and one low-ranking UDA member, as well as one of the perpetrators, who was killed when the bomb detonated prematurely. The UDA retaliated with mass shootings in nationalist areas such as Greysteel and Castlerock. Twelve people were killed at Greysteel and Castlerock, all but two of whom were Catholic.[48]
On 16 June 1994, just before the ceasefires, the Irish National Liberation Army killed a UVF member in a gun attack on the Shankill Road. In revenge, three days later, the UVF killed six civilians in a shooting at a pub in Loughinisland, County Down. The IRA, in the remaining month before its ceasefire, killed four senior loyalist paramilitaries, three from the UDA and one from the UVF. On 31 August 1994, the IRA declared a ceasefire. The loyalist paramilitaries, temporarily united in the "Combined Loyalist Military Command", reciprocated six weeks later. Although these ceasefires failed in the short run, they marked an effective end to large-scale political violence, as they paved the way for the final ceasefires.[48][104]
In 1995, the United States appointed George Mitchell as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Mitchell was recognised as being more than a token envoy and someone representing a President (Bill Clinton) with a deep interest in events.[126] The British and Irish governments agreed that Mitchell would chair an international commission on disarmament of paramilitary groups.[127]
Second ceasefire[edit]
On 9 February 1996, less than two years after the declaration of the ceasefire, the IRA revoked it with the Docklands bombing in the Canary Wharf area of London, killing two people, injuring 39 others,[128] and causing £85 million in damage to the city's financial centre. Sinn Féin blamed the failure of the ceasefire on the British Government's refusal to begin all-party negotiations until the IRA decommissioned its weapons.[129]


The destruction caused by the Docklands bombing in London, 1996.
The attack was followed by several more, most notably the 1996 Manchester bombing, which destroyed a large area of the centre of the city on 15 June. It was the largest bomb attack in Britain since World War II. While the attack avoided any fatalities due to a telephone warning and the rapid response of the emergency services to it, over 200 people were injured in the attack, many of them outside the established cordon. The damage caused by the blast was estimated at £411 million. Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, the last British soldier killed before the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was finalised, was shot dead at a border crossing on 12 February 1997 by the "South Armagh sniper".[citation needed]
The IRA reinstated their ceasefire in July 1997, as negotiations for the document that became known as the Good Friday Agreement began without Sinn Féin. In September of the same year Sinn Féin signed the Mitchell Principles and were admitted to the talks. The UVF was the first paramilitary grouping to split as a result of their ceasefire, spawning the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in 1996. In December 1997, the INLA assassinated LVF leader Billy Wright, leading to a series of revenge killings by loyalist groups. A group split from the Provisional IRA and formed the Real IRA (RIRA).[130]
In August 1998, a Real IRA bomb in Omagh killed 29 civilians. This bombing discredited "dissident republicans" and their campaigns in the eyes of many who had previously supported the Provisionals' campaign. They became small groups with little influence, but still capable of violence.[131] The INLA also declared a ceasefire after the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Since then, most paramilitary violence has been directed at their "own" communities and at other factions within their organisations. The UDA, for example, has feuded with their fellow loyalists the UVF on two occasions since 2000. There have been internal struggles for power between "brigade commanders" and involvement in organised crime.[132]
Provisional IRA members have since been accused or convicted of involvement in the killings of Robert McCartney, Matthew Burns, James Curran, and Andrew Kearney, among others.
Political process.