1997 Northern Ireland riots facts for kids
Quick facts for kids 1997 riots in Northern Ireland |
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| Part of the Troubles | |||||||
 "Drumcree, The Garvaghy Road July 1997" by military artist David Rowlands, oil on canvas, 91cm x 61 cm, painting owned by the 1st Battalion (The Cheshires) The Mercian Regiment which depicts British soldiers during the rioting on Garvaghy Road |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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Irish nationalist rioters Supported by:
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Kevin McKenna (IRA) | Ronnie Flanagan (RUC) Rupert Smith (BA) |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1 civilian killed over 100 people injured, 117 arrested |
62 constables injured, at least 3 soldiers injured, some armoured vehicles badly damaged or destroyed |
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  One loyalist UDA/UFF militant was killed by the explosion of a pipe bomb he was handling in an indirectly related incident |
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From 6 to 11 July 1997 there were mass protests, fierce riots and gun battles in Irish nationalist districts of Northern Ireland. Irish nationalists/republicans, in some cases supported by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), attacked the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army. The protests and violence were sparked by the decision to allow the Orange Order (a Protestant, unionist organization) to march through a Catholic/nationalist neighbourhood of Portadown. Irish nationalists were outraged by the decision and by the RUC's aggressive treatment of those protesting against the march. There had been a bitter dispute over the march for many years.
It was the last spell of widespread violence in Northern Ireland before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. The security forces were attacked hundreds of times by rioters throwing stones and petrol bombs, and by IRA members with automatic rifles and grenades. They fired more than 2,500 plastic bullets at rioters and exchanged gunfire with the IRA. More than 100 civilians and 65 security force personnel were injured. There were many complaints of police brutality and a 13-year-old boy went into a coma after being struck on the head by a plastic bullet. Hundreds of vehicles were hijacked, set on fire and used to block roads in Belfast and other districts like Newry, Armagh and Dungannon. The RUC and the British Army had to withdraw entirely from some nationalist areas of Belfast. The Provisional IRA's involvement in the clashes was its last major action during its 27-year campaign. The paramilitary organization declared its last ceasefire on 19 July.
Background
The Orange Order is a Protestant, unionist fraternal organization. It insists that it should be allowed to march its traditional route to-and-from Drumcree Church each July. It had marched this route since 1807, when the area was mostly farmland. However, today most of this route is through the mainly Catholic/Irish nationalist part of Portadown. The residents sought to re-route the march away from their area, seeing it as "triumphalist" and "supremacist". They likened it to a Ku Klux Klan march through an African American neighbourhood.
The march was first banned in 1832, although the law was ignored by the Orangemen. Local magistrate William Hancock wrote in 1835: "For some time past the peaceable inhabitants of the parish of Drumcree have been insulted and outraged by large bodies of Orangemen parading the highways, playing party tunes, firing shots, and using the most opprobrious epithets they could invent... a body of Orangemen marched through the town and proceeded to Drumcree church, passing by the Catholic chapel though it was a considerable distance out of their way." The onset of the Troubles in 1969 led to the dispute intensifying and triggered a shift in the local population that further strengthened the ethnic divide. In 1987, the Orangemen were banned from marching along Obins Street, after their march caused severe rioting two years in a row. However, the Orangemen were still allowed to march along the other main road in the Catholic area, the Garvaghy Road.
In 1995, residents formed the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition (GRRC) to try and divert the march away from Garvaghy Road. The dispute escalated that July when residents blocked Garvaghy Road for two days. Orangemen and their supporters clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) until the residents were persuaded to clear the road and the march went ahead.
The July 1996 march was banned from Garvaghy Road. Thousands of Orangemen and their supporters gathered at Drumcree and there was a three-day standoff with the RUC. They held large protests and attacked the police and Catholics throughout Northern Ireland. The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) shot dead a Catholic taxi driver and threatened further attacks. As a result, the ban was lifted. Police violently removed nationalist protesters from Garvaghy Road and forced the march through. This sparked days of rioting in Catholic/nationalist areas of Northern Ireland; one protester was crushed to death by a British Army armoured vehicle in Derry (see 1996 Derry riots).
July 1997 Drumcree parade
On 18 June 1997 Alistair Graham warned after the killing of two RUC officers in nearby Lurgan that the IRA was seeking to raise tensions before the march so that a compromise would be impossible.
In June 1997, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam had privately decided to let the march proceed. However, in the days leading up to the march, she insisted that no decision had been made. She met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who stressed that any unilateral decision to allow the march would be 'a mistake'. The RUC and the Northern Ireland Office said they would announce their decision two or three days before the march. According to a document leaked from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in 2021, on 9 June the RUC requested heavy equipment to government agencies in order to remove roadblocks and barricades set up by potential rioters. It was also revealed that the British Army was measuring Garvaghy Road for the possible deployment of bollards.
As the parade day approached, thousands more British troops were flown into Northern Ireland, while thousands of people left the province fearing another outbreak of violence. Garvaghy Road residents set up a peace camp along the road. The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) threatened to kill Catholic civilians if the march was not allowed to proceed and the Ulster Unionist Party also threatened to withdraw from the Northern Ireland peace process negotiations. On 4 July, sixty families had to be evacuated from their homes on Garvaghy Road after a loyalist bomb threat.
On Sunday 6 July at 3:30am, 1,500 soldiers and riot police swept into the nationalist area in 100 armoured vehicles. They took control of Garvaghy Road so it would be free for the marchers. This led to clashes with about 300 protesters, who began a sit-down protest on the road. They were forcibly removed by riot police. Rosemary Nelson, the lawyer for the residents coalition, was verbally and physically abused by officers. Some officers claimed that residents taunted them about the killing of their two colleagues in Lurgan while shouting IRA slogans. From this point onward, the road was sealed off by rows of armoured vehicles and residents were hemmed into their housing estates. As residents were unable to reach the Catholic church, the local priests held an open-air mass in front of a line of soldiers and armoured personnel carriers. Ronnie Flanagan, the Chief Constable, said the march had been allowed to go ahead to avoid loyalist violence. The parade marched along Garvaghy Road at noon that day. After it passed, the security forces began withdrawing from the area and severe rioting erupted. They were attacked by hundreds of nationalists with stones, bricks and petrol bombs. About 40 plastic bullets were fired at rioters, and about 18 people had to be hospitalised.
Aftermath
By 9 July, according to an RUC report, 60 RUC officers and 56 civilians had been injured while 117 people had been arrested. There had been 815 attacks on the security forces, 1,506 petrol bombs thrown and 402 hijackings. The RUC had fired 2,500 plastic bullets. According to other sources, over 100 people are believed to have been injured. The last IRA action took place on 12 July, when an improvised mortar round fell 40 yards (37 m) short of the RUC/British Army base at Newtownhamilton, South Armagh. Arsonists attacked an Orange hall in Warrenpoint, County Down and another in Rasharkin, County Antrim. Local Sinn Féin councillor Paul Butler and other republican residents claimed to have uncovered a "British Army spy post" in the Summerhill area of Twinbrook, Belfast, allegedly used during the riots to track the neighbours' movements.
The violence died down on 10 July when the Orange Order decided unilaterally to re-route six parades. The following day, Orangemen and residents agreed to waive another march in Newtownbutler, County Fermanagh. In Pomeroy, County Tyrone, nationalist residents blocked Orangemen's return parade with a counter-demonstration, while the marches in Newry and Lower Ormeau were cancelled outright. The Order's gesture was unheard of in its 202-year history. According to Anglican minister Bill Hoey, a member of the Order, "this was an extremely bitter pill to swallow, but the powers that be made it clear to us that to have taken any other decision would have meant civil war." Author Eric Kaufmann claims that the RUC overstated security threats to trick county lodge officials into taking the decision. This was the last time the Order carried on their march through the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, forbidden since 1998 by the Parades Commission.
In a parallel development, on 9 July the British government assured Sinn Féin that in the event of a new IRA ceasefire, representatives of that party would be allowed to meet with government ministers. A week later, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness called for a renewal of the IRA's 1994 ceasefire. The IRA announced the restoration of the ceasefire on 19 July. The Last Gunman, a photograph taken by Brendan Murphy of an IRA man firing an AK-47 on Ormeau Road, became an iconic image of the Troubles.
See also
- 1969 Northern Ireland riots
- 1996 Derry riots
- Drumcree conflict
- Chronology of Provisional Irish Republican Army actions (1990–1999)
- Timeline of Irish National Liberation Army actions
- Timeline of Continuity IRA actions
