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IRA units offered resistance, however very few weapons were available for the defence of Catholic areas. Many local IRA figures, and ex-IRA members such as Joe Cahill and Billy McKee, were incensed by what they saw as the leadership's decision not to take sides and in September, they announced that they would no longer be taking orders from the ...
In response to the campaign for Home Rule which started in the 1870s, unionists, mostly Protestant and largely concentrated in Ulster, had resisted both self-government and independence for Ireland, fearing for their future in an overwhelmingly Catholic country dominated by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church of Christ the King in Limavady was also bombed by loyalist paramilitaries in October 1981 as it was nearing completion. In the early hours of 13 June 1986 the IRA detonated a huge bomb in Castle Park, a predominantly Protestant residential area of Limavady.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various resistance organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to anti-imperialism through Irish republicanism , the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic free from British colonial rule.
The IRA had been poorly armed and failed to properly defend Catholic areas from Protestant attacks, [43] which had been considered one of its roles since the 1920s. [44] Veteran republicans were critical of Goulding and the IRA's Dublin leadership which, for political reasons, had refused to prepare for aggressive action in advance of the violence.
Many Protestants, loyalists and unionists believed the violence showed the true face of the Catholic civil rights movement – as a front for the IRA and armed insurrection. They had mixed feelings regarding the deployment of British troops.
Protestants living in the mainly-Catholic Bogside would be burnt out of their houses by the IRA, with two shot dead. [27] Loyalists fired from the Fountain neighborhood into adjoining Catholic streets. [32] The IRA, armed with rifles and machine-guns, occupied St Columb's College, which became the scene of intense gunfire.
The IRA was not a sectarian group and went out of its way to proclaim it was open to all Irishmen, but its membership was largely Catholic with virtually no Protestants serving as "active" IRA men. [19] Hart wrote that in his study of the IRA membership that he found only three Protestants serving as "active" IRA men between 1919 and 1921. [19]