States of emergency 1970-79

• Partition of Ireland

  • Partition was intended to achieve peaceful implementation of home rule in Ireland
  • in northern Ireland = the predominant protestant majority who identified as unionists, used their majority to set up + dominate parliament + denied rights to Catholics.
  • Protestants came to monopolise the best housing, schools and jobs = Catholics blamed this on political corruption in Ulster which meant Protestants could operate by a biased system.
  • Local protestants couldn't control higher education as 1/3 of Queens uni were Catholics
• Nationalists

  • Mainly catholics who were poor workers and businessmen
  • believed British empire was oppressive keeping nations enslaved and blamed Britain for Ireland poverty
  • wanted to end the union with UK
• Unionists

  • majority protestants concentrated in NI that wanted to keep the union with Britain
  • Came from Ulster which was wealthy in the early 1900s with booming industries such as shipbuilding, linen, and engineering
• NICRA


  Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, founded in 1967 by students who wanted fair distributions of social and financial resources for everyone, led against discrimination
• NICRA condemned gerrymandering (manipulating constituency boundaries) and B specials
• Catholics faced a lot of discrimination mainly from protestant unionists in housing, voting, political representation and employment
• Terence O'neill


  Promised pragmatism and reconciliation but the protestant-catholic inequalities became glaring when NI was hit by severe economic recession
• Causes of internment in NI:

  • Approved and backed up by British gov.
  • Internment proved controversial by republic internees, complained of torture - led to an increase in civil unrest, violence + support for the IRA.
  • proposed by unionist gov. by Faulkner to counter rising levels of political malice.
• Internment in NI 1971

  • 2-day military operation 'Demetrius' (Aug 9-10) rounded 342 suspected republican parlimentries
  • The consequences equal increased tension in NI, feeling among Catholics that they were being prosecuted, and strained relationships between the Irish and British governments.
  • 1981 people (1874 were republican) interned.
• Bloody Sunday 1972

  • 14 unarmed demonstrators killed by British troops during a civil rights protest
  • Widgery report 1972 claimed that it was the shots fired before at the soldiers who started firing shots beforehand = many republicans saw this as an attempt to whitewash the British army and condone its actions
  • Before report appeared, Heath unposed direct rule of NI from London by suspending Stormont
• Widgery report affects:

  • Further convinced the Catholics that the british government is hostile
  • Increased tensions between London and Dublin gov.
  • Gap between IRA and SDLP widened
  • Gap between moderate official unionists part and the DUP widened
• Sunningdale agreement 1973

  • Political treaty between Ireland and Britain that created a power-sharing government in NI
  • First time since 1921 that Catholics had been offered a share in gov.
  • Didn't succeed as violence continued, slow progress in civil rights + Both Catholics and protestants felt aggrieved over it
  • Such fears that it was a cover for sell-out unionist Ireland, led to the creation of the UDF.
• Birmingham pub bombings 1974

  • Nov 1974, separate explosions in 2 public houses in Birmingham city centre, 21 people were killed and 180 were seriously injured.
  • Induced by IRA
  • Led to Prevention of terrorism act to be passed = gave the police and authorities considerably extended powers of search and arrest.
• Wilsons retirement 1976

  • Was only in office for 2 years after 2 elections in 1974
  • He resigned -> James Callaghan became prime minister
  • Most likely explanation is that strains of office and leadership led him to keep an earlier resolution that he had to retire at 60
• Social contract

  • Trade unions agreed to voluntarily curb wage demands in exchange for the Labour gov. increasing public control over private industry and extending = improving social welfare measures.
  • PRICE + RENT CONTROL
  • PUBLIC TRANSPORT
  • HOUSING SUBSIDIES
  • IMPROVEMENT IN SOCIAL WELFARE PROVISIONS
• Social contract :

  • Failed to provide a basis for successfully managing the economy and a 2-8 million majority from trade unions voted for a return to free collective bargaining as they couldn't settle for these commitments during times of inflation.
• Winter of discontent

  1. Social contract introduced
  2. 6 pounds per week for workers gaining 8.500 pounds per year
  3. collective bargaining (everyone agrees to wage increase)
  4. The pound dropped below $2 by 1978 Inflation
  5. social contract
  6. Ford strike autumn 1978
  7. Gov. required to make a contract as other workers saw the Ford strike, and they started too.
  8. On Jan 22, 1.5 million workers went on a strike with NUPE and COHSE being allied
  9. Strikes in certain areas to attract attention (grave diggers left dead bodies unburied)
  10. Wilson + Callaghan gov. had failed to meet expectation + alienated own supporters.
• Cultural Revolution in China + Britain

  • Cultural Revolution, a violent movement by Mao Zedong.
  • 11 foreign embassies were attacked and their employees assaulted including the British Embassy -> broken into + set on fire + employee's physically assaulted.
  • Various of Chinese embassy workers in London in 1967 armed with sticks and machetes, shouting Mao's name threatened the police but weren't arrested due to diplomatic immunity + just caused major disruption.
  • This showed that the attacks weren't only confined to Chinese people or the area of china but spread internationally.
• Hong Kong + relations with Britain

  • The London scene was part of the plan to use the cultural revolution to make trouble for Britain for continuing possession of Hong Kong.
  • MAY 1967 - Mao tried to turn a worker's strike into an Anti-British demonstration -> so Chinese terrorists were sent to create havoc + provoke British retaliation
  • 8 week period of terrorist bomb attacks, killed 5 police + injured others
  • Hong Kong wasn't gonna take extreme measures but Mao made them think that they were going to take HK by force.
• LIB-LAB Pact 1977

  • Working arrangement between liberal democrats and the Labour party.
  • Labour accepts some number of liberal party policy proposals and in exchange, Liberal agree to vote with gov.
• Monetarism

  • Aim = decrease inflation -> gov. had to restrict amount of money in circulation + reduce public expenditure
  • Gov. cut gov. spending -> interest rates kept high
  • Falling orders for manufactured goods had seen the start of an economic recession.
  • unemployment rose at a bad rate after 1980
  • 1980->2,244,000
  • 1986->3,408,000
  • 1990->1,850,000
  • Keynesian -> believes in fiscal policy (Thatcher didn't believe in Keynesian economics.)
• 1979 ELECTION

  • Cons won 43 majority, this allowed Thatcher to embark on a policy of radical change
  • Against Heath & Thatcher criticized him for pushing Britain further towards Socialism than even labour had.
  • Thatcher believed consensus politics which allowed Britain to play too large a part in people's lives harmed Britain.
  • Thatcher's state believed half-hearted and the incompetent shouldn't be rewarded.