Battle of the Bogside
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-->The Battle of the Bogside was a battle only in a rhetorical sense. In reality, it was a very large communal riot between the mostly unarmed residents of the Bogside area of Derry city in Northern Ireland and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The "Battle" took place in Derry, Northern Ireland, 12 August-14 August, 1969, after the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) attempted to force a loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry parade through a nationalist area of the city. The inhabitants declared the area "Free Derry" after the police had been successfully repulsed. Tensions in the city were high after a local man, Samuel Devenny, had died the previous month from injuries received in a beating he took from the RUC in his home in April. His teenage daughters had also been beaten in the attack. On the 12th of August, clashes occurred as the Apprentice Boys parade approached the Bogside. The police, assisted by a loyalist mob, forced the nationalists deeper into the area, at which point the rioting escalated. Large crowds turned out and pelted the police and the mob with stones and petrol bombs, and set up barricades to block their progress. The loyalists went home soon after this development, leaving the RUC to try to bring the area back under control. After two days of almost continuous rioting, during which police were drafted in from all over Northern Ireland, the police were exhausted, and snatching sleep in doorways whenever the opportunity allowed. Although the local police had been heavily augmented by men from other areas, on the afternoon of the 14th, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester-Clarke, took the unprecedented step of requesting the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for troops to be sent to Derry. Soon afterwards a company of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment relieved the police. This marked the first direct intervention of the London government in Ireland since partition. The British troops were at first welcomed by the Bogside residents as a neutral force compared to the RUC. This good relationship did not last long however, as the Troubles escalated. A call by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association for people to stretch police resources to aid the Bogsiders led to rioting in Belfast, which left five Catholics and a Protestant dead. That same night (the 14th) a loyalist mob burned all of the Catholic homes on Bombay Street. See alsoIrish battlesExternal links
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