It is a common but mistaken view that Northern Ireland was at peace from the mid-1920s to the start of the present ‘Troubles’. In fact, the fundamental divisions persisted and periodically erupted in violence. There were sectarian riots in Belfast in the 1930s. In 1942 the IRA Northern Command launched a new campaign. In April of that year an officer of the RUC was shot dead in Dungannon. Three days later IRA men fired on an RUC patrol car .. in Belfast and killed one officer. Another RUC officer was shot and wounded in Strabane. When an IRA man was executed for his part in the shooting, the IRA threw everything it had at Northern Ireland; an RUC officer and two B Specials were killed. Internment was used both in Ulster and in the Irish Free State (where the government which had accepted the partition settlement was itself at war with the IRA), and IRA activity ‘tailed off’. It revived again in 1956 when, on the night of 11 December, 150 IRA men attacked ten targets in Ulster. In the next year there were over 300 incidents. Three RUC officers were killed, as were 7 republicans, 5 by their own bombs. Even faster than the previous one, this campaign petered out, although an RUC man was blown up in South Armagh in November 1961. When the campaign was formally stood down the following February, 11 republicans and 6 RUC men had been killed . [Northern Ireland: The Orange State]

"This [collision at Craigavon Bridge on 05.10.68] marked the beginning of what newspapers in many parts of the world described as the "Derry Bloodbath". A group of young constables attacked Gerry Fit [MP] who was leading the procession. They felled him with their truncheons and beat him as he lay on the ground. Attacking the marchers with the utmost savagery, the RUC spared nobody. They struck out at men, women and children, drove their armoured cars straight towards the crowds and turned their water-cannons on them .. RUC brutality that day in Derry generated the violent social and political disorders that eventually brought down the government of Terrence O'Neill."

"Those who argue the case for platonic Protestant nationalism do not mention one of the silent subjects of twentieth century history, tacitly ignored by both sides for their own purposes: the victimisation, murder and banishment of 'ordinary' Protestants (not landowners or British Army figures) in places like Limerick and Cork, after the treaty, in 1922. Here, thinking from hand to mouth approaches selective amnesia."

"Whatever its exact political status, Northern Ireland has never really been treated by Whitehall as a constituent part of the United Kingdom, but as a post-colonial successor state. It has therefore been neither truly British nor truly Irish. The illusion that the defensive positions across this no-man's-land will be spontaneously dismantled with the Common Market cannot be maintained much longer."
" Eire .. cannot want a province which would erupt into a civil war far more savage than anything seen so far, and not even the most fervent Republican expects .. loyalist pieds noirs [to be] resettled in metropolitan Britain. Independence is out of the question, since the Catholic population would have no protection .. Even if historically unfair to the nationalists, the only course appears to lie in complete integration with Britain. But this integration could no longer permit a sectarian power structure. That would mean no Stormont, no Ulster Defence Regiment, and instead of the RUC in green uniforms, with its paramilitary air, there should be a British national police force in blue. It offers the only way to call the pseudo-patriotic bluff of Protestant extremists. From 1921 to 1969 Britain washed its hands of Ulster. Since then, using the Army as a shield, it has been able to keep the worst of the problem at arm's length."  p. 277.