Battle of Lenadoon
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Battle of Lenadoon was a series of gun battles fought over a six day period from 9–14 July 1972 between the Provisional IRA and the British Army. It started on Thursday, 9 July 1972 in and around the Lenadoon Avenue area and spread to other places in Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries and the Official Irish Republican Army were involved in some of the incidents. 28 people in total were killed in Belfast according to the CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths. The violence ended a two-week truce between the forces of the British Government and the IRA.
In 1972 The Troubles had been ongoing in Northern Ireland for three years, with Irish Republican paramilitaries increasingly attacking the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army, and a level of societal violence & sectarian violence had appeared that had not been seen in the island of Ireland since the 1920s during the Irish Civil War. Shootings, bombings, ambushes, IED attacks, bank robberies and riots had become a daily theme of life in Northern Ireland, and from August 1971 gun battles between Irish Republican paramilitaries, the British Army, and Loyalist paramilitaries were a regular occurrence in Belfast, especially in its North and West districts, with their concentrations of rival populations, nicknamed the "Wild West" by RUC officers.
After "Bloody Sunday", when the British Army shot dead fourteen unarmed civil rights marchers, Irish Republican paramilitarism gained substantial support, and recruits flooded in to join the IRA, both the Provisional (PIRA) & Official (OIRA) wings. By the spring of 1972 the IRA believed they were winning and were using the slogan "Victory 72". In June 1972 the IRA's Army Council called a ceasefire to accommodate talks between an IRA delegation and the British Government. The truce lasted two weeks, with hardline IRA members eager to resume revolutionary violence, believing they had the upper hand against the British Government in the deteriorating law and order situation in Northern Ireland, and that victory was in sight.
Two days after secret talks between the British Government and IRA leadership in London broke down, the IRA in the West Belfast became involved in a sectarian confrontation in the Lenadoon Estate. A large group of Catholics attempted to move families into 16 empty council houses in Lenadoon Avenue that had been abandoned by Protestants, who had fled their homes due to the recent sectarian rioting; the Catholic families had themselves been forced to flee from other parts of the city. In an attempt to prevent a riot between the Catholics and the Protestant population that resided in the South of the Lenadoon Estate which had support from the UDA, a British Army detachment blocked the road with its armoured vehicles to halt the crowd's advance. The situation deteriorated into a riot when the Army rammed a moving truck to prevent it crossing the barricade. That evening the IRA in Belfast announced an end to its ceasefire, saying that the act was in response to events at Lenadoon Estate. IRA Army Council member Seamus Twomey, who had been negotiating with the British Army in the district up until that point, ordered Brendan Hughes, the commander of an IRA unit in the vicinity, to open fire on the British Army, and gun battles subsequently broke out.
The ground they fought on
The site of Battle of Lenadoon lies on Mercia Mudstone Group, bedrock that formed in the Rhaetian. The rock here is mudstone, sandstone and limestone.
- British Army: 3 killed; 30 wounded
- Provisional IRA; Official IRA: 2 killed; 12 injured; 3 (2 from Youth Wing) killed
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- Battle of Lenadoon · Wikidata
- Battle_of_Lenadoon · Wikipedia