Free Derry
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Free Derry was a self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland that existed between 1969 and 1972 during the Troubles. It emerged during the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, which sought to end discrimination against the Irish Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government. The civil rights movement highlighted the sectarianism and police brutality of the overwhelmingly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
"Free Derry Corner" at the corner of Lecky Road and Fahan Street in the Bogside. The slogan was first painted in January 1969 after an unauthorised midnight incursion by RUC men into the Bogside.
The Guildhall, where members of the Derry Housing Action Committee disrupted meetings of Londonderry Corporation in 1968
Westland Street, in the Bogside. The headquarters of the Derry Citizens Defence Association were at number 10.
The Bloody Sunday memorial in Rossville Street. All of the dead belonged to Free Derry.
The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA was an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a "workers' republic" encompassing all of Ireland. It emerged in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of the Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two factions. The other was the Provisional IRA. Each continued to call itself simply "the IRA" and rejected the other's legitimacy.
Official IRA patrol vehicle in Turf Lodge, Belfast, April 1972