unity. In trying to control the situation the police force and its reserves, the 'B-Specials', were not impartial. Largely Protestant themselves, they tended to sympathize with unionist opinion and to act more harshly against the civil rights campaigners. In any case, the situation was moving further out of their control. The escalation seemed to confirm for both the nationalist and unionist communities that gradual reform was impossible. For unionists that meant that all protest needed to be suppressed and for nationalists that only strong concerted action would bring about any change. In August 1969 British troops were deployed to try to maintain control of the situation on behalf of the Stormont administration. A loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), was already being revived but the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was uncertain how to respond to the situation. In the mid-1960s it had moved away from a military strategy because of its failure to gain popular support for its previous campaign and because of its espousal of a Marxist ideology which called for the building of alliances between the Protestant and Catholic working classes. However after the arrival of British troops there was a rapid growth of underground armed groups, often known as paramilitaries. For republicans the presence and activities of British troops in their communities focused attention on the role of Britain in supporting the unionist system and encouraged the arguments for armed struggle against the British and their unionist 'surrogates'. Loyalists did not believe that the authorities would take sufficient action to deal with the threat which they saw coming from the nationalist community. They felt that the threat could only be handled by moving outside the rule of law, even though the state had special powers and were using army forces to deal with the civilian population. They formed defense groups, most of which...
