After Bloody Sunday came a year of fierce violence and very confused, rudderless political activities

Through all that violence, there was also considerable but confused political activity all across 1972. IRA recruitment soared and London finally lost patience with the unionist-led Belfast government and introduced direct rule in March of that year, with William Whitelaw becoming the first in a long line of hapless Northern Ireland ministers.

On February 22, the Official IRA bombed the HQ of the Parachute regiment at Aldershot in England, billing it as “revenge for Bloody Sunday”. But they killed a Catholic army chaplain, a gardener, and four women cleaners, provoking a major public backlash.

The Provisional IRA stepped up its campaign of sowing public terror with a series of car bombs. On March 4, 1972, a Provo bomb at the Abercorn restaurant in Belfast murdered two women and injured 130 people, some horrifically. The Provos continued unabashed and set off 20 explosions on one day in mid-April 1972.

While nationalists were being increasingly radicalised and moving from civil rights to militant separatism, there was also a virulent unionist backlash. Former unionist minister, Bill Craig, told a rally of his new Vanguard movement that it may fall to them “to liquidate the enemy”. Vanguard called a two-day strike and thousands of Unionists marched on Stormont in protest against direct rule.

The rhetoric of unionism and loyalism rose and rose with Ian Paisley styling himself a Cassandra trying to turn back the tide of IRA violence. But on the nationalist side, the SDLP, tried to dial down violence and helped broker an IRA ceasefire, with the Officials going first on May 29, followed by the Provisionals offering a truce on June 22.

The British Conservative government, under prime minister Ted Heath, clearly felt by then that security forces alone could not stop the spiral of violence. A young Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were among a Republican delegation flown to London for secret talks, on July 7, with Mr Whitelaw which sadly did not yield any result.

Mr Whitelaw told the London parliament about the talks two weeks later, dubbing the IRA demands as “absurd”. Demands included an immediate withdrawal of British forces from “sensitive areas”, full British troop withdrawal by January 1, 1975, and an all-Ireland vote on partition. There was an implicit threat of a return to fierce violence.

The Provisional IRA ceasefire ended on July 13, 1972. Eight days later, on July 21, the IRA caused what was quickly dubbed “Bloody Friday” with 26 bombs in Belfast killing 11 people and maiming 130 people.

One of Northern Ireland’s most senior civil servants, Kenneth Bloomfield, wrote searingly in his 2007 memoir A Tragedy of Errors of the most horrific incident at a thronged Oxford Street bus station where seven people died. “Television, shedding for the occasion the reticence normally shown about too close a focus on blood and guts, carried appalling pictures of police literally shovelling up pieces of human beings,” Mr Bloomfield recalled.

And just 10 days on from Bloody Friday, on July 31, 1972, the British security authorities responded in kind with what they called “Operation Motorman” which was one of the biggest ever single manoeuvres. The forces deployed were massive: 21,000 British soldiers, 9,000 UDR soldiers, and 6,000 RUC officers were mobilised.

Their goal was to end the no-go areas in large parts of Derry and Belfast. Here it is interesting to note that the soldiers and police met little resistance. In his memoir, Mr Bloomfield writes that Mr Whitelaw feared another Bloody Sunday but he also speculated that the IRA did not want to add to the public backlash to the events of Bloody Friday.

After the failure of IRA talks, Mr Whitelaw turned to work with the North’s constitutional parties arranging a conference for Darlington in England. The SDLP did not take part but John Hume did welcome London’s recognition of “an Irish dimension” as the beginning of some reality dawning. Unionist politicians talked of a unilateral declaration of independence emulating Rhodesia back in 1965.

Dublin politicians’ fears of the violence spilling south were realised in November and December with loyalist bombs in Dublin. During the second bombing, which killed two men, the Dáil was debating emergency anti-terrorist legislation, which many in Fine Gael had opposed. All sides backed the law which was passed at 4am the next day.

The year 1972 ended with another milestone which endured for decades as the eminent judge, Kenneth Diplock, presented his report recommending non-jury trial for terrorist offences in a court presided by one judge. The Diplock courts persisted until 2007 and can still be invoked on a case-by-case basis.

But what really screams out of the events of 1972 – especially after Bloody Sunday in Derry – is the sheer scale and utter brutality of the killing.

The bible of that era, Lost Lives, tells us that 496 people were killed in 1972: 258 were civilians; 108 regular British soldiers and 26 UDR soldiers; 17 members of the North’s police, the RUC, died including two reservists. A total of 74 republican and 11 loyalist paramilitaries were also killed.

From the first killing to the last, tales of heartbreak and loss remain undimmed despite the passing of half a century. The year was five days old when 18-year-old Keith Bryan, a British soldier from Bristol, was shot dead by the IRA in Belfast.

He had joined the army as a boy soldier and his comrades poignantly presented a commemorative plaque to his local bar, the Bristol Bulldog.

The final 1972 killing was that of a 55-year-old baker, Hugh Martin, a father of five murdered by the loyalist UVF for the crime of being a Catholic from Ardoyne in Belfast.

Ironically, he had survived three years as a British army prisoner held by the Germans in north Africa during World War II.