Enshrined in Republican lore, this event saw the Provisional IRA, for five hours, defend its Nationalist community from the grounds of St Matthew’s Catholic Church as Loyalist rioters made incursions into Catholic Short Strand area of East Belfast. Of the six people killed that day, five were Protestants killed by the IRA.
The Nationalist community claimed that the British Army and the RUC had been deployed but did not intervene; the IRA secured a propaganda victory, successfully repelling the Loyalists, demonstrating what they promised to do when they split from the Official IRA.
The Troubles 