Free Derry

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Free Derry was the name given to the self-declared autonomous republican region of Derry, Northern Ireland, following the Battle of the Bogside of August 12-August 14, 1969.

In August 1969 a planned march by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association through Derry was banned by the authorities after the loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry organised a march at the same time. After the RUC attempted to force the Apprentice Boys parade through the area, pitched battles were fought between republicans and the RUC in the "Battle of the Bogside". Barricades were put up around the Bogside, Brandywell and the Creggan--all Catholic and republican neighbourhoods. When the police admitted the area was impossible for them to enter, the republicans inside declared it an autonomous territory: Free Derry.

Facing pressure from police and the British Army, Free Derry was defended by the Irish Republican Army. A community alert system, often neighborhood women banging garbage can lids, was used to mobilize the IRA to repel incursions by the security forces into Free Derry.

The autonomy was celebrated by a "Liberation Fleadh" on August 30-August 31, 1969, described by organizers as a "manifestation of MASS HAPPINESS," one of the more situationist aspects of this autonomous zone.

The "No Go" area of Free Derry lasted around a year, before the security forces engaged in "Operation Motorman" and regained some degree of control, but it was a part of the ferment that achieved municipal home rule and civil rights in Derry by the mid-1970s.