The march was illegal. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association had planned a route from the city’s Waterside station to the Diamond in the city center, a path banned by the Unionist government. Approximately 400 people set out. They were met by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who sealed the bridges over the River Foyle. At the Craigavon Bridge, the police moved in with batons. They deployed water cannons for the first time in Northern Ireland. Marchers, including many students, were beaten as they fled. The violence was filmed by television news crews.
This was not a republican rally seeking Irish unity. The NICRA’s demands were specific and secular: an end to housing discrimination against Catholics, ‘one man, one vote’ in local elections, and the disbanding of the B-Specials, an auxiliary police force. The police response framed these moderate demands as insurrection. The spectacle of unarmed protesters being clubbed shifted public opinion dramatically. A sense of grievance turned into a conviction that the state was irredeemably sectarian.
The Battle of the Bogside, as it became known, is often seen as the opening clash of the Troubles. It was more precisely the catalyst that made wider conflict inevitable. It directly led to the formation of the more militant People’s Democracy and injected new members and purpose into the nascent Provisional Irish Republican Army. The British Army was deployed to keep peace the following year. October 5, 1968, closed the door on peaceful reform. For the next thirty years, politics would be conducted with barricades and bullets.