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#OTD 9 August 1971, Internment is introduced in Northern Ireland. There was a list of 450 people to be arrested, but a total of 342 were picked up. All but two were Catholics and nationalists. No loyalists were arrested.
https://www.theirishstory.com/2012/08/10/today-in-irish-history-9-august-1971-internment-is-introduced-in-northern-ireland/#.Xy-8J4hKjIU
https://www.theirishstory.com/2012/08/10/today-in-irish-history-9-august-1971-internment-is-introduced-in-northern-ireland/#.Xy-8J4hKjIU
Of the two Protestants interned on the day, both were republican activists. The more famous was Ronnie Bunting, a firebrand left-republican, son the militant loyalist Major Ronald Bunting.
Over the next four days, 24 people were killed in rioting and gun battles across Northern Ireland. Some 7,000 people, both Catholics and Protestants, were expelled from their homes.
The introduction of internment was probably the point of no return in the Northern Ireland conflict. The possibility that the British government and its army could be neutral agents of reform was shattered by what nationalists saw as the blatantly one-sided use of internment.
While internment was introduced by the Stormont rather than Westminster government, it was signed off on in London and was carried out by British Army troops.
Internment was phased out in 1975. During that time, just under 2,000 people were imprisoned without trial in Northern Ireland, of whom 1,875 were Republicans and just 107 loyalists.
