A wide variety of source material will be used to create the NIRI database
Association for Legal Justice Statements
The Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) was a human rights organization formed in 1970 to catalogue the abuses suffered by residents of Northern Ireland during the armed conflict. The organization primarily focused on charging and sentencing patterns in the Northern Ireland justice system at the time. During their history, ALJ collected over 4,000 statements of abuse from victims or those who witnessed the crimes. These statements were collected with a wide range of detail and include both violent and non-violent events during the conflict, particularly in regards to police and state abuse.
Ardoyne: The Untold Story (2002)
The Ardoyne Commemoration Project published a book in 2002 entitled “Ardoyne: The Untold Truth”. This is a published book which details the deaths of the 99 people killed in the Ardoyne area of Belfast from 1969 through 1998. The book is based on over 300 interviews including victims' family and friends as well as other community members.
Deutsch and Magowan (1975)
This source is a three-volume event catalogue coding major violent and political events in Northern Ireland from 1968 through 1973. This event catalogue was complied from Northern Ireland newspapers including the Belfast Telegraph.
Father's Murray and Faul Pamphlets
The Fr. Raymond Murray and Fr. Denis Faul Pamphlet Collection represent over twenty years of human rights documentation and activism on the part of these two men. Beginning in 1971 when political prisoners were first transferred to Armagh prison (where Fr. Murray was chaplain), these pamphlets document decades of prisoner mistreatment, legal irregularities, state terrorism and British Army/RUC brutalities. Compiled mostly from first hand testimony these pamphlets represent a passionate account of the day-to-day violence that embodied the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Lost Lives (2001)
This book provides a comprehensive list of individuals killed by political violence during the Troubles. For each individual, the book contains a detailed description of how they died, who killed them, the types of evidence used to make claims regarding perpetrator responsibility, as well as numerous personal details about the life of that individual and what s/he might have been doing immediately before their death. Also recorded are individual characteristics, including age, gender, occupation, sect, address. The source was compiled by a team of Northern Ireland’s most well known journalists, including David McKittrick. To generate the individual narratives, the journalists surveyed press reports, coroner’s reports, official inquests, and conducted interviews with members of the paramilitary groups and security forces. It is the most detailed and well-respected source for reporting deaths on the Troubles.
Newspapers from Northern Ireland, the UK & Around the World
Northern Ireland is blessed with a wide variety of newspapers from a variety of different political-orientations. There are also numerous papers within the UK as well as throughout the world that have covered the Troubles. We will be coding many of them in our creation of a database of events.
Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) Material
PRONI is the branch of the British archival system responsible for cataloging documents from the various branches of the cabinet operating in Northern Ireland, as well as various bureaucratic agencies that have functioned in country. From PRONI we are interested in documents from two sources – Cabinet 9B, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Cabinet 9B was responsible for governing Northern Ireland during the period of direct rule (1972-1998), and handled matters related to security. These documents record estimations of security throughout the six-counties, as well as annual statistics on various indicators of political stability, such as killings, bombings or arrests. The RUC records focus on the patterns of police behavior during the Troubles, and include weekly summaries of RUC activities, such as patrols, raids, and arrests, in the principal conflict areas.
Kew Archive Material (Miscellaneous)
Kew National Archive contains documents internal to the British Government. We are interested in collecting documents specifically related to the operation of the security forces. This includes numerous forms and files central to the operation of a functioning bureaucracy, but three types of documents stand out as systematically recording the beliefs, operation and behavior of the security forces. The first of these are Security Briefs, which document perceptions of security and insecurity at the cabinet level. Tracking these provides a sense of how the government perceived progress during the period. The second are Situation Reports or SitReps. These documents were the formal paperwork to be filled out in situations where members of the army encountered, or interacted with opposition movements, including both paramilitary groups and non-violent marches. The SitReps record specific details about the missions in which they encountered the opposition movement, including who was patrolling and what they were doing in that particular place and time. The last set of systematic data on military activity to be collected from Kew are Military Log Files. Military log files were collected at the level of the individual unit, and record all activities conducted by members of that unit by the day. These records have less detail than the SitReps on individual actions, but are a far more comprehensive listing.
Association for Legal Justice Statements
The Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) was a human rights organization formed in 1970 to catalogue the abuses suffered by residents of Northern Ireland during the armed conflict. The organization primarily focused on charging and sentencing patterns in the Northern Ireland justice system at the time. During their history, ALJ collected over 4,000 statements of abuse from victims or those who witnessed the crimes. These statements were collected with a wide range of detail and include both violent and non-violent events during the conflict, particularly in regards to police and state abuse.
Ardoyne: The Untold Story (2002)
The Ardoyne Commemoration Project published a book in 2002 entitled “Ardoyne: The Untold Truth”. This is a published book which details the deaths of the 99 people killed in the Ardoyne area of Belfast from 1969 through 1998. The book is based on over 300 interviews including victims' family and friends as well as other community members.
Deutsch and Magowan (1975)
This source is a three-volume event catalogue coding major violent and political events in Northern Ireland from 1968 through 1973. This event catalogue was complied from Northern Ireland newspapers including the Belfast Telegraph.
Father's Murray and Faul Pamphlets
The Fr. Raymond Murray and Fr. Denis Faul Pamphlet Collection represent over twenty years of human rights documentation and activism on the part of these two men. Beginning in 1971 when political prisoners were first transferred to Armagh prison (where Fr. Murray was chaplain), these pamphlets document decades of prisoner mistreatment, legal irregularities, state terrorism and British Army/RUC brutalities. Compiled mostly from first hand testimony these pamphlets represent a passionate account of the day-to-day violence that embodied the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Lost Lives (2001)
This book provides a comprehensive list of individuals killed by political violence during the Troubles. For each individual, the book contains a detailed description of how they died, who killed them, the types of evidence used to make claims regarding perpetrator responsibility, as well as numerous personal details about the life of that individual and what s/he might have been doing immediately before their death. Also recorded are individual characteristics, including age, gender, occupation, sect, address. The source was compiled by a team of Northern Ireland’s most well known journalists, including David McKittrick. To generate the individual narratives, the journalists surveyed press reports, coroner’s reports, official inquests, and conducted interviews with members of the paramilitary groups and security forces. It is the most detailed and well-respected source for reporting deaths on the Troubles.
Newspapers from Northern Ireland, the UK & Around the World
Northern Ireland is blessed with a wide variety of newspapers from a variety of different political-orientations. There are also numerous papers within the UK as well as throughout the world that have covered the Troubles. We will be coding many of them in our creation of a database of events.
Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) Material
PRONI is the branch of the British archival system responsible for cataloging documents from the various branches of the cabinet operating in Northern Ireland, as well as various bureaucratic agencies that have functioned in country. From PRONI we are interested in documents from two sources – Cabinet 9B, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Cabinet 9B was responsible for governing Northern Ireland during the period of direct rule (1972-1998), and handled matters related to security. These documents record estimations of security throughout the six-counties, as well as annual statistics on various indicators of political stability, such as killings, bombings or arrests. The RUC records focus on the patterns of police behavior during the Troubles, and include weekly summaries of RUC activities, such as patrols, raids, and arrests, in the principal conflict areas.
Kew Archive Material (Miscellaneous)
Kew National Archive contains documents internal to the British Government. We are interested in collecting documents specifically related to the operation of the security forces. This includes numerous forms and files central to the operation of a functioning bureaucracy, but three types of documents stand out as systematically recording the beliefs, operation and behavior of the security forces. The first of these are Security Briefs, which document perceptions of security and insecurity at the cabinet level. Tracking these provides a sense of how the government perceived progress during the period. The second are Situation Reports or SitReps. These documents were the formal paperwork to be filled out in situations where members of the army encountered, or interacted with opposition movements, including both paramilitary groups and non-violent marches. The SitReps record specific details about the missions in which they encountered the opposition movement, including who was patrolling and what they were doing in that particular place and time. The last set of systematic data on military activity to be collected from Kew are Military Log Files. Military log files were collected at the level of the individual unit, and record all activities conducted by members of that unit by the day. These records have less detail than the SitReps on individual actions, but are a far more comprehensive listing.