Decimal Coins, Detention Camps
Northern Ireland entered 1971 with the institutions at Stormont under severe strain. The civil-rights movement had exposed long-standing grievances over housing, electoral arrangements and policing, while republican and loyalist violence, alongside the expanding British Army presence, had made everyday security precarious in many places. The split between the Official and Provisional wings of the Irish Republican movement, completed in 1970, had also created competing armed organisations rather than reducing republican militancy.