The 1970s was a decade full of important events in Ireland and Dublin.
In October 1970, former US President Richard Nixon made his official state visit to the country. On January 1, 1973, Ireland became a member of the European Communities at the same time as the United Kingdom and Denmark. June 1973 marked the official retirement at age 90 of President Éamon de Valera, making him the oldest head of state in the world.
View down North Earl Street, December 1971.
Dublin was also affected to varying degrees by “the Troubles”. In 1972, angry crowds in Dublin burned down the British Embassy in Merrion Square in protest at the shooting of 13 civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday (1972) by British troops. The city, however, did not generally experience paramilitary violence directly, with the exception a period in the early to mid-1970s when it was the target of several loyalist bombings.
The 1972 and 1973 Dublin bombings killed 3 people and injured 185. The worst bomb attacks, however, occurred on Talbot street in 1974. The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings on 17 May 1974 were a series of terrorist attacks on Dublin and Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland which left 33 people dead (26 of them in Dublin), and almost 300 injured.
View from Talbot Street and North Earl Street, 1971.
In the early 1970s the Irish government canceled the hitherto annual Easter parade commemorating the Rising of 1916 and in 1976 banned it, fearing it was serving as a recruiting tool for illegal republican paramilitaries. Nevertheless, the Provisional republican movement organized a demonstration 10,000 strong on Easter Sunday.
Take a trip down memory lane to Dublin in the 1970s through these fascinating black and white pictures:
A group of children playing on a merry-go-round in Ballymun, August 1970.
Former US President Richard Nixon’s motorcade passes the GPO on O’Connell Street, October 1970.
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