In preparation for the operation, 4,000 more troops were brought in during the past week. This raises the total strength of the British garrison in Northern Ireland to 21,000.

The army's main target was "Free Derry" - the Bogside and Creggan districts of Derry, which have a population of 35,000. Free Derry, the largest of the areas the Catholics have declared off limits to the British, was invaded by 4,000 British soldiers and 300 armored vehicles.

"The army are now in occupation and control throughout Northern Ireland," said William Whitelaw, the British proconsul, after the assault.

Bernard Weinraub, reporting in the Aug. 1 New York Times, described the occupation. "Belfast and Londonderry are under virtual siege. Flakjacketed soldiers - some of them with faces blackened with charcoal - patrolled such Irish Republican Army strongholds as Andersonstown, Falls Road and the Ardoyne in Belfast as well as the Bogside in Londonderry. Troop carriers, tanks and armored cars, equipped with twin Browning machine guns, rumbled down the center of Belfast."

A July 31 AP dispatch from Derry says, "Barbed-wire roadblocks, thrown up by troops, blocked the streets so thoroughly that some persons were searched three times in one 200-yard stretch.

"Helicopters circled above, ready to give the word on potential trouble.

Weinraub reports that "Although there was no major violence during the assault, Catholics reacted bitterly. Troops were stoned in the Bogside. In Belfast as well as Londonderry, soldiers were cursed and jeered by women and groups of young people."

August 11, 1947
AMSTERDAM, Holland, July 30 - The militant strike of almost 1,000 dock workers of the Eenheid Vak Centrala is in its third day. The striking workers, who may soon be joined by the crane operators, are bravely standing up against company threats and feel certain of an early victory.

On July 28 one of the dock workers said that he felt Princess Julianna should be hung because she was largely responsible for the war in Indonesia. He was immediately fired. Within a few hours all the dock workers of the EVC in the port of Amsterdam had stopped work to protest the company's brazen persecution of one of their union brothers who was merely voicing the popular sentiment.

The next day, in reply to the company's "back to work" order, the workers demanded the reinstatement of their union brother with pay for the time lost for all striking workers.  
 
 
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