Derry, first day

Derry (also known as Londonderry, usually by Loyalists) is a beautiful city. Enniskillen had started to give me the impression that all of Northern Ireland was going to be bleak and ... kinda soviet. This city is far from that. Derry, almost as much as any city I've ever been to, has a really strong sense and pride of identity and character. It's main feature are the massive City Walls, built in the early seventeenth century by the British, which are an example of some of the most intact ancient stone walls of any city in Europe. They still very much enclose the city centre, which gives the whole city a very unique feeling.
The building of the walled inner city was of course a signature point for the conflicts between the British and the Irish. Visiting the "Free Derry Museum", I learned a lot about the city's turbulent past. A key place in the city is the so-called "bogside" - early in the city's history this part was very swampy, earning its name. Of course when the British asserted their presence here and built the walled city they took the nice, firm, solid ground and the local Irish had to live in the Bogside. And throughout the city's history this attitude would set a trend, and the city would be central and iconic for the Irish people's struggles agains British rule.

One of the many murals in the Bogside,
this one displaying a scene from Bloody Sunday

You'll often hear that the conflicts in Ireland have to do with religion - Protestant versus Catholic. Seriously, the respective religions are so similar and private enough - do you really expect people to kill each other over them? No, it's political. The British brought protestantism to Ireland, and the locals were Catholic. It was a class and allegiance struggle, where religion was just a simple way to differentiate what side you were on. Also later it was easy for the Crown to target religion as the reason for the fighting to make themselves not look bad.
I had a tour guide that lived through some of the worst parts of this crisis. Perhaps you can tell that from the last paragraph.
He was the kind of tourguide you always want to have - not just someone familiar with the material, but someone who has first-hand experience. He even personally saw a neighbourhood 11 year old boy killed by the English military. So yeah, this post may sound a bit biased. So sue me.
Basically, the conditions for the Catholics (and by that I mean the original inhabitants) were terrible from start to finish. They were oppressed by English rule for hundreds of years in the area, but the whole thing blew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 60s there were a number of protests all around northern Ireland, one of which marched from Belfast. This protest group was attacked by various loyalists, including police. This action stirred the Bogsiders into their own action. They built barricades around the whole bogside, effectively secceding from Northern Ireland (keep in mind this area is only half a city in size). Naturally the British didn't like this, and for the next few years fighting and complicated politics happened regarding this. It was during this time that the iconic slogan "you are now entering Free Derry" was painted on a gable on the street leading into the bogside.
This all culminated into the so called "bloody Sunday". Protests by Irish Nationalists and Unionists (not exactly friends, though with the same goal. It's complicated) reached boiling point when the British declared that Irish nationalists could be detained without trial. Similar rules exist now with Guantanamo bay. There were protests almost daily, and finally the Crown sent a paratrooper regiment into Free Derry. They fired on a group of innocent civilians, killing 13 and seriously wounding another 15. The museum, I might add, was quite graphic regarding this - they had several articles of clothing from those killed, complete with bullet holes, and even a giant banner covered in blood where someone was shot in the head.
So slowly after this there was some reform. After a lot of political machinations the IRA decided that politics rather than violence is the way to go. Now it seems like Northern Ireland has settled into a comparatively peaceful state, though there's still a way to go.