From Civil Rights to Armalites traces and analyses the gradual escalation of conflict in Northern Ireland from the first civil rights marches in 1968 to the verge of full-scale civil war in 1972, focusing on the city of Derry. Derry was at the heart of the early civil rights campaign and it was in Derry in January 1972 that the events of Bloody Sunday marked a defining moment in the escalating conflict. This detailed local study seeks to explain how a peaceful civil rights campaign gave way to increasing violence and how the most moderate and conservative sections of the Catholic community gradually became deeply hostile to the state. It provides an explanation of how the IRA became a major political force and how the British army became a major party to the conflict. A new chapter on Bloody Sunday brings significant new material to the public debate around the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, placing the events of the day in the context of well-established patterns of conflict and secret negotiation which had gradually developed in Derry over the previous three years.