On 30 March 1972, the UK government formally suspended the parliament of Northern Ireland and imposed direct rule from Westminster – a decision aimed at containing the escalating violence of the Troubles. The move, enacted through the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, ended 51 years of devolved unionist-led government from Stormont.

The decision marked the culmination of a political crisis between London and Belfast over the deteriorating security situation in Northern Ireland. The security policy of internment without trial, introduced in 1971, had caused huge resentment within the nationalist community.

Following the events of Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians, the Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, concluded that his government should take full responsibility for law and order in Northern Ireland to have any chance of finding a political solution.

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The Stormont prime minister, Brian Faulkner, was summoned to London on 24 March. Heath informed him of his decision that security policy would be transferred to Westminster. Faulkner and his cabinet resisted, refusing to maintain government without security powers.

Faced with this impasse, the entire Northern Ireland government resigned.

The UK parliament moved swiftly to fill the political vacuum, sitting overnight to pass emergency legislation that transferred executive authority from both the government and governor of Northern Ireland to a newly created secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

William Whitelaw was the first to be appointed to this cabinet post.

Faulkner, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), addressed the imposition of direct rule in a speech on 24 March.

In his address, Faulkner described talks in London in which the British government proposed transferring “all statutory and executive responsibility for law and order” from the Northern Ireland government to Westminster.

He argued that “this diminution in the powers, prestige and authority of Stormont was in reality simply a response to the criticism of our opponents”. The outgoing Northern Ireland prime minister said that “chief amongst those who have sought the emasculation and ultimately the downfall of Stormont have been the IRA terrorists themselves.”

Faulkner, having outlined the government’s intention to resign, said he was then told that Heath would “announce at Westminster today a temporary suspension of our devolved institutions of government”.

Faulkner expressed his regret for the “serious and sad situation, reached after three years of the most strenuous efforts to reform our society on a basis at once fair and realistic.”

He added: “I fear, too, that many people will draw a sinister and depressing message from these events – that violence can pay; that violence does pay; that those who shout, lie, denigrate and even destroy earn for themselves an attention that responsible conduct and honourable behaviour do not.

“They may ask – if Belfast is to bow to violence today – where will it be next year? Birmingham? Glasgow? London?”

Heath defended the introduction of direct rule in a special broadcast from Downing Street. He described the decision as a “completely fresh start”.

The prime minister said: “The government have concluded after long and anxious thought that we must make possible a completely fresh start.

“It is needed if we are to break out of the vicious circle of violence and yet more violence. The government here in London is therefore obliged for the time being to take over full responsibility for the conduct of affairs in Northern Ireland.”

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Heath set out the government’s policy in a statement to the House of Commons on 24 March.

The prime minister said the government remained of the view that the “transfer of this responsibility to Westminster is an indispensable condition for progress in finding a political solution in Northern Ireland.”

Harold Wilson, the Labour leader of the opposition, responded that direct rule had always been “regarded by… both of us in opposition, as the very last resort, not an objective to be sought for itself, and we have all of us maintained this.”

On 27 March, Faulkner addressed an emergency meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC), informing it that he had lost confidence in Heath’s government. The UUP ultimately resigned the Conservative whip at Westminster in protest against Heath’s decision to impose direct rule.

Stormont met for the final time on 28 March. Faulkner marked the occasion with an address to a crowd of around 100,000 people from the first-floor balcony of parliament buildings. “We feel that we, in our endeavour to provide just government in Ulster, have been betrayed from London”, he declared.

The Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Bill was introduced to the commons for its second reading on 28 March.

Bernadette Devlin, the independent MP for Mid Ulster and civil rights leader, expressed her opposition to the bill during its commons stages. She argued it was “impossible for a Tory government to solve the problem of Ireland or the problems which beset the working class of this country.”

Devlin added: “The question we as Catholic and Protestant workers must face is not ‘will we be ruled from Belfast, London or Dublin?’ but ‘Will we be ruled?’. We will be ruled only by ourselves. Only then do we solve the problems that beset our community.”

UUP MP Rafton Pounder argued that direct rule represented the “internment of Stormont”.

Speaking ahead of the bill’s introduction, William Craig, the leader of the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP), referred to direct rule as “Ulster’s El Alamein”.

The proposed legislation ultimately secured its second reading by 483 votes to 18.

Former cabinet minister Enoch Powell was among those who voted against the bill. Powell, an “integrationist” on the Ulster question, argued that the bill actually emphasised “the distinction and the difference between the six counties and the rest of the United Kingdom.”

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In the end, the provisions set out in the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, which received royal assent on 30 March 1972, were anything but. The Northern Ireland Constitution Act, passed a year later, permanently abolished the parliament the 1972 act had indefinitely suspended.

Stormont, as it had been known – a majority-rule, unionist-dominated parliament – was no more.

Moreover, in his statement to the commons on 24 March, Heath proposed “a system of regular plebiscites [referenda] in Northern Ireland about the border, the first to be held as soon as practicable in the near future and others at intervals of a substantial period of years thereafter.”

The secretary of state for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, said the goal of this strategy “was to take the border out of the day-to-day political scene”.

On 8 March 1973, Northern Ireland held its first referendum on its constitutional status – a “border poll” that resulted in an overwhelming, but in effect meaningless, vote to remain part of the United Kingdom. The poll, which represented the first time that a major referendum had been held in any region of the United Kingdom, was marked by a mass boycott from the nationalist community. It duly produced an almost unanimous majority vote in favour of maintaining the Union with Britain.

The border poll was followed by a white paper, Northern Ireland Constitutional Proposals, published on 20 March 1973. It proposed a devolved power-sharing assembly in Northern Ireland and a ‘Council of Ireland’ to consider cross-border matters with the Republic of Ireland.

The new Northern Ireland assembly, created by the ‘Sunningdale Agreement’, met for the first time on 31 July 1973.

The power-sharing Sunningdale executive, which brought together moderate unionists, the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP), and the cross-community Alliance (APNI), took office on 1 January 1974.

Faulkner led the Sunningdale negotiations on behalf of the UUP, and was appointed as chief executive of Northern Ireland under the scheme.

However, the agreement’s cross-border element was fiercely opposed by loyalists and hardline unionist politicians, led by Harry West, Ian Paisley and William Craig, who viewed it as a step towards a united Ireland. The so-called ‘Dublin-dimension’, it was feared, would see the unionist community “trundled into a United Ireland”.

On 28 May, with Northern Ireland crippled by a loyalist strike, Faulkner and his unionist colleagues resigned from the Sunningdale executive. The power-sharing body, having failed to win cross-community support, collapsed

Northern Ireland self-government would only be revived in any sustainable form by the Good Friday Agreement 1998, which provided for a power-sharing executive.