Emma Groves
| Numbers of rubber and plastic bullets fired in Northern Ireland 1970-1981 | ||||
| Year | Rubber bullets | Plastic bullets | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 238 | |||
| 1971 | 16,752 | |||
| 1972 | 23,363 | |||
| 1973 | 12,724 | 42 | ||
| 1974 | 2,612 | 216 | ||
| 1975 | 145 | 3,556 | ||
| 1976 | 3,464 | |||
| 1977 | 1,490 | |||
| 1978 | 1,734 | |||
| 1979 | 1,271 | |||
| 1980 | 1,231 | |||
| 1981 | 29,665 | |||
| Total | 55,834 | 42,669 | ||
|
Total rubber and plastic bullets
98,503 |
||||
Emma Groves (1920 – 2 April 2007) was a Human rights activist and a leading campaigner for banning the use of plastic bullets and a co-founder of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets in Northern Ireland. She began her campaign after she was blinded from being struck in the face by a rubber bullet in 1971.
Emma Groves was a Belfast mother of 11 children. At 9 a.m. on 4 November 1971, aged 51, she was standing at her living room window during British Army searches on her neighbours' houses. As a mark of defiance Emma turned on her record player and placed the ballad "Four Green Fields" on her record player and turned up the volume.
As she turned back to the window, a soldier, at a distance of about eight yards, shot a rubber bullet through the window hitting her in the face. As a result, she lost her sight in both eyes. A doctor at the hospital who was removing Emma's eyes approached Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was visiting Belfast at the time, to break the news to Emma that her eyesight was gone. Years later, she was offered £35,000 compensation, which was seen at the time as a de facto admission by the Army, although the soldier involved was never charged.
98,503
Groves campaigned for thirty years for the banning of plastic bullets. Groves and Clara Reilly founded the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets after the killing of John Downes in August 1984. The aim of the organisation was to bring together the families bereaved or injured by rubber and plastic bullets. They also compiled information on the statistics relating to usage of plastic bullets in Northern Ireland. In 1976, rubber bullets were replaced by plastic bullets. Up until that time they had caused the death of one person and the wounding of a further seventy. The new bullets were solid PVC cylinders, 4 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter. Their weight was nearly 5 ounces and they were fired at up to 170 miles per hour. These bullets were presented publicly as a more secure and less dangerous means of crowd control, despite that their use was prohibited in Great Britain as they were deemed ‘a danger to the civilian population’. Despite this, Groves said they were used "unsparingly in Northern Ireland". In 1981, during the hunger strikes, large numbers of people took to the streets to show their solidarity with the prisoners. The greatest number of plastic bullets fired was between May and August 1981, the same period in which Bobby Sands and the other nine prisoners died on hunger strike.
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