On its arrival in west Belfast in August 1969 the British army was generally welcomed by the Catholic community. Local people saw its intervention as providing a much-needed defence from loyalists, who had invaded and burned several streets of Catholic-owned houses in the Cupar Street area, which subsequently became the "peace line" between the Shankill and the Falls.
The loyalist gangs included members of the reserve RUC force, the B Specials. The police were widely regarded by Catholics as a party to the purge of nationalist areas.
When the army arrived and erected barriers between the Shankill and the Falls, it was initially attacked by the loyalist side. In contrast, the women of the Falls came to the barriers with tea and biscuits for the soldiers.
By the middle of 1970, however, the tide of opinion within the nationalist community had turned against the army, which was beginning to come into conflict with both the Official IRA and its militant offshoot, the Provisionals. The Provisional wing quickly established a support base in west Belfast and, as part of its campaign of consolidating its position, began to target people who were seen as sympathetic to the army or RUC.
The few Catholic members of the RUC living in west Belfast left. Women who fraternised with British soldiers were attacked, and some were tarred and feathered. Anyone who was suspected of being anti-IRA was likely to be harassed or forced from their homes.
The IRA in the lower Falls area, known as "B" Company, was one of the most extreme and active groups in the organisation.
"B" Company, the members of which killed Jean McConville, was under the control of Seamus Twomey, a bookmaker's clerk from Andersonstown who was one of the most extreme personalities to emerge in the IRA, and who instigated the no-warning bombing campaign which led to huge casualties in 1972. In policing its own area, the Lower Falls IRA would not countenance any instance of fraternisation with the British army.
Jean McConville's simple act of compassion in providing comfort to a young British soldier who was shot and fatally wounded outside her home in late 1972 was noted by IRA supporters. Twomey or some of the people under his control ordered her murder.
Although a young widow with nine children, she was doubly at risk in the Lower Falls as a Protestant who had happened to marry a local Catholic. Her abduction from in front of her children was known about widely in the area, although not reported in the media. It was also known locally why she had been taken.
Her murder had the intended effect: there were no further cups of tea for British army patrols in west Belfast.
Eight men and four women from the IRA abducted Mrs McConville in the days before Christmas, leaving her eldest daughter Susan, who was 15, to look after the eight other children.
With little or no support from the community, she managed for a week before the children were taken into care. The family were broken up and the children placed in different orphanages.
The incident is among the most shameful in the IRA's history, and one it tried to hide.
The IRA in West Belfast circulated a story that Mrs McConville had absconded with a British soldier, abandoning her children. However, people who lived in the area at the time have said it was known locally that she had not absconded but was abducted by the IRA, shot, and buried in the Bog Meadow, beside the M1 motorway as it approaches Belfast.
It finally admitted her murder only two months ago, when her name appeared in the list of nine people published in the Sinn Fein newspaper, An Phoblacht.
Mrs McConville's daughter, Susan McKendry, and her husband became the leading figures in the campaign to get the IRA to give up the dead. On Saturday gardai in Co Louth began excavating the reported site in what is now a car park on the shores of Carlingford Lough.