This time, Free Derry was defended by well-armed members of the IRA. From within the area they launched attacks on the British Army, and the Provisionals began a bombing campaign in the city centre. As before, unarmed 'auxiliaries' manned the barricades, and crime was dealt with by a voluntary body known as the Free Derry Police. Support for the IRA rose further after Bloody Sunday in January 1972, when thirteen unarmed men and boys were shot dead by the British Parachute Regiment during a protest march in the Bogside (a 14th man was wounded and died months later). This support began to wane after the Official IRA killed a local youth who was home on leave from the British Army. Following the Bloody Friday bombings, the British decided to re-take the "no-go" areas. Free Derry came to an end on 31 July 1972 in Operation Motorman, when thousands of British troops moved in with armoured vehicles and bulldozers. Derry City lies near the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It has a majority nationalist population, and nationalists won a majority of seats in the 1920 local elections. Despite this, the Ulster Unionist Party controlled the local council, Londonderry Corporation, from 1923 onwards. The Unionists maintained their majority, firstly, by manipulating the constituency boundaries (gerrymandering) so that the South Ward, with a nationalist majority, returned eight councillors while the much smaller North Ward and Waterside Ward, with unionist majorities, returned twelve councillors between them; secondly, by allowing only ratepayers to vote in local elections, rather than one man, one vote, so that a higher number of nationalists, who did not own or rent homes, were disenfranchised; and thirdly, by denying council housing to nationalists outside the South Ward constituency. The result was that there were about 2,000 nationalist families, and practically no unionists, on the housing waiting list, and that housing in the nationalist area was crowded and of a very poor condition. The South Ward comprised the Bogside, Brandywell, Creggan, Bishop Street and Foyle Road, and it was this area that would become Free Derry. The Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) was formed in March 1968 by members of the Derry Branch of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the James Connolly Republican Club, including Eamonn McCann and Eamon Melaugh. It disrupted a meeting of Londonderry Corporation in March 1968 and in May blocked traffic by placing a caravan that was home to a family of four in the middle of the Lecky Road in the Bogside and staging a sit-down protest at the opening of the second deck of the Craigavon Bridge.