History of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland was created as a political entity in 1921. Once the bedrock of Irish resistance to the advance of the English state in Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster by Scottish and English colonists resulted in it following a different economic, religious and cultural trajectory to the rest of the island.

Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster and, together with Great Britain, forms the present United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This came about through the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 that also granted Home Rule to the rest of Ireland as Southern Ireland. In 1922, the rest of Ireland became independent and became known as the Irish Free State.

Northern Ireland today remains a divided society with a legacy of civil conflict, at times made obvious through territorial markings such as painted kerbstones and the flying of the Irish or British national flags.

1925 to 1965

Under successive Unionist Prime Ministers from Sir James Craig (later Lord Craigavon) onwards, the unionist establishment practiced what is generally considered a policy of discrimination against the nationalist/Catholic minority.

A pattern of discrimination has most firmly and inarguably been established in the case of local government, where gerrymandered ward boundaries rigged local government elections to ensure unionist control of local councils with nationalist majorities. In a number of cases, most prominently those of the Corporation of Londonderry, Omagh Urban District, and Fermanagh County Council, ward boundaries were drawn to place as many Catholics as possible into wards with overwhelming nationalist majorities while other wards were created where unionists had small but secure majorities, maximising unionist representation. This process was greatly facilitated by the use of bloc voting to elect local councillors in most areas outside Belfast.

Voting arrangements which gave commercial companies votes and restricted the vote to property owners, primary tenants and their spouses also helped achieve similar ends. Disputes over local government gerrymandering were at the heart of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

In addition, there was widespread discrimination in employment, particularly at senior levels of the public sector and in certain sectors of the economy, such as shipbuilding and heavy engineering. Emigration to seek employment was significantly more prevalent among the Catholic population. As a result, Northern Ireland's demography shifted further in favour of Protestants leaving their ascendancy seemingly impregnable by the late 1950s.

Perhaps most fatally, the abolition of Proportional Representation in 1929 meant that the structure of party politics gave the Ulster Unionist Party a continual sizable majority in the Northern Ireland Parliament, leading to fifty years of one-party rule. While Nationalist parties continued to retain the same number of seats that they had under Proportional Representation, the Northern Ireland Labour Party and various smaller leftist Unionist groups were smothered, meaning that it proved impossible for any group to sustain a challenge to the Ulster Unionist Party from within the Unionist section of the population.

In 1935, the worst violence since partition convulsed Belfast. After an Orange Order parade decided to return to the city centre through a Catholic area instead of its usual route, the resulting violence left nine people dead. Over 2,000 Catholics were forced to leave their homes.

Though disputed for decades, many leaders of unionism now admit that Northern Ireland government in the period 1922–1972 was discriminatory, although prominent Democratic Unionist Party figures continue to deny it. One unionist leader, Nobel Peace Prize joint-winner, former UUP leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble, openly described Northern Ireland as having been a "cold house for Catholics."

Despite this, Northern Ireland was relatively peaceful for most of the following the period from 1924 until the late 1960s, except for some brief flurries of IRA activity and the (Luftwaffe) Belfast blitz during the Second World War and the so-called "Border Campaign" from 1956 to 1962, with little support among the wider Catholic community — thanks, in part, to the economic prosperity of Northern Ireland, and the welfare benefits available there. However, many Catholics were resentful towards the state, and nationalist politics was sullen and defeatist. Meanwhile, the period saw an almost complete synthesis between the Ulster Unionist Party and the loyalist Orange Order, with even Catholic Unionists being excluded from any position of political or civil authority outside of a handful of Nationalist-controlled councils.

Throughout this time, although the Catholic birth rate remained higher than for Protestants, the Catholic proportion of the population declined, as poor economic prospects, especially west of the River Bann saw Catholics emigrate in disproportionate numbers.

Nationalist politcial institutions declined, with the Nationalist party boycotting the Stormont Parliament for much of this period and its constituency organisations reducing to little more than shells. Sinn Féin were banned though operated through the Republican Clubs or similar vehicles. At various times they stood and won elections on an abstensionist platform.

Labour-based politics were weak in Northern Ireland, especially in comparison with Britain, but even when compared to the Republic. A small Northern Ireland Labour Party existed but suffered many splits to both nationalist and unionist factions.

1966 to 1998

Main article: The Troubles

In the 1960s, moderate Unionist prime minister Terence O'Neill (later Lord O'Neill of the Maine) tried to reform the system, but encountered strong opposition from both fundamentalist Protestant leaders like Ian Paisley and within his own party. The increasing pressures from Nationalists for reform and from extreme Loyalists for "No Surrender" led to the appearance of the civil rights movement, under figures such as Austin Currie and joint-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, John Hume. It had some moderate Protestant support and membership, and a considerable dose of student radicalism after Northern Ireland was swept up in the world-wide student revolts of 1968. Clashes between marchers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary led to increased communal strife, with elements both among the police and student radicals actively seeking to up the temperature, culminating in a violent attack by a unionist mob (which included police reservists) on a march, at Burntollet, outside Derry on 4 January 1969 as the police looked on. Wholescale violence erupted after an Apprentice Boys march was forced through the nationalist Bogside area of Derry on 12 August 1969 by the RUC, which led to large scale disorder known as the Battle of the Bogside. Rioting continued until the 14th of August, and in that time 1,091 canisters, each containing 12.5g of CS gas and 14 canisters containing 50g of CS gas, were released into the densely populated residential area by the RUC. Even more severe rioting broke out in Belfast and elsewhere in response to events in Derry (see Northern Ireland riots of August 1969). The following thirty years of civil strife came to be known as the Troubles.

The British army were deployed by the UK Home Secretary James Callaghan two days later on 14 August 1969. Two weeks later, control of security in Northern Ireland was passed from the Stormont government to General Ian Freeland. At first the soldiers received a warm welcome from Nationalists, who hoped they would protect them from Loyalist attack (which the IRA, at that point a Marxist organisation, had for ideological reasons declined to do). However, tensions rose throughout the following years, with an important milestone in the worsening relationship between the army and nationalists being the Falls Curfew of 3 July 1970 when 3,000 British troops imposed a three day curfew on the Lower Falls area.

After the introduction of internment without trial for suspected IRA men on 9 August 1971, even the most moderate Nationalists reacted by completely withdrawing their co-operation with the state. The SDLP members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland withdrew from that body on 15 August and a widespread campaign of civil disobedience began. Tensions were ratcheted to a higher level after the killing of fourteen unarmed civilians in Derry by the Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972, an event dubbed Bloody Sunday.

Throughout this period, the modern constellation of paramilitary organisations began to form. After Bloody Sunday, their full fury was unleashed, and 1972 was the most violent year of the conflict. The appearance in 1970 of the Provisional IRA, a breakaway from the increasingly Marxist Official IRA, and a campaign of violence by loyalist paramilitary groups like the Ulster Defence Association and others brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war. On 30 March 1972, the British government, unwilling to grant the unionist Northern Ireland government more authoritarian special powers, and now convinced of its inability to restore order, pushed through emergency legislation that prorogued the Northern Ireland Parliament and introduced direct rule from London.

However, the British government held talks with various parties, including the IRA, during 1972 and 1973. On 9 December 1973, after talks in Sunningdale, Berkshire, the Ulster Unionist Party, SDLP and Alliance Party of Northern Ireland reached the Sunningdale Agreement on a cross-community government for Northern Ireland, which took office on 1 January 1974. The IRA was unimpressed, increasing the tempo of their violence, while unionists were outraged at the participation of nationalists in the government of Northern Ireland and at the cross-border Council of Ireland. Although the pro-Sunningdale parties had a clear majority in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, the failure of the pro-Agreement parties to co-ordinate their efforts in the General Election of 28 February, combined with an IRA-sponsored boycott by hardline republicans, allowed anti-Sunningdale Unionists to take 51.1% of the vote and 11 of Northern Ireland's 12 seats in the UK House of Commons.

Emboldened by this, a coalition of anti-Agreement Unionist politicians and paramilitaries encouraged a general strike on 15 May. The strikers brought Northern Ireland to a standstill by shutting down power stations, and after Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to send in troops to take over from the strikers, the power-sharing executive collapsed on 28 May 1973.

Some British politicians, notably former British Labour minister Tony Benn, advocated British withdrawal from Ireland, but many opposed this policy, and called their prediction of the possible results of British withdrawal the Doomsday Scenario, anticipating widespread communal strife. The worst fear envisaged a civil war which would engulf not just Northern Ireland, but also the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, both of which had major links with either or both communities. Later, the feared possible impact of British withdrawal was the Balkanisation of Northern Ireland after the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and the chaos that ensued.

The level of violence declined from its early 1970s peak from 1972 onwards, stabilising at 50 to 100 deaths a year. The IRA, using weapons and explosives obtained from the United States and Libya, bombed England and various British army bases in Europe, as well as conducting ongoing attacks within Northern Ireland. These attacks were not only on "military" targets but also on Protestant-frequented businesses, unaffiliated civilian commercial properties, and various city centres. Arguably the signature attack would involve cars packed with high explosives being driven directly to key areas for maximum effect. At the same time, Loyalist paramilitaries largely (but not exclusively) focused their campaign within Northern Ireland, ignoring the uninvolved military of the Republic of Ireland, and instead claiming a (very) few Republican paramilitary casualties. They also targeted Catholics working in Protestant areas, and (in a parallel to the IRA tactic of car-bombing) attacked Catholic-frequented pubs using automatic fire weapons. Such attacks were euphemistically known as "spray jobs". Both groups would also carry out extensive "punishment" attacks against members of their own communities for a variety of perceived, alleged, or suspected "crimes", regardless of the reality of the situation.

Various fitful political talks took place from then until the early 1990s, backed by schemes such as Rolling Devolution, and 1975 saw a brief IRA ceasefire. The two events of real significance during this period, however, were the Hunger Strikes and the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Despite the failure of the Hunger Strike, the republican movement gained its first taste of electoral politics with modest electoral success on both sides of the border, including the election of Bobby Sands to the House of Commons. This convinced republicans to adopt the armalite and ballot box strategy and gradually take a more political approach.

While the Anglo-Irish Agreement failed to bring an end to political violence in Northern Ireland, it did improve cooperation between the British and Irish governments, which was key to the creation of the Belfast Agreement a decade later.

At a strategic level the agreement demonstrated that the British recognised as legitimate the wishes of the Republic to have a direct interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland. It also demonstrated to paramilitaries their ultimate political impotence vis a vis sovereign states. Unlike the Sunningdale Agreement the Anglo-Irish Agreement withstood a much more concerted campaign of violence and intimidation, as well as political hostility, from the loyalists. Republicans were left in the position of rejecting the only significant all-Ireland structures created since parition.

By the 1990s, the failure of the IRA campaign to win mass public support or achieve its aim of British withdrawal, and in particular the public relations disaster of Enniskillen (when there were 11 fatalities among families attending a Remembrance Day ceremony), along with the 1983 replacement of the traditional republican leadership of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh by Gerry Adams, saw a move away from armed conflict to political engagement.

This change from paramilitary to political means was part of a broader Northern Ireland peace process, which followed the appearance of new leaders in London (John Major) and Dublin (Albert Reynolds).

Increased government focus on the problems of Northern Ireland led, in 1993, to the two prime ministers signing the Downing Street Declaration. At the same time Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, and John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, engaged in talks. A new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, initially perceived as a hardliner, brought his party into all-party negotiations that in 1998 produced the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement"), signed by eight parties on 10 April 1998, although not involving Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party or the UK Unionist Party. A majority of both communities in Northern Ireland approved this Agreement, as did the people of the Republic of Ireland, both by referendum on 22 May 1998. The Republic amended its constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, to replace a claim it made to the territory of Northern Ireland with an affirmation of the right of all the people of Ireland to be part of the Irish nation and a declaration of an aspiration towards a United Ireland (see the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland).

Since the Good Friday Agreement

Under the Good Friday Agreement, properly known as the Belfast Agreement, voters elected a new Northern Ireland Assembly to form a parliament. Every party that reaches a specific level of support gains the right to name a members of its party to government and claim one or more ministries. Ulster Unionist party leader David Trimble became First Minister of Northern Ireland. The Deputy Leader of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, became Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, though his party's new leader, Mark Durkan, subsequently replaced him. The Ulster Unionists, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party each had ministers by right in the power-sharing assembly.

The Assembly and its Executive operated on a stop-start basis, with repeated disagreements about whether the IRA was fulfilling its commitments to disarm, and also allegations from the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Special Branch that there was an IRA spy-ring operating in the heart of the civil service. It has since emerged that the spy-ring was run by MI5 (see Denis Donaldson). Northern Ireland is now, once more, run by the Direct Rule Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, and a British ministerial team answerable to him. Hain is answerable only to the Cabinet.

The events of September 11th 2001 caused many erstwhile American sympathisers of the IRA cause to re-evaluate their beliefs. A withdrawal of support (moral and financial) from sympathizers in the US was compounded when Gerry Adams chose to visit or support the anti-American regimes in Cuba and Colombia.

The changing British position to Northern Ireland was represented by the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Parliament Buildings in Stormont, where she met nationalist ministers from the SDLP as well as unionist ministers and spoke of the right of people who perceive themselves as Irish to be treated as equal citizens along with those who regard themselves as British. Similarly, on visits to Northern Ireland, the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, met with unionist ministers and with the Lord Lieutenant of each county - the official representatives of the Queen.

However, the Assembly elections of 30 November 2003 saw Sinn Féin and the DUP emerge as the largest parties in each community, which was perceived as making a restoration of the devolved institutions more difficult to achieve. However, serious talks between the political parties and the British and Irish governments saw steady, if stuttering, progress throughout 2004, with the DUP in particular surprising many observers with its newly discovered pragmatism. However, an arms-for-government deal between Sinn Féin and the DUP broke down in December 2004 due to a row over whether photographic evidence of IRA decommissioning was necessary, and the IRA refusal to countenance the provision of such evidence.

The 2005 British general election saw further polarisation, with the DUP making sweeping gains, although Sinn Féin did not make the breakthrough many had predicted. In particular, the failure of Sinn Féin to gain the SDLP leader Mark Durkan's Foyle seat marked a significant rebuff for the republican party. The UUP only took one seat, with the leader David Trimble losing his and subsequently resigning as leader.

On July 28, 2005, the IRA made a public statement ordering an end to the armed campaign and instructing its members to dump arms and to pursue purely political programmes. While the British and Irish governments warmly welcomed the statement, political reaction in Northern Ireland itself demonstrated a tendency to suspicion engendered by years of political and social conflict.

On October 13 2006 an agreement was proposed after three days of multiparty talks at St. Andrews in Scotland, which all parties including the DUP, supported. Under the agreement, Sinn Féin will fully endorse the police in Northern Ireland, and the DUP will share power with Sinn Féin. The parties have to respond to the proposed agreement by November 10.

8th May 2007 Home rule returned to Northern Ireland. DUP leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness took office as First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively. (BBC). "You Raise Me Up", the 2005 track by Westlife, was played at their inauguration.

See also

• Flag of Northern Ireland
• History of Ireland
• History of the United Kingdom
• Northern Irish murals

References

• "Northern Ireland." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 July 2006.
• Dr Raymond McClean^{Note 1} (1997). The Road To Bloody Sunday (revised edition). Guildhall: Printing Press. ISBN 0-946451-37-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (extracts available online)