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Background Information on
Ulster
432 Romans conquered England but not Ireland
1014 Ireland defeated Norsemen aggressors
1066 local warlords maintained their power
1169 Irish warlord invited help from an English Earl
After the Norman Invasion in 1170, Henry II of England attached Ireland to his kingdom by establishing control in an area around Dublin. The Irish adopted English administrative practices and the English language while receiving protection and leadership from London. The British tried to extend their domination on the rest of Ireland, but did not succeed until the sixteenth century. For the Irish population England therefore became a threat for Ireland.
16th century England settled Protestants from Scotland in Ulster on the best land
In 1609, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, England controlled Ireland, with the exception of the provinces of Ulster. They had built an effective alliance against the British Kingdom and their Army. After long fights Ulster was brought under English control and the leaders of Ireland left Ulster for Europe. By 1703, barely 5% of Ulster was in the hands of Catholic Irish. The native Irishmen were then excluded from the towns and had to settle in the mountains and bogs on the margins of the land they had owned. The plantation of Ulster was the beginning of a new culture in Ireland with different languages and several foreign communities. Mainly, two hostile groups occupied the region. That's why the situation then could be called the beginning of the conflicts today.
1801 Ireland under British control; Irish language forbidden;
In 1801, Westminster abolished the Irish parliament and government to gain more direct control over the Irish. The Act of Union created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the next century movements were attempted to overthrow the Union. Some of these movements were parliamentary, some of them took place with physical force.
1845 ff. Great Famine; more than 1.000.000 people immigrated to the US
1916 Easter Rising in Dublin
- During the Easter week of 1916 an armed rising was attempted, but did not succeed. The leaders were executed which created a wave of sympathy for the IRA and Sinn Fein.
- In 1918, Sinn Fein replaced the old Irish Parliament and established its own Irish Parliament. The resulting Anglo-Irish War between Republicans (IRA) and Britain was ended by peace treaties. From then on, Ulster Protestants succeeded in their position to exclude Northern Ireland (Ulster) from the Home Rule arrangements.The Government of Irish Act recognised and confirmed their suggestion by partitioning the island.
- The following Civil War in 1921 saw two positions. Those, who were willing to accept the treaty and those, who thought that living in Northern Ireland was a betrayal. Northern Ireland consisted of six county administrations which could be easily held by the British Union.
- For the security of Northern Ireland, the British MPs established a police force and a police reserve to prevent the Irish from beginning another civil war.
1949 Republic of Ireland (Eire) founded; Ulster remained British
reforms including a policy change
of the discrimination in the allocation of jobs and
houses. The resulting civil disorder could not be managed
by the local administration, therefore the British
government sent in troops to enforce order and imposed
Direct Rule on Northern Ireland.ZOMBIE - The Cranberries |
19th century. The two main parties are
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) with party leader David
Trimble. 
Democratic
Unionist Party
(DUP) with its party leader Ian Paisley.
The main party of the Nationalists is the Social Democratic and 
Labour Party (SLDP), led by John Hume. The main aim of
the Nationalists is to unite Northern Ireland with the
Republic of Ireland.
Sinn
Féin ("We
Ourselves") is committed to a united Ireland. This
party has historic links to the IRA although it has long insisted
that the organisations are separate. It is led by Gerry Adams.
"Our objective is to end British rule in Ireland. We seek national self-determination, the unity and independence of Ireland as a sovereign state" (from: Sinn Féin Homepage).
The Paramilitary
Organisations
"The republican
paramilitary organisations, of which the IRA is by far the most
important, believe that only force will remove the British from
Ireland. Initially they saw themselves as defenders of the
Northern Catholic minority, but later spread their military
activities throughout Northern Ireland, Britain and Europe. There
is disagreement about whether loyalist violence is essentially
reactive, but certainly the pattern of loyalist violence has
shadowed republican violence. There has been a major shift in the
form of violence since 1990, with loyalists for the first time
killing more victims than republicans. It has been speculated
that this rise in loyalist violence may be connected to the
failure of recent political talks."
from: Conflict in Northern Ireland: A Background Essay by John Darby
CAIN Web Service |
The Management and Resolution of the Conflict
"'The Northern Irish problem' is a term widely used in Northern Ireland and outside as if there were an agreed and universal understanding of what it means. It is more accurate, and more productive, to consider the issue, not as a 'problem' with the implication that a solution lies around the corner for anyone ingenious enough to find it, but as a tangle of interrelated problems:
There is a central constitutional problem: what should be the political context for the people of Northern Ireland? Integration with Britain? A united Ireland; independence? There is a continuing problem of social and economic inequalities, especially in the field of employment; there is a problem of cultural identity, relating to education, to the Irish language and to a wide range of cultural differences; there is clearly a problem of security; there is a problem of religious difference; there is certainly a problem of the day-to-day relationships between the people who live in Northern Ireland.
All of these are elements of the problem, but none can claim dominance. Each affects the others. Any approach to change needs to take into account all elements of the problem. Viewed against this broader context, an evaluation of conflict relations policy over the last 20 years can point to some successes: discrimination in the allocation of housing, a major grievance in 1969, has been removed; integrated schooling has been encouraged, and the segregated schools attended by the vast majority of children are required to introduce the concepts of cultural diversity and mutual understanding; minority cultural expression, especially through the use of the Irish language, has been allowed and even encouraged through the acceptance of a small number of Irish language schools. At local government level, 11 of Northern Ireland's 26 councils were in 1993 operating a power-sharing regime, often involving rotation of the chair, and 18 had agreed to implement a community relations programme with specific and binding requirements. On the other side of the balance, a number of major problems remain. Catholics are much more likely to be unemployed than are Protestants, more than twice as likely in the case of males. The problem of violence remains as persistent as ever. Progress towards a more general political solution has been disappointing. Since the introduction of direct rule from Westminster in 1972 there have been six attempts to reach a political accord. All have failed. 1973-74: The power-sharing Executive, which lasted for three months, remains Northern Ireland's only experience of a government shared by Catholics and Protestants. It attempted to construct a devolved system based on power-sharing between Protestants and Catholics, and on a Council of Ireland to regulate affairs between the two parts of Ireland. It was opposed by the Democratic Unionist Party and most of the Ulster Unionist party, but eventually was brought down through a Protestant workers' strike in May 1974. 1975-76: A Constitutional Convention was convened to enable elected representatives from Northern Ireland to propose their own solution. The majority unionist parties proposed a return to majority rule, modified by a committee system with some minority rights inbuilt. It was rejected by both the British and the minority SDLP. 1977-78 and 1980: Two attempts to set up devolved institutions were initiated by two Northern Ireland secretaries of state, Roy Mason and Humphrey Atkins. Neither got to first base. They were opposed, for different reasons, by the SDLP and the UUP, but both simply petered out. As a measure of the cultural gap between the two sides, two bars were set up in Stormont during the Atkins talks of 1980, one serving only non-alcoholic beverages. Students of national stereotyping may guess which bar was designed for which political parties. 1982-84: Rolling Devolution, introduced by James Prior, was perhaps the most ingenious proposal, again involving an elected assembly and a committee system. This envisaged a gradual return to power by elected representatives, but only if the proposed powers had 'Widespread acceptance', defined as 70 per cent agreement. In other words, the amount of power allowed to local political parties depended on their ability to agree, and would roll along at the speed of progress determined by them. It was boycotted by the SDLP because it did not guarantee power-sharing. 1991-92: The Brooke-Mayhew initiatives sought to introduce phased talks, involving the Northern Irish parties first and the Dublin government at a later stage. This initiative followed the introduction of the Anglo-lrish Agreement in 1985, an agreement signed by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic, but which did not involve local politicians and has been bitterly opposed by unionists. A major survey in 1990 confirmed that, for Protestants, the Anglo-lrish Agreement is still perceived to be the biggest single obstacle to peace. Prior to 1993 Sinn Féin was excluded from all major political talks, mainly because unionist parties refused to talk with terrorists. In 1988 and 1993, however, those whom they regarded as the leaders of the SDLP and Sinn Féin held two series of bilateral talks. The consequences remain to be seen. 1993: The Downing Street Declaration, jointly announced by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Major, and the Irish Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, introduced for the first time the possibility of Sinn Féin becoming involved in t