Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist, Republican and

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Northern Ireland has been through nearly a century of turmoil.  Catholic, Nationalist, Republicans have been pitted against Protestant, Unionist, Loyalists in what has often been a bloody conflict.  The difference in ideologies is that where Catholic Nationalists dream of a united Ireland, completely free from British influence, Protestant Unionists are very proud of their British ties and will do seemingly anything it takes to remain a part of the United Kingdom.  After agreeing to disagree for nearly 400 years, in the 1960s things took a sudden change for the worse and tensions became visible in daily bloodshed.  Why did these two sides become so polarized in the 1960s?  Ancient hatreds is clearly an insufficient answer for it fails to explain why it was not until 1968 that violence became commonplace.  It also fails to explain why amicability and peace has recently triumphed over conflict.  So what were the factors involved in the beginning and ending of the Troubles?  Although it is undeniably a combination of factors that led to the swelling and fading of violence – most of which will be addressed and evaluated – it is the sharp contrast between the levels of extremism during periods of peace and conflict that seems to highlight the biggest problem.  As each respective community and their leaders made increasingly inflexible demands, the level of conflict would rise.  As practicality overtook irrationality, peace began to prosper.

It is important to first understand the history behind the Catholic-Protestant conflict if one is to determine whether the turning point was simply a result of the buildup of years of tension, or whether there are specific factors which can be pinpointed as directly leading to years of bloodshed.  The very deepest roots of Northern Ireland’s political mess “lie in historical conflicts between Planter and Gael” (Tonge 104). The Planters – the Scottish Protestants who immigrated to Ulster in the late 1500’s – had already taken over the Plantation of Ulster by 1609, displaced many native Irish from their homes and within 200 years of their arrival, they had overtaken 86 percent of the land (Darby 14).  Twice in the late 1600s, Catholic uprisings were crushed, the second of which – King William’s victory over James II and his army – is to this day celebrated by some Ulster Protestants.  In 1858, the IRA (formerly known as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood), who have often been associated with Ireland’s violent past, was formed so as to end England’s occupancy of Ireland.  The onset of the Industrial Revolution and the economic effects that were felt in the North gave Ulster even more of a sense of ‘separateness’.  By the end of the Industrial Revolution, there was a distinctly Protestant working-class who had completely overtaken the shipbuilding and engineering industries and left many Catholics to fill the manual labor jobs or be left jobless (Tonge 5-6).

        This economic polarization of British Loyalists and Irish Nationalists inevitably deepened tensions, and yet still to this point violence had been sparse and rarely bloody.  However, as nationalism sprouted up all across Europe in the 1880s with Ireland being no exception, Britain saw the rise of Gaelic pride as something that deserved attention.  Thus rose the concept of “Home Rule”, an idea of British Prime Minister Gladstone and his Liberal Party.  Home Rule was intended to be a form of powersharing government, where Ireland would have “limited autonomy over domestic matters, whilst the Westminster parliament would continue to legislate on defense and foreign policy, along with most economic affairs” (Tonge 6).  This bill was primarily intended to placate constitutional Irish Nationalists and quell the support for radical Nationalist groups.  However, in 1886, a divided Liberal Party and general dissatisfaction amongst all parties led to its failure.  History repeated itself only 7 years later as a second and weaker version also failed.  In 1914 a third Home Rule bill was actually passed, however, with the onset of World War I, it was abandoned.  However, the Home Rule threat hit close enough to home with many Ulster Protestants that an ethnic consciousness revival of their own took place and the revival of the “Orange Order” was fully realized.  The polarization was nearly complete and the partition of Ireland seemingly inevitable.

        Indeed, this widespread belief that one day Ireland would be free from Britain came true.  The 1920 Act was not enough to satisfy either side.  Eventually the Unionists came around once they realized Westminster would no longer rule Ulster directly and began to see that partition was, at least for them, the least of all evils.  However, Nationalists felt this offering to be fully insufficient and their desire for independence unfulfilled.  After a year of war, carried out primarily by the IRA, the Nationalists got their wish – in part.  In 1921, the Anglo-Irish treaty formed a free Irish state with the provision that Northern Ireland could withdraw from the Irish Free State if it was their choice.  Of course, at a time when 95 percent of the entirety of Ireland was Catholic and nearly 70 percent of the North Protestant, it was to no one’s surprise that the majority in Northern Ireland opted to remain part of the United Kingdom (Tonge 14-15).  Partition, an option that Austen Chamberlain wanted badly to avoid in Ireland, became a reality.  The fears of the Protestant minority in the 6 counties of Ulster forced this hand upon Chamberlain.  For partition to work, it was now up to this former Protestant minority to act responsibly as a majority in their newly founded state.  This meant tolerance of minority identities who found themselves sanctioned off on the wrong side of the border, namely, Catholics.

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        Protestants, however, seemingly from the day they became the majority, have looked at Catholics with a wary, cautious and even paranoid eye, a view that comes from the belief that all Catholic motives are insidious and are propelled by the desire to overthrow the existing government that is linked to Britain.  In the period between Ireland’s independence in 1921 and the beginning of the Troubles in the 1960s, the Free Irish State and the Catholic Church only helped strengthen the paranoid perceptions throughout the Protestant community.  For example, the Irish constitution created in 1937 stated that it rejected partition, would ...

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