In my opinion, one of the greatest causes of distrust towards the Catholic people originated during WW1. While the Protestants were giving their lives to protect Britain, the Catholics started an uprising, which then led to troops being pulled out of the war to fight a guerilla war in Ireland. This was like a stab in the back, and sowed a great amount of hatred and distrust in the Protestants. Then to make it worse, the Enniskillen bomb was exploded on Remembrance Sunday, the hatred and mistrust caused by these two events is still around today.
In the 1970’s violence between the Catholics and Protestant Para-military groups was on the increase, and both commenced a series of tit-for-tat killings. These reached a peak in 1992, but fortunately have now died down, although they do still occur on occasion in N. Ireland.
In 1916 about 1500 Catholic men and women rose up in what they described as, “a war of independence”. During this hundreds of people joined the ranks of the revolutionary nationalists. The IRA still feel that they are fighting that same war to this very day, and one of the reasons they will not decommission is as they will look at it as a sign of them giving up, and they have vowed never to do this. The British also, under the command of General Sir John Maxwell, made many political errors, as his orders were to “put down the rebellion with all possible speed”. As the rebels had no uniform, the British, who were mainly untrained soldiers, shot at Irish males almost on sight. They also destroyed a rebel stronghold, which happened to be the General Post Office, in all it is estimated they caused 2,500,000 pounds of damages. Then punishment was swift and brutal, with the leaders being court-marshaled and shot, before their punishment was announced to the public. Connolly, an Irish leader who was executed, was so ill at the time he had to sit in a chair to be shot, as he could not stand. Eventually Britain realized their mistake and fired Maxwell, but the damage had been done and was not forgotten.
After the rebellion, over 3,000 Irish prisoners were released and set up a new stronger IRA, now with the backing of the people. Lloyd George then tried a gesture of appeasement that was completely boycotted by Sinn Fein. In 1918 all but one of the leaders of the new independence, Michael Collins then led a series of guerrilla wars and in 1919 the first shots of a new rebellion were fired.
In 1922 Lloyd George partitioned Ireland, Protestants were given N. Ireland and Catholics the rest. The Protestants instantly adopted the stance of “what we have we hold” while the Catholics saw it as temporary, and waited until N. Ireland would fall. The Protestant Government in the North also discriminated against the Catholics, and their legacy is still left behind today.
The Civil Rights Marches initially increased support for the Catholics, as they were peaceful protests about the obvious discrimination. However, when they saw the peaceful protests were taking far too long to achieve the reforms they set out to, the IRA took a more active role in them. The IRA’s involvement accumulated at Bloody Sunday. It is hard to say whether the British or IRA started the violence at the march, but it is definite that the British army went over the top. They shot many peaceful protesters as they tried to flee, and caused mayhem. This brought a large amount of support for the IRA, causing many new members to join, while bringing hatred to the British for what they had done.
After the events of Bloody Sunday, the new more powerful IRA started up a bombing campaign, they killed hundreds of people in total, but the worst were the Enniskillen and Omagh bombs. The Omagh bomb was particularly bad as the IRA tipped off the police that a bomb was at one side of a road, but when the police cleared the area and moved the people to the other end of the road, the bomb exploded at that end, killing 29 people.
Both bombs were designed to stop all peace talks between the two Communities. Enniskillen was seen as an insult to the people that gave up their lives to fight against Germany, while Omagh was just three weeks after the Good Friday agreement. This showed Protestants that Gerry Adams had little or no control over the many splinter groups of the IRA, and so they had no reason to trust them. It also showed that they had learned nothing from the Civil Rights Marches and hunger strikes, which showed them that the peaceful protests gained much more support than the violent bombing campaigns.
The Good Friday agreement itself brought a lack of trust towards the British from the Protestants, as they were holding talks with Sinn Fein about the future of N. Ireland without including them. They also felt it was an agreement that would benefit the Catholics, more than it would benefit themselves.
All these events force a lack of trust toward the different communities, and stop them from decommissioning. If it wasn’t for Bloody Sunday and The Easter Rising, there may not have been a bombing campaign, yet it is the bombing campaign that keeps the British in Ireland, which in turn stop the IRA and DUP from decommissioning. It is this fact that halts the peace talks from going forward.
