How Did the Catholics Grow To hate the Protestants?

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Northern Ireland Coursework

How Did the Catholics Grow To hate the Protestants?

The present crisis in Northern Ireland has causes going back to the 1530's. This is when England turned Protestant whilst under the control of Henry VIII, because Ireland was all Catholic there was some worry that European powers would use it as a base to attack England, so Elizabeth seized Irish Catholic land and set up plantations of Protestants. The Catholics weren't at all happy about this so there was an Irish rebellion until the arrival of Oliver Cromwell the new English leader. Cromwell regained power and he taught Catholics a lesson by slaughtering the Catholic inhabitants of two towns, Drogheda and Wexford, then he took the Catholics land.

When Catholic King James II became king in 1685, the Protestants began to fear that their land would be given back to Catholics, so in 1688 the Roman Catholic King James II was overthrown and William Of Orange, a Dutch-speaking Protestant who was married to James' daughter Mary became king at the request of Parliament. But James II sought refuge with his old ally, Louis XIV of France, who saw an opportunity to strike at William through Ireland. He provided French officers and arms for James, who returned to Ireland with the French officers. William also went to Ireland and the two armies met at the river Boyne, where they battled, this battle is famously known as the Battle On The Boyne. William won this battle and James II fled to Dublin and then to France. After 1690 Protestants made sure they had complete control over Ireland, so they set up penal laws, which meant Catholics weren't allowed to own land, and so they couldn't vote. In 1845-51 there was an Irish potato famine where 1 million Catholics died, this brought Ireland to the World' attention. There were several campaigns for an Irish home rule from 1870's but the British rejected them all and so a Catholic group the IRB seized Dublin's Post office and declared Ireland dependant this was called the Easter Rising, but the British sent in troops and executed the main leaders. Then in 1919 Ireland is 'temporarily divided into North and south' and governed separately, some hardliners in the north reject this and the violence still continued.

When Terence O'Neil took control of the government of Ulster in 1963 and it looked as though the Catholics and Protestants were starting to bury their old differences. In the 1969's British troops were brought into Northern Ireland to keep the peace between the Catholics and the Protestants. The British troops were welcomed by many Catholics, because they were not keen to see the return of the IRA and thought that the soldiers would protect them from protestant violence. Ordinary Catholics gave tea and sandwiches to the newly arrived British forces. "We used to just wander around in pairs like policemen", says a corporal from the parachute regiment, also he says, "You drank twenty cups of tea a day because everybody wanted to give you a cup". Some soldiers who were sent to Northern Ireland called their time there the honeymoon tour, this shows it was an enjoyable time, and what a friendly atmosphere there was.

In August 1971, the Northern Ireland prime minister Brain Faulkner introduced Internment. Internment enabled the security forces to arrest anyone suspected of terrorism, and put them straight in prison. Faulkner introduced internment because there was too much violence in Northern Ireland, between January and July 1971 there were 136 bombs that targeted Protestant shops and businesses, which were set off by the Provisional IRA who were a part of the IRA that had split because they couldn't agree what action to take. The Provisionals also attacked Catholics they thought were disloyal, for example, they tarred and feather girls who went out with British soldiers. The Prime Minister thought internment would put an end to all the violence because it helped to deal with the last outbreak of IRA violence in 1956-62. Internment had been used then and it had worked, Faulkner thought it would work again, but this time it was a disastrous failure. Some reasons that internment failed was that the RUC's intelligence was badly out of date, the people who were targeted were no longer part of the IRA; in fact none of the new IRA leaders were arrested. Lots of people who weren't guilty were arrested and tortured by being blindfolded put in a helicopter and dropped out when they weren't very far away from the ground which the person being tortured didn't realise. The decision to introduce internment caused outrage in the USA and the republic. This almost certainly helped the IRA to raise funds aboard and obtain weapons from the USA. As a result of internment IRA violence went up so it caused more problems instead of solving them. Most Catholic families were scared to sleep at night because of the fear that their house would get raided and a loved one arrested. This greatly angered Catholics because most people arrested were innocent Catholics who had no involvement with the IRA. By mid-December 1971, 1,576 people had been arrested by the army under the special powers act and virtually all of them were Catholic.

Bloody Sunday added to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. On Sunday 30th January 1972, there was a huge protest march against internment, this march was organised by the Civil Rights Movement, and fifteen thousand people defied a ban on marches and gathered in the centre of Londonderry. Parachute Regiment troops sealed off the area, and were met with hail of stones thrown by youths. The troops are said to of reacted to the stones being thrown by firing at the youths, but there is a lot of confusion over the sequence of events. The soldiers say that they were fired on and returned fire even though they had orders not to retaliate. This resulted in 14 unarmed marchers being killed, and 13 injured.

After Bloody Sunday there was an enquiry, which was headed by Lord Widgery, which was made to inhibit publication of eyewitness accounts and comment, so that those responsible were shielded and the descriptions of the terrible slaughter of innocent defenceless people was hidden. It did criticise the troops by saying their shooting was, "bordering on the reckless", but no action was taken against the troops, so the criticism was just to please the Catholics. The report accepted the soldiers' side of the story that IRA gunmen fired them upon first. But no one saw the IRA shoot first, a peaceful citizen who was attempting to help someone who was injured was shot in the head, so this proves the Parachute troops were very reckless. Also marchers who had surrendered with their arms up were shot in the armpits. On the hands of some of the victims there was lead power found, which would have been from a gun, but no guns were found. Some of the bodies had been moved by the troops who would have had lead power on their hands, so its possible there was a contamination of evidence.

The Catholics had tremendous anger at what had happened on Bloody Sunday, they thought there should have been a proper enquiry. The reaction outside the UK was one of outrage this event shocked the world, funding for the IRA from the USA increased, also worldwide protests led to a clash between the Stormont government and Westminster, and in Dublin 20,000 people attacked British Embassy and burnt it down.

The IRA stepped up its campaign with bombs in England and Northern Ireland. These events also strengthened the argument of the hard line Republicans that defending their communities was no longer enough. Residents of Londonderry and Belfast set up barricades with some help from IRA activists. The barricades kept out loyalist attackers, and the districts within them soon became 'no-go' areas, even for the security forces. These barricades enabled the IRA to make more bombs, train more activists and so increase its attack on soldiers. In some areas the troops lost their discipline and beat suspects or smashed up houses. This was a gift for the IRA's propaganda machine and just increased support of the IRA still further.

In the 1980's a group of people who had been at the maze prison in cells known as H blocks, in southwest Belfast, because they were members of the IRA, went on hunger strike. The IRA prisoners wanted to be treated like political prisoners and not like ordinary criminals. The British government agreed to their demands and in 1972 gave a 'special category' for prisoners who had committed crimes for political reasons. One of the special treatments was they were allowed to wear their own clothes and they didn't do any prison work.

When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister everything changed, Margaret Thatcher was determined not to give the prisoners any concessions. So in 1976 the British changed the policy and abolished the 'special category'. The IRA prisoners reacted to the abolishment of the 'special category' by starting the 'blanket protest', where they refused to wear prison clothes, remained naked except for a blanket and they sat in their cells and refused to wash or clean their cells. Some prisoners also spread faeces on the walls and urinated on the floor and their mattresses; this is why it was also called the 'Dirty Protest'. Despite the prisoners' attempts the protest did not get much public attention and it slowly died away. The British still refused to grant a return to the 'special category', and in 1980 the IRA and INLA decided on a hunger strike. This time, there was Nationalist support and marches were organised. The first hunger strike ended in confusion in December, because the strikers believed they had been granted their demands but they were wrong. So a second hunger strike began in March 1981. Its main member was Bobby Sands who was the MP for Fermanagh. The British prime minister insisted on not giving into Sands and the other hunger strikers.
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By October 10 men were dead and the hunger strike was called off. One of the men that had died was Bobby Sands, who died in May 1981 after 66 days without food; around 100,000 people (about 20% of the Catholic population of Northern Ireland) attended his funeral. The hunger strikes showed how non-violent action could generate enormous public attention, generally positive rather than negative publicity, which bombs attracted. The Catholics were greatly angered by the government's treatment of the hunger strikers; this led to marches against the government. Many Nationalists felt that the hunger strikers were a ...

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