In 1846 there was a total failure of the potato crop in Ireland. The poor peasant farmers had two choices – they could starve and pay the rent, or eat the corn they grew and be thrown out of their homes by the Landlords. The British Government attempted to help – but it was too little too late. A million people died in the potato famine and another million emigrated, mainly to America. This is an important factor as it gives Nationalist supporters a stronger argument later on. The British Government can be seen to be at fault here. It is also an important factor as many of the descendants of these emigrants later did a lot to raise money for the IRA.
In 1870 the Home Rule Association was formed. Its aim was to get its supporters elected as MP’s in the British parliament in London where they could fight for Irish Home Rule. Prime Minister William Gladstone decided to support ‘Home Rule’. The first Home Rule Bill he proposed in 1886 was rejected by the House of Commons, his second was passed and only defeated by the House of Lords.
However, by 1911 the power of the house of Lords had been diminished to the state where they could delay bills for two years – when the next Home Rule Bill came through in 1912, they could only delay it until 1914. Protestants who were loyal to the British governments would have felt outraged by this as they were mainly Unionists and would not want to be ruled by people who did not agree with their ideas. Led by Edward Carson and Supported by Bonar Law (the leader of the conservative party) some unionists formed the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913 to resist Home Rule by force.
The threat of Civil War was lifted however when the First World War broke out in 1914 – but a minority refused to join up and fight. The Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers decided to take advantage of the war and attempted to take over Dublin at Easter 1916. However, the Easter Rising failed.
Most people in Dublin were hostile towards the rebels as they were marched into prison. However, this attitude changed when they heard that seventy-seven had been sentenced to death. People’s opinions quickly changed from pro- Britain to anti-Britain.
After 1916 support for a Republican group known as Sinn Fein grew. In 1918 Sinn Fein won 75 out of the 105 seats in Ireland. They refused to go to the British Parliament in Dublin, called Dail Eireann. During the Irish War of Independence (1919-1920) the IRA carried out many attacks on the police and army whilst the British Government recruited ex-soldiers known as the Black and Tans. They became famous for their lack of discipline and acts of terror. This caused problems as both sides felt angry about the atrocities committed against ‘their’ people.
British Prime Minister Lloyd George decided there was only one way to stop the war. Ireland would be ‘partitioned’ into two countries, North and South. The Nationalists finally agreed to this in 1921.
The long term theory is that all the causes I have listed caused the Catholics and Protestants to get angry enough at each other to commit acts of violence against each other. However, some of the things I have mentioned are not strictly as black and white as they seem. Take for example the very important factor of William of Orange. Supposedly he was a great Protestant leader who led his army to victory against the Catholics in a religious war.
However that is the ‘street history’ version of events. It seems that over the years members of the Ulster community have only remembered the parts of the story that are useful to them – perhaps to justify their actions today. The truth is that the battles are far from religious.
French King Louis XIV was an enemy of William, and wanted to keep him busy in Ireland whilst Louis himself fought elsewhere. That is the reason Louis XIV supplied former King James with troops and ships. James though he could use the fact he was Catholic to gain Irish support and get his throne back. Already the war doesn’t sound at all religious. On top of this Williams ‘protestant’ army had several catholic regiments and was even supported by the Pope. Huge celebrations were held in Rome after Williams’ victory. This could show us that perhaps it is not the history that is the problem – perhaps it is the way it is used by the modern groups looking for powerful historical symbols to justify the actions they take today. Another example of this is Wolfe Tone.
The myth of Wolfe Tone goes as such:
‘Dublin Lawyer, Theobald Wolfe Tone, sets up the Society of United Irishmen, inspired by the French Revolution in 1789 and campaigns to overturn the Penal Laws which are very harsh on Catholics. He fled to America to avoid arrest, but returned in 1796 to try and get support for an uprising in Ireland. The uprising began in 1978, but the rebels were defeated at the battle of Vinegar Hill in June 1978. When Wolfe Tone was captured he slit his own throat. The British then decided that it was too dangerous to allow Ireland to have it’s own Parliament and it was therefore united to England by an Act of Union in 1800. Wolfe Tone soon became a symbol of resistance for all Irish Catholics.’
However, this isn’t the full picture. Before we even start to contradict the story, Wolfe Tone wasn’t a celebrated Catholic hero until the late 19th century. Tone was also a reformer, as opposed to being a revolutionary. He saw resistance as a last resort and only fought back after his poor treatment by the British government. He wasn’t even only answering to the plight of the Catholics; he also fought the harsh judgement forced on the Presbyterian Protestants. So, not only was he not strictly fighting for the Catholics, he wasn’t a Catholic himself. This shows how history can get twisted over the years to suit peoples’ beliefs.
View Two
I am taking short term causes from partitioning. Protestants living in the newly formed Northern Ireland wanted this to happen, so they would not be ruled under a Catholic government. However, the Catholics wanted to see a united and independent Ireland – so resentment grew. Protestants in Ulster had a tendency to view all Northern Catholics as possible traitors, probably because the IRA (who are seen as on the Catholic side) conducted a series of violent attacks. As a result Catholics were discriminated against.
When it came round to election time, most Catholics would probably vote a Catholic representative to speak on behalf of the Catholic people, however, Protestants ‘fixed’ the elections to favour themselves, so that no Catholics could be voted into Parliament to speak for their people. This was known as ‘Gerrymandering’, the process by which constituency boundaries were redrawn to favour the Protestant population, for example, Catholics were moved into places where only a certain amount of seats could be won. Because of this, even though there may be a larger Catholic population than Protestants in the area they could only win a certain amount of the vote. The Protestants would be spread out so that they could win more of the votes than the Catholics.
This was a huge disadvantage to the Catholics, they had no political power. Catholics were given no job opportunities. If a Protestant and a Catholic applied for the same job, no matter how qualified the catholic was the Protestant would always get the job. This meant that many Catholics were unemployed and could often not afford to feed their families. Catholic children went to the worst schools; Protestant children went to the best schools. Catholic children were not taught anything about Catholicism, they were only taught Protestant history. Children grew up believing that Catholics were evil and that Protestantism was the way forward.
Another significant social problem was that Catholics were placed in the worst housing. If a Catholic family were in need of a home, they would become second class citizens to a single Protestant girl – the girl would have a better chance of acquiring a house than the needy Catholic family. Many children had inadequate diets which resulted in many children dying of malnutrition.
In 1969 The British Government sent the army into Northern Ireland to prevent civil war. Despite all the unfairness the Catholics had to deal with, this had not been necessary earlier. Many things changed between 1960-1969.
Firstly, before 1960 Catholics pursued peaceful methods. Inspired by the American Civil Rights movements, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights association began. From 1920 through to 1960 Catholics campaigned for fairer conditions and expected change to come through the ballot box – and yes, slight improvements were made in the 1950s. But there was still glaring inequalities in Northern Ireland. The RUC was overwhelmingly Protestant, with about six times as many Protestant officers as Catholic. This was not including the B-Specials. There were about 10,000 of them, part-time, armed volunteer constables who could be called up for emergency service. They were almost all Protestant and had a very bad reputation for harassing Catholics and using violence indiscriminately. However, the real slide into violence didn’t begin until the civil rights campaigns of 1968.
The aims of the civil rights movement were simple. Its members wanted all citizens of Northern Ireland to have civil rights. They wanted to end sectarian discrimination in employment, housing, law and other areas. It was not a solely republican movement, but attracted wide support. Despite this the marches led to violence on October 5th 1968. Civil rights marchers ignored a ban, refusing them entry to Londonderry’s city centre and attempted to get to the main square via Craigavon Bridge. At the bridge they were met by RUC constables who refused to let them cross. Within a short time, in front of dozens of television cameras the bridge was a scene of violent confusion. The Londonderry violence triggered more civil rights movements and even more violence. The typical pattern was that civil rights marches stirred up loyalist outrage because loyalists saw the marchers not as campaigners but as Republicans. These confrontations usually led to police intervention – generally even-handed but sometimes with the sectarian excesses seen in Londonderry.
On New Years day 1969, about 40 young people, mainly student supporters of People’s Democracy, set out to walk across Northern Ireland from Belfast to Londonderry.
It was a three day march. On the first two days the march was re-routed several times by the RUC to avoid confrontation with loyalist counter-marchers. The march was closely followed by television cameras.
On the third day, marchers were at Burntollet near the city of Londonderry. There they were suddenly ambushed by a loyalist mob. The television cameras showed the marchers being showered with bricks, bottle and stones. Then the mob closed in and beat the marchers with iron bars and sticks. The RUC appeared to do little to help or protect the marchers. Later investigations showed that some of the mob were actually off-duty police or special constables. Londonderry was then swept by rioting and violence.
More violence was seen in Northern Ireland after the Apprentice Boys’ march on August 12th 1969. Soon after the march had ended Protestants and Catholics began to throw missiles at each other. Before long there was a riot. When the RUC tried to take down a barricade on Rossville Street, the riot turned into a battle. This continued for two days, in what became known as the Battle of the Bogside. The first of Northern Ireland's ‘no-go’ areas had been created.
This violence was not limited to Londonderry. Disturbances soon started in other towns. The most serious violence was in Belfast. In one night six people died, twelve factories were burned down and 100 houses were wrecked. The government feared that if troops were not brought in the violence would continue to get worse and worse. So, on the afternoon of August 15th 1969 the British army came onto the streets of Belfast – and they would still be there 30 years later.
Conclusion
With the complicated history that Ireland has it’s easy to see why people’s views differ as to why it all led to violence. I believe that the real violence that actually was between Nationalists and Unionists only began really in 1968 with all the civil rights marches. However, to discover the reasons for the civil rights marches you have to go back a few years to when Catholic discrimination began, and then you might go back a few more years to try and discover the reason for that. From my point of view it’s just one long messy chain of events until 1969. It appears that there was always a little bit of resentment between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland (seemingly caused by either British monarchy or British politicians). Even though street history tends to make things that little bit worse, like the Protestants idolising William of Orange, or the Catholics idolising Wolfe Tone, regardless of what actually happened, I think that if there wasn’t a little bit of hatred between them in the first place these stories would not have come about.
I think the more important causes of the troubles in Northern Ireland were early, like when Henry VIII created Protestantism. When he tried to force this on the Irish. When King James I took land away from Irish Catholics and gave it away to British Protestants. Factors such as these triggered a separation that has lasted centuries. I believe that the separation that this caused eventually led to the partitioning of Ireland, which in turn, led to discrimination and violence in 1969.
In conclusion, though the violence in 1969 seemingly was caused by the tensions in the 1960s and the civil rights marches, the tensions wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for all that came before it.
