In May 1974 the Ulster workers council who were Protestants began a strike for the general public. What they wanted to do was break down the power sharing Executive. Protestants still held most of the key jobs in Northern Ireland and they wanted to show not only the Catholics but the British that they had the real power in the North. The strike meant that roads were blocked and electricity supplies were very limited. Within a couple of days the power stations began to close as all there usual workers were gone. After two weeks Northern Ireland had declined leaving the whole place in complete chaos. The power sharing executive was unable to get it moving again as more protestants were forced into striking by the UDA (the Protestant army- The Ulster Defence Association) There was no other way to get Northern Ireland up and running again and that was to abandon power sharing altogether so on May the 28th power sharing was forced to come to an end. The British Government were made to go back to Direct Rule and the Protestants were extremely happy. I believed that this reaction showed how little the politicians in Britain new about the situations going on in Ireland as this reaction would mean more fighting from the Nationalists. The British government set up the Northern Ireland Assembly this would give fair voting to all and this also would mean that both Protestants and Catholics would get more power if they were able to work together. This plan was called the ‘Rolling Devolution’. A parliament was set up by a vote and the rights of the Catholics would be protected.
Power Sharing was tried again in 1982 but that too failed. Protestants still did not believe they wanted to agree to another power sharing agreement and most nationalist especially those in the SDLP would not even consider taking part. A lot of Catholics began to switch to Sinn Fein again. In the next parliament Sinn Fein won 10% in the elections which meant that it got six seats in the new assembly. Many violence attacks began after the results of these elections and because of this it made the British ban the members of Sinn Fein to come to Britain. Catholics began to bomb houses and attack properties. In December 1983 the IRA bombed Harrods killing nine people. The situation in Northern Ireland had again got out of control and the Nationalist had been the ones this time to make the plan be discontinued. I believe that power sharing failed because the Protestants and Catholics didn’t know how to work together as they hadn’t done for so long. The Protestants and Catholics had been against each other for so long, that they where not ready to let there prejudices go.
The second attempt at trying to end the ‘troubles’ in Ireland was bringing in the Anglo-Irish Agreement which was to be set up to help security and legal and political issues in Ireland. A joint committee was set up by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister Garrett Fitzgerald on the 15th November 1985. The committee contained people from both North and South of Ireland; they hoped to find a way to convince the Unionists and Nationalist to value each others rights and views. Cross-border co-operation is what it is known as when both North and South work together to create a better country. The British finally excepted that they one day may need to release their control and power over Northern Ireland and maybe one day Ireland would be a Republic again. This agreement differed from power-sharing because this time the English government was more involved and were able to make sure that everyone would get a fairer chance and no one could be discriminatory against the other religion.
The Protestants were angry at the Anglo-Irish Agreement as they didn’t want the South of Ireland taking control over Northern Ireland again. They did not want Ireland to become a Republic they liked the control that Britain had over there country. They believed it was unfair that Britain was giving the republic permission to have a say about how Northern Ireland was run. The Nationalists in Sinn Fein also disagreed with the Anglo-Irish Agreement as they still believed that they should be a complete republic, they wanted partition to be gotten rid of. Ireland was still separated.
The USA believed that Ireland still needed help; they knew that progress had been made in Northern Ireland but fighting was still a frequent occurrence. They offered $250 million over 5 years to try and help make the Anglo-Irish agreement work but the Unionists criticized it publicly. The Ulster Unionist MPs resigned and the leaders of the Unionists asked for another strike. There was increased backing for the violent Unionists called the UVF. As a consequence of demonstrations held by the extreme Unionists the British had to send about 500 extra troops in to Ireland to try and keep the peace. Only a few had confidence that the agreement may help they were the SDLP and a moderate unionist group who consisted of both Catholics and Protestants called the Alliance. Both extreme Nationalists and Protestants still caused distress and sorrow in the Britain and all over the United Kingdom. The Killings in Ireland rocketed through the roof and continued too into the early 90s. I believe that the Anglo-Irish agreement failed because so many people in Ireland where against it and therefore it was not a good plan as half the people did not believe it would help their country.
People were happy and optimistic when the new British Prime Minister John Major arrived. A lot of people in Northern Ireland were just hoping for a quick change and they wanted peace for a change. Thousands of people stood up for their beliefs on making Ireland a more peaceful place and joined in with peace rallies all around Ireland. There was a sudden urgency for peace as it pointed out in statistics that in one generation there would be a catholic majority in Northern Ireland; therefore they needed to act quickly to gain peace. Peter Brooke believed that the British remained in Northern Ireland because the majority of its population wanted them to. The British were worried that trouble may be caused if there was a catholic majority and wanted the British out of Ireland so that the North and South could reunite and become one country again.
The Downing Street Declaration was then issued in December 1993. This was a breakthrough the declaration stated that talks would be set up to decide on a new government for Northern Ireland. Groups that rejected violence would be the only ones allowed to have their say in these talks, this way peace could be found. The British government assured Northern Ireland that they had ‘no selfish, political, or economic interest in Northern Ireland’ but that they were only concerned with the wellbeing and safety of its people. The Ulster Unionists accepted the declaration warily. This declaration was not welcomed by all party’s especially Sinn Fein and the nationalists. The declaration however did not move on the anticipated cease-fire and therefore the death rate continued to rise. This declaration is very different to the Anglo-Irish agreement because it tried to stop the violence and cancel out all the hatred that each side felt for each other. The British government also let the Irish people realise that they were helping them because they cared and not because it would give them more power, this may have helped with trying to get more Irish on the British government side.
When they finally issued a cease-fire in 1994 there were still groups who were not completely happy. The IRA did not use the word permanent in their proclamation and this became a crucial issue for the Unionists. The other big problem was ‘decommissioning’, the IRA was unwilling to give up their weapons as they didn’t want to show others that they had surrendered and so the cease-fire had to end as final agreement could not be made. In February 1996 Canary Wharf was bombed and 2 people were killed, 100 were injured and the damage that was caused cost the British Government an approximate of £85 million. The cease-fire had only lasted for 17 months. I believed the downing street declaration failed because those who believed in violence would have just acted against this declaration as they were being excluded and they would have come back with more violent abuse. As the declaration did not touch on the cease-fire then killings continued and peace was not found.
In July 1997 came the IRA proclamation that there was going to be another cease-fire in Northern Ireland. As now the British political system had changed as they were now under a Labour government with Tony Blair now in power and so this meant a change in the situation and this led to the restart of peace talks in January 1998. During these peace talks decisions were made that in Northern Ireland any decisions made had to have agreements from both Catholic and Protestants, also they set up a council which had members from both the north and the south which meant both sides got a say on the running of the country. Policing was provided in Northern Ireland to stop bias behaviour against the Catholic faith. In the USA President Clinton, Mo Mowlam, who was the Northern Ireland Secretary also the Unionist leader David Trimble and Taoiseach Bertie Aherne were a played a major part in the peace talks.
After the talks people began to compromise with each other more than they ever had done. It was agreed that most of the paramilitary prisoners would be freed earlier than expected, also they came to the agreement that a new non-biased policed force needed to be put in place. All Marches were called off and money and jobs should be brought to all areas across Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement had tremendous public support. A vote took place over the Republic and Northern Ireland to see how many accepted this agreement and of the 71% of people in Northern Ireland Agreed with the agreement and the republic had 94% of its inhabitants vote in favour of the Good Friday Agreement. Although this Agreement helped a lot it did not altogether put a stop to all the violence as in August 1998 violence returned with the Omagh bomb. A very strong group of republicans calling themselves the real IRA exploded a bomb in a car right outside a children’s clothes shop in Omagh (29 people died). This bomb as appalling as it was helped in one way, it made some republicans change their opinions from there old violent methods to new peaceful ways of protest. The main problem left in Northern Ireland was the giving up or decommissioning of the IRA weapons. There had been no progress on getting rid of these weapons for many years and it really needed something to be done. The Good Friday Agreement in many ways was much better than the downing street declaration because it had much more support from the Irish public.
The Good Friday Review began in 2004. Talks showed that there was still a big split between the Nationalists and the Unionists but there had been no more major violent attacks since 1998. This may have meant that the peace process had finally worked and Ireland was finally free of violent. However this was not correct as there were still a lot of problems. Protests continued and prejudices continued. In 2003 children walking to a catholic school in Belfast had to be police protected as Loyalists believed it wrong that Catholic children were attending a school in the protestant area.
Finally in 2005 the IRA announced that it had given up all of its weapons. Tony Blair was glad and announced that the IRA destroying its weapons was an ‘important step’ to finally resolving the problems in Northern Ireland and bringing the country to peace at last. This is Tony Blair’s speech: ‘Successive British governments have sought final and complete decommissioning by the IRA for over 10 years. Failure to deliver it had become a major impediment to moving forward the peace process. Today it is finally accomplished. And we have made an important step in the transition from conflict to peace in Northern Ireland.’ This speech must have given the British a feeling of relief as they finally believed all was over and the conflicts should soon cease, but the Unionists were still not completely happy as there had not been any evidence that the IRA had done what they said they had.
I believe that this breakthrough was needed to finally bring the conflicts to an end and the peace process could restart. Peace was needed between all in Ireland and to do so they needed to get rid of all the weapons in the areas. The decommissioning of the IRA weapons meant that finally they would not be using there old violent methods and would begin to release the country of the violence. When the weapons were still in the hands of the IRA the rest of the country was still in danger as no one could know whether they would attack at any moment. I believe it was right for the Unionists to be wary of the IRA as they did not produce photographic evidence they would not be able to tell if they were telling the truth and as the only witness was a catholic priest and an ex-Methodist president the Unionist had no way of knowing whether the witnesses were unreliable.
The Northern Ireland Assembly which was first created in 1998 but was suspended many times; it was last suspended in October 2002 and lasted nearly 5 years till may 2007. Ian Paisley a member of the Unionist party and Matin McGuinness a former IRA commander, joined forces of the 8th of May 2007 to take up office as the first and deputy ministers at the head of the new power-sharing government. This unity between the groups marked an end to the troubles and began an era of peace and co-operation. The only conflict that happened on that day was a protest against Tony Blair and anti-war protests.
I believe that the reason the Good Friday Agreement worked better than all the past attempts because before this agreement people still believed more strongly in their old prejudices and the Good Friday Agreement brought two supporters from both sides together and the public seeing this realised that they could work together peacefully without the strong hatred they had in the past felt.
I believe that all the attempts were made as a way to try and help the Irish but some of them ended up causing more anger and disagreement. The nationalists and unionists had fought against each other for so long and the English government tried to push them to work together and this would never really worked, the killings and shootings were horrible and many people lost their lives but the British government had no way of stopping the Irish feeling the way they felt towards the two religions. Although the attempts did eventually end most of the attacks (Ireland still has a few problems) during the process of trying to gain a more peaceful country, many deaths and injuries were the result of the anger produced when the British government tried to help. Since 2007 there have been very little problems in Ireland, which shows that the attempts at gaining peace finally did pay off. I believe that the last attempt in 2007 of bringing in ministers from both sides showed Ireland that they could live in peace and that the fighting was not necessary.
I believe that the Good Friday agreement should last a long time and hopefully eventually the few problems they still have can be sorted out. In ten years time I hope that Ireland can continually work together as one country. I hope that eventually any disagreements between the Catholics and the Protestants will be cleared and so in ten years time they could work together like there is no difference between them, I hope that the fighting and violence can be all forgotten because of all the death and destruction that has happened in the past it would be terrible for Ireland to sink back into the pattern of death and destruction after all these years, free without war.