Northern Ireland: Overview

Introduction

Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, consists of six counties on the island of Ireland. For over thirty years (1966-1998), Northern Ireland was the site of a vicious and violent sectarian conflict often referred to as the Troubles. The conflict's main issue is the political status of Northern Ireland. The Nationalists, who are overwhelmingly Catholics who were historically marginalized by the Protestant-dominated government, want to separate Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and unite the province with the Republic of Ireland in the south. The Unionists, who were overwhelmingly drawn from the region's Protestant majority, want Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom. From both the Nationalist and Unionist communities, armed paramilitary groups waged a guerilla war of assassinations and bombings that claimed many innocent civilian lives. At various points in the conflict, the United Kingdom sent in the British army to maintain the peace between the two warring sides. However, the British military's conduct, particularly during the Troubles, was marred by allegations of collusion with Unionist groups as well as criminal actions against the civilian population.

After the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, most of the paramilitary organizations declared a ceasefire and open violence largely came to a halt. In April 2023 a number of groups in Northern Ireland, the rest of the UK, and the Republican of Ireland commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which had helped ensure drastically reduced violence during that period. In the years since, many of these organizations attempted to govern Northern Ireland in a power-sharing parliament with their former opponents. The political situation of the region remained dynamic throughout the twenty-first century, with developments such as Brexit, the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU), complicated debates over North Ireland's present and future.

As one of the world's longest sectarian conflicts, many observers note that Northern Ireland is an example of how ethnic conflicts can be resolved from open warfare to peace through careful and patient negotiations.

Understanding the Discussion

Nationalist: A term generally used to refer to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Nationalists support the separation of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and reunification with the Republic of Ireland. They are also known as Republicans.

Paramilitary: A term used to refer to organizations of civilians formed along military lines who engage in violence to further a specific political agenda.

Sectarian: An adjective used to describe actions by groups of people joined together through a common religious or political idea.

The Troubles: The common term people in Northern Ireland use to refer to the thirty-year period from the late 1960s to 1998. It was a period marked by great violence between several paramilitary organizations, the Northern Irish police, and the British military.

Ulster: The historical name for Northern Ireland until the twentieth century. Today, six of Ulster's nine counties make up Northern Ireland.

Unionist: A term generally used to refer to the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland. Unionists support the continued union of Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom. They are also known as Loyalists.

History

The conflict in Northern Ireland is an old one, having its roots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, English monarchs encouraged Scottish and English Protestants to immigrate to Ulster and establish large plantations. Much of this land was forcibly taken from native Catholics, who resisted the settlers violently. On three separate occasions (1641-53, 1689-1691, 1798) over a two-hundred-year period, brutal sectarian warfare broke out between the Protestant settlers and the native Catholics, with many atrocities committed by both sides. Protestant superiority in both manpower and weaponry led to the defeat of the Catholics on each occasion and some English military leaders, such as Oliver Cromwell, carried out actions against the Catholic population that were described by later historians as genocidal.

To commemorate their victories, the Protestants established the Orange Order, a social club dedicated to upholding Protestant control over Northern Ireland. Following the last of the rebellions, with both the government and the economy under their control, the Protestants enacted a series of laws that prohibited Catholics from gaining any sort of political or economic power in Northern Ireland.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, all of Ireland was under the control of the United Kingdom. However, Catholics remained the majority population group in areas other than Northern Ireland. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Catholics (as well as a small number of Protestants) began to agitate for Home Rule, a form of limited self-government for all of Ireland. Protestants in Northern Ireland were vehemently opposed to Home Rule, considering it the first step toward an independent, majority Catholic Ireland.

As Catholic and Protestant political parties failed to compromise on the issue of Home Rule and Catholics remained marginalized in many ways throughout the country, armed paramilitary gangs formed in anticipation of sectarian violence. An armed rebellion broke out in the south of Ireland in 1916 which, after six years of guerrilla warfare, resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the creation of the Irish Free State. Despite this victory in the south, Northern Ireland remained firmly under British control and in the hands of the Protestants, who violently resisted any attempts by the Irish Catholics to unite Ireland.

For the next forty years, Northern Ireland remained relatively peaceful. While Catholic unrest remained high, the overall economic prosperity of the region stood in stark contrast to the grim economic conditions in the Republic of Ireland. In the mid-1960s, inspired in part by civil rights leaders in the United States, Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland formed the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, calling for greater political representation and economic equality for Irish Catholics. They launched a series of nonviolent protest marches throughout Northern Ireland. Unionist gangs, oftentimes spurred on by the speeches of the charismatic and fiery Reverend Ian Paisley, responded with violent attacks against the demonstrators. Catholics accused the Northern Irish police, formally known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), of allowing these attacks to happen and colluding with Protestant paramilitaries. Riots and violence continued across the country and, by 1969, an overwhelmed Northern Irish government appealed to the British government to send in the British army to help restore order.

With the appearance of British troops in Northern Ireland in 1970, the violence increased. Various Protestant and Catholic paramilitary units were formed, most notably the Catholic Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), led in part by the young Gerry Adams. The early years of the decade were marked by horrific violence, with paramilitaries conducting targeted assassinations, sectarian murders and public bombings. Over 500 people were killed in 1972 alone. Moderates on both sides called for negotiations, but the growing cycle of violence left them with little chance of being heard. The British government, whose soldiers were being routinely targeted by IRA bombs, exercised strict control over the province, detaining without trial several thousand young Catholics as suspected terrorists. These maneuvers further alienated local Catholics, who accused the British government of being in league with the Unionists.

By 1994, however, the conflict was over twenty-five-years-old, and neither side had gained a clear advantage over the other, resulting in a virtual stalemate. That August, Gerry Adams, who had become head of Sinn Féin, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, announced that the IRA was declaring a cease-fire and would seek peace negotiations. Some weeks later, various Unionist paramilitary factions announced that they too would honor a cease-fire. Lengthy peace negotiations ensued, culminating in the Belfast Agreement of 1998. The agreement restored self-government to a Northern Ireland Assembly, released all political prisoners, initiated reform of the RUC, and established a timeline for the surrender of all paramilitary weapons.

The Belfast Agreement did not result in a smooth transition to self-rule. Ian Paisley, as head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led the resistance to the agreement by refusing to join any assembly which allowed members of Sinn Féin. Paisley objected to the slow pace of IRA disarmament and the continued involvement of the IRA in criminal activities such as drug running and bank robberies. Gerry Adams also expressed frustration at the slow pace of RUC reform. In 2002, due to a deadlock between Paisley and Adams, the assembly was suspended and British rule was reinstated.

Following clear IRA involvement in a large Belfast bank robbery in 2003, it was revealed in the British media that an IRA spy ring was operating within the offices of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The resulting scandal severely damaged Sinn Féin's popularity. In 2005, Sinn Féin announced that the IRA had surrendered all of its weapons and had divested itself of all criminal activities; both claims were validated by an international monitoring board. These announcements were met with universal acclaim by the British and Irish governments as a necessary condition to complete the peace process.

By October 2006, both the Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party had agreed to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss ways to break the impasse. Gathering at Saint Andrew's in Scotland, Adams and Paisley worked to negotiate a new power-sharing government for Northern Ireland. Following elections held on March 7, 2007, DUP leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin deputy leader Martin McGuinness were sworn into office on May 8, 2007 taking office as First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively, leading McGuinness to say "Today, we will witness not hype but history."

After years of bloodshed and violence, the power-sharing government had one of its first tests during the July 12, 2007 The Twelfth marches, an annual event in which thousands of Protestants march in the streets commemorating the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic King James II. Thousands of Protestants took to the streets without any violence signaling a real cooperation between political factions and the first fruits of the power-sharing agreement.

Northern Ireland reached another significant milestone on July 31, 2007 when at midnight the British Army ended its operations in the area. This was followed by the renouncement of violence and weapons by the Ulster Defense Association on November 11, 2007. After almost four decades and 3,500 dead, the end of British military operations in Northern Ireland and the continuing disarmament of extremist groups was hailed by many to demonstrate the power of governance over that of violence and armed struggle.

While much progress has been made in the realization of peace, Northern Ireland still faces a difficult road ahead. This was evidenced in public outrage over and denunciations of the Consultative Group on the Past report, a document proposing a number of steps to seek a permanent peace in Northern Ireland. The release of the report on January 28, 2009 was met with near violence given the report's recommendations of "recognition payments" for the families of all who died during the almost four decades of violence.

Continued tensions boiled over in 2012 when loyalist protests erupted over a vote by the Belfast City Council to only fly the Union flag outside city hall on fifteen designated days per year. Protesters gathered outside the building threw bottles and golf balls, injuring five police officers and an Associated Press photographer. Not long before the Belfast protests, members an IRA splinter group ambushed fifty-two-year-old Northern Ireland prison officer, David Black, fatally shooting him as he drove to work. Black was the first Northern Ireland prison guard killed in almost twenty years.

In 2015 tensions were again on the rise in Northern Ireland and reached a crisis point. For many months, members of the Northern Ireland Assembly had been having trouble agreeing on a budget. The already fragile power-sharing arrangement in the Assembly was further challenged when a former IRA assassin, Kevin McGuigan, was killed at his home in August 2015, allegedly by IRA members. The murder prompted concerns as to whether the IRA was still active and deadly and reignited tension between Catholics and Protestants in the Assembly. The DUP wanted Sinn Féin removed from the Assembly, or for the Assembly to be dissolved. First Minister Peter Robinson of the DUP stepped aside on September 10, along with three other DUP ministers. They were periodically reinstated over the following weeks, and Robinson was officially reinstated on October 20. After ten weeks of negotiations, the Assembly issued the Stormont Agreement in November 2015. The agreement put in place new rules for dealing with paramilitarism, called for the establishment of an international body to monitor paramilitary activity, and the establishment of a task force to monitor activity on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Following the issuing of the agreement, the Assembly began work implementing its terms.

Northern Ireland Today

The United Kingdom's 2016 decision to leave the European Union reignited tensions within the Assembly. The debate over whether to remain part of the UK, a position supported by the DUP, or reunite with the Republic of Ireland, supported by Sinn Féin, had not been a pressing issue while the UK and the Republic of Ireland were both members of the European Union. As people and goods can move freely between EU member states, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland did not have much practical effect. However, the UK's withdrawal from the EU would, at least legally speaking, create a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, giving Sinn Féin a reason to resume pushing for reunification and leading to a conflict that could not be resolved. As a result, the coalition government collapsed in January 2017; in June 2019, the region was still without a government.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Mary Lou McDonald, at that time a Teachta Dála (elected representative) in the legislature in the Republic of Ireland, replaced Adams as the leader of Sinn Féin. Following the 2020 elections in Ireland, Sinn Féin became the largest opposition party in the Republic of Ireland's government and McDonald became leader of the opposition. At that time, despite extensive negotiations aimed at resolving uncertainty over the economic status of Northern Ireland and attempts to avoid establishing a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a number of issues related to trade between the UK and Ireland remained unresolved by early 2024.

As a result, concerns over the potential economic fallout of Brexit remained at the forefront of political debate in Northern Ireland. These concerns likely helped Sinn Féin scored a decisive victory in the May 2022 elections in Northern Ireland, when the party won 29 percent of the vote. This was the largest share of votes for any single party in that election and upended decades of political dominance in the region by parties supportive of the Unionist cause. Sinn Féin's victory, which marked the first time in Northern Irish history that an Irish republican party won the most seats in an assembly election, eventually resulted in the appointment of Michelle O'Neill as first minister of Northern Ireland in February 2024. O'Neill was the first Irish nationalist or republican to hold this title, and her appointment generated speculation that Irish reunification could attract renewed interest and debate among people in Northern Ireland.

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