Northern Ireland conflict

Northern Ireland conflict (1969– ). Northern Ireland was born in violent conflict, but with the exception of savage riots in 1935 (see religious conflict) the conflagrations which had recurred regularly, especially in Belfast, during the later 19th century were avoided between 1923 and 1968. The IRA's border campaign of 1956–62 failed either to provoke the Protestants or to interest the Catholics very much. But almost half a century of Stormont government, while it had been successful in managing the ethnic divide, had done little to mitigate it. After 1930 the funding of Catholic schools has been put on a basis acceptable to the Catholic church, but no effort was made to dissuade Catholics from the early acquired belief that posts in the Northern Ireland civil service were not for them, to address the housing shortage in areas where houses meant voters, to alleviate unemployement in Catholic areas, or to persuade the majority of Catholics that the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Special Constabulary exercised their responsibilities even‐handedly. Inspired by a wish to modernize, and under pressure from the British government, Terence O'Neill sought to bring in reforms after 1963. Expectations were raised but not met, while a powerful Protestant backlash was aroused, led by Revd Ian Paisley, whose militant Protestant Unionist Party (renamed the Democratic Unionist Party in 1971) became, paradoxically, the main beneficiary of the reintroduction of proportional representation in 1973.

During the late 1960s the civil rights movement took up many of the main Catholic grievances, but the successive governments of O'Neill, James Chichester‐Clark, and Brian Faulkner proved unable to deliver reforms, contain growing Catholic street action, or keep Protestant militants in check. British troops were called out ‘in aid of the civil power’ in August 1969, an intended short‐term measure which is still in place more than 30 years later. Mass rioting between Catholics and the police and at Catholic–Protestant interfaces in Belfast, Derry, and other centres was brought under more effective control after three summers of rioting and other major incidents such as Bloody Sunday, in January 1972. But during 1970 the conflict took an even more serious turn as the provisional IRA began a campaign of terrorist warfare against both the security forces and major commercial centres. The death toll rose from 25 in 1970 to 173 in 1971 (all but 30 of which occurred after the introduction of internment on 9 August) and 467 in 1972, before levelling off at an average of about 100 deaths per year from 1977 until 1993. From 1972 onwards Protestant counter‐violence from within the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force also became a major feature of the conflict.

Where British government strategy is concerned, early hopes that direct rule would be a short‐term expedient were dashed following the failure of the Sunningdale agreement and the Constitutional Convention of 1975–6. After this governments gave up serious hope of achieving an internal settlement between the constitutional parties within Northern Ireland. From 1980 a new strategy began to develop, based on direct links between London and Dublin, within the context of the European Union. This at last bore fruit in the Anglo‐Irish agreement of 1985. In the meantime another quixotic attempt at an internal settlement, the Northern Ireland Assembly of 1982–6, had failed. Sustained paramilitary violence from both sides continued for almost another decade, and the 1985 Agreement was bitterly opposed by all shades of Unionism. It contained within it, however, the basis for what later became known as ‘the peace process’.

Bibliography

Arthur, Paul, and and Jeffery, Keith , Northern Ireland since 1968 (1988)
Bardon, Jonathan , A History of Ulster (1992)

A. C. Hepburn